What Is A Thriller?

Thrillers have a few main elements which define them as a thriller, the main ones are suspense, excitement and tension. Most thrillers are able to anticipate viewers moods, and contain a lot of uncertainty and suspense, they do this by using cliff hangers. It is also key to note that a lot of thrillers keep key information hidden from the audience, they do this to cover up typical judgements. As well as this fight and chase scenes are commonly used.  There is a few types of thrillers, these include crime, paranoid, psychological and mystery. The whole concept of a thriller is to keep the audience on edge, and full of excitement and unknowing as the plot builds up towards the final climax. The atmosphere created needs to be creepy, eerie, with some violence, for example things such as crime, murder corruption. Usually thriller films are fast paced and gritty and often present everything to be dark, gloomy and dangerous. With the usual characters consisting of terrorists, police officers, escaped prisoners, stalkers, innocent victims and many more, as themes tend to include pursuit and terrorism. Commonly they take place in ordinary situations and places, such as suburbs and cities.

For me a good thriller needs to get my adrenaline going, and my heart racing. It also must keep me guessing as I feel that as soon as you can guess the storyline the excitement for me as the viewer is ruined and there is no longer any anticipation involved in the film.

A few examples of thrillers include Black Swan, The Sixth Sense and Shutter Island.