“Vacancy” and “The Departed” Opening sequence analysis

The opening sequence of “Vacancy” sets the atmosphere and tone for the rest of the film, introducing characters, but not telling us that much about them, creating a sense that we do not know everything, and that there is more than the film tells us. Straight away, we can tell that this is a horror subgenre of thrillers, from the darkness, and the fear and suspense it is aiming to build up in the audience.

This is carried on throughout the rest of the opening sequence, as the dark obscures whatever is beyond the road, and the two main characters argue over things we are not informed about.

There is also an anticlimax, at the point when the car almost hits the (racoon?). The music builds up, and we are shown the silhouette of the animal in the cars headlights, as if it is something dangerous. What happens next, however (the car makes a sudden stop and skids off the road) has an impact on the rest of the film in that it damages the car, causing them to stop off later on. Pathetic fallacy is used to an extent, it being at night. This is something that you could say is a convention of thrillers, as the genre uses it a lot to create whichever atmosphere it is trying to portray.

Another point about the opening sequence of “vacancy” is the very long credits at the very beginning. The credits alone tell us something about the film we are about to see, with black and red being the dominant colours, and the music being very dramatic, and foreboding.

“The Departed” is an example of a very different subgenre of thrillers, the gangster film, and the opening sequence uses very different tactics to create a very different atmosphere and setting within the film. Conventions, almost clichés, of the gangster movie are used. An example of this is the narrator, who has an almost typical gangster voice. There are many similar films which open in a very similar way, which, in a way, is very suitable for a very well established genre of film, and does not detract from the opening in any way, merely informing us of the type of film we are watching.

One thing that “The Departed” has in common with “Vacancy” is that we get the sense of a background that goes far beyond what we see in the opening, as we see a flashback, involving one of the characters, who has already been established as a man who doesn’t care about morals or human life, shoots two people, along with someone else. We are not told anything about this, but we can assume that it has something to do with the boy he is talking to.