Researching target audience

Researching the target audience

Psychological thrillers are a sub-genre of thrillers and normally involve story lines based on unstable emotional states of characters. They normally contain traits of mystery drama and sometimes horror, they normally contain mature themes and the target audience for these types of films is generally 18-34. Psychological thrillers are targeted at both sexes however is generally watched more by women because of films where women are the protagonist and the villain is a man would would usually abuse the women this scares the viewers but compels them to watch more because there is an element of proejction and identification.


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Target Audience of Psychological Thrillers
"Usually the target audience of most psychological thrillers is 18+, this is because they contain many disturbing characters with psychological illnesses. However a majority of psychological thrillers attract primarily females, aged 18-35. Research shows that women are more attracted to psychological thrillers,  because they enjoy the mystery and story behind events that take place in thriller films. It has been shown that females prefer the intellectual side of the mental illnesses and strange psychologically challenging behaviour that features in psychological thrillers." (http://nfgssupernova.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/target-audience-of-psychological.html)
I would agree and disagree with this because as my research has shown women clearly do watch more of this genre but by a very small margin, the difference between male and female viewers is very slim compared to romantic comedies or action films, I myself am very fond of psychological thrillers and wouldn’t say the films are obviously to see geared towards women.


 Because of themes based on the emotional state of the characters' minds it may be quite complicated and also may contain mature themes meaning that it would be watched by older viewers. Rarely would a psychological thriller have a rating of 12 or lower because of the themes involved. Because of the psychological themes the films are more often watched by18-24 age group and more likely to be intelligent people who like to watch complex films with complex films and psychological thrillers try and give the audience what they want by creating complicated films. For example:



"Black Swan" is a psychological thriller that can be interpreted many ways because of its complex story arc and requires the viewer to concentrate to get the full experience out of the film. This is why they are aimed at more intelligent people to get the best out of the film.


When making the story line for our film we decided to use a main girl character and explore her mental stability after being abused and raped for several years by her captor. We thought this would fit in the genre quite well because psychological thrillers quite often begin with a tragedy to show how the character became how they are. This is similar to memento: his wife gets brutally murdered and he goes insane trying to find the murdered. We figured this would make a hardcore psychological thriller enthusiast happy because we have incorporated mature themes and spend the rest of the film delving into her mind to see if she is insane or sane.