History of thriller

Thriller is a genre which is used in literature, film and television to create suspense, excitement and tension. The most common use of this subgenre to thriller are mystery, crime and psychological thrillers, however there are also many other subgenres. Thriller is also very closely coincided with the horror genre, to which both use suspense and atmosphere to cause feelings of dread in their audiences. The genre of thriller film developed from well-known novels such as "Fanny hill" as movie producers buys right to turn a book into movies. Then later these novels were studied and adapted and later reproduced into a thriller film. A film is portrayed as a thriller when the storyline gives the audience thrills, and keeps them on the ’edge of their seats’ as the plot builds up towards the climax.
 The tension is usually built up by a character being placed in a menacing situation, a mystery, or a trap which seems impossible to escape. There is also use of life threatened during a thriller film, as the main character is usually unsuspectingly or unknowingly involved in an extremely dangerous situation.
The common plots in crime thrillers are ransoms, revenge, femme fatal and kidnappings, which are elaborated on for the effect on the audience. the majority of  features in thrillers are used to add and create effect in the narrative and keep the audience betrothed at all times. Several of these features are: Anxiety, Anticipation, Enigmas, Excitement, Suspense, Plot, Climax and Tension.

Author Lee Child speaks about the thriller genre

In mystery thrillers, the common methods are investigations and the ‘whodunit’ technique. This is technique when there is a complex plot of a detective story where the audience is provided with clues of the identity of the criminal. The elements which are usually shown in a psychological thriller are mind games, stalking, death traps, obsession. These elements are generally combined to a certain extent, where it creates a complex plot which creates thrills the audience.The atmosphere in a thriller film is also enhanced through the lighting and use of music. An example of this is from the opening of the film ‘Alien’ by Ridley Scott in 1979. In the opening of this film, the lighting is minimal and dull, this creates the atmosphere of suspense and mystery which links into the thriller genre. One of the most well-known and popular thriller films is ‘Psycho’ which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and was produced during 1960. This film is a psychological thriller based on the American 1960‘s time period. The film was adapted from the1959 novel which was written by Robert Bloch also called ‘psycho‘. 

Both the film and novel are based on the cases on convicted serial killer Ed Gein, this therefore allowed the directors of the film to associate the film with other genres such as horror, drama and mystery, as well as the thriller.Subsequently thrillers of today borrows  themes and elements from those in the past decades amalgamating them into their movies with the use of better technology and equipment such as CGI, which have allowed for more elaborate and realistic scenes.  To limit the repetitiveness, some thrillers have maintained the aspects of horror; having more gore/sadistic violence, brutality, terror and body counts to compensate for the full lack of originality. This however has caused some of them to strive to far from the thriller genre and enter the horror genre; examples of these are Saw, Stephen Kings 'IT' and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  

Overall, the genre of thriller is used in various ways to create an atmosphere which excites thrills and entices the audience to carry on watching a film. This is done in several ways, such as through the use of lighting, mise-en-scene and also with the added use of non-diegetic and diegetic music. The thriller genre was a popular genre during the past fifty years and is still increasingly popular within the industry today.