Genre Characteristics

Genre characteristics break into 4 different categories, they are as follows; Iconography, Narratives, Themes and Characters. When these separate areas are used to break down a certain film you can understand and see the similar conventions it has to its genre.

When applied to the film Disturbia:
Iconography- There are dead bodies, blood smears, mist, empty spaces, shafts of light, masks and confined corners. These are all typical as part of a thriller genre as they are suggestions of mystery and contain enigmatic codes as they don't quite show you the whole story. The weapons used are knives and guns with knives being the preferred choice, this is because it means the killer must trap the victim before killing him/her.
Drugs, money, large houses, garages and basements are all used and suggests the mise en scene.

Narratives- The narrative events, sounds and actions in Disturbia all contain typical features of the thriller genre. Death, crime scenes, fight scenes, sex scenes, secret conversations and spying are all part of the genre and parts such as spying is especially used in Disturbia as Kale looks through his window into other peoples houses.
Narrative sounds could be from diegetic sounds such as screaming, police car sirens, gun shots, and non-diegetic sounds such as slow pace classical orchestra get faster paces as the action continues.
The narrative actions in the film are suspicions, which is the main one that starts the story, drinking, smoking, searching for clues, kidnappings, murders and stabbing. These are all part of the story and build up a big picture of the narrative of the film as a whole.

Themes- There are many themes that are used throughout the film, some more dominant than others those were, suspicion, murder, mystery, danger, family, tension and uncertainty. Others that were not quite so important were things such as corruption of innocents, law and order, political conspiracy, excitement, suspense, treachery, threat to life and anxiety.

Characters- These are character roles in the film which also refers to typical thriller conventions, Corrupt police, young female victims, unexpected hero, girlfriend, phycopaths, criminals and protagonists sidekick. Each characters role plays a part in the story to make it fit together realistically but also to allow unrealistic events.