Thriller Research

WHAT IS A THRILLER?
A thriller is a genre for fiction works, such as films, TV programs or books. In thrillers the main elements are excitement, suspense and tension, and usually use indepth storylines to exaggerate these elements. There are sub-genre thrillers such as:

Action thriller
Adventure thriller
Sci-fi thriller
Crime thriller
These 4 sub-genres are the most common. The mix of genres work well for different storylines and help the audience feel how the makers of the film want their audience to feel. For example, an action thriller may make the audience feel a lot more excited than a crime thriller, because the action would be used to heighten this element, whereas a crime thriller would heighten the amount of suspense and tension due to the enigma.

There are hybrid thrillers such as:

Action Adventure thriller
Crime Horror thriller
Crime Mystery thriller

Hybrids allow the audience to get different elements from different genres which come together to make a thriller that can target a wider audience. This is why hybrids are so popular.
WHAT SHOULD THRILLERS ACHIEVE?
A successful thriller is normally a thriller considered to heighten the audience's emotions of anticipation, uncertainty, anxiety, suspense, excitement terror and tension. If a thriller does this it is seen to be a good thriller as it has achieved what a thriller is supposed to do to an audience. 

HISTORY OF THRILLERS
After the death of President Kennedy, thriller films became very popular. Early stages of thriller films include thrillers by Alfred Hitchcock such as The Lodger and Blackmail. Most thriller films in the early days were political thrillers and paranoid thrillers, and were a grat success as not many forms of thrillers had appeared in films before this time. As thrillers developed over time, new sub-genres became more popular than others, and in the past decade psychological thrillers are the most common, such as The Silence of the Lambs. Whilst psychological thrillers are most common, there are still thrillers being made with elements of thrillers of the past, such as The Last House on the Left which includes violence as it's main theme as opposed to psychological problems.

CONVENTIONS
Cliffhangers are very often used in thrillers, which leaves the audience to think for themselves. This allows their own imagination to the storyline which is a very common convention. It involves the audience in the storyline making them feel more involved and therefore even more scared/excited/tense in other parts of the film or book or program, because they feel part of the action.
Red Herrings are also used a lot, where the audience are lead to think that a certain thing is down to somebody who it actually isn't. It makes the audience feel good if they get the answer right or just more shocked when they get it wrong, and both senses are good to feel about a storyline, making it more effective.
Important information is normally hid from the audience to creat enigma and confusion, and fight and chase scenes are also commonly used, but every storyline has different techniques and characteristics.
Each sub-genre is likely to have its own niche variety of conventions, such as psychological thrillers having stalking or obsession, mental illness or mind games. This is opposed to something such as a crime thriller, where kidnappings and hostages are likely themes.