Here Are The 18 Best Thriller Movies You Can Watch Right Now:
The thriller genre includes a lot of different types of movies. The thriller genre occupies a unique space, bridging the intense fear of horror movies and the deep psychological impact of works by Bergman and other filmmakers.
One of the most enjoyable types of movies is drama. These movies pack some of the most exciting scenes ever seen on the big screen, with twists that keep us guessing the whole time and tense moments that raise our heart rate more than any run.
Aliens, serial killers, 1970s plots, and artists who are obsessed might all seem like they don’t belong in the same type of movie. There are great performances, heady secrets, twist ends, heists, and car chases on our list of the greatest action movies. Some of these movies changed the way people watched movies forever when they came out.
North By Northwest:
There isn’t a movie out there that is more exciting, hotter, or full of memorable moments than this one. The best thing about Alfred Hitchcock’s spy thriller is how easy it all seems as the movie glides from New York to Mount Rushmore, stopping in Chicago and a Midwestern bus stop along the way.
Meanwhile, Cary Grant’s ad man is sick with Wrong Man-itis, which could be fatal. Of course, it takes a lot of work to make a movie look this easy. It’s all thanks to Hitch and his team of talented people behind the camera, like author Ernest Lehman, Saul Bass, and Bernard Herrmann, whose score adds both fear and joy.
What about the cast? Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau, and Jessie Royce Landis are all having a great time. They play heroes, bad guys, and worried moms. But Grant is in charge of the movie, and he’s a famous actor who is happy to be the joke when the situation calls for it.
Heat:
In an interview with Empire that came out 12 years after the movie came out, Michael Mann called Heat, his 1995 masterpiece, not a heist thriller but a symphonic drama, an opera of high emotions about two men whose unwavering obsessions put them at odds with each other, their sides of the law, and the people who love and care about them.
Not only that, but Heat is also without a doubt one of the best movies of the 1990s, with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro giving their best performances ever.
Heat is, well, a real heater of a film. It’s a superb movie that lasts almost three hours, but every minute feels important and moving. The story of master thief Neil McCauley and his game of cat and mouse with LAPD Lt.
Vincent Hanna is an explosive epic full of shooting that sounds like percussion instruments and quiet moments of reflection that show emotional intensity that is too complicated to put into words.
If you’ve never witnessed heat before, this is the time to fix that mistake. And if you have seen it before, I promise you that you need to watch it again soon.
The Sixth Sense:
“I can see dead people.” When a young Haley Joel Osment whispered the famous line, it sent chills down everyone’s spine. Bruce Willis is the child counselor who is sent to him to help him deal with seeing ghosts.
This movie’s twist ending made M. Night Shyamalan famous as the “king of twist endings.” Part of what made The Sixth Sense a hit was the shocking ending. For something slightly less scary, put these family movies on your list of must-sees.
Burning:
Based on the Japanese novel “Barn Burning,” this South Korean horror is just what it sounds like. Burning is a drama about a young writer, his childhood friend, and a stranger they become friends with.
At first, it seems like a very simple story that hits on modern South Korean society. As the movie goes on and the main character learns more about the stranger, the story starts to change as he sees that things might not be what they seem to be.
Burning might not be suitable for everybody because it spends a lot of time showing how its characters go about their everyday lives. It does take a while to get to the scary parts, but the movie awards viewers who wait with a tense third act.
Death Wish:
This much more typically action-packed remake from director Eli Roth was a remake of the classic 1974 Michael Winner film starring Charles Bronson. It got terrible reviews from critics but much better reviews from general viewers.
This movie features an increased level of violence and blood compared to the first installment. Bruce Willis portrays a man whose wife is killed and daughter left unconscious during a home invasion. He then turns violent and seeks payback against the crooks who did it.
Under The Shadow:
Babak Anvari’s first full-length movie is a masterfully made and deeply unsettling thriller that blurs the line between magical horror as well as the horrors of reality in a way that few movies ever do.
It takes place in Tehran in the 1980s during The War of the Cities, which is also the setting of Anvari’s own scary youth. Narges Rashidi portrays the lead role of Shideh, a medical student prohibited from studying due to her involvement in rebel politics.
When Shideh’s husband goes to fight, she has to watch over their young daughter, Dorsa, while the fighting and bombing get worse around them. Just when things look like they can’t get any worse, an evil genie starts to haunt Shideh and Dorsa.
It’s almost too hard to breathe while watching this movie because it makes you feel like you’re in a war-torn Iran. Anvari grew up in a society where VCRs as well as VHS tapes were against the law. Anvari’s first movie demonstrates a passion for films that money can’t buy.
Anvari’s point seems to be that the magical scares work, yet they’re never exactly as scary as Shideh’s real life. The great British film writer Mark Kermode called this small-scale powerhouse the greatest movie of 2016. Don’t miss it!
M:
In real life, there were child killers, cannibals, and serial killers with horrible names like “the Butcher of Hanover” and “the Vampire of Düsseldorf.” These people caused a lot of fear in Germany in the 1920s.
Fritz Lang, the most famous and wealthy director in Berlin, was interested in the subject. It became the main idea of his debut sound film, which was, in many ways, the first commercial psychothriller.
M is a groundbreaking film that revolutionized the way movies depict society. It changed the way movies were made by depicting society in a strange way, filled with bad tastes. Peter Lorre’s performance as Hans Beckert, who is stuck between his hot desires and a web of cops and mobsters, made the movie famous.
Lang also made “In the Hall of the Mountain King” by Edvard Grieg sound instantly scary when Beckert hummed it, but not when Lorre did it because she couldn’t whistle.
Assault On Precinct 13:
John Carpenter’s crime movie from 1976 is one of the tightest 91 minutes ever captured on film. Many have copied it, but none have ever topped it. This is Carpenter’s second full-length movie.
It’s about a police officer as well as a killer who work together to protect the title station from a street gang with lots of weapons. Despite its small budget of about $100,000, Assault upon Precinct 13 serves as a prime example of efficiently and swiftly producing a movie.
The closed-in setting of the movie effectively builds tension and sets up action scenes. Plus, it shows off many of the skills that would make Carpenter one of the greatest genre film masters.
The Others:
There is a woman living in a creepy old house with her two kids who are allergic to light. Nicole Kidman plays the lead role in this atmospheric movie. After experiencing a series of strange occurrences, the woman begins to suspect that her house is haunted by what she refers to as “the others.”
This is one of the best horror movies for people who like artistic camera work and beautifully off-kilter art design. It’s sad and scary, and the ending is a complete surprise. If you need an enjoyable opportunity to watch the movie, Halloween is the best time.
Good Time:
The Safdie Brothers became better known after the crime movie Good Time, in which Robert Pattinson plays a thief who wants to help his handicapped brother get out of jail. He tries to obtain the money for his bail, yet a string of bad choices sends him on an anxiety-filled roller ride that never stops.
Good Time was filmed in the boys’ city of New York City and has music by Oneohtrix Point Never. It shows not only how good Robert Pattinson was as an actor but also how bad one night of mistakes may be.
Unsane:
Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane is a low-key yet effective thriller about a young woman who finds herself chained up against her will and starts to see her stalker walking around the halls as an employee who can see and talk to her at any time.
Many times during the movie, people are on the edges of their seats, wondering how much of the narrative they’re seeing is actually true.
I’m Thinking Of Ending Things:
In Wild Rose, she shocked us with her role as a Scottish bad girl who becomes a country singer. A year later, she appeared in Charlie Kaufman’s deeply funny psychological thriller.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things is based on the same-named 2016 book and is about a young couple who go on a car trip. Some might say the movie is too clever for its own good, yet it’s still a fun puzzle movie that you should see.
Les Diaboliques:
It’s hard to find a more suspenseful movie than this one, with its scary boarding school, monster director, quietly angry wife, and another angry lover. Author Henri-Georges Clouzot, who is like France’s Alfred Hitchcock, sneakily pairs up the shy husband with the wild lover to kill their mutual enemy.
Clouzot uses everything he has access to, including creepy hallways, dirty swimming pools, and kids who are so loud they hurt your ears. The end result is a very scary movie that had an impact on Psycho.
Clouzot’s crazy nail-biter ends with such a domino effect of turns that there was a title card at the conclusion asking people not to give away the movie. Don’t think you’ll figure out who is lying until the very end.
Blood Simple:
Blood Simple, which the Coen brothers directed for the first time in 1984, is a great introduction to the deeply funny, strangely planned, and uniquely Coen-esque films they would go on to make.
The movie is a hard-boiled neo-noir crime story set in Texas. It’s about a bar owner, his wife, and one of his workers, who are in a dangerous love triangle. As the affair and escape escalate into violence, the two individuals longing to be together become entangled in a complex scheme entailing money and murder.
Frances McDormand does a great job as Abby, the unhappy wife who is at the center of the drama, and M. Emmet Walsh does a great job as Loren Visser, the sneaky hitman who stirs up trouble because he wants to get paid quickly.
Picnic At Hanging Rock:
In this famous Australian movie, teenage girls go missing while on a school trip to the bush. The town deals with the slow-building tension of the case. The storytelling technique creates a captivating mood that leaves you craving for more information.
If you liked the classic from 1975, you should watch the TV drama with Natalie Dormer. Some people say it’s not one of the most effective TV shows ever, but drama fans will enjoy it.
Rear Window:
In Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” James Stewart plays a photographer who has broken his leg and has to stay in his small apartment while he heals. He starts to spy on his neighbors because he is bored and stuck in his New York apartment.
It’s just a safe hobby until he thinks one of his friends has killed someone. The movie was filmed on a single set. It is a murder story that keeps people interested. The main character in this Hitchcock favorite can’t move, but there are many other exciting parts that make it one of his best.
Hunter Killer:
As a submarine captain, action star Gerard Butler leads a strong cast in this military thriller about a failed military coup at the top levels of the Russian government. The storyline centers around a perilous mission to rescue hostages and a high-stakes battle of wits between two rival submarines.
Hunter Killer is smooth and exciting the whole time. It’s not a very intellectual movie, but its score shows that it has a lot more brainpower than a few of Butler’s other action films that aren’t as controlled.
The Firm:
Tom Cruise had become such a huge star that a legal thriller was considered a summer hit. Sydney Pollack’s adaptation of John Grisham’s book made an amazing $270 million, making it the highest-grossing R-rated movie of 1993.
Tom Cruise delivers a compelling performance as a law school graduate filled with optimism, only to discover the pervasive corruption within his company when it’s already too late.
The Firm is an imperfect success of real-life filmmaking by top-notch talent behind and in front of the camera. It stars Gene Hackman, Holly Hunter, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Ed Harris, David Strathairn, Hal Holbrook, and Wilford Brimley as typical bad guys.
