Thriller movie

A **Thriller movie**, also known as **suspense movie**, **suspense thriller** or simply **Thriller**, is a  movie genre that creates excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense in the plot of most movies is a main part of this genre. Tension is created by delaying what the audience knows is going to happen. It is built through situations that are scary or where the characters cannot escape.

## Methods

Fight and chase scenes are common methods. Life is usually threatened in a thriller. This happens often when the protagonist does not see that they are entering a dangerous situation. The protagonist must usually deal with a problem, such as an escape, a mission, or a mystery.

## Relation with other genres

Screenwriter Eric R. Williams lists thriller movies as one of eleven super-genres in his screenwriters' taxonomy. He says that all feature length movies can be classified by these super-genres. The other ten super-genres are action, crime, fantasy, horror, romance, science fiction, slice of life, sports, war, and western.  Thrillers are commonly combined with other super-genres. The most common combinations are action thrillers  and science fiction thrillers. Thriller movies have a close relationship with horror movies. Both use suspense as they tell the story.  In plots about crime, thriller movies deal more on creating suspense than on the criminal or the detective. Common themes include, terrorism, political conspiracy and romantic triangles leading to murder.

## History

One of the earliest thriller movies was Harold Lloyd's comedy _Safety Last!_ (1923). It included a character performing a stunt on the side of a skyscraper. Alfred Hitchcock's first thriller was his third silent movie _The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog_ (1926). It is a suspenseful Jack the Ripper story. His next thriller was _Blackmail_ (1929). It was his first sound movie and the first British sound movie .

One of the earliest spy movies was Fritz Lang's _Spies_ (1928). It had an anarchist international conspirator and criminal spy character named Haghi (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), who is pursued by good-guy Agent No. 326 (Willy Fritsch)/ This movie was an inspiration for the future James Bond movies.

Hitchcock made more his suspense-thrillers during the 1940s. He directed _Foreign Correspondent_ (1940), the Oscar-winning _Rebecca_ (1940),  _Suspicion_ (1941)           **_Saboteur_ (1942) and _Shadow of a Doubt_ (1943). Notable non-Hitchcock movies of the 1940s include _The Spiral Staircase_ (1946), _Sorry, Wrong Number_ (1948), and _The Third Man_ (1949).

In the late 1940s, Hitchcock added Technicolor to his movies. Hitchcock's first Technicolor movie was _Rope_ (1948). He reached the top of his career with several classic movies such as _Strangers on a Train_ (1951), _Dial M For Murder_ (1954), _Rear Window_ (1954) and _Vertigo_ (1958). Non-Hitchcock thrillers of the 1950s include _The Night of the Hunter_ (1955) and Orson Welles's crime thriller _Touch of Evil_ (1958).

After Hitchcock's classic movies of the 1950s, he made _Psycho_ (1960). It is the story of a lonely, mother-fixated motel owner. He also produced . J. Lee Thompson's _Cape Fear_ (1962), with Robert Mitchum, as man trying to get revenge.

The 1970s saw an increase of violence in the thriller genre. This began with Canadian director Ted Kotcheff's _Wake in Fright_ (1971). It is almost completely a horror movie.  _Frenzy_ (1972) was  Hitchcock's first British movie in almost two decades. It was given an R rating for its strangulation scene.

One of the first movies about a person being obsessed with their idol was Clint Eastwood's _Play Misty for Me_ (1971). It is about a California disc jockey who is being stalked by a female listener (Jessica Walter). John Boorman's _Deliverance_ (1972) tells the story of four Southern businessmen on a weekend trip.

In the early 1990s, thrillers were often about obsession and trapped protagonists who must find a way to escape a villain. Rob Reiner's _Misery_ (1990)  featured Kathy Bates as a fan who terrorizes an author (James Caan) who is in her care after an accident. Other movies include Curtis Hanson's _The Hand That Rocks the Cradle_ (1992) and _Unlawful Entry_ (1992).Detectives or FBI agents hunting down a serial killer was another popular movie idea in the 1990s. A famous example is Jonathan Demme's Best Picture–winning crime thriller _The Silence of the Lambs_ (1991). In it, FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) needs the help of a cannibalistic psychiatrist named Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) to find the serial killer Buffalo Bill. David Fincher's crime thriller _Seven_ (1995), about the search for a serial killer whose murders are bases on the seven deadly sins.

Another notable example is Martin Scorsese's psychological thriller _Shutter Island_ (2010). In it, a U.S. Marshal must investigate a psychiatric facility after one of the patients disappears.

In recent years, thrillers have often overlapped with the horror genre. They have more elements that are common to horror movies. Examples of this include _Disturbia_ (2007), _Eden Lake_ (2008), _The Last House on the Left_ (2009) , and A Quiet Place (2018).

## Sub-genres

The thriller movie genre includes the following sub-genres, with examples:
|*Action thriller **_Dirty Harry_ **_Snakes on a Plane_ **_Speed_ **_The Dark Knight_ **_The Terminator_|*Comedy thriller **_Dr. Strangelove_ **_Kiss Kiss Bang Bang_ **_In Bruges_ **_Mr. and Mrs. Smith_ **_Grosse Point Blank_|||
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
|*Conspiracy thriller **_The Da Vinci Code_ **_Edge of Darkness_ **_Absolute Power_ **_Marathon Man_ **_In the Line of Fire_|*Crime thriller ** _No Country for Old Men_ ** _The Fugitive_ ** _New Jack City_ ** _The Silence Of The Lambs_ ** _Collateral_|||
|*Erotic thriller **_Basic Instinct_ **_Color of Night_ **_Dressed to Kill_ **_Eyes Wide Shut_ **_Single White Female_|*Horror thriller **_American Psycho_ **_Black Swan_ **_Bird Box_ **_1408_ ** *Legal thriller **_The Pelican Brief_ **_A Time to Kill_ **_The Client_ **_The Lincoln Lawyer_|||
|*Pandemic thriller **_Contagion_ **_Deranged_|*Political thriller **_The Day of the Jackal_ **_Notorious_|||
|colspan="2"|*Psychological thriller {||||
|*_Suspicion_ *_Shadow of a Doubt_ *_Blue Velvet_ *_Shutter Island_ *_Gone Girl_||*_Phone Booth_ *_Fatal Attraction_ *_The River Wild_ *_Misery_ *_Cape Fear_|}|
|*Social thriller **_The Tall Man_ **_Dirty Pretty Things_ **_Parasite_ **_The Constant Gardner_.|* Spy movies **_Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy_ **_The Parallax View_ **_Mission Impossible movie series_ **The James Bond franchise|||
|*Supernatural thriller **_Flatliners_ **_Unbreakable_ **_The Sixth Sense_ **_The Dead Zone_|*Techno-thriller **_I, Robot_ **_Source Code_ **_Eagle Eye_|||