1. Thriller is a genre of literature, film, and television that uses
suspense, tension, and excitement as the main elements.
The primary subgenres are mystery, crime, and
psychological thrillers. After the assassination of President
Kennedy, political thriller and paranoid thriller films became
very popular.
The brightest examples of thrillers are the Hitchcock’s
movies. The cover-up of important information from the
viewer and fight/chase scenes are common methods in all
of the thriller subgenres, although each subgenre has its
own characteristics and methods.

2. Action Thriller: Lots of violence, an obvious main character, can include large quantities of
guns, explosions and quite often can involve large elaborate sets for the action to take
place in. A good example of an Action Thriller would be the latest James Bond film ‘Casino
Royale’ where there is indeed a lot of violence, James Bond acts as the man character and
many elaborate sets were used like airports and hotel resorts.
Conspiracy Thriller: This is where we see our antagonist faced with a large, powerful
group of enemies in which the extent of their danger is only seen by the antagonist
themselves. A recent Steven Spielberg Produced film ‘Eagle Eye’ follows this setting as the
large, powerful enemy is shown as a evil plan that they have to uncover during the course
of the film.
Drama Thriller: A Drama Thriller is essentially where a drama film and a thriller film meet.
These are shown as reasonably slow paced films with little action and involve a lot of
character development. An example of this would be the recent card counting film ‘21’ in
which a group of MIT students learn card counting in order to make money in Vegas.
Physiological Thriller: This is the thriller which features hardly any physical conflict
between the characters (often this is broken near the end of the film) as the conflict is very
often mental and emotional. Many examples can be given here, ‘The Number 23’ which
stars Jim Carrey as he finds a book about the number 23 and starts finding the same
patterns in his real life. The film ‘One Hour Photo’ is another good one which features Robin
Williams as an employee at a photo printing company who becomes obsessed with one
particular family. the lambs.