The rules and conventions of thrillers

The rules and conventions of thrillers

In the thriller genre there’s lots of different sub genres, which do certain rules to create a specific effect on the audience.  Thrillers are mostly fast paced with regular action this includes a hero who has to stop this strong intelligent villain.

One of the characteristic’s in a thriller is the location is often in exotic places such as foreign cities for example in James bond films he is in mostly foreign places. On the other hand some of the thrillers are presented as people in an ordinary situation and then extraordinary things happen to them for example in the film “The Birds” we see birds attack these ordinary people which is extraordinary for birds to do. Finally some other thrillers have a hero as an ordinary person then extraordinary things happen to them for example the in “the hulk” there’s an ordinary man but when he gets angry he turns in to this giant big green guy also known as the hulk.

In some of the thrillers the story’s is mostly centred around a crime or often a murder or someone captured their family which sets the theme on revenge and the person who murdered or captured their family also known as the antagonist is powerful and mostly has an army of people where as the protagonist is mostly one person who is after revenge and is fighting an army of people by himself.

Secondly some thriller genres are more complicated and is not the same as some of original thriller convention for example in the film “law abiding citizen” we see a man’s wife and kid murders we think that the man is the protagonist (hero) but later on in the film we see that he actually is the antagonist (villain) and then a new protagonist comes, therefore few of the thrillers don’t stick to their thriller conventions.

Finally in the thriller genre there is also an enigma set in the opening of the film and then the film gets complicated and then at the end it becomes clear. This is done to engage the audience because they don’t know the aspect of the film which makes them eager to find out what’s going on in the film till the information’s revealed. An example of an enigma is done in the film fight club where brad Pitt has a gun pointed at another character, this is later resolved in the end.

In the Thriller genre there are lots of different sub genres such as action thriller, crime thriller, horror thriller and etc.