“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” So said the American horror writer H P Lovecraft. Like the horror genre, the thriller can take us on a primal journey into the unknown, right into the very heart of fear. However, unlike horror, thriller is an elevated genre. This means that, whilst it is hugely popular, with strong audience expectations, the thriller offers the capacity to engage the audience on multiple levels. A good thriller can weave in sophisticated themes, complex narratives, and depths of character, as the reader not only follows the thrills of the story but comes to question themselves and the world around them. The thriller writer can have their storytelling cake and eat it.
We owe much of the elevation of the thriller to one man: Alfred Hitchcock. His more than thirty films were so memorable that, in 2016, the term ‘Hitchcockian’ entered the Oxford English Dictionary. The “Master of Suspense” understood the primal nature of the emotion that his favourite genre evoked. “Fear isn’t so difficult to understand,” he explained. “After all, weren’t we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It’s just a different wolf. This fright complex is rooted in every individual.”
So what accounts for the thriller’s enduring popularity and power? Perhaps because the genre taps into our natural fascination with suspense while safely exploring the dangerous aspects of human psychology. The thriller gives us the opportunity to gaze into an abyss of murder, abuse, madness, obsession, exploitation, and addiction – without turning psycho ourselves.
In effective stories, the reader identifies with the protagonist and vicariously experiences the events of the plot through them; in the classic thriller, this identification is aided by the fact that the protagonist is an ordinary person. The action hero is usually equipped for their role, with a police or military background, and is licensed to kill. However, the thriller protagonist often stumbles into a conspiracy that they don’t understand. This helps to elevate the thriller as it seems more realistic than the action genre, with its idolised heroes who never get hurt, no matter how many times they’re shot. In contrast, the thriller protagonist is vulnerable and out of their depth, just like we would be. What would we do if we were framed for murder and had to run for our lives?
In most classic thrillers, the main character’s arc is a maturation plot. At the beginning of the story, the protagonist exists in a somewhat childlike state of innocence. They think that the police, government and experts have their best interests at heart (Enemy of the State). They believe that their employers are fighting for justice (Devil’s Advocate). They trust that their beautiful wife would never do them harm (Gone Girl). These characters find out the hard way that things are not as they seem.
On a deep level, we resonate with this universal truth. As we mature, we lose our innocence. We realise the world is not as safe as we once thought. As Jack Nicholson’s character is advised at the end of Polanski’s 1974 crime film classic, “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
On the other hand, whilst we can relate to the protagonist, we hope that we are nothing like the thriller antagonist. The terrorist, serial killer, gangster; they may once have been ordinary people but now they have gone to the dark side. They have signed the Faustian pact. Yet although we don’t like them, we can’t help but be seduced by their dark side. They break the taboos, which keep the rest of us bound. A mafioso like The Godfather refuses to be a wage slave, working for bosses who, as thrillers often demonstrate, can be just as corrupt as the legal, government-endorsed criminals.
The thriller antagonist wants to shape their own destiny. They have succumbed to their shadow, which Carl Jung defined as the darker side of the unconscious self, i.e. everything we don’t wish to be. However, as Jung revealed, although the shadow contains negative qualities like repressed desires, instincts, and socially unacceptable traits, it has positive potential. Acknowledging and confronting the shadow, rather than projecting it onto others or being overwhelmed by it, is crucial for psychological wholeness and understanding of the self.
Jung constantly emphasised this need to integrate the shadow. “Man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” On a thematic level, this may be why the thriller protagonist (and thus the audience) needs to go on the journey of the story. By confronting the shadow, the protagonist is able to grow, like George Thornhill, who lives the frivolous life of a cocktail-sipping adman at the beginning of North by Northwest but is a full-blown American hero by the end.
As E.M. Forster said in A Room with a View, “We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows.” As long as we try to escape our fear, it controls us. If we attempt to deny our bad experiences – our past, our demons – we are always on the run. The thriller demonstrates that it is only when we turn around and face the shadow, that we can integrate it and gain the power which always comes from overcoming fear. Jung confirmed, “No noble, well-grown tree ever disowned its dark roots, for it grows not only upward but downward as well.”
This need to face the shadow is so primal, it seems inseparable from the very act of storytelling. No wonder the thriller is such an ancient genre. Hitchcock may have elevated it into an art form, but Homer’s The Odyssey could compete for the title of World’s First Thriller. Written down around 800 BCE, but told in an oral tradition long before, this epic poem uses suspenseful elements like disguises, strategic foreshadowing, dramatic irony, tense encounters, and the tension of a hero operating outside his element. The constant threat of unknown dangers and the psychological pressure for Odysseus living undercover add to the thriller-like mood.
In Poetics, written around 335 BCE, Aristotle describes how the tragic drama leads to a catharsis; purging the emotions of pity and fear in the audience, leaving them purified and in harmony with universal truths. The thriller helps us to face the collective shadows in society and purge our feelings of horror and disgust. Perhaps this is the ultimate reason that the genre is elevated, because of the therapeutic release it provides. As Jung concluded, “What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate.” Hitchcock told us, “Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.” If he hadn’t been able to channel his sadism, who knows what he would have done?
Jacqueline Haigh is a story consultant who heads up the Scriptwriting Division at The London Ghostwriting Company. With over 17 years as a professional writer and script doctor, Jacqueline occupies a leading role in advising and consulting on narrative structure across film, television, stage, radio, and all major literary projects.
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