Analysis of a Genre

Analysis of a Genre

Shutter Island


The film trailer 'Shutter Island' is typical of the Thriller genre. Straight away the audience picks up on what type of genre this is. One of the most popular ways of telling is the setting; it is in a mental hospital on an isolated island. The main characters are two detectives; thrillers often use the law as a key theme. The dialogue used in this trailer leaves the audience asking questions “it’s as if she evaporated, straight through the walls” we are curious to know how the patient escaped. This film is also classed as a Psychological thriller, which is a fictional thriller story which emphasizes the psychology of its characters and their unstable emotional states. They often incorporate elements of mystery, drama, and horror, particularly psychological horror.

General themes have also appeared throughout the narratives, like reality, perception, mind, existence, identity and death. Again the dialogue used in this trailer “what if while you were looking into them, they were looking into you?” shows the reality and ideology of everything is not as it seems. This is also an example of how thrillers usually contain a plot twist to develop an unpredictable, mysterious catch to the film. It is what the audience expect from the film. Thrillers heavily stimulate the viewer's moods, giving them a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, surprise, anxiety and/or terror. Films of this genre tend to be adrenaline-rushing, gritty, rousing and fast-paced. To create the fast pace effect in this trailer, each scene doesn't last for more than 3 or 4 seconds, and jump cuts are made throughout it.

 Music plays a key part in thriller films. At the beginning of this trailer, the beat is slow and dramatic, at each key piece of information the music sound and volume changes, signifying an important line of dialogue has just been said or the plot is about to move along into a different scene. As the trailer moves along, the music beat and volume picks up and jump cuts have been made, the pace is rapidly changing and the tension is building.  Once the music is at its highest, it is suddenly cut out, releasing the tension that has just been built up. As it is a thriller, they want to build the tension back up, so they have added a slow eerie sound to create this once again. Cutting off the tension then building it back up again by music plays with the audience's feelings. 

The setting in this film is on an island home to a mental hospital for the criminally insane. The visual aspect of this trailer is dark and dismal, a typical convention to thrillers. They are also usually set in deselect places to increase the fear of the unknown; this will grasp the audience’s attention, they will feel curious because it adds mystery to the film.  This film also shows binary opposites of natural vs. Unnatural. It shows how different the patients act compared to workers and detectives.


The narrative development is fairly simple in this trailer. The setting established is the mental hospital on the island, they go there to try and find out how a patient escaped from her room, which is the disruption. The recognition of disruption is as they are trying to investigate, a storm hits and they lose all power and connections to the outside world, leaving them stranded. As they try to carry on investigating, they find new information about the hospital itself; the workers are keeping the patients quiet about something. This is the attempt to repair. The new equilibrium is investigating the actual mental institution, and what secret it is hiding. 


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