Why 'Thrillers' Thrive

Our group have all spent time reading the article "Why 'Thrillers' Thrive", which was featured in the magazine, Picturegoer. We found this was useful to explain how and why thrillers will live on well past horror films in the future.

We tend to have an awareness that we usually watch a film to experience someone else's life "the kind we don't experience ourselves". Thrillers seem to involve "disturbances which, for convenience, we call 'thrills" which as a person we become intrigued by, therefore getting drawn into the film. It is in our nature to "have these shake ups" through a screen instead of real life situations. This enables us to view another life in the safety and security of "an armchair", whilst we watch the "struggle and turmoil of life through a window". Although we do not simply watch or spectate but "participate" in the thriller, the audience becomes very attached to the film and the characters, just by our human nature. In our opinion we agree with this and have found ourselves imagining ourselves as the protagonist and asking how we would react in that situation. 

The most disturbing scenes in thriller and horror films are a result of skilled actors, trained animals along with skillful editing. As students taking a media A-level course we believe we have done well to keep our scenes less disturbing but while still portraying the thriller characteristics due to a lack of these high standard skills. An example of a film that has used these skills is "The Crusades", this did not really feature harm to any of the horses in the production and they were simply "trained to fall". However, horrors are very different in this way,  there meaning is "extreme aversion" which provide emotional jolts that the audience experience. In the film industry these genre of films are referred to as no more than "unnatural excitement". So the conclude, the authentic thriller will live on and be successful, just as the horror film will eventually die.