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100 titles. 1. Se7en (1995) R | 127 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery. 8.6. Rate. 65 Metascore. Two detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his motives. Director: David Fincher | Stars: Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Kevin Spacey, Andrew Kevin Walker. Votes: 1,790,307 | Gross: $100.13M. 2.
May 30, 2022 · From Hitchcock classics like Rear Window, to modern mind-benders like the work of Ari Aster, we’ve compiled the most heart-pounding psychological thrillers you can stream online right now.
- Lucia Tonelli
- Assistant Editor
- Lucia.Tonelli@hearst.com
- Kiss Me Deadly (1955) Film. Thrillers. Film noir’s most unsettling nightmare ends in a flaming nuclear disaster – and if that anxiety weren’t enough, there’s also off-screen torture, ferocious desk-clerk slapping and the casual destruction of a beloved opera record.
- Les Diaboliques (1955) Film. Thrillers. A creepy boarding school, a monstrous headmaster, his quietly fed-up wife, another disgruntled lover – thrillers rarely come better stocked for suspense.
- Vertigo (1958) Film. Thrillers. Often regarded as cinema’s greatest achievement, ‘Vertigo’ presents the peak of Hitchcock’s psychosexual fixations in gloriously shot Technicolor.
- Taxi Driver (1976) Film. Drama. As a study of masculinity and alienation, Martin Scorsese’s most disturbing masterwork has taken on even greater relevance in the last few years, in ways that probably shock and frighten the director himself.
- 35 'Shutter Island'
- 34 'The Prestige'
- 33 'Donnie Darko'
- 32 'Don't Look Now'
- 31 'Jacob's Ladder'
- 30 'Shock Corridor'
- 29 'Manhunter'
- 28 'Dead Ringers'
- 27 'Gaslight'
- 26 'Caché'
Director: Martin Scorsese
Directed by Martin Scorsese, Shutter Island is a highly beloved, fan-favorite film in the psychological thriller genre, and a very successful one at that (it grossed $295 million worldwide). Although not one of the filmmaker's best features, it benefits greatly from Leonardo DiCaprio's astounding central performance, as expected. The story centers around Deputy U.S. Marshal Edward "Teddy" Daniels as he investigates a psychiatric facility on Shutter Island after one of the patients goes missin...
Director: Christopher Nolan
This Christopher Nolan essential, based on the 1995 novel by Christopher Priest, immerses viewers who dare to witness an anxiety-inducing game of cat and mouse through an utterly captivating narrative about how obsession destroys the artist. The Prestige depicts two rival stage magicians in Victorian London, perfectly played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, who feud over a perfect teleportation trick. This engrossing battle of wits earned two Academy Award nominations for Best Art Directio...
Director: Richard Kelly
Donnie Darko is one of the many early 2000s movies that have garnered a massive cult following. While this is mostly thanks to its mind-boggling narrative, it also features great performances. The Jake Gyllenhaal-led Richard Kelly feature follows the titular character, an emotionally troubled teenager who escapes a bizarre accident by sleepwalking. He then begins having visions of a mysterious figure in a rabbit costume who causes panic by informing him that the world will end in just over 28...
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Thanks to its innovative editing style and some controversial scenes that sparked conversations among moviegoers (especially considering the standards of contemporary mainstream cinema), Don't Look Nowcenters around a grieving couple, John(Donald Sutherland) and Laura Baxter(Julie Christie), who mourn the death of their young daughter in Venice. There, they encounter two elderly sisters, one of whom is a psychic. Meditating on the consequences of grief and the effect of the death of a child o...
Director: Adrian Lyne
Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) is a mild-mannered postal worker, recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder after a bloody tour in the Vietnam War. His family is no longer with him, his son died years ago, and he’s just barely putting the pieces of his life together with his new girlfriend… when he sees a tentacle on the subway and mysterious men with blurry faces, viewers are left wondering if it his PTSD affecting him or something far, far more sinister. The repulsion that Jacob, played by...
Director: Samuel Fuller
As a filmmaker,Samuel Fuller reveled in pushing narrative boundaries, and in his absolutely electric psychological thriller,Shock Corridor, he practically burst through them. Peter Breckplays Johnny Barrett, a journalist obsessed with winning the Pulitzer Prize, who embarks on a daring scheme to catch a headline. He will go undercover in a mental institution, live amongst the inmates, and get to the bottom of an unsolved murder. It’s the kind of idea that sounds clever on paper, but puts Barr...
Director: Michael Mann
The first film adaptation of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter novels, based on the novel Red Dragon, goes deeper into psychological terror than any of the others (at least until the TV show came along). Michael Mann’s Manhunter stars William Petersonas Will Graham, an FBI profiler so talented at getting into the mind of a killer that he ends up losing his own personality and drowns in the darkness. Hannibal Lecter appears, inexplicably named “Hannibal Lecktor,” and played with a disarming casu...
Director: David Cronenberg
David Cronenberg spent the majority of his career exploring the terrors of the human body, and our unnerving psychological obsessions with our own organics. While he’s made several classic films along these lines, it is perhaps Dead Ringers that stands out as his crowning accomplishment. Jeremy Irons plays identical twinswho share each other’s work, each other’s lives, and — without telling them — the same women. Elliot is confident and domineering, Beverly is shy and sensitive, and when they...
Director: George Cukor
George Cukor’s Gaslight isn’t just a psychological thriller, it’s synonymous with manipulation and horror — this film’s very title has entered the popular lexicon to describe a form of psychological abuse. Ingrid Bergman stars as a young opera singer who meets the love of her life, a handsome older gentleman played byCharles Boyer. But no sooner are they married and move into the London townhouse does the relationship devolve into a nightmare. Our heroine, it seems, is losing her mind. Or is...
Director: Michael Haneke
Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche) are an unremarkable, upper-class French couple, who discover, to their horror, that they are being watched. Every day a video arrives on their doorstep, with footage of the front of their house. No threats, no message, just one person’s clear obsession with observing them. What the two decide to do with this information says a lot about them. Without any clue, they decide to dig into the past on their own, and what they find is the wretched...
- Ryan Heffernan
- 'Parasite' (2019) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 99% A modern masterpiece that has already become a certified classic as one of the greatest films of the 21st century so far, Parasite famously became the first ever foreign language feature to win Best Picture at the Oscars.
- 'Rear Window' (1954) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98% Across a career as distinguished as Alfred Hitchcock’s, it stands to reason that pinpointing one standout masterpiece is an impossible task, but Rear Window makes an excellent case for exhibiting the master of suspense at his absolute best.
- 'Rebecca' (1940) Rotten Tomatoes: 98% Combining elements of romantic intrigue, psychological thrills, and gothic narrative, Rebecca marked a glistening American cinematic debut for famed genre master Alfred Hitchcock.
- 'Psycho' (1960) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97% Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho revolves around Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a young woman who embezzles money and seeks refuge at the Bates Motel, owned by the peculiar Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins).
Best Psychological Thrillers of 21st Century (2000-present) Movies with Psychological plot in any form (crime, mystery, psych-horror, conspiracy theories, science fiction, detective fiction, post-apocalyptic, dystopian fiction, missing person cases, psychosexual disorders, e.t.c.)
1. Oldboy (2003) R | 120 min | Action, Drama, Mystery. 8.3. Rate. 78 Metascore. After being kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen years, Oh Dae-Su is released, only to find that he must find his captor in five days. Director: Park Chan-wook | Stars: Choi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jeong, Kim Byeong-Ok. Votes: 632,396 | Gross: $0.71M.