Combining Thrilling and Killing:Use of Violence in Psychological Thrill

Combining Thrilling and KillingUse of Violence in Psychological Thrillers As we speak, at that place 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 leave cut into your wrists. Your eye, 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 fundament 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? maybe theres no man at all. Perhaps its you whos holding that gun. Maybe that gun isnt there either. Is such a thing possible? A loud BANG is your only answer.Now you stand up, brush the flecks of popcorn off your shirt, and leave the theatre. Tomorrow, when you tell your friends that the movie was exciting, thrilling, and heart-stopping youll most likely be describing one thing - violenc e. Never mind the unanswered questions of identity its the gun that made your heart race, the blood that made your pig stand on end. Does this mean you cant be thrilled without violence? Certainly not. What it means is that violence does thrill. Aside from being a biological fact, it also happens to be one which filmmakers have learned to expertly exploit. When properly employed, almost any object or action can set the heart thumping and send a chill down the spine, but to do so requires greater-than-average skill on the part of writers, directors, and actors, whereas simple violence requires relatively comminuted of these things. What motivates filmmakers to put in all that effort to replace a cheap thrill with a sophisticated one? Why do extremel... ...because to us, it exists as a part of our very selves.Works CitedHarris, Sally. Original Purpose of Escalating Violence in movies Backfired, Virginia Tech Film Critic Says. Virginia Tech freshs and Information, Oct 1999. Mar 2004 .Kelley, Richard. The Donnie Darko Book. Faber & Faber, 2003.Klein, Andy. Everything You Wanted to screw About Memento. Salon.com ArtsEntertainment June 2001. Mar 2004.Nolan, Christopher. Memento A Screenplay. Oct 1999.Piluso, Robert. Ah, Bloody Hell Violence in Film. Script Magazine Dec 2003. Mar2004 .Wood, Robin. Hitchcocks Films Revisited Revised Edition. New York Columbia University Press, 2002.