Thriller Summary

'Notoriously difficult to define as a genre'

From my understanding of the Thriller genre it is not a jack of all trades but rather a collection of crossovers and sub-genres.

Thus making it difficult to define as a genre. However, this is a list of things that i think are nearly always applicable to the Thriller genre.

-Thrillers are all about the construction of suspense through narration.

-Thrillers feature convoluted narratives and complexities of character.

-They often involve dark criminal worlds, seedy underworlds, conflict, ambiguity and colliding moral forces.

-They also often feature themes such as deception, treachery, corruption and murder.

-They may feature detectives or detective like characters who operate on the edge of the law.

-They can often involve clashes between: wealth and power, crime and business, law and order.

Thrillers will generally stick to stereotypical conventions of masculinity and femininity. Female characters are often only the femme fatale, the female victim or the gangster's wife. For men, they will generally be the psychopathic stranger, the victim hero, the lone detective or the gangster. This is why it is all the more interesting when films such as Alien (1979) choose to break these characteristics.

Alien- Enigma and breaking of conventions

When marketing the film Alien the producers decided that in order to make sure that people would watch a controversial thriller, you had to put it across as a sterotypical conventional thriller. To do this they create a false narrative image of the film, for example, on the poster for the film this was personified by the slogan 'In space no one can hear you scream.' This was also backed up by the graphic image of an alien egg. The narrative image connoted from this would lead you not to expect the actual plot and idea of the film centering around the heroine's sang-froid.

Enigma in Thrillers

Marketing of thrillers relies heavily on enigma. By this I mean that marketing campaigns for thrillers and even thriller titles are vague and ambiguous, leading to the audience asking questions and wanting more. This need can only be satisfied by watching the film, thereby creating a very successful advertising campaign for marketers.

Here are a list of enigmatic thriller titles:

-Rebbeca
-Seven
-The man who wasn't there
-The wrong man
-The third man
-Out of the past
-Hannibal

These titles are enigmatic as they make you question the film:

-Who is Rebbeca? and why is she the center of the film
-Seven what? deadly sins?
-Who is the man, and in what way is he 'not there'?
-What is out of the past?
-Who is Hannibal? deliberate similarity to the word cannibal?

The only way to find the answers is to watch the film. This is what the film marketers try to create, in order to stir up interest and a fan base for the film before it is released.