Thriller Conventions

- Crime at the core of the narrative.
- False paths, false clues, red herrings, enigmas (Anna in "The Third Man" is enigmatic/unreadable. Questions asked why she is still in love with Harry Lime who committed henious crimes against children by watering down penicillin.)
- Resolutions to the crime often ambiguous. (For example "Se7en" - the villain/psychopath has been hunted down but the detective's wife is murdered/beheaded, thus a dark ending.)
- Protagonist/main character is disempowered and drawn into a web of intrigue by antagonist (the person or persons opposing him or her. Holly Martens in "The Third Man" is drawn into a web of intrigue in post war Vienna and is mostly out of his depth.)
- Protagonist is often flawed (For example Holly Martens crashes into Vienna like an innocent and refuses to accept his limitations.)
- Extraordinary events occur in ordinary situations (In "Heavenly Creatures" two girls murder their mother on a walk in park land. Also, In "The Godfather part 1" where a mafia rival wakes up in bed with the bloodied head of his horse on the pillow beside him. In "Psycho" Marion Crane is knifed to death whilst taking a shower in an isolated motel.)
- Themes of voyeurism, (For example the point of view shot in the opening of "Psycho", the camera takes the audience through the window of a cheap hotel room where Marion Crane is having a rendezvous with a married man.)
- Elements of mise-en-scene frequently reflect the protagonist's emotional state. Shadows, lift shafts, alley ways, car parks, car bots, spiralling star cases all redlect the entrapment of the hero and the suggestion there is no way out. Wet streets and narrow roads indicate a fall into a world that is confusing. In "The Third Man" the tilt shots, noir lighting, spiralling stair cases, the sequence on the ferris wheel all connote the web of confusion Holly finds himself in. In Peter Weir's "Withness", after the child witnesses the mirder in the toilet John Book takes the child and his Amish mother, Rachel Lapp, into the unglamorous streets of New York, thus indicating her sense of horror and the murky unforgiving workd John Book exists in.
- The hero is often in peril towards the end of the film thus building up suspense.
- Deviant women/femme fatale is a convention of classic noir thrillers. This woman is usually unglamorous and seductive and draws the hero/protagonist into further peril.
- Themes of identity - who is the protagonist/antagonist.
- Line between good and evil often blurred. (For example "Blade Runner", a sci-fi film with thriller conventions. The replicant and Deckard, blade runner - roles are reversed at the end of the film.