Difference between Horror/Thriller films

Cafe Society
1

Hello all,

A conversation after a night of films at my house a few weeks ago let off a few sparks and started a few small fires.

Somebody asked what the difference was between a Horror film and a Thriller.

I, having wondered about it before, said that though I hadn’t really been able to find any concrete answers, there was a theory saying that it was that a Horror is fantasy-based - it contains things that couldn’t actually exist/occur in what we know to be true of the world we live in. A Thriller however, is reality based - it might be unlikely, it might be unrealistic - but the things it portrays are theoretically possible within human knowledge.

I also mentioned that when I applied this theory on my wanders around local video rental/sale places - it seemed to hold true for the way they had classified and divided their films.

However - I was attacked immediately from several corners. I was informed by a drama-student friend (who made me even less likely to listen to him by prefacing everything he said with ‘I wrote a 5000 word thesis and…’) that I was wrong. He wasn’t really able to give me any argument as to why - or what the alternative answer was - but apparently I was very. very wrong. He did seem to be leaning towards the idea that there was no difference.

I was annoyed after everybody left - not because he had challenged me but because he had done so without any alternative answers. Poking around the net I have found several sites where the matter is discussed (tempers also seemed to flare up there) but no real answers.

Is there an industry standard for the difference between the two genres?
If there is no standard, how do things get classified? Arbitrarily by some cinema manager?

What do you personally think the difference is? Is there one?

Obviously, I think that there is certainly a difference. Why bother labeling them as different things if they are one and the same? If, as yet, there is no standard - there should be one - and the Horror-unreal/Thriller-real one is, to my mind, a good one.

Footnote: I was unsure whether this should go in Cafe Society (it being a question about film genre), General Questions (my desire for it to be a question with a concrete, factual answer), or IMHO (If there isn’t a factual answer, it likely end up being a list of opinions). If anybody thinks it should be elsewhere, please report it and Mods can shuffle it along if they wish.

2

I’ve always thought a horror flick should have some kind of supernatural (or fantasy, as you put it) element, as a necessary condition. But that’s just my opinion, and clearly many differ.

3

Horror needs a supernatural or fantasy element – that works for me. I think the definition matters most to publishers and writers, and the people who decide where a book is placed in the store.

On the other hand, I think of Jaws and Silence of the Lambs as horror movies, and there was noting supernatural or fantastical in them.

It does make for interesting discussions, but I’ve yet to see an answer that everyone agrees on.

4

That’s interesting. Do you think it’s because they succeed in giving people a scare, for the most part?

I find I think of Jaws as a horror and SotL as a thriller. But then, I do find that I find the shark’s behaviour in Jaws to be… unconvincing. Perhaps my brain told me that it was too fake - and thus a fantastical idea. Although it wasn’t intended as such.

Maybe we just think of thrillers as exiting/suspenseful up until the point that they give us some sort fear (however small) and then they become horrors? I mean, in our heads, of course. My head, anyway.

5

The supernatural end is part of it, but the point of a horror film is to scare the audience. A thriller (see Alfred Hitchcock) is not about scares, but rather about the hero being put into danger.

If the point is to make an audence scream, it’s horror. If the point is to make the audience just feel tense, it’s a thriller.

And a thriller is much harder to pull off than horror (which is one of the easiest effects to achieve in film).

6

I have no idea.

Maybe we could come up with some more examples of horror movies and thrillers, analyze how they made us feel – whether we were scared or just tense, and if the feeling lasted after the movie was over.

Did your wordy friend cite any examples?

7

And it’s a damn shame. The film makers can make us jump or go “ewww”, but the effect doesn’t last. If it’s real horror, we should feel a sense of unease, and it should last for awhile. We should be able to think of that movie and get the feeling all over again.

Maybe that’s why SotL might fit in the horror category. I still get creeped out by Jame Gumb. :slight_smile:

Is Psycho horror or thriller?

8

I was thinking of something along those lines, as well. Alfred Hitchcock is a good example, except I think Psycho might fall under horror.

9

The point came up after we watched M Night Shamalayan’s ‘The Village’. The video store labeled it thriller. (When I returned it, I asked them what their protocol was for horror/thriller. They use Horror-Unreal/Thriller-real.) I’m going to spoiler box this in case some unwilling viewer stumbles across it:

[Spoiler]I would have also been forced to call it a thriller, by the definition I offered because in the end, everything that happened is possible.

I felt however, that it was deliberately put together like a horror film to retain the semi-twist-at-the-end effect of the village’s founders being the monsters ‘those we do not speak of’. My friend felt it was a horror because it was put together like that, trying to recreate the effect of a horror and then resolving it as a kind of scary reality. I think he had a good point there - [/spoiler]

  • some movies blur the lines.

I want to keep writing but am at work! I will return!

10

In my book, Horror is about monsters, whether supernatural, human, animal, mineral, or vegetable. Examples would include Jaws, Frankenstein, Psycho, Saw, Friday the 13th, Mummy, Silence of the Lambs, Weekend at Bernies, etc.

Thriller is about being in imminent danger and how the protagonist deals with extacting himself for said danger. Examples are North By Northwest, Vertigo, Wages of Fear, Any number of good guy on the run from the bad guy flicks, etc, Hostage, Passenger 57, Gaslight, Marathon Man, etc.

Thillers seem to be much more difficult to produce. No one was better than Hitchcock.

There also can be some crossover. Marathon Man has a antagonist that is bit of a monster. Jaws is less about the monster than the threat.

That is why there can be a lot of mislabeling, and why a lot of stores lump them together.

11

It’s probably cliched by now, but I believe the only example of a movie that satisfies both the Horror and Thriller genres is The Hitcher.

12

This is a damn fine post, Revedge.

I’d like to add the observation that the goodly majority of thrillers involve essentially ordinary people in sudden, unexpected and often unanticipated circumstances (there’s a good many thrillers with novice, off-duty, retired or on vacation cops… BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK through DIE HARD through THE BONE COLLECTOR.)

Thrillers at their core have some sort of compelling mystery that must be solved, a question that life and limb depends on being answered, that drives the antagonist or protagonist. In Marathon Man, it was “Is It Safe?”

Horror is about evoking fear and revulsion in the audience, which is why gore is such a big part of the genre now.

13

That’s often where I find myself drawing the line. Gore. Not that I don’t dig the gore, it’s just what separates horror from thriller, in my book. Until this thread, I’d never heard the natural/supernatural distinction, and I can solidly get behind that.

14

I think the sort of movies that tread the line work with the unfamiliar, which is a broad term for the crucial element of horror. The supernatural is almost automatically unfamiliar. Often even in horror movies with ‘natural’ horrors (e.g. Jaws) the protaganist of the horror movie (and ideally, the audience) is unfamiliar with whatever the thing is. If there will be a conventional positive ending, they might learn from some wizened veteran, or they might learn on their own how to beat it. The wizened veterans even show up in supernatural horror at times as well.

By this logic, most horror sequels will suck. Alien is more of a horror movie than Aliens (in which the protaganist is the veteran). By the time we have to clone the veteran specifically to fight the alien, it’s almost entirely in the realm of action. This also mostly works for The Village.
There is a bit of difficulty explaining the endless slasher sequels. They may rightly be a subgenre of horror, and I’m not familiar enough with them to go into detail. I think that often you have at least some new set of people to scare.
Of course, both thrillers and horror work with the unfamiliar. The protaganist in a thriller ends up in an unfamiliar, but usually recognizable situation. They can almost immediately develop a plan, and thus plot twists are sometimes introduced to keep them on their toes. I’d say that a movie in which the heros are transported to some alternate fantasy dimension, but they’re given a map to the exit, and have to simply run a gauntlet to get out, is mostly thriller. If they’re taken to the same place, not told anything, and have every expectation of being attacked and killed at any time, I’d consider it horror.

15

panamajack. The appeal of slasher sequels is the gore I mentioned two posts ago. Traditional horror needs the unexpected and unfamiliar, with some jump scare moments for fright. Gore sidesteps this by concentrating on the hundreds of permutations for beheading someone.

16

A horror film is horrifying. A thriller is thrilling.

Or,
A horror film is one in which awful things happen. A thriller is one in which awful things threaten to happen.

17

Thudlow Boink. There are plenty of war, sci-fi and action movies in which absolutely horrific things happen (SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, DELIVERANCE, STARSHIP TROOPERS and last year’s KING KONG and STAR WARS: REVENGE OF THE SITH, to name a few.) But no one I know would classify them as horror.

Similarly, I can think of several thrillers in which something awful does in fact happen, not just threaten to happen: Silence of the Lambs, The Hitcher, Se7en, Training Day, The Birds.

Horror films have scenes designed/intended to frighten, gore and an element of the alienating unfamiliar we (the audience) want to see destroyed, be they supernatural, natural or alien. A thriller’s agenda is usually to try and solve some kind of mystery or reveal a secret in the process, though. In most thrillers this does happen but in Ridley Scott’s ALIEN and James Cameron’s ALIENS questions are raised, but never answered.

18

Thrillers are about danger. Horror is about fear.

19

I think **askia ** nailed it – horror has to include an element of disgust and revulsion. What pushes **Alien ** into horror is the reproductive cycle of the alien; otherwise it would just be a monster movie. **Psycho ** becomes horror with the revelation of Norman’s relationship to Mom. **King Kong ** is a fantasy action flick, except for the spider pit sequence, which is horrifying.

20

Great thread!

Personally I find that it is too difficult to catagorize many films because they have elements of different genres and that the terminology can be messy. This is especially true when using the same terms for genres as modifiers for others. Is a monster film horror or sci-fi or neither? Is it fantasy? The aforementioned Alien is sc-fi, but it is also horror, monster film, and fantasy. The sequel, Aliens is IMHO, mostly an action film with elements of horror set within sci-fi realm. So which is it? A more confusing example might be the sci-fi flick Saturn 3 which feels like a thriller set in space, but still contains dread, fear, violence and some gore. So is it horror/sci-fi or thriller/sci-fi? What about Dark City or Jacob’s Ladder? They both play out like thrillers. Both have fear and revulsion. Both thrill, both horrify. Supernatural thrillers? :confused: