This film opens with a close up of waves crashing against a rock, the sound of this is loud and all you can hear. This works to build the tension and curiosity as the audience at this point has no idea to even a location let alone what the film is about.  After switching between shots of the waves which are big and intimidating the shot seemingly washes up onto shore showing that there is a man lying on the wet sand. The confusion the audience feels at this stage is exactly what this unknown man is feeling and that helps the audience to side with him despite not knowing who he is. This element of confusion and mystery often appears in the Thriller genre as it heightens the tension and anxiety of the audience.
 Two children appear and the man is looking at them, recognition on his face. The low angle/ two shot tells us we are observing the children from his point of view, the brighter lighting on the children gives us an idea of how he views them, they are happiness in his eyes. From this the audience can infer that they are his children. This moment is over quickly though as the children run off screen and with them seemingly goes the man's will to go on as he collapses into the surf.
 We are looking at his collapsed form as from out of shot the barrel of a gun appears, pointed at the man's back. This is a sudden change from the previous natural tranquillity in which the most violent element were the waves, this ability to put the audience on edge is essential for the creation of an effective Thriller. As we continue to follow the man's perspective we look upward to see an oriental building which serves to establish where we are. The fact we are seeing this building in a low angle shot makes it seem intimidating and dangerous we don't to have to go there yet we know we will.
 In a sudden switch of scenery we are now inside the building the previous natural light has been changed to a low sultry candle light which oozes wealth. We are observing the room from the doorway in an over the shoulder shot from a distance yet because the man who's shoulder we are looking over is slumped in a sitting position and all the other men we can see are standing we feel intimidated and cowed by them.
 Subtitles (due to the foreign speech) tell us that these men are just as confused about the man's identity as we are and as this is being explained the shot changes. Now we are looking over the shoulder of the man at the other end of the table, he is old and the men are serving him, it is clear to the audience that he is in charge here. Despite this however the shot seems to suggest that we should side with him also making the situation murky, who is the bad guy? All Thrillers have an antagonist and we, as the audience, are constantly trying to identify who that is, yet we can't tell in this opening and that confusion is what keeps our rapt attention.
 The men/minions inform their leader that our man was found with a gun and following a dramatic pause a spinning top which they put down on the table for both us and their leader to view, the amount of time spent on this seemingly insignificant item tells us that it is important in this scene and possibly the wider plot of the story.
 We receive a close up of our man eating the food he has been given, that he has been given food shows that his captor is benevolent at least to some extent. Then the old man asks a question that the audience has been asking themselves for quite some time "are you here to kill me?"; no answer. This common ground then disappears as he tells both our man and the audience that he has seen the spinning top before, raising even more questions in the viewer's minds. How has he seen this item before? " It belonged to a man I met in a half remembered dream" Suffice to say this clears up nothing for the audience yet it does mention the word "dream" which anyone with any kind of prior knowledge of them film knows is the key this film is about dreams, ideas and danger two of those things have become relevant in the first two minutes of the film and the third has begun to fill the audience's head thus securing their attention for the rest of the film and beyond.