The Forms and Conventions of Thrillers

The forms and conventions of thrillers are divided into 5 different groupes, these are:

1. Characters
2. Narrative
3. Themes
4. Iconography
5. Audio Visual Style

Characters:
There are all different types of characters for the different sub genres, however, most thrillers always include: corrupt cops/politicians, hit men, psychotic maniacs, but most thrillers always have an innocent victim who has to learn how to fight in order to survive what is happening. Such as in 'The Resident,' the young Juliet Bliss Devereau (Hilary Swank) becomes the victim of a psychopath as he becomes obsessed with her and she has to fight her way out of a situation that you think there is no way out of. Characters are important to thrillers because the innocent ones get the audience to feel for them and to share emotions this is good because it brings them into the film more. Some characters i.e. the bad guy differs for different sub-genres, some could be hit- men while others could be killers.

Narrative:
A narrative is also known as the story. Thrillers usually base their stories on crimes such as drug use, killings etc that happens at the start, or leading to a climax. Thrillers can sometimes be a race against time to stop something from happening i.e. in Silence of The Lambs someone of importance gets kidnapped by a killer and the FBI have to find her before she gets killed.

Themes:
There are all different types of themes for thrillers these include: madness, obsession, revenge, betrayal, deception, paranoia, love, alienation. However, the most common ones for thrillers are: revenge, obsession and betrayal. An example of revenge would be ‘Leon,’ an innocent victims life gets shattered so she takes it upon herself and a hit man to get revenge on who ruined her life.

Iconography:
Iconography is the 'visual elements' such as: props, costumes, locations or buildings. In thrillers these normally include: guns, urban area (city), drugs, suits, high-tech equipment, dirty run down environment and cops/government offices. These provide us with the knowledge of what sub-genre that thriller belongs in.

                                         Audio- Visual Style:

The audio-visual style provides us with: low-key lighting, fast editing, dramatic/tense music, jerky hand-held camera work. The type of music affects the audience because it helps build up suspense which is a key factor to a thriller, it works because hearing is one of our senses and the different type of music we hear affects our moods. Whereas, the jerky hand-held movements tend to make the audience feel like they are a part of the film and by seeing the camera shaking because the innocent victim is scared or hurt makes us feel sympathy for them.