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.

Small worlds and denser stories

I recently watched the web series Suzhal - The Vortex, and was blown away. It stayed with me for a long time. Two days went by, and I was stuck relistening to its soundtrack and scenes from youtube. I felt far more connected to the plot, compared to the ones which involves International Intelligence, A global terror plot etc. 

I love huge open worlds in games. Typically when i used to choose games , acreage was one of the big factors considered. Huge worlds means lot of things to explore right !? Thats true to some extent, but then there is only so much a game/story can fit in before hitting the hard stop. Huge maps were my goto when I open a new map in OpenTTD ( Not Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam. Transport Tycoon Deluxe ). It took me a while to realize why i typically get bored after sometime with large Open worlds.

This video by Razbuten and one from GMTK ( This channel never stops giving. ) opened my eyes to why this strange phenomenon was happening. 

We typically tag a game/movie as a huge world when it involves lots of characters/ multiple cities, countries etc. But what we ultimately care about when we experience a game or a movie is the content. Our brain strengthens a neural pathway when we recall the memory related to that path. Something similar seems to be happening with stories. In a small world, there are not many characters/places to write the story with. So the entity is reused for other purposes. This seems to not only keep the entity from fading into irrelevance, but to strengthen our connection with a story.

With interactive media aka Games though it seems it is a weird mix. The number of meaningfully different interactions matter. The entity doesnt matter. But if the story has to stay then the entities have to be limited. In Deus Ex, eventhough it involves a global conspiracy and all those good stuff, the game was engaging and never allowed me to relax. There is always something to find in Deus ex. And to add to that, like mentioned in the GMTK video, the lack of a dynamic map adds to the necessity of learning the landscape better to do anything. But the story of Deus Ex consists of too many important characters, which after a certain point just renders everyone except a select few useless ultimately.

How then can we get games which are good at both ? A near perfect example is A Short Hike. The map is tiny, the characters are few. But at every nook and corner you are bound to find something. Some of the characters have multiple dimensions. What do i mean by dimensions ? In A Short hike, sometimes a single NPC can be involved in more than 1 thread of quests. In Witcher 1 , A trader can be involved in a robbery, a murder plot, a conspiracy against the king simultaneously, and asks you to fetch some flowers from an island. All almost simultaneously. Not of all of them are linked. The story feels real. Typically in open world games, all characters are very very single dimensional and they want/do one thing.

Video games have limits. Since there is a limited amount of resources, the size of the map and the content available tends to be inversely proportional all else remaining same. That is maybe why in most GTA games above san andreas, there is always places where nothing interesting is going on with repasted buildings.

Coming back to where i started from, Suzhal does this excellently. Seemingly everyone has multiple angles. Some people I talked to, about this series, were critical about some plot threads which dont lead anywhere, and the plot could have done without those threads. But in my opinion, thats real life. Not everything is relevant to the biggest plot point. And it adds one more layer of mystery. If something juicy is revealed, it remains to found whether it is actually relevant to the outcome, in addition to how it is relevant. From a shear mathematical POV, it allows the mesh density to be even more. Infact in Suzhal masterfully uses misdirection to effectively use these unclosed threads.

I used to be put off by stories with very limited scope. But with an overload of grand stories, stuff like Before Trilogy , The Man from Earth and 12 Angry Men captivate me and from time to time shape who I am.

Any other small worlds which stayed with you for a long time. Please mention in the comments. I am looking for movie/game suggestions anyway.

Thank you.