Asocial thriller is afilm genre using elements ofsuspense to augment instances of oppression in society. The genre gained attention by audiences and critics around the late 2010s with the releases ofJordan Peele'sGet Out andUs,[1][2] each film highlighting occurrences ofracial alienation (the former which veil a plot to abduct young African-Americans). Before Peele, other film actors, directors, writers, and critics had used the term to describe an emerging genre of cinema with examples from all over the globe.
Many social thrillers focus on issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, or nationhood, often within the format ofgenre films more broadly categorized as ablack comedy,film noir,psychological drama, andhorror cinema, among others.
"Social thriller" first appeared infilm criticism to denote films using elements ofsuspense to heighten dramatic tension caused by social inequity.[3] Often appearing in quotes, the term was being used as early as the 1970s toretrospectively describe politicalneo-noir cinema. An early example comes from cinema writerGeorges Sadoul's characterization ofEl Wahsh ("The Monster"), anEgyptiancrime film entered into the 1954Cannes Film Festival.[4] Sadoul sums up the film as "a social thriller based on an authentic police case about police pursuit of a drug-addicted gangster." Sadoul goes on to describe the film's documentary style and backdrop of life in the Egyptian countryside.[5] Other early uses of the term can be found in descriptions ofFrench New Wave films, such asThe Nada Gang,Claude Chabrol's 1974 film inspired by theMay 1968 events in France.[6] In their book,French Culture Since 1945, Malcolm and Martin Cook wrote that "Chabrol's career has been almost exclusively devoted to what might be called the 'social thriller'" and go on to define the genre as, "films using asuspense format often akin to that ofHitchcock to comment on the deviousness and duplicity of French society."[3]
Many other film critics bandied about the term in their reviews prior to the 2010s but seldom in a way that gave the social thriller its own status as a codified genre in cinema. Prior to 2017, most writers used the term only once, usually in a single review, and to characterize an individual film. In his biography onWilliam Wyler,Axel Madsen calls the 1937Humphrey Bogart pictureDead End a social thriller.[7] TLA Video reviewer David Bleiler described the 1950Sidney Poitier filmNo Way Out as "an exceptionally made, tense drama which succeeds both as medical soap opera and social thriller."[8] Douglas Brode calledSpencer Tracy "the alienated anti-hero of the social thriller" for his 1955 performance inBad Day at Black Rock.[9] Another Poitier film, 1967'sIn the Heat of the Night, got tagged as social thriller by Leonard Maltin,[10] and was also cited as such on the floor of theU.S. House of Representatives.[11] Both Tracy and Poitier also appeared in 1967'sGuess Who's Coming to Dinner, a film that would later be identified as a key "non-thriller" example of the social thriller genre.[12]
For films produced outside the U.S., more than one reviewer has named the 1961 British filmVictim as a social thriller. As the firstEnglish language film on record to use the word "homosexual" in its dialogue,Victim raised controversy in theUnited Kingdom for its critique of Britain's anti-gay laws that would remain in place until the passing ofSexual Offences Act 1967 decriminalized homosexuality for men inEngland andWales.[13][14] Ismal Xavier called the 1962 Brazilian political train robbery filmO Assalto ao Trem Pagador ("Assault on the Payroll Train") a social thriller.[15]Taiwanese director Bai Jingrui's 1982 filmOffend the Law of God has been called "an exploitation social thriller"[16] and the 1996Spanish filmTaxi, about the rise of the racist right wing, has also been given the label.[17]
In hisHistorical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema, author Peter Rollberg goes a bit further than the one-mention references of his peers. In describing the work of Russo-Belarusian directorAleksandr Faintsimmer, Rollberg writes, "Fainsimmer devoted himself to the traditionally underrepresented genre of the social thriller with blockbusters such asNo Right to Fail (1974) andThe Cafeteria on Piatnikskaia Street (1978)." Rollberg also namesLeonid Filatov's 1982 filmThe Rooks and Vadim Derbenev's 1985 hitThe Snake Catcher as landmarks of the genre in theSoviet Union.[18]
At the onset of the 2000s, critics and scholars continued to label a number of contemporary films as social thrillers. The authors ofSociology: An Introductory Textbook and Reader wrote of the 2002 British filmDirty Pretty Things as being "not a documentary but a social thriller which blends aspects of the global urban legends about child kidnapping for organs and prostitutes drugging unsuspecting barflies who wake up in a hotel bathtub minus a kidney."[19]The New Yorker echoed this sentiment, saying, "Dirty Pretty Things is not a violent thriller. It might be called a social thriller—a creepy, tightly knit suspense film that, on the fly, reveals more about the lives of immigrants in London than the most scrupulously earnest documentary."[20] Other films labeled as social thrillers from the first decade-and-a-half of the new millennium include 2005's British production ofThe Constant Gardener[21] andthe 2008 Italian filmAs God Commands, both based on the best-selling novels of the same names.[22] TheWall Street Journal called 2010'sThe Social Network "Partmorality play, part social thriller",[23] the 2012Canadianchild abduction filmThe Tall Man got called a social thriller for itsDVD release,[24] and the French film festival hitCorporate was called a social thriller in 2016, several months in advance of its 2017 release.[25][26]
Like the West, Indian cinema has a longstanding tradition of identifying some movies as "social films" or "social problem films", genres that emerged whentalking pictures first came to India in the 1930s.[27][28][29] The rise of "social thriller" as a genre garnered familiarity in India, as it did in the U.S., in its association with a major box office hit. 2016'sPink, acourtroom drama that deals withrape, was India's highest-grossing film ever to be released.Pink starred longtimeBollywood iconAmitabh Bachchan, who named the film a social thriller.[30] Bachchan said ofPink that, "the context and the premise of the film shall always be of prime interest," but that "much is not spelt out because of the nature of the story and, of course, the nature of its genre—a social thriller!”[31]
BeforePink the term social thriller was applied occasionally by Bollywood's directors and marketers and then repeated by the press to describe selected movies, such as 2014's filmFugly starringolympic boxing medalistVijender Singh.[32][33] Prior toFugly's release, the press were unfamiliar with the genre, and in a film preview theIndia Times said that it was "the movie that's been billed as a 'social thriller' (whatever that is)."[34] AfterFugly, other social thriller tags followed suit, such as 2014'sBhopal: A Prayer for Rain about theUnion Carbide Disaster,[35] and 2016'sLaal Rang about theorganized crime trafficking inhuman blood.[36]
South Indian film columnists may have been using the term prior to theirNorth Indian counterparts.G. Dhananjayan called the 2009Tamil language filmAchchamundu! Achchamundu! ("There is fear! There is fear!") a social thriller, citing it as "one of the rare mainstream Tamil films with the subject onpedophiles."[37] Tamil director Bramma G. called his 2014 debut film,Kutram Kaditha, a social thriller.[38][39] The same year Jean Marcose called hisMalayalam filmAngels a social thriller.[40] Film Beat's Akhila Menon used the term to describe bothPuthiya Niyamam[41] andEvidam Swargamanu in 2015.[42] Other Tamil social thrillers include 2016'sKabali,[43] andAagam, of which director Vijay Anand Sriram claimed, "has a message but it will not be preachy. It's a social thriller with commercial elements in it".[44]
Post-Pink social thrillers in Indian cinema have includedAdanga Maru,[45]Jhalki...Ek Aur Bachpan,[46]Mulq,[47][48]Pinu,[49]Parari,[50]Blue Whale,[51] andMarainthirunthu,[52] all released in 2018.
Broadly categorized as ahorror film,[53] director Jordan Peele stated that his directorial debut,Get Out, was part of a lineage of social thrillers, meaning that whatever scary things manifest onscreen, society is actually the true evil.[54] In a February 2017 interview, Peele told theChicago Tribune, "I define 'social thriller' as thriller/horror movies where the ultimate villain is society."[55]In March he told theNew York Times that social thrillers "all deal with this human monster, this societal monster. And the villain is us."[54] He later toldNew York Magazine, "I was trying to figure out what genre this movie was, and horror didn't quite do it. Psychological thriller didn't do it, and so I thought,Social thriller. The bad guy is society—these things that are innate in all of us, and provide good things, but ultimately prove that humans are always going to be barbaric, to an extent. I think I coined the term social thriller, but I definitely didn’t invent it."[56]
To coincide with the release ofGet Out, Peele curated a film series for theBrooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) calledThe Art of the Social Thriller.[57] The series featured classic horror films likeRosemary's Baby,Night of the Living Dead,The Shining,The Silence of the Lambs,Candyman,The People Under the Stairs, and thefirst film ofWes Craven'sScream series. Peele also included films outside of the horror genre, such aspsychological thrillersFunny Games andMisery,Hitchcock'smystery thrillerRear Window, and comedy-thrillerThe 'Burbs. Thesneak preview ofGet Out was preceded by the 1967comedy-dramaGuess Who's Coming to Dinner, the first Hollywood film to address interracial marriage[58] and a big influence on the premise for Peele's own film.[59][60] When asked about its inclusion in the series, Peele told theVillage Voice, "It's not an actual thriller, it's just a great exploration of the social phenomenon of how we deal with race, putting it in a package that everyone can understand. Anybody can relate to the fear of meeting your potential in-laws for the first time... At a certain point withGet Out, I realized that I was making a sort of thriller take onGuess Who's Coming to Dinner."[12]
AfterGet Out's success, Peele announced that he had plans to make four more social thrillers in the next decade. In an interview withBusiness Insider he said, "The best and scariest monsters in the world are human beings and what we are capable of especially when we get together. I've been working on these premises about these different social demons, these innately human monsters that are woven into the fabric of how we think and how we interact, and each one of my movies is going to be about a different one of these social demons."[61] By the time Peel's second film,Us, was under production, it had veered away from its original inceptions as a "social" thriller and fell more squarely into the horror genre. Whereas Peele's treatment ofGet Out's black protagonist and white antagonists made it a film about race, he strove to makeUs not be about race. “It’s important to me that we can tell black stories without it being about race,” Peele toldRolling Stone in early 2019. “I realized I had never seen a horror movie of this kind, where there’s an African-American family at the center that just is. After you get over the initial realization that you’re watching a black family in a horror film, you’re just watching a movie. You’re just watching people. I feel like it proves a very valid and different point thanGet Out, which is, not everything is about race.Get Out proved the point that everything is about race. I’ve proved both points!”[62]
By mid-2017 the press had started touting upcoming films as belonging to the genre, including internationalCannes Film Festival favorites likeColombia'sMatar a Jesús,[63] France'sL'Atelier;[64] Brazil'sRifle,[65] and the remake ofArgentina'sLa Patota.[66]Variety wrote that animated filmTales of the Hedgehog was both "a children’s thriller" and "a social thriller-fable" after directorAlain Gagnol described it as a “suspenseful social fable.”[67] From Hollywood, thesocial media scandal movieAssassination Nation,[68] andGreg McLean andJames Gunn'sThe Belko Experiment,[69] were promised as social thrillers, as wasKathryn Bigelow'sDetroit as part of the social thriller canon.[70]
Musician/authorBoots Riley's 2018 directorial debutSorry to Bother You was tapped as being a social thriller by bothThe Guardian andDeadline, and multiple reviewers compared Riley's film toGet Out.[71][72] That same yearRolling Stone positedTyrel, a drama about one black man's weekend getaway with a bunch of drunk white men, as a social thriller.[73] In 2019Luce, a film about the external expectations placed on young black men in America, got the social thriller tag after its debut at theSundance Film Festival.[74] On the eve of the 2019Academy AwardsThe A.V. Club addedCam, a psychological horror film told from the perspective of an onlinesex worker, to the genre's roster, saying, "One year afterGet Out, another social thriller deserves Oscar love for its script.[75] Likewise the websiteInsider clamored "to see Lee Chang-dong's tense social thrillerBurning in this race" forBest Foreign Language Film at the2019 Academy Awards.[76] A2019 Cannes Film FestivalThe Associated Press headline proclaimed that "South Korean directorBong Joon-ho’s social thrillerParasite winsPalme d’Or" and that third-place jury prizes were also awarded to "two socially conscious thrillers: The French director Ladj Ly’s feature-film debutLes Miserables and Brazilian directorKleber Mendonça Filho’sBacurau."[77] WithGet Out helping to codify the genre, critics have continued to apply the term retrospectively, with more than one review adding the 1975 science fiction thrillerThe Stepford Wives to the canon.[60][62]
Use of social thriller as a genre term has come under scrutiny since its widened use. One critique is that niche genres such as horror are re-labeled to draw a more mainstream fanbase. In a news piece about 2017's most successful horror films, journalist Haleigh Foutch wrote that "Get Out is being billed as a 'social thriller' now that the film has dominated at the box office and conjured early awards buzz."[78] Critic Jacob Knight has also cited uses of "social thriller", "social horror" and "elevated horror" to describeGet Out and the 2018 filmsHereditary andA Quiet Place, saying, "'elevated horror' (or even 'social horror', for that matter) doesn’t exist. It never did, and it never will. Filmmakers have been attempting to distance themselves from the 'horror' label for decades, as it’s a genre that’s been ghettoized for most of its existence."[79] In an opinion piece forSYFY Wire Emma Fraser wrote that "social thriller" refers to a specific kind of horror but that "by dressing this genre up, it actually does it a disservice." Fraser goes on to say that filmmakers likeGeorge A. Romero,David Cronenberg andJohn Carpenter have used the horror genre to address social issues such as racism or theAIDS epidemic, and that many horror films bear social significance without relying on the social thriller label.[80]
Outside the medium of cinema, literary critics have used the term "social thriller" as early as the first decade of the 2000s. Writing on the psychological crime novels ofRuth Rendell in 2002, Lidia Kyzlinková atMasaryk University remarked, "Rendell may be seen as having developed a kind of social thriller, in which various representations around region, class, race, gender, or age form an important part of the plot."[81] Three years later Kyzlinková subtitled another chapter on Rendell, "Social Thriller,Ethnicity and Englishness", in which she characterized works whose plots focus less on detectives or police as being "socio-psychological, or social thrillers."[82]
Also writing in 2002,The New York Daily News said that Iain Pears Riverhead's bookThe Dream of Scipio "uses a larger-than-ever canvas to construct this genre-bending historical and social thriller."Business Wire later called Kathleen Kaufman’s 2009dystopian novelThe Tree Museum "an environmental thriller that follows a world completely transformed by an enigmatic and powerful totalitarian force" in a review titled, "New Social Thriller, The Tree Museum, to Challenge the Ethics of State-Enforced Environmentalism."[83] MacMillan Publishing describedSix Suspects,Vikas Swarup's 2010 follow-up toSlumdog Millionaire as "a richly textured social thriller."[84]
After its proliferation as a cinematic genre, the term was used to describeDC/Vertigo comic bookSafe Sex.[85]
As film writers began applying the term with greater frequency after its 2017 upsurge, theatre critics followed suit.Time Out New York reviewer Adam Feldman wrote that theBroadway showJunk "melds a breadth of genres—crime story, tragedy, issue play, cautionary tale—into a fast-moving, broad-ranging social thriller."[86] By 2018 the term had leapt to television, and was used to describe theNetflix seriesWhat/If[87] and indian seriesCriminal Justice.[88]
In September 2018The New York Times highlighted a number of fictionpodcasts as contributions to the social thriller genre, chiefly the politically charged dystopian fantasyAdventures in New America by filmmakers Stephen Winter and Tristan Cowen.[89] Audio fiction publisherNight Vale Presents touted the term on its own website, citing comparisons toBoots Riley's filmSorry to Bother You and the work of Jordan Peele.[90] TheTimes also citedGimlet Media's subterranean serialThe Horror of Dolores Roach andPanoply Media's airline disaster whodunitPassenger List as being among the social thrillers cropping up in the new wave of serialized audio fiction.[89]
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