Talk:Psychological thriller

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Moali809.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 07:25, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Cleanup rewrite
Article lacks a definition and lead and has style flaws throughout. It's inappropriately composed of a list of terms and their meanings and contains no real explication of its subject. See Guide to writing better articles. Jonathan F 07:35, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Agree. Reads like a list of dictionary entries. Has writer never seen a wiki article before?98.99.18.134 (talk) 00:49, 16 September 2009 (UTC)kjdamrau

Added a definition and a lead in to the article. Will go through the article to clean up grammar and style later on. User:Schwenkstar 10:15, 14 June 2004 {UTC}

Video Games
Shouldn't psychological horror games be added to the page? There may not be very many, but the Silent Hill series; for example, deals with nearly every element listed on the page, and - arguably - more effectively than films do. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.212.72.216 (talk) 22:18, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree, and I think television series should be added here. Also, since a lot of anime deals with this genre, this article would do well to include some. SweetNightmares (talk) 17:14, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Is there any reason most of the games have been removed from the list? Alan wake and the Darkness were removed. The Penumbra series and Amnesia should also be added. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.208.159.178 (talk) 05:38, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Novels
Any examples of novels?

Vaguely named section
Without a better definition, the Film writers and directors dealing with psychological matters section needs to be deleted as subjective and possible OR. There is no clear criterion for what counts as "dealing with". Doczilla 07:36, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

French?
Why are parts of the article in French? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.134.175.36 (talk) 17:03, 21 January 2010 (UTC) yes of crouese knnfdfnd — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.45.51.239 (talk) 09:21, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Manga???
There are many examples of manga in the psycho thriller genre Battle royale Death note Monster Gantz Ikigami Liar game and so many more to list.... The japanese are Massive in their contribution to psych thriller. and so thats why i think manga should be added as a category —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rbgij (talk • contribs) 05:42, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

The article misses the point!
The subject is: Psychological Thriller and NOT Philosophical Thriller (Metaphysics, Ethics etc.) Because there is no such thing as a Philosophical Thriller as far as I know, I deeply recommend to erase most parts of this article and start from the beginning. 87.159.154.148 (talk) 23:06, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Dead Space
Dead Space has nothing to do with psychological horror. It is a shooter where monsters jump at the player and scream. That's all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.192.158.134 (talk) 04:12, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Hideaki Anno?
Why no mention of Neon Genesis Evangelion? 76.15.53.167 (talk) 06:32, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Cleanup
I added some cleanup tags. As requested by someone removed Refimprove a few weeks ago, I am explaining this action. First of all, much of this article is original research. Themes and literary devices may seem self-evident to a fan of the genre, but they still require citations to reliable sources. The list of examples has grown to a rather large size, and almost none of them have citations. I've noticed a creeping fannish perspective, as well, where authors are described as "unique", "a master", or "successful". I'll see about trying to find some sources and fixing these issues. The excessive list of examples may need to be split. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 22:36, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I went through a first pass and removed a few obviously non-notable examples (and nominated the articles for deletion on notability grounds), removed some puffery, and provided some sources for a few examples. I also made fixes to comply with the manual of style, such as removing excessive boldface. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 04:05, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree. Good choices. Agree about list of examples may need splitting (trimming too?).--Tomwsulcer (talk) 10:17, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * If we can't locate citations for the examples, then the problem may simply fix itself, as we prune down the list. I located a few sources for some of the examples.  I'm looking for a reputation for multiple notable works that are clearly labeled as psychological thrillers.  Some of these people just don't seem to have that reputation, but it could just be that my lack of familiarity with their work is coloring my search results.  Nonetheless, I found a few examples that simply don't meet the criteria, as they were consistently described in terms other than "psychological thriller".  Silent Hill, for example, was consistently described as horror.  Cult only lasted one season (13 episodes).  And so on.  I'm still working on locating a good source Mary Higgins Clark, as none of them have conclusively identified her as a notable author of psychological thriller novels; usually, she's described as a prominent suspense/thriller writer.  I haven't started on the others.
 * Other issues:
 * There's a big problem with Psychology Today citation: it never actually discusses psychological thrillers. It only describes original flavor thrillers.  I'm not sure that we can keep it, even though it's true.  I'll try to find a better citation that says the same thing, more-or-less.  The citation to The Script Lab is really iffy.  I plan on replacing that citation, too, as soon as I can find something comparable.
 * The "themes" section was apparently plagiarized from a book. I located the source for that and added a citation.  Someone added a bit about black humor that was not actually covered by the citation.  I removed that, since it was original research.
 * I can't find any citations for the "literary devices" section. I'll keep looking, but I think it might have to be removed. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 11:31, 31 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I hope that you don't mind that I partially rewrote the "definitions" section that you added. Like I said earlier, I like it and agree with it, but the sources were a little problematic.  I think it's easier to simply find better sources than try to find some way to make the old sources work.  I tried to find something akin to what you added.  There's lots more to be said about the defining psychological thrillers (and I plan to add more), but I don't want to overwhelm people with three long paragraphs, like I did on Cult film.  The problem is that cult films are incredibly difficult to define, and the massive leeway allowed by the subjectivity allows any number of definitions to be correct.  For psychological thrillers, there's a rather fuzzy but generally agreed upon definition... more or less.  I'm trying to fill out the literary devices section, too, but it's difficult.  It may be easier to just combine the literary devices and themes sections.  I've kept them in list format basically out of inertia, but I've been thinking about converting them into prose.  The Packer book expands slightly on the list, and I've been meaning to go back to it and flesh it out.  Also, I'm sure we can find other examples of themes.  It's just a matter of trawling through the vast numbers of useless Google search results. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 08:01, 1 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Much better. I rewrote the lede a bit. Is it any better? Wondering if we need to use italics for the first few words in it?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 12:13, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I like those changes. I think I like "incorporate elements of ..." better than "have elements of...", though.  It sounds more encyclopedic.  I made a few more copy edits and added more info from the Packer book.  One idea I had was to limit the examples to historically significant works, as cited by reliable sources.  The obvious problem with that is that there's an inherent subjectivity involved, even if it's on the part of the source.  We could also limit historically significant examples to this page, and split the long list into its own article.  I don't think it's really something we need to solve any time soon, though, because the article is still fairly small. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 03:23, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree "incorporate" sounds more encyclopedic. Good info from Packer book. One thing I remember from Modernist literature is that the idea of the unreliable narrator is often used in modernist literature; DK if there's a source on that, but the trace-back to Poe is good. Wondering when you think the article will be good enough for the tags to come off. Good idea about making a separate list sometime.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 11:33, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Do you think refimprove is unnecessary? I was planning on keeping it around for a while longer, to remind myself to dig up more sources to validate the exhaustive list of examples, but I don't mind removing it.  Right now, I'd prefer to keep the "too many examples" template up, so that we can discourage more indiscriminate additions while the article is being actively improved and solicit help in pruning down the list and providing citations for it.  It's not a huge deal, though.  I'll probably have citations for all the examples this weekend. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 01:50, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I wonder if the tags have much of an effect of actually spurring action, for readers to take up the cause and add references. I believe most Wikipedians naturally, who contribute a lot, will naturally add references, over time, but that the article will grow slowly in caliber and content. Sometimes good battles happen which have the long term byproduct of sharpening thinking, although they can fray nerves. My sense is the "multiple issues" tag at this point is a bit much, causing most readers to discount the good stuff currently in the article, but I will leave it up to your fine judgment. I'll keep the article on my watchlist and may add stuff from time to time as I come across it.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 20:25, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I think that Wikipedia editors will naturally add unreferenced pop culture shout-outs to any list that they find. It doesn't matter how many warnings you put on their talk page, how many templates you put in the article, or how many edits they have.  This compulsive drive to expand every list can be problematic, but most people are just trying to be helpful.  Anyway, I finally got sick of searching Google for citations, and I simply removed several entries that were proving problematic.  Since we're all nice and properly cited now, I removed the Refimprove template, too.  Instead of hunting down citations for lists, I'd like to get back to actually writing encyclopedic content.  I'm not sure, but I think I might be able to convert the extensive lists in Examples into prose, but I'd rather save that for some day when I have more patience.  Much more patience.  I should also add some prose to the TV shows, since that's the only bare list.  Ugh. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 05:34, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

IP comments
^^hi — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.122.149.173 (talk) 23:47, 3 November 2013 (UTC)


 * howdy.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:54, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

192 AISSA.AMMAR (talk) 08:20, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Clean Up/ Insert List
I've noticed that there isn't a film section that specifically lists psychological thrillers. There's a link to thrillers, but I want to add films strictly of the sub genre. Also, the info is a bit repetitive. Anyone have any film suggestions? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sules13 (talk • contribs) 16:38, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
 * the IMDb is not a reliable source, as it's user-generated content. Can you find better citations for those films?  You can see examples of sources that are often used on Wikipedia at WP:FILM/R. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 19:16, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

No Horror
Psychological Thrillers do not contain any horror. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sules13 (talk • contribs) 15:46, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

Splitting this article into three
I think this article would benefit from being split into three separate ones: psychological thriller (literature), psychological thriller (film), and psychological thriller (games). They are different media and use different techniques which could be discussed in detail in each separate case. The current article lacks focus--it's like a tossed salad. It also keeps mixing it with psychological horror which is not helpful. Philburmc (talk) 15:33, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
 * The article is fairly well-sourced, which is a rarity in articles about genres. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 03:52, 29 November 2019 (UTC)