Why We Changed Our Mind

 After writing the last post and finally deciding on horror, one of my group members brought to my attention the similarities to horror that the thriller genre had. In his blog, he had listed some of the key similarities and differences between the two genres, which sparked indecision in the rest of the group. After conducting further research into the thriller and horror genres and what differentiates the two of them, my group and I all reached the consensus that thriller would not only be an easier genre to go through with, but it also leaves us more open to doing a variety of things, as the main point of a thriller is to mainly build suspense rather than terrify the viewer. In this post, I'm going to analyze some of the key differences between the horror genre and thriller genre, and evaluate which ones swayed my decision.

Horror

• Employs a "fight vs flight" dynamic, which in the beginning a character is faced with an issue in the first half of the film and tries to flee, but are forced to confront the issue directly in the second half.
• The characters make active decisions that lead them to direct confrontation with the antagonist.
• Intends primarily on scaring the viewer rather than leaving them tense.
• Exposition is usually given to the characters and questions are quickly answered and explained to the audience.
• Is usually more unrealistic and supernatural rather than realistic and plausible.

Thriller

• Characters are drawn towards the antagonist against their will rather than making active decisions to get closer to them.
• The protagonist is usually unsuspecting and living normally until the antagonist causes problems.
• Thrillers rely more on mystery rather than revealing everything to the audience, so the audience is also actively trying to figure out what is going on, thus building more suspense.
• Characters do not try to face the issue and try to get away from it.
• Is usually more realistic in the issue and in the way the characters react to the conflict caused by the antagonist.

Similarities

• Both share the "fight vs flight" dynamic. (However, in horror, the protagonist usually chooses to fight while in a thriller the protagonist chooses to try avoiding conflict.)
• A horror movie can still thrill the audience and a thriller can still horrify the audience.
• Both can contain similar plots, however, they are shown differently.
• Both can have mysterious elements to them, although horror tends to reveal the exposition more than thriller does.

What swayed my decision?

   After doing research on how the two genres are different, it became apparent to me that thriller is much more simple for a few reasons. For one, the issue at hand does not have to be identified, as in horror the exposition is usually given to the audience while in thriller it is not, making it much easier to have the conflict facing the character being anything we choose, without having to identify what exactly it is. Given it is a title sequence, it probably wouldn't be revealed anyway, however having more of a mystery is better in general as far as building tension. Another thing that made me want to do a thriller rather than horror is considering that we need to act whatever we chose to put in the movie out which would be difficult, as none of us are professional actors, and in horror there is more direct confrontation and scary things actually happening. This would be hard to pull off as our acting may not be good enough to scare the audience and may even be cheesy, however with thriller, a lot can be done through editing. The use of sound, speed and which shots are shown is enough to build suspense alone, and nothing "scary" needs to happen or be done. Going off on this however, I do want our title sequence to be creepy, but the intent is to build tension for the audience, not to terrify them.

Source

http://www.bang2write.com/2013/11/whats-the-difference-between-horror-thriller-part-2.html
http://pediaa.com/difference-between-horror-and-thriller/