Video essay here: https://youtu.be/KLnUpr9lvXc

When we go see movies, we’re all hoping to encounter a plethora of emotions. We want movies to make us happy, sad, frightened, fearful, and distraught among others. As an audience we generally want a complete experience, so we don’t leave the theater feeling unsatisfied. But what do we tend to think is the most satisfying emotion? What feeling grips us, and makes us feel the most captivated?

Suspense.

Suspense is powerful, because when a film is suspenseful, it has our undivided attention. Sometimes, the feeling of suspense can be hard to describe. Dictionary.com defines it as “a state or condition of mental uncertainty or excitement, as in awaiting a decision or outcome, usually accompanied by a degree of apprehension or anxiety.”

I think that’s a pretty good definition.

That heat-racing, edge-of-your-seat feeling is just awesome.

But how is it created? What are the elements that come into play for a filmmaker to have our nerves on edge?

The common film school answer is to turn the films of Alfred Hitchcock, the “Master of Suspense” himself. Now, I don’t think anyone could deny that Hitchcock is a great place to start. His films are definitely worth studying.

However, one contemporary director is ratcheting up the anxiety and apprehension to crazy-high levels, and I think he’s worth talking about.

Jeremy Saulnier.

Saulnier’s 2013 Blue Ruin and 2015 Green Room are MASTERCLASSES of tension. From beginning to end, they’re a constant thrill ride of madness, panic, and uneasiness. If you haven’t seen these films, I strongly recommend that you do.

Creating suspense is a process, and we’re going to analyze the narrative aspects and filmmaking techniques of this process that Saulnier uses to make his movies filled with tension.

Right off the bat in Blue Ruin, we’re given instant feelings of dread and uncertainty. Lots of omniscient camerawork is used, giving us a nervous, voyeuristic look into the events unfolding onscreen. Even when nothing crazy or violent is appearing onscreen, we’re given the right kind of breathing room. We kind of feel we’re peering into a world which we shouldn’t be seeing.

When we’re introduced to the world, we’re then introduced to our protagonist. Saulnier really takes advantage of the first act to evoke emotion by creating sympathetic characters. What’s more sad and sympathetic than a homeless guy? This is a brilliant way to set up the eventual conflict in the film. We instantly know that we want this guy to succeed.

Green Room is done a bit differently, but in an equally effective way. The band members seem a bit pretentious and standoffish at first, but in contrast to Nazis, they seem like extremely pleasant people.

This brings us to creating conflict providing a menacing opposition. By placing a menacing opposition between the protagonist and their goal, this gives us a feeling of impending doom.

When opposition is introduced, then we can begin to give the audience the sense that something bad is about to happen. Playing an anti-Nazi song in front of a bunch of Nazis, well, that will do the trick. In Blue Ruin, this is done by having the protagonist radically change his actions, we see him start preparing for something that he seems to have planned. A great way to have the audience get this feeling is to give a spark of motivation to the main character. Give him a purpose, and convincingly sell the idea that he or she must do something against the opposition.

This is how we build expectation. Letting the events of the film naturally play out to the point where there is no going back… We KNOW that something bad is going to happen. The audience’s expectation is paid off when we see the conflict actually occur, and a terrific way at making this moment effective is to almost get your characters out of their predicament, but pull them back at the last moment to make the clash of opposing forces inevitable. The increases tension by putting the protagonist in a state of despair.

This is the point of the story where many films lose their effectiveness. So, what do Blue Ruin and Green Room do differently, in contrast to other thriller and horror movies? They use the element of SURPRISE very well. Putting our hero in a state of despair is common in both of these genres, but this is when we sink to mind-numbingly boring levels of cliche. By keeping plot points unpredictable, we retain tension and continue to guess what will happen. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been thirty minutes into Friday the 13th Part X and completely check out thirty minutes in. Saulnier cleverly avoids this pitfall.

Another thing to take away from these films is that they raise the stakes by using TIME to their advantage. Having a finite amount of time for your characters to complete their goals adds tons of suspense. The band members in Green Room, while contemplating on running, comment that the longer they wait in the room, the surer they are to die. In Blue Ruin, Dwight has to quickly dissipate the bloodbath on his hands before it reaches his sister and her family.

But perhaps the best thing to note is Green Room’s use of DRAMATIC IRONY. Dramatic Irony is when the audience knows something that the characters do not. We see both sides to the story in this film, the band’s perspective, and the Neo-Nazi’s perspective. To both of them, there is a crisis on their hands and they need to deal with it in different ways. Knowing the motivations and decisions of the bad guys leaves us constantly wondering how the good guys will react to these decisions. By giving us a window into the lives of the antagonists, if done right, we get an anxious nervousness about how the protagonists decide to plan their next move.

One of the main criticisms of Saulnier’s work is that the characters make ridiculously stupid decisions. I can’t really argue with that, but I do think that it’s intentional from the director’s perspective. Character flaws make them captivating. By having characters doing something you HATE, like giving away a gun to people holding you captive, we get a certain anticipation of worse things to come. This adds to the dramatic chaos of the situation.

But during chaos, it’s always important to vent the steam. It’s vital to not wear down the audience with consistent, shocking imagery. This is pacing 101. The tightness of conflict and the recoil of resolution are imperative. Relax and release the tension before ratcheting it back up again. Give the characters some room to breath and some time to recoup. Otherwise, there will be no room for other fundamental storytelling components to do their part.

In a chaotic, pressure-cooker environment, comfort is the enemy of tension. Denying the audience satisfaction for as long as you can ensures that we spend the majority of the time watching the film with our adrenalin pumping.

White-knuckled suspense can be hard to pull off, but by taking a few tricks from Blue Ruin and Green Room, you can create an intense and powerful experience yourself.