Thriller Film Conventions and Target Audiences

Thriller films are usually watched by 16-25 year olds and are not usually bound to a specific gender, which is a great point for the thriller genre because it caters for a far larger target audience. There are so many different subgenres of thriller films that it makes it difficult to broadly state who their target audience is, however thriller films are usually watched by those that seek a complex, thrilling storyline that grips them from start to finish with many pitfalls that the characters seem to get themselves into but use their whit to save them, this genre of film is argued to be the more psychologically engaging genre because of all the many different thrillers that make you think about what the main character is going to do and how they are going to do it. The target audience never normally knows what the protagonist is going to do next which is usually where the thrill comes from in these movies. This is true in the movie ‘Inception’, throughout the entire story the film has its target audience on its toes, making them try to keep up with what is happening and how characters are going to overcome their problems in a very psychological dream world, the movie really makes you think and often leaves its audience confused at the end of it making it a very complex but clever film. I believe that it is this cleverness that makes its target audience so hooked on the thriller genre and that it works very well.

Thriller films are designed to keep their audience thrilled throughout the entire film, hence the name thriller; they mainly rely on suspense to achieve this and usually create the suspense through the use of a main antagonist, who is constantly causing problems for the hero. For example in the film ‘Batman the Dark Knight’ the Joker is constantly causing problems for Batman, the most thrilling scene from this movie where the joker plays a key role in causing problems for Batman is where the joker kidnaps Batsman’s girlfriend as well as the face of Gotham’s crime fighting force and straps them both to timed explosives at opposite sides of the city, making him have to choose between the love of his life and effectively the people of Gotham, this scene is so effective as we see Batman racing to save someone however we do not know who he has chosen to save until he saves them, there are many quick cross cuts between these 3 characters during his race to get to one of them which really helped to effectively raise a huge amount of tension during this scene. Making their target audience very worried for the people about to die and if Batman can get there in time to save them. Dramatic music is also used to heighten the tension in this film.

There is usually multiple plot lines happening all at once that have a direct influence upon one another, as tension rises more plotlines may open up usually when the situation becomes more dangerous and the pace in which the film flicks between these story lines speeds up. In the movie ‘Inception’ there are 3-4 different plot lines happening all at once in different stages of inception, so each character has his own quest of protecting the others from armed militia as they dive deeper into the subconscious of their targets mind.

Thriller films usually have elements of Action in them, having action in a thriller film helps to make the movie more interesting and therefore engages its target audience more thoroughly when it comes to building up the pace and tension of the movie. Action is usually used with a male hero or in many thriller films now a day’s male anti heroes, to whom the target audience has someone to be in awe of and to aspire too, the hero/anti-hero usually encounters a beautiful damsel in distress that needs the hero to save them, in the thriller genre the heroes usually have a more complex background to them and there is far more to know about the characters than in most other genre of film, this is a very effective strategy as it gets the audience intrigued and makes them want to find out why they might have a certain set of rules and ethics that they live by and why they do what they do. This point relates very well to the film ‘Taken’ were Liam Neeson’s character has his daughter kidnapped by slavers, they do not start out with a very strong relationship but by the end of the film we see the troubles he originally faced with his daughter disappear. His character is also quite the vigilante in the film however we agree that it is the right thing to do so that he can save his daughter, it is rather impressive that watching a film such as taken can make us condone murder that is effectively happening throughout the film.

The last key point of the thriller genre is that there are so many different subgenres of thriller that there is potentially something there for everyone, whether your target audience like romantic thrillers or crime and action thrillers there is always something there for them making the range of people that watch thrillers vast, this means that there is a lot of money in the thriller genre as it reaches a far greater target audience. This means that thriller also reaches niche audiences which is positive as it means there is potentially more creativity in this genre.