In my last post, I briefly touched upon Patrick Bateman in American Psycho and how I did not want my protagonist to be like him because I wanted my character to be more serious and pensive, not comedic and showy.
After a bit more research into the characters of psychological thrillers, I stumbled into none other than Stanley Kubrick. He has three movies that are very obvious psychological thrillers, but I always found his movies to be a little more funny than scary, and I think I found out what it is...
IT'S THE STARE!
I have never really liked any of Kubrick's movies. I always felt like the actors were trying to hard and overacting, and I think I was able to pinpoint the root of the problem in the Kubrick Stare. And as it turns out, I am not the only one that shares this sentiment.
Apparently the Kubrick Stare is a popular term and has become almost synonymous with cheesy serial killers in movies.
Cheesiness is something I want to try to avoid in my film opening. I want to adhere to a lot of genre conventions like having one main protagonist (most likely a male), making him mentally disturbed, and use physical violence to evoke psychological responses from his victims or from himself.
I kind of want my film to be a lot more serious than American Psycho, but films like The Shining aren't supposed to be funny, yet I find them so brutally cheesy that I cannot help but have a laugh. So, I have to avoid overacting or things like the Kubrick Stare, so I can have more tonal control throughout the opening and not confuse audience as to whether they should be terrified or cracking up.
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