Key Characteristics of Thrillers & Psychological Thrillers

To gain greater understanding of the Thriller genre and the general conventions of thriller films and Psychological Thrillers as that's our chosen genre for our film opening.

Thrillers
Thriller films usually involve:

• A protagonist:c The character is usually curious, searching for greater good, faced with death at one point, on a quest and the film is usually from their point of view. The 'good guy' or the person we side with the most in the film.
• Antagonist: The 'bad guy'. Must be stronger than the protagonist.
• Protagonist and Antagonist  must come into conflict at one point
• Mystery that must be solved
• Desire for justice and the morality of individuals
• A Thriller must promote intense excitement, suspense, high level of anticipation, uncertainty, anxiety, nerve wracking tension

Psychological Thriller
A psychological usually involves all those of a normal thriller plus:
Characters have to rely on their mind rather than their physical strength. The suspense created by psychological thrillers often comes from two or more characters preying upon one another's minds, either by playing deceptive games with the other or by merely trying to demolish the other's mental state.

• Stream of Consciousness – Written equivalent of the character's thought processes. In psychological thrillers,through word usage, descriptions, or visuals we are invited into the characters mind.
• First Person Narrative – In the opinion of the character and thus able to understand the mechanics of the characters' minds. 
• Back Story – what has happened before hand. This deepens the psychological aspect of the story since the audience is able to more fully understand the character; more specifically, what the character's motivations are and how his/her past has shaped their current way of thinking.

Gaining a good understanding of these characteristics we allow us to be able to use some of these features in our film and narrative, for example for a first person narrative we could have a one of our characters doing a voice over, a stream of consciousness could also be done in this way.