Why?

This picture encapsulates everything we should be feeling after watching a good thriller: cathartic, slightly traumatised, yet undeniably serene. The thriller genre evokes our voyeuristic tendencies and underlying fears in order to entertain us. There is something about seeing the world through the eyes of someone just like ourselves, and seeing that world transform into something deadly. 

What is it about the thriller genre that attracts millions to it? It is the ability it gives us to live our greatest fears through a fictional character in order to help us purge those feelings of anxiety that we link with certain things. It is a need to be scared, a need to feel the instability, not in our own, but in other people's lives. Why else would we read gossip magazines? Why else would we use social media to find out about the personal lives of others? Why else would we stop to gawk at an accident on a busy road? Because it gives us a way in which to live an alternate life temporarily, while forgetting about our own. 

What is is about the thriller genre that we love? We love to know that, whatever happens to us, someone, somewhere out there is worse off than us. We want to know that our lives aren't all that bad, and that, in fact, in comparison to some others, our lives are pretty great, so great, that we can afford to waste our time experiencing simulations of alternate existences.

I happen to be one of these people. Join me in my quest for the perfect thriller.