Red Herrings in Films

During my research of Thriller films we discovered that a device to create tension in the thriller genre is to use a red herring. To recap, a red herring is something that distracts or misleads the viewer from relative or important issue in the film so you are left shocked when the real plot is revealed. Red Herrings can be characters in the film or just a prop which you think will have a role in the plot but then realise that the item has no significance at all.

 We have completed some research into some films that have used red herrings, however that are not al thrillers but are good examples of red herrings. The following films use red herrings:







Kindergarten Cop-
This film is about a character named John Kimbel who is a cop that is working under cover as a teacher in a Kindergarten, but he is really trying to search for a killer that is trying to kill someones wife and son. John however does not know what the women or child look like so he has to find them, but throughout the film we are lead to believe that a different child in the class might be the possible victim,, until the true one is revealed. 

The Da Vinci Code-
This film has a storyline which has lots of different twists and turns and uses a good red herring. Throughout the entire film the audience is tricked into thinking that Bishop Aringarosa is the culprit of the crime of a Vatican cover up. However, we then realise that this character is actually just a red herring which stops us from seeing who the real criminal is. 










Scream-
In this film there is a red herring in the form of costume. This is because as an audience we are told that the murderer was wearing the same shoes as the police chief. This then leads us to think that the chief is intact the murderer, however the chief is in fact not the criminal and we do not see him in the film again. 






Red Herrings are not only used in films but by writers such as the famous Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie used red herrings in there writing. Also the famous thriller directer Alfred Hitchcock was known to use Red Herrings techniques to keep his audience from realising who the real antagonist in the story is, for example Psycho.