ABSTRACT
Complex storytelling, of course, is not new, in the same way that the narrative devices often manifest in postmodern fiction have their own, centuries-old precursors (Cobley 2013, chapter 6 ). Likewise, puzzle narratives and convoluted plots are not necessarily phenomena indigenous to the present. Nor is it true to say that complexity and convoluted plots are both marked only by their movement into the mainstream in recent years. In one of the canonical inaugural texts of cultural studies, Hall and Whannel (1964, 125-127) note that what marks hugely popular contemporary detective narratives on television is the almost unmanageable density of their plots, suggesting that their audiences are made up of viewers who are not only competent in the genre but also not unintelligent. In the thriller genre in particular, some key mainstream films of the last forty years have experimented with such staples of complex storytelling as unreliable narrators, specific focalizations, prolepses, and analepses. Blow Up (1966), The Conversation (1974), and Blow Out (1981) have provided inspiration in this respect. These kinds of movies embody, significantly, narratives of witnessing and points of view. One precursor of such ‘witnessing narratives’ that acts like a brand leader is, of course, Rear Window (1954). Sometimes these thrillers have close relatives in relatively uncomplex narratives in paranoid surveillance thrillers, the benchmark for which was set over the last decade by Enemy of the State (1998) (see Cobley 2010). In other film genres, complex staples have served other specific generic purposes-for example, the constant problematizing of what is real in the horror syuzhet as opposed to what is imagination or dream ( Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors [1987] is a well-known example) or what is memory and what is an artificial implant for science fiction characters ( Total Recall [1990] is an obvious exemplar).
