The History of Thriller

Thriller first arrived within literature; the first pieces were poems such as “Epic of Gilgamesh” and “Homer’s Odyssey”. In the Odyssey, the main hero, Odysseus, takes on a dangerous journey home after the Trojan War, overcoming incredible obstacles to be reunited with his wife, Penelope. These pieces were written in times of the Ancient Greeks yet ideas are still written into films in more recent years such as Jason and The Argonauts (1963). Though this film was made first made in 1963, it was remade in 2000 as a TV film. Another example of a popular thriller story is “Little Red Riding Hood” which is a story of a psychotic stalker, which seems to be a convention in the thriller genre. Little Red Riding Hood was first a fairy tale story depicting a small girl travelling through the woods to deliver food to her sick grandmother. This four hundred year old fairy tale, despite its age, was recently made into a film in 2011 starring Amanda Seyfried.

  Following the period of fairy tale and poem thrillers, in 1844 there became thriller novels such as “The Count of Monte Cristo” in which a man is wrongfully imprisoned by his friends and then finds a way to get his revenge. This novel is another example of a thriller story to be modernized and made into a film in 2002. Following from literature, a man named Alfred Hitchcock created his third silent film “The Lodger” in 1926 (but would, in later years, be received as the first “true” Alfred Hitchcock film), which was a story about Jack the Ripper. This film established his role in the film industry and gave him the themes that he would use in later films such as the innocent man on the run, fetishistic sexuality and the feeling of being hunted down by society. David Ondaatje later recreated this film in 2009 starring Alfred Molina. Alfred Hitchock’s next thriller film was “Blackmail” which also happened to be Britain’s first sound film.

 The German thriller film entitled “M”, directed by Fritz Lang, recreated the story of a serial killer named Peter Kurten who preyed on the lives of innocent children.

 Following Hitchcock’s classic films of the 1950’s, he released “Psycho” about a loner mother-fixated motel owner. This film shortly became one of the most popular films in this particular genre and has produced some inspiration to more modern films in this genre.

 In the 1990’s there were a lot of thriller films released such as Unlawful Entry, Single White Female and Misery, to name a few. Throughout this decade there was a common theme to thrillers, obsession. In Misery a writer is “rescued” by an obsessed fan and terrorized, in Unlawful Entry a police officer becomes obsessed with a woman that he saves and in Single White Female the main character’s roommate becomes obsessed. Despite this trend with obsession in the 90’s, there was one other common convention, FBI/Detectives hunting for a serial killer. In Silence of The Lambs, an FBI agent is in the middle of a psychological war with the cannibalistic psychiatrist, Hannibal Lecter. Se7en also has this theme, where a detective hunts for a serial killer who re-enacts the seven deadly sins.

 Even today, films are still using elements and themes from past thriller although in the more recent years, to avoid repeating the exact same ideas, it has become more towards the side of the horror genre; having more graphic storylines and imagery, sadistic criminals and an increasing amount of blood and gore. Recent films that have taken this idea on board include Eden Lake, The Last House On The Left and P2.