Psychological Thriller Codes and Conventions

Psychological Thriller codes and conventions

Psychological thrillers focus heavily on the characters mental state as well as drawing and incorporating elements from the drama and mystery genre. The character’s mental state is usually the driving force of the plot line and often there is a first person narrative so that the audience can understand the character’s state of mind.

Psychological: elements that are related to the mind or processes of the mind that are mental instead of physical in nature. Sometimes the plot is revolved around only one character who struggles to resolve conflicts with their own mind.

The main themes of a psychological thriller are:

1.      Reality: characters often struggle to determine what is reality and what is not

2.      Mind: the mind is explored through first person narrative, revealing inner conflict and thoughts

3.      Identity: characters often doubt who they are or what purpose they are serving and therefore set out to discover themselves

4.      Perception: often the character’s perception of the world is shown to be different to others who have a more sound state of mind

5.      Death: characters sometimes have a fascination or fear of death or the dead

Literary devices and techniques:

First-person narrative: a literary technique where the story is narrated by one of more characters, who refers to him or herself in the first person (“I”). This technique enables the audience to feel more involved with the character who is then directly related to the plot and the storyline.

Backstory: the history behind the main plot line. This helps the audience to understand what a character’s motivations are within the story, therefore, deepening the psychological aspect of the narrative.

Examples of psychological thriller films include:

Shutter Island (2010), Memento (2000), Mulholland Drive (2001) and the Butterfly effect (2004)

By Melissa Owen