Thrillers

Thrillers, a very popular movie genre usually based around something to scare us as the audience, put us on the edge of our seat and lead us on a roller coaster of emotions of fright, tension, sadness and most of all…thrills!

The aim of a thriller is to keep us on the edge of our seats. Usual sub-genres of these films involve political thrillers, crime thrillers, physiological thrillers, mystery thrillers & paranoid thrillers.

A very famous and popular example of a crime thriller is The Godfather, thought to be one of the best movies created, and It made around $268,500,000 in box office.

Common themes in thrillers can be can be kidnaping, revenge, heists & ransoms. In psychological thrillers common themes such as mind games can be seen. Examples of this can se seen in saw, where jigsaws victims are forced to fight for their life through a series of unpleasant challenges.

Aspects of mind games can be seen in films such as The Devil Inside. This is a supernatural thriller in which the main characters are trying to remove the wicked daemons within the mother of the main character (Fernanda Andrade). They do this by taking the mother to a church to have an exorcism, but as always with all thrillers, the story has a twist!

Another famous thriller is psycho. The plot consists of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) who is unhappy in her job at a Arizona real estate and is annoyed by her romantic affairs. One afternoon, Marion is given $40,000 in cash to deposit in the bank, but seeing the opportunity she decides to run off with the cash, hoping for a better life. She decides to stop for the night at the Bates Motel after she finds herself exhausted after her journey. Innkeeper Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) welcomes her mentioning he has very few guests & tells tales of his mother. The most famous thriller scene happens next, in which Marion is stabbed multiple times whilst in the shower!

The most effective parts in this scene can be seen in the camera angles, music, & shots. For starters, the face of the psycho is blurred out, this creates a red herring effect as it misleads us as the audience to who it is. This helps to develop the feeling of tension and thrill along with the different camera angles and shots!

The codes & conventions in thrillers:

A blurred out figure hides who the Character is. This is a red herring effect.

Crane angle adds to the distortionof the character in this thriller film.

Exaggerated wide looking eyes will make us think of danger.

A shadowy room can build tensionAs we expect something to pop Out from the dark.

The codes & conventions in

thrillers. Examples of these

are…

Arlington Road Thriller Evaluation (codes &

conventions)

• In the opening of the thriller the screen is blurred out. This creates a red herring effect, hiding who the character is.

• We see the character looking up & around. His heavy eyes and cold sweat suggest he is dizzy or ill.

• Through a point of view shot we can see what the character is looking at. It also sets the location. The fast movement of the camera as he looks around also goes on to suggest he is dizzy.

• A view of the characters feet shows he cant walk steady. Also dripping blood goes on to suggest he is injured.

• The camera goes on to reveal the young boy is seriously hurt. Using an arc-shot the camera spins round the characters, building tension and panic as it moves around them quick.