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Thriller film

April 26, 2023

"Suspense thriller" redirects here. For the general category "suspense/thriller", see Thriller (genre).

Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience.[1] The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre. Tension is created by delaying what the audience sees as inevitable, and is built through situations that are menacing or where escape seems impossible.[2]

A common theme in thrillers involves innocent victims dealing with deranged adversaries, as seen in Hitchcock's film Rebecca (1940), where Mrs. Danvers tries to persuade Mrs. De Winter to leap to her death.

The cover-up of important information from the viewer, and fight and chase scenes are common methods. Life is typically threatened in a thriller film, such as when the protagonist does not realize that they are entering a dangerous situation. Thriller films' characters conflict with each other or with an outside force, which can sometimes be abstract. The protagonist is usually set against a problem, such as an escape, a mission, or a mystery.[3]

Screenwriter and scholar Eric R. Williams identifies thriller films as one of eleven super-genres in his screenwriters' taxonomy, claiming that all feature length narrative films can be classified by these super-genres.[undue weight? – discuss] The other ten super-genres are action, crime, fantasy, horror, romance, science fiction, slice of life, sports, war, and western.[4] Thriller films are typically hybridized with other super-genres; hybrids commonly including: action thrillers, fantasy and science fiction thrillers. Thriller films also share a close relationship with horror films, both eliciting tension. In plots about crime, thriller films focus less on the criminal or the detective and more on generating suspense. Common themes include, terrorism, political conspiracy, pursuit and romantic triangles leading to murder.[3]

In 2001, the American Film Institute (AFI) made its selection of the top 100 greatest American "heart-pounding" and "adrenaline-inducing" films of all time. The 400 nominated films had to be American-made films whose thrills have "enlivened and enriched America's film heritage". AFI also asked jurors to consider "the total adrenaline-inducing impact of a film's artistry and craft".[5][3]

Characteristics

In his book on the genre, Martin Rubin stated that the label "Thriller" was "highly problematic" declaring that "the very breadth and vagueness of the thriller category understandably discourage efforts to define it precisely.".[6][7] This was echoed by Charles Derry in his book The Suspense Thriller found that the terms "suspense thriller", "thriller" and "suspense film" used continuously in popular press, academic writings and the film industry with no clear idea of what the definition is.[8] Unlike other genres such as the Western which had recognizable iconography (cowboys, saloons, southwestern landscapes), the thriller lacks such unique iconography.[9] Rubin went on to state that thrillers involve an excess of certain qualities beyond the narratives: they tend emphasize action, suspense and atmosphere and emphasize feelings of "suspense, fright, mystery, exhilaration, excitement, speed, movement" over more sensitive, cerebral, or emotionally heavy feelings.[9] Rubin described thrillers as being both quantitative and qualitative as virtually all narrative films could be considered thrilling to some degree, while they could contain suspense to some degree, but at "a certain hazy point", the films become thrilling enough to be considered part of the genre. [9] For Alfred Hitchcock, a director very associated with the genre, he proclaimed that the whodunnit generated "the kind of curiosity that is void of emotion, and emotion is essential ingredient of suspense" and thus for Hitchcock, "mystery is seldom suspenseful"[10] In their discussions on the political thriller, Pablo Castrillo and Pablo Echart stated in 2015 that the concept of a thriller as an overarching, broad category is "traditionally unclear" due to the varied definitions between authors, with its "boundaries often blurred, overlapped, and hybridized with other genres."[11]

In his book The Suspense Thriller (1988), the genre-studies specialist Charles Derry found the "suspense thriller" to be crime films that lacked a traditional detective figure and featured non-professional criminals or innocent victims as protagonists and excluded films that are often labeled as thrillers such as hard-boiled detective stories, horror films, heist films and spy films. Derry found the non-professional or victim being placed in unfamiliar situations enhanced their vulnerability and thus increased greater suspense.[12] Derry specifically noted the "innocent-on-the-run" theme a coherent in the genre, presenting them in films such as The 39 Steps (1935), North by Northwest (1959) and conspiracy thriller films like The Parallax View (1974) and the comedy-tinged Silver Streak (1976).[13] Alternatively, British communication professor Jerry Palmer in his book Thrillers defined the genre by literary roots, ideology and sociological backgrounds and that thrillers could be reduced to just two components: a hero and a conspiracy.[14] Palmer noted the hero in a thriller must be professional and competitive and not an amateur or an average citizen and suggested and declared characters such as spy James Bond or private eye Mike Hammer to be "quintessential thriller heroes".[14] Palmer also noted that audiences must approve of the hero's actions and adopt their moral perspective.[14] Palmer included styles such as detective films as part of the genre.[15] Rubin argued against Palmer's definition, noting that it would include melodramas and courtroom dramas such as Meet John Doe (1941) into the genre and eliminate such films as Purple Noon (1960) and Psycho (1960) from the genre.[16] Rubin borrowed from G. K. Chesterton's "A Defence of Detective Stories", stating that the world of the thriller is in an urban world, opposed to bygone eras of knights, pirates and cowboys which assists with the concept that "one normally does not think of Westerns as thrillers, even though they often contain a great deal of action, adventures chases and suspense."[17] Similarly, the adventure film is predominantly set in an environment that is already exotic and primitive, and removed form the realm of mundane and modern-day urban existence.[18] In his book Crime Movies: An Illustrated History, Carlos Clarens discussed location being related to thrillers as well, stating that crime films as emphasized broad, socially symbolic characters such as the criminal, the Law, and society while thrillers were more concerned with violence or disturbances within a private sphere.[19]

Ruben declared that thrillers attached itself to other genres such as the spy film, horror film and various sub-genres of crime films more so than Westerns, musicals, and war films.[20] Derry also suggested this, stating that the film was an "umbrella genre" that cuts across several more clearly defined genres.[13] Rubin went as far to suggest that there was possibly no such thing as a pure "thriller thriller" as it was easier to apply it as a quality as a spy thriller, detective thriller, horror thriller, and that there is possibly no such thing as a pure "thriller thriller".[20] Rubin further expanded on the problematic usage of the genre due to its wide usage in media, such as the American magazine TV Guide listing Basket Case (1982) as a thriller, while its sequel Basket Case 2 (1990) was a comedy and that films as diverse as the horror film Halloween (1978), the detective film The Big Sleep (1946), the Harold Lloyd comedy film Safety Last! (1923), the Hitchcock spy film North by Northwest (1959), the disaster film The Poseidon Adventure (1972), and the science fiction monster movie Alien (1979) can all be considered thrillers.[6]

History

Precursors

Pre-film

Due to the what Rubin describe as a "wide, imprecise scope", it is unwieldy to attempt a comprehensive history of individual genres, including the thriller, and suggests it better to view the style in terms of cycles.[21]

Prior to the development of films, the genre has its connections to broadly-based fiction of the 18th century.[22] Elements of the thriller are traced to the earliest gothic novel with Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1765) which led to Matthew Lewis's The Monk (1796) and Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1797). [22] Rubin noted that the extended vunerability of the enthralled protagonists and victims in the thriller anticipated the thriller genre, a statement echoed by Robert D. Hume's 1969 essay which asserts that the Gothic novel involved a reader in a new ay, with increased emphasis on suspense, sensation and emotion opposed to moral and intellectual focuses. [23] The gothics being considered thrillers is problematic as they are set in antiquated decaying worlds and fail the tradition of being considered "modern".[23] The second literay form that predated thrillers was the Victorian sensation novel, starting with Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White (1859-1860) which stripped the gothic genre of its mysticism and brought to a contemporary time closer to every day life.[24] These sensation novels often were published in serialized form, sometimes concluding their installments with cliffhangers called "climax and curtain".[25] The third of the proto-types to the thriller was early detective and mystery fiction, such as Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), which is widely considered the first detective story.[25] The detective story drew upon the previously mentioned forms, and is shown through stories such as the Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.[26]

The roots of the thriller also generally associated with the rise of the urban-industrial society in the 19th century which created new and expanded mass audience, along with new forms of entertainment. This included stage play melodrams such as Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) in which an escaped slave escapes over an ice-choked river and the rural-set melodrama Blue Jeans (1890) which features a heroine who unties the hero just before he is cut by and advancing buzz saw.[26] Other forms of entertainment arrived in the 19th century at fairgrounds and amusements parks with thrill-oriented rides and attractions such as Ferris wheels, Shoot the Chutes, which Rubin described as offering a "departure from humdrum reality that is merely a heightened version of that same humdrum reality.".[27]

Silent era

At these same fair grounds, is where the earliest venues for film exhibition swith peep-show arcades which film historian Tom Gunning described as "the cinema of attractions".[28] These films provided early novelty-oriented shorts that provided surprise, amazement, laughter, or sexual stimulation with no narrative. The sensation of motion in these early films was later input into a framework known as the "chase film" which came into prominence in 1903.These films were often produced in Britain and France and employed minimal narrative for an extended chase scene that led to one of the most commercially celebrated American films of the period with The Great Train Robbery (1903).[29] Elements of heist films are seen in the film, with its depictions of ingeniously planned robberies, as well as the thriller's central emphasis on accelerated motion.[29] [30] Chase films were limited in scope, but their emphasis on the chase sequence would extended into film in the future such as On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Vanishing Point (1971), and Speed (1994).[31]

The period between 1907 and 1913 solidified the film industry's domination of narrative filmmaking, predominantly with D.W. Griffith's films which Rubin described as refining for "enhancing suspense, psychological depth, and spatial orientation."[31] Griffith's applied techniques such as cross-cutting to enhance suspense in film such as The Girl and Her Trust (1912), which also applied psychological context for the actions.[32]

Film serials, featuring stories broken up into a number regularly scheduled episodes expanded on the suspense-educing devices of the earlier chase films.[33] Originally published in newspapers, as fictional story installments, the Chicago Tribune came upon the idea in 1913 to by running serialized stories in both newspapers and film versions.[34] This led to The Adventures of Kathlyn, a serial in 13 parts which was a grand success and led to the newspaper developing The Million Dollar Mystery which was even more successful.[35] Serials often ended with cliffhangers, an element that led to thrillers tendencies to break up into a series of self-enclosed set pieces.[36] Film serials were later produced in Europe, with French directors such as Louis Feuillade who previously worked making chase films to later making serials based on novels about master criminals, such as Fantômas (1913) and Les Vampires (1915). [37] Outside of France, the most significant venue for serials in Europe was Germany with Fritz Lang who wrote serials like The Mistress of the World (1919) and later directorial efforts like The Spiders (1919).[38] Lang would later make films similar to those of Feuillade with his films based on Dr. Mabuse which were sent in a contemporary time.[39] Lang's Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922) was described by Rubin as an important part of the development of the thriller with its "duplicitous, labyrinthine network of decadent nightspots and secret dens that are linked together by murky thorough fares, twisting back alleys and subterranean passages."[40] Lang's later film Spies (1928), had Lang make extensive use of crosscutting to not only enhance suspense and draw thematic parallels but also to develop what Rubin described as a "paranoid vision of a world where everything seems to together as an ever-widening web of conspiracy".[41] This type of editing was later applied to several film noirs, such as Robert Siodmak's The Killers (1946) and Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956), Oliver Stone's JFK (1991) and Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects.[42] During this silent era in Germany, German Expressionism was active from 1905 onward.[43] These films featured distorted sets and stylized gestures which had an influence on filmmaking all over the world, including the United States.[44] The style has been particularly relevant to the thriller, combining psychology and spectacle.[45]

1930s

The early 1930s saw the rise of two film genre movements: the gothic styled horror film and the gangster film.[46] Universal Pictures was the leader of the horror genre in the early 1930s with its expressionist-derived atmosphere that started with two big hits film: Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931).[47] Rubin noted that both films lacked the thriller's fundamental tension between the familiar and exotic or adventurous.[48] Also in the early 1930s, the gangster film arrived with early major films including Mervyn LeRoy's Little Caesar (1930), William A. Wellman's The Public Enemy (1932) and Howard Hawks Scarface (1932).[48] These films centered on the rise of and fall of the criminal with Rubin noting that suspense in these films was "relatively slight", with both genres leaving an imprint on subsequent forms of the thriller with mid-1930s G-Man films, the early detective films of the 1940s, and the gangster films of the 1950s.[49] The gangster film itself, entrusted the modern urban environment with larger-than-life overtones.[50]

 
Fritz Lang (on the left) in 1938.

Rubin described the mid-1930s as when the thriller entered its "classical period" with the emergence of key genres that were previously either non-existent or minor. These included the spy film, detective film, the film noir, the police film and the science fiction thriller.[51] The horror films of the early 1930s with their Europeanized settings and villains led to what Rubin described as a "growing uneasiness towards Europe" Such anxieties were directly registered with spy thriller films, that were previously marginalised but grew as the tensions of the 1930s and the outbreak of World War II.[51] The genre grew into popularity in Great Britain in the mid-1930s with the output of the countries leading filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock. Between 1934 and 1938, Hitchcock directed five spy thrillers: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), Secret Agent (1936), Sabotage (1936), and The Lady Vanishes (1938). Along with Lang's output of the period, Rubin stated that Hitchcock became a "top rank" filmmaker specialising in the classical film thrillers, opposed to his prior output, which only sporadically included films that could be considered thrillers.[52] Compared to Lang, Hitchcock approach to the spy thriller was described by Rubin as "less abstract, less epic" with "a greater emphasis on individual psychology and subjective points of view" while Lang's primary focus was on "the structure of the trap", Hitchcock's was on the "mental state of the entrapped."[52] The first major American spy thriller of the World War II era was Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939).[53] After relocating to the United States, Hitchcock continued his attachment to spy films with films like Foreign Correspondent (1940) and Saboteur (1942).[52] Despite having these films exist beyond the cityscapes of the thriller genre, they do not deploy the adventure nature of The Adventures of Kathlyn or The Spiders usually lacking in exaggerated methods of transport, such as parachute drops, safaris, submarines, or even high-speed chases.[53]

1940s

Like the spy film, another genre that grew popular due to the war-generated phenomena in the early to mid-1940s saw the rise of thrillers centered around various phases of crime films such as the rise in popularity of detective films.[54][55] These ranged from B-film detectives such as Michael Shayne, The Falcon, Boston Blackie, the Crime Doctor as well as modernize Sherlock Holmes stories having him battle Nazis.[54] These smaller budget films led to more major productions such as John Huston's The Maltese Falcon (1941) while Murder, My Sweet (1944) introduced the character Philip Marlowe to film. Marlowe would appear again in The Big Sleep (1946) while other films Ruben deemed as notable detective mysteries included Laura (1944).[55] These detective films drew upon thriller and thriller-related genres with their nocturnal atmosphere and style influenced by expressionism.[55] These detective films often overlapped with film noir, which arose in the mid-1940s and was coined by French critics in 1946.[56] The style was not acknowledge by American filmmakers, critics or audiences while these films were being developed until the 1970s.[57] Early films considered as harbingers of the movement include Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once (1937), the b-film Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) and I Wake Up Screaming (1941) and the first universally acknowledged major film noir with Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity.[58]

During the 1940s, due to filmmaker's participation in making war documentaries and the audience's growing familiarity with these films as being gritty and fact-based, and the influence of other foreign movements such as Italian neo-realism, Hollywood began developing crime films with pictures like The House on 92nd Street and Call Northside 777 (1947) and the most acclaimed of these films with The Naked City (1948) which re-created a police manhunt for a brutal killer. These films were shot in actual locations opposed to studio sets.[59] These films eventually began toning down their factuality to be applied to more noir styles, such as with Kiss of Death (1947), The Street with No Name (1948), and He Walked by Night (1949).[59] Rubin found that placing these films in actual locations increased the tension of the ordinary world opposed to the limited confines of the studio sets.[60]

Further spy films were made, including The House on 92nd Street which now encompassed anti-communist themes that was inaugurated with films like The Iron Curtain (1948).[61] These film heavily drew on 1930s gangster film conventions, with the American branch of the communist parties being depicted like a gangster organization. This cycle continued into the 1940s with I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951), The Red Menace (1949), and Samuel Fuller's Pickup on South Street (1953).[62]

1950s

Crime was the significant focus of thrillers in the 1950s.[63] The more realistic crime films of the 1940s and film noir merged into films about police detectives thrillers. Unlike the more clean-cut police officers of the 1940s realistic films, these films often had the police officer following darker paths. These included The Man Who Cheated Himself (1951), The Prowler (1951), Pushover (1954).[63] A smaller wave of similar police thrillers had the police detective having moral weakness, but excessiveness.[64] These included Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950), On Dangerous Ground (1952), The Big Heat (1953).[65] Rubin declared Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958) as another major film of this flawed-cop style. Rubin found that these late noirs collectively represent a peak of character development and moral complexity in the film thriller that was closer to the psychology films of Alfred Hitchcock than the action or mystery-oriented forms of the police thriller.[66] Syndicate gangster films of the era had similarities to the anti-communist spy films and alien-invasion science fiction films of the era with films like The Enforcer (1951) while The Phenix City Story (1955) and The Brothers Rico which contained borderline breakdowns of the criminal world and the lawful world.[67] The gangsters of these films do not resemble conventional criminals of the past, they dressed casually while bing non-confrontational with muted violence.[68]

The 1950s also saw the movement of the science fiction thriller, which previously was a relatively minor genre.[69] The most prevalent was a hybrid of science fiction and horror in films like Them! (1954) and Tarantula (1955) while the films more attuned to the thriller occasionally saw an alien invasion theme, such as in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) which Rubin described as being between "science-fiction mundaneness and film-noir moodiness".[70] The science fiction thrillers of the era are not set on far off planets or but featured in present-day locales such as in It Came from Outer Space and The Incredible Shrinking Man.[71]

The 1950s also launched what Rubin called "a run of Hitchcock masterpieces", following an uneven part of experimentation in the late 1940s.[72] Rubin noted as Hitchcock hitting his stride with Strangers on a Train (1951), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), and Psycho (1960).[73] During this period, Anglo-American critics of the era preferred Hitchcock's lighter-hearted British classics of the 1930s, these films were declared as "more ambitious and mature works" by Rubin, which became the focus of a major reevaluation of Hitchcock's artistic stature, which included with the first full-length books study of his work: Hitchcock (1957), by Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol as well as the first English-language assessment, with Robin Wood's Hitchcock's Films (1965).[74] The plots and themes of these films would be re-worked into later directors such as Jonathan Demme (Last Embrace (1979)), Brian de Palma (Dressed to Kill (1980), Body Double (1984), Obsession (1976)) and Curtis Hanson (The Bedroom Window (1987)).[75]

1960s

Around 1960, Rubin described that key thriller categories went through major overhauls. This led to closing what he described as "subversive debunking" that nearly closed the doors on genres like the detective film, re-contextualizing genres like the neo-noir, and enhancing the popularity of some genres such as the spy film briefly and other genres like the police film for longer periods.[76]

The expansion of foreign-film exhibition in the United States of highly regarded thrillers was an influence on the American thriller film.[76] Among the earliest of these was Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear (1953) and Les Diaboliques (1955) and Jules Dassin's Rififi (1955) which influenced the 1960s thrillers with their sordid atmosphere.[77] Another cross-fertilization between American and European thrillers was the French New Wave, a movement which arose in the late 1950s. The style of these films were generally more self-conscious and intrusive than that of Hollywood films.[78] When these films had thriller aspects, these aspects of their story had a throwaway quality.[79] The influence of the French New Wave was seen on American thrillers such as Mickey One (1965), Point Blank (1967) and Bonnie and Clyde (1967) as well as later films (Sisters (1972), Blue Velvet (1986), Reservoir Dogs (1992)).[80]

The spy film had been what Rubin described as "stagnating" for several years due to the limitations of post-war anti-communist films. The genre was dramatically revitalized by the surprised hit Dr. No (1962), which led to increasingly expensive and lucrative sequels as well as spearheading a 1960s spy craze in cinema and mass media.[80] Dr. No was conceived as a series of action set pieces (called "bumps" by the series co-producer Albert R. Broccoli) which mixed the film's action and violence with generous doses of humor and Bond's post-bloodshed quips and sexual banter.[81] The Bond films generally distanced themselves with apolitical villains, that toned down the cold war elements of the original novels and spy films of the past, locating their films in Jamaica, Istanbul and Miami over Cuba, Berlin or Israel.[82] Rubin found that the Bond films important to the development of the thriller, but their own thriller dimensions was limited due to the Bond stories gravitating towards adventures, suspense sequences being moderate, and tensions kept simple compared to the films of Hitchcock or Lang.[83] Following the success of the Bond films, the character became the standard which all other spy films of the era were defined by within their similarities or dissimilarities.[84] These included having the spy being suave hero, colorful locations, attractive women and flamboyant decors. Many pre-1970s spy films were predominantly comedies with spy film elements, such as Our Man Flint (1966) and The Silencers (1966) and their sequels.[85] Another style of spy films attempted to differentiate themselves from the Bond films, while still diffentriating themselves from the patriotic and Anti-Nazi and anti-communist spy films of the past. These films deglamorized the nature of the Bond films while still remaining thrillers, such as The Ipcress File (1965), Funeral in Berlin (1966), The Defector (1966) and The Quiller Memorandum (1966).[86] These films featured spies who seemed less invincible than James Bond and other super spies, and often featured a more paranoid edge to their plots.[87]

Police thrillers returned to popularity around the period of law-and-order issues between 1968 and 1972 presidential campaigns through a general swing towards the right in the United States due to the Vietnam War. The police-centered were much less critical in their treatment of their justice obsessed lawmen and were showcased fighting to protect society where official institutions have failed them.[88] The police thriller returned in 1967 with the multiple-Oscar winning film In the Heat of the Night (1967), which was more about social issues than being a straight thriller, the films' use of racial epithets and strong-arm methods paved the way for films featuring characters like Dirty Harry and Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle for the upcoming police cycle.[88] Early films in the cycle included Madigan (1968), The Detective (1968), Coogan's Bluff (1968) and Bullitt (1968), the latter being more successful financially than any the previously mentioned thrillers.[89] Like Bond, Bullitt featured much of the mystique as the James Bond series, with his stylish lifestyle and being an elite specialist working with a larger organization and is granted considerable autonomy on the course of his assignments. Bullitt's producer Philip D'Antoni featured even more elaborate variations in his later productions such as The French Connection (1971) and The Seven-Ups (1973) as car chases became staple to modern police thrillers. These police thrillers also featured a harsher more conflict-riddled world closer to those of the anti-Bond spy films.[90] These films were alos harsher and more violent, mostly due to the demise of the Hays Code.[91] The influence of the police thriller was long lasting, leading into the popular Die Hard and Lethal Weapon film series and attaching itself to other genres such as science fiction (Mad Max, Blade Runner, RoboCop), and comedy (48 Hrs. and Beverly Hills Cop).[92]

1970s

Offshoots of the police thriller is the vigilante film, in which an avenger in an urban setting throws off the restraints of the super cop of the police thrillers to operate as a loner without a badge or uniform. The main characters usually revolve around personal revenge and desire to cleanse society of its evil doers. Examples include the Death Wish film series, Taxi Driver (1976) and Ms. 45 (1981).[92] A cycle of action films featuring black leads that came from the police thriller, vigilante films, and blaxploitation films arrived with the 1970s.[92] The films predominantly feature loose-cannon private eyes such as in Shaft (1971), Slaughter (1972) and Coffy (1973) or hustlers such as in Super Fly (1972) and The Mack (1973).[93] The films were often derivations of earlier films such as Cool Breeze (1972), a remake of The Asphalt Jungle, Hit Man (1972) a remake of Get Carter (1971), and Black Mama, White Mama (1973) a remake of The Defiant Ones (1958). The cycle generally slowed down by the mid 1970s.[94]

During the 1970s, contemporary situations such as the Watergate scandal and disillusionment about the Vietnam War led to conspiracy thrillers.[95] A cycle of these films included Executive Action (1973) about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, The Parallax View (1974) about a sinister corporation linked to a series of political murders, and others like The Conversation (1974) and Winter Kills (1979).[96] Unlike other films of the past, the paranoia of these films often focused on American institutions opposed to gangsterism or communists.[96]

A thriller-related movement in the 1970s was the disaster film, which came with the great financial success of Airport (1970), about an airplane crippled by a bomb that struggles to land in a snowstorm.[96] Similar films about a group of survivors escape several locations, such as The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Towering Inferno (1974) and Earthquake (1974) about a group of troubled people in Los Angeles.[96] The films often featured all-star casts and often had the disaster happening early or mid-way into the story rather than at the climax with the narrative focusing on the group of survivors.[97] The genre ended following overt sequels, television films and parodies.[96] The genre had a brief revival in the late 1990s through the science-fiction and disaster hybrid Independence Day (1996), which was followed by Dante's Peak (1997), Volcano (1997) and Titanic (1997).[98]

1990s–present

In the early 1990s, thrillers had recurring elements of obsession and trapped protagonists who must find a way to escape the clutches of the villain—these devices influenced a number of thrillers in the following years. Rob Reiner's Misery (1990), based on a book by Stephen King, featured Kathy Bates as an unbalanced fan who terrorizes an incapacitated author (James Caan) who is in her care. Other films include Curtis Hanson's The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) and Unlawful Entry (1992), starring Ray Liotta.[99]

Detectives/FBI agents hunting down a serial killer was another popular motif in the 1990s. A famous example is Jonathan Demme's Best Picture–winning crime thriller The Silence of the Lambs (1991)—in which young FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) engages in a psychological conflict with a cannibalistic psychiatrist named Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) while tracking down serial killer Buffalo Bill—and David Fincher's crime thriller Seven (1995), about the search for a serial killer who re-enacts the seven deadly sins.

Another notable example is Martin Scorsese's neo-noir psychological thriller Shutter Island (2010), in which a U.S. Marshal must investigate a psychiatric facility after one of the patients inexplicably disappears.

In recent years, thrillers have often overlapped with the horror genre, having more gore/sadistic violence, brutality, terror and frightening scenes. The recent films in which this has occurred include Disturbia (2007), Eden Lake (2008), The Last House on the Left (2009), P2 (2007), Captivity (2007), Vacancy (2007), and A Quiet Place (2018). Action scenes have also gotten more elaborate in the thriller genre. Films such as Unknown (2011), Hostage (2005), and Cellular (2004) have crossed over into the action genre.

Sub-genres

See also: Lists of thriller films

The thriller film genre includes the following sub-genres:[100]

Action thriller

Action thriller is a blend of both action and thriller film in which the protagonist confronts dangerous adversaries, obstacles, or situations which he/she must conquer, normally in an action setting. Action thrillers usually feature a race against the clock, weapons and explosions, frequent violence, and a clear antagonist.[101] Examples include, Phantom Raiders, Nick Carter Master Detective, Dirty Harry, Taken,[102] The Fugitive,[103] Snakes on a Plane, Speed, The Dark Knight, The Hurt Locker,[104] The Terminator, Battle Royale, the Die Hard series, and the Bourne series.[105]

Comedy thriller

Comedy thriller is a genre that combines elements of humor with suspense. Such films include Silver Streak, Dr. Strangelove, Charade, Hera Pheri, Malamaal Weekly, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, In Bruges, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Grosse Point Blank, The Thin Man, The Big Fix, Pocket Listing, The Lady Vanishes, and Game Night.

Conspiracy thriller

Conspiracy thriller a genre in which the hero/heroine confronts a large, powerful group of enemies whose true extent only she/he recognizes. The Chancellor Manuscript and The Aquitaine Progression by Robert Ludlum fall into this category, as do films such as Awake, Snake Eyes, The Da Vinci Code, Edge of Darkness,[106] Absolute Power, Marathon Man, In the Line of Fire, Capricorn One, and JFK.[107]

Crime thriller

Crime thriller as an genre is a hybrid type of both crime films and thrillers, which offers a suspenseful account of a successful or failed crime or crimes. Such films often focus on the criminal(s) rather than a policeman[citation needed]. Central topics include serial killers/murders, robberies, chases, shootouts, heists, and double-crosses. Some examples of crime thrillers involving murderers are Seven,[108] No Country for Old Men, The French Connection, The Silence Of The Lambs, Memento, To Live and Die in L.A., Collateral, and Copycat.[109] Examples of crime thrillers involving heists or robberies are The Asphalt Jungle,[110] The Score,[111] Rififi, Entrapment,[112] Heat, and The Killing.

Erotic thriller

Erotic thriller is a thriller film that has an emphasis on eroticism and where a sexual relationship plays an important role in the plot. It has become popular since the 1980s and the rise of VCR market penetration. The genre includes such films as Body Heat, Sea of Love, Basic Instinct,[113] Chloe, Disclosure, Dressed to Kill, Eyes Wide Shut, In the Cut, Lust, Caution, and Single White Female.

Giallo

Giallo is an Italian thriller film that contains elements of mystery, crime fiction, slasher, psychological thriller, and psychological horror. It deals with an unknown killer murdering people, with the protagonist having to find out who the killer is. The genre was popular during the late 1960s-late 1970s and is still being produced today, albeit less commonly. Examples include The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Blood and Black Lace, Deep Red, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, Don't Torture a Duckling, Tenebrae, Opera , and Sleepless.

Horror thriller

A subgenre involving horror.[114]

Legal thriller

Legal thriller is a suspense film in which the major characters are lawyers and their employees. The system of justice itself is always a major part of these works, at times almost functioning as one of the characters. Examples include The Pelican Brief, Presumed Innocent, A Time to Kill, The Client, The Lincoln Lawyer, The Firm.

Political thriller

Political thriller is a type of film in which the protagonist must ensure the stability of the government. The success of Seven Days in May (1962) by Fletcher Knebel, The Day of the Jackal (1971) by Frederick Forsyth, and The Manchurian Candidate (1959) by Richard Condon established this subgenre. Other examples include Topaz, Notorious, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Interpreter,[115] Proof of Life,[116] State of Play, and The Ghost Writer.

Psychological thriller

Psychological thriller film is a psychological type of film (until the often violent resolution), the conflict between the main characters is mental and emotional rather than physical. Characters, either by accident or their own curiousness, are dragged into a dangerous conflict or situation that they are not prepared to resolve. To overcome their brutish enemies characters are reliant not on physical strength but on their mental resources. This subgenre usually has elements of drama, as there is an in-depth development of realistic characters who must deal with emotional struggles.[117] The Alfred Hitchcock films Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window, and Strangers on a Train, as well as David Lynch's bizarre and influential Blue Velvet, are notable examples of the type, as are The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Machinist,[118] Shutter Island, Mirrors, Insomnia, Identity, Gone Girl, Red Eye,[119] Phone Booth, Fatal Attraction, The River Wild,[120] Panic Room,[121] Misery, Cape Fear, 10 Cloverfield Lane, and Funny Games.[122]

Social thriller

Social thriller are a thriller that uses suspense to augment attention to abuses of power and instances of oppression in society. This new subgenre gained notoriety in 2017 with the release of Get Out.[123] Other examples include The Tall Man, Dirty Pretty Things, Parasite, and The Constant Gardner.

Spy film

Spy film is a genre in which the protagonist is generally a government agent who must take violent action against agents of a rival government or (in recent years) terrorists. The subgenre often deals with the subject of espionage in a realistic way (as in the adaptations of John Le Carré's novels). It is a significant aspect of British cinema,[124] with leading British directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Carol Reed making notable contributions, and many films set in the British Secret Service.[125] Thrillers within this subgenre include Berlin Express, Spy Game, Hanna, Traitor, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Tourist, The Parallax View, The Tailor of Panama, Mission Impossible, Unknown, The Recruit, the James Bond franchise, The Debt, The Good Shepherd, and Three Days of the Condor.[126]

Supernatural thriller

Supernatural thriller films include an otherworldly element (such as fantasy or the supernatural) mixed with tension, suspense, or plot twists. Sometimes the protagonist or villain has some psychic ability and superpowers. Examples include Fallen,[127] Frequency, In Dreams,[128] Flatliners, Jacob's Ladder, The Skeleton Key,[129] What Lies Beneath, Unbreakable, The Sixth Sense,[130] The Gift,[131] The Dead Zone, and Horns.[132]

Techno-thriller

Techno-thriller is a suspenseful film in which the manipulation of sophisticated technology plays a prominent part. Examples include WarGames, The Thirteenth Floor, I, Robot, Source Code, Eagle Eye, Supernova, Hackers, The Net, Futureworld, eXistenZ, and Virtuosity.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Konigsberg 1997, p. 421
  2. ^ Konigsberg 1997, p. 404
  3. ^ a b c Dirks, Tim. "Thriller – Suspense Films". Filmsite.org. Retrieved July 25, 2010.
  4. ^ Williams, Eric R. (2017). The screenwriters taxonomy : a roadmap to collaborative storytelling. New York, NY: Routledge Studies in Media Theory and Practice. p. 21. ISBN 978-1-315-10864-3. OCLC 993983488.
  5. ^ "AFI's 100 YEARS...100 THRILLS". American Film Institute. 2001. from the original on January 1, 2017.
  6. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 3-4.
  7. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 13.
  8. ^ Derry 1988, p. 7.
  9. ^ a b c Rubin 1999, p. 5.
  10. ^ Derry 1988, p. 8.
  11. ^ Castrillo & Echart 2015, p. 110.
  12. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 9.
  13. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 10.
  14. ^ a b c Rubin 1999, p. 11.
  15. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 12.
  16. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 12-13.
  17. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 14-15.
  18. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 16.
  19. ^ Mayer 2012, p. 2.
  20. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 4.
  21. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 39.
  22. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 40.
  23. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 41.
  24. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 41-42.
  25. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 42.
  26. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 43.
  27. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 44.
  28. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 44-45.
  29. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 45.
  30. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 46.
  31. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 47.
  32. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 47-48.
  33. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 50.
  34. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 51.
  35. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 52.
  36. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 53.
  37. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 54.
  38. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 57.
  39. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 58.
  40. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 59.
  41. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 60.
  42. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 62.
  43. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 64.
  44. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 64-65.
  45. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 65.
  46. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 70.
  47. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 71.
  48. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 72.
  49. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 73.
  50. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 73-74.
  51. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 79.
  52. ^ a b c Rubin 1999, p. 80.
  53. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 85.
  54. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 86-87.
  55. ^ a b c Rubin 1999, p. 88.
  56. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 89-90.
  57. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 90.
  58. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 91.
  59. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 97.
  60. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 98.
  61. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 100-101.
  62. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 101.
  63. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 102.
  64. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 102-103.
  65. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 103-104.
  66. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 105.
  67. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 107.
  68. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 108.
  69. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 109.
  70. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 110-111.
  71. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 111-112.
  72. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 113.
  73. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 113-114.
  74. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 116-117.
  75. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 117.
  76. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 119.
  77. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 120-121.
  78. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 124.
  79. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 125.
  80. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 127.
  81. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 128.
  82. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 130.
  83. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 130-131.
  84. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 132.
  85. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 133.
  86. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 133-134.
  87. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 135-136.
  88. ^ a b Rubin 1999, p. 137.
  89. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 137-138.
  90. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 138.
  91. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 139-140.
  92. ^ a b c Rubin 1999, p. 144.
  93. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 145.
  94. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 146.
  95. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 148-149.
  96. ^ a b c d e Rubin 1999, p. 149.
  97. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 149-150.
  98. ^ Rubin 1999, p. 150.
  99. ^ "Thriller and Suspense Films". Filmsite.org. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  100. ^ "Thriller/Suspense Subgenre Definitions". Cuebon.com. Retrieved June 24, 2010.
  101. ^ "Action Thriller". AllRovi. Retrieved November 6, 2015.
  102. ^ "Taken – Cast, Reviews, Summary, and Awards – AllRovi". Allmovie.com. Retrieved November 6, 2015.
  103. ^ The Fugitive (1993) AllMovie
  104. ^ "The Hurt Locker – Cast, Reviews, Summary, and Awards – AllRovi". Allmovie.com. Retrieved November 6, 2015.
  105. ^ "Hollywood readying new wave action thrillers". ew.com. Retrieved November 11, 2015.
  106. ^ "Edge of Darkness – Cast, Reviews, Summary, and Awards – AllRovi". Allmovie.com. January 29, 2010. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  107. ^ "JFK – Cast, Reviews, Summary, and Awards – AllRovi". Allmovie.com. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  108. ^ "Seven – Cast, Reviews, Summary, and Awards – AllRovi". Allmovie.com. October 24, 2011. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  109. ^ "Copycat – Cast, Reviews, Summary, and Awards – AllRovi". Allmovie.com. October 24, 2011. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  110. ^ "The Asphalt Jungle – Cast, Reviews, Summary, and Awards – AllRovi". Allmovie.com. June 8, 1950. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  111. ^ "The Score – Cast, Reviews, Summary, and Awards – AllRovi". Allmovie.com. July 13, 2001. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  112. ^ "Entrapment – Cast, Reviews, Summary, and Awards – AllRovi". Allmovie.com. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  113. ^ "Basic Instinct – Cast, Reviews, Summary, and Awards – AllRovi". Allmovie.com. March 20, 1992. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  114. ^ Benshoff, Harry M., ed. (2014). A Companion to the Horror Film. Wiley. p. 172. ISBN 9781118883495.
  115. ^ "The Interpreter – Cast, Reviews, Summary, and Awards – AllRovi". Allmovie.com. April 22, 2005. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  116. ^ "Proof of Life – Cast, Reviews, Summary, and Awards – AllRovi". Allmovie.com. December 8, 2000. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  117. ^ . AllRovi. October 24, 2011. Archived from the original on November 2, 2011. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  118. ^ Oksenhorn, Stewart (December 7, 2004). . The Aspen Times. Archived from the original on September 18, 2016. Retrieved September 10, 2016.
  119. ^ . AllRovi. August 19, 2005. Archived from the original on December 25, 2011. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  120. ^ . AllRovi. October 24, 2011. Archived from the original on July 28, 2011. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  121. ^ . AllRovi. March 29, 2002. Archived from the original on January 20, 2012. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  122. ^ "Funny Games – Cast, Reviews, Summary, and Awards – AllRovi". Allmovie.com. March 14, 2008. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  123. ^ Ebiri, Bilge (February 14, 2017). "Get Out's Jordan Peele Brings the 'Social Thriller' to BAM | Village Voice". Village Voice. Retrieved August 16, 2017.
  124. ^ "The Spying Game: British Cinema and the Secret State", 2009 Cambridge Film Festival, pp.54-57 of the festival brochure. July 20, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  125. ^ Geoffrey Macnab, "Spy movies – The guys who came in from the cold", The Independent, October 2, 2009.
  126. ^ Filmsite.org
  127. ^ "Fallen – Cast, Reviews, Summary, and Awards – AllRovi". Allmovie.com. October 24, 2011. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  128. ^ "In Dreams – Cast, Reviews, Summary, and Awards – AllRovi". Allmovie.com. January 15, 1999. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  129. ^ "The Skeleton Key – Cast, Reviews, Summary, and Awards – AllRovi". Allmovie.com. August 12, 2005. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  130. ^ Shoard, Catherine (July 26, 2010). "Spoiler alert: The Sixth Sense voted film with best twist". The Guardian. Retrieved September 10, 2016.
  131. ^ Billy Bob Thornton. "The Gift – Cast, Reviews, Summary, and Awards – AllRovi". Allmovie.com. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  132. ^ "Daniel Radcliffe to Grow 'Horns' for Supernatural Thriller". Screen Rant. March 9, 2014. Retrieved October 11, 2014.

References

  • Konigsberg, Ira (1997). The Complete Film Dictionary (Second ed.). Penguin Group. ISBN 978-0-670-10009-5.

Further reading

  • Castrillo, Pablo; Echart, Pablo (2015). "Towards a narrative definition of the American political thriller film". Communication & Society. 28 (4): 109–121. doi:10.15581/003.28.35944. hdl:10171/41822. ISSN 2386-7876.
  • Derry, Charles (1988). The Suspense Thriller: Films in the Shadow of Alfred Hitchcock. McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-7864-1208-9.
  • Frank, Alan (1997). Frank's 500: The Thriller Film Guide. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-7134-2728-8.
  • Hanich, Julian (2010). Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers: The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear. Routledge Advances in Film Studies. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-87139-6.
  • Hicks, Neil D. (2002). Writing the Thriller Film: The Terror Within. Michael Wiese Productions. ISBN 978-0-941188-46-3.
  • Indick, William (2006). Psycho Thrillers: Cinematic Explorations of the Mysteries of the Mind. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-2371-2.
  • Mayer, Geoff (2012). Historical Dictionary of Crime Films. The Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-6769-7.
  • Mesce, Bill (2007). Overkill: The Rise And Fall of Thriller Cinema. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-2751-2.
  • Rubin, Martin (1999). Thrillers. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-58183-4.

April 26, 2023
thriller, film, suspense, thriller, redirects, here, general, category, suspense, thriller, thriller, genre, also, known, suspense, film, suspense, thriller, broad, film, genre, that, evokes, excitement, suspense, audience, suspense, element, found, most, film. Suspense thriller redirects here For the general category suspense thriller see Thriller genre Thriller film also known as suspense film or suspense thriller is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience 1 The suspense element found in most films plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre Tension is created by delaying what the audience sees as inevitable and is built through situations that are menacing or where escape seems impossible 2 A common theme in thrillers involves innocent victims dealing with deranged adversaries as seen in Hitchcock s film Rebecca 1940 where Mrs Danvers tries to persuade Mrs De Winter to leap to her death The cover up of important information from the viewer and fight and chase scenes are common methods Life is typically threatened in a thriller film such as when the protagonist does not realize that they are entering a dangerous situation Thriller films characters conflict with each other or with an outside force which can sometimes be abstract The protagonist is usually set against a problem such as an escape a mission or a mystery 3 Screenwriter and scholar Eric R Williams identifies thriller films as one of eleven super genres in his screenwriters taxonomy claiming that all feature length narrative films can be classified by these super genres undue weight discuss The other ten super genres are action crime fantasy horror romance science fiction slice of life sports war and western 4 Thriller films are typically hybridized with other super genres hybrids commonly including action thrillers fantasy and science fiction thrillers Thriller films also share a close relationship with horror films both eliciting tension In plots about crime thriller films focus less on the criminal or the detective and more on generating suspense Common themes include terrorism political conspiracy pursuit and romantic triangles leading to murder 3 In 2001 the American Film Institute AFI made its selection of the top 100 greatest American heart pounding and adrenaline inducing films of all time The 400 nominated films had to be American made films whose thrills have enlivened and enriched America s film heritage AFI also asked jurors to consider the total adrenaline inducing impact of a film s artistry and craft 5 3 Contents 1 Characteristics 2 History 2 1 Precursors 2 1 1 Pre film 2 1 2 Silent era 2 2 1930s 2 3 1940s 2 4 1950s 2 5 1960s 2 6 1970s 2 7 1990s present 3 Sub genres 3 1 Action thriller 3 2 Comedy thriller 3 3 Conspiracy thriller 3 4 Crime thriller 3 5 Erotic thriller 3 6 Giallo 3 7 Horror thriller 3 8 Legal thriller 3 9 Political thriller 3 10 Psychological thriller 3 11 Social thriller 3 12 Spy film 3 13 Supernatural thriller 3 14 Techno thriller 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 Further readingCharacteristicsIn his book on the genre Martin Rubin stated that the label Thriller was highly problematic declaring that the very breadth and vagueness of the thriller category understandably discourage efforts to define it precisely 6 7 This was echoed by Charles Derry in his book The Suspense Thriller found that the terms suspense thriller thriller and suspense film used continuously in popular press academic writings and the film industry with no clear idea of what the definition is 8 Unlike other genres such as the Western which had recognizable iconography cowboys saloons southwestern landscapes the thriller lacks such unique iconography 9 Rubin went on to state that thrillers involve an excess of certain qualities beyond the narratives they tend emphasize action suspense and atmosphere and emphasize feelings of suspense fright mystery exhilaration excitement speed movement over more sensitive cerebral or emotionally heavy feelings 9 Rubin described thrillers as being both quantitative and qualitative as virtually all narrative films could be considered thrilling to some degree while they could contain suspense to some degree but at a certain hazy point the films become thrilling enough to be considered part of the genre 9 For Alfred Hitchcock a director very associated with the genre he proclaimed that the whodunnit generated the kind of curiosity that is void of emotion and emotion is essential ingredient of suspense and thus for Hitchcock mystery is seldom suspenseful 10 In their discussions on the political thriller Pablo Castrillo and Pablo Echart stated in 2015 that the concept of a thriller as an overarching broad category is traditionally unclear due to the varied definitions between authors with its boundaries often blurred overlapped and hybridized with other genres 11 In his book The Suspense Thriller 1988 the genre studies specialist Charles Derry found the suspense thriller to be crime films that lacked a traditional detective figure and featured non professional criminals or innocent victims as protagonists and excluded films that are often labeled as thrillers such as hard boiled detective stories horror films heist films and spy films Derry found the non professional or victim being placed in unfamiliar situations enhanced their vulnerability and thus increased greater suspense 12 Derry specifically noted the innocent on the run theme a coherent in the genre presenting them in films such as The 39 Steps 1935 North by Northwest 1959 and conspiracy thriller films like The Parallax View 1974 and the comedy tinged Silver Streak 1976 13 Alternatively British communication professor Jerry Palmer in his book Thrillers defined the genre by literary roots ideology and sociological backgrounds and that thrillers could be reduced to just two components a hero and a conspiracy 14 Palmer noted the hero in a thriller must be professional and competitive and not an amateur or an average citizen and suggested and declared characters such as spy James Bond or private eye Mike Hammer to be quintessential thriller heroes 14 Palmer also noted that audiences must approve of the hero s actions and adopt their moral perspective 14 Palmer included styles such as detective films as part of the genre 15 Rubin argued against Palmer s definition noting that it would include melodramas and courtroom dramas such as Meet John Doe 1941 into the genre and eliminate such films as Purple Noon 1960 and Psycho 1960 from the genre 16 Rubin borrowed from G K Chesterton s A Defence of Detective Stories stating that the world of the thriller is in an urban world opposed to bygone eras of knights pirates and cowboys which assists with the concept that one normally does not think of Westerns as thrillers even though they often contain a great deal of action adventures chases and suspense 17 Similarly the adventure film is predominantly set in an environment that is already exotic and primitive and removed form the realm of mundane and modern day urban existence 18 In his book Crime Movies An Illustrated History Carlos Clarens discussed location being related to thrillers as well stating that crime films as emphasized broad socially symbolic characters such as the criminal the Law and society while thrillers were more concerned with violence or disturbances within a private sphere 19 Ruben declared that thrillers attached itself to other genres such as the spy film horror film and various sub genres of crime films more so than Westerns musicals and war films 20 Derry also suggested this stating that the film was an umbrella genre that cuts across several more clearly defined genres 13 Rubin went as far to suggest that there was possibly no such thing as a pure thriller thriller as it was easier to apply it as a quality as a spy thriller detective thriller horror thriller and that there is possibly no such thing as a pure thriller thriller 20 Rubin further expanded on the problematic usage of the genre due to its wide usage in media such as the American magazine TV Guide listing Basket Case 1982 as a thriller while its sequel Basket Case 2 1990 was a comedy and that films as diverse as the horror film Halloween 1978 the detective film The Big Sleep 1946 the Harold Lloyd comedy film Safety Last 1923 the Hitchcock spy film North by Northwest 1959 the disaster film The Poseidon Adventure 1972 and the science fiction monster movie Alien 1979 can all be considered thrillers 6 HistoryPrecursors Pre film Due to the what Rubin describe as a wide imprecise scope it is unwieldy to attempt a comprehensive history of individual genres including the thriller and suggests it better to view the style in terms of cycles 21 Prior to the development of films the genre has its connections to broadly based fiction of the 18th century 22 Elements of the thriller are traced to the earliest gothic novel with Horace Walpole s The Castle of Otranto 1765 which led to Matthew Lewis s The Monk 1796 and Ann Radcliffe s The Mysteries of Udolpho 1794 and The Italian 1797 22 Rubin noted that the extended vunerability of the enthralled protagonists and victims in the thriller anticipated the thriller genre a statement echoed by Robert D Hume s 1969 essay which asserts that the Gothic novel involved a reader in a new ay with increased emphasis on suspense sensation and emotion opposed to moral and intellectual focuses 23 The gothics being considered thrillers is problematic as they are set in antiquated decaying worlds and fail the tradition of being considered modern 23 The second literay form that predated thrillers was the Victorian sensation novel starting with Wilkie Collins The Woman in White 1859 1860 which stripped the gothic genre of its mysticism and brought to a contemporary time closer to every day life 24 These sensation novels often were published in serialized form sometimes concluding their installments with cliffhangers called climax and curtain 25 The third of the proto types to the thriller was early detective and mystery fiction such as Edgar Allan Poe s The Murders in the Rue Morgue 1841 which is widely considered the first detective story 25 The detective story drew upon the previously mentioned forms and is shown through stories such as the Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles 26 The roots of the thriller also generally associated with the rise of the urban industrial society in the 19th century which created new and expanded mass audience along with new forms of entertainment This included stage play melodrams such as Uncle Tom s Cabin 1852 in which an escaped slave escapes over an ice choked river and the rural set melodrama Blue Jeans 1890 which features a heroine who unties the hero just before he is cut by and advancing buzz saw 26 Other forms of entertainment arrived in the 19th century at fairgrounds and amusements parks with thrill oriented rides and attractions such as Ferris wheels Shoot the Chutes which Rubin described as offering a departure from humdrum reality that is merely a heightened version of that same humdrum reality 27 Silent era At these same fair grounds is where the earliest venues for film exhibition swith peep show arcades which film historian Tom Gunning described as the cinema of attractions 28 These films provided early novelty oriented shorts that provided surprise amazement laughter or sexual stimulation with no narrative The sensation of motion in these early films was later input into a framework known as the chase film which came into prominence in 1903 These films were often produced in Britain and France and employed minimal narrative for an extended chase scene that led to one of the most commercially celebrated American films of the period with The Great Train Robbery 1903 29 Elements of heist films are seen in the film with its depictions of ingeniously planned robberies as well as the thriller s central emphasis on accelerated motion 29 30 Chase films were limited in scope but their emphasis on the chase sequence would extended into film in the future such as On Her Majesty s Secret Service 1969 Vanishing Point 1971 and Speed 1994 31 The period between 1907 and 1913 solidified the film industry s domination of narrative filmmaking predominantly with D W Griffith s films which Rubin described as refining for enhancing suspense psychological depth and spatial orientation 31 Griffith s applied techniques such as cross cutting to enhance suspense in film such as The Girl and Her Trust 1912 which also applied psychological context for the actions 32 Film serials featuring stories broken up into a number regularly scheduled episodes expanded on the suspense educing devices of the earlier chase films 33 Originally published in newspapers as fictional story installments the Chicago Tribune came upon the idea in 1913 to by running serialized stories in both newspapers and film versions 34 This led to The Adventures of Kathlyn a serial in 13 parts which was a grand success and led to the newspaper developing The Million Dollar Mystery which was even more successful 35 Serials often ended with cliffhangers an element that led to thrillers tendencies to break up into a series of self enclosed set pieces 36 Film serials were later produced in Europe with French directors such as Louis Feuillade who previously worked making chase films to later making serials based on novels about master criminals such as Fantomas 1913 and Les Vampires 1915 37 Outside of France the most significant venue for serials in Europe was Germany with Fritz Lang who wrote serials like The Mistress of the World 1919 and later directorial efforts like The Spiders 1919 38 Lang would later make films similar to those of Feuillade with his films based on Dr Mabuse which were sent in a contemporary time 39 Lang s Dr Mabuse the Gambler 1922 was described by Rubin as an important part of the development of the thriller with its duplicitous labyrinthine network of decadent nightspots and secret dens that are linked together by murky thorough fares twisting back alleys and subterranean passages 40 Lang s later film Spies 1928 had Lang make extensive use of crosscutting to not only enhance suspense and draw thematic parallels but also to develop what Rubin described as a paranoid vision of a world where everything seems to together as an ever widening web of conspiracy 41 This type of editing was later applied to several film noirs such as Robert Siodmak s The Killers 1946 and Stanley Kubrick s The Killing 1956 Oliver Stone s JFK 1991 and Bryan Singer s The Usual Suspects 42 During this silent era in Germany German Expressionism was active from 1905 onward 43 These films featured distorted sets and stylized gestures which had an influence on filmmaking all over the world including the United States 44 The style has been particularly relevant to the thriller combining psychology and spectacle 45 1930s The early 1930s saw the rise of two film genre movements the gothic styled horror film and the gangster film 46 Universal Pictures was the leader of the horror genre in the early 1930s with its expressionist derived atmosphere that started with two big hits film Dracula 1931 and Frankenstein 1931 47 Rubin noted that both films lacked the thriller s fundamental tension between the familiar and exotic or adventurous 48 Also in the early 1930s the gangster film arrived with early major films including Mervyn LeRoy s Little Caesar 1930 William A Wellman s The Public Enemy 1932 and Howard Hawks Scarface 1932 48 These films centered on the rise of and fall of the criminal with Rubin noting that suspense in these films was relatively slight with both genres leaving an imprint on subsequent forms of the thriller with mid 1930s G Man films the early detective films of the 1940s and the gangster films of the 1950s 49 The gangster film itself entrusted the modern urban environment with larger than life overtones 50 Fritz Lang on the left in 1938 Rubin described the mid 1930s as when the thriller entered its classical period with the emergence of key genres that were previously either non existent or minor These included the spy film detective film the film noir the police film and the science fiction thriller 51 The horror films of the early 1930s with their Europeanized settings and villains led to what Rubin described as a growing uneasiness towards Europe Such anxieties were directly registered with spy thriller films that were previously marginalised but grew as the tensions of the 1930s and the outbreak of World War II 51 The genre grew into popularity in Great Britain in the mid 1930s with the output of the countries leading filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock Between 1934 and 1938 Hitchcock directed five spy thrillers The Man Who Knew Too Much 1934 The 39 Steps 1935 Secret Agent 1936 Sabotage 1936 and The Lady Vanishes 1938 Along with Lang s output of the period Rubin stated that Hitchcock became a top rank filmmaker specialising in the classical film thrillers opposed to his prior output which only sporadically included films that could be considered thrillers 52 Compared to Lang Hitchcock approach to the spy thriller was described by Rubin as less abstract less epic with a greater emphasis on individual psychology and subjective points of view while Lang s primary focus was on the structure of the trap Hitchcock s was on the mental state of the entrapped 52 The first major American spy thriller of the World War II era was Confessions of a Nazi Spy 1939 53 After relocating to the United States Hitchcock continued his attachment to spy films with films like Foreign Correspondent 1940 and Saboteur 1942 52 Despite having these films exist beyond the cityscapes of the thriller genre they do not deploy the adventure nature of The Adventures of Kathlyn or The Spiders usually lacking in exaggerated methods of transport such as parachute drops safaris submarines or even high speed chases 53 1940s Like the spy film another genre that grew popular due to the war generated phenomena in the early to mid 1940s saw the rise of thrillers centered around various phases of crime films such as the rise in popularity of detective films 54 55 These ranged from B film detectives such as Michael Shayne The Falcon Boston Blackie the Crime Doctor as well as modernize Sherlock Holmes stories having him battle Nazis 54 These smaller budget films led to more major productions such as John Huston s The Maltese Falcon 1941 while Murder My Sweet 1944 introduced the character Philip Marlowe to film Marlowe would appear again in The Big Sleep 1946 while other films Ruben deemed as notable detective mysteries included Laura 1944 55 These detective films drew upon thriller and thriller related genres with their nocturnal atmosphere and style influenced by expressionism 55 These detective films often overlapped with film noir which arose in the mid 1940s and was coined by French critics in 1946 56 The style was not acknowledge by American filmmakers critics or audiences while these films were being developed until the 1970s 57 Early films considered as harbingers of the movement include Fritz Lang s You Only Live Once 1937 the b film Stranger on the Third Floor 1940 and I Wake Up Screaming 1941 and the first universally acknowledged major film noir with Billy Wilder s Double Indemnity 58 During the 1940s due to filmmaker s participation in making war documentaries and the audience s growing familiarity with these films as being gritty and fact based and the influence of other foreign movements such as Italian neo realism Hollywood began developing crime films with pictures like The House on 92nd Street and Call Northside 777 1947 and the most acclaimed of these films with The Naked City 1948 which re created a police manhunt for a brutal killer These films were shot in actual locations opposed to studio sets 59 These films eventually began toning down their factuality to be applied to more noir styles such as with Kiss of Death 1947 The Street with No Name 1948 and He Walked by Night 1949 59 Rubin found that placing these films in actual locations increased the tension of the ordinary world opposed to the limited confines of the studio sets 60 Further spy films were made including The House on 92nd Street which now encompassed anti communist themes that was inaugurated with films like The Iron Curtain 1948 61 These film heavily drew on 1930s gangster film conventions with the American branch of the communist parties being depicted like a gangster organization This cycle continued into the 1940s with I Was a Communist for the FBI 1951 The Red Menace 1949 and Samuel Fuller s Pickup on South Street 1953 62 1950s Crime was the significant focus of thrillers in the 1950s 63 The more realistic crime films of the 1940s and film noir merged into films about police detectives thrillers Unlike the more clean cut police officers of the 1940s realistic films these films often had the police officer following darker paths These included The Man Who Cheated Himself 1951 The Prowler 1951 Pushover 1954 63 A smaller wave of similar police thrillers had the police detective having moral weakness but excessiveness 64 These included Where the Sidewalk Ends 1950 On Dangerous Ground 1952 The Big Heat 1953 65 Rubin declared Orson Welles Touch of Evil 1958 as another major film of this flawed cop style Rubin found that these late noirs collectively represent a peak of character development and moral complexity in the film thriller that was closer to the psychology films of Alfred Hitchcock than the action or mystery oriented forms of the police thriller 66 Syndicate gangster films of the era had similarities to the anti communist spy films and alien invasion science fiction films of the era with films like The Enforcer 1951 while The Phenix City Story 1955 and The Brothers Rico which contained borderline breakdowns of the criminal world and the lawful world 67 The gangsters of these films do not resemble conventional criminals of the past they dressed casually while bing non confrontational with muted violence 68 The 1950s also saw the movement of the science fiction thriller which previously was a relatively minor genre 69 The most prevalent was a hybrid of science fiction and horror in films like Them 1954 and Tarantula 1955 while the films more attuned to the thriller occasionally saw an alien invasion theme such as in Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1956 which Rubin described as being between science fiction mundaneness and film noir moodiness 70 The science fiction thrillers of the era are not set on far off planets or but featured in present day locales such as in It Came from Outer Space and The Incredible Shrinking Man 71 The 1950s also launched what Rubin called a run of Hitchcock masterpieces following an uneven part of experimentation in the late 1940s 72 Rubin noted as Hitchcock hitting his stride with Strangers on a Train 1951 Rear Window 1954 Vertigo 1958 North by Northwest 1959 and Psycho 1960 73 During this period Anglo American critics of the era preferred Hitchcock s lighter hearted British classics of the 1930s these films were declared as more ambitious and mature works by Rubin which became the focus of a major reevaluation of Hitchcock s artistic stature which included with the first full length books study of his work Hitchcock 1957 by Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol as well as the first English language assessment with Robin Wood s Hitchcock s Films 1965 74 The plots and themes of these films would be re worked into later directors such as Jonathan Demme Last Embrace 1979 Brian de Palma Dressed to Kill 1980 Body Double 1984 Obsession 1976 and Curtis Hanson The Bedroom Window 1987 75 1960s Around 1960 Rubin described that key thriller categories went through major overhauls This led to closing what he described as subversive debunking that nearly closed the doors on genres like the detective film re contextualizing genres like the neo noir and enhancing the popularity of some genres such as the spy film briefly and other genres like the police film for longer periods 76 The expansion of foreign film exhibition in the United States of highly regarded thrillers was an influence on the American thriller film 76 Among the earliest of these was Henri Georges Clouzot s The Wages of Fear 1953 and Les Diaboliques 1955 and Jules Dassin s Rififi 1955 which influenced the 1960s thrillers with their sordid atmosphere 77 Another cross fertilization between American and European thrillers was the French New Wave a movement which arose in the late 1950s The style of these films were generally more self conscious and intrusive than that of Hollywood films 78 When these films had thriller aspects these aspects of their story had a throwaway quality 79 The influence of the French New Wave was seen on American thrillers such as Mickey One 1965 Point Blank 1967 and Bonnie and Clyde 1967 as well as later films Sisters 1972 Blue Velvet 1986 Reservoir Dogs 1992 80 The spy film had been what Rubin described as stagnating for several years due to the limitations of post war anti communist films The genre was dramatically revitalized by the surprised hit Dr No 1962 which led to increasingly expensive and lucrative sequels as well as spearheading a 1960s spy craze in cinema and mass media 80 Dr No was conceived as a series of action set pieces called bumps by the series co producer Albert R Broccoli which mixed the film s action and violence with generous doses of humor and Bond s post bloodshed quips and sexual banter 81 The Bond films generally distanced themselves with apolitical villains that toned down the cold war elements of the original novels and spy films of the past locating their films in Jamaica Istanbul and Miami over Cuba Berlin or Israel 82 Rubin found that the Bond films important to the development of the thriller but their own thriller dimensions was limited due to the Bond stories gravitating towards adventures suspense sequences being moderate and tensions kept simple compared to the films of Hitchcock or Lang 83 Following the success of the Bond films the character became the standard which all other spy films of the era were defined by within their similarities or dissimilarities 84 These included having the spy being suave hero colorful locations attractive women and flamboyant decors Many pre 1970s spy films were predominantly comedies with spy film elements such as Our Man Flint 1966 and The Silencers 1966 and their sequels 85 Another style of spy films attempted to differentiate themselves from the Bond films while still diffentriating themselves from the patriotic and Anti Nazi and anti communist spy films of the past These films deglamorized the nature of the Bond films while still remaining thrillers such as The Ipcress File 1965 Funeral in Berlin 1966 The Defector 1966 and The Quiller Memorandum 1966 86 These films featured spies who seemed less invincible than James Bond and other super spies and often featured a more paranoid edge to their plots 87 Police thrillers returned to popularity around the period of law and order issues between 1968 and 1972 presidential campaigns through a general swing towards the right in the United States due to the Vietnam War The police centered were much less critical in their treatment of their justice obsessed lawmen and were showcased fighting to protect society where official institutions have failed them 88 The police thriller returned in 1967 with the multiple Oscar winning film In the Heat of the Night 1967 which was more about social issues than being a straight thriller the films use of racial epithets and strong arm methods paved the way for films featuring characters like Dirty Harry and Jimmy Popeye Doyle for the upcoming police cycle 88 Early films in the cycle included Madigan 1968 The Detective 1968 Coogan s Bluff 1968 and Bullitt 1968 the latter being more successful financially than any the previously mentioned thrillers 89 Like Bond Bullitt featured much of the mystique as the James Bond series with his stylish lifestyle and being an elite specialist working with a larger organization and is granted considerable autonomy on the course of his assignments Bullitt s producer Philip D Antoni featured even more elaborate variations in his later productions such as The French Connection 1971 and The Seven Ups 1973 as car chases became staple to modern police thrillers These police thrillers also featured a harsher more conflict riddled world closer to those of the anti Bond spy films 90 These films were alos harsher and more violent mostly due to the demise of the Hays Code 91 The influence of the police thriller was long lasting leading into the popular Die Hard and Lethal Weapon film series and attaching itself to other genres such as science fiction Mad Max Blade Runner RoboCop and comedy 48 Hrs and Beverly Hills Cop 92 1970s Offshoots of the police thriller is the vigilante film in which an avenger in an urban setting throws off the restraints of the super cop of the police thrillers to operate as a loner without a badge or uniform The main characters usually revolve around personal revenge and desire to cleanse society of its evil doers Examples include the Death Wish film series Taxi Driver 1976 and Ms 45 1981 92 A cycle of action films featuring black leads that came from the police thriller vigilante films and blaxploitation films arrived with the 1970s 92 The films predominantly feature loose cannon private eyes such as in Shaft 1971 Slaughter 1972 and Coffy 1973 or hustlers such as in Super Fly 1972 and The Mack 1973 93 The films were often derivations of earlier films such as Cool Breeze 1972 a remake of The Asphalt Jungle Hit Man 1972 a remake of Get Carter 1971 and Black Mama White Mama 1973 a remake of The Defiant Ones 1958 The cycle generally slowed down by the mid 1970s 94 During the 1970s contemporary situations such as the Watergate scandal and disillusionment about the Vietnam War led to conspiracy thrillers 95 A cycle of these films included Executive Action 1973 about the assassination of President John F Kennedy The Parallax View 1974 about a sinister corporation linked to a series of political murders and others like The Conversation 1974 and Winter Kills 1979 96 Unlike other films of the past the paranoia of these films often focused on American institutions opposed to gangsterism or communists 96 A thriller related movement in the 1970s was the disaster film which came with the great financial success of Airport 1970 about an airplane crippled by a bomb that struggles to land in a snowstorm 96 Similar films about a group of survivors escape several locations such as The Poseidon Adventure 1972 The Towering Inferno 1974 and Earthquake 1974 about a group of troubled people in Los Angeles 96 The films often featured all star casts and often had the disaster happening early or mid way into the story rather than at the climax with the narrative focusing on the group of survivors 97 The genre ended following overt sequels television films and parodies 96 The genre had a brief revival in the late 1990s through the science fiction and disaster hybrid Independence Day 1996 which was followed by Dante s Peak 1997 Volcano 1997 and Titanic 1997 98 1990s present In the early 1990s thrillers had recurring elements of obsession and trapped protagonists who must find a way to escape the clutches of the villain these devices influenced a number of thrillers in the following years Rob Reiner s Misery 1990 based on a book by Stephen King featured Kathy Bates as an unbalanced fan who terrorizes an incapacitated author James Caan who is in her care Other films include Curtis Hanson s The Hand That Rocks the Cradle 1992 and Unlawful Entry 1992 starring Ray Liotta 99 Detectives FBI agents hunting down a serial killer was another popular motif in the 1990s A famous example is Jonathan Demme s Best Picture winning crime thriller The Silence of the Lambs 1991 in which young FBI agent Clarice Starling Jodie Foster engages in a psychological conflict with a cannibalistic psychiatrist named Hannibal Lecter Anthony Hopkins while tracking down serial killer Buffalo Bill and David Fincher s crime thriller Seven 1995 about the search for a serial killer who re enacts the seven deadly sins Another notable example is Martin Scorsese s neo noir psychological thriller Shutter Island 2010 in which a U S Marshal must investigate a psychiatric facility after one of the patients inexplicably disappears In recent years thrillers have often overlapped with the horror genre having more gore sadistic violence brutality terror and frightening scenes The recent films in which this has occurred include Disturbia 2007 Eden Lake 2008 The Last House on the Left 2009 P2 2007 Captivity 2007 Vacancy 2007 and A Quiet Place 2018 Action scenes have also gotten more elaborate in the thriller genre Films such as Unknown 2011 Hostage 2005 and Cellular 2004 have crossed over into the action genre Sub genresSee also Lists of thriller films The thriller film genre includes the following sub genres 100 Action thriller Action thriller is a blend of both action and thriller film in which the protagonist confronts dangerous adversaries obstacles or situations which he she must conquer normally in an action setting Action thrillers usually feature a race against the clock weapons and explosions frequent violence and a clear antagonist 101 Examples include Phantom Raiders Nick Carter Master Detective Dirty Harry Taken 102 The Fugitive 103 Snakes on a Plane Speed The Dark Knight The Hurt Locker 104 The Terminator Battle Royale the Die Hard series and the Bourne series 105 Comedy thriller Comedy thriller is a genre that combines elements of humor with suspense Such films include Silver Streak Dr Strangelove Charade Hera Pheri Malamaal Weekly Kiss Kiss Bang Bang In Bruges Mr and Mrs Smith Grosse Point Blank The Thin Man The Big Fix Pocket Listing The Lady Vanishes and Game Night Conspiracy thriller Conspiracy thriller a genre in which the hero heroine confronts a large powerful group of enemies whose true extent only she he recognizes The Chancellor Manuscript and The Aquitaine Progression by Robert Ludlum fall into this category as do films such as Awake Snake Eyes The Da Vinci Code Edge of Darkness 106 Absolute Power Marathon Man In the Line of Fire Capricorn One and JFK 107 Crime thriller Crime thriller as an genre is a hybrid type of both crime films and thrillers which offers a suspenseful account of a successful or failed crime or crimes Such films often focus on the criminal s rather than a policeman citation needed Central topics include serial killers murders robberies chases shootouts heists and double crosses Some examples of crime thrillers involving murderers are Seven 108 No Country for Old Men The French Connection The Silence Of The Lambs Memento To Live and Die in L A Collateral and Copycat 109 Examples of crime thrillers involving heists or robberies are The Asphalt Jungle 110 The Score 111 Rififi Entrapment 112 Heat and The Killing Erotic thriller Erotic thriller is a thriller film that has an emphasis on eroticism and where a sexual relationship plays an important role in the plot It has become popular since the 1980s and the rise of VCR market penetration The genre includes such films as Body Heat Sea of Love Basic Instinct 113 Chloe Disclosure Dressed to Kill Eyes Wide Shut In the Cut Lust Caution and Single White Female Giallo Giallo is an Italian thriller film that contains elements of mystery crime fiction slasher psychological thriller and psychological horror It deals with an unknown killer murdering people with the protagonist having to find out who the killer is The genre was popular during the late 1960s late 1970s and is still being produced today albeit less commonly Examples include The Girl Who Knew Too Much Blood and Black Lace Deep Red The Red Queen Kills Seven Times Don t Torture a Duckling Tenebrae Opera and Sleepless Horror thriller A subgenre involving horror 114 Legal thriller Legal thriller is a suspense film in which the major characters are lawyers and their employees The system of justice itself is always a major part of these works at times almost functioning as one of the characters Examples include The Pelican Brief Presumed Innocent A Time to Kill The Client The Lincoln Lawyer The Firm Political thriller Political thriller is a type of film in which the protagonist must ensure the stability of the government The success of Seven Days in May 1962 by Fletcher Knebel The Day of the Jackal 1971 by Frederick Forsyth and The Manchurian Candidate 1959 by Richard Condon established this subgenre Other examples include Topaz Notorious The Man Who Knew Too Much The Interpreter 115 Proof of Life 116 State of Play and The Ghost Writer Psychological thriller Psychological thriller film is a psychological type of film until the often violent resolution the conflict between the main characters is mental and emotional rather than physical Characters either by accident or their own curiousness are dragged into a dangerous conflict or situation that they are not prepared to resolve To overcome their brutish enemies characters are reliant not on physical strength but on their mental resources This subgenre usually has elements of drama as there is an in depth development of realistic characters who must deal with emotional struggles 117 The Alfred Hitchcock films Suspicion Shadow of a Doubt Rear Window and Strangers on a Train as well as David Lynch s bizarre and influential Blue Velvet are notable examples of the type as are The Talented Mr Ripley The Machinist 118 Shutter Island Mirrors Insomnia Identity Gone Girl Red Eye 119 Phone Booth Fatal Attraction The River Wild 120 Panic Room 121 Misery Cape Fear 10 Cloverfield Lane and Funny Games 122 Social thriller Social thriller are a thriller that uses suspense to augment attention to abuses of power and instances of oppression in society This new subgenre gained notoriety in 2017 with the release of Get Out 123 Other examples include The Tall Man Dirty Pretty Things Parasite and The Constant Gardner Spy film Spy film is a genre in which the protagonist is generally a government agent who must take violent action against agents of a rival government or in recent years terrorists The subgenre often deals with the subject of espionage in a realistic way as in the adaptations of John Le Carre s novels It is a significant aspect of British cinema 124 with leading British directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Carol Reed making notable contributions and many films set in the British Secret Service 125 Thrillers within this subgenre include Berlin Express Spy Game Hanna Traitor Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy The Tourist The Parallax View The Tailor of Panama Mission Impossible Unknown The Recruit the James Bond franchise The Debt The Good Shepherd and Three Days of the Condor 126 Supernatural thriller Supernatural thriller films include an otherworldly element such as fantasy or the supernatural mixed with tension suspense or plot twists Sometimes the protagonist or villain has some psychic ability and superpowers Examples include Fallen 127 Frequency In Dreams 128 Flatliners Jacob s Ladder The Skeleton Key 129 What Lies Beneath Unbreakable The Sixth Sense 130 The Gift 131 The Dead Zone and Horns 132 Techno thriller Techno thriller is a suspenseful film in which the manipulation of sophisticated technology plays a prominent part Examples include WarGames The Thirteenth Floor I Robot Source Code Eagle Eye Supernova Hackers The Net Futureworld eXistenZ and Virtuosity See alsoAFI s 100 Years 100 ThrillsNotes Konigsberg 1997 p 421 Konigsberg 1997 p 404 a b c Dirks Tim Thriller Suspense Films Filmsite org Retrieved July 25 2010 Williams Eric R 2017 The screenwriters taxonomy a roadmap to collaborative storytelling New York NY Routledge Studies in Media Theory and Practice p 21 ISBN 978 1 315 10864 3 OCLC 993983488 AFI s 100 YEARS 100 THRILLS American Film Institute 2001 Archived from the original on January 1 2017 a b Rubin 1999 p 3 4 Rubin 1999 p 13 Derry 1988 p 7 a b c Rubin 1999 p 5 Derry 1988 p 8 Castrillo amp Echart 2015 p 110 Rubin 1999 p 9 a b Rubin 1999 p 10 a b c Rubin 1999 p 11 Rubin 1999 p 12 Rubin 1999 p 12 13 Rubin 1999 p 14 15 Rubin 1999 p 16 Mayer 2012 p 2 a b Rubin 1999 p 4 Rubin 1999 p 39 a b Rubin 1999 p 40 a b Rubin 1999 p 41 Rubin 1999 p 41 42 a b Rubin 1999 p 42 a b Rubin 1999 p 43 Rubin 1999 p 44 Rubin 1999 p 44 45 a b Rubin 1999 p 45 Rubin 1999 p 46 a b Rubin 1999 p 47 Rubin 1999 p 47 48 Rubin 1999 p 50 Rubin 1999 p 51 Rubin 1999 p 52 Rubin 1999 p 53 Rubin 1999 p 54 Rubin 1999 p 57 Rubin 1999 p 58 Rubin 1999 p 59 Rubin 1999 p 60 Rubin 1999 p 62 Rubin 1999 p 64 Rubin 1999 p 64 65 Rubin 1999 p 65 Rubin 1999 p 70 Rubin 1999 p 71 a b Rubin 1999 p 72 Rubin 1999 p 73 Rubin 1999 p 73 74 a b Rubin 1999 p 79 a b c Rubin 1999 p 80 a b Rubin 1999 p 85 a b Rubin 1999 p 86 87 a b c Rubin 1999 p 88 Rubin 1999 p 89 90 Rubin 1999 p 90 Rubin 1999 p 91 a b Rubin 1999 p 97 Rubin 1999 p 98 Rubin 1999 p 100 101 Rubin 1999 p 101 a b Rubin 1999 p 102 Rubin 1999 p 102 103 Rubin 1999 p 103 104 Rubin 1999 p 105 Rubin 1999 p 107 Rubin 1999 p 108 Rubin 1999 p 109 Rubin 1999 p 110 111 Rubin 1999 p 111 112 Rubin 1999 p 113 Rubin 1999 p 113 114 Rubin 1999 p 116 117 Rubin 1999 p 117 a b Rubin 1999 p 119 Rubin 1999 p 120 121 Rubin 1999 p 124 Rubin 1999 p 125 a b Rubin 1999 p 127 Rubin 1999 p 128 Rubin 1999 p 130 Rubin 1999 p 130 131 Rubin 1999 p 132 Rubin 1999 p 133 Rubin 1999 p 133 134 Rubin 1999 p 135 136 a b Rubin 1999 p 137 Rubin 1999 p 137 138 Rubin 1999 p 138 Rubin 1999 p 139 140 a b c Rubin 1999 p 144 Rubin 1999 p 145 Rubin 1999 p 146 Rubin 1999 p 148 149 a b c d e Rubin 1999 p 149 Rubin 1999 p 149 150 Rubin 1999 p 150 Thriller and Suspense Films Filmsite org Retrieved November 13 2011 Thriller Suspense Subgenre Definitions Cuebon com Retrieved June 24 2010 Action Thriller AllRovi Retrieved November 6 2015 Taken Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi Allmovie com Retrieved November 6 2015 The Fugitive 1993 AllMovie The Hurt Locker Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi Allmovie com Retrieved November 6 2015 Hollywood readying new wave action thrillers ew com Retrieved November 11 2015 Edge of Darkness Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi Allmovie com January 29 2010 Retrieved November 13 2011 JFK Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi Allmovie com Retrieved November 13 2011 Seven Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi Allmovie com October 24 2011 Retrieved November 13 2011 Copycat Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi Allmovie com October 24 2011 Retrieved November 13 2011 The Asphalt Jungle Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi Allmovie com June 8 1950 Retrieved November 13 2011 The Score Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi Allmovie com July 13 2001 Retrieved November 13 2011 Entrapment Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi Allmovie com Retrieved November 13 2011 Basic Instinct Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi Allmovie com March 20 1992 Retrieved November 13 2011 Benshoff Harry M ed 2014 A Companion to the Horror Film Wiley p 172 ISBN 9781118883495 The Interpreter Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi Allmovie com April 22 2005 Retrieved November 13 2011 Proof of Life Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi Allmovie com December 8 2000 Retrieved November 13 2011 Psychological Thriller Movies and Films Find Psychological Thriller Movie Recommendations Casts Reviews and Summaries AllRovi October 24 2011 Archived from the original on November 2 2011 Retrieved November 13 2011 Oksenhorn Stewart December 7 2004 The Machinist a haunting psychological thriller The Aspen Times Archived from the original on September 18 2016 Retrieved September 10 2016 Red Eye Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi August 19 2005 Archived from the original on December 25 2011 Retrieved November 13 2011 The River Wild Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi October 24 2011 Archived from the original on July 28 2011 Retrieved November 13 2011 Panic Room Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi March 29 2002 Archived from the original on January 20 2012 Retrieved November 13 2011 Funny Games Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi Allmovie com March 14 2008 Retrieved November 13 2011 Ebiri Bilge February 14 2017 Get Out s Jordan Peele Brings the Social Thriller to BAM Village Voice Village Voice Retrieved August 16 2017 The Spying Game British Cinema and the Secret State 2009 Cambridge Film Festival pp 54 57 of the festival brochure Archived July 20 2011 at the Wayback Machine Geoffrey Macnab Spy movies The guys who came in from the cold The Independent October 2 2009 Filmsite org Fallen Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi Allmovie com October 24 2011 Retrieved November 13 2011 In Dreams Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi Allmovie com January 15 1999 Retrieved November 13 2011 The Skeleton Key Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi Allmovie com August 12 2005 Retrieved November 13 2011 Shoard Catherine July 26 2010 Spoiler alert The Sixth Sense voted film with best twist The Guardian Retrieved September 10 2016 Billy Bob Thornton The Gift Cast Reviews Summary and Awards AllRovi Allmovie com Retrieved November 13 2011 Daniel Radcliffe to Grow Horns for Supernatural Thriller Screen Rant March 9 2014 Retrieved October 11 2014 ReferencesKonigsberg Ira 1997 The Complete Film Dictionary Second ed Penguin Group ISBN 978 0 670 10009 5 Further readingCastrillo Pablo Echart Pablo 2015 Towards a narrative definition of the American political thriller film Communication amp Society 28 4 109 121 doi 10 15581 003 28 35944 hdl 10171 41822 ISSN 2386 7876 Derry Charles 1988 The Suspense Thriller Films in the Shadow of Alfred Hitchcock McFarland amp Company ISBN 0 7864 1208 9 Frank Alan 1997 Frank s 500 The Thriller Film Guide Batsford ISBN 978 0 7134 2728 8 Hanich Julian 2010 Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear Routledge Advances in Film Studies Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 87139 6 Hicks Neil D 2002 Writing the Thriller Film The Terror Within Michael Wiese Productions ISBN 978 0 941188 46 3 Indick William 2006 Psycho Thrillers Cinematic Explorations of the Mysteries of the Mind McFarland amp Company ISBN 978 0 7864 2371 2 Mayer Geoff 2012 Historical Dictionary of Crime Films The Scarecrow Press ISBN 978 0 8108 6769 7 Mesce Bill 2007 Overkill The Rise And Fall of Thriller Cinema McFarland amp Company ISBN 978 0 7864 2751 2 Rubin Martin 1999 Thrillers Cambridge University Press ISBN 0 521 58183 4 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Thriller film amp oldid 1151576581, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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