Psychological thriller, a genre where a complicated mental state emphasizes a questionable reality. Tending to have domesticated characters, this subgenre illustrates a world where your mind is an enemy. It is a category that plays with what people believe to be codes, signs, connotations, and well-known ideologies to transport the audience through a cinematic recreation of the “real world.” Furthermore, the study of film utilizes this genre to manipulate the character in their story and the audience watching. Over a long period of watching movies set in this subgenre, I have decided to analyze how those films differentiate globally. The narrational format of so many films in this sub-genre conveys a sort of documentary-style transported internationally. However, many tiny elements of movies from Asia, Europe, and America alter how we categorize psychological thrillers, such as suspenseful plots, unreliable narrators, and pan shots that create tension.
The sub-genre of psychological thrillers is a broad range of thrillers with a heavy focus on the instability of a mind. These films include various aspects of mystery and horror, constantly creating tension and dramatic effect. The popularity of this genre began in the early 90s, catching traction because of Alfred Hitchcock’s films, including The Lodger(1926) and The Man Who Knew Too Much. As these films evolved over the years, there have been common characteristics and traits that allow these movies to be classifiable. In the sub-genre psychological thriller, the story is often told from the point of view of psychologically stressed characters revealing their warped mental perceptions or a sense of spinning out of control. Nicholas Carolan from Grazia Magazine claims, “The stories are set in apparently ordinary homes in familiar cities, which makes it so easy to imagine how there but for the grace of god.” In addition, these characters rarely rely on their physical strength to overcome their enemies but rather their mental resources. However, the mental resource contradicts the abnormal psychological states they had from the beginning. Furthermore, psychological thrillers are filmed in low-level lighting and quick edits to increase fear and shock. These common standard psychological thrillers could be seen as repetitive when more movies are made, but directors worldwide have learned how to make their films original.
When exploring the characteristics of psychological thrillers, the plot of those films is never the same. A great example of this would be the Japanese animated film, Paprika which focused on the depth of the mind, more specifically, how uncontrollable a dream is. The movie revolves around these doctors and one detective trying to figure out who stole this powerful device that lets people combine their dreams. The fast pace and twists make both Paprika and the audience question what information is reliable and who is the real villain. Moreover, the audience and characters progressively learn more information about what a dream and a reality were. The plot taps into a world where there will always be questions about reality and makes you question the power held in their society. In like manner, the Academy Award movie Parasite touches on class and how easy a class system can exploit the people above or below them. This film isn’t counted as a psychological thriller even though it includes many aspects of the genre. In Parasite, suspense and awkward situations are frequently used to build the plot. In a standard setting with ordinary-seeming characters, this movie allows the director to get into the audience’s mind and make them wonder what they should be taking from the film. That questioning of the plots in Paprika and Parasite allows conversations, whether essential or not, adding more character to this sub-genre. Psychological thrillers are the only genre that generally makes the director and audience think and ask questions about the plot.
Even though all these films came from different directors and countries, they still share similarities despite their differences. A common trait in this popular subgenre is how they portray their characters. The portrayal of characters in any film is critical because they guide the story along when the camera can’t. Psychological thrillers tend to have 3 or 4 main characters that aren’t labeled as protagonists or antagonists. This example is prominent in the Euro-Indie film The Girl on the Train, where the audience follows the story of Mira. She was a recently divorced “alcoholic” that gets accused of murdering a girl she saw every time she took the train. Often the enemies in psychological thrillers are internal, but this film used the characters and the mind as the enemy. As Mira gets so lost in her drinking problems, she is perceived as more aggressive, shocking because that gets typically thrown on the male leads. As the story progresses, the characters begin to reveal more about their backstory, especially Mira’s ex-husband and the girl who was murdered. The characters continuously stood out because they provided so much new information that added to the story instead of hampering it. Erin Kelly from Crime Reads states, “The plots here hinge not on detection or forensics but on human nature.” This could be seen in previous films I have mentioned even though no one character is the same. The films in the genre of psychological thrillers utilize their characters to add realism, giving the actors more importance to the movie than other genres.
As a result of the characters and plots of a psychological thriller, how a director chooses to film these movies plays a significant role. In a typical psychological thriller film, the directors use low-level lighting to create anticipation about the character. This is demonstrated in the book-based movie I’m Thinking of Ending Things. One of the main characters, Jake, is always shot in side lighting, creating shadows to illustrate a hidden side of the character that the audience doesn’t know about. That lighting constantly makes you wonder what is happening and what is real because the film’s tone continually changes. Unlike most of these films, I’m Thinking of Ending Things lacks a creepy soundtrack, utilizing the sounds of the environment to produce eerie moments. Sometimes the use of silence in the film can create more tension than an orchestra. However, at the end of the movie, the last scene is a musical number that encompasses the film’s message: how time is perceived mentally. With this abrupt change of pace, the musical number allows the audience to interpret the ending in many different ways. Another factor this film incorporates is quick edits and extreme close-ups. When shooting psychological thrillers, shots are used to exclude identity and represent the idea that something is wrong. In I’m Thinking of Ending Things, the movie has multiple scenes in a car with quick edits between the main characters’ dialogue to make the audience feel restless. This increases the anticipation of what will happen next, along with the extreme close-up shots that illustrate anxiety.
Pudovkin used close-up shots to guide the audience to the most critical parts of the story. Whereas in psychological thrillers, close-ups and over-the-shoulder shots create tension and allow the audience to relate to the characters’ minds. In the 2020 film, The Vanished, the director utilizes close-ups and over-the-shoulder shots throughout the movie. The movie follows a couple who goes camping with their daughter, and she vanishes on the first day of their stay. Whenever the couple speaks about their daughter or to her, the camera focuses on the upper part of their face, specifically their eyes. Those shots show distant emotions these characters are feeling, and it signals what is wrong with this couple which gets revealed later in the story. The over-the-shoulder shots in this film also allow the audience to feel like these characters speak to them, making them believe they are in an uncomfortable situation.
Nonetheless, every aspect of these films worldwide affects how we perceive this genre in the future. The film industry has come to a point where directors and actors don’t have to stick to one genre to make their movies memorable. As we can see with psychological thrillers now, there are comedy moments, musical numbers, murder mystery while still playing with the idea of a world inside your mind. These techniques and factors show the beauty of psychological thriller films, allowing the audience and director to continuously develop their conclusions on what’s a dream or reality.