Genre

[Winter in New York]

Anyone want to have a shot at describing the difference between these two genres:

Supernatural Thriller
Horror

When does a supernatural thriller become a horror in your pitch? And what are the benefits of err-ing on the side of one genre rather than the other?

Winter in New York

[sppeterson]

For me, the difference is that supernatural thrillers tend to focus more on suspense and have more in common with straight thrillers whereas horror films are closer in structure to an action film (lots of long activity sequences). As such, supernatural thrillers have a bit more space for character development and talking. Admittedly, there isn't a clear distinguishing line.

Both of them can fit into a variety of budgets. I figure supernatural thrillers can be made more appealling to actors due to the extra space available for character development. For a horror film I think you'll want to be able to tout your set-pieces, generally gory or inventive kill scenes, much the way you'd want to talk about your set pieces in a straight asction movie. In a supernatural thriller the various twists during the story will be more important--whereas horror films can be a little more linear.

[Biohazard EHW]

I guess supernatural thriller is just a euphemism for horror...perhaps used to attract people who think horror is too stupid, thats my guess. The Shining can he called a supernatural thriller, but it's a horror movie.

[Postal Pictures]

The Ninth Gate came to mind when I saw you mention Supernatural Thriller. I'd say that supernatural thrillers have more one clear and defined protagonist, where as a lot of straight Horror films are essentially a showcase for murder, characters become less important.

I think that supernatural thrillers have more of a sense of purpose, there's more goal to it even if it is supernatural. It's not a slasher, for instance. I don't know. Maybe I'm rambling and I have no clue what I'm talking about.

[Deus Ex Machine]

A supernatural thriller is a thriller with supernatural elements in it but is structured like and contains all the genre elements of a thriller which is essentially suspense, pursuit and mystery/puzzle solving. Hicks and Hill both have written extensively on the genre and have gone into some great detail about the thriller genre.

A horror film is not structured like a thriller and emphasizes the shocking aspects (read Trauffat's Hitchcocks for an eloquent definition of the difference between surprise/shock and suspense) and horror such as gore and things that are socially and psychologically disturbing.

For me the fundamental difference between the two is that structurally thrillers are resolved by the use of superior mental force while Horrors are resolved by the use of superior physical force. The rest is a question of style and taste.

My 2 cents.

[JakeSchuster aka Ostroff]

Deus, can you elaborate a bit more on Hicks and Hill, please? Have they collaborated on a book dealing specifically with thrillers?

[wcmartell]

Gladly...

In the mid-90s horror movies (and scripts) just stopped selling. There had been so many bad low budget horror films that nobody wanted to buy a horror script...

So, someone came up with the bright idea to call them "supernatural thrillers" and movies that were being called horror one year were being called supernatural thrillers the next - the exact same movie. And you know what? As "supernatural thrillers" they sold.

Maybe there's a difference today, but back when the genre was "created" there was no difference - except one sold and the other didn't.

- Bill

[Deus Ex Machine]

Neil Hicks has written several books, one of which is called "Writing the thriller film" and John Hill used to moderate a compuserve group and made many posts about genres, some of which are archived in the files section of the compuserve group. I think it was called the "showbiz media forum".

[wendydarling11]

I agree with Deus. I have written a supernatural thriller. I have *never* written a horror movie. To me, there is a definite distinction between the two.

I think in addition to the character development that was mentioned, there's a certain plausibility to the S-T that is, at least, implied. Like, hey, let's all pretend that this could really happen. But there's something otherworldly about it. This one's emphasis is on suspense and atmosphere.

A horror film can be plausible or not. It can be about some psycho (aka a slasher film) where the antagonist is actually human...or the antagonist can be "supernatural" i.e. a zombie, werewolf, etc. But in either event there's bound to be some gore, and possibly cheap thrills.

The gospel according to Wendy D.

[Deus Ex Machine]

Hicks, like many others, does use North by North West as the example of a quintessential thriller, you could also include films like 3 Days of the Condor, Marathon Man and Enemy of the State as thrillers that also have a very strong spy element.

Typically spy films are variants of action films, occasionally they are written as variants of the crime/mystery film but generally they are action films.

I guess it all depends on the type of spy film you are writing.

[wcmartell]

Hill is no longer on Compuserve (I hardly ever show up there, either)...

I have a CD of my thriller class - I looked at NORTH BY NORTHWEST, THE GAME, BREAKDOWN, MINORITY REPORT, LADY VANISHES, THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR and BOURNE IDENTITY and discovered what they had in common, and used that as the basis of my thriller class (I also ref WAIT UNTIL DARK and DADDY'S GONE A HUNTING and a bunch of other thrillers).

Even in slasher films, the killer is usually supernatural: in HALLOWEEN Mike can't be killed no matter what, same with Jason... Freddy appears only in nightmares, etc.

- Bill

[sppeterson]

Actually, I think in the first Halloween Michael Myers wasn't supernatural--or at least it was left a little vague. In Friday the 13th Jason wasn't even present except in a dream, and then just a gnarly kid.

They added in the supernatural element when they needed to justify a long series of sequels.

[Deus Ex Machine]

Bill,

Do you have a blue book on Thrillers or a print version of your Thriller CD?

[Queen Uhuru]

wcmartell,

Your CD sounds like exactly what I am looking for. I've written a screenplay (and then a novel based on that screenplay) that I would classify as suspense/thriller (with just a hint of a romantic subplot).

I am a big Hitchcock fan and once aced a screenwriting class' final exam by forgoing the standard test questions to do an in-depth analysis (LOL, written in a two hour time frame) of Hitchcock.

Two aspects of Hitchcock movies especially fascinate me. One, making the innocent into something evil (innocent little birdies re: "The Birds") or taking a complete innocent and placing them in dire jeopardy not of their own making and seeing what happens when the sh*t hits the fan ("North by Northwest").

Two, my screenwriting teachers were fond of referring to Hitchcock's "putting the bomb on the apron of the stage" style of suspense. Allowing the audience to be aware of the imminent danger while keeping it hidden from your character(s) for as long as possible. I think I like that, too. Tends to have audiences on the edges of their seats. Not that there's anything wrong with the great surprise now and then. But I love nervewracking suspense.

The problem for me with my own screenplay is that even though I think I hit all the right technical marks, and my basic dramatic structure is sound, the "ride" is still a bit too slick. It feels like it needs a transfusion from the action genre. I think I need more physically combative scenes or imminent threats of same.

How much "mixing and matching" of genres is a good or bad idea?

If the intensity of a suspense/thriller rides on the psychological games you play with your audience and the anxiety you are able to induce, then why should it be necessary to have physical confrontatons or other "bits" from the action genre inserted into the suspense film?

And yet, without it, my screenplay feels kind of "blah" to me. What am I to do?

By the way, I don't get this same "feel" from my novel which actually satisfies on the count of grabbing the audience by the gonads and never letting go.

Queen Uhuru
The Kickass Resource for Writers, Filmmakers, Artists, and Web Designers (http://p083.ezboard.com/btheofficialunofficialpglmessageboard)

[Queen Uhuru]

Don't know if this will be helpful, but I found the following on the filmsite.org (http://www.filmsite.org/) website:
The Main Film Genres:
These are some of the most common and identifiable film genre categories:

action (http://www.filmsite.org/actionfilms.html)
adventure (http://www.filmsite.org/adventurefilms.html)
comedy (http://www.filmsite.org/comedyfilms.html)
crime/gangster (http://www.filmsite.org/crimefilms.html)
drama (http://www.filmsite.org/dramafilms.html)
epics/historical (http://www.filmsite.org/epicsfilms.html)
horror (http://www.filmsite.org/horrorfilms.html)
musicals (http://www.filmsite.org/musicalfilms.html)
science fiction (http://www.filmsite.org/sci-fifilms.html)
war (http://www.filmsite.org/warfilms.html)
westerns (http://www.filmsite.org/westernfilms.html)


A good mystery can have some thrilling and/or suspenseful elements, so here is a list of mystery categories (http://members.tripod.com/~ticket2write/catamystery.html). I know this particular list is related to writing novels and not screenplays, but the list just might help nudge a screenwriter here in the direction they need to go in with a particular story.


An interesting definition of the "thriller" can be found in the article, "The Rules of the Thriller (http://writingonspec.com/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid=14)." One of their comments is, "The thriller combines the detective story with the horror story." This article is from the Tennessee Screenwriter's Association.


Some elements of a good thriller (http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/asguru/generalstudies/culture/05film/film02.shtml).


For some reason, my mind keeps trying to think up a comedy that is written as a thriller or suspense movie and I can't name any. Would "Charade" come close or is it strictly suspense/thriller? It seemed every time that movie reached another "moment" or "beat," it was a lot of fun and very often, funny.

[wendydarling11]

The Thin Man series with Wm Powell & Myrna Loy were comedies with light suspense, I'd say. Also, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. And maybe it was just my age, but The Ghost and Mr. Chicken scared the begeesus out of me when I was little. The Raven with Vincent Price was a comedy/farce, was it not? Oh! I know - 2 Hitch films: The Trouble With Harry and Family Plot.

That's all I'm coming up with right now...I know there's more.

[Deus Ex Machine]

Some like it Hot has all the elements of a thriller but it is treated as a comedy.

Throw Mama from the Train is built on a classic thriller but treated as a comedy.

[wcmartell]

SILVER STREAK is both a comedy (Gene Wilder & Richard Pryor) and a thriller (very much like NORTH BY NORTHWEST).

One of the things on my CD (not a booklet, but Deus should e-mail me) is what makes a Thriller different from an Action movie or a Mystery.

And in the very first HALLOWEEN flick MM, dead, vanishes without a trace. Pleasance calls him pure evil, and believes he's more than just a serial killer. If you want to remove the slaher subgenre from Horror (because they are mostly junk - made cheap for gorehounds) that would make more sense than reclassifying films like THE HAUNTING which have been called Horror for decades.

- Bill

[sppeterson]

And in the very first HALLOWEEN flick MM, dead, vanishes without a trace. Pleasance calls him pure evil, and believes he's more than just a serial killer. If you want to remove the slaher subgenre from Horror (because they are mostly junk - made cheap for gorehounds) that would make more sense than reclassifying films like THE HAUNTING which have been called Horror for decades.

Sorry, Bill. I wasn't disagreeing so much as just mentioning something that I've found interesting. Particularly with "Friday the 13th" -- it's weird that the iconic character it introduced wasn't really even in the first film.

I do think though that the conventional notion of the horror genre has changed since the 60's and bifurcated into supernatural thriller and horror. And when a producer puts up a call for a horror script they're typically looking for something more like Jeepers Creepers whereas when they call for a supernatural thriller they're looking for something more like Gothic. And it's just worthwhile for a writer to keep that in mind when pitching the producer or choosing which screenplay to query with.

[Queen Uhuru]

If you are lucky enough to get two minutes of someone's time to pitch your script, it pays to do lots of homework beforehand - as in, looking up what kinds of movies that person has been involved with in the past. Then you know how to pitch to their specific wants.

Ugh. I hate making the pitching rounds. I am not exactly a social butterfly type or a sparkling conversationalist. I write. That's what I do.

I remember one pitch meeting based on a treatment I'd done that was based on a true story. The meeting was attended by the two infamous characters whose real lives were the basis for the story, the would-be producers, some money and marketing people, etc.

We were seated around this big long table and everybody was jumping in and talking. Then I raised my hand because I had something to say. I mean, I know I'm the lowly writer, but I had something to say.

So the whole meeting stops, they all are quiet, they listen with polite expressions, I finish talking and then the meeting goes on as before as if I wasn't even there. I was invisible.

If I had money, I'd hire someone who has a personality to go into pitch meetings for me.