Conventions of the Thriller Genre

Conventions of the Thriller Genre

Thrillers are sometimes set in exotic or unusual surroundings such as foreign cities, deserts, and high seas. The typical protagonists in most thrillers are usually a "macho males" who are well accustomed with danger: police officers, spies, soldiers, sailors or pilots. However, there are also times where the protagonist may be an ordinary person thrust into dangerous situations by a turn of events, most commonly seen within the plots of “psychological thrillers”. Whilst protagonists have traditionally been strong men, female “hero” characters have become increasingly common; for example Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider and Vera Farmiga in Orphan.

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Thrillers sometimes use the ideas of mystery stories, but are set apart after close examination of their plots and in recent years thrillers have become more strongly influenced by horror or psychological-horror where a “monstrous” element is included to make the suspense more evident. The monster could be anything, a supernatural entity, aliens, serial killers, or even a pandemic or simple virus.

CONVENTION ONE: DIALOGUE MEANS NOTHING “People don’t always express their inner thoughts to one another," Hitchcock states, "a conversation may be quite trivial, but often the eyes will reveal what a person thinks or needs.” The focus of the scene is hardly ever on what the characters are actually saying. Producers only resort to dialogue when it’s impossible to get the message across in any other fashion. "In other words we don’t have pages to fill, or pages from a typewriter to fill, we have a rectangular screen in a movie house,” said Hitchcock.

CONVENTION TWO: TWO THINGS HAPPENING AT ONCE

Tension can be built into a scene by using contrasting situations. Using two marginally unrelated events happening at once is a commonly used technique. The audience will be focused on the first one, and then interrupted by the other. The end result is - the audience pays more attention to what's happening.

CONVENTION THREE: SUSPENCE IS INFORMATION

Information is essential to Hitchcock’s air of suspense; introducing dramatic irony to the situation. Constant reminders of looming danger are used in order to build suspense.

In “Family Plot” Hitchcock shows the audience that brake fluid is leaking out of a car before the characters are aware. In “Psycho” (Hitchcock) the audience knows about the crazy mother character before the detective does, making the following scene where the detective visits the house one of the most successful suspense scenes of Hitchcock's entire career. 


“The essential fact is to get real suspense you must let the audience
have information." -Alfred Hitchcock

CONVENTION FOUR: SURPRISE, TWIST AND MYSTERY

Once the audience is readily set by the use of gripping suspense it must never end the way they expect. The bomb will never go off! The audience is led in one direction and then span into a completely different one. In the climax scene of “Saboteur” by Hitchcock, Norman Lloyd is cornered on the top of the Statue of Liberty and held at gunpoint by Robert Cummings. Just when the audience thinks his fate is set, Cummings speaks, this startles Lloyd and he plummets over the edge.