The Thriller

What is a thriller?

“The thriller is a very difficult genre to pin down because it covers such a wide range of films. Thrillers are films of suspense...that are suppose to instil terror into the audience” – Susan Hayward Key Concepts in Film Studies.

Examples of thrillers:

Psycho

North by Northwest

Point Break

Manchurian Candidate

Paranormal Activity

127 Hours

The Birds

Mission Impossible

Buried

Source Code

Tinker Tailor Solider Spy

V for Vendetta

Phone Booth

Hide and Seek

Panic Room

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Seven

Types of thrillers

Type of Thriller	Examples
Spy Thrillers	Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, Mission Impossible
Political Thrillers	Manchurian Candidate
Conspiracy Thrillers	State of Play, S.A.L.T
Legal Thrillers	Rainmaker, Time to Kill
Psychological Thrillers	Psycho, Seven, Birds

Aspects of thrillers

“When you enjoy something, you must never let logic get too much in the way. Like the villains in all the James Bond movies. Whenever Bond breaks into the complex: ‘Ahh, Mr Bond, welcome, come in. Let me show you my entire evil plan and then put you in a death machine that doesn’t work’.” – Jerry Seinfeld (SeinLanguage 1993)

                                                    

                                                          

Conventions

Most agree that there are certain ‘conventions’ that mainstream films observe in order for them to be acceptable to the mass audience. But sometimes creativity doesn't come from following the rules sometimes rules are put into place to be broken. 

Examples:

Mysterious phone calls with no one on the other end of the line

Guns/ weapons

Sophisticated villains

A character always investigates a strange noise only to end up being killed

A young naive protagonist

Resourceful protagonist e.g. James Bond

Suspense

Hi-Tech gadgets e.g. James Bond and Mission Impossible

Fast pace actions scenes

A Flashback of a past memory

Protagonist usually succeeds and wins

Can’t kill children

Protagonist falls in love

A mystery that needs to be solved (enigma)

A curious character

A double agent/ false hero e.g. James Bond

Reason for conflict

MacGuffin

The Antagonist is always more powerful, at the beginning of a film, than the hero

Antagonist usually wealthy