Legal thrillers and psychological thrillers are often aimed at audiences 15 years or older due to specialist legal terminology, complex scripts, violent content, and disturbing psychological issues that could disengage younger viewers. Some thrillers also incorporate elements of horror to attract a wider teenage and female audience who enjoy horror films. Crime thrillers like Seven and Memento similarly target mature audiences of young adult males and receive a 15 rating for strong language or violence.

1. Legal Thrillers
 Legal thrillers such as Runaway Jury and Fracture are aimed at a more mature
audience e.g. a 15 as opposed to a 12a. The reason for this being the context of
the legal thriller as this often contains specialist terminology and the complex
nature of the script which would disengage the younger audience

2. Psychological Thrillers
Psychological thrillers often have a target audience of 15 and
sometimes even 18 +, this is mainly due to a lot of violent content and
psychological issues which could be disturbing for younger audience.


3. Reaching out to wider Audiences
However there are also those thriller films which are border line horrors.
This is a very clever ploy made by film makers to reach out to a wider audience.
By mixing elements of horror into thriller films the film makers can target
a younger and female based audience as horror films are popular
among teenage girls. In addition, these films contain two elements of genres
which in theory attract audiences from those who like both horror and thriller films.
Some example of such films produced are :
- The Sixth Sense
- Signs
- The Unborn
- When A Stranger Calls

4. Crime Thrillers
 Crime thrillers such as seven and memento are
also targeted at a mature audience which mainly
consists of young adult males. Crime thrillers
are mostly 15 due to either strong language or
violence.