Suspense in the context of "Psychological horror"

Thriller is a genre of fiction with numerous, often overlapping, subgenres, including crime, horror, and detective fiction. Thrillers are characterized and defined by the moods they elicit, giving their audiences heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation and anxiety. This genre is well suited to film and television.

A thriller generally keeps its audience on the "edge of their seats" as the plot builds towards a climax. The cover-up of important information is a common element. Literary devices such as red herrings, plot twists, unreliable narrators, and cliffhangers are used extensively. A thriller is often a villain-driven plot, whereby they present obstacles that the protagonist or hero must overcome.

Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, crime novel, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives or fiction that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, often a murder. Most crime drama focuses on criminal investigation and does not feature the courtroom. Suspense and mystery are key elements that are nearly ubiquitous to the genre.

It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as historical fiction and science fiction, but the boundaries are indistinct. Crime fiction has several subgenres, including detective fiction (such as the whodunit), courtroom drama, hard-boiled fiction, and legal thrillers.

Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre. Tension is created by delaying what the audience sees as inevitable, and is built through situations that are menacing or where escape seems impossible.

The cover-up of important information from the viewer, and fight and chase scenes are common methods. Life is typically threatened in a thriller film, such as when the protagonist does not realize that they are entering a dangerous situation. Thriller films' characters conflict with each other or with an outside force, which can sometimes be abstract. The protagonist is usually set against a problem, such as an escape, a mission, or a mystery.

Crime film is a film belonging to the crime fiction genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine with many other genres, such as drama or gangster film, but also include comedy, and, in turn, is divided into many sub-genres, such as mystery, suspense, or noir.

Screenwriter and scholar Eric R. Williams identified crime film as one of eleven super-genres in his Screenwriters Taxonomy, claiming that all feature-length narrative films can be classified by these super-genres.  The other ten super-genres are action, fantasy, horror, romance, science fiction, slice of life, sports, thriller, war and western. Williams identifies drama in a broader category called "film type", mystery and suspense as "macro-genres", and film noir as a "screenwriter's pathway" explaining that these categories are additive rather than exclusionary. Chinatown would be an example of a film that is a drama (film type) crime film (super-genre) that is also a noir (pathway) mystery (macro-genre).

Japanese horror, also known as J-horror, is horror fiction derived from popular culture in Japan, generally noted for its unique thematic and conventional treatment of the horror genre differing from the traditional Western representation of horror. Japanese horror tends to focus on psychological horror, tension building (suspense), and the supernatural, particularly involving ghosts (yūrei) and poltergeists. Other Japanese horror fiction contains themes of folk religion such as possession, exorcism, shamanism, precognition, and yōkai. Media in which the genre of Japanese horror fiction can be found include artwork, theater, literature, film, anime and video games.

Brian Russell De Palma ([de ˈpalma]; born September 11, 1940) is an American film director and screenwriter. With a career spanning over 50 years, he is best known for work in the suspense, crime, and psychological thriller genres. De Palma was a leading member of the New Hollywood generation.

Carrie (1976), his adaptation of Stephen King's novel of the same name, gained him prominence as a young filmmaker. He enjoyed commercial success with Dressed to Kill (1980), The Untouchables (1987) and Mission: Impossible (1996) and made cult classics such as Greetings (1968), Hi, Mom! (1970), Sisters (1972), Phantom of the Paradise (1974), and The Fury (1978).