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Horror and Thriller Books........Are They the Same Thing?
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I wouldnt associate a thriller as a horror and more of a kind of constant on edge kind of genre. Horror is more scary where as thriller is more of a puts you in ab ancious kind of "oh, whats gonna happen next?" thing. I wouldnt necessarily find a thriller scary.
I think horror and thrillers somewhat mix with each other but they are different genres at the same time. It's like how science fiction and fantasy are lumped together a lot because they're similar but they're also very different. Horrors tend to be more outright bloody/gory and they are designed to scare you while thrillers are designed to make your heart pump and make you a little scared, so the amount of scariness and amount of gore is what separates these two genres from each other.
Completely agree with you Shawna! They're definitely different, but can walk the same lines sometimes. Horrors can be thrilling but if a thriller is horror then I'd say it's just a horror.... I mentioned this discussion to my friend and he said "Of course not. When you're thrilled to see your little brother happy are you also horrified" =-O
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Soooooo off topic, but your profile pic makes me WHEEZE
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I read a collection of fantasy by Jeff Vandermeer and the first thing he did was to promote a “scientific” method of analyzing where something falls on the fantastical spectrum. I was fascinated by this concept. It basically rates how much non-reality is in the work. So something can be completely within our world but drift into horror because of the subject matter dealing with a possibility of supernatural events. Or, it can be all the way into fantasy because the entire story takes place in a different world, with different beings and even different languages. I don’t recall thrillers ever falling on this spectrum. So in my opinion, based on the fantasy king’s methodology, I’m going to go with thrilllers are based in our reality and could be real events and horror mostly doesn’t. Has anyone else seen this giant collection he put together?
(:D O Y I N :D) when she asked a question on the most recent poll:
"Isn't horror and thriller the same thing?"
At first I was immediately like "no of course they aren't", however as I continued to think about it I realized how similar these two genres in books and movies are. I continued to think and think and think and I was just stuck in his 50/50 position where I couldn't come up with a yes or no answer. That then made me come up with the idea for this thread like I said earlier, and I just want to know your guys opinions and thoughts on this question are!
So, do you think horror and thriller books / movies are the same or are they different?