Initial Idea for our coursework project

As a group, we decided in our first meeting that we wanted to do a psychological thriller, and it was our jobs individually to come up with our own ideas to fit in that genre, so we could brainstorm ideas in our next meeting.

After thinking about a few psychological films I had watched in the past that I had really enjoyed, I thought of the two films in particular: The Uninvited, and The Stepfather.



Both films have a similar plotline with the fact that they are about a teenager experiencing a hard time adjusting to their parents' new partners, and how they think that the are out to kill them.

So playing with this theme, I thought it could be interesting if the roles were reversed, and we could do a story about how an overprotective mother is experiencing a hard time dealing with her daughter's new boyfriend, and how she feels that he is corrupting her, and planning to sabotage her life. The mother then starts hallucinating scenes of him trying to kill her, and ends up killing the boy in the end.
This overprotective mother stereotype has also been used in a few films, for example in Black Swan.

 The opening sequence:
- Close ups of the mother in the kitchen chopping vegetables, with a very sharp, large knife.
- We can hear a girl's laughter and squeals from upstairs, along with muffled sounds of the boyfriend's speech.
- The mother carries on cutting the food with large, forced motions, looking incredibly angry and frustrated.
- The boy and girl walk down the stairs hand in hand, and we see her kiss him goodbye, and he leaves the house.
- Daughter walks into the kitchen to see her mum cooking, and they start talking.
- They have a conversation on something to do with how her grades seem to have fallen since she has met him, or how the mother is disapproving of how her time is spent more on going out than work.
- Daughter walks out of the kitchen to her room, looking annoyed with her mum.
- Mum is left in the kitchen looking out to the doorway, grasping her knife more tightly.
- She looks over to see that her daughters phone is left on the table and the caller ID shows a photo of him and her together, slams the knife onto the chopping board, and screen cuts to black with titles.

Genre Research: Psychological Thriller

Here is a synopsis of thrillers, courtesy of www.filmsite.org:

These are types of films known to promote intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension. Thriller and suspense films are virtually synonymous and interchangeable categorizations, with similar characteristics and features.

If the genre is to be defined strictly, a genuine thriller is a film that rentlessly pursues a single-minded goal - to provide thrills and keep the audience cliff-hanging at the 'edge of their seats' as the plot builds towards a climax. The tension usually arises when the main character(s) is placed in a menacing situation or mystery, or an escape or dangerous mission from which escape seems impossible. Life itself is threatened, usually because the principal character is unsuspecting or unknowingly involved in a dangerous or potentially deadly situation. Plots of thrillers involve characters which come into conflict with each other or with outside forces.

Suspense-thrillers come in all shapes and forms: there are murder mysteries, private eye tales, chase thrillers, women-in-danger films, courtroom and legal thrillers, erotic thrillers, surreal cult-film soap operas, and atmospheric, plot-twisting psychodramas.

'Best Psychological Thriller Movies' by skoknicglumac on IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/list/mo5IG2eK5DA/