What is a Thriller?

In one of our lessons we looked at the aspects of what makes up a thriller. In our terms a thriller is a movie which is designed to keep the viewer on the edge of their seats through suspenseful actions and excitement. The genre thriller is a wide genre which is defined by many different aspects. These are often things such as twisted plots, violence and gore which makes you able to split it into different kinds such as psycholgical thrillers and violent thrillers.

Twisted plots create suspense and tend to keep information from the audience up to the point at which the tension and suspense becomes unbearable for the audience. This creates the scary aspect of the thriller and often constitutes another interesting aspect to the storyline. Without tension thrillers would not have the wished effects and probably tend to become a bit dull. The stories of thrillers can very strongly. Some are supernatural, involving mystical creatures; some are scientific or medical involving a journey into the future or causing the death of a whole species whilst some are just plain scary, dealing with mental disorders and instability of the mind. One genre which can also be seen often is the spy thriller where your protagonist in a somewhat heroic way has to face the villain at the end.

Some thrillers are very intellectual adressing a very smaller audience often involving a psychological aspect whilst on the other hand some thrillers are more crude and have less of a twist which then adress a much wider audience.

Codes and Conventions of thrillers are the things which people expect to see in a thriller to make up the story line. For Example: Restricted narrative, violence, psychological twist, injuries, etc... Some of these things make up the stereotypical thriller. A tool often used to increase the tension is editing by having quick cuts and loud sounds. All of these in a way torment the audience and make them feel uncomfortable.