A thriller is a genre aimed at building suspense and keeping audiences guessing. They use twists, turns, and misleading clues to confuse viewers and get their adrenaline pumping. While thrillers and horror movies are sometimes confused, thrillers focus more on plot and character development, while horror emphasizes gore. Shutter Island uses an asylum escape and Teddy's flashbacks and hallucinations to create uncertainty. The Departed builds tension as the audience learns the identities of "rats" before the characters do. Gone Baby Gone features a missing child case in a rough Boston neighborhood and uses lighting, camerawork, and facial expressions to convey feelings of tension.

1. WHAT IS A THRILLER ?
Everyone has a different opinion as to what a thriller is. To me a
thriller is a genre aimed to build the suspense and keep the
audience guessing, almost sitting on the edge of their seat. They
consist of a lot of twists, turns and red herring all to send you down
the wrong route. This is all a ploy to confuse and excite you.
Overall it doesn’t matter if it’s a psychological, crime or mystery
thriller they are all aimed to mess with your emotions and get your
adrenaline pumping.

2. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A THRILLER
AND HORROR
A lot of people often think that a horror and a thriller are the same. This is
normally because most thrillers and horrors are quite dark so people assume
that they are the same. Horrors don't really have much of a story line to
them, they just have a lot of blood and gore in them. An example of this would be
the SAW movies. The reason they can make so many movies is because there
is not much context to the story line, you can tell what is going to happen
because its so simple. The audience are only watching for the gore. Whereas a
thriller is based on a good storyline. Thrillers go much more into detail with the
characters and the context of the film. The Sixth Sense is a perfect example for
a thriller. It has red herrings, engrosses the audience and the ending is totally
unexpected. Which is why the viewers stay till the end, they are so engrossed
they need to know what happens.

3. SHUTTER
ISLAND
Set in 1954, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels is investigating the disappearance
of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and
is presumed to be hiding nearby.
Patient escapes from an asylum : This sets a mysterious context for the movie because it’s
quite difficult to believe that a mentally unstable woman could escape from such a high
security “prison”.
The setting of the movie is based on an Island which is only accessible by boat, so you
know as much as Teddy, which also sparks a bit of uncertainty.
Originally we don’t know anything about Teddy, just that he was a WW2 veteran which
makes the audience think of him as a hero of some sort. As the story goes on Teddy starts
to have flashbacks and hallucinations. With these scenes the viewers start to understand
Teddy’s past and what he has been through.
Throughout the movie you are lead to believe that the Island is a government facility that
experiments on the human brain. So when we reach the end and find out that Teddy is really
crazy and the doctors have been trying to make him sane it is a major twist which no one
could really see coming.

4. THE
DEPARTED
The film takes place in Boston, Massachusetts, where Irish Mob boss Frank
Costello plants Colin Sullivan as an informant within the Massachusetts State
Police. Simultaneously, the police assign undercover cop Billy Costigan to
infiltrate Costello's crew. When both sides realize the situation, each man
attempts to discover the other's true identity before his own cover is blown.
In the beginning there is not much going on The main characters are introduced but
throughout the film the tension increases dramatically because the viewers learn who
the “rats” are before they do themselves, so there's a sense of anxiety to see what
happens when they do.
One of the main characters, Colin Sullivan, is without a father so during the whole film
Costello is acting as a father figure towards him. This father-son relationship is quite
noticeable in the whole duration of the film especially when Colin calls Frank to warn
him and he calls him “dad”.
During the film there are many twists but the most noticeable would be when Billy finds
out that Frank is an informant for the FBI and is close to handing over the spy’s inside
the force .

5. GONE BABY
GONE
Private investigator Patrick Benzie and his partner/girlfriend Angie Gennaro
witness a televised plea by a woman named Helene McCready for the return of her
missing daughter Amanda, who was abducted.
The film is set in the neighborhoods of Boston. This is quite a violent area but Patrick
knows his way around the city which gives the audience a sense of comfort because
they know he is in control.
Throughout the movie the lighting is fairly dark, most of the scenes take place at night
creating a tenser atmosphere because there seems to be more violence at night than in
the day.
The cameras focus a lot on the facial expressions in this movie. It portrays the
characters feelings which can relate to what the audience are feeling as well.
A big twist is when Patrick and the two police officers are outside a house and are
waiting to raid the house. When Patrick finally enters the home there is a small sense of
relief but at the same time tension because you don’t know what he will find up stairs. As
he approaches the bath the audience think its all over and that she is dead, but when he
takes a closer look at the body you realise that it isn’t her.

6. CONVENTIONS / THEMES
Jump cuts are used to change the pace of the film
Camera angles can change someone's perception of the scene
Audio playing in the background represents the feeling in the atmosphere
Red Herrings
The setting of the film can have an effect of how the view feels about the film e.g. dark
Camera movement, zooming in and out, 180º rule
Positioning of the characters, main characters normally start in the centre of the frame
Common themes can consist of Pursuit ( The Bourne Series), Revenge (Taken), Political
(Enemy Of The State).

7. ACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH THRILLER
FILMS
Morgan Freeman
Age: 75
Plays multiple roles, never really sticks to one. He can play a bad guy
(Gone Baby Gone) or a good guy (Dark Knight).
Leonardo DiCaprio
Age: 37
Most of his films he plays a mysterious character, very hard to read (never
quite know what is going to happen next)

8. DIFFERENT TYPES OF THRILLERS
Thrillers is a very broad genre you can get many types of them, some of which
can be
.Psychological . Pursuit
.Crime . Terrorism
.Mystery . Revenge
.Espionage
.Political
.Paranoid