Settings and Locations of Psycological Thrillers

The setting of a psychological thriller film varies from locations and story lines however commonly used settings are: Wooded areas, haunted houses and rural areas. However depending on the story line psychological thrillers can be based anywhere.
In the psychological thriller 'Sinister' it was set in a rural area, a small town surrounded with a lot of wooded areas, most of the film was shot in and around the house where the family lived.

Normal day to day settings

Houses and normal day to day settings are wildly common settings used in psychological thrillers because it is part of people day to day lifes, so it adds a factor of immersion and worry because it makes the audience feel like it could happen to them so they feel more connected to the character because he lifes an average day to day life, in a setting like this. People are supposed to feel safe in there homes and in their day to day lifes, but danger is commonly linked with being outside and in the open world and in the unknown. Stuff that commonly happen in physiological thrillers happening in normal settings for people, makes it that moire surreal and interesting.


Cities

Cities are another popular setting in the physiological thrillers. This is because the large crowds of population you can find in the city and the feelings of being ignored and walked past and people ignoring the subtle things and what the one character is feeling in a crowd of hundreds. It messes with the mind and adds scale, because out of a big crowd, you wont know who is going through these physiological issues and whats happening in everyones lifes. They are also used as a metaphor for a state of claustrophobia and not being able to escape because of the scale of the city and the walls surrounding it as building, adding to the mind trickery of the setting.

Weather

Weather can aslo mirror characters feelings in the particular setting. A stromy setting would connatetae feelings of sadness, loss, anger, and deporession, etc. This is because storms are seen as bad,, and have that imagaery behind them. But on the otherhand, if its sunny it may lead the audience to beleive that it is happiness, coming of peace and a resolutuion at the end of a film.

Senssitivty

Carrying on from the weather setting, sensitivity of a setting can be used to show how negative the state of a character is. A mild grey dusk conveys less fear and emotion than a pitch black stormy woodland.

Offices/Workplaces

This setting revolves around is usually formed around the idea where a character despises his job and always repeats the same process: Wake up, go to work, go home, sleep, repeat. It also revolves around the idea of  "work making you go crazy" which is a common theme used. This gives the audience an insight of the character's life and allows them to sympathise with them.

Conclusion
Since phycological thrillers are meant to work on the mind and manipulate the mind if the protagonist and the audience in some ways, the initial use and connotations received from these settings are not to be ignored as they have so many metaphors and meanings behind the thought out locations and settings The hidden meanings of the setting can amplify and emotions and feelings. For example, in shutter island (Dir, Scorse, 2010) many claustrophobic and close up shots are meant to illustrate DiCaprio`s character`s "trapped in" state of mind at that point if the film. Many shots of bare brick walls and sweeping pans of the island demonstrate the isolation he goes through and this is shown also by the desolate living space.