Combining Thrilling and KillingUse of Violence in...

Combining Thrilling and Killing:Use of Violence in Psychological Thrillers As we speak, there is a man holding a gun to the back of your head. The cold muzzle stings the tender skin of your scalp and blood trickles to the floor from where the handcuffs have cut into your wrists. Your heart, sensing death approaching, struggles in vain to slip through its cage of ribs and run screaming into the night, much like how the scream just behind your eyes makes your vision blur and muscles twitch spastically. But perhaps you know the man behind you. Does that make you more or less afraid? Perhaps there’s no man at all. Perhaps it’s you who’s holding that gun. Maybe that gun isn’t there either. Is such a thing possible? A loud BANG is your†¦show more content†¦If a film attempts to be as â€Å"realistic† as possible, as many psychological thrillers do, it will more likely than not contain violence simply because violence is a part of our reality. Just because a good psychological thriller does not necessarily require violence to be intense and suspenseful does not mean that violence is always an indication of trashy cinema. What discriminates between the instances where film violence is powerful and where it is just so much bloody fluff is the accompanying moral and emotional context. A journalist quotes author and film critic Stephen Prince as saying, â€Å"nearly all filmmakers are concentrating on the visual, physical aspects of violence and not on the emotional or spiritual dimensions of it† (Harris 2). A good question to determine the value of a particular instance of violence might be, â€Å"Is the violence a part of the story, or does the story exist merely for the purpose of exhibiting violence?† Most often, if the content is critically integrated into the story, the â€Å"emotional or spiritual dimensions† are being addressed to a far greater extent than if the story is simply a backdrop for che ap eye-candy. A number of excellent examples of such â€Å"meaningful violence† can be seen in the movie Memento, written by Christopher Nolan. His screenplay opens quite bluntly, with â€Å"A