What is a Thriller?

A thriller can take many different forms, for example, psychological thrillers, crime thrillers, erotic thrillers, mystery thrillers and action thrillers (however these usually involve crime). It often bestows a sudden rush of emotions, whether that emotion be sad, happy or an intense mix of both, which is driven by the story of the film. 

This is an important genre in the world of film because the many sub genre's allow it to be presented the an incredibly wide range of audiences. 

You would expect a psychological thriller to be mental and emotional, rather than physical. An example of your typical psychological thriller is Oren Peli's 2007 Paranormal Activity. This is an incredibly well done psychological thriller as it is a film in which not a huge amount happens but tension is built up so well that something as simple as a door slamming to break that tension would cause the whole cinema to become spooked.

A crime thriller is all about crime, which often begins with a failed crime followed by revenge. It contains murders, heists, car chases, shootouts and kidnappings. The target audience for a crime thriller tends to be your stereotypical, male adrenaline junkie. One of my favourite thriller's is Justin Lin's Fast and Furious 6, if not the entire Fast and Furious franchise. This film contains pretty much every aspect that a crime thriller contains, with particular emphasis on car chases.

As you can see the two sub genres that I have talked about are considerably different, which highlights my point about thriller's appealing to a wide range of audiences.