1) Our film tells the story of Marie, who suffers abuse from her parents from a young age which continues into her adolescence and causes nightmares and mental issues. 2) Marie turns to drugs and alcohol to cope, causing hallucinations, and she violently kills her boyfriend during an alcohol-fueled rage. 3) Her mental state deteriorates further as she hears voices and smashes her mirror, and she ultimately commits suicide by hanging, unable to take the psychological torture anymore.

1. Film Narrative
Our psychological horror film’s narrative starts with our protagonist, Marie
being physically and mentally abused by her parents at a young age. This
abuse continues on into her adolescence and it begins affecting her mental
capacity as she begins to have nightmares of herself being attacked or her
attacking others. These nightmares have caused her to lose sleep and this
causes her to turn to drugs and alcohol as a release from her torment and she
soon becomes addicted to them. Her addiction causes her to have horrific
hallucinations such as her taking a regular bath and it slowly filling with blood
even though it is only in her mind.
Her boyfriend notices the change in Marie’s behaviour and attempts to help
her through her struggles; but she ends up killing him violently in an
unprecedented rage urged on by her excessive use of alcohol. This leads to
her becoming more mentally unstable which we see as she starts hearing
terrifying voices in her head whispering to her to inflict harm on others and
Marie smashing her bedroom mirror because she imagines that the reflection
in the mirror is of her dead boyfriend watching her. At the end of the film, her
psychological torture becomes too overwhelming and she commits suicide by
hanging.
In 1969, Tzvetan Todorov simplified the idea of narrative structure into five
stages that he argues occur in all films. Firstly, the equilibrium – this is when
everything is normal, the characters are living a normal life and the audience
can relate to this. In our film, the equilibrium is her living her normal life at
first, before all these problems occur. Then, there is a disruption; something
happens to disturb this normality. In our film, the disruption is when Marie
starts having nightmares, and turns to drugs and alcohol. Next, there is a
reaction and repair; characters react to this situation and try to deal with it. In
Todorov’s narrative structure, the problem gets resolved – however, with our
film, because it’s a horror film, the problem does not get solved and Marie
ends up killing her boyfriend. Next, there is a new equilibrium, where the
problem is dealt with and there is a new normality. However, in our film, this
does not happen as Marie becomes worse and worse in her mental state. In
the horror genre, Todorov’s theory only works to an extent; this is because
the problem can’t always be solved. This leads to a heightened scare for the
audience, leaving them feeling hopeless and paranoid that this could happen
to them.

2. The choices we have made for our narrative have been inspired by other
existing media texts, like ‘Black Swan’. Our protagonist smashes her mirror
when in a rage, as seen in ‘Black Swan’. This idea of Marie breaking her own
reflection signifies the extent of which her psychological state has
deteriorated. Another inspiration to our narrative is ‘Girl, Interrupted’. At the
end of our film, Marie can’t take the pain anymore and hangs herself; this is
similar to Daisy from ‘Girl, Interrupted’ who is seen to have hung herself in her
bedroom.
We decided that the reason Marie became mentally unstable was her parents;
the audience will relate to the character more as the experience may have
happened to them or their friends. Also, the fact that Marie hangs herself is
important within the psychological sub-genre as it doesn’t show too much
gore, unlike the slasher sub-genre.