Thriller research: Audiences

Generally, there is no specific target audience for thrillers, it mostly depends on the subgenres of the film being watched. This can vary from the BBFC's certificates for films 12-18. However most examples of 18+ thrillers can over step the thriller boundary into Horror, but there is a grey area to this.
Typical audiences for different sub-genres:

Action thrillers
Action thrillers can have a variety of age aimed audiences from PG to 18. For example, Die Hard is an action thriller and was given the certificate 18. your typical target in this age range would be young adults due to the use of action, violence and simle plot in order to make the movie. Movies with typical explosions bad language and gun violence typically adhere to teens but obviously other factors in this films make it an 18, possibly due to nudity, drug use or frequency of blood seen in the movie.





Crime Thriller
Crime Thrillers, much like action thrillers have a varied ag range.
Typically this can range from 12-18 because of the use of language and gore with most containing sometimes excessive violence. Leon is a crime thriller which is rated 15. this film, like action thrillers would appeal for adult men that like films with violence, in most cases. crime thrillers mostly contain murder or drug use in them which boosts the age rating higher and higher.






Psychological Thriller
Psychological thrillers are typically rated at 18+. this is because they usually
include violence and psychological issues that are not usually suitable for children. warnings of films containing these would be featured on the box of the movie or its movie poster. your typical target audience for this sub genre are older adults that like films that are close to horror such as silence of the lambs that contains some controversial issues.





Science-Fiction Thriller
Sci-Fi thrillers have a different range to most, they can range from PG to 15

in most cases. your typical target audience for sci-fi thrillers is typically teens male or female. not alot of gore is usually featured in these films with the main focus being an introduced plot device for the genre. Some sci-fi thrillers can be suitable for children e.g. Planet of the Apes, because the themes within the movie despite being a thriller arent too extreme for the audience.

Religious Thriller

Religious thrillers, much like psychological thrillers can contain

some controversial topics unsuitable for children within them.However unlike action thrillers, they typically dont contain as much violence because of the theme of religion unless, like The Da Vinci Code (2006), it also contains themes of conspiracy. your typical age range for religuous thrillers can range from 12-18 with such films as this being a 12 and The End Of Days (1999) being an 18.






BBFC certificates for movies:
the british board of film classification have 6 different certificates for movies for different audiences being: U, PG, 12 or 12A, 15 and 18. these help as guidlines for parents buying movies and for cinemas to know which age range are eligible to view the movie.

U stands for universal, and can be viewed by all ages. The worst type of language used in U would be 'damn' or 'hell' meaning it will be suitable for the very young audiences. Also, violence will be limited to short periods in which the characters are placed in dangerous situations, with drug references generally not included at all.

PG stands for parental guidance. this means that parents may need to check the films before showing it to their children. if its an action film it might have some limited violence. if romantic, it might have some sexual scenes or very brief secluded nudity. it might also contain some milder swear words.

12 and 12A are both really similar in what they will show in their films. 12 is restricted to those who are under the age of twelve with 12a, acting like PG and allowing those below twelve to view the films with their parents.The 12 certificate is just for videos, DVDs and Blu-rays. 12A is for films at the cinema only. swearing will be to a minimal in these films aswell as nudity, violence and drug use.

15 movies are much stronger in what they contain compared to 12 and 12a.

thye will contain:

strong violence

frequent strong language (eg 'f***').

portrayals of sexual activity

strong verbal references to sex

sexual nudity

brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence

discriminatory language or behaviour

drug taking

all throughout the film which breaks it from 12 and is obviously not suitable for that age band.


contain very strong themes which make them only suitable for adults.

they are similar to 15 rated films but tend to have these themes more frequently, in most cases they will contain:

very strong violence

frequent strong language (eg 'f***') and/or very strong language (eg ‘c***’)

strong portrayals of sexual activity

scenes of sexual violence

strong horror

strong blood and gore

real sex (in some circumstances)

discriminatory language and behaviour

Moreover, there are different ways to categorise the audience in terms of who a product will be aimed at:

Social profiling aims at the different bands of people based upon their economic background. These bands are:
A - Higher managerial professionals
B - Middle management, fairly well paid professionals
C1 - skilled non-manual professionals
C2 - skilled manual workers
D - semi-unskilled workers
E - Lower level
All of which give media industries a band of economic and educational level to aim at with their products

Demographic Profiling
This simply categorises people by their general information to aim their products at. These include:
-Age
-Gender
-Race
-Location
-Family life cycle
-Sexuality
For example, films such as Romantic Comedies are aimed at the female gender between the ages 15-30.

Psychological Profiling
This would involve asking the populous who they are what they like and just general knowledge about them in order to create a profile to base their products from. An example of this comes in the form of "Cosmo reader women" and "GQ reader men"


For our short opening sequence for our course work we will be aiming for the 12-15 band for our thrillers. we do not wish to over step into 18 in case of turing the clip into a horror, rather than thriller. Moreover, our target audiences will be young adults of both genders in order to have a wider audience which will attract more viewers, and will have to consider this when writing our plans for the opening sequence.