Thriller film research

So, My first post. Thought I'd give you a little insight into the world of....

The thriller genre!

What is a thriller?

A thriller is a film genre that uses intense emotion and should leave us on edge and exhilarated. It also uses suspense, tension and excitement as the main elements. The thriller genre includes many sub-genres: Mystery, crime, psychological, political and paranoid. There are also many types of thriller films; e.g. police, spies, religion, etc. Thriller films usually create an atmosphere of menace, violence, crime and sinister situations. Society is usually seen as dark, corrupt and dangerous. Many literary devices are used in creating a typical thriller film such as; plot twists, red herrings and cliff hangers.

Thriller methods

There are many different methods for exciting thriller openings. For instance;
-Crime: Ransoms, captivities, heists, revenge kidnapings.
-Mystery: Investigations, 'Whodunit technique'.
-Psychological: mind games, stalking, confinement, deatn traps, horror of personality, obsession.

Thriller characters

Alike with Thriller methods there a lot of interesting characters we could use for our Thriller opening:
-Criminals, stalkers, Assassins, psychotic individuals, escaped convicts.
-Menaced women, innocent victims, private eyes, world weary people.
-Cops, people involved in twisted relationships.

After researching many different types of different thriller characters, i found that characters are often not binnary opposites, so good and bad for example. The good and bad charaters of thriller films are more of a mixture and we are often confused about which side the characters are on.

There are many different narrative techniques for Thriller films. Here are just a few:
-Multiple lines of action
-Flashbacks
-Narrative retardation
-Misdirection


Institutional use of genre

-After researching thriller films, I decided to research the term 'genre' as a whole. Here's what I found:
-Film producers use genres as a means of minimising the economic risk in making films.
-Film distributors/exhibitors use genre as a means of advertising and promoting films.
-Both depend upon audiences foreknowledge and past experience of the films included in the genre.

Thanks for reading!