Conventions of the Thriller Genre and Key Terms

A typical thriller film would aspire to make their target audience feel a huge variety of emotions. The ones usually associated with thrillers are suspense, mystery, fear. Since many films nowadays are either hybrid genres or sub-genres, the emotions associated with thrillers has risen, and now comedy, horror, dramatic and many more are now incorporated into many thriller films.

Another aspect predominantly found in thrillers is the use of double emotions. This technique is used to pull the viewer in opposite directions, and make them feel tense and wondering what will happen next. Feelings and sensations such as humour and suspense, fear and excitement, pleasure and pain, masochism and sadism, identification and detachment are used to make the viewer feel on edge and are a main reason why thrillers are a popular genre of film.


Key Terms
A sub genre is when a genre (for example thriller) is fused with another word to make it more specific. This other word cannot be a genre alone. For example, psychological thriller

A hybrid is the merging of two separate genres, used if a particular film crosses over two genres. For example, horror thriller.

Iconography is the use of sometimes stereotypical props, clothing etc, and conventions that relate to a specific genre. These conventions give the audience connotations of what to expect from a film. For example, if there was a room that was dark with broken windows, contained knives and the character was dressed in untidy clothes, the audience would immediately expect a thriller or horror film, because those specific things are found in typical thriller/horror films. The audience would not expect to see all of those props in a comedy film, for example. When creating our thriller, we will need to research and carefully plan exactly what iconography we will want to have in our shots. These will be very important, as it gives the audience a clear idea of what kinds of themes our film may involve.

- Taylor Gladwin