Aspects of the Thriller

There are many different types of thrillers and conventions that a thriller film should follow.

The thriller genre is divided up into five different sorts of thrillers; this includes spy thriller, political thriller, conspiracy thriller, legal thriller and physiological thriller.

For a “Thriller” type film to have this label it must follow a set of rules that consist in the film, these may be that there is always a villain or a hero who come against each other at some point in the film. Another convention may be that the protagonist is put into situations where they are at risk, however in many cases they make it to the end. Furthermore a thriller film must include elements of danger and moments of suspense and shock.

An example of where thrillers create suspense is, in the film “Rope” (1948) by Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock completed this film by shooting 10 minute clips as the camera only had a short storage space which he then tried to hide the individual edits when putting the film together. This film tells the story of two young and wealthy men who murder a friend just to test if they can get away with it. The suspense is created when the two men have a dinner party including close friends and, the parents of the dead man, whilst the dead body is stored in a chest in their sitting room. As the audience watching the film, we are all wondering “will they discover the body?”

A way of creating moments of shock for the audience is taking a situation where there is a bomb in the classroom but both teachers and students are unaware. If the director wanted to create suspense he would let the camera reveal the bomb and let the audience anticipate and wait for it to go off but instead, it just explodes and kills all present, thus leaving the audience in total astonishment.