Psychological thriller

Psychological thriller is a thriller story which emphasizes the unstable psychological states of its characters. In terms of classification, the category is a subgenre of the broader ranging thriller category, with similarities to Gothic and detective fiction in the sense of sometimes having a "dissolving sense of reality", moral ambiguity, and complex and tortured relationships between obsessive and pathological characters. Psychological thrillers often incorporate elements of and overlap with mystery, drama, action, slasher and horror (particularly psychological horror). They are usually books or films.

Peter Hutchings states that varied films have been labeled psychological thrillers, but that it usually refers to "narratives with domesticated settings in which action is suppressed and where thrills are provided instead via investigations of the psychologies of the principal characters." A distinguishing characteristic of a psychological thriller is a marked emphasis on the mental states of its characters: their perceptions, thoughts, distortions, and general struggle to grasp reality. According to director John Madden, psychological thrillers focus on story, character development, choice, and moral conflict; fear and anxiety drive the psychological tension in unpredictable ways. Madden stated that their lack of spectacle and strong emphasis on character have caused them to decline in popularity in Hollywood. Psychological thrillers are suspenseful by exploiting uncertainty over characters' motives, honesty, and how they see the world. Films can also cause discomfort in audiences by privileging them with information that they wish to share with the characters; guilty characters may suffer similar distress by virtue of their knowledge.James N. Frey instead defines psychological thrillers as a style, rather than a subgenre; Frey states that good thrillers focus on the psychology of their antagonists and build suspense slowly through ambiguity. Creators and/or film distributors or publishers who seek to distance themselves from the negative connotations of horror often categorize their work as a psychological thriller. The same situation can occur when critics label a work to be a psychological thriller in order to elevate its perceived literary value.

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