Section One. Thriller Genre

Genre is a French word which simply means category or type. This is used in many different ways, for example video games, television programs, books and films. A thriller genre uses tension, suspense, excitement and mystery as the main elements.

Some sub genres of thrillers are disaster thrillers which uses earthquakes, floods, hurricanes as an artificial disaster. A good example of a disaster thriller is 'A Day After Tomorrow'. Another sub-genre of thriller is a crime thriller, this normally a hybrid of both crime films and thrillers. They normally focus on the criminal rather than the policeman and usually involve serial killers or murders. A good example of a crime thriller is 'Silence of the Lambs'.

A thriller genre keeps you in suspense, and always asking questions. A thriller normally shocks or scares the viewer and plays with the mind. Different from a horror which focus on blood and gore, a thriller would focus on the story line. A thriller may also include tension and mystery, which will drive the narrative and would appeal to the audience.

Martin Ruben 'Thrillers' in 1999 has a series of theories to make a successful thriller.

C K Chesterton - ' The Transformed City' uses the idea of a modern ordinarily city and transforms is into an extraordinary city.

Northrop Frye - ' The Heroic Romance' This is when a normal everyday person has to become a 'hero' like person when they are faced with the problems and circumstances, 'moves the world in which ordinary laws and nature are slightly suspended'.

John Cawelti - ' The Exotic'.  This is when a modern city is turned mysterious. An introduction to the unfamiliar, this could be a person, artefacts, objects, locations and sometimes more popular in the earlier thriller movies are props from the Middle East orient.

W H Matthews - 'Mazes & Labyrinths'. This is origins of the Greek mythology, and it’s when the hero in the thriller finds them selves in a predicament. This could be a metaphorical maze like when the person finds problems which would be a metephoic dead end, or a clue which would be a corner closer to the exit or an actual maze like a corridor. The audience are presented with the hero’s puzzles and problem solving.

Pascal Bonitzer - 'Particle Vision'. This is a theory about the audience seeing part of something, and some elements are hidden. The blind spot create suspense and asks the audience questions. What we don’t see is just as important as what we do see, for example, in a murder thriller, sometimes if you see the killer at the beginning and know it is the killer then it may ruin the suspense for the whole film. This when the characters are places in an 'unlimited prison'.

Lars Ole Sauerberg - 'Concealment and Protraction'. This is when the suspense of the thriller can pull the audience in different directions. Concealment is when the films hide something on purpose and protection is a deliberate delay of a suspected out come.

Noell Carroll - ' The Question and Answers Model'. This is when the audience is asked a question to keep them in suspense. It is a probability factor, a sure thing is not as good and doesn’t hold suspense as well as a battle against the odds. This means when the audience knows something for sure then they won’t have to question it, a battle against the odds means that it couldbe between two or more things.