The Best Psychological Thrillers Movies to Watch
The key to what makes this apocalyptic thriller from Mr Robot and Homecoming showrunner Sam Esmail so unnerving is how resolute it is about not taking place in an alternate timeline. Making references to memorable events in recent history and namechecking real brands and cultural touchstones (like Tesla and Friends), Leave the World Behind is […]
In case you didn’t know, Speak No Evil is based on a Danish film of the same name, released only two years ago. Given that the latter was already a hit among horror fans thanks to its unrelentingly bleak approach, it’s tempting to chalk this remake up to narcissism. As was the case with the […]
Appropriately for its literary focus, The Lesson feels, in places, like the gripping adaptation of a bestselling psychological thriller. Unfortunately, though, its initial cleverness peters out in a contrived ending that ironically feels like it belongs to the pulpy airport fiction that one character accuses another of writing. The Lesson’s early chapters (another way the […]
Psychological thriller fans might find God’s Crooked Lines to be a tad derivative. Fans of the novel might find its film adaptation slightly more convoluted than the original text. But for viewers entirely new to both, the undercover psych ward investigation proves to be an intriguing mystery, twisting the plot by playing with alternating timelines […]
Before you press play on this movie, we highly recommend you take a few very deep breaths. This 2018 thriller is wound so tight, you will need the extra oxygen to get through it without fainting. In his directorial debut, Swedish-danish filmmaker Gustav Möller uses very little in terms of resources to create this breath-taking […]
A woman loses her phone on her way back to her countryside childhood home. Once there, she connects an old landline in hopes of finding her lost mobile, only to start receiving weird calls that seem to be from 20 years ago. On the other side of the receiver is a girl who seems to […]
x4The Platform is the closest thing to Parasite released so far. This interesting Spanish movie is about 90% a science-fiction drama and 10% a horror movie. It’s an allegory set in a future where prisoners live in vertical cells, and each cell has to wait for the cell above it to eat to get food. […]
Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are the only two actors starring in this eccentric movie, and they deliver such grand performances that it feels like another actor would have been one too many. They star as lighthouse keepers in the 19th century, left on an island to interact only with each other and their rock. […]
Echoing Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesmen, Oscar-winning writer-director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation, About Elly) tells the story of a loving middle-class couple who live in Tehran, Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti), who are forced to move out of their apartment. After arriving at their new place, violence erupts, upending their life and […]
Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem star in this mystery by Asghar Farhadi, the Iranian Oscar-winning director of A Separation and The Salesman. When Laura returns to her small Spanish hometown with her two daughters, she is greeted with the warm welcome worthy of someone who once was a loved member of the community. However, when […]
x2Memento is a right of passage movie – the kind of movie 19 year olds watch and decide, “holy hell, cinema is cool.” Call it the most cinematic mainstream film or the most mainstream serious film of the last 20 years, Memento also marks the beginning of the reign of Christopher Nolan. A deep and gripping […]
Ex Machina is the directorial debut of Alex Garland, the writer of 28 Days Later (and 28 Weeks Later). It tells the story of Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson from About Time), an IT developer who is invited by a billionaire CEO to participate in a groundbreaking experiment—administering a Turing test to a humanoid robot called Ava […]
This is a really weird movie starring Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman. They play a wholesome and well-off couple where Farrell is a heart surgeon. The movie starts with him taking care of a teenager called Martin, who’s not related to him or seems to have any real connection with him. It later turns out […]
Released in between Francis Ford Coppola’s famed Godfather trilogy, The Conversation is the director’s undersung gem of a film. It follows surveillance agent Harry (Hackman) as he obsesses over a conversation he’s asked to record. Hyperaware of how privacy is rendered useless by people like him, he starts to get overly suspicious about everything and […]
Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively star in this crime-comedy as two opposite mom personalities: one a stay-at-home food vlogger, and the other an upper-class businesswoman. Kendrick’s character (Stephanie, the vlogger mom) agrees to pick up her new friend’s kid from school. However, the kid’s mom disappears, leaving Stephanie to lead an investigation on her own […]
Zodiac is an edge-of-your-seat thriller that knows exactly when to be slow and when to pick up the pace. Director David Fincher delivers what he was admired for in movies like Se7en and Fight Club (and more recently Gone Girl), and that is an intelligent, not necessarily satisfactory, gripping film. The ensemble cast including a surprisingly fitting Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. gives a great […]
La Cérémonie is the kind of thriller you can watch repeatedly and glean new insight from each time. Right from its first scene, there’s something puzzling about the buttoned-up Sophie (Sandrine Bonnaire) that narrows your focus and pulls you in. What’s remarkable is that, even after the secret Sophie’s keeping that seems to explain her […]
The best way to watch this movie is to be completely unprepared; it’s a super indie (sub 1 million dollar budget) Canadian thriller that completely wowed critics and audiences, even as it (and we’re being honest here) totally freaked them out. So, no spoilers, we can let you know it’s an internet thriller with shades […]
A very intelligent and nuanced movie that relentlessly asks unpleasant questions. It’s a story about a woman seeking freedom by turning away from her own family and finding something she did not expect. The main character of the movie, Martha, is taken in by a cult and the movie depicts how this experience shapes and […]
Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue is a chilling psychological thriller and a fantastic next step for those looking to explore anime’s dark side. Kon animates with Hitchcockian flair and is so successful at memorable compositions that Darren Aronofsky even lifted a scene from this into Requiem for a Dream. Mima is a pop idol who abandons […]
Based on the Stephen King book, this is a slow-burning horror thriller with a seemingly limited premise. Jesse and Gerald are in a house in the countryside and their attempt to spice up their relationship turns out catastrophic. Gerald suffers from a heart attack while Jesse finds herself handcuffed to a bed without the keys. […]
Arch-provocateur Paul Verhoeven received widespread acclaim for his assured and darkly funny adaptation of Philippe Dijan’s award-winning novel, his first film in the French language. It’s a controversial revenge thriller about a domineering businesswoman who is raped in her home by a masked man. Refusing to let the attack affect her life, she refuses to […]
A woman joins some acquaintances on a sailing trip only to get caught in a storm. They are rescued by a seemingly empty cruise ship and struggle to make sense of the mysteries that unfold. Definitely one of those “The less you know the better” type of films. If you like well-written creepy thrillers with […]
The Wave is a movie about manipulation, National Socialism and the authoritarian development at a German school. The well-liked teacher Rainer Wenger presents a social experiment to his students which quickly expands to a much larger scale. His experiment, named “Die Welle” (the wave), is part of a project week at the school about different […]
In an age where recent horror films mostly use the jump-scare as a crutch to make their CGI-spawned (not to mention generic) creatures seem scary, The Babadook portrays real scares, relatable characters and a moving story. Jennifer Kent (director and writer) sets this on the backdrop of heavily Lars von Trier-inspired cinematography, elevating The Babadook […]
British director Adrian Lyne (9 1/2 Weeks) is famous for his uncompromising treatment of seedy eroticism and charged stories. Fatal Attraction is a staple of the erotic thriller genre and with good reason, it’s steamy and very 1980s in the best possible way. Like a good vintage, it has the whiff of old times, but […]
I Saw the Devil is a South Korean psychological thriller/horror film. IT IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART!!! It has a lot of blood and gore that could make even the strongest stomachs turn. A young woman is kidnapped from her car while waiting for a tow truck and the kidnapper murders her far […]
Despite being colorful and full of music like many Bollywood films, there’s a noirish sensibility to Talaash that makes it stand out. The plot takes on a familiar investigation. The protagonist, portrayed by Aamir Khan, is broody and jaded due to grief. And of course, there’s a femme fatale portrayed by Kareena Kapoor Khan, who […]
Based on true events. One of the most controversial and talked-about films at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. While the story unfolds you can’t help but question if real people could blindly follow instructions, and the sad answer is yes. The story of Sandra (Ann Dowd), an overworked manager at a fast food restaurant, who […]
Acerbic diary excerpts provide the narration for this taut psychological thriller, but don’t be fooled: as Notes on a Scandal teases, single schoolteacher Barbara (Judi Dench) might not be filling these pages with the truth — at least, not intentionally. There are early tells that she might not be as reliable a narrator as we […]
Following is the first movie Christopher Nolan ever directed, a mesmerizing low-budget effort that introduced the world to the genius who will later give us Memento, Inception, The Dark Knight, and many other classics. Shot in “extreme” conditions to quote Nolan himself, for just over £3000, it had to be filmed in the span of a year […]
The Gift is Joel Edgerton’s directoral debut, a twisted and smart thriller that sneaks up on you where you least expect it. He also stars in it as Gordo, a friend from the past that enters a new couple’s life (played by Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall) and brings a secret that has been hidden for decades. A […]
This little gem of a sci-fi is based on actual physics theory and doesn’t make you cringe every time some technobabble word comes out. Watching it the first time around leaves most viewers puzzled at the end, but wanting to see it again. Shot at a budget of ~$7000, don’t expect any flashy special effects […]
This is a fun genre mashup B-movie, in the vein of old John Carpenter films or those movies you used to run across on late-night cable in the 80s and early 90s. Dan Stevens (that handsome chap from Downton Abbey) gives a knock-out performance as the titular guest (David), who in the movie’s beginning has […]
This movie will first confuse your perception of the narrative with a feud involving the two magicians (played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale), but you will soon be hooked by the twists and turns of the plot. The unveiling of the mystery will leave you in awe, however it is the storytelling and the […]