Thinking about thrillers over time

In this top image, you can see three successful thriller films and by the conventional look of the first two posters you already get a sense of the atmosphere for the film. Psycho's poster is quite unconventional as a thriller/horror film as it is very unclear what the film is about asides from the bold yellow title which I suppose you could say contrasts with the black to convey some sort of danger or threat.

After some of the most iconic thriller films such as Seven, Shutter Island and the Sixth sense, films like the ones above started to emerge and they all follow the same plot; someone is being chased or captured; in other words they follow Todorov's narrative structure. Two of these films were successful enough to get sequels  but they are very predictable as they follow the same simple structure. 

The films above are not necessarily predictable as they are quite unique in the fact they do not have other films on the market similar to them and there is not really any graphical cues that signify its genre.

The films displayed above are categorised as Thriller movies on IMDB (Movie review, information site) although you may think they do not fit that genre because of the range of techniques used on the posters that don't necessarily convey thriller; this is because most films now fit into multiple genres, films like these are known as hybrids.

The films above are also hybrids. Most thriller hybrids these days are action orienatated and this is possibly due to production conglomerates such as Universal and their forever growing budget. The budget allows films to have more dramatic scenes with special effects using green screens and CGI so therefore lots more action is possible.