Conventions of the Thriller Genre

A thriller film can be divided into many sub-genres such as crime thriller, psychological thriller or supernatural thriller. But they all have common conventions which make them a thriller. They revolve around suspense and anticipation, which leads to a climax between the disruption to resolution in the narrative.
Thriller films include: Silence of the Lambs (1991), Seven (1995), Shutter Island (2010), and Inception (2010).

• It will usually consist of a battle between the protagonist and antagonist. The role of the protagonist is to restore the equilibrium, whilst the antagonist tries to destroy it. As thrillers are stereo typically a more male dominated genre, the protagonist is very often a male.
• There is a common use of lowkey lighting, tense music, quick cuts diegetic sound to heighten tension and to create a sombre atmosphere.
• Themes can include isolation/vulnerability, especially relating to the protagonist, violence, and psychological problems.
• The setting is usually an everyday environment, which adds to the suspense as the antagonist is disrupting the normality of everyday life.
• The general demographic of this genre are of older ages, as the themes of violence etc. are not suitable to younger audiences. The sub-genres of thrillers have demographics which vary from one another, e.g. horror thrillers will have an expected older demographic than an action thriller.
• Thriller films can tend to overlap with other genres such as action, drama and horror, as the genre of thriller covers such a wide range of sub-genres. Despite this, there are many differences between the two genres. Horror films focus more on the intention to scare viewers with a lot of jump scares, blood and gore, and horrifying acts and images, whereas thrillers have more explanation and a detailed narrative and creates more suspense rather than tension. Like their names, horrors are intended to 'horrify' their viewers, whilst thrillers 'thrill' them.