Genre Conventions

Thriller genres usually consists of frightful like elements. Thriller usually involve some form of crime or espionage, which makes for a brilliant ending plot or cliff hanger. Thrillers are usually compared to horrors as they are both intended for trepidation on the audience, however horrors typically involve gore and blood whereas thrillers involve mystery and suspense to unveil an exciting story.  Thrillers usually densely stimulates the audiences mood as they start to come up with assumptions and expectations about the story line and plot, they begin to feel uncertainty, anxiety and uneasy, they begin to feel high levels of anticipation and involve villains, red herrings and cliffhangers.

Sub-genres allow the film to have more than one genre element to the film. Thriller sub-genres are used a lot in films to make their film more exciting and interesting rather than having just one genre. Films such as ‘Obsessed’; which carries a romance sub genre and ‘Limitless’; which carries a sci-fi sub genre to it, are highly successful films mainly because they show different genre elements rather than keeping the film as just a thriller. Obsessed portrays various emotions and feelings such as love, jealousy and anger, which makes the audience intrigued and interested. Limitless portrays emotions such as fear, excitement and anxiety which makes the audience feel as if they are in the characters position.

Characters make the film become real and alive. The characters make the storyline realistic, this is because the audience can relate to the characters by their ethnicity, situation, age, gender etc. The antagonist character is usually the main character within thriller genres that stalks or aims to kill the victim, followed by the victim or protagonist character that aims to save the day, unveils the mystery or gets murdered.


Locations are important in thrillers as they create a scenery and atmosphere that allows the audience to grasp an idea and understanding of the plot. Usually locations in thriller have a dark environment that makes the audience start becoming fearful and wary. Locations is a major way to create tension, suspense and mystery. 


Dialogue within thrillers are used to make the audience understand the characters personalities, relationships with other characters and to know what is happening within the plot. Dialogue makes the audience start to use their imagination and therefore start to think about the overall story and what character is the villain/hero etc.


Mise-en-scene is most important in thrillers as the majority of thrillers them use such high quality and good uses of this. Successful and popular thrillers draw their audience into the story. Mise-en-scene includes props, dialogue, characters, locations, sound, lighting, and costume. Thillers use music to create suspense and causes a more dramatic scene in the thriller. The props used is to create a sense of realism and a sense of familiarity toward the audience, as some props used maybe similar to the audiences and therefore can relate to these similarities with the scene.  The costume used allow audience to be drawn to the character and to therefore they grasp a feel of the characters personality, financial situation, style, age, hobbies and interests.