Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action, and resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more-powerful and better-equipped villains. Literary devices such as suspense, red herrings and cliffhangers are used extensively. "Homer's Odyssey is one of the oldest stories in the Western world and is regarded as an early prototype of the thriller." A thriller is villain driven plot, whereby he presents obstacles the hero must overcome. The genre is a fascinatingly flexible form that can undermine audience complacency through a dramatic rendering of psychological, social, familial and political tensions and encourages sheltered but sensation-hungry audiences, in Hitchcock's phrase, "to put their toe in the cold water of fear to see what it's like."
Psychological thriller is a specific sub-genre of the wide-ranging thriller genre. However, this genre usually has hints of the mystery genre in addition to the typical elements of the thriller genre.
Generally, thrillers focus on plot over character, and concentrate more on intense, physical action over the character's psyche. Psychological thrillers tend to reverse this formula to a certain degree, emphasizing the characters just as much, if not more so, than the plot.
The suspense created by psychological thrillers often comes from two or more characters influencing upon one another's minds, either by playing deceptive games with the other or by merely trying to demolish the other's mental state.
Sometimes the suspense comes from within one solitary character where characters must resolve conflicts with their own minds. Usually, this conflict is an effort to understand something that has happened to them. These conflicts are made more vivid with physical expressions of the conflict in the means of either physical manifestations, or physical torsions of the characters at play.
Distruction of the definition:
Psychological – Elements that are related to the mind or processes of the mind; they are mental rather than physical in nature.
Thriller – A genre of fiction that attempts to "thrill" its audience by placing characters at great risk. This constant unease throughout the story makes the narrative suspenseful to the reader by creating a tense atmosphere.
Psychological + Thriller – By combining these two terms, the definition changes to a narrative that makes the characters exposed to danger on a mental level rather than a physical one. Characters are no longer reliant on physical strength to overcome their brutish enemies (which is often the case in typical action-thrillers), but rather are reliant on their mental resources, whether it be by battling wits with a formidable opponent or by battling for equilibrium in the character's own mind.
Top 5 psychological thrillers:
- Silence of the lambs
- Rear window
- The Manchurian Candidate
- Taxi driver
- Se7en
Definition:
a suspenseful movie or book emphasizing the psychology of its characters rather than the plot; this sub-genre of thriller movie or book
Example:
In a psychological thriller, the characters are exposed to danger on a mental level rather than a physical one.
Reasearch taken from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_thriller
http://listverse.com/movies/top-15-psychological-thrillers/
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/psychological+thriller
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