LOST POSSESSION: Genre Research: History

History of Thrillers
Thriller is a genre of literature, film, and television programming that uses suspense, tension, and excitement as its main elements. Thrillers heavily stimulate the viewer's moods, giving them a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, surprise, anxiety and terror. Films of this genre tend to be adrenaline-rushing, gritty, rousing and fast-paced.

The horror and action genres often overlap with the thriller. Thrillers tend to be psychological, threatening, mysterious and at times involve larger-scale villainy such as espionage, terrorism and conspiracy.

In terms of narrative expectations, it may be contrasted with mystery or curiosity and surprise. The objective is to deliver a story with sustained tension, surprise, and a constant sense of impending doom. A thriller aims to keep its audience alert. As described by film director Alfred Hitchcock, an audience experiences suspense when they expect something bad to happen and have (or believe they have) a superior perspective on events in the drama's hierarchy of knowledge, yet they are powerless to intervene to prevent it from happening.

Common sub-genres are psychological thrillers, crime thrillers, erotic thrillers and mystery thrillers:

Psychological Thriller
Alfred Hitchcock produced many thriller/ suspense films in which included his first thriller (and his third silent film) The Lodger (1926), a suspenseful Jack the Ripper story.
His next thriller was Blackmail (1929)
plus Murder!, Number Seventeen, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and The 39 Steps.
From 1935 on, however, most of his output was thrillers.

Other British directors, such as Walter Forde, Victor Saville, George A. Cooper, and even the young Michael Powell made more thrillers in the same period; Forde made nine, Vorhaus seven between 1932 and 1935, Cooper six in the same period, and Powell the same. Hitchcock was following a strong British trend in his choice of genre.

Director Michael Powell's tense Peeping Tom (1960), with Carl Boehm as a psychopathic cameraman – the film was released prior to Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). After Hitchcock's classic films of the 1950s, he produced the shocking and engrossing thriller Psycho (1960) about a loner mother-fixated motel owner and taxidermist.

Shower Scene from Psycho (1960)

Thrillers do borrow themes and elements from those in the past decades. However, to cut the repetitiveness, there are a number of recent thrillers that maintain the aspects of the horror genre; having more gore/sadistic violence, brutality, terror and body counts.

The recent thrillers which took this approach include Eden Lake (2008), The Last House on the Left (2009), Captivity (2007), Vacancy (2007) and Funny Games (2008).