Black Swan - Thriller One

A thriller movie is usually described as a genre that uses excitement, suspense and tension to hold viewer’s attention. Thrillers could be described as an adrenaline rush, they stimulate the audience’s emotions and during the film many emotions can be experienced. It is an ‘edge of the seat’ genre that has an exhilarating plot that leads to an explosive climax. Audiences would expect a certain mise-en-scene, for example thrillers are usually dark and mysterious forcing audiences to wish to find out what is going to happen next and bringing a negative vibe to the film therefore distinguishing it from a happy film that would be light and fun. Thrillers are expected to be fast paced and exciting from beginning to end and live up to the cliché of lulling the audience into a false sense of security before jeopardising the situation with a shocking nail biting event.

There are many great and classic thriller films available; one that stands out in my mind as being interesting and enticing is Black Swan; which is a complex psychological thriller which uses two characters that haunt each other’s minds by playing both deceptive games and that attempt to demolish the other's mental state. The film is set in New York about Nina, a ballerina and the protagonist of the film whose life is completely consumed with dance. She lives at home with her obsessive ex-ballerina mother who mollycoddles her daughter and displays intense signs of control over. When the artistic director decides to replace the prima ballerina for the new production of Swan Lake, Nina is the ballerina he chooses. Nina faces competition from a new dancer Lily who becomes the protagonist from the outset of the film, who impresses him also. Swan Lake requires a dancer who is able to portray both the White Swan with innocence and beauty, and the Black Swan, who is sly and devious. Nina fits the White Swan role perfectly but Lily is considered the perfect representation of the Black Swan. As the two young dancers expand their rivalry into a twisted friendship, Nina gets caught up in a world of jealousy and the desire to ‘be perfect’ making her delirious and eventually driving her to insanity.

The film is cleverly devised and goes from bad to worse throughout the duration of the film. There are many intense scenes as Nina becomes vastly more insane and the effects of the mind games that lead to the jealousy of Lily. Her dark side is unleashed towards the end of the film as she seeks revenge on Lily. During one of the last scenes, in her unhinged and delusional mind, Nina stabbed what she imagined to be Lily yet in reality had stabbed herself. The film is considered a psychological thriller as we see her go from having a perfectly unsettled state of mind to a traumatised and mentally unstable ending. The cause of which was her to do with her passion, dancing, yet the stress and pressure to be perfect drove her to insanity prior to killing herself.