How Terry Winsor utlises the aspects of the Thriller genre in Essex Boys.(revised again)

Essex Boys
Director: Terry Winsor
2000
Company: Granada Film Productions
User Comment:

“Winsor's film, it seems to me, brilliantly evokes both the drabness and cruelty of the criminal mindset. It does this partly through the choice of dull, flat Essex landscapes with their coastal marshes, grey motorway links, flash nouveau riche mansions and the tawdry glamour of seafront locations. The characters are both repellent and yet curiously mesmerising. This is not a film in which it is easy to lose interest.”

User Rating: 5.9/10

As the film starts, the credits are shown through binary opposites of black and white with a chalk board effect. There are non diagetic sounds that accompany various lines that appear on the screen. This appears to the viewer to be either somebody scraping their nails down a chalkboard - a sound that many people hate - or somebody scratching at something in an attempt to escape. The sounds are that of a car alarm going off - something that connotes danger immedietly, or at the very least a sense of unease.

The dramatic music being played over the top (the soundtrack) begins to give the viewer a sense of unease or suspense, and the non-diagetic sounds mentioned earlier raise the tension before the audience can see a picture. The black screen is noir - a common feature of the Thriller, and it connotes gloom, danger and sorrow amongst many other emotions.




The establishing shot is of Billy in the garage (pictured), being lit by chairoscuro lighting which suggests not only the genre, but also communicates nightmare, suspense and the feeling that there is something to hide, this could be an intertextual nod to the extremely infamous thriller: "The Third Man" - which uses chairoscuro lighting effectively - in paticular during the sewer sequences. The fact that it is in a claustophobic space (a garage of which the audience is looking from one of the corners) is another generic feature of the Thriller, and the cobwebs crowding the garage making it hard to see clearly what is around. The mise-en-scene here is a brilliant example of a convention of a thriller film- noir lighting, creaks amongst the silence suggesting that anything could be about to happen.



The dark in the scene could represent the corruption of the characters or the darker side of the human soul. The colours and various features of the mise-en-scene make it seem slightly Gothic and our suspense is heightened as the dank chill of the garage is visualised in Billy's breath; this suggests that the garage is as cold as a tomb. It could be that the director here has used this method to suggest that Billy's character is cold-hearted - which could be here being represented through the weather. The sudden P.O.V shot of Billy's face against the darkness adds to the suspense and connotes his demonic nature. The fact that he is here after it has obviously been a long time and at night time make his character seem shady.

The unglamourous location (as seen in the above photo) and the low key dreary lighting are generic conventions whilst the voice over and the grey tint of the mise-en-scene are British cultural references.

The voice-over of Billy (a young man of around 18-20) - 'I'll try anything once' - breaks the silence of the scene, and we hear that the narrator has quite a soft voice and that he is from Essex - as the title of the film suggests. This technique is used to engage the audience, as it is as if the driver is speaking directly to him. His voice is informal, friendly and jokey - as if the audience is his friend. From this, it is clear that the film is going to be his story.

Billy sits in the car and continues his story, and as he mentions 'Jason Locke', he turns on the windscreen wipers and through a P.O.V shot (through Billy's perspective), the audience can see a man standing in the headlights of the car. (pictured) This is extremely clever, as the viewer only sees him once the mud on the windscreen has been wiped away, although the screen is still quite grimy. This connotes that Jason is dirty or has a dirty past, and that although his slate has been wiped clean (as the viewer learns he has just left prison), there is still something not quite right about him.

Many more generic features of the Thriller genre are used in the next scene: Billy is driving along an empty road, it is raining extremely hard, there are walls on either side of the road making it seem slightly claustrophobic, the skies are dark and the location is unglamorous and industrial. The empty road connates danger, as anything could happen and everybody would be oblivious - this along with the weather that is used in horror and thriller movies alike both increase the suspense.



The scene where they are driving through a deserted tunnel also created a lot of tension. The shape of the tunnel slightly resembles the barrel of a gun (pictured), which could foreshadow later events in the film. This is also an extremely big metaphor showing the audience signs of danger and violence.



In the same way, we later see a close up of Billy driving the car through the tunnel, however the lights are shining down in strips across the face of Billy in the foreground and Jason who is in the background. (Pictured) This could either represent the fact that Jason has just got out of prison, the fact that they're about to do something that is against the law, the fact that they will go to jail or the fact that they - or mainly, Jason - are criminals. Looking at it in a different way, it could also represent the fact that Billy is trapped with Jason as he is too naive to know any different, or too scared to disobey him. It may also show that Billy has been blinded by lights that may come with being asked by somebody so well known around his town (despite it being for the fact that he is so violent) to help him and was too starstuck (for lack of a better word) to turn him down.

Here, the voice-over begins again, with Billy informing the audience that they have 'picked up this truck.' - the truck in question being a white, unmarked truck. This in itself is another generic feature as anything could be happening within it - from kidnappings, smuggling of drugs, smuggling of illegal immigrants and much more. The rest of the mise-en-scene is in dark colours such as greys and blacks, with the atmosphere in the film still being quite sinister.