Final Project - Intial Research
For our final project, Craig and have thought about doing a psychological thriller/ horror. For our research we have looked into what are the codes and conventions of a psychological thriller/horror, the main distributors and producers of this genre and examples of films of this particular genre.
The main element that psychological thrillers include is the way the plot is structured as instead of typical action films where the characters rely on their strength, psychological thrillers instead have for example, the criminals play games with the officers chasing them, aiming to destroy each other’s mind in turn creating the suspense in the film as the audience is constantly on edge of who will win this battle of wits. The reason this genre borders close to horror at times is because this technique shows the audience sometimes disturbing insights into what the antagonist is like who, unlike typical horror, is a normal human being and not some monster. This frightens the audience more as the character is a human doing these depraved things and shows another side of humanity that we are afraid to admit exists. This is mainly used in the serial killer films like Seven as we see these sides to the killers in great detail, creating the psychological horror part to the film.
On occasion, sometimes the film may focus only one characters struggle like the film The Machinist starring Christian Bale. The whole film is about a character who has had a year long period of insomnia and doesn't know why. Also keeps seeing a man called Ivan who doesn’t exist and post-it notes depicting hangman games. While all this seems insignificant, it all builds up tension towards the climax of the reason behind it all. So a main link between most of these thrillers and horrors is instead of going full bore with monsters and gore, they give smaller clues that all add up and keep the audience guessing whilst coming up with their own ideas as this is another part of these films. It’s all about the character's and audience's interpretation of everything in the film as while one my find something useless within working out the plot, someone else might think it’s the final piece of the puzzle. In terms of tone, the majority of films usually go for unsettling dark atmospheres coupled with the main tones of death, humanity and sometimes morals like the Saw films target moral ambiguity as the title character "Jigsaw" thinks he's helping people understand life better while the audience and the other characters think he is just demented with the work he does. Sixth Sense is a good one for the death aspect as the whole film deals with this subject.
A fairly interesting introduction to your idea, which gives me an overview of what you would like to achieve. You should now start to look at some specific examples of this kind of film (which usually, it has to be said, start quite quietly). Se7en is a good one to look at, since it sort of throws you in quite quickly, although you might also want to look at some more recent examples (the first Saw movie is a reasonable psychological horror, as you say, at least at the start). I can also recommend looking at Memento, Insomnia, Kiss me Deadly and possibly even Double Indemnity, since all are quite interesting examples of psychological thrillers
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I can see images and video on your blog just fine (at least, from home; the video will be blocked at school).
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