My Initial Thoughts on Thrillers
Many thrillers turn out to be great box office hits including: The Godfather 1, 2 and 3, Fight Club, Leon, Alien, Terminator 2, The usual Suspects and very recently The Dark Knight. What makes a thriller is its thriller signifiers.
In the plot and Narrative the signifiers would be mystery and intrigue, with a twisting, spiralling, turning narrative which is often symbolised by spiral staircases and long chases from pursuers. On top of this thrillers are often narrated by a male protagonist for example in Blade Runner.
The tone and atmosphere of thrillers often feels sinister, threatening and claustrophobic with small enclosed spaces like elevators and long thin passageways, like in 'The Panic Room' starring Jodie Foster and Forest Whitaker. In addition to this a sense of sleaze and sex is often apparent especially as there is normally a femme fatales depicting that a woman's sexuality is dangerous and destructive along with showing women as sex objects!
In describing a thriller you have to mention the settings that they take place in and many if not all of the following appear in every single thriller film: bleak rain lashed urban streets with large imposing shadows in the day and very dark nights often lit by a single street lamp or the moon (this is where Chiaroscuro lighting comes into effect contrasting the dark shadows with the bright light). Inside scenes utilize slanting light and slatted blinds that create dark shadows across an entire room/faces. As i have mentioned before staircases and enclosed spaces are also widely used to emphasize how trapped a character is and how claustrophobic, scared and panicky someone is.
The characters exhibit many different traits that also signify a thriller, like femme fatales (Uma Thurman in Kill Bill), hard boiled detectives (Jack Nicholson, as J.J. Gittes, in Chinatown), flawed heroes (Mickey Rourke in Sin City), a male lead (Gabriel Byrne in 'Millers Crossing'), women as sex objects (Jessica Alba in Sin City), and police.
Common themes in Thrillers include corruption, mystery, deceit, sexuality and moral ambiguity. However a thriller wouldn't be a thriller without the tilted camera angles utilizing vanishing points to create suspense and mystery! All of which are exhibited in the film 'Vertigo' by Alfred Hitchcock and in fact most of Alfred Hitchcock's films exhibit all of these themes, that is because Alfred Hitchcock is the king of thriller!
Many thrillers turn out to be great box office hits including: The Godfather 1, 2 and 3, Fight Club, Leon, Alien, Terminator 2, The usual Suspects and very recently The Dark Knight. What makes a thriller is its thriller signifiers.
In the plot and Narrative the signifiers would be mystery and intrigue, with a twisting, spiralling, turning narrative which is often symbolised by spiral staircases and long chases from pursuers. On top of this thrillers are often narrated by a male protagonist for example in Blade Runner.
The tone and atmosphere of thrillers often feels sinister, threatening and claustrophobic with small enclosed spaces like elevators and long thin passageways, like in 'The Panic Room' starring Jodie Foster and Forest Whitaker. In addition to this a sense of sleaze and sex is often apparent especially as there is normally a femme fatales depicting that a woman's sexuality is dangerous and destructive along with showing women as sex objects!
In describing a thriller you have to mention the settings that they take place in and many if not all of the following appear in every single thriller film: bleak rain lashed urban streets with large imposing shadows in the day and very dark nights often lit by a single street lamp or the moon (this is where Chiaroscuro lighting comes into effect contrasting the dark shadows with the bright light). Inside scenes utilize slanting light and slatted blinds that create dark shadows across an entire room/faces. As i have mentioned before staircases and enclosed spaces are also widely used to emphasize how trapped a character is and how claustrophobic, scared and panicky someone is.
The characters exhibit many different traits that also signify a thriller, like femme fatales (Uma Thurman in Kill Bill), hard boiled detectives (Jack Nicholson, as J.J. Gittes, in Chinatown), flawed heroes (Mickey Rourke in Sin City), a male lead (Gabriel Byrne in 'Millers Crossing'), women as sex objects (Jessica Alba in Sin City), and police.
Common themes in Thrillers include corruption, mystery, deceit, sexuality and moral ambiguity. However a thriller wouldn't be a thriller without the tilted camera angles utilizing vanishing points to create suspense and mystery! All of which are exhibited in the film 'Vertigo' by Alfred Hitchcock and in fact most of Alfred Hitchcock's films exhibit all of these themes, that is because Alfred Hitchcock is the king of thriller!
