2. Thriller – Psychological crime thriller
My group have decided to base our ideas
around a psychological crime thriller like
“Zodiac” as we want to have a scary unknown
serial killer
A psychological crime thriller is a hybrid genre of
both a psychological thriller and a crime
thriller (as the name suggests)
3. Setting
• Crime thrillers are often based in places like
police stations whereas psychological thrillers
can be set practically anywhere for example
the 2002 film “Phone booth” is set in a phone
booth on a highstreet
• Zodiac has a multitude
Of settings like a newspaper company in San
Francisco, a motorway
And an abandoned house
4. Character
• The prominent characters in psychological crime thrillers are typically the
protagonist and antagonist.
• in phone booth the man on the phone was the antagonist and the man
answering the phone calls is the protagonist
• And in zodiac the protagonist is the person cracking the ciphers and the
antagonist is the zodiac killer.
Representation
Typically the antagonist is a Caucasian male as seen in zodiac, phone booth and
silence of the lambs which unfairly represents males as being psychotic killers
Protagonist: In Mulholland drive (2001) and in Silence of the Lambs (1991) the
protagonist is a Caucasian female however in Zodiac and phone booth both the
protagonists are Caucasian males.
Typically caucasian males dominate the PCT genre as they are the target audience
5. Narrative
• One trope for the narrative of psychological crime
thrillers is the antagonist being a crazy serial killer
that brutally and inhumanely kills their victims and
the protagonist being a brave male that tries to stop
them before they kill more people.
• Narrative devices such as busy crime scenes and car
chases are used like in Zodiac and Mulholland Drive.
• However films in the PCT genre don’t tend to follow
much of a trend apart from being centred around the
serial killer and divulging into a serial killers mind and
their motives.
6. Iconography
• Some examples of iconography in psychological
crime thrillers are
• Murder weapons e.g. Axe, knife, gun, chainsaws
• Sounds e.g. Gunshots, screaming
• Bloodied victims/mutilated corpses
• Calling cards from the killers
• Crime scenes
