"The 'thriller' is not really a genre unto itself. There are action thrillers, erotic thrillers, supernatural thrillers, and even more drama-oriented thrillers with deeper character development. There are some common threads that tie them all together; the best thrillers are plot-driven films with strong elements of suspense. They usually have shades of film noir and are often violent, but crucially also contain mysteries and surprising twists that keep you hooked from beginning to end. Alfred Hitchcock was considered the 'master of suspense,' but that's because he was almost exclusively making thrillers, be they spy thrillers, horror thrillers or psychological thrillers. More modern directors like De Palma, Scorsese, Bong Joon-ho, and Fincher are all working in Hitchcock's long shadow. Ultimately, the thriller is the super-genre that subsumes other sub-genres and best taps into the foundational appeal of all storytelling: Our primordial need to know what happens next." - slashfilm.com
