Section 1: Background to Thriller Genre

The thriller genre is typically associated with the following things:

• A chase scene
• A victim
• A villain
• A twist in the plot
• Conflict
• Murder
• A detective/Multiple detectives
• A suspect
• Tension
• Clues
• Red herrings
• Conventional
• Predictable

Many thrillers have become popular throughout the whole world, films such as;

• Se7en
• Silence of the lambs
• Bank job
• Bounce

Theoretical approaches to the Thriller genre;

G K Chesterton- theory was called "The transformed city". He viewed our world we live in as drab and mundane. He suggested the Thriller genre was an attempt to find excitement and adventure in normal everyday life. Exchanging the ordinary to the extraordinary.

• Northrop Frye- "The Heroic romance". This is where the hero is "one of us", an ordinary human who is forced to do extraordinary things. "ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended for these people".
• John Cawelti-"The Exotic" Is something foreign and unfamiliar can turn things into a mystery. Many thrillers make use of artifacts from "foreign" places to help create a thrilling feel.
• W H Matthews- "Mazes and Labyrinths" Comes from the story of Theseus and the Minotaur in Greek mythology. The theory is where either a maze or a metaphor of a maze, e.g. journeys with lots of different twists and dead ends, where the solution is reached through deduction creating suspense and mystery.
• Pascal Bontizer- "Partial Vision" This is very popular among thrillers, it is where we can only see so much but then again what we cant see is usually important. This is done to keep the audience watching as they have no idea what could possibly happen next.
• Lars Ole Saurberg-"Concealment and Protraction" there are two way in which this works to pull an audience in directions. Deliberately concealing a vital clue from the audience, such as killers identity etc. This is also used within films such as when the audience can spot a vital clue to the mystery and the clue is kept hidden from the character, Dramatic irony. Also this theory suggests that bombs and countdowns to a certain suspected outcome increases suspense rather than not knowing the outcome, its all about the countdown.
• Noel Carroll- "The question-answer model". This is where the audience are meant to have many unanswered question and get confused they will watch on and wait to find out the answers to their questions. suspense is also created through either Probability factor where "a sure thing thing" is less exciting than a battle against the odds. And The moral factor is where to an audience the "right" outcome is a more desirable one than one which twists a cliched ending.