What is a Thriller?

A Thriller is a meta-genre, this is the emotions and reactions that should come from it, for example fear. Thrillers rely heavily on the plot, fear within the audience, suspense, apprehension or basic worries which people have. These can be simple fears that make the audience emotionally involved. They usually contain universal themes and work with a sense of delay, as they use the time that the audience sitting there waiting for something to happen, to build up suspense so the audience become even more scared. Thrillers as a genre work because they are sadomasochistic, as the audience likes to see somebody else feeling discomfort, to make the audience believe what is happening they use ambivalence, and too make them emotionally involved in what is happening. There are various different types of thrillers:
Espionage/Spy Thrillers. E.g. James Bond
Psychological Horror. E.g. Saw
Supernatural Thrillers. E.g. Drag me to Hell
All these genres are classified and identified by their key conventions, which are their intricacy of plot, a focus on fear, a complex unraveling narrative, a sense of delay, apprehension and suspense, and enigma codes, which are mysteries and questions, that the audience will be asking throughout the film as to what is happening, meaning there is something unknown with the audience.
Other conventions are that the audiences are pleasure derived from the discomfort of individuals, and voyeurism, meaning to be aware of something that the character isn’t. If a thriller contains each of there conventions it makes them a good thriller and it fulfills the expectations that the audience have.