Genre Timeline

What Women Suffer-1911-Made in Australia. This was the earliest to try and create a thriller. However, this movie was clearly limited by not just it’s black and white colour but also the sound which makes it difficult for the audience to really be scared as this genre not only heavily relies on the characters fears and beliefs, as well as, the sound to build tension and further the plot.

After Five, 1915 The first records of the thriller genre, moving to America is with this film.

The genre really started to take off when iconic film directors like Alfred Hitchcock decided to immersive themselves in it, making a more credible film proposition.

Rebecca in 1940

Rear Window 1953- this was especially well accredited and begins the real trend for modern thrillers.

In 1974 another classic thriller was created by Polanski.

Nevertheless, one of the most iconic films was Jaws (Spielberg, 75)

Taxi Driver, 1976 by the famous director Martin Scorsese was another iconic thriller. From this film came the famous lines "ARE YOU TALKIN' TO ME"

This Genre started to develop more on the physchological aspect with Silence of the Lambs (Demme, 91)

Quentin Tarantino’s pulp fiction 1994 re-enforced this development in crime-horror.

Se7en (Fincher, 95) starring Brad Pitt is another iconic thriller film

These Japanese films are the main sub genre that we believe that we would be able to re-create and exploit.

Japan made early forays into the horror genre with Bake Jizo and Shinin no Sosei, both made in 1898.

This pre-war Japanese film was one of the first Japanese horror films, but sadly like most pre-war horrors it has been forgotten over time and has not been appreciated.

Ugetsu Monogatari 1953 – Dir: Kenji Mizoguchi. – has been called ‘the most beautiful ghost story ever filmed’: visually stunning, like an ancient painting shrouded in fog and silence. This film had an extremely low budget and relied mainly on an eerie atmosphere instead of using special effects or computer graphics. This film laid out the foundations for modern Japanese horror such as ‘Ringu’ and ‘The Grudge’.

The Ring , 2002 directed by Verbisnki was the first successful film to really build on the psychological aspect of the film which aided them financially as it brought the certificate rating down. Furthermore, it changed its main character to a girl to conform to the expectations of the audience that to some extent alone explain its success. Also introduced the way for other psychological thriller remakes like the Grudge and Dark Water, as well, as its own remake.

The Grudge (Shimizu, 04)

Dark Water (Salles, 05)

The Grudge 2 (Shimizu, 05)

The Grudge 3 (Wilkins, 09)