Thriller (genre)

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.

Thriller is a broad genre of literature, film and television, having numerous subgenres. Thrillers are characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving viewers heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and anxiety.^[1][2] Successful examples of thrillers are the films of Alfred Hitchcock.^[3]

Thrillers generally keep the audience on the "edge of their seats" as the plot builds towards a climax. The cover-up of important information from the viewer is a common element.^[4] Literary devices such as red herrings, plot twists, and cliffhangers are used extensively. A thriller is usually a villain-driven plot, whereby he or she presents obstacles that the protagonist must overcome.

In 2001, the American Film Institute in Los Angeles made its definitive selection of the top 100 greatest American "heart-pounding" and "adrenaline-inducing" films of all time. AFI also asked jurors to consider "the total adrenaline-inducing impact of a film's artistry and craft".^[5]

Homer's Odyssey is one of the oldest stories in the Western world and is regarded as an early prototype of the thriller. One of the earliest thriller films was Harold Lloyd's comic Safety Last! (1923), with a character performing a daredevil stunt on the side of a skyscraper.^[1]

Characteristics

Writer Vladimir Nabokov, in his lectures at Cornell University, said: "In an Anglo-Saxon thriller, the villain is generally punished, and the strong silent man generally wins the weak babbling girl, but there is no governmental law in Western countries to ban a story that does not comply with a fond tradition, so that we always hope that the wicked but romantic fellow will escape scot-free and the good but dull chap will be finally snubbed by the moody heroine."^[6]

Thrillers may be defined by the primary mood that they elicit: suspenseful excitement. In short, if it "thrills", it is a thriller. As the introduction to a major anthology explains:

Suspense

Suspense is a crucial characteristic of the thriller genre. It gives the viewer a feeling of pleasurable fascination and excitement mixed with apprehension, anticipation and tension. These develop from unpredictable, mysterious and rousing events during the narrative, which make the viewer or reader think about the outcome of certain actions. Suspense builds in order to make those final moments, no matter how short, the most memorable. The suspense in a story keeps the person hooked to reading or watching more until the climax is reached.

In terms of narrative expectations, it may be contrasted with curiosity and surprise. The objective is to deliver a story with sustained tension, surprise, and a constant sense of impending doom. As described by film director Alfred Hitchcock, an audience experiences suspense when they expect something bad to happen and have (or believe they have) a superior perspective on events in the drama's hierarchy of knowledge, yet they are powerless to intervene to prevent it from happening.

Suspense in thrillers is often intertwined with hope and anxiety, which are treated as two emotions aroused in anticipation of the conclusion - the hope that things will turn out all right for the appropriate characters in the story, and the fear that they may not. The second type of suspense is the "...anticipation wherein we either know or else are fairly certain about what is going to happen but are still aroused in anticipation of its actual occurrence."^[8]

According to Greek philosopher Aristotle in his book Poetics, suspense is an important building block of literature, and this is an important convention in the thriller genre.^[9]

Themes and characters

A common occurrence in thrillers is characters being taken as hostages and with a ransom in need. (Hostages, 1896 painting by Jean-Paul Laurens, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon)

Common methods and themes in crime and action thrillers are mainly ransoms, captivities, heists, revenge, kidnappings. Common in mystery thrillers are investigations and the whodunit technique. Common elements in dramatic and psychological thrillers include plot twists, psychology, obsession and mind games. Common in horror thrillers are serial killers, stalking, deathtraps and horror-of-personality. Elements such as fringe theories, false accusations and paranoia are common in paranoid thrillers. Threats to entire countries, spies, espionage, conspiracies, assassins and electronic surveillance are common in spy thrillers.^[10]

Characters may include criminals, stalkers, assassins, innocent victims (often on the run), menaced women, psychotic individuals, spree killers, sociopaths, agents, terrorists, cops and escaped cons, private eyes, people involved in twisted relationships, world-weary men and women, psycho-fiends, and more. The themes frequently include terrorism, political conspiracy, pursuit, or romantic triangles leading to murder. Plots of thrillers involve characters which come into conflict with each other or with outside forces.^[11]

The protagonist of these films is set against a problem. No matter what subgenre a thriller film falls into, it will emphasize the danger that the protagonist faces. The protagonists are frequently ordinary citizens unaccustomed to danger, although commonly in crime and action thrillers, they may also be "hard men" accustomed to danger such as police officers and detectives. While protagonists of thrillers have traditionally been men, women lead characters are increasingly common.^[12] In psychological thrillers, the protagonists are reliant on their mental resources, whether it be by battling wits with the antagonist or by battling for equilibrium in the character's own mind. The suspense often comes from two or more characters preying upon one another's minds, either by playing deceptive games with the other or by merely trying to demolish the other's mental state.^[12]

Story and setting

An atmosphere of menace and sudden violence, such as crime and murder, characterize thrillers. The tension usually arises when the character(s) is placed in a dangerous situation, or a trap from which escaping seems impossible. Life is threatened, usually because the principal character is unsuspectingly or unknowingly involved in a dangerous or potentially deadly situation^[13]

Hitchcock's films often placed an innocent victim (an average, responsible person) into a strange, life-threatening or terrorizing situation, in a case of mistaken identity or wrongful accusation.^[14]

Thrillers take place mostly in ordinary suburbs and cities, although sometimes they may take place wholly or partly in exotic settings such as foreign cities, deserts, polar regions, or the high seas. These usually tough, resourceful, but essentially ordinary heroes are pitted against villains determined to destroy them, their country, or the stability of the free world. Often in a thriller movie, the protagonist is faced with what seem to be insurmountable problems in his mission, carried out against a ticking clock, the stakes are high and although resourceful, they face personal dilemmas along the way forcing them to make sacrifices for others.

History

History in literature

Little Red Riding Hood is an early example of a psychotic stalker story, a common convention in the thriller genre (art by Gustave Doré).

Ancient epic poems such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer's Odyssey and the Mahābhārata use similar narrative techniques as modern thrillers. In the Odyssey, the hero Odysseus makes a perilous voyage home after the Trojan War, battling extraordinary hardships in order to be reunited with his wife Penelope. He has to contend with villains such as the Cyclops, a one-eyed giant, and the Sirens, whose sweet singing lures sailors to their doom. In most cases, Odysseus uses cunning instead of brute force to overcome his adversaries.

Little Red Riding Hood (1697), an early example of a psycho-stalker story, is a fairy tale about a girl who walks through the woods to deliver food to her sick grandmother. A wolf wants to eat the girl but is afraid to do so in public. He approaches Little Red Riding Hood and she naively tells him where she is going. He suggests the girl pick some flowers, which she does. In the meantime, he goes to the grandmother's house and gains entry by pretending to be the girl. He swallows the grandmother whole (in some stories, he locks her in the closet) and waits for the girl, disguised as the grandma.

The Three Apples, a tale in the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), is the earliest known murder mystery^[15] and suspense thriller with multiple plot twists^[16] and detective fiction elements.^[17] In this tale, a fisherman discovers a heavy locked chest along the Tigris river and he sells it to the Abbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid, who then has the chest broken open only to find inside it the dead body of a young woman who was cut into pieces. Harun orders his vizier, Ja'far ibn Yahya, to solve the crime and find the murderer within three days. This whodunit mystery may be considered an archetype for detective fiction.^[15][18]

The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) is a swashbuckling revenge thriller about a man named Edmond Dantès who is betrayed by his friends and sent to languish in the notorious Château d'If. His only companion is an old man who teaches him everything from philosophy to mathematics to swordplay. Just before the old man dies, he reveals to Dantès the secret location of a great treasure. Shortly after, Dantès engineers a daring escape and uses the treasure to reinvent himself as the Count of Monte Cristo. Thirsting for vengeance, he sets out to punish those who destroyed his life.

The Riddle of the Sands (1903) is "the first modern thriller", according to Ken Follett, who described it as "an open-air adventure thriller about two young men who stumble upon a German armada preparing to invade England".

Heart of Darkness (1903) is a first-person within a first-person account about a man named Marlow who travels up the Congo River in search of an enigmatic Belgian trader named Kurtz. Layer by layer, the atrocities of the human soul and man's inhumanity to man are peeled away. Marlow finds it increasingly difficult to tell where civilization ends and where barbarism begins. Today this might be described as a psychological thriller.

The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) is an early thriller by John Buchan, in which an innocent man becomes the prime suspect in a murder case and finds himself on the run from both the police and enemy spies.

The Manchurian Candidate (1959) is a classic of Cold War paranoia. A squad of American soldiers are kidnapped and brainwashed by Communists. False memories are implanted, along with a subconscious trigger that turns them into assassins at a moment's notice. They are soon reintegrated into American society as sleeper agents. One of them, Major Bennett Marco, senses that not all is right, setting him on a collision course with his former comrade Sergeant Raymond Shaw, who is close to being activated as an assassin.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) by John le Carré is set in the world of Cold War espionage and helped to usher in an era of more realistic thriller fiction, based around professional spies and the battle of wits between rival spymasters.

The Bourne Identity (1980) is one of the first thrillers to be written in the modern style that we know today. A man with gunshot wounds is found floating unconscious in the Mediterranean Sea. Brought ashore and nursed back to health, he wakes up with amnesia. Fiercely determined to uncover the secrets of his past, he embarks on a quest that sends him spiraling into a web of violence and deceit. He is astounded to learn that knowledge of hand-to-hand combat, firearms, and trade craft seem to come naturally to him.

History in film

1920s-1930s

Rear Window is considered to be one of Hitchcock's best^[19] and one of the greatest movies ever made. The film received four Academy Award nominations.

Alfred Hitchcock's first thriller was his third silent film The Lodger (1926), a suspenseful Jack the Ripper story. His next thriller was Blackmail (1929), his and Britain's first sound film. His notable thrillers in the 1930s include, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and The 39 Steps.

One of the earliest spy films was Fritz Lang's Spies (1928), the director's first independent production, with an anarchist international conspirator and criminal spy character named Haghi (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) who was pursued by good-guy Agent No. 326 (Willy Fritsch) – this film inspired the James Bond films in the future. The German film M (1931) directed by Fritz Lang, starred Peter Lorre (in his first film role) as a criminal deviant who preys on children.

1940s-1960s

Hitchcock continued his suspense-thrillers, directing Foreign Correspondent (1940), Oscar-winning Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941), Saboteur (1942) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943), which was Hitchcock's own personal favorite. Notable non-Hitchcock films of the 1940s include, The Spiral Staircase (1946) and Sorry, Wrong Number (1948).

In the 1950s, Hitchcock added technicolor to his thrillers, now with exotic locales. He reached the zenith of his career with a succession of classic films such as, Strangers on a Train (1951), Dial M For Murder (1954) with Ray Milland, Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958). Non-Hitchcock thriller of the 1950s include The Night of the Hunter (1955), director Charles Laughton's only film and Orson Welles crime thriller, Touch of Evil (1958).

Director Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960), with Carl Boehm as a psychopathic cameraman. After Hitchcock's classic films of the 1950s, he produced Psycho (1960) about a loner mother-fixated motel owner and taxidermist. J. Lee Thompson's Cape Fear (1962) with Robert Mitchum had a menacing ex-con seeking revenge. A famous thriller of its release date was Wait Until Dark (1967) by director Terence Young with Audrey Hepburn as a victimized blind woman in her Manhattan apartment.

1970s-1980s

The 1970s saw a violent start in the thriller genre, with Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock's first British film in almost two decades, being given an R rating for its vicious and explicit strangulation scene. One of the first films about a fan being disturbingly obsessed with their idol was Clint Eastwood's directorial debut film, Play Misty for Me (1971), about a California disc jockey pursued by a disturbed female listener (Jessica Walter). John Boorman's Deliverance (1972) followed the perilous fate of four Southern businessmen during a weekend's trip. In Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974), a bugging-device expert (Gene Hackman) systematically uncovered a covert murder while he himself was being spied upon.

Alan Pakula's The Parallax View (1974) told of a conspiracy, led by the Parallax Corporation, surrounding the assassination of a US Senator running for president that was witnessed by investigative reporter Joseph Frady (Warren Beatty). Peter Hyam's science-fiction thriller Capricorn One (1978) proposed the government conspiracy-theory idea that the first mission to Mars landing was a complete fake.

Brian De Palma usually had themes of guilt, voyeurism, paranoia and obsession in his films. Similar plot elements include killing off a main character early on, switching points of view, and dream-like sequences. His notable films include, Sisters (1973), Obsession (1976) which was slightly inspired by Vertigo, Dressed to Kill (1980) and the assassination thriller Blow Out (1981).

1990s-present

In the early 90s, 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 the book by Stephen King, with Kathy Bates as an unbalanced fan named Annie who terrorizes, in her care, an incapacitated author named Paul (James Caan) – Kathy Bates won the 1990 Academy Award for Best Actress for her role. Other films include, Curtis Hanson's The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) and Unlawful Entry (1992), starring Ray Liotta^[20]

Detectives/FBI agents hunting down a serial killer was another popular motif in the 90s. The famous was Jonathan Demme's highly acclaimed Best Picture-winning crime thriller The Silence of the Lambs (1991) where a young FBI agent Jodie Foster in a psychological war against a cannibalistic psychiatrist named Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), while tracking down transgender serial killer Buffalo Bill and David Fincher's crime thriller Seven (1995), which was about the search for a serial killer who re-enacts the seven deadly sins.

In recent years, thrillers often overlapped with the horror genre, having more gore/sadistic violence, brutality, terror and frightening scenes. The recent films in which this occurred include Eden Lake (2008), The Last House on the Left (2009), P2 (2007), Captivity (2007) and Vacancy (2007). Action scenes have also gotten more elaborate in the thriller genre within the past 10 years. Films such as, Unknown (2011), Hostage (2005) and Cellular (2006) had crossed over into the action genre.

Subgenres in film

The thriller genre can include the following subgenres:^[21]

• Action thriller: In which the hero/heroine confronts dangerous adversaries, obstacles, or situations which s/he must conquer, normally in an action setting. Action thrillers would usually feature a race against the clock, frequent violence and a clear antagonist.^[22] Examples include Dirty Harry, Taken,^[23] The Fugitive,^[24] Snakes on a Plane, Speed, The Dark Knight, Casino Royale,^[25] The Hurt Locker,^[26] The Terminator, the Die Hard series and the The Bourne series.^[27]
• Comedy thriller: A genre that combines elements of comedy and thrillers, a combination of humor and suspense or action. Films such as Silver Streak, Dr. Strangelove, Charade, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, In Bruges, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Grosse Point Blank, The Thin Man, The Big Fix, and The Lady Vanishes.
• Conspiracy thriller: In which the hero/heroine confronts a large, powerful group of enemies whose true extent only s/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,^[28] Absolute Power, Marathon Man, In the Line of Fire, Capricorn One, and JFK.^[29]
• Crime thriller: This particular genre is a hybrid type of both crime films and thrillers that offers a suspenseful account of a successful or failed crime or crimes. These films often focus on the criminal(s) rather than a policeman. Central topics of these films include serial killers/murders, robberies, chases, shootouts, heists and double-crosses. Some examples of crime thrillers involving murderers include, Seven,^[30] No Country for Old Men, Silence of the Lambs, Untraceable, Mindhunters,^[31] Kiss the Girls, Along Came a Spider, Collateral and Copycat.^[32] Examples of crime thrillers involving heists or robberies includes The Asphalt Jungle,^[33] The Score,^[34] Rififi, Entrapment,^[35] and The Killing.
• Erotic thriller: A type of thriller 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 Sea of Love, Basic Instinct,^[36] Chloe, Color of Night, Dressed to Kill, Eyes Wide Shut, In the Cut, Lust, Caution, and Single White Female.
• Horror thriller: Type of film that blends the horror and thriller genres: focusing on suspense, tension and adrenaline while having an emphasis on fear, terror and/or gore.^[37] Many horror films tend to cross over into the thriller genre due to their suspenseful and tense nature. Personages of supernatural origin may be present in such films. Examples of horror thrillers include Saw, The Strangers, Hostel, Eden Lake, Psycho, Jaws, Scream, Final Destination, Devil, The Uninvited and The Orphanage.
• Legal thriller: 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, The Jury, The Client, The Lincoln Lawyer, Hostile Witness, Perry Mason novels and Silent Witness.
• Political thriller: In which the hero/heroine must ensure the stability of the government that employs him. 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. Examples include, Topaz, Notorious, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Interpreter,^[38] Proof of Life,^[39] State of Play, and The Ghost Writer.
• Psychological thriller: In which (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. Characters are not reliant on physical strength to overcome their brutish enemies, but rather are reliant on their mental resources.^[40] The Alfred Hitchcock films Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt, and Strangers on a Train and David Lynch's bizarre and influential Blue Velvet are notable examples of the type, as are The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Machinist, Flightplan, Shutter Island, Secret Window, Identity, Red Eye,^[41] Phone Booth, The River Wild,^[42] Panic Room,^[43] Misery, Cape Fear and Funny Games.^[44]
• Spy film: 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 usually deals with the subject of fictional espionage in a realistic way (such as the adaptations of John Le Carré). It is a significant aspect of British cinema,^[45] with leading British directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Carol Reed making notable contributions and many films set in the British Secret Service.^[46] Thrillers within this subgenre include Spy Game, Hanna, Traitor, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Tourist, The Parallax View, The Tailor of Panama, Mission Impossible, Unknown, The Recruit, James Bond franchise, The Debt, The Good Shepherd, and Three Days of the Condor.^[2]
• Supernatural thriller: In which the film brings in an otherworldly element (such as fantasy and/or the supernatural) mixed with tension, suspense and/or plot twists. Sometimes the protagonist and/or villain has some psychic ability and superpowers. Examples include, Fallen,^[47] Frequency, In Dreams,^[48] Flatliners, Jacob's Ladder, The Skeleton Key,^[49] What Lies Beneath, Unbreakable, The Sixth Sense, The Gift,^[50] The Dead Zone and Horns.^[51]
• Techno-thriller: A suspenseful film in which the manipulation of sophisticated technology plays a prominent part. There is a bit of action and science fiction.^[52] Examples include The Thirteenth Floor, I, Robot, Source Code, Eagle Eye, Supernova, Hackers, The Net, Futureworld, eXistenZ, and Virtuosity.

Notable contributors to the thriller genre

Fiction and literature

Novelists closely associated with the genre include James Hadley Chase, John Grisham, Eric Ambler, Jeffrey Archer, Ted Bell, Dan Brown, Lincoln Child, Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, Michael Crichton, Nelson DeMille, Richard Ferguson, Ian Fleming, Ken Follett, Frederick Forsyth, Erle Stanley Gardner, Graham Greene, Paul Levine, Robert Ludlum, Alistair MacLean, Andy McNab, David Morrell, James Phelan, Douglas Preston, and Matthew Reilly.

Film

Television

There have been at least two television series called simply Thriller, one made in the U.S. in the 1960s and one made in the UK in the 1970s. Although in no way linked, both series consisted of one-off dramas, each utilising the familiar motifs of the genre.

24 is a fast-paced television series with a premise inspired by the War on Terror. Each season takes place over the course of twenty-four hours, with each episode happening in "real time". Featuring a split-screen technique and a ticking onscreen clock, 24 follows the exploits of federal agent Jack Bauer as he races to foil terrorist threats.

Lost, which deals with the survivors of a plane crash, sees the castaways on the island forced to deal with a monstrous being that appears as a cloud of black smoke, a conspiracy of "Others" who have kidnapped or killed their fellow castaways at various points, a shadowy past of the island itself that they are trying to understand, polar bears, and the fight against these and other elements as they struggle simply to stay alive and get off of the island.

Prison Break follows Michael Scofield, an engineer who has himself incarcerated in a maximum-security prison in order to break out his brother, who is on death row for a crime he did not commit. In the first season Michael must deal with the hazards of prison life, the other inmates and prison staff, and executing his elaborate escape plan, while outside the prison Michael's allies investigate the conspiracy that led to Lincoln being framed. In the second season, Michael, his brother and several other inmates escape the prison and must evade the nationwide manhunt for their re-capture, as well as those who want them dead.

Other examples include, Dexter, Breaking Bad, Criminal Minds, Without a Trace, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Homeland, The 4400, Medium, Revenge, Numb3rs, The Twilight Zone, Quantico and The X-Files.

See also

• Adventure novel
• Giallo
• International Thriller Writers
• Horror and terror
• Suspense
• Spy novel

References