The Sub-Genres of a Thriller:

In taking a deeper look into the thriller genre we see that there “sub-genres”. This is a way of identifying the content of a film. There are characteristics which form the genre of a Thriller for example the use of blood, violence and typically the audience will be kept in suspense, not know how the plot will thicken etc. Yet, certain details in a thriller can picked out and used to form a sub-genre. These are used to associate different thrillers with her, with mutual elements such as plot ect.

I used www.wikipedia .com to research these sun-genres. Please note that sub-genre’s within thrillers may have elements and characteristics of other genre’s such as horror, yet are still classified as a thriller. The sub-genres are as follows:

Action Thriller: Action thrillers often have elements of mystery and crime films. They are full of action, contains large elaborate sets, explosions and guns. There is often a time element to them, with fare-fetched scenarios such as there is two minutes to stop a mars bar from derailing a train, with energetic, strong and ambitious male characters saving the day. For example “James Bond” (see below).

Conspiracy Thriller: Often containing a Heroic character who challenges the darker side. The storylines are mostly political, with beliefs that there may be more to an event than meet the eye, an example would be “Fight Plan” (See below).

Crime Thriller: This genre is extremely hard to place as there is a very fine line as to what is a thriller and as to what is a crime film.  Usually these films are crime films with an added suspense or mystery to a failed crime. They are commonly filmed from the criminals point of view. They focus on actions as oppose to the psychological side of a criminal. The commonly include murders, robberies, shoot-outs ect. For example “Seven” (see below).

Eco-Thriller: The main conflict in these thrillers is due to a disaster whether it be true to life or Science-fiction. Floods, earthquakes and nuclear disasters are all possible storylines. The science fiction element to these, often consist of storylines about problems that may occur in the future.  An example and Eco-Thriller is “In The Blue” (see below).

Erotic Thriller: These thrillers are a mix of the typical characteristics of a thriller and erotica. Becoming more popular since the 1980’s, this genre includes “Fatal Attraction” (see below).

Horror Thriller: These thrillers contain conflict between characters which is mental/emotional and physical. There is also a very fine line between what is a thriller and what is a horror as most horrors have a sense of the “unknown” which is most common in Thrillers. The main elements throughout a Horror thriller are fear and mystery. There is often a superior being or force which the main character has to outsmart, the main characters commonly become victims at one point or another. An example is “28 Days Later” (see below).

Psychological Thriller: commonly, the conflict between main characters is mental and emotional as oppose to physical. A person may have a mental defect or is mentally unhinged causing them to act the way they do. “The Orphan” is an example of this (see below).

Supernatural Thriller: Characters in a supernatural thriller often have abnormal powers of some sort. These thrillers combined the tension accosted with a normal thriller but with added horror aspects such as ghosts and other such phenomenon. An example of such film would be “Carrie” (see below).

When researching this information i learnt a great deal about which thriller will fall in the which sub-genre. This will help me a great deal when planing the final sequence because i will understand which elements make a sub-genre and then can there fore give a clear representation of said genre.

Connie.