They’ll make your blood pressure skyrocket, heart race, and have you gripping your seat with unbearable tension: Psychological thrillers are adrenaline injections in cinematic garb. At their best, these movies take us by the hand and accompany us into the deepest abysses of the human soul.
Shady characters play with the minds of both the protagonists and the viewers. Often the focus is on a question we ask ourselves repeatedly, a question that has burned itself deep into our brains and suddenly makes us see the world through different eyes: Which is real? What is not? Am I real?
Ballet is no walk in the park, as Darren Aronofsky reminded us in 2010 with his bitter and grueling psychodrama of an ambitious ballet dancer (Natalie Portman) who, though she finally lands her dream role in “Swan Lake,” becomes increasingly haunted by dark hallucinations during rehearsals.
As a good psychological thriller should, “Black Swan” blurs more and more the boundaries between reality and dream. Aronofsky stages this in a hypnotic, dramatic and creepy-poetic way that Nina’s delusion is also transmitted to the audience.
“Black Swan” is like a nightmarish horror fairy tale in which the protagonist is a princess and a witch at the same time. Highly complex psychologically, challenging and worth seeing for that very reason. Portman’s terrifyingly intense performance was rightly rewarded with an Oscar.
