popular psychological thrillers

Black Swan.
 companion piece of sorts to The Wrestler, Black Swan stars Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis as ballet rivals angling for the lead in a Swan Lake adaptation. As the competition heats up, so too does Portman's vivid hallucinations and bizarre occuerences around her. What is she seeing? And why? Darren Aronofsky directs with unstoppable force, concoting a shamelessly melodramatic and profoundly grand psychological thriller. The movie gave Portman an Academy Award, and gave us the image of the two leads in a darkroom imprinted permanently onto our brains.





The machinist
Otherwise known as "that movie nobody's really seen but Christian Bale lost a lot of weight for" -- because he's so serious about his craft; hence the tortured Batman growl -- this is the story of an industrial worker who begins to question his sanity when he develops chronic insomnia. Ghosts, mysterious post-it notes (scary!), and monotone 2000s cinematography ensue. Oh, the pain.


A tale of Two Sisters 
South Korea's Kim Ji-woon (I Saw the Devil, The Good, the Bad, the Weird) is an unabashed fan of genre fare, and A Tale of Two Sisters, a psych thriller/horror hybrid, was the first film of his to garner him international recognition. The plot centers on adolescent Su-mi, who has returned home with her younger sister Su-yeon from psychiatric care to face the stepmother she hates and the father she resents. As tensions rise in the household, supernatural visions begin to haunt Su-mi, but determining what is real and what is imaginary is up to the viewer. A skillful and measured blend of suspense, paranoia, and sheer terror, A Tale of Two Sisters's "a-ha" moment is certainly satisfying, but the fact that you soiled your britches getting to that moment is what makes it so fun.


Mulholland Drive
Mulholland Drive isn't an ordinary mystery; you'll have it all figured out pretty early -- until halfway through the movie, when Lynch pulls the rug out from underneath you, rolls it up, fills it with his giddy ideas, and forces you to smoke it. The film initially follows a woman with amnesia (Laura Harring), an aspiring actress (Naomi Watts in a breakout performance), and a hotshot movie director (Justin Theroux), all living in Los Angeles, but ultimately takes these threads and weaves a dark and grimy tale of obsession, conspiracy, and murder set against the backdrop of Hollywood. A Hollywood, by the way, that includes cowboys, hitmen, and demonic elderly couples.

Frailty
Bill Paxton's directorial debut is a gripping, slowburning Southern tension. In a story mainly told through a series of flashbacks, Paxton portrays a rural single father who one night recieves a vision from God telling him to cleanse the world of a few demons. The demons? Oh, yeah, they're disguised as people. It's all a very sordid affair, with Paxton's two boys split on the path their father has taken them: one believes, the other a horrifed skeptic. And we see that the effects will last well into adulthood...







momento 
Christopher Nolan's Memento essentially begins at the end of its story and invites the audience to retrace its steps alongside its protagonist, long term memory-deficient Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), who's attempting to unravel the mystery behind his wife's rape and murder. Alternately told in chronological order (the past, shown in black-and-white) and reverse chronological order (the present, in color), Nolan's mind-bending script never quite lets on what's happening until the last possible moment, beginning with a bang (literally) and sustaining its tension and sense of disorientation so effectively that -- wait, what were we talking about again?

an over view of Psychological Thriller

Psychological Thrillers

Is a popular sub-genre of thrillers with heavy focus on characters. It often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genre genre along with the typical traits of the thriller genre. In addition, psychological thrillers contain elements of and often overlap with the horror genre, especially seen in psychological thrillers.

Characters are no longer reliant on physical strength to overcome their enemies but are reliant on their mental resources by battling for equilibrium in the characters own mind. The suspense created by psychological thrillers often comes from two or more characters preying on one another mind. E.g. Playing deceptive games

themes
Psychological thrillers tend to follow certain themes which is a centre of the story. Some of them as of followed: 

• mental illness
• Death
• Reality
• Identity
• Existence
• Purpose

Conventions of a psychological thriller

The conventions of psychological thrillers will include things like:

• Low level lighting- shadows to create fear/tension.
• Quick edits & changes in camera angle- increase the feeling of fear and shock. Often used during significant scenes.
• Music- high tension, eerie, silence.
• Flashbacks- time disorientation confusing the audience or showing the past to give an insight into why the characters are the way they are.
• Black and white colouring- increase effectiveness of shadows.
• Claustrophobic spaces- entrapment of the mind, planes or house.
• Font/colour of title- may be written in a certain way to emphasis the theme of the film.

Directors of thrillers

• Alfred Hitchcock - also known as the 'Master of suspense' uses these conventions to an extent that its so effective and really encapsulates the audience. You can find it in one of his best films 'Psycho' which does this really well.

• David Lynch - is a surrealist director whose mysteries are usually puzzles of the mind.  The audience and the characters themselves must figure out what is real and what isn't. E.g. Mulholland drive.

• Martin Scorsese - director of 'The Departed' & 'Shutter island'.

Amended post of Final idea

Girl wakes up, looks confused, shrugs it off and walks downstairs, again begins to look confused but carries on and ignores it, gets ready and walks out of the door cuts to her coming home, walks up the stairs and goes in her bedroom, cantered angle camera as she puts her things down and places her coat over the back of a chair, then gets in bed, when he wakes up his chair is gone and the coat is on the floor, she picks it up and puts it on without thinking about, she then has a moment of realisation and as she's leaving he turns round to stare at where she picked it up from, knowing that something is strange, she carries on as usual,

She no longer dare go to sleep, she knows that when she goes to sleep something is going to change, she sits at a table, her eyes are dark and bloodshot and her hair is a mess, you can see both the fear and tiredness in her eyes, lots of empty energy drink cans, and tablets scattered around the table, eventually she can't stay awake no more she falls asleep and this is when the worst happens, she wakes in a completely unfamiliar room and panics, she knows something is going to have happened and daren't do anything because she knows how it's going to be, she hesitantly leaves the room, and when she goes downstairs her family don't recognise her and are scared that there's a stranger in the house, she argues that she's their son but the Dad grabs him and drags him out of the house, 

Everything that changes goes into this room, like when the chair goes missing there is a chair in an empty room. Say if a pen went missing, there would be a chair and a pen. She wakes up from her sleep one day and then wakes up in the room. There is a close upshot of her eyes opening rapidly. The camera slowly pulls away from her face whilst you hear doctors voices saying 'She appears to be in a catatonic state." It could then cut to her in a mental state in the white room thumping on the doors screaming and kicking to get her out. This could represent her mental state. Everything she needs and wants to be a normal stable person seem to be going missing. This could also be a link to her brain. The things that the brain needs to function are slowly going and disintegrating.

She walks around the room and takes a seat somewhere and her eyes begin to water, it fades and cuts to flashbacks of happier times when she's with friends and family, always laughing, then the laugh continues in a graphic match, this time more sinister, as she's stood against a white wall, in a straight jacket with a light in her face (the light swings to emphasise his madness) and then it slowly fades out with her laughing all the time...

detailed plan of film (needs middle)

Boy wakes up, looks confused, shrugs it off and walks downstairs, again begins to look confused but carries on and ignores it, gets ready and walks out of the door cuts to him coming home, walks up the stairs and goes in his bedroom, cantered angle camera as he puts his things down and places his coat over the back of a chair, then gets in bed, when he wakes up his chair is gone and the coat is on the floor, he picks it up and puts it on without thinking about, he then has a moment of realisation and as he's leaving he turns round to stare at where he picked it up from, knowing that something is strange, he carries on as usual,












He no longer dare go to sleep, he knows that when he goes to sleep something is going to change, he sits at a table, his eyes are dark and bloodshot and his hair is a mess, you can see both the fear and tiredness in his eyes, lots of empty energy drink cans, and tablets scattered around the table, eventually he can't stay awake no more he falls asleep and this is when the worst happens, he wakes in a completely unfamiliar room and panics, he knows something is going to have happened and daren't do anything because he knows how it's going to be, he hesitantly leaves the room, and when he goes downstairs his family don't recognise him and are scared that there's a stranger in the house, he argues that he's their son but the Dad grabs him and drags him out of the house, he walks around the street and takes a seat somewhere and his eyes begin to water, it fades and cuts to flashbacks of happier times when he's with friends and family, always laughing, then the laugh continues in a graphic match, this time more sinister, as he's stood against a white wall, in a straight jacket with a light in his face (the light swings to emphasise his madness) and then it slowly fades out with him laughing all the time...

The end

Idea Number One

The main character seems calm, collected and suspicious. The character is seen to be taking pills on a daily basis in which the audience knows no reason for. Over a gradual amount of time, the pills begin to work in a way that no other pill does, scary things start happening; lights flickering, turning on, sounds, alarm clocks going off, voices talking to them, paranoia. Nightmares are the final step. The main character soon becomes scared to sleep because if they do, they are took to the deepest most horrible place.

Possible Endings - 

The pills make her forget her trauma, the loss of her twin. It makes her only see herself when she looks in the mirror.

She is a schizophrenic.

Film Idea 1.

A regular boy who lives a regular life is about to have his world turned upside town. One night he goes to sleep and when he awakes he notices something isn't right, but he can't figure out what. Over time, more things keep changing, furniture moves and other little things. He soon realises that it's what he's been dreaming, everything he imagined in his dreams had been coming true in real life. It doesn't worry him at first, he actually finds it sort of cool, but that quickly changes. His dreams become worse, people go missing and some even get hurt. However the weirdest thing, is that when something changes in real life, nobody notices. If someone goes missing, he is the only one who has a recollection of their existence. When more and more people go missing from his life he begins to panic, he becomes scared of going to sleep, he keeps his self awake on an unhealthy diet of energy drinks and caffeine terrified that he will fall asleep. However he can't stay up forever, he falls asleep eventually and this is when the worst happens, his parents disappear. He wakes up in tears, scared to go in to his parents bedroom, because he knows they won't be there, he was right. He tries to tell people about what is happening, doctors, therapists, psychiatrists, but nobody will believe him, it drives him crazy, he wishes more than anything that he could control these dreams but he can't. After a while he loses everyone he loves, they all vanish, and he's alone, he hates his life...

Not yet sure on ending?

Individual film idea

individual film idea 
 My first film idea is inspired by a independent short film called Amy's Torch (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01AI0lAq_uY&list=HL137890268) 
-A Girl aged 5-6 is telling her mum about the "scary thing" under her bed 
-when its the girls bed time the mum checks under her bed.
- scene cuts to woman running around a house looking scared
- a man with a knife is running after her
- woman runs into daughters room (daughter is at a sleep over) man kills woman by stabbing her multiple times and shoves her under the bed.
-scene cuts back to the bed where the mum is crouched down
-Mum's dead body is under the bed.
-Mum stands up looking confused and scared, fades away into wall as she steps back.

film idea no.1 - Lewis Roscoe

After having a bad few days at college/school, this student goes missing; however through a history of upsets, running away and mental health (bipolar), many people seem to think that it is just another episode. A few days after other people begin to disappear; it is thought that the student is responsible for this as clues such as clothing items and jewellery begin to be discovered, so the search for the missing students continues by his college peers. However the family of the missing student believe that the whole search is a waste of time, they believe that he will turn up I his own time, however they decide to continue the search. After other items of clothing appear, but with red stains, the college peers begin to think that they are looking for someone else who is responsible for the missing students. By searching the first missing students room they see evidence that he has been home (dirty clothes, other clothes missing from his closet). This is where the student sneaks back into the house and is surprised to see his college/school peers. He panics and runs away. Leaving the other students in shock, so they follow him; it turns out he has been living in a tent in the nearby woods and is responsible for the other missing students as they find many other items belonging to the them. Flashbacks of the boy being harassed and bullied begin to appear from the peers by standing perspective (being pushed around etc). and I turns out his parents weren’t that bothered as they gave him permission to do whatever he wants about the situation but had no idea he would go this far (kidnapping) and after coming into contact again with his parents is given mental help while the other missing students are found and returned home. However it is not a happy ending for the boy as he goes missing for a final time and is never seen again.

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