Thriller Sub Genres – Deep Blue Sea

There are many different subgenres for a thriller, each subgenres with different aspects that put it in that particular category. We watched the first 30 minutes of the film ‘Deep Blue Sea’ in class to look at the different subgenres in it. Most thrillers contain more than one subgenre, an example of a thriller that contains more than one subgenre is James Bond. These films contain the following thriller subgenres; Action thriller, conspiracy thriller, crime thriller, spy thriller and depending on the storyline of the individual film there may be more. This is a lot of subgenres to have in one film, but it shows the wide variety of subgenres types a thriller can have. Like James Bond and many other thrillers, Deep Blue Sea is no different and contains several thriller subgenres.

Action Thriller

An action thriller is when the work of the protagonist often features a race against time, contains a lot of violence and an obvious antagonist. These films usually contain a lot of guns, explosions and large set pieces of action. Deep Blue Sea meets these criteria, as there are a lot of these elements. Set pieces in the film for example are when the sharks pick off each character one by one. The first of these is the scientist whose arm gets bitten off. This set piece then expands very quickly, as his helicopter ambulance is brought down by the sharks, causes a massive explosion of the waterstation and the armless scientist is smashed against the glass of the room his fellow protagonists are in. This then causes the glass to break and flood the underwater section of the waterstation. This also shows the violence of an action thriller and the obvious antagonists being the sharks. This particular set piece is very large and sets the pace of the film being the first of the action scenes. The race against time in this film is more of a race to survive. It has aspects of a race against time because the protagonists only have so much time before the sharks kill them. It becomes a kill or be killed struggle for the protagonists.

Disaster Thriller

A disaster thriller is when the main conflict is due to some sort of natural or artificial disaster. The disaster in Deep Blue Sea being an artificial disaster, is the genetic construction of these ‘super sharks’ that become the films main antagonists. This is not a typical disaster thriller, like films such as ‘Tornado’ but does qualify for containing an artificial disaster, the sharks. This causes conflict in who the antagonist of the film is. The sharks are obviously the prominent antagonists, but as we find out at the end of the film, the female scientist altered them genetically because of the deadline given by the experiments funding. Can this make her the antagonist? The sharks did not choose to be that way, they were unwillingly changed. Surely the person that causes the sharks to be that way is the antagonist in the story. But it is not quite the case in Deep Blue Sea, as she herself becomes a victim of the sharks, sacrificing herself to destroy them. The main conflict in this film is between the people in the water station (protagonists) and the sharks (antagonists/artificial disaster) this makes it a disaster thriller.

Eco-Thriller

An eco-thriller is when the protagonist must avoid or resolve an environmental or biological calamity, often while trying to deal with usual obsticles in a thriller. In Deep Blue Sea the biological calamity that must be avoided or resolved is the sharks. They count as a biological calamity because scientists genetically altered them, they were not born that way. This biological calamity then causes the obsticles the protagonists must go through to solve the problem at hand, the sharks. This is probably the main subgenre for Deep Blue Sea as it directly suits the story and the problem the protagonists have. The experiment on the sharks and the way it goes wrong cannot be described any better than as a biological calamity. It was a mistake made by the scientists. Even though the female scientist did act individually in trying to speed up the experiment, not sticking to the initial plans of the experiment, she still did not mean for the sharks to turn that way. However the mistake was made and a biological calamity was formed and had to be resolved. The initial conflicts with the sharks were avoided but at the end of the film when the remaining protagonists when as sea level and relatively safe they had to resolve the problem, by killing the sharks, whether they had helped make a medical breakthrough or not.

Medical Thriller

A medical thriller is when the hero/heroine are medical doctors/personnel working to solve an expanding medical problem. Deep Blue Sea is only loosely a medical thriller but there are certainly elements of it that contain aspects of a medical thriller. The medical problem in this film is brain-related illnesses. The objective of the scientists in the film is the use cells from experimented on sharks to solve human brain illnesses. This is because sharks cannot get brain-related illness, including cancer. But instead of solving the problem they create one. They do make a breakthrough using cells from one of the sharks, but the genetically altered shark then becomes dangerous, almost like a ‘super shark’. The other sharks that have had the same alteration go through this same change and then become hell-bent on killing the protagonists in the film. Instead of solving a medical problem the scientists create several super sharks that will result in their deaths.

All thriller sub-genres with film examples for each

Action Thriller – The Transporter

Conspiracy Thriller – The Good Shepherd

Crime Thriller – The Departed

Disaster Thriller – Perfect Storm

Drama Thriller – The Prestige

Eco-Thriller – Armageddon

Erotic Thriller – Basic Instinct

Legal Thriller – Shawshank Redemption

Medical Thriller – Awake

Political Thriller – Frost/Nixon

Psychological Thriller – Fatal Attraction

Spy Thriller – The Bourne Indetity

Techno-Thriller – The Terminator