slow unraveling

Films structured around the gradual, irreversible deterioration of a person, relationship, or psyche — where the primary dramatic architecture is decline itself, tracked across extended time as a character's grip on sanity, identity, power, or selfhood loosens by increments, each scene registering the protagonist as measurably further gone than before. The unraveling is the film's spine, not a crisis to be resolved but a condition to be inhabited and witnessed. Distinct from investigation-spiral (which is structured around an external inquiry that pulls characters toward danger or revelation) by being centered on interior collapse rather than outward pursuit; distinct from slow-burn (a pace register about deferred tension building toward release) by requiring that deterioration — not payoff — be the structural destination.