History of the thriller genre.

A thriller is a type of Genre for books, films and television that is based around key qualities that are closely associated and common conventions of the thriller genre.  Basically these conventions are of how we stereotypically view what a thriller should be, and how we already have this idea based in our head due to previous experiences of what we’ve already seen. The major key elements of what makes up a thriller are suspense, tension, excitement, shock and mystery. There are also primary sub genres that divide a thriller up into three categories: These are mystery, crime, and psychological thrillers.

Two particular categories of thrillers actually became popular after the assassination of President Kennedy, making political thrillers and paranoid thrillers popular. One of the best examples of a thriller are the Hitchcock’s movies, which involves a cover up of important information in the plot from the viewer to keep them guessing throughout, and the stereotypical fight and chase scene is an extremely particular and common method that occurs in all of the thriller subgenres.

A case study by Charles Derry (1988) identified six types of ‘thriller’ genres:

1.     Murderous passion- involving a husband, wife and a lover. One of them gets murdered. The motive for their crime is passion and greed. A particular example of a Murderous passion thriller is fatal attraction.

2.    Political thriller- associations of leaders of government conspiracy. A motive for the crime is power and domination over people. An example of a political thriller is the Bourne Identity series.

3.    Change of Identity- Where the character changes or conceals their identity- and deals with the consequences. The Motive is to hide their crime. An example of this type of thriller is Shutter Island.

4.    Psycho-traumatic- the main character is traumatised by past events, which causes him to commit a crime- trying to deal with traumatic events with past. One hour photo is a good example of this type of thriller

5.    Moral confrontation- the idea of good V’s evil. The Motive for this thriller is the fact that the evil wants to defeat the good. Examples are all superhero movies such as Batman, Spiderman e.t.c

6.    Innocent on the run- a hero is falsely accused and hast to escape- and prove innocence, the motive: The hero’s bosses want him/her out of the way

Common methods in the three sub genres

Crime thriller: ransoms, captivities, heists, revenge, kidnappings.

Mystery thrillers: investigations and whodunit techniques.

Psychological thrillers: mind games, psychological themes, stalking, confinement/death traps, horror-of-personality, and obsession.

Paranoid thrillers:  Conspiracy theories, false accusations, paranoia.

‘ A thriller is a villain-driven plot, whereby he presents obstacles that the hero must overcome’ Vladimir Nabokov (1981)

Characteristics: A genuine thriller is a film that provides thrills and can keep the audience on the edge of their seat with techniques such as cliff-hangers as the plot builds its way towards the dramatic climax at the end. The tension is usually created when the character(s) are placed in a menacing and threatening situation where their life may be endangered and a way of escaping seems impossible.

The setting to a thriller is usually based in an ordinary suburb or city however it has also been known to be set in a foreign city or environments such as the desert, Polar Regions and on the sea.

In frequent cases the heroes in the thriller are ordinary citizens unaccustomed to danger, however more common thrillers are actually based on men accustomed to danger such as police or detectives. Woman lead characters are also becoming increasingly common to being the hero of the film whereas beforehand it was often just men.

The thriller genre can often overlap into other genres such as the recent film ‘The Tourist’ (Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie) which is divided into Thriller and Comedy genres.

A thriller can often overlap with mystery stories however they are still distinguishable by the plot. For example in a thriller movie the hero would thwart the plans of an enemy rather than uncover a crime already done. In a thriller the audience also tends to know who the murderer Is all along. A thriller also occurs on a much more grander and high in suspense scale such as the crime being serial or mass murder, terrorism, assassination, or an overthrow of the government. A standard thriller storyline would involve a violent confrontation, and jeopardy. Compared to a mystery climax where the hero defeats the villain and saves the lives of himself and everyone else. A thriller can often involve the actual compromise and death of the hero himself, which s influenced by film noir and tragedy.

In recent years the actual thriller genre has been slightly influenced by the genre of horror. With much more gore and sadistic violence, brutality and terror with a number of characters killed throughout. An example of a thriller that took this route was Eden Lake.

As a result thrillers can only be defined by the primary mood that they inflict. For example if it creates thrills, then it is a thriller. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_(genre)