Learning more about my genre

So Psychological Thrillers! If I am going, to be honest, I haven’t watched that many movies in this genre. But my other team members have, so since this is going to be the genre I am focusing on, I might as well learn more about it, right?

So in order to understand it, I decided to take a look at its definition. A psychological thriller as defined by Defintions.net is “a thriller story which emphasizes the psychology of its characters and their unstable emotional states.”

What I found after taking a look at the definition of a psychological thriller was that it focuses more on the psychology and mental state/ delusion of its characters rather than the action or the plot. Therefore, I found that many psychological thrillers can seem slow in action, as they focus on building up suspense and concentrate more on their characters mentality. Psychological thrillers also incorporate suspenseful scores in order to augment the fear factor onto their audience. This genre, in essence, uses scores as a tool to build up suspense and fear.

Although they can be confused with horror movies I found that they are actually very different. One way I found them differing is in the fact that horror movies focus on one scary tangible things while psychological thrillers focus on the hysteria of their characters. In a way, they are therefore considered much scarier since it is sometimes difficult to differentiate what is real and what is over-dramatized. In addition to this, Horror movie director’s often use scares throughout the entire movie. On the other hand, psychological thrillers use scares sparingly and build up suspense. Lastly, Psychological thrillers do not incorporate as heavy of a focus on costume design or makeup design since characters are almost always real human beings unlike the many characters in Horror films which are often fictitious. However, Psychological thrillers do rely heavily on lighting and other mise en scène factors in order to establish a specific tone.

Split

One example of such Psychological Thriller films that I looked at was Split. Split is a movie which focuses on the story of Kevin, played by James McAvoy, which has several personalities. The story then revolves around him kidnapping three girls along with a deeper personality inside him that is trying to dominate all the others. This focus on his mental struggle and hysteria is reflective upon the genre. The film also revolves heavily around the acting of the main character because this is what delivers the feeling of hysteria to the audience. The score is also a very prominent part in augmenting the suspense of the movie.

Gone Girl

Another example of a psychological thriller in the film industry is Gone Girl. Gone Girl is a movie focused on the characters Nick Dunne played by Ben Affleck and Amy played by Rosamund Pike. The story focuses these two character’s facade of a perfect marriage when suddenly Amy goes missing and the prime subject is Nick. The part of the film that makes it a psychological thriller is the deep focus on the mental state of each character. Especially in this case (SPOILER ALERT) where Amy was secretly behind the entire set-up and framed her own husband in an elaborate psychopathic manner. Other features that were previously mentioned, such as acting and the score were prime attributes in the delivery of suspense to the audience in this film.

References

• Rennick, L. (2018, April 18). 5 Ingredients You’ll Find In The Best Psychological Thriller Films. Retrieved from https://junkee.com/best-psychological-thriller-films/154593
• TV Tropes. (n.d.). Psychological Thriller. Retrieved from  https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PsychologicalThriller