Genre Characteristics - differentiating the psychology and thriller aspect of my film

Like I've mentioned before, I am a big fan of thriller movies, especially the psychological kind. Every time I watch a film of that genre, I automatically assume that everything portrayed in it is accurate. Before I started this project, I didn't really think about how much of the psychology in a psychological thriller was authentic and how much of it was just dramatized. I interviewed my old AP Psychology teacher, Dr. Sugarman, this morning and one of the most important questions I had for her was that.

Dr. Sugarman explained that dissociative identity disorder (DID)/multiple personality disorder (MPD) usually starts with a traumatic experience or some form of significant trauma during childhood, or sometimes later on in life. Severe physical or sexual abuse, going to war, losing a loved one, or experiencing some type of change would be examples. A person suffering from MPD leaves the consciousness of that one individual and changes into another individual. They're only conscious of what is happening when they are that particular individual so they lose time and memory. The conscious peace and the personality are not integrated and therefore, they separate into two or more alter personalities.

She said that a lot of films in Hollywood don't correctly portray the psychological aspect of psych thrillers. In her opinion, the amount of dramatization and accuracy varies depending upon the film.

"For example, I don't think Fight Club did a good job of showing the emotional impact [on the Narrator]. It showed the cognitive impact the disorder had on him, but it didn't really capture what he was going through emotionally," Dr. Sugarman said.

When asked about a good and somewhat accurate portrayal of psychology in a film, she said:

"Shutter Island did a very good job of showing the guy's disorder. He was delusional and had several flashbacks and hallucinations which is typical of most psychological disorders. While it was dramatized, it still kind of showed the psychology part of it well."

While I don't plan on using it, she said that due to the rise of special effects and computer-generated imagery (CGI), the films have addressed the thriller part of the genre. Instead of building up the disorder through the characters, this technology shows the audience what's going on inside the character's head but also sort of diminishes the authenticity of the psychological disorder.

Keeping all of the aforementioned in mind, my plan is to create a film opening that portrays MPD as accurately as possible while still staying true to the thriller genre!