Audiences all over love films such as Joker, Silence of the Lambs and American Psycho. However, with all of these films, there leaves a puzzling question that many can’t quite answer— is this a horror movie, or is it a thriller?
Where is the line between the two genres? It seems like an easy question to ask at first, but upon reflection, it becomes difficult to answer. The line becomes blurry, as many thriller movies use the medium of film to creep out or disturb the audience, just as a horror movie would.
This makes the line especially difficult to distinguish. I have heard this question being posed for many films, as both genres often include elements of suspense, as well as shocking moments that leave the viewer uneased.
With these similarities in mind, it makes sense that the audience for these genres overlap. For some, the answer itself doesn't quite matter. After all, if you like the film, does it matter what it could be labeled as?
However, it can be an interesting question to think about. What makes a genre of movie distinguished from other genres, and why do we label certain movies as thrillers and others as horrors?
What makes a film a horror movie, and not a thriller movie? Is it the level of scares, or the subject matter? Does the label really matter at all?
Let’s look back at film history, and remember the past of the horror and thriller genre in order to look into what makes these two genres.
The history of the thriller genre
As many people know, the filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock is one of the major reasons that the thriller genre is the way that it is today. Hitchcock is a huge inspiration for many creators, and many filmmakers today are building off of the filmmaking language that he used to make his films a success.
Many writers and creatives have heard about the bomb under the table analogy that Hitchcock used in a seminar to show how showing the audience small hints of information can increase the tension in a scene. It is a good way to explain how to create suspense within a narrative medium.
In short, showing something like an explosion would be very shocking for a short period of time. However, what would be more impactful, is cutting to a bomb under the table while characters are talking.
The dramatic irony of the audience knowing information that the characters are not aware of makes the scene more engaging, and makes the audience anxious for the characters in a scene.
This is a major notable component in the thriller genre— suspense. Thriller films will use methods such as suspense, dramatic irony, or mystery in order to keep the viewer engaged.
In the book After Hitchcock: Influence, Imitation, and Intertextuality, Boyd and Palmer identify the main genre that Hitchcock is known for as the ‘suspense thriller.’ These allowed Hitchcock to create successful, engaging films on a lower budget, as most of the tension of a suspense thriller lies in the psychological aspects.
Interestingly enough, one of Hitchcock’s most famous films is considered a horror film. Psycho is an extremely influential film, and one that changed the landscape of horror media as we know it.
Though it may seem tame to modern audiences, audiences in the 1960’s were bewildered by the darkness and uncomfortable imagery in Hitchcock’s Psycho. Notably, in an 1960 issue Time magazine gave a mixed review of the film, saying that “... the delicate illusion of reality necessary for a creak and shriek movie becomes, instead, a spectacle of stomach-churning horror.”
The quote itself is an interesting display of the difference between the expected nature of Hitchcock films at the time, and what a modern audience would want to see now. It is important in context to remember that this was in the midst of the era that the Hays Code would be in place, which meant that the audience would be unused to certain material and imagery in films.
The effect of the Hays Code has meant that audiences at the time had been unused to seeing stories in which there was no clearly defined ‘good’ or ‘evil’, or stories in which the ‘criminal’ does not get punished by the end of the film. The guidelines were very specific and limiting, which meant that the films most audiences of that era had seen in theaters were very largely exceptionally tame.
The audience wasn’t used to being this uncomfortable by a film for a very long time. The idea of leaving a film feeling uneasy was something that a lot of people considered to be an inherently bad thing, and a reason that the film would be considered of poor quality.
However, nowadays, many people long for the media that creates this exact feeling. This is the very reason that it seems that Psycho was so influential for the horror genre. In later decades, Psycho had become more widely beloved, and the idea of a film making you feel anxious or uneasy was considered to be a sign of quality from those involved.
How can we separate horror from thriller, when the history of the two genres is so entangled with the other? It is difficult to discuss the history of horror movies without mentioning thrillers, and some notable movies labeled as thrillers seem to push the boundaries into horror.
Ultimately, the names of genres are just a means to market a movie, and to tell the audience what to expect from the film. A thriller is meant to leave you tense, waiting for what will happen next. A horror movie is meant to disturb or to scare, to make you uncomfortable and make you think about the dark subjects most genres do not cover.
Given the history of the thriller genre, do you still think of the two genres as separate? Would you call a beloved film like American Psycho a horror movie, a thriller movie, or would you consider it to be both?