Overview

Thriller opens with the scene of a house in a forest (reminiscent of Tarkovsky) in which a young man in farm clothes bearing a suffering demeanour tends sheep and a young woman in vampiric goth-garb gathers bracken for a fire. They do not look at one another. The soundtrack hums eerily. The young woman looks up towards an upstairs window of the house. Cut to an interior where a younger girl lies daydreaming on her bed. The man enters the house, turns the handle of her door. Cut to a close-up of her porcelain face wide-eyed in terror. The suspense dissipates as he turns away without opening the door. Cut to the girl as she lies back down on her bed, an enigmatic smile on her face. (Some critics have read her expression as relief, perhaps at some averted abuse, but her expression could also be read as triumph.)