Research into the history of the Thriller genre

Research into the history of the thriller genre
The Thriller genre is set up into a series of six different sub-categories of thriller:
Thriller involving ‘Murderous passions’ Husband/Wife/Lover, one gets murdered. Motive: Passion/Greed
Political thriller: Assassination of leaders or government conspiracy. Motive for crime: Power and domination over people
Change of identity thriller: Character changes or conceals identity and deals with the consequences. Motive: Hiding crime
Psycho-traumatic thriller: The main character is traumatized by past events causing him or her to commit a crime. Motive: Trying to deal with traumatic events from past
Moral confrontation thriller: Good vs. evil. Motive: Evil wants to defeat good
Innocent on the run thriller: Hero is falsely accused and has to escape and prove innocence. Motive: The hero’s bosses want him/her out of the way.

The thriller movie tends to includes lots of mysteries and puzzles, cliff hangers, crime and victims, familiar objects such as a photograph (Used in One Hour Photo), places (Like someone’s home) or activities (Again, in one hour photo the use of the everyday normal activity of getting your photographs developed) are made to become dangerous or menacing. This is done by using dark, moody and impressionistic lighting to make these familiar items and places seem a lot more sinister.

The lighting also helps to portray different people as a good or bad person in the movie. In Shutter Island you are lead to believe that Leonardo DiCaprio’s character is an inspector of whom is solving a crime, this is through the use of voiceovers. But in actual fact his character is living in the mental institution but the voiceover leads you to believe otherwise. Hybrid Genre’s also exist; in the way that two or more thriller genre’s can be mixed to make a completely different genre.

Some memorable directors include Alfred Hitchcock (Director of well known thrillers such as The Birds, and Psycho), David Fincher (Director of Se7en, Panic Room, Fight Club and The Social Network) and Orson Welles (Most commonly known for War of the worlds). The ‘Top 50 Greatest Thriller Movies’¹ still include such classics as ‘Alien’, ‘Se7en’, ‘Silence of the Lambs’, ‘Fight Club’ and ‘Reservoir Dogs’. Many of these thrillers are not from the 21st Century, but from the previous Century, showing that the best directors were those from several years ago. Thriller films are made with the intent to scare and shock the viewer, most of this is done by the use of suspenseful music and dark and atmospheric lighting.

Many films with the use of ‘Creatures’ such as ‘Cloverfield’ ‘The Mothman Prophecies and ‘The Blair Witch Project’ generally tend to either not show the ‘Creature’ or only show specific parts of the creature to hold the interest of the viewer and keep them in suspense. When you imagine a creature such as the ‘Mothman’ your imagination can conjure up all sorts of images of hideous creatures crossed between man and moth, but the real thing is never as scary as your version. This is why this convention is used in Thriller Movies

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