Georgia Atherton- "Why Thrillers Thrive." Homework

The article, 'Why "Thrillers" Thrive,' is about different Thrillers and the difference between Horrors and Thrillers, and why Thrillers are a lot more satisfying.

Thrillers are Thrilling to the audience because they are seeing life reflected, but the kind of life that we will never experience ourselved that consists of emotional disturbances which provide us with the thrills. Our nature is to have these thrills or shake ups, but as we can rarely experience them ourselves we have to experience them artificially, for example in the cinema or a theatre where it has been made for us. In a well made film we not only watch the film, we participate in it in our own way as we appreciate what the characters on stage are going through and we project ourselves into thier conciousness.

A good Thriller, such as 'Hells Angels,' there is no harm to the audience because in our subconcious we are aware that we are safe as we are only visually watching the cinema and know to ourselves that we wont be harmed. For example, when the pilot decides to crash his plane to destroy it, the audience are aware of his inevitable death. This is followed by the viewers seeing his grim face as the plane falls. We almost feel as if we are there with the pilot, also crashing to our deaths, and as his plane crashes, shudders and thrills run through the audience.

However, a bad thriller such as an exhibition show promising thrills to the audience. The audience were sat between two columns facing a curtain. They expected the curtain to rise, however, one of the columns began to fall over toppling on to the audience. It was then suspended above them before it fell completely. This caused the audience fear, not thrills, and therefore there were a lot of complaints about it as the audience's feeling of security was undermined.

A horror is an entirely different type of cinema. It originally means "extreme adversion," and there are a lot of different types of horror, varying from drastic to mild. They were made to provide an emotional jolt to exploit sadism, perversion, bestiality and deformity. Horrors are generally vicious, dangerous and gruesome. Horrors also provide unnatural excitement to the viewers.

"A Thriller must be wholehearted- the more exciting the better and that is why the authentic thriller will live and thrive, and the horror film will die."