Exit Polls

To broaden my understanding of how popular the thriller genre was, and with what age group, I researched two exit polls from the BFI website for two recent thriller movies. Exit polls are used to collect opinions of respondents.

The first I researched was The Keeper of Lost Causes, directed by Mikkel Nørgaard (A mystery/thriller film). This study found that 49% of their respondents were under 45, and 51% were over 45. This is a fairly even divide. The most common way that the respondents discovered the film was through online ads, which 20% confirmed. This was closely followed by trailers before a film at 18%. This proves that advertising is most effective when conducted online or by other media technologies, rather than traditional magazine advertisements.

The reason behind people seeing the film was because they were a big fan of foreign films, with a staggering 49% giving this response. The next highest was 39% of respondents saying they enjoyed the genre.

The second exit poll I analysed was for A Dangerous Method, directed by David Cronenburg (A drama/thriller film). This study found that 46% of their respondents were under 35, and 54% were over 35. This is, again, a fairly even divide. Interestingly, the most common way that this film was discovered was through magazine/newspaper reviews. I believe that this is because this exit poll was conducted in 2012, and The Keeper of Lost Causes was conducted in 2014, meaning that in just two years our reliance on and use of technology has increased dramatically.

44% of respondents said that they watched the film because it's based on the work of Freud and Jung. After some quick research, I discovered that these are both theorists. Freud believed that behaviour is driven by fears and desires locked in the unconscious mind. Jung believed in 'archetypes'- a representation at an unconscious level of everything we understand by a certain person; for example, a 'mother'.