No Country For Old Men

For me, No Country For Old Men is definitely the most suspenseful of the three fear films we have watched. There is something about the fact that it is a newer movie, as opposed to Psycho and The Shining which are more dated, that makes the fear more real. What caught my eye from the very beginning of the film was the way that antagonist Anton Chigurh went about killing the first two men that got in his way. As a member of the audience, I expected him to use a standard shotgun to kill these men, but was startled, intrigued, and disturbed to see the weapons that he used instead. When he comes across the driver of a car he is trying to steal, Chigurh approaches him and calmly asks him to step out of the car. The driver points out the captive bolt pistol and asks what it is. These are his last words. Instead of immediately putting the pistol to the driver's head, Chigurh draws the moment out for a few more seconds, letting the fear settle in the driver before taking his life. This was the first example of the creative methods that Chigurh uses to murder his victims.

Soon after this in the second example, Chigurh is in the deputy's office awaiting punishment. While the deputy is on the phone facing away from Chigurh, we see the deputy in focus and Chigurh in the background slowly getting up and walking towards the deputy until they both come into the same focus. Chigurh strangles the deputy with his handcuffs, yet another clever way of killing someone. As a hitman, Chigurh has learned that the only way he can get what he wants is to kill everyone who gets in his way. He will also find any way to do it, using whatever resources he has. That explains how he achieved his first two killings. The fact that the audience has to wait for Chigurh to slowly approach his victims creates fear and anxiety, which adds to the suspense factor. What makes the film so frightening is how Chigurh stirs up the audience like this before delivering the pain to his victims.

What I noticed from these two scenes is that Chigurh is not a violent person, although he commits violent acts. He approaches each situation calmly and then snaps into a killing machine.

Besides him being so calm in the terrifying situations he creates, what else is scary about Chigurh?