Account Of Lesson On ‘What Is A Thriller?’

We had a presentation in class about what is a thriller. We examined the concept of a thriller and learnt that the thriller genre is difficult to define because so many of the emotions and reactions that come from thrillers are part of the whole experience of film. It is a meta-genre. There are many different types of thrillers, most commonly, crime, psychological. Supernatural, political and espionage. However the problem with thrillers is that they only rely on intricacy of plot to create fear, apprehension and suspense in the hearts and minds of the audience. It plays on our most basic worries by drawing on the most infantile and therefore repressed thoughts. These thoughts can be voyeuristic, sexual or violent. Yet the thriller manages to achieve this by raising questions in the minds of the audience, and they use universal themes that are of the struggles of love, death or money. This is also achieved by a scene of delay, as when something eventually happens, there is a sense of relief from that tension. The audience enjoys watching pain and suffering being inflicted on the characters as our pleasure is derived from their discomfort. Finally the word thrill is ‘to pierce’. Giving you an unpleasant feeling, and the thrillers that we produce must draw on all these influences, evoke primitive, gut-level feelings rather than more sensitive, delicate emotions.