10 Director Trademarks That You Can't Unsee

Though Wright is certainly not the first filmmaker or writer to incorporate foreshadowing into his work, very few have ever been quite as skilled at it as Wright is.

Beginning with his first major release, Shaun of the Dead, Wright has consistently made strong use of his foreshadowing, with it often resulting in some of the biggest laughs in his films. For instance, in an early drinking sequence during Shaun of the Dead, Ed lays out their bar-crawling plan for the night but is, in actually, surmising the entire plot of the film...

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

From Hot Fuzz to Baby Driver, Wright's films are positively laced with it. Whether it be any of Nicholas Angel's interactions with the townspeople explaining exactly what will happen to them in the shootout or Baby watching a news broadcast that tells the audience exactly how the film will end, it's always there.

What makes it so uniquely Wright's is that his very particular style of foreshadowing is never on-the-nose or made to stand out. In fact, if anything, it is deliberately hidden using humor. The set-up lines are framed as jokes in and of themselves, which then makes the payoff of them that much more surprising and effective.