Coventions of a Thriller and Sub-Genres

In thriller films we see a lot of things, but there are things that we see on the big screen are all planned and all thriller films are set in a certain way to grab the attention of the audience. When planning a thriller film, you have to take into consideration these conventions:

-          Crime is the main story

-          A complex narrative structure with clues and false paths

-          Enigmas are established

-          Protagonist (good guy) drawn into a web of conspiracy  and trouble by the antagonist (bad guy)

-          Extraordinary events happening in ordinary situations

-          Themes of identity and voyeurism

-           The opening scene often places the protagonist in danger

As well as thriller being a genre on its own, there are different types of thriller and these are called a sub-genre. A sub-genre is a derivative of that genre. Examples of these are:

-          Action-Thriller

-          Conspiracy-Thriller

-          Crime-Thriller

-          Disaster-Thriller

-          Psychological-Thriller

-          Spy-Thriller

-          Supernatural-Thriller

In this blog I am going to talk about Conspiracy Thrillers.

Conspiracy thrillers (also known as ‘paranoid thrillers’) are generally about journalists or amateur investigators who get themselves mixed up in conspiracies which go all the way to the top. These are often used to “recreate” what might have happened during a historical event. The protagonist often struggles to uncover the conspiracy and contain ‘man-in-peril’ stories (very rarely ‘woman-in-peril’) and are similar to detective stories.

 The link below is a trailer of an example of a conspiracy film. The title of the film is Se7en (1995) directed by David Frincher, starring stars such as Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt. This film is about two detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his way of working and doing his job which is to kill people. This is a conspiracy genre because there is an investigation going on and the one of the people investigating is an amateur in terms of being a detective and the fact that one of his first case is to deal with a serial killer. Also the fact that the protagonist is really struggling to get to the bottom of the case. As well as that, the fact that it is a male who is the amateur investigator which normally happens in these films.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4YV2_TcCoE