Conventions of a thriller genre

Thriller is a genre of litrature, film and television that uses suspense, tension and excitment as the main elements. Thrillers are mostly created with an atmospthere of menace, violence, crime and murder. Thrillers show society to be dark, corrupt and dangerous, though often present a happy ending in which villians are killed or arrested. Thrillers promote moods such as anticipation, adrenaline rushes, expectation, uncertanty and anxiety and sometimes even terror.

Characters
Commonly the characters in thriller movies appear in smartly and well dressed with dark colours in spy based thrillers e.g. James Bond. However dress codes differ depending on the context of the plot. As there are many different types of thriller the dress codes are familiar to the type of sub genre within the thriller e.g. Die hard, Bruce Willis wears casual/mascuine clothing which helps empower his characters appearence.
 Often in thriller films, there is one character who plays a defencless female in need of a rescue. This then changes by the end of the movie when she becomes brave enough to aid/save the male protagonist. Therefore there is normally a male protagonist who defeats the residing evil of the situation to allow good to prosper. The antagonist of the film can range from a scary monster to a twisted neighbour. However there are some common characteristics in thriller films such as
-Revenge
-Anger
-Or a skewed view on events as well as bad social skills and understanding

Themes
Themes are commonly based fears and worries. They can be isolation, murder, pain, terrorism or entrapment.

Narrative
Thrillers are normally only shown from two characters point of view. The first character who is first observed is the protagonist which involves the audience in more events and creates empathy for the character.However occasionally the story is told from the villians point of viewwhich can lead to empathy for the villian also to thier twisted ways and perhaps their demented past that has led to the future. Lastly the story can also be told from the point of view from an onlooker, detaching the audience from the events s they can be more obsevervant.
The storyline has a series of events to enable the film to progress, and enable the audience to make predictions as to what might happen next. In many films this adds to the suspense and more on the edge. In thrillers the dialogue never contains a complete explanation of events or plot, to give it place, and maintain the mystery, which is essential in building up suspense.

Iconography
Setting: Can be urban, cities or quiet country villages.
Mise-en-scene:Normally dim lighting hiding parts of a character, large threatening weapons for props e.g. guns, knives etc. Colors are used to signify differenct emotions e.g. red-anger, green-jelously, blue-cold,mystery or death. Camera shots are normally P.O.V shots, frames within frames, or close-ups.