Common Features of a Thriller?

A thriller is a suspenseful adventure, it can be a story, play or movie.
The effect of a thriller is to thrill the audience, they are meant to create suspense amongst their audience.

There are many different thriller films out there, a few examples could be Shooter(2007) Vantage point(2008) The strangers(2008) and Obsessed(2009). The plots of these films are very different yet there always seems to be a dominant hero or villain despite their endings.

Shooter = The hero can jump through time and space to different places, however the villain hunts down these jumpers and the audience watch the hero be hunted down and tried to be killed. The adventure excites the audience and in the end the hero prevails as usual.

Vantage Point = The president gets shot and the day it happens is shown through the eyes of all the different characters. The audience are to watch this and decide for themselves who are the good guys who are the bad guys and watch the story unfold from every angle so they get the full picture at the end.