The difference between Horror and Thriller

We plan to use a bit of both horror and thriller in out movie. We plan to have the suspense a horror gives, but give it a horror storyline. Horror is about invoking fear, gruesome images and out of proportion issues, whereas Thriller is about holding suspense. In a Thriller, the fear is a lot more psychological based, where as a Horror has the gruesome graphics on screen. You could say thriller is based on suspense, where as horror is surprise. We plan to use both these in our film, similarly to what Alfred Hitchcock did. We give it a Horror based storyline, zombies, put a Thriller edge to it, making the zombies smarter than normal, and not showing themselves till necessary.
The lighting in thrillers is mostly studio based, to give an extra emphasis on the scenes although you do get ambient lighting in a lot of Thriller to create realism. In a horror, the lighting is purely natural. The flashing lights or red dull lights are in the scene, such as a broken spark or an alarm. The locations of Thrillers are very wide ranged. You can create suspense in anything if you can do it right, where as a horror needs a proper location to give the true effect of the destruction the antagonist gives, such as a small village is almost wiped out, or a city is in ruins. The storylines in Thrillers are often based around a flaw in the protagonist where the antagonist provokes it. There are many sub plots and sub genres in Thrillers. This is massively different to horrors, where the storyline is set and is purely based on the antagonist and protagonist and the struggle to survive. The camera angles in Thrillers have a lot of low angles and high angles to show strengths and weaknesses of the characters as they progress through the film. There is also a lot of close ups to show the characters reaction towards a certain event. In a Horror the camera angles are often point of view, or you are put in the scene as a person, while the scene takes place. This keeps the audience as close as possible to the danger, rather than trying to distance them from it. Thrillers have minimal editing, except the fast transitions at some points to build suspense, although in a Horror a lot of editing is needed, such as special effects to enhance what is going on in the scene.

To conclude we plan on using both the typical conventions that make a Horror scary, but keep the suspense that a Thriller gives. We plan on making this a whole new way of looking at a film; bringing two very mainstream genres and trying to make them a hybrid. It has worked before. Seven is a film that has both aspects of a Horror and Thriller. You could say the same about 28 days/weeks later, although that verges mostly on the Horror side.