Significant Developments Within The Genre: The Introduction To CGI

The obvious development within the genre and over all genres is that we now have our thriller movies in colour.

The film Psycho was in black and white and although it gave you a sense of fear and tension, it was not good as you couldn't quite relate yourself to the film. Nowadays thriller films such as se7en are in colour and they use it to there advantage. They use it to create dark shadows and cause us to be on edge throughout the film.


Another development with thriller films is that they used to be more physiological rather than having a fast moving plot. Take Psycho again as an example it was very psychological, and now the thriller films combine psychological elements with fast moving plots etc. The Bourne Supremacy (2004) has a fast moving plot and has many special effects and is very different to Psycho. They were mainly psychological because they did not have the advanced technology that we have now days, so therefore they made there thriller films play with your mind, rather than make it fast and exciting.


CGI is Computer Generated Imagery and this has made the thriller films fast and exciting using animation and many special effects.

It is a relatively new concept within the thriller genre. For example when Thunderbirds was released we could see the strings of the puppets etc. Now in the thriller movies we have people flying through the air, e.g Spiderman etc.
The first films that were heavily created with CGI were Tron(1982) and The Last Starfighter(1984). These films were commercially a disaster.

It was the film Jurassic Park in 1993 that revolutionized the film industry. As the dinosaurs fitted in seamlessly within the action scenes. 3D CGI became a success.

Then 2D CGI became increasingly popular and was used with the traditional animated movies such as Beauty and the Beast.

In 1995 the first fully CGI animated film was produced, Toy Story. This film was a big commercial success.
After this success many other animation studios went into production. (see Institutions Producing The Thriller Genre)

Thriller films benefit lots from CGI because many of the scenes now look realistic and they also help with all the needed conventions within Thrillers.

Now many other types of genre are using CGI as it is so effective.