TV

Getting Under Your Skin: The Subliminal Shots of ‘Mindhunter’

By  · Published on October 19th, 2017

The Netflix original’s opening titles want to mess with your head.

David Fincher is a notoriously heady director. Chopping up bits and pieces of footage, leaving clues, has been something of a calling card of his – ironic as it may be when much of his work focuses on serial killers. Fight Club’s fourth wall-breaking antics are replicated a bit in the opening titles of Fincher’s new show Mindhunter, in which a relatively calm sequence is intercut with gruesome images.

The supercut by editor Vashi Nedomansky lingers on these subliminal messages, making them rise to the forefront of conscious viewership and stripping them of some of their power.

However, seeing these images for longer amounts of time, then going back to the flashing quickness of the intercut title sequence makes the effect all the more powerful. Watch at your own discretion.

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Jacob Oller writes everywhere (Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Playboy, FSR, Paste, etc.) about everything that matters (film, TV, video games, memes, life).