Conventions of the psycho-thriller genre

We have studied some opening sequences/films that belong to the psycho-thriller genre and these are some of the conventions that we have noticed.



Costumes/clothing: The villan or the 'psycho' tends to wear dark colours, jeans or a shirt and dress down or they tend to wear smart suits. For example, in the film American Psycho, the villan Patrick is always seen in a suit.

Mememto opening credits.

Setting: In some of the psychothriller films that I have seen, for example Mememto and Se7en the opening sequence takes place somewhere that is completely unfamiliar to the audience. Mememto was taken place in what seems to be an abandoned room and Se7en has so many extreme close ups that it's hard to understand what is happening. This is also true of the film 'The eye'  as in the first 30 seconds of the film you are given a blurred clip and it's hard to make out what it is.



The eye opening sequence.



Sound: the usual conventions for sound in a psycho-thriller film is to have uneasy non-diagetic sound over the credits coming in and out of the scenes. In films such as Mememto and ..... they use a narrative during the film to show that the whole movie is shown in the protagonists point of view.

Editing, in psycho-thriller films it can be said that there is a lot of faced paced editing involved that can confuse the audience. This can be seen in 'The Eye' where there is an establishing shot of a field and it jumps to a black screen and then back again to the field and then jumps to a close up of an exhaust of a car.