Thriller films use suspense, tension, and excitement to influence audiences' moods and create uncertainty. There are several subgenres of thriller including psychological thriller, crime thriller, and mystery thriller. Successful examples are films by Alfred Hitchcock. The thriller genre developed from novels and aims to keep audiences engaged by building anxiety through threatening plots and unexpected endings. Popular thrillers like Psycho are influential due to their effective use of lighting, music, and intensity to enhance suspense. Modern thrillers continue to follow these techniques to remain exciting and captivating for audiences.

1. History of the Thriller Genre
Thriller is a wide-ranging genre of literature, film and television that
uses suspense, tension and excitement as the main features, they
heavily influence the audiences’ moods, giving them high levels of
uncertainty, anticipation and terror. Horror, Sci-fi and Action
themed films, can also influence Thrillers. Combining the genres
together, however, more so in Horror than Sci-fi and Action. There
are also many subgenres’ for Thriller; psychological thriller, crime
thriller and mystery thriller. Successful examples of these subgenre
films are, the films of Alfred Hitchcock. The genre of Thriller
developed from well-known novels, to which these novels were then
created into a thriller film.
Films are portrayed as Thriller films, when the film gives the
audience a ‘thrill’ and keeps the audience ‘on the edge of their seats’
creating a sense of anxiety in the audience, as the plot builds up
throughout the film. This sense of anxiety is usually built up due to
character settings and a menacing approach to the plot build up,
like life threatening situations, as the main character/s may be
involved in an unexpected dangerous situation, this would also give
the audience a thought of what they believe the ending may be,
keeping them interested throughout the whole film, usually with an
unsuspected ending to keep the viewers wondering right up until
the credits, making Thriller genres continuously successful right
from the beginning when they fist hit cinemas and television.
Popular Thriller films, which are well known in this genre,
are mostly so successful because of the lighting and music used in
the film, helping with the suspense created in the film, an example
of this is ‘Psycho’, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, produced during
the 1960’s, this film has gone on to influence many modern Thrillers
due to its success within the Thriller Genre.
Overall the Thriller genre uses various ways to excite and
pull in the audience to the film to keep them watching. This is done
in many different ways, such as different lighting, music and the
intensity created in the scenes. The Thriller genre has been an
increasingly popular genre during the past 50 years and is still very
popular in the industry today. Films such as: Shutter Island, Identity
and American Psycho, have successfully supported the popularity of
old Thrillers, and carried it out using the same techniques as past

2. Thrillers. Each modern Thriller you see today, you expect intense
scenes, music and an atmosphere throughout the whole film, it is
very rare a modern film will not follow this pattern; otherwise it
may not be classes as a ‘successful Thriller’. Thrillers today are still
keeping the audience on the edge of their seats, and will carry on
doing this if Thrillers keep on being as successful as they always
have been.