Thriller (genre)

Thrillers are a genre of literature, film, and television programming that uses suspense, tension, and excitement as the main elements. A common subgenre is psychological thrillers. After the assassination of President Kennedy, political thriller and paranoid thriller films became very popular. The brightest examples of thrillers are the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

Thrillers heavily stimulate the viewer's moods such as; a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, suspense, excitement, tension, terror. Literary devices such as red herrings and cliffhangers are used extensively. The cover-up of important information from the viewer and fight/chase scenes are common methods in all of the thriller subgenres, although each subgenre has its own characteristics and methods.

Common methods in crime thrillers are mainly ransoms, captivities, heists, revenge, kidnappings. More common in mystery thrillers are investigations and the whodunit technique. Common elements in psychological thrillers are mind games, psychological themes, stalking, confinement/deathtraps, horror-of-personality, and obsession. Elements such as fringe theories, false accusations, paranoia, and sometimes action are common in paranoid thrillers.

A genuine, standalone thriller is a film that provide thrills and keeps the audience cliff-hanging at the "edge of their seats" as the plot builds towards a climax. The tension usually arises when the character(s) is placed in a menacing situation, a mystery, or a trap from which escaping seems impossible. Life is threatened, usually because the principal character is unsuspectingly or unknowingly involved in a dangerous or potentially deadly situation. Plots of thrillers involve characters which come into conflict with each other or with outside forces - the threat is sometimes abstract or unseen. Thrillers with a crime-related plot mostly keep the attention away from the criminal or the detective, where they focus more on the suspense and danger that is generated.

"Homer's Odyssey is one of the oldest stories in the Western world and is regarded as an early prototype of the thriller." A thriller is villain-driven plot, whereby he presents obstacles that the hero must overcome.

Characteristics

Setting, characters and story

An atmosphere of creepy menace and sudden violence, crime and murder characterise thrillers. They mostly are adrenaline rushing, gritty, rousing and fast-paced. Thrillers often present the world and society as dark, corrupt and dangerous. Characters in thrillers include criminals, stalkers, assassins, innocent victims (often on the run), menaced women, characters with dark pasts, psychotic individuals, terrorists, cops and escaped cons, private eyes, people involved in twisted relationships, world-weary men and women, psycho-fiends, and more. The themes of thrillers frequently include terrorism, political conspiracy, pursuit, or romantic triangles leading to murder.

Thrillers mostly take place in ordinary suburbs/cities. Though sometimes, they may take place wholly or partly in exotic settings such as foreign cities, deserts, polar regions, or the high seas. The heroes in most thrillers are frequently ordinary citizens unaccustomed to danger. However, more common in crime thrillers, they may also be "hard men" accustomed to danger, like police officers and detectives. While such heroes have traditionally been men, women lead characters have become increasingly common.

Hitchcock's films often placed an innocent victim (an average, responsible person) into a strange, life-threatening or terrorizing situation, in a case of mistaken identity, misidentification or wrongful accusation.

Thriller and mystery

Thrillers often overlap with mystery stories but are distinguished by the structure of their plots. In a thriller, the hero must stop the plans of an enemy rather than uncover a crime that has already happened. While a murder mystery would be spoiled by a premature disclosure of the murderer's identity, in a thriller the identity of a murderer or other villain is typically known all along. Thrillers also occur on a much grander scale: the crimes that must be prevented are serial or mass murder, terrorism, assassination, or the overthrow of governments. Jeopardy and violent confrontations are standard plot elements in the genre. While a mystery climaxes when the mystery is solved, a thriller climaxes when the hero finally defeating the villain, saving his own life and often the lives of others. In thrillers influenced by film noir and tragedy, the compromised hero is often killed in the process. However, there are thriller films that have the characteristics of a mystery, such as the climax of a mystery being solved and the defeating of the villain seem to be common.

Definition of thriller

Thrillers may be defined by the primary mood that they elicit: fearful excitement. In short, if it "thrills", it is a thriller. As the introduction to a major anthology explains,

...Thrillers provide such a rich literary feast. There are all kinds. The legal thriller, spy thriller, action-adventure thriller, medical thriller, police thriller, romantic thriller, historical thriller, political thriller, religious thriller, high-tech thriller, military thriller. The list goes on and on, with new variations constantly being invented. In fact, this openness to expansion is one of the genre's most enduring characteristics. But what gives the variety of thrillers a common ground is the intensity of emotions they create, particularly those of apprehension and exhilaration, of excitement and breathlessness, all designed to generate that all-important thrill. By definition, if a thriller doesn't thrill, it's not doing its job.

— James Patterson, June 2006, "Introduction," Thriller

Writer Vladimir Nabokov, in his lectures at Cornell University, said that "In an Anglo-Saxon thriller, the villain is generally punished, and the strong silent man generally wins the weak babbling girl, but there is no governmental law in Western countries to ban a story that does not comply with a fond tradition, so that we always hope that the wicked but romantic fellow will escape scot-free and the good but dull chap will be finally snubbed by the moody heroine."

History in film

Early thrillers, 1920s-1940s

Alfred Hitchcock helped to shape the modern-day thriller genre, beginning with his early silent film The Lodger (1926), a suspenseful Jack the Ripper story, followed by his next thriller Blackmail (1929), his first sound film (though also released in a silent version).

The chilling German film M (1931) directed by Fritz Lang, starred Peter Lorre (in his first film role) as a criminal deviant - a child killer. The film's story was based on the life of serial killer Peter Kurten (known as the 'Vampire of Düsseldorf').

Notable examples of Hitchcock's early British suspense-thriller films include The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), his first spy-chase/romantic thriller, The 39 Steps (1935) with Robert Donat handcuffed to Madeleine Carroll and The Lady Vanishes (1938). Hitchcock continued to perfect his recognizable brand of suspense-thriller, producing Foreign Correspondent (1940), the haunting Oscar-nominated Rebecca (1940) which is about the unusual romance between a young woman (Joan Fontaine) and an emotionally-distant rich widower (Laurence Olivier) - overshadowed by a vindictive housekeeper (Judith Anderson), Suspicion (1941) about a woman in peril from her own husband (Cary Grant), Saboteur (1942) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943), which was Hitchcock's own personal favorite and based upon the actual case of a 1920s serial killer known as The Merry Widow Murderer.

Director George Cukor's psychological thriller Gaslight (1944) featured a scheming husband (Charles Boyer) plotting to make his innocent young wife (Ingrid Bergman) go insane, in order to acquire her inheritance. The film noir, Laura (1944) was about a thrilling murder investigation made by a police detective (Dana Andrews), with suspects including an columnist (Clifton Webb) and a fiancee (Vincent Price).

In The Spiral Staircase (1946), a mute domestic servant (Dorothy McGuire) in a house was terrorized by a serial murderer, thinking she was the next victim. In a thriller starring Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth titled The Lady From Shanghai (1948), a woman, her crippled lawyer/husband and his partner, and an Irish sailor ended up involved in a murder scheme. In Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), an invalid woman (Barbara Stanwyck) overheard a murder plot on the phone - against herself. The Third Man (1949), told the story of a writer (Joseph Cotten) in post-World War II Vienna who found out that his old friend (Orson Welles), a black marketeer, was not dead after all.

1950s-1960s

In the 1950s, Hitchcock added technicolor to his thrillers, now with exotic locales and glamorous stars. He reached the zenith of his career with a succession of classic films such as, Strangers on a Train (1951) which is about two train passengers: tennis pro Guy (Farley Granger) and Bruno (Robert Walker) who staged a battle of wits and traded murders with each other, Dial M For Murder (1954) with Ray Milland as a villainous husband who attempts to murder his wealthy wife (Grace Kelly), Rear Window (1954) which is about man (James Stewart) being convinced that his neighbour is a killer, To Catch a Thief (1955), a lightweight thriller set in South of France, Vertigo (1958), with James Stewart as a retired police detective who becomes obsessed with the disturbed enigmatic 'wife' (Kim Novak) of an old friend, and North by Northwest in which an advertising executive (Cary Grant) is mistaken for a non-existant spy and chased across the country while aided by a mysterious woman (Eva Marie Saint).

Non-Hitchcock thriller of the 50's include, the film-noirish Niagara (1953) by Henry Hathaway, with Marilyn Monroe as the trashy femme fatale who schemes to kill her unstable husband (Joseph Cotten), director Robert Aldrich's violent and fast-paced film Kiss Me Deadly (1955) featured Ralph Meeker as a hard-nosed detective having fears of a nuclear apocalypse, The Night of the Hunter (1955), director Charles Laughton's only film, with Robert Mitchum playing a Bible-thumping, homicidal preacher victimizing two young children with a secret about the location of stolen money. Orson Welles' unique crime thriller, Touch of Evil (1958) with a pre-Psycho Janet Leigh as a terrorized wife, Charlton Heston as a Mexican-American narcotics agent, and the director himself as an evil border-town cop. Director Michael Powell's tense Peeping Tom (1960), with Carl Boehm as a psychopathic cameraman - the film was released prior to Hitchcock's Psycho (1960).

After Hitchcock's classic films of the 1950s, he produced the shocking and engrossing thriller Psycho (film) (1960) about a loner mother-fixated motel owner and taxidermist.

J. Lee Thompson's Cape Fear (1962) with Robert Mitchum had a menacing ex-con seeking revenge at an attorney (Gregory Peck) and his family, director Stanley Donen's stylish, romantic thriller Charade (1963), which had numerous plot twists, identity-changes, and a search for hidden loot that stars the pair of Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn on location in Paris. Roman Polanski's first film in English, the frightening and surrealistic Repulsion (1965) - with Catherine Deneuve as a young woman who goes increasingly mad. A famous thriller of its release date was Wait Until Dark (1967) by director Terence Young with Audrey Hepburn as a victimized blind woman in her Manhattan apartment and Alan Arkin as the evil and sadistic con man searching for drugs (hidden in a doll).

1970s and 1980s

The decade saw a violent start in the thriller genre, with Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock's first British film in almost two decades, being given an R rating for its vicious and explicit strangulation scene. Steven Spielberg's low-budget early TV movie Duel (1971), which got a cult following, was about road rage between a hapless traveling salesman (Dennis Weaver) and the unseen, relentless driver of a truck. One of the first films about a fan being disturbingly obsessed with their idol was Clint Eastwood's directorial debut film, Play Misty for Me (1971), about a California disc jockey pursued by a disturbed female listener (Jessica Walter). John Boorman's Deliverance (1972) followed the perilous fate of four Southern businessmen during a weekend's trip. Director Nicolas Roeg's edgy, puzzling and macabre Don't Look Now (1973), a tale of despair in Venice, with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as a couple grieving the drowning death of their daughter.

In Francis Ford Coppola's tense character study/thriller, The Conversation (1974), a bugging-device expert (Gene Hackman) systematically uncovered a covert murder while he himself was being spied upon. Directed by Irvin Kershner, The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) was yet another stalker themed thriller, starring Faye Dunaway as the title character - a stalked photographer.

Director Brian De Palma's earliest, heavily-stylistic films (often with reconstructed scenes from other films) are particularly reminiscent of Hitchcock's tense thrillers, with themes of guilt, voyeurism, paranoia and obsession. Similar plot elements include killing off a main character early on, switching points of view, and dream-like sequences.

His films include, the psycho-thriller Sisters (1973), a story of murderous Siamese twins, with music from Hitchcock's frequent and favorite collaborator, composer Bernard Herrmann, Obsession (1976) which was somewhat inspired by Vertigo, Dressed to Kill (1980), the assassination thriller Blow Out (1981) told about a sound-effects man who witnessed the 'accidental' killing of the governor and the erotic Body Double (1984) which was about a struggling B-movie actor who became involved in a tale of intrigue and mystery involving his erotic next-door 'body double' neighbor.

The decade ended with Phillip Noyce's Dead Calm (film) (1989), a psychological thriller with Nicole Kidman, who must fight for her life on a yacht against a crazed castaway (Billy Zane). This thriller had elements of obsession and trapped protagonists who must find a way to escape the clutches of the villain - these devices influenced a number of thrillers in the following years, the early 90's.

1990's to present

Thrillers of this decade were mainly psychological ones that dealt with obsession, domestic violence, revenge, mentally ill characters and the protagonist's goal of escape.

Thrillers with those elements include, director Rob Reiner's Misery (1990), based on the book by Stephen King, with Kathy Bates as an unbalanced fan named Annie who terrorizes, in her care, an incapacitated author named Paul (James Caan); in one horrifying scene, she 'hobbles' his ankles so that he can't escape, a battered wife who left her sadistic husband to find a better life was vengefully pursued in Sleeping with the Enemy (1991), Curtis Hanson's The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992), with Rebecca De Mornay as a nanny intent on seeking revenge against her dead obstetrician husband's patient (Annabella Sciorra), Unlawful Entry (1992) with Ray Liotta as cop being obsessed with a woman he saved, Barbet Schroeder's suspenseful Single White Female (1992), with Bridget Fonda and her obsessed roommate-from-hell Jennifer Jason Leigh, Harold Becker's Malice (1993) with Alec Baldwin and Nicole Kidman, and lastly Anthony Minghella's psychological thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) with Matt Damon being obsessed with, and then assuming the identity of, Jude Law.

However, despite how common the obsession theme was in this decade, there was another popular theme of the thriller genre - detectives/FBI agents hunting down a serial killer. The famous was Jonathan Demme's highly-acclaimed Best Picture-winning crime thriller The Silence of the Lambs (1991) where a young FBI agent Jodie Foster in a psychological war against a cannibalistic psychiatrist named Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), while tracking down transgender serial killer Buffalo Bill and David Fincher's crime thriller Se7en (1995), which was about the search for a serial killer who re-enacts the seven deadly sins.

Until today, thrillers do borrow themes and elements from those in the past decades. However, to cut the repetitiveness, there are a number of recent thrillers that maintain the aspects of the horror genre; having more gore/sadistic violence, brutality, terror and body counts. The recent thrillers which took this approach include Eden Lake (2008), The Last House on the Left (2009), P2 (2007), Captivity (2007) and Funny Games (2008). Even action scenes have gotten more elaborate in the thrillers of the past 10 years. Thrillers such as Joy Ride (2001), Unknown (2011), Hostage (2005), Cellular (2006), A History of Violence (2005) and Firewall (2006) had some action scenes.

Sub-genres

See also: List of thriller films

The thriller genre can include the following sub-genres, which may include elements of other genres:

• Conspiracy thriller: In which the hero/heroine confronts a large, powerful group of enemies whose true extent only he/she recognizes. The Chancellor Manuscript and The Aquitaine Progression by Robert Ludlum fall into this category, as do films such as Awake, Snake Eyes, Edge of Darkness, Absolute Power, Marathon Man, In the Line of Fire, Capricorn One, and JFK.
• Crime thriller: This particular genre is a hybrid type of both crime films and thrillers that offers a suspenseful account of a successful or failed crime or crimes. These films often focus on the criminal(s) rather than a policeman. Crime thrillers usually emphasise action over psychological aspects. Central topics of these films include serial killers/murders, robberies, chases, shootouts, heists and double-crosses. Some examples of crime thrillers involving murderers include, Seven, No Country for Old Men, Silence of the Lambs, Untraceable, Mindhunters, Kiss the Girls, Along Came a Spider and Copycat. Examples of crime thrillers involving heists or robberies includes The Asphalt Jungle, The Score, Rififi, Ocean's 11, Entrapment, The Killing and Reservoir Dogs.
• Erotic thriller: In which it consists of erotica and thriller. It has become popular since the 1980s and the rise of VCR market penetration. The genre includes such films as Basic Instinct, Chloe, Color of Night, Dressed to Kill, Eyes Wide Shut, In the Cut, Lust, Caution and Single White Female.
• Legal thriller: In which the lawyer-heroes/heroines confront enemies outside, as well as inside, the courtroom and are in danger of losing not only their cases but their lives. The Runaway Jury by John Grisham is a well known example of the type. Other examples include The Client, Fracture, A Time to Kill, Primal Fear, A Few Good Men, Presumed Innocent and The Juror.
• Political thriller: In which the hero/heroine must ensure the stability of the government that employs him. The success of Seven Days in May (1962) by Fletcher Knebel, The Day of the Jackal (1971) by Frederick Forsyth, and The Manchurian Candidate (1959) by Richard Condon established this sub-genre. Examples include, The Sentinel, Topaz, Notorious, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Interpreter, Proof of Life, State of Play and The Ghost Writer.
• Psychological thriller: In which (until the often violent resolution) the conflict between the main characters is mental and emotional, rather than physical. Characters, either by accident or their own curiousness, are dragged into a dangerous conflict or situation that they are not prepared to resolve. Characters are not reliant on physical strength to overcome their brutish enemies, but rather are reliant on their mental resources, whether it be by battling wits with a formidable opponent or by battling for equilibrium in the character's own mind. The suspense created by psychological thrillers often comes from two or more characters preying upon one another's minds, either by playing deceptive games with the other or by merely trying to demolish the other's mental state. The Alfred Hitchcock films Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt, and Strangers on a Train and David Lynch's bizarre and influential Blue Velvet are notable examples of the type, as are The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Machinist, Don't Say A Word, House of 9, Trapped, Flightplan, Shutter Island, Secret Window, Identity, Red Eye, Phone Booth, Psycho, The River Wild, Nick of Time, P2, Breakdown, Panic Room, Misery, Cape Fear, The Collector, Frailty, The Good Son and Funny Games.
• Rape and Revenge films: Out of the sub-genres of exploitation film, this focuses more on the thriller elements such as suspense, tension, some action and fast-pacing rather than scares and the supernatural. Some famous rape and revenge films are The Last House on the Left, Irréversible, Thriller - A Cruel Picture, Baise-moi and I Spit on Your Grave.
• Supernatural thriller: In which the film brings in an otherworldly element mixed with tension, suspense and plot twists. Sometimes the hero and/or villain has some psychic ability. Examples include, Lady in the Water, Fallen, Frequency, Knowing, In Dreams, Flatliners, Jacob's Ladder, The Skeleton Key, What Lies Beneath, Unbreakable, The Gift, and The Dead Zone.

Although most thrillers are formed in some combination of the above, there are some however that are formed with other genres, which commonly are the horror genre, spy genre (i.e. espionage), science fiction, action and the adventure genre.

Examples

Fiction and literature

See also: List of thriller writers

Ancient epic poems such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer's Odyssey and the Mahābhārata use similar narrative techniques as modern thrillers. In the Odyssey, the hero Odysseus makes a perilous voyage home after the Trojan War, battling extraordinary hardships in order to be reunited with his wife Penelope. He has to contend with villains such as the Cyclops, a one-eyed giant, and the Sirens, whose sweet singing lures sailors to their doom. In most cases, Odysseus uses cunning instead of brute force to overcome his adversaries.

"The Three Apples", a tale in the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), is the earliest known murder mystery and suspense thriller with multiple plot twists and detective fiction elements. In this tale, a fisherman discovers a heavy locked chest along the Tigris river and he sells it to the Abbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid, who then has the chest broken open only to find inside it the dead body of a young woman who was cut into pieces. Harun orders his vizier, Ja'far ibn Yahya, to solve the crime and find the murderer within three days. This whodunit mystery may be considered an archetype for detective fiction.

The Thirty-Nine Steps is an early thriller by John Buchan, in which an innocent man becomes the prime suspect in a murder case and finds himself on the run from both the police and enemy spies.

Novelists closely associated with the genre include Eric Ambler, Sydney Bauer, Ted Bell, Dan Brown, Lincoln Child, Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, Michael Crichton, Nelson DeMille, Ian Fleming, Ken Follett, Frederick Forsyth, Graham Greene, John Grisham, Robert Ludlum, Alistair MacLean, Andy McNab, David Morrell, James Phelan, Douglas Preston, and Matthew Reilly.

Notable contributors to the thriller genre

Writers

• Eric Ambler
• Desmond Bagley
• Peter Benchley
• William Bernhardt
• Dan Brown
• Raymond Chandler
• Douglas Preston
• Lee Child
• Tom Clancy
• Mary Higgins Clark
• Michael Connelly
• Robin Cook

• Michael Crichton
• Clive Cussler
• Jeffery Deaver
• Ted Dekker
• Joy Fielding
• Ian Fleming
• Ken Follett
• Frederick Forsyth
• W.E.B. Griffin

• John Grisham
• Dashiell Hammett
• John le Carré
• John Lutz
• Alistair Maclean
• Perri O'Shaughnessy
• Richard North Patterson
• Edgar Allan Poe
• R.L. Stine
• Craig Thomas
• Scott Turow
• Mary Willis Walker

Directors

• Jon Amiel
• Bryan Bertino
• John Boorman
• D.J. Caruso
• Henri-Georges Clouzot
• Joel and Ethan Coen
• Jonathan Demme
• Brian De Palma
• David Fincher
• Gary Fleder
• James Foley
• John Frankenheimer
• William Friedkin
• Robert Harmon
• Mary Harron

• Alfred Hitchcock
• Gregory Hoblit
• Stephen Hopkins
• John Huston
• Neil Jordan
• Philip Kaufman
• Stanley Kubrick
• Adrian Lyne
• John McTiernan
• Dick Maas
• Michael Mann
• Christopher Nolan
• Phillip Noyce
• Alan J. Pakula

• Wolfgang Petersen
• Roman Polanski
• Sydney Pollack
• Carol Reed
• Joel Schumacher
• Martin Scorsese
• Ridley Scott
• Tony Scott
• M. Night Shyamalan
• Steven Soderbergh
• Steven Spielberg
• Quentin Tarantino
• Tom Tykwer
• Orson Welles
• Billy Wilder
• Peter Jackson

Television

There have been at least two television series called simply Thriller, one made in the U.S. in the 1960s and one made in the UK in the 1970s. Although in no way linked, both series consisted of one-off dramas, each utilising the familiar motifs of the genre.

24 is a fast-paced television series with a premise inspired by the War on Terror. Each season takes place over the course of twenty-four hours, with each episode happening in "real time". Featuring a split-screen technique and a ticking onscreen clock, 24 follows the exploits of federal agent Jack Bauer as he races to foil terrorist threats.

Lost, which deals with the survivors of a plane crash, sees the castaways on the island forced to deal with a monstrous being that appears as a cloud of black smoke, a conspiracy of "Others" who have kidnapped or killed their fellow castaways at various points, a shadowy past of the island itself that they are trying to understand, polar bears, and the fight against these and other elements as they struggle simply to stay alive and get out of the island.

Prison Break follows Michael Scofield, an engineer who has himself incarcerated in a maximum-security prison in order to break out his brother, who is on death row for a crime he did not commit. In the first season Michael must deal with the hazards of prison life, the other inmates and prison staff, and executing his elaborate escape plan, while outside the prison Michael's allies investigate the conspiracy that led to Lincoln being framed. In the second season, Michael, his brother and several other inmates escape the prison and must evade the nationwide manhunt for their re-capture, as well as those who want them dead.

Other examples include, Dexter, Breaking Bad, Criminal Minds, Without a Trace, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The 4400, Medium, Numb3rs, The Twilight Zone and The X-Files.

See also

• Adventure novel
• International Thriller Writers
• Spy film
• Mystery film
• Horror film
• Action film
• Crime film

External links

• A Century of Thrillers: 200 Books From 1890 to 1990 by David L. Vineyard.
• A Choice of Thrillers by Mike Ripley.