Mia’s Corner: Why Thrillers Are Thrilling

Thriller

A thriller is a genre of literature with an exciting plot typically involving crime or espionage.

Thrillers usually consist of a lone protagonist or small group of heroes opposed by a vastly superior enemy while pursuing an overriding quest or objective. There are lots of plot twists in the genre typically used to create the sense of confusion and psychological effect. The hero of a thriller is often an ordinary person, allowing for easy audience sympathy, although sometimes the hero is a person with specialized training, such as a detective or spy. The main character tends to be outnumbered, outgunned, and unsure of whom to trust. The sense of desperation that is a key element in the thriller genre. Characters tend to got through the threat of death and capture, or very difficult decisions.

In production, the use of low level lighting creates shadows allowing fear and tension to creep within the audience. Thrillers tend to use a wide array of camera angles and techniques such as Dutch angle, dolly zoom, wide lenses with extreme close-ups to create the sense of tension and confusion. The characters use a limited amount of makeup in order to make the characters more relatable to the audience. A key technique used in most thrillers is Shepard's Tone, a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves, typically sounds like a continuously rising or falling tone. It is used to create suspense and tension.

An example of a close-up Dutch angle using a wide lens from the film Fallen Angels (1995) directed by Wong Kar-wai.

The target audience for a thriller are 15-24 year-olds as they are usually attracted to the realness and graphic action around an intense storyline. Thriller usually adds to drama, action, horror, crime, sci-fi, and psychological films.

The Batman(2022)

Though the film is about a traditional superhero and has those traditional superhero film qualities, Matt Reeves, director of the Batman (2022), focuses more in the procedural serial killer and crime saga about institutional corruption aspect of the story. Reeves took inspiration from David Fincher’s Se7en (1995) and created a scenery of Gotham City with non-stop downpour and grim murders. Over the three hours of film, there's an engaging mystery, red herrings, and unexpected plot twists. From the opening scene and the murder by the Riddler, it already obvious that this film is different from the other Batman films in the past, including a darker, duller set and storyline.

The Villainess (2017)

A South Korean action-thriller film directed by Jeong Byeong-gil, the main character, a woman who witnessed her fathers murder by an unseen man when she was a child, she then dedicates her life to avenging his death. She is forced into an organization that trains promising young women into assassins. Throughout the film she await unexpected plot twists such as being pregnant with her ex crime boss husband's child and later have to kill him as an order by the organization. This film includes great amount of violence and tension, especially when it seemed when her ex, her new lover, and the organization were all against her. The production has an engaging plot, as well as incredible fighting scenes filmed without the sexualised catsuit but a trained killer that happens to be female. As the villainess experiences psychologically traumatic situations, we are left feeling tensed and as confused as she is.