Thriller Locations

Thrillers take place mostly in ordinary suburbs and cities, although sometimes they may take place wholly or partly in exotic settings such as foreign cities, deserts, polar regions, or the high seas. This is done for 3 reasons

1. Making obstacles and sharp corners
2. Close enclosed areas that could trigger claustrophobia
3. Bringing the feeling of a thriller to the audience.

For starters, the thriller and horror genre THRIVE on using acute and 90 degree angles when illustrating tones of tension and horror when using corners and walls. A common stereotype found in cinema is, what I like to call, the "Sword through the wall" scene, where a sharp object penetrates a wall or door as the person on the other side tries to get through. This can be used as a comedic scene where the main character hides behind the door, and the sword just misses their body as it tries to cut through, but it can also convey realism panic famously demonstrated in "The Shining" by Stanley Kubrick.

Secondly, Continuing on using towns and cities, there are a lot of closed off areas within cities such as alley ways and huge buildings that you can easily get lost in. Die Hard 1 used a giant building for the characters to get lost in, and The Shining used small rooms to make the characters feel trapped and helpless, shown in the bathroom scene as well as the snowy hedge maze. With that being said, not every thriller need these conventions to be scary for the main character. For example, huge open areas can convey isolation and no areas to hide in. A common place to convey this is within West America where there are flat lands for miles on end, showing in the movie "SE7EN" with the box scene in the end.


This also appeals in the Manga "Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run", where the author had intended the story to set out in a wide open area with very little area to hide from enemies, aside from a few small hills and trees.


Lastly, Most thriller films take place in towns and cities and villages because the film wants to apply the thrill of a thriller directly to the audiences, tackling locations that normal people live in to say that "anyone can be effected by the events we are about to show". Films like Scream and The Shining and use these locations to demonstrate that normal people can be effected by these events, and the audience will feel relieved to see the victims fighting back using wit and intellect.