19/09/2011
Written & Directed by Gregory J. Read.
Starring Eddie Redmayne as Alex Forbes, Tom Sturridge as Nigel Colbie and Toni Collette as Sally Rowe.
The opening titles of a thriller film are very important as they set up the atmosphere for the audience and ease them into the story and feeling of the film. In the opening of pshycological thriller film Like Minds, the audience watches a very close-up shot of a piece of glinting metal as the actors names and major production teams' names appear in a thin white scrawl. Eerie classical music is being played over the scene to help create the atmosphere - tense, mysterious. The shot gently moves away to reveal the metal being train tracks, and before you know it, a train ploughs ahead at full speed and we see one of the main protagonists leaning out of the train door, screaming in what seems to be some form of excitement.
Like Minds comes under the genre of pshycological thriller. It centres around seventeen year old Alex Forbes who is being held at a police station and being questionned over the death of his "friend" Nigel Colbie. Most people - including the forensic pshycologist Sally Rowe who is questionning him- believe he has commited the crime of killing Nigel. In the first real scene of the film that isn't a flashback, the audience sees an out of focus mid shot of Alex in the interview room. As the shot comes into focus, the boy's features are vacant, the eerie music is still playing and his voice appears over the footage "I can't remember when I first noticed the change. It's not that I didn't see it coming, I just didn't want to believe it. I guess that's not much of an excuse, but it's the truth". The ambiguous first few sentences give nothing away in terms of the storylines and plots. It creates a real sense of mystery and forces the audience to want to keep watching.
The character of Alex is a strong, sharp tongued teenager who is thrown into a situation which he is initially blamed for. Nigel is a dark generally quiet, mysterious young man, also seventeen years old. He pulls Alex into an uncomfortable and strange story of fraternity and the Knights Templar. The relationship between the two boys is very strained as they share a room together in a prestigous boarding school for boys which Alex's father is headmaster of. Another main character in the film is the forensic pshycologist Sally Rowe who investigates Alex's point of view of what occured.
I think Like Minds is suitable for anyone from late teens onwards. It's a really interesting, mysterious film that is imaginative and edgy and above all, a truly good thriller.
No comments:
Post a Comment