Tuesday 11 October 2011

What is a Thriller?

A genuine thriller is a film that provides thrills and keeps the audience on the edge of their seats as the plot builds towards climax. Tension usually arises when the character/s are placed in a difficult situation, a mystery or trap from which escaping seems impossible. Life is threatened usually because the principal character is unsuspectingly or unknowingly involved in a dangerous or potentially deadly situation. The themes of thrillers frequently include terrorism, political conspiracy, pursuit, or romantic triangles leading to murder.

Conventions- setting, characters and story

 Thrillers are usually set in a creepy atmosphere in with sudden violence, crime and murder. Thrillers mostly take place in ordinary suburbs/cities, however, sometimes they may take place completely or partly in exotic settings such as foreign cities, deserts, Polar Regions, or the high seas. The heroes in most thrillers are frequently ordinary citizens who are not used to danger. However, more common in crime thrillers, they may also police officers or detectives. While such heroes have traditionally been men, women lead characters have become increasingly common.
Thrillers are fast-paced that often present the world and society as dark, corrupt and dangerous. Characters in thrillers include criminals, stalkers, assassins, innocent victims (often on the run), menaced women, characters with dark pasts, psychotic individuals, terrorists, cops and escaped cons, private eyes, people involved in twisted relationships, world-weary men and women, psycho-fiends, and more. The themes of thrillers frequently include terrorism, political conspiracy, pursuit, or romantic triangles leading to murder.

Thriller and mystery
Thrillers often overlap with mystery stories but are distinguished by the structure of their plots. In a thriller, the hero must stop the plans of an enemy rather than uncover a crime that has already happened. While a murder mystery would be spoiled by a premature disclosure of the murderer's identity, in a thriller the identity of a murderer is typically known all along. Thrillers also occur on a much grander scale: the crimes that must be prevented are serial or mass murder, terrorism, assassination, or the overthrow of governments. Jeopardy and violent confrontations are standard plot elements in the genre. While a mystery climaxes when the mystery is solved, a thriller climaxes when the hero finally defeating the villain, saving his own life and often the lives of others. In thrillers influenced by film noir and tragedy, the compromised hero is often killed in the process. However, there are thriller films that have the characteristics of a mystery, such as the climax of a mystery being solved and the defeating of the villain seem to be common.

Alfred Hitchcock
The master of the thriller or suspense genre, Hitchcock manipulated his audience's fears and desires, taking viewers into a state of association with the representation of reality facing the character. Hitchcock's films often place an innocent victim into a strange, life-threatening or terrorizing situation, in a case of mistaken identity, identification or wrongful accusation.

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