Thriller Research

Thrillers use suspense, tension and excitement as the main elements in the genre. There are many different types of sub-genres of thrillers such as, mystery, crime and psychological thrillers, later on political thrillers and paranoid thrillers became more popular.

Some examples of mystery thrillers are Vertigo, Memento and The Big Sleep.
Vertigo is about a retired San Francisco police detective, 'Scottie' who suffers from acrophobia is asked by an old friend to follow his wife. His friend fears that she is going insane and believes that she may be possessed by a dead ancestor. During this investigation he becomes greatly obsessed with her.
Memento is about an ex-insurance investigator man who is suffering from short term memory loss, and the last thing he remembers is the murder of his wife. unable to build new memories he hunts for the man that killed his wife. He does this by using notes and tattoos.
The Big Sleep is about a private detective who is hired by a rich family and he is asked to deal with several problems that the family have. during the investigation he finds that all the problems centre around the dissapearance of a favoured employee who left with a mobsters wife. As he continues to investigate he finds that most of the problems are a cover for something else.

Some examples of crime thrillers are The Silence of the Lambs, Goodfelllas and Seven.
The Silence of the Lambs is about a young FBI agent who is given a case to try and find a missing woman and save her from a psychopathic serial killer. The agent tries to understand the case more, by talking to another psychopath who is powerful and manipulative, and which they believe can help them locate the woman. The agent must first gain the confidence of him before he gives away any information.
Goodfellas is about a man named Henry Hill, who has wanted to become a gangster since he was young. When he grew older he became a small time gangster and began taking part in a robbery with the high time gangsters. Watching his friends successes he becomes jealous, and wants to get to the top of the mob hierarchy.
Seven is about two homicide detectives who are on a case to find a serial killer who justifies his murders around the seven deadly sins. Each murder is connected with one of the seven deadly sins, the first one is gluttony and it continues, to show the worlds ignorance of the seven deadly sins.

One of the most well known psychological thrillers is Strangers on a Train directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This film is about a psychotic man named Bruno who meets a stranger on a train, and tells him about how he wants to murder his father. He says he will get caught because he has motive, so he builds up a crazy scheme to exchange murders with the stranger on the train. The stranger on the train does not realise that Bruno is serious about this and takes things into his own hands.

All of these different sub-genres always include the main elements to a thriller, this is also shown in their trailers.