What is a Thriller?

What is a Thriller?


A Thriller is a movie, book or play with a plot which is exhilarating and thrilling. The Thriller genre can also be split into many different sub-genres such as: Action thrillers, crime thrillers, horror thrillers and psychological thrillers to just name a few. An example of an action thriller would be the Bourne series films. Many good examples of thrillers are films which keep the audience on the edge of their seats as the main plot.


Action thriller: It focuses on action and is more common in movies than books due to it being easier to visualise. An example of an action thriller would be the Bourne series films. Action film is a genre in which the protagonist or protagonists end up in a series of challenges that typically include violence, extended fighting, physical feats, and frantic chases. Action films tend to feature a resourceful hero struggling against incredible odds, which include life-threatening situations, a villain, or a pursuit which generally concludes in victory for the hero (though a small number of films in this genre have ended in victory for the villain instead). 



(below is a scene in the Bourne Ultimatum which is a good example of an intense thriller scene)

Crime thriller: it's usually from the criminals point of view and the criminal avoids the police to make the film more exciting and tense. Detectives may be involved in crime thrillers as well as courtroom drama, hard-boiled fiction and legal thrillers being part of crime films. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre. An example of a crime thriller would be Angels and Demons (2009).

Horror thriller: A horror film is used to get a physiological reaction. It's main adjective is often to give the audience a sense of fear. Horror films often deal with viewers' nightmares, fears, revulsions and terror of the unknown. Plots within the horror genre often involve the intrusion of an evil force, event or personage into the everyday world. Prevalent elements include ghosts, aliens, vampires, werewolves, demons, satanism, gore, torture, vicious animals, evil witches, monsters, zombies, cannibals , psychopaths, natural or man-made disasters and serial killers. An example of a horror thriller would be 'IT' (2017) .

Psychological thriller: Psychological thriller is a thriller story which emphasises the unstable psychological states of its characters. In terms of classification, the category is a sub-genre of the broader ranging thriller category, with similarities to Gothic and detective fiction in the sense of sometimes having a "dissolving sense of reality", moral ambiguity, and complex and tortured relationships between obsessive and pathological characters. Psychological thrillers often incorporate elements of or overlap with mystery, drama, action and horror (particularly psychological horror).  An example of a Psychological thriller would be Shutter Island (2010).