Thrillers and the overuse of shock value

 One of the blogs i wrote was in praise of the web series called Suzhal-The Vortex. The thriller element of the story was liked by many including me, but a small group of people criticized it for its story. Some people felt it was too easy to predict who was the actual culprit in the plot. Maybe I was dumb enough for the obvious plot points to fly over my head. But it is an interesting point to ponder.

The main talking point of that particular web-series was its shocking reveal, which happens at the very end ( maybe thats one of the reasons, why it is one of the major talking points. ). But eventhough one can like it for many of its other virtues, like mostly organic reveals, foreshadowing, unreliable evidences and narrators, seemingly parallel but interesecting stories , it will be always be remembered as the series with the shock reveal.

This raises a problem. If too many shows/movies do the shock reveal, wont the audience learn to ignore the obvious cues and only make note of the ones that seem ( deliberately ) irrelevant. Seeing in this light, a lot of popular but unpopular ( with the hardcore critics ) makes some sense. One such movie comes to mind immediately. Dhuruvangal 16 ( D16 ) was very famous with mostly simple movie watchers like me, who were blown away by the twists. But lately I have been noticing a lot of very strong criticism of that movie, attacking its direction and story. Honestly it was a bit surprising to see critics bashing such a movie. There are many reasons why it got flak, but here, I am just going to think out loud about one such problem I see with these kinds of thrillers. Deliberate lack of information and over-reliance on shock value.

Dont get me wrong. I love deliberate misguidance if it fits well with the flow of the movie. In Suzhal, I felt most misguiding information are part of a natural deduction process. And there is a part in the series, where there is even commentary about it. But it is a problem when the audience has no chance of knowing anything about the impending twist, because nothing relevant was revealed. D16 is heavily guilty of this. For most of the movie, we have absolutely no idea about the character that ends up being the culprit. One very good movie called Raatchasan, also does this to some extent. Until the culprit is revealed, we have no clue about the culprit. In Suzhal, eventhough we know about the culprit from the beginning, most of the important give-aways are deliberately hidden from the audience, just to prevent the suspense from revealing itself accidentally, which is just very dishonest to the viewer. Imagine preparing for a mathematics exam day in day out, and receiving an art question paper in the exam hall!

 So lets look at movies which dont do this and still shine at being a thriller. Raatchasan here again. After the murderer is revealed, and most details about him are revealed, it still manages to be haunting till the very end. The Usual Suspects, I beleive is the best example in this regard. We know the person from the very beginning, and we completely hear his story, and still it is a surprise when the twist happens. Just googling "Best suspense thrillers of all time" reveals some of them. Psycho, The Departed... Looks like I havent seen that many thrillers. :/

Shock value helps greatly in thrillers. But like all good things, there is a right way and a wrong way to use it. Shock works greatly when the audience isnt expecting one. It already sounds contradictory to my previous point. How does one shock the audience, even after revealing most of the information ? Well, I think thats what good, non-lazy writing looks like. Please point me to movies, which look like that in the comments, will you ? Also welcome, are good counter-examples, where a movie manages to surprise us without revealing much information, but it still doesnt feel like cheating.