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There's nothing like a good psychological thriller. In fact, if you're overwhelmed by life or your constantly growing movie watchlist, good psychological thrillers are sometimes exactly what you're looking for when you feel your brain turning to mush. But if you've already exhausted the best of them, what about the understated, underrated gems of the genre?
Psychological thrillers, also cerebral thrillers, are a rich cinematic genre that might be one of the most misunderstood. While they aren't always horror movies, their predominantly dark tones and preoccupation with human flaws often decorate thrillers as adjacent to the horror genre. Where they lack in jump scares and chainsaws, they make up for it with riveting storytelling that still gets the blood pumping and the heart racing.
Article continues below32. Play Misty for Me
Year: 1971
Director: Clint Eastwood
In Clint Eastwood's first movie as a director, the Dirty Harry star plays a radio deejay whose life descends into a nightmare when he's stalked by an obsessed fan (played by Jessica Harper). While Play Misty for Me was a big hit during its release in 1971, the movie has since fallen under the radar, particularly among younger audiences who seem to only know Eastwood as the guy from their grandfather's favorite Westerns. With pop culture filled with overzealous fandoms, and parasocial relationships to niche celebrities being more common than ever, Play Misty for Me stays relevant even after all these years.
31. One Hour Photo
Year: 2002
Director: Mark Romanek
Throughout his career, comedian Robin Williams sometimes strayed from his wholesome image to portray characters tinged with darkness. Among the best of his against-type performances was in Mark Romanek's One Hour Photo, where Williams plays a photo technician who harbors an unhealthy obsession towards a family whose photos he's developed for years. One Hour Photo earned positive reviews in 2002; after Williams' death in 2014, his output of family comedies and tender dramas eclipsed his darker work. But One Hour Photo contains perhaps the best single performance by Williams, in which he masterfully portrays a pathetically lonely man.
30. Circle
Year: 2015
Director: Aaron Hann and Mario Miscione
Like a sci-fi version of 12 Angry Men, Aaron Hann and Mario Miscione's Circle is a containment thriller where the specter of death renders humanity to form alliances, rivalries, and descend into panicked tribalism. The movie stars an ensemble cast, where 50 people wake up in a dangerous room, and one of them randomly dies every two minutes. After the group figures out they can control who dies, the room splits over ideologies. Circle draws up strong comparisons to other movies like Cube (1997) but embarks on its own path with its own sense of social commentary.
29. The Cell
Year: 2000
Director: Tarsem Singh
While it was dismissed by critics during its theatrical release, Tarsem Singh's sci-fi thriller The Cell has amassed a dedicated cult following of fans attracted to its blend of psychological horror and mesmerizing visuals. Jennifer Lopez stars as a psychologist who conducts a radical new form of transcendental science in order to infiltrate the mind of a comatose serial killer and pinpoint the location of his final victim, who is still alive. The Cell predates other dreamlike wonders like Paprika and Inception but teems with its own sense of otherworldly evil.
28. Strange Darling
Year: 2023
Director: JT Mollner
JT Mollner's buzzy erotic thriller Strange Darling warns about who, exactly, you go to bed with. Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner star as an anonymous man and woman whose one-night stand at a rural motel in Oregon descends into a violent game of survival. With a unique nonlinear plot structure (which actually created tension between Mollner and Miramax executives) and its facade as a dramatized interpretation of a fictional serial killer's murder spree, Strange Darling racked up plenty of buzz when it premiered at Fantastic Fest in 2023.
27. Starry Eyes
Year: 2014
Director(s): Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer
The blinding lights of Hollywood stardom dims grimly in Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer's 2014 thriller Starry Eyes. A psychological thriller that descends into supernatural horror, Starry Eyes follows an aspiring actress (Alexandra Essoe) who finally lands the lead role in a strange new movie, only to learn who its mysterious backers really are. Somewhere between David Lynch's Mulholland Drive and David Cronenberg's The Fly is Starry Eyes, a movie where fame and fortune come at a dehumanizing cost.
26. Searching
Year: 2018
Director: Aneesh Chaganty
Years ago, John Cho was just a dude named Harold looking for late-night burgers. But in Searching, Cho has grown into a father looking for his 16-year-old daughter (Michelle La). In Aneesh Chaganty's directing debut, Searching chronicles the efforts of a father (Cho) who teams up with a hard-boiled police detective (Debra Messing) to find his daughter by tracing her digital footprint. With a strong dramatic performance by John Cho and a novelty presentation – unfolding entirely through webcams, computer screens, and smartphones – Searching transcends its gimmick to tell a moving story about family and the lives we lead behind technology.
25. Profile
Year: 2018
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Throughout his career, Timur Bekmambetov has demonstrated a profound interest in "screenlife." Even in this niche but growing genre of digital "found footage" movies, his twelfth film, Profile – which premiered in 2018 but was delayed until 2021 – flew well under the radar. Profile is loosely based on Anna Erelle's nonfiction book In the Skin of a Jihadist, where Valene Kane plays a journalist who infiltrates ISIS' recruitment of young European women by creating a fake profile on Facebook. She soon establishes contact with a charismatic militant (Shazad Latif), and their connection blurs the lines between trust and lies. A white-knuckle thriller for the virtual age, Profile cannot be missed.
24. The Strangers
Year: 2008
Director: Bryan Bertino
Sometimes, the scariest thing you can do is to be in your own home. The Strangers, a psychological horror hit from 2008, follows the survival of a couple (played by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) whose vacation home is suddenly invaded by three masked intruders (Kip Weeks, Gemma Ward, and Laura Margolis). While the commercial success of The Strangers suggests, it's anything but underrated – the movie spawned multiple sequels – that success actually obscures how brilliant and menacing The Strangers really is. It's a movie that will make you think twice about turning on your lights at night.
23. The Gift
Year: 2015
Director: Joel Edgerton
Joel Edgerton directs and stars in this deceptively great psychological thriller from 2015. Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall play a married couple who, shortly after relocating to Los Angeles, run into a distant old friend of Bateman's Simon, a man named Gordo (Edgerton). As Gordo begins to show too much affection by showering the couple with gifts, they grow uneasy after Hall's Robyn learns the extent of Gordo's connection to Simon. A revenge thriller in misleading packaging, The Gift is pure suspense that will inspire you to make amends with anyone you've wronged before it's too late.
22. Death Game
Year: 1977
Director: Peter S. Traynor
Temptation means death for Seymour Cassel in Death Game. In Peter S. Traynor's erotic thriller, Cassel plays George, a family man who is visited one dark and stormy night by two nubile strangers (Sondra Locke and Colleen Camp). While giving them shelter from the rain, George's quiet evening becomes a nightmare when his visitor's fascination with violence slowly reveals itself. A forbidding picture about the dangers of infidelity, Death Game drew some divisive notoriety, with critics split over its worth as a multi-dimensional thriller or grimey exploitation. Death Game was remade in 2015 under the title Knock Knock with Keanu Reeves, Ana de Armas, and Lorenza Izzo.
21. Obsession
Year: 1976
Director: Brian De Palma
In Brian De Palma's seventh feature film (but the first to be a box office hit), the director pays homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo in a thriller about dealing with grief. Cliff Robertson plays a New Orleans businessman still mourning the death of his wife when, while in Europe, he meets an attractive young woman (Geneviève Bujold) with a striking resemblance. As the title implies, Robertson's character develops an obsession rooted in a longing for what was heinously taken from him.
20. The One I Love
Year: 2014
Director: Charlie McDowell
When your marriage is doomed, who else can save you but yourselves? In this mind-bending comedy by Charlie McDowell, Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss star as a couple who embark on a weekend getaway to a remote home in an attempt to salvage things. But what they don't expect are idealized doppelgangers of themselves waiting for them, whose presence raises questions about what it actually means to "have and to hold." Deliriously funny as it is provocative about modern relationships, The One I Love is one you should (maybe) watch with the one you love.
19. Hard Candy
Year: 2005
Director: David Slade
A little before his breakout role in Juno, Elliot Page starred in Hard Candy in the role of a teenager named Hayley, who targets a much older man (Patrick Wilson) she met online. Like a twisted episode of To Catch a Predator, Hayley's efforts to turn the tables and torture a suspected child predator seems like a wish-fulfillment vigilante movie at first, until the film takes a few surprising turns to inspire questions over who is actually the victim here. Disturbing as it is engrossing, Hard Candy is a mean little thriller where not all is what it seems.
18. Dead Ringers
Year: 1988
Director: David Cronenberg
One of David Cronenberg's more overlooked movies in his filmography is his dark 1988 thriller Dead Ringers. Jeremy Irons stars in the dual role of twin playboy gynecologists Beverly and Elliot, who share their medical practice and even their endless string of lovers. But when Beverly falls for Claire (Geneviève Bujold), the movie descends into outright madness as the lines blur between truth and deception. Dead Ringers isn't as phantasmagoric as Cronenberg's other movies, but it's got a masculine Irons demonstrating range as he portrays brothers who look alike but don't quite see eye to eye.
17. Green Room
Year: 2015
Director: Jeremy Saulnier
In Jeremy Saulnier's horror-thriller Green Room, a penniless punk rock band reluctantly accepts a gig playing at a neo-Nazi bar in the middle of nowhere. When they become witnesses to a murder backstage, the band finds themselves fighting for their lives against the rowdy crowd of skinheads led by their ruthless leader (played by Patrick Stewart). Green Room totally shreds, with Stewart inhabiting a much darker role than Star Trek fans are used to seeing him take on, as well as featuring the last onscreen role by the late Anton Yelchin.
16. Frailty
Year: 2001
Director: Bill Paxton
In actor Bill Paxton's only feature-length movie as a director, Paxton co-stars with Matthew McConaughey to play a deluded father who believes he's on a divine mission to kill demons. McConaughey plays one of his grown sons, who tells an FBI agent the story of his father's paranoia; the movie unfolds entirely through flashbacks, with a stunning revelation that awaits at the end. What Frailty lacks in scares and pizazz, it makes up for with a disturbing atmosphere that supposes the most terrifying thing is actually the people you love losing themselves completely.
15. The Vanishing
Year: 1988
Director: George Sluizer
When the person you love goes missing, what would you do to know what happened to them? That's the question at the heart of George Sluizer's The Vanishing, based on Tim Krabbé's 1984 novella The Golden Egg. Gene Bervoets stars as a man whose holiday with his girlfriend in France goes belly-up after she disappears at a gas station. After years of fruitless searching, a chemistry teacher offers to tell him what happened – but only if he goes through the same kidnapping. Like a slow walk into the mind of a serial killer, The Vanishing will leave you thinking about its shocking ending for days.
14. The Experiment
Year: 2001
Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
The horrors of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment act as a loose inspiration for Oliver Hirschbiegel's dramatic thriller The Experiment. Based on Mario Giordano's novel Black Box, the movie follows a psychological experiment in which men are hired as guards and others as prisoners to properly examine the effects of imprisonment. Sure enough, things spiral out of control with disastrous consequences. At the end of the day, The Experiment reminds us that even in controlled spaces, the intoxication of power can be too great.
13. Little Children
Year: 2006
Director: Todd Field
In an idyllic Massachusetts suburb, feelings of restlessness, frustration, and paranoia permeate among the people who live seemingly perfect lives. Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson star as neighbors in unhappy marriages who begin an affair. Meanwhile, the arrival of a registered sex offender (Jackie Earle Haley) sends ripples throughout the town and community. Todd Field's Little Children is a simmering portrait of the secrets and resentment we keep behind appearances.
12. Cube
Year: 1997
Director: Vicenzo Natali
In Vicenzo Natali's sci-fi thriller from 1997, seven strangers with amnesia wake up in a shapeshifting maze full of deadly traps. Despite their personality differences, the strangers must work together and overcome suspicions against one another to escape, all while piecing together the secrets of their new prison. Since its release, Cube has enjoyed cult status for its ingenious premise and razor-sharp execution. In 2021, the movie was remade in Japan with the story altered to act as commentary on contemporary Japanese culture. However, despite its remake, the original Cube is still one of the best thriller movies ever made.
11. I'm Thinking of Ending Things
Year: 2020
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Charlie Kaufman's surrealist thriller, based on Iain Reid's 2016 novel, is ostensibly about a young woman (Jessie Buckley) who accompanies her new boyfriend (Jesse Plemons) to meet his parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis). But not all is what it seems, as the young woman – who has been mulling over breaking up – slowly realizes her true nature and the real circumstances of their innocent evening. I'm Thinking of Ending Things is a startling movie that dwells in the recesses of lonely people who have nothing else but resentment, though the movie manages to be a touch more tender than Reid's far darker novel.
10. Manhunter
Year: 1986
Director: Michael Mann
In the first-ever film adaptation of the Hannibal Lecter novels, Michael Mann weaponizes color and shadows to adapt Thomas Harris' 1981 novel Red Dragon with Manhunter. William Petersen stars as FBI profiler Will Graham, who comes out of retirement to hunt down a serial killer and reluctantly consults with his former nemesis, Hannibal Lecter (Brian Cox). While the Oscar-winning Silence of the Lambs has overshadowed it from collective memory, Manhunter is Michael Mann at his finest, being a cerebral thriller and stylish detective story all in one.
9. Sleep Tight
Year: 2011
Director: Jaume Balagueró
Luis Tosar effortlessly fluctuates from unassuming concierge to sneaky sicko in Jaume Balagueró's Spanish thriller Sleep Tight. Tosar plays a lonely front desk clerk of a Barcelona apartment complex who enjoys the trust of the building's tenants, including pretty Clara (Marta Etura), who César fancies. But César hides a secret: He delights in wreaking havoc on their daily lives. However, as the movie progresses, César's obsession with Clara soon becomes his undoing. One of the rare thrillers where you find yourself rooting for the bad guy, Sleep Tight will have you locking your doors extra tight. You never know who's been in your home.
8. You Were Never Really Here
Year: 2017
Director: Lynne Ramsay
With sharp direction from Lynne Ramsay and a typically committed Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here is a sinewy hitman thriller mired in the horrors of the world. Phoenix stars as a traumatized former soldier and FBI agent who is hired by a politician to rescue his daughter from human traffickers – by any means necessary. But not all is what it seems. When Phoenix starred in Joker just a few years later, comparisons to Taxi Driver were prominent. But You Were Never Really Here might be the true successor to the Martin Scorsese classic, upholding not just the vigilante power fantasy but also the unreliable perspective of an unreliable protagonist.
7. Nocturnal Animals
Year: 2016
Director: Tom Ford
Minor spoilers, but nothing really "happens" in Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals. But that doesn't mean it isn't engrossing, and it's guaranteed to sit with you for days afterward whether you want it to or not. From fashion designer and filmmaker Tom Ford, Nocturnal Animals stars Amy Adams as Susan, a wealthy art gallery owner who receives an advance copy of a new novel written by her ex-husband (Jake Gyllenhaal), which tells of a family man who chases after the sadistic gang leader who killed his wife and daughter. But as gruesome as the novel is, it doesn't compare to the psychological distress Susan experiences from reading it and realizing just who the man she used to call husband is. Even if it's just words on a page, the story still cuts deep.
6. I Saw the Devil
Year: 2010
Director: Kim Jee-woon
The tables turn in Kim Jee-woon's startling pitch-black horror-thriller I Saw the Devil. Lee Byung-hun stars as a government agent who hunts down the serial killer (Choi Min-sik) who murdered his wife. Unlike other cat-and-mouse thrillers where the killer is after the protagonist, it's the murderer who runs for his life here as a vengeful Lee Byung-hun stops at nothing to get his revenge – even if it costs him his humanity. Equal parts fiery and pulverizing, I Saw the Devil is a transgressive Korean New Wave classic that makes so many other R-rated thrillers look like a Saturday morning cartoon.
5. Insomnia
Year: 2002
Director: Christopher Nolan
Al Pacino has never looked more haggard than in Christopher Nolan's sleepless psychological thriller Insomnia. A remake of a 1997 Norwegian movie, Insomnia takes place in rural Alaska where the sun doesn't set. A Los Angeles detective (Pacino) is dispatched to Alaska to assist local police on a case involving the murder of a teenage girl; tensions between Pacino and his partner (Martin Donovan) underscore an accidental shooting that leaves Donovan's character dead. The elusive suspect (Robin Williams) is an eye-witness, which kicks off a game of cat-and-mouse between Pacino and Williams, who together put on an acting clinic not unlike Pacino and De Niro did in Michael Mann's Heat.
4. Prisoners
Year: 2013
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Although Prisoners won acclaim and was ranked as one of the National Board of Review's top movies of 2013, the film is still being discovered by many who've never stumbled upon it in their streaming queues. Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman co-star in this grounded psychological thriller, which centers on the abduction of two young girls in Pennsylvania. While a wrathful detective (Jake Gyllenhaal) is on the case, one of the girls' impatient fathers (Jackman) begins taking matters into his own hands. Prisoners is a bleak yet absorbing crime thriller, one that transforms its lower-middle-class suburban surroundings into a vast underworld of darkness.
3. Take Shelter
Year: 2011
Director: Jeff Nichols
Those who know anyone struggling with mental illness might understand the human mind's potential for heartbreaking destruction. Jeff Nichols' Take Shelter explicitly elaborates on that phenomenon, with Michael Shannon playing the lead role of a father who is plagued by visions of an apocalyptic storm. But are these visions prophetic, or are they the work of inherited paranoid schizophrenia? With utmost care and grace, Jeff Nichols and a stirring Michael Shannon paint a most sympathetic portrait of people in distress and demonstrate the tension of listening to someone versus believing in them.
2. The Invitation
Year: 2015
Director: Karyn Kusama
Jennifer's Body director Karyn Kusama helms this delectable thriller that imagines the terror of going to a party you didn't even want to attend. Logan Marshall-Green stars as a man still mourning the death of his son when he is invited to a dinner party hosted by his ex-wife (Tammy Blanchard) and her new boyfriend (Michiel Huisman) in their swanky Hollywood Hills home. Things get even more uncomfortable after the arrival of a strange guest (John Carrol Lynch) who, shall we say, kills the vibe. Set over the course of one fateful night, The Invitation reveals how even those closest to us can drag us down.
1. Burning
Year: 2018
Director: Lee Chang-dong
An adaptation of Haruki Murakami's short story "Barn Burning," Lee Chang-dong's Burning simmers with psychological complexity and invites multiple interpretations. Yoo Ah-in plays an awkward young man and aspiring writer, Jong-su, who runs into an old friend, Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo). After striking up a brief fling, he meets Hae-mi's new friend, the worldly and sociable Ben (Steven Yeun). However, things take a turn after Hae-mi suddenly disappears, and Jong-su struggles to get answers from Ben. Burning is layered with ambiguity, grabbing hold of the viewer tight and refusing to let go even after the credits roll. It's one of the best drama movies of the 2010s and is a film you'll undoubtedly rewatch again.
