Red Herring

What is a red herring in film?

A red herring is a clue, character or event that the story deliberately presents as meaningful so the audience draws the wrong conclusion. It's a kind of plot device: its job isn't to be true, it's to occupy the viewer's attention while the real answer is being set up somewhere else.

The name comes from hunting and debate. A smoked herring turns reddish-brown and smells strongly, and the phrase is usually traced to a story the English journalist William Cobbett published in the early 1800s about dragging one across a trail to throw hounds off the scent. That image is still the best way to think about it: the red herring doesn't erase the real trail, it lays a stronger, more tempting one across it.

In screen stories a red herring has three parts:

• The plant. The false clue gets emphasis: screen time, a close shot, a line of dialogue that makes it sound important.
• The pull. Characters and audience start building theories around it. The more a detective or protagonist believes it, the more we do.
• The release. The story clears the false lead, ideally in a way that also reveals something true. A red herring that simply vanishes feels like a dropped thread.

The good ones are fair. The real answer is on screen the whole time, just given less weight. That's the difference between a red herring and a plot hole: when the truth comes out, the audience can look back and see that the film didn't lie, it only directed their eyes.

Types of red herrings, with examples

Red herrings come in a few recognizable shapes. Most mysteries use more than one.

The false suspect. The most common form: a character who looks guilty. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) points everything at Snape, cold, hostile and seen muttering during the Quidditch match, while the stammering, harmless-seeming Quirrell is the real threat. Home Alone (1990) uses the same trick in a gentler key: Old Man Marley, rumored among the neighborhood kids to be a murderer, turns out to be a lonely man who ends up saving Kevin.

The crowded suspect list. Instead of one decoy, the story gives everyone a motive. Clue (1985) gathers guests who are all being blackmailed by the same man, Mr. Boddy, so every one of them has a reason. Knives Out (2019) does it with a whole family, each member financially threatened by the patriarch before his death, and it adds a second layer by apparently showing us the culprit early on.

The decoy identity. The film tells us who the villain is, then swaps them. In Batman Begins (2005), the man introduced as Ra's al Ghul is a stand-in, and Bruce's mentor Ducard is the real one. In The Usual Suspects (1995), Agent Kujan is so sure Keaton is Keyser Söze that the audience adopts his theory, while the man telling the story is sitting in front of him.

The false resolution. The problem seems solved, and it isn't. In Jaws (1975) the fishermen catch a tiger shark and the town celebrates, until Hooper examines it and the evidence doesn't add up.

The misleading storyline. The biggest version hijacks the whole plot. Psycho (1960) spends its opening act on Marion Crane's stolen money, the car trade, the highway patrolman and her guilty conscience, and then abandons that story along with its star. The stolen money works as a MacGuffin for the first act and as a red herring for the audience's expectations about the rest of the film.

The double bluff. The story raises suspicion, clears the suspect, then proves the first instinct right. Scream (1996) arrests Billy early, lets him go, and brings him back as one of the killers.

Why do filmmakers use red herrings?

To protect the ending. Film audiences are experienced readers of structure. They know the famous actor with little to do is probably important, and they know the obvious suspect usually isn't guilty. A red herring gives them something to solve so they stop working on the real answer.

To make the reveal recolor the film. When a plot twist lands, the audience replays earlier scenes in their heads. A well-built red herring means those replays pay off: the scene they misread was actually showing them the truth. The Usual Suspects is built for that second viewing.

To build suspense and dread. A suspect in the house raises suspense in every scene they enter, whether or not they're guilty. Marley in Home Alone makes every walk down the snowy street tense for Kevin.

To say something about the characters. Who a detective suspects says who they are. Kujan's certainty about Keaton shows his pride. The family in Knives Out each blame the outsider first, and the film uses that to make its point about them.

How to write and shoot a red herring

A red herring is written in the script but sold with the camera. The cinematic grammar that says "this matters" is the same grammar that plants a false clue, so you can use it on purpose.

Emphasis on the decoy. An insert shot of the bloody letter opener, held for two or three seconds with a slow push-in, tells the audience to remember it. A reaction shot of the groundskeeper glancing at the door after someone mentions the will does the same for a character. Close framing, a longer lens, a music sting on the cut: each one adds weight.

Lighting and framing the suspect. Put the decoy in low-key lighting, hard sidelight, half of the face in shadow, or frame them in the foreground of someone else's shot, watching. Audiences read shadow and scrutiny as guilt long before any dialogue makes the case.

Understatement for the truth. Give the real clue less than it deserves: show it in a wide shot, on the edge of frame, out of focus in the background, or during a laugh or an argument that pulls attention elsewhere. A rack focus away from a detail at the exact moment it becomes relevant is a classic way to show something and hide it at once. Whatever you hide must still be readable on a second viewing. That's the fair-play rule.

Write the release. Decide in the outline how and when each red herring gets cleared, and what true information the clearing reveals. In Jaws, dismissing the tiger shark exposes the town's denial. In Home Alone, clearing Marley gives Kevin an ally. A red herring with a scene that clears it feels designed. One without feels forgotten.

Keep it proportional. One major false lead and two or three minor ones is plenty for a feature. If every scene has a decoy, the audience stops trusting any clue and stops guessing.

Plan it on the board. Red herrings live across the whole film, so it helps to see them at once. In FlashBoards you can lay out the decoy's plant, pull and release shots in one row and the real clue's quieter appearances in the row below, next to reference frames for how each should be lit and framed. When the rows sit side by side on one board, you can check that the truth really is on screen before the reveal.

Red herring vs. MacGuffin vs. foreshadowing

All three involve details the audience notices. What separates them is their job in the story.

• A red herring points the wrong way. Its purpose is misdirection, and it's eventually proven false or irrelevant to the solution.
• A MacGuffin is what the characters want: the briefcase, the microfilm, the stolen money. Its nature barely matters, but the chase for it is real. It doesn't mislead anyone about the ending, it just makes the story go. Hitchcock popularized the term.
• Foreshadowing points the right way. It plants a hint that pays off, so the ending feels earned rather than random.

The cleverest scenes use them together. The same shot can foreshadow for the attentive viewer while a louder red herring in the same scene distracts everyone else. The money in Psycho shows how one element can switch roles: it drives the first act as a MacGuffin, and once Marion is gone it has also served as a red herring for what the film is really about.

A red herring is also different from an unreliable narrator, though they often work together. The unreliable narrator is a source of false information; the red herring is the false information itself. In The Usual Suspects the narrator feeds the investigator the story, and the red herrings are what he chooses to put in it.

For more devices that control what the audience knows and when, see the storytelling hub, including dramatic irony, which works the opposite way: the audience knows more than the characters.

A red herring on screen is a matter of emphasis: who gets the hard light, the focus and the foreground, and who gets soft background. Image and video models reproduce that emphasis well if you assign it plane by plane in the prompt, instead of asking for "a suspicious scene." Build the decoy shot and the insert, then animate the decoy so the true culprit's small tell happens behind him. In FlashBoards you can keep the decoy shots and the real-clue shots on one board and compare takes side by side.

Common mistakes

• Everyone looks guilty. Ask for "a suspicious scene" and models light every face moodily. Assign the mood per character: hard shadow for the decoy, warm light and a smile for the real culprit.
• Everything in focus. Image models often render the background as sharp as the foreground, which kills the hierarchy. State "foreground, sharp focus" and "background, soft focus" and give a lens (40mm or longer).
• The real clue disappears. If you describe the hidden detail too vaguely, it doesn't get drawn. Name it concretely ("a teacup with a pink lipstick mark on the rim") and then weaken it with position and light, not by leaving it out.
• The video camera wanders to the background. Say "focus staying on him the whole time," otherwise the model may rack focus to the second character and give away the reveal.
• Named negatives backfire. Writing "she is not holding a weapon" can put a weapon in her hand. Describe what she is doing instead: pouring tea, smiling.

Further reading

Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut, Hitchcock/Truffaut (1966) — on suspense, surprise and the MacGuffin. Michael Quinion, World Wide Words — on the origin of the phrase "red herring."