Genre Signifiers (thrillers)

 Thrillers

Actual Definition: A thriller is a suspenseful adventure story or play or movie. Thrillers concentrate more on suspense, although gore and violence may be shown at times, the focus is on the suspense. Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action, and heroes. Devices such as suspense and cliff hangers are used extensively. Thrillers combine action and suspense in to one group. They do this by including twists or secrets whilst including fights or action shots. Thrillers also concentrate on the intensity of emotions they create especially exhilaration and tension by showing the emotional break-down or emotional mind state of the hero. The audience identifies with the main hero either through emotion or fear of the situation. The music in thrillers are normally very quiet so it makes you concentrate more on the characters and the scene, this builds up suspense. The music then changes when something jumpy happens like a killer jumping out of a closet. After this the music will change its pace to be more faster to give the idea of fear and that adrenaline rush. Key items used in a normal thriller are normally weapons like knives, blunt weapons, swords like objects because this mean the killer has to get up close and personal with the victim where as a gun would not make a good weapon in a thriller because its quick and clean. The colours used in thrillers are normally very dark except at the beginning when you are introduced to the characters. The dark atmosphere is perfect for thrillers because in films like these bad things normally happen at night.   

There are many sub-genres to thrillers, including action thriller, drama thriller, crime thriller, psychological thriller, spy thriller and supernatural thriller. These thrillers may differ to each other in terms of pace, for example, an action thriller would be quicker paced than a drama or physiological thriller.