A thriller is a genre of literature, novel, film, and play whose primary feature is to induces strong feelings of excitement, anxiety, tension, suspense, fear and other similar emotions with an electrifying plot in its readers or viewers; in other words, to thrill the audience normally involving crime or spying often including themes of terrorism and political conspiracy to cause heightened moods of intrigue and suspense. Thriller is an important genre because it excites the audience; their whole purpose is to induce the strongest emotional responses possible. This can allow the audience to experience feelings that, they never feel on a day to day basis, yet providing a level of generally fearful excitement that would often be difficult as well as unusual to achieve. The audience do not typically want to experience these emotions in their own lives daily; since thrillers are fictional the suspense that thrillers produce in the audience are exhilarating rather than essentially intimidating.

Thriller movies have sub-genres such as mystery thrillers, an example is shutter island is a psychological thriller directed by martin Scorsese’s U.S. Marshals Edward “Teddy” Daniels, who is investigating a psychiatric facility on shutter island in Boston harbor after one of the patients goes missing and Mark Ruffalo plays his partner officer (Chuck Aule) Ben Kingsley is the facility’s lead psychiatrist (Dr. John Cawley). Andrew Laeddis is a US marshal with a wife called Rachel Solando is played by (Dolores Chanal) who is played by Michelle Williams, that has mental health issues as well as manic depressive wife. In spite of people’s advice, Andrew chooses to ignore her condition and one day she drowns then murders their children. 

Andrew is overwhelmed with anger and murders Dolores which makes him go insane and give up on life. So, he decides to admit himself in shutter island then is introduced and treated with Dr. Crawley as well as Dr. Sheenhan for 2 years. Andrew has started to hallucinate and is convinced that he is Edward who is in shutter island too. Dr. Crawley pursues permissions to conduct a huge role-play to bring Andrew out of his fantasy, furthermore the film sees Edward being taken through this role-play as well as his conspiracies are fueled towards the end at the lighthouse, which is supposed to be center of all human experiments, the truth is exposed.

Edward is Andrew! A patient at ashecliffee now therefore they need to patiently wait for a day to observe his behavior and see if his mental health remains with him. Next morning Andrew acts like he has regressed because he finds it impossible to live with the knowledge of being responsible for his family’s death. He is taken away to have surgery performed with an incision into the prefrontal lobe at the front of his brain. Also, Scorsese uses sharp camera angles and creates a dark atmosphere with use of lighting that pays homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s work. The elements of mysterious island destination plus strandedness emphasises the psychoanalytic thriller genre and creates a suspenseful movie that sets the mood for a uncertain plot twist.  

In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 classic “vertigo”, the story was based on the 1954 novel D’entre les morts (from Among the dead) by Boileau-Narcejac. The main character detective john “Scottie” Ferguson who is played by (James Stewart) is pressured into early retirement because an incident in the line of duty that caused him to develop acrophobia which means an extreme fear of heights. the reason for this is from the trauma with the death of a police officer who died trying to save him from falling to his death. 

Furthermore, Hitchcock amplifies Ferguson’s fear with other thrilling aspects of the film, using a variety of codes and conventions through use of a range of camera shout, lighting and color as well as sound. Thriller films tend to use these techniques in a way to serve as mood-setters, symbols and motifs for foreshadowing for example, the uses of dark and dim lighting gives the audience a sense of suspense and oncoming helplessness, moreover allowing them to presume something sinister or unfortunate events will occur to the characters in the near future. The final scene of the film where Scottie appears at the top of the bell tower and reveals that he knows about how Madeleine’s actual name is Judy Barton as well as she helped support and conspired Gavin Elster murder of the actual Madeleine is a tense and anxious sequence of exposition with explanations from both Judy and Scottie more uses of color are depicted in the surreal montage of flashing, changing and swirling images, used in the very beginning of the film and in Scottie’s nightmare.


In one way or another Vertigo shows a significant thriller codes and conventions with sound. Hitchcock uses both diegetic and non-diegetic sound to enhance and create suspense with tense sequences for example, the recurring motif of the scream, is used to exhibit fear and shock, and in the case of “Vertigo”, death. The audience hear three screams in the film which are the following. The policeman’s who screams as he drops to his imminent death after his unfortunate attempt to help Scottie up from his dangerous predicament, ‘Madeleine’s’, whose identity is actually Judy, screams because she was intimated and afraid of the horror of Gavin’s actions, as he throws the real Madeleine’s body off of the tower; and Judy’s, who screams for the same reason as the policeman she falls to her death, this sound represents an unnerving fear, experienced in the scene of meeting with death, something that is common in some thrillers.

Cape Fear is a psychological thriller film directed by Martin Scorsese, the film tells a story of a convicted rapist who attempts with his new acquired knowledge of the law and its numerous understanding of loopholes wants vengeance against a former defense attorney that he blames for his 14-year imprisonment because of the intentional faulty defense tactics used during trial. Bowden is flawed and guilty and everyone in this film is delicate or fragile in one way or another, and there are no heroes which makes give it the unique Scorsese’s touch. 

The movie is set in Florida near Fort Lauderdale, shows Nolte at the head of a troubled family. He and his wife Jessica Lange who is played by (Leigh Bowden) have been attending counseling classes because of his infidelities and now he appears to be in the beginning stages of a new affair. They live in a house that covers a lot of land, however there isn’t space enough for their daughter Juliette Lewis who is played by (Danielle Bowden), who dislikes when they argue/fight then locks herself in her bedroom and watch MTV shows. This is a family that has a lot of problems before Max Cady arrives on the scene. Max Cady is played by (Robert De Niro), in a role filled by Robert Mitchum in 1962, with tattoos spelling out biblical warnings. Cady is a gym bodybuilding southern confederate supporter who learned to read in prison ‘I started with Dick, Jane and Spot and went on to lawbooks’. 

He drives into town in a Mustang convertible and offers to teach Bowden something about the law. with this new version of Max Cady, Scorsese gives us not just a terrible man, yet an evil and sadistic one; whose whole agenda is to show Sam Bowden he’s a criminal too. A thickness of a sinister undertones centers around the entire film and is sensationalised in the character of Danielle, the Bowden’s daughter, who is going on 16 and is attracted to the menace and implied sexuality of Max Cady. It’s as if she likes anybody who can bug her parents. In a tense disturbing scene, Cady poses as a drama teacher and Danielle goes along even after she knows who his real identity, allowing herself to be verbally seduced because villainous and danger are attractive to her. Cape Fear shows impressive moviemaking, showing Scorsese as a master of a traditional Hollywood genre who is able to mold it to his own themes and obsessions. 

Nonetheless this $35 million movie with big known movie stars, special effects and great use of production. The film opens with an establishing shot of a rippling lake which starts to change colour as the scene transitions through the use of mise-en-scene the director is able to use the water with its colors to represent the codes and conventions of the thriller genre with black and blue colors of the water having undertone of death and tragedy. Helping to establish the films dark thriller atmosphere or when the water changes to red which shows elements of danger and destruction which illstrues something horrible will happen at this lake foreshadowing the movie’s plot.

In conclusion the thriller genre, provides and provokes a level of excitement and emotion in its audience that other genres struggle to achieve. It allows its readers and viewers to be entertained by their own intense reactions to what is going on in the plot, going through emotions that they normally wouldn’t experience outside of fiction.