10 Unique Tricks Every Movie Started To Rip-Off
2. The Doorbell Switcheroo - The Silence Of The Lambs
The Trick
Jonathan Demme's Best Picture-winning thriller features one of the most iconic and brilliantly devious edits in modern filmmaking history - the now-famous "doorbell switcheroo."
In the film's climax, FBI agents are preparing to raid what they believe to be killer Buffalo Bill's (Ted Levine) house, cross-cut with Clarice (Jodie Foster) following up on a separate lead.
Demme does a fantastic job milking Bill's panic as it appears he's about to be rumbled, only for him to open the door and be greeted by Clarice.
The FBI got the wrong house, and now the audience is left to fester in their own anxiety as they watch a blissfully unaware Clarice enter Bill's home.
The Rip-Offs
No Country for Old Men features an outstanding example of the doorbell switcheroo, when assassin Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) breaks into a hotel room we believe is occupied by hero Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), only for it to actually be the room next door containing the Mexican assassins.
Taylor Sheridan's superb thriller Wind River has a similarly memorable example, where rookie FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) knocks on the door of the local security crew's sleeping quarters.
Sheridan then cuts to the man who appears to be inside, Matt Rayburn (Jon Bernthal), who answers the door only to be greeted by his girlfriend Natalie (Kelsey Chow) who died at the start of the movie, confirming the sequence is a separate flashback. Genius.
Much like the parallel editing employed in Christopher Nolan's action scenes, this trick is technically complex enough that the hacks-for-fire generally steer well clear of it, even if auteurs clearly love it.
Because it hits so hard when it's executed well, it hasn't quite outstayed its welcome even three decades later.