best travel thriller movies

• Best New Thriller Movies of...
• Underrated Thrillers In Which The Main Characte...
• In Which the Stalker Is Female
• Psychological Thrillers, Ra...
• Underrated '90s Thrillers B...
• Thrillers That Are Mysteries
• Women Out for Serious Revenge
• The Best Thriller Movies of...
• The Scariest Psycho Thrillers
• Psychological Thriller TV S...
• The Darkest, Most Twisted Lifetime Movies
• The Most Heartbreaking Deaths In Thriller Movies

The 100+ Best Foreign Thrillers, Ranked

Immersing oneself in the mesmerizing realm of action films often leads to exploring beyond the familiar, and there's nothing quite like the intrigue served up by the best foreign thrillers. These intoxicating films, hailing from diverse corners of the globe, offer an invitation to experience profound narratives, gripping suspense, and unique cultural perspectives that transcend borders. A distinct fascination lies in their ability to weave international ideologies and filmmaking techniques into the thriller genre, crafting masterpieces that leave viewers on the edge of their seats. 

It is fascinating how the best foreign thriller movies navigate the thrilling labyrinth of suspense and tension while harnessing the essence of their native filmmaking traditions. They ingeniously employ classic thriller tropes, yet each exhibits a distinctive flavor, reflecting the social, cultural, and cinematic contexts of their respective countries. This innovative blend of established thriller conventions and international film making techniques culminates in a truly unique cinematic experience that stands head and shoulders above its counterparts. 

Take, for instance, the South Korean marvel Oldboy . This film, much like the infamous I Saw The Devil , exemplifies the best of Korean thriller movies with its intricate narrative, unforgettable twists, and compelling performances. These movies lay bare the soul of Korean cinema while delivering an adrenaline rush typical of a thriller. Similarly, films like Parasite and REC masterfully balance suspense with insightful commentary, making them must-watch entries in the realm of foreign thrillers. What’s more? Each movie entry comes with convenient streaming buttons for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+, HBO Max, and Paramount+ to ensure an effortless viewing experience. 

Exploring the realm of the best foreign thriller movies provides an enriching perspective on international storytelling. From suspenseful Spanish thriller movies to captivating European psychological thrillers, these cinematic wonders have woven their diverse cultural threads into the very fabric of thriller cinema. They not only elevate the viewing experience by offering unique narratives but also carve out an intimate space for audiences to connect with the art of filmmaking beyond their own borders. So, buckle up and delve into this thrilling world, appreciating the genius that foreign thrillers bring to the global cinematic landscape. 

Considered a classic of South Korean cinema, this intense revenge tale follows the story of a man who's been mysteriously imprisoned for 15 years and is suddenly released, setting him on a brutal quest for vengeance. The film showcases a disturbing yet enthralling narrative, anchored by a powerful central performance from Choi Min-sik. With its bold visual style, unapologetic brutality, and unforgettable twist ending, it holds a special place among thriller enthusiasts as a must-see film.

• Released : 2003
• Directed by : Park Chan-wook

The Handmaiden

A daring and provocative South Korean thriller, this film tells the story of a young pickpocket and her con-artist mentor who hatch a plan to steal the fortune of a wealthy Japanese heiress. The film is known for its intricate plotting, gorgeous cinematography, and deeply erotic portrayal of desire and deception. A powerful exploration of love, betrayal, and sexual politics, it has been hailed as a modern masterpiece that pushes the boundaries of the genre.

• Released : 2016

Hailing from South Korea, this genre-bending masterpiece mixes elements of black comedy and thriller to expose the class divide and social inequality within Korean society. It's a gripping tale centered around two families, one rich and one poor, whose lives become entwined in a heart-stoppingly tense series of events. With its relentless pacing, edge-of-your-seat suspense, and razor-sharp social commentary, it's easy to see why this film has earned high praise from critics and audiences alike.

• Released : 2019
• Directed by : Bong Joon-ho

The Invisible Guest

This Spanish film masterfully weaves a tale of a successful businessman accused of murder, with a shocking twist that keeps the audience captivated until the very end. Known for its intricate plot and chilling atmosphere, it presents a thrilling exploration of themes like guilt, deception and revenge in a way that only the best foreign thrillers can. By making audiences question their own preconceived notions and expectations, this film has cemented itself as one of the best thrillers of all time .

• Directed by : Oriol Paulo

Train to Busan

This riveting South Korean zombie film tells the story of a father and daughter trying to survive a zombie outbreak while aboard a train bound for Busan. Known for its breakneck pacing and tense action sequences, the film expertly marries traditional horror elements with an exploration of societal breakdown and what it means to be human. A thrilling cinematic experience, it has cemented itself as a modern classic in the world of foreign thrillers.

• Directed by : Yeon Sang-ho

The Secret In Their Eyes

An Argentine crime drama, this film centers on a retired legal counselor who becomes obsessed with solving the 25-year-old rape and murder case of a young woman. With its intricate narrative, skillful direction, and powerful performances, it offers a profound examination of themes like justice, obsession, and loss. As a prime example of Argentine cinema at its finest, it's no wonder this film went on to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

• Released : 2009
• Directed by : Juan José Campanella

This Spanish thriller tells the tale of a detective searching for a missing corpse, as the suspect attempts to unravel the truth behind his wife's apparent death. Known for its riveting twists and turns, the film draws viewers deeper into a web of deceit and betrayal. Its analysis of themes such as love, obsession and guilt makes it a must-watch for those drawn to intelligent, thought-provoking thrillers.

• Released : 2012

I Saw The Devil

In this brutal South Korean revenge film , a secret agent embarks on a relentless pursuit of a sadistic serial killer who murdered his fiancée. The film is both shocking and mesmerizing in its depiction of the thin line between good and evil, questioning whether vengeance can ever truly satisfy one's need for justice. With its captivating narrative, intense performances, and visceral visuals, it leaves a lasting impression on audiences worldwide.

• Released : 2010
• Directed by : Kim Jee-woon

This Danish gem takes place entirely within the confines of an emergency dispatch center, following a police officer who receives a frantic call from a kidnapped woman. This gripping tale is known for its innovative storytelling and its intense focus on the protagonist as he struggles to piece together the puzzle and save the victim. The tension is palpable throughout, demonstrating true mastery of suspense and establishing the film as a standout among foreign thrillers.

• Released : 2018
• Directed by : Gustav Möller

Headhunters

This Norwegian thriller follows a successful corporate headhunter who moonlights as an art thief and becomes embroiled in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse. The film's tense, action-packed narrative is driven by its protagonist's desire for wealth and status, encapsulating the darker corners of the human psyche. With its unpredictable twists and dark humor, it firmly establishes itself as an essential watch for thriller fans.

• Released : 2011
• Directed by : Morten Tyldum

Lady Vengeance

The final installment in Park Chan-wook's famous Vengeance Trilogy , this South Korean film follows a woman who seeks bloody revenge on the man who framed her for murder and ruined her life. The film's stylistic and narrative prowess is matched only by its relentless exploration of the human thirst for retribution. Its powerful conclusion cements it as not only a fitting end to the trilogy but also a standout among the best foreign thrillers.

• Released : 2005

In this thrilling South Korean crime film, an ex-detective turned pimp races against time to rescue one of his girls from a sadistic serial killer. As the line between hunter and hunted blurs, the film offers a nail-biting exploration of desperation and morality. Aided by its memorable characters, relentless pace, and gritty cinematography, it's become a shining example of crime thrillers from around the world.

• Released : 2008
• Directed by : Na Hong-jin

The Vanishing

Hailing from the Netherlands, this chilling psychological thriller follows a man's obsessive search for his girlfriend, who disappeared during a vacation in France. Known for its unrelenting suspense, gripping narrative, and one of cinema's most memorable climaxes, the film presents a haunting examination of obsession, grief, and the lengths people will go to uncover the truth. With its lasting impact on the thriller genre, it's no wonder the film has become a cult classic among cinephiles.

• Released : 1988
• Directed by : George Sluizer

The Lives Of Others

Set in East Germany during the Cold War era, this German film follows a Stasi surveillance officer who becomes emotionally invested in the lives of the artists he's been assigned to spy on. A profoundly moving and suspenseful film, it delves into themes of privacy, art, and the human need for connection within a repressive regime. Its thought-provoking narrative and poignant performances have garnered it numerous accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film .

• Released : 2006
• Directed by : Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

In this South Korean psychological thriller , a devoted single mother sets out to prove her mentally challenged son's innocence after he's accused of murder. The film examines themes of maternal love, sacrifice, and the depths one will go to protect their child. With its expertly woven narrative, powerful performances, and unsettling atmosphere, it's easy to see why it's considered one of the best foreign thrillers.

Memories of Murder

Based on real events, this South Korean crime film follows a pair of detectives as they try to solve a series of brutal rapes and murders that shook their country in the 1980s. With its compelling narrative, masterful direction, and haunting visuals, it offers a chilling examination of the pursuit of justice in an era of political turmoil. Repeatedly lauded as one of the best foreign thrillers, it's a must-watch for fans of true-crime dramas.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

A Swedish adaptation of Stieg Larsson's best-selling novel, this film weaves a gripping tale of a journalist and a troubled hacker who join forces to solve the decades-old mystery of a missing heiress. It's a compelling thriller that delves into themes of power, corruption, and violence against women, all while maintaining a chilling atmosphere that's hard to shake. Widely praised for its captivating storytelling and strong performances, it's undeniably earned its place among the best foreign thrillers.

• Directed by : Niels Arden Oplev

The Man From Nowhere

This South Korean action-thriller revolves around a former government agent who embarks on a violent quest for vengeance when a young girl he befriends is kidnapped. Blending thrilling action sequences with a deeply emotional core, the film takes viewers on a roller-coaster ride through the dark underbelly of society. With its visceral impact and palpable tension, it's a standout in the realm of action-thrillers.

• Directed by : Lee Jung-beom

Confessions

A Japanese psychological thriller about a grieving mother who plots her own twisted form of justice against the students she believes killed her young daughter. Known for its stylish visuals and bone-chilling narration, the movie provides a disturbing look into the depths of human depravity and grief. It's a haunting and often shocking film that leaves a lasting impression on all who witness it.

• Directed by : Tetsuya Nakashima

The Hidden Face

A Spanish thriller about a man whose girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, leaving him to unravel the truth behind her disappearance. As he delves deeper into the investigation, he uncovers a tangled web of paranoia, deceit, and jealousy. The film's chilling atmosphere and well-crafted suspense make it an unforgettable addition to the canon of foreign thrillers.

• Directed by : Andrés Baiz

A masterpiece of Italian horror cinema , this film from maestro Dario Argento follows a musician who witnesses the murder of a psychic and becomes entangled in the investigation. Known for its iconic visuals, masterful suspense, and blood-curdling scenes of violence, it showcases the best of the giallo subgenre and has left a lasting impact on the world of foreign thrillers.

• Released : 1975
• Directed by : Dario Argento

Tell No One

A French adaptation of Harlan Coben's best-selling novel, this film follows a doctor who's framed for his wife's murder and embarks on a tension-filled quest to clear his name. The movie is lauded for its rapid-fire pacing, twist-filled plot, and emotionally resonant storytelling, offering a gripping exploration of love, loss, and redemption. It's no surprise that this riveting thriller has earned itself a passionate following among cinephiles worldwide.

• Directed by : Guillaume Canet

Based on true events, this Australian crime thriller tells the story of a teenager who falls under the spell of a charismatic psychopath responsible for a series of brutal murders. The film presents a chilling examination of the seductive allure of violence and the grim reality of life on society's fringes. Its unflinching brutality, haunting atmosphere, and powerful performances make it a standout among foreign crime films.

• Directed by : Justin Kurzel

Suicide Club

This Japanese cult favorite follows a group of detectives investigating a string of bizarre suicides that may be connected to an underground cult. The film is known for its macabre imagery, provocative themes, and biting satire of modern society's obsession with death and technology. Its unique blend of horror and thriller elements has earned it a dedicated following among fans of foreign genre films.

• Released : 2001
• Directed by : Sion Sono

Hailing from Denmark, this harrowing drama follows a kindergarten teacher who becomes the target of mass hysteria after being falsely accused of sexual misconduct. Centered around an astonishing performance from Mads Mikkelsen, the movie offers a gut-wrenching exploration of human nature and the consequences of mob mentality. Its powerful storytelling and haunting themes make it an unforgettable viewing experience for fans of thought-provoking thrillers.

• Directed by : Thomas Vinterberg

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

The first installment in Park Chan-wook's acclaimed Vengeance Trilogy , this South Korean thriller follows a deaf-mute man who goes to extreme lengths to secure a kidney transplant for his ailing sister. With its brutal violence, complex characters, and morally ambiguous themes, the film presents a bleak and unforgettable portrait of desperation and revenge. Its unflinching depiction of the human condition has made it a must-watch for fans of foreign thrillers.

• Released : 2002

Hailing from Spain, this horror-thriller follows a television reporter and her cameraman as they document the unfolding of a mysterious epidemic within a quarantined apartment building. Shot in a found-footage style, the film creates an immersive and claustrophobic atmosphere that amplifies the terror. With its relentless pacing, relentless scares, and innovative storytelling, it has become a genre-defining example of horror cinema.

• Released : 2007
• Directed by : Jaume Balagueró, Paco Plaza

This disturbing Japanese thriller, directed by horror master Takashi Miike, tells the story of a widower who holds an audition to find a new wife, only to discover his chosen candidate harbors dark secrets. The film is celebrated for its unflinching exploration of obsession, gender roles, and the grotesque, with stomach-churning scenes that are not for the faint of heart. Its ability to shock and disturb viewers has earned it a dedicated following among fans of extreme cinema.

• Released : 1999
• Directed by : Takashi Miike

The Skin I Live In

A dark and twisted Spanish thriller from acclaimed director Pedro Almodóvar, this film follows a brilliant but disturbed plastic surgeon who develops an incredibly durable synthetic skin after his wife dies in a fiery car accident. As the truth behind his experiments emerges, the film delves into themes of obsession, identity, and the horrors of human manipulation. Its masterful storytelling, unsettling visuals, and haunting conclusion make it a must-watch for fans of psychological thrillers.

• Directed by : Pedro Almodóvar

Confession of Murder

In this South Korean thriller, a police detective is haunted by his failure to catch a serial killer 15 years prior when a man publishes a memoir claiming responsibility for the crimes. As the truth begins to unravel, the film delves into themes of obsession, closure, and the human desire for justice. Its gripping narrative and thought-provoking exploration of crime and punishment make it a standout among foreign thrillers.

• Directed by : Jung Byung-gil

This Argentine anthology film features six separate stories that each focus on the theme of violence and revenge, serving as a darkly comedic exploration of human nature and the primal urge for vengeance. Blending the absurd with genuinely thrilling suspense, the film showcases fascinating characters and expertly crafted narratives that keep audiences on the edge of their seats. As a unique and thought-provoking entry in the world of foreign thrillers, it continues to captivate viewers around the globe.

• Released : 2014
• Directed by : Damián Szifron

This German classic from director Fritz Lang tells the story of a serial child murderer who becomes the target of both the police and the criminal underworld. Hailed as an early masterpiece of suspense filmmaking, the movie presents a chilling examination of societal obsession with scapegoats and the blurred line between justice and vengeance. Its enduring influence and legendary status make it an essential viewing for any thriller aficionado.

• Released : 1931
• Directed by : Fritz Lang

The Nightingale

Set in 19th-century colonial Australia, this revenge thriller follows an Irish convict seeking to avenge the brutal attack on her family by a sadistic British officer. The film is known for its unflinching portrayal of violence and the emotional toll it takes on both the victim and the perpetrator. With its powerful themes, vivid storytelling, and mesmerizing performances, it stands as a striking example of foreign thrillers at their best.

• Directed by : Jennifer Kent

Directed by South Korean auteur Park Chan-wook, this atmospheric psychological thriller centers on a young woman who becomes infatuated with her enigmatic uncle after her father's death. The film's hypnotic visuals, unsettling atmosphere, and nuanced exploration of desire and obsession make it a fascinating entry in the genre. Its captivating blend of Gothic horror and adult fairy tale elements ensures its place among the best foreign thrillers.

• Released : 2013

Ichi the Killer

This controversial and ultra-violent Japanese thriller from director Takashi Miike follows a sadomasochistic yakuza enforcer in search of his missing boss, whose path crosses with the titular Ichi, a deranged and deadly assassin. The film pushes the boundaries of on-screen violence and depravity, offering a shocking and unapologetically brutal exploration of human nature's darkest corners. Its relentless pacing, twisted characters, and macabre visuals have made it a cult favorite among fans of extreme cinema.

Nine Queens

A compulsively watchable Argentine con-artist caper, this film follows two small-time swindlers who team up to pull off a massive scam involving a valuable set of rare stamps. With its intricate plot, engaging characters, and ever-shifting alliances, it keeps audiences guessing until the very end. The film's clever twists and high-stakes suspense have cemented it as a standout in the world of foreign thrillers.

• Directed by : Fabián Bielinsky

This Danish thriller tells the story of a young law student who takes a job as a night watchman at a morgue, soon finding himself ensnared in a terrifying web of mystery and murder. The film's chilling atmosphere, compelling narrative, and formidable performances make it a standout among foreign thrillers. Its expert blending of horror and suspense has left a lasting impression on audiences worldwide.

• Released : 1994
• Directed by : Ole Bornedal

Battle Royale

In this controversial Japanese thriller, a group of high school students is forced to participate in a deadly game where the last person standing wins. The film offers a gripping exploration of violence, survival, and the darker side of human nature while also serving as an incisive commentary on the pressures of modern society. Its unflinching brutality, compelling premise, and dark humor ensure its status as a cult favorite among foreign thriller fans.

• Released : 2000
• Directed by : Kinji Fukasaku

The Orphanage

A Spanish supernatural thriller produced by Guillermo del Toro, this film centers on a woman who returns to her childhood home – a former orphanage – with her family, only for her son to mysteriously disappear. As she delves into the building's tragic past, the film expertly balances chilling scares with a poignant exploration of love, loss, and the unbreakable bond between a mother and her child. Its haunting atmosphere, strong performances, and emotional depth make it a standout in the world of foreign thrillers.

• Directed by : Juan Antonio Bayona

Memoir of a Murderer

• Released : 2017
• Directed by : Won Shin-yun

This German thriller, filmed in a single, continuous take, follows a young Spanish woman who becomes embroiled in a dangerous bank heist after a chance encounter with a group of criminals. The film's innovative technique, raw performances, and relentless pacing make for an immersive and heart-pounding experience. By pushing the boundaries of cinematic storytelling, it has earned its place among the best foreign thrillers of all time.

• Released : 2015
• Directed by : Sebastian Schipper

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

This Iranian-American vampire thriller defies categorization, blending elements of horror, romance, and Westerns to create a mesmerizing cinematic experience. Set in a desolate Iranian ghost town, the film follows a lonely vampire who forms an unlikely connection with a human man. With its striking visuals, moody atmosphere, and unique fusion of genres, it's no wonder this film has garnered a cult following among fans of foreign thrillers.

• Directed by : Ana Lily Amirpour

Run Lola Run

This innovative German thriller follows a young woman named Lola as she races against the clock to save her boyfriend from a deadly predicament. By incorporating multiple timelines, kinetic visuals, and a pulsating techno soundtrack, the film creates a breathless, adrenaline-fueled experience that feels fresh and exhilarating. Its unique approach to storytelling and nonstop energy have made it a cult classic among thriller enthusiasts.

• Released : 1998
• Directed by : Tom Tykwer

This Korean crime thriller follows a landlord who is forced to confront the ghosts of his past when a series of murders occurs in his neighborhood. As he teams up with a retired detective to solve the case, the film presents a compelling exploration of themes such as redemption, forgiveness, and the cyclical nature of violence. Its nuanced storytelling, atmospheric visuals, and well-crafted suspense have earned it high praise among fans of the genre.

• Directed by : Kim Hong-seon

Open Your Eyes

This Spanish psychological thriller follows a man disfigured in a car accident who's haunted by recurring dreams of a mysterious woman. As the line between reality and fantasy blurs, the film delves into themes of identity, love, and the nature of existence. Its mind-bending narrative, captivating visuals, and thought-provoking conclusion make it an unforgettable cinematic experience that has continued to captivate audiences worldwide.

• Released : 1997
• Directed by : Alejandro Amenábar

This French crime drama follows three friends from a Parisian banlieue as they navigate the aftermath of a local riot and the brutal police tactics used to suppress it. By placing the spotlight on themes of racial tension, police brutality, and social inequality, the film offers a harrowing and timely exploration of contemporary issues. Its gripping narrative, striking visuals, and fearless social commentary have cemented its status as a modern classic among foreign thrillers.

• Released : 1995
• Directed by : Mathieu Kassovitz

Cliff Walkers

• Released : 2021
• Directed by : Zhang Yimou

The Forest of Love

From visionary Japanese director Sion Sono, this twisted thriller tells the story of a con man who manipulates a group of aspiring filmmakers into documenting his increasingly violent deeds. The film is lauded for its daring narrative, provocative themes, and unflinching portrayal of human depravity. With its disturbing imagery, surreal storytelling, and unforgettable performances, it has left a lasting impression on fans of unconventional thrillers.

Coming Home in the Dark

This tense New Zealand thriller follows a family whose idyllic vacation turns into a nightmare when they're kidnapped by a pair of merciless criminals. As the ordeal unfolds, the film presents a harrowing exploration of themes such as survival, guilt, and the consequences of past actions. Its relentless suspense, shocking twists, and gut-wrenching emotion make it an unforgettable addition to the world of foreign thrillers.

• Directed by : James Ashcroft

The 8th Night

• Directed by : Tae-Hyung Kim

Blade of the Immortal

Why Don't You Play in Hell?

The Housemaid

• Released : 1960
• Directed by : Kim Ki-young

This Spanish supernatural thriller follows two separate families plagued by the same malevolent entity known as Hollowface. As the children of each family become targets of the mysterious creature, the film delves into themes of fear, loss, and the power of belief. With its suspenseful storytelling and eerie atmosphere, it offers a chilling and memorable experience for fans of foreign thrillers.

• Directed by : Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Riders of Justice

This Danish dark comedy-thriller stars Mads Mikkelsen as a military veteran who uncovers a conspiracy behind the train accident that killed his wife, leading him on a bloody quest for vengeance. The film expertly blends elements of action, suspense, and black humor while exploring themes of grief, anger, and the nature of coincidence. Its unique tone, engaging characters, and thrilling narrative make it a standout among foreign thrillers.

• Released : 2020
• Directed by : Anders Thomas Jensen

• Directed by : Farren Blackburn

Enforcement

• Directed by : Anders Ølholm, Frederik Louis Hviid

• Directed by : John Byrne

Kidnapping Stella

• Directed by : Thomas Sieben, J Blakeson

Another captivating entry in Italian director Dario Argento's horror-thriller oeuvre, this film follows a young girl with psychic powers who befriends a chimpanzee while trying to uncover the truth behind a string of grisly murders. The movie is celebrated for its unique blend of supernatural horror and slasher elements, creating an unsettling and memorably surreal cinematic experience. Its haunting visuals, innovative narrative, and mesmerizing score make it an essential watch for fans of foreign thrillers.

• Released : 1985

The Quiet Family

• Directed by : Kim Ji-eon

A Company Man

• Directed by : Lim Sang-yoon

• Directed by : Martin Owen

Ride or Die

• Directed by : Ryuichi Hiroki

High Ground

• Directed by : Stephen Johnson

A Bittersweet Life

• Directed by : Nicolas Winding Refn

No Tears for the Dead

• Directed by : Lee Jeong-beom

Lust, Caution

• Directed by : Ang Lee

• Directed by : Jaume Balagueró

The Proposition

• Directed by : John Hillcoat

The Happiness of the Katakuris

• Released : 2004
• Directed by : Fruit Chan

• Directed by : Coralie Fargeat

The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil

• Directed by : Lee Won-tae

• Released : 1983
• Directed by : Gerald Kargl

Unstoppable

• Directed by : Kim Min-ho

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

• Directed by : Yorgos Lanthimos

• Released : 1966
• Directed by : Ingmar Bergman

The Last Deadly Mission

• Directed by : Olivier Marchal

13 Assassins

Death Watch

• Released : 1980
• Directed by : Bertrand Tavernier

• Directed by : Jacques Audiard

• Directed by : Julia Ducournau

• Directed by : Cary Fukunaga

• Released : 1987

• Directed by : Joachim Trier

The Suicide Theory

• Directed by : Dru Brown

A Gang Story

• Directed by : Robert Connolly

• Directed by : Kourosh Ahari

The Other Lamb

• Directed by : Małgorzata Szumowska

Knife+Heart

• Directed by : Yann Gonzalez

The Belko Experiment

• Directed by : Greg McLean

• Directed by : Jaco Bouwer

The Evil Next Door

• Directed by : Tord Danielsson, Oskar Mellander

• Directed by : Chino Moya

• Directed by : Timur Bekmambetov

No One Gets Out Alive

• Directed by : Santiago Menghini

• Directed by : Alexandre Aja

• Directed by : Jeanette Nordahl

• Directed by : Andreas Fontana

The Pandemic Anthology

• Directed by : Martín Blousson, Guillermo Carbonell, Giordano Gio, Emerson Niemchick, Julio Napoli Filho

• Directed by : Michel Franco

• Directed by : Damiano D'Innocenzo, Fabio D'Innocenzo
• Entertainment
• World Cinema
• Watchworthy

Suspense. Excitement. Plot twists. Dim corridors. Flickering lights. Ringing phones. Speeding cars. Mysterious strangers? No, those are just mannequins.

The 10 Best Road Trip Thriller Movies

There is a natural tension to the open road, with its isolation broken only by a complete stranger piloting their own ton or two of steel, glass and rubber where only suckers heed the speed limits. Most of the world might be carved up by roads, but that doesn’t mean that civilization grew up alongside them. It’s still a frontier, with plenty unknown on either side of the asphalt. Here are ten terrific pictures about why that cancelled road trip might be a blessing in disguise.

1. The Hitcher (1986)

When The Hitcher was first released, it proved a modest commercial success, largely ignored or reviled by critics. It grew in stature as HBO played it incessantly, and now it routinely shows up on the lists like this one. The premise couldn’t be more basic, as a young man (C. Thomas Howell) drives cross country to deliver a car from Chicago to San Diego and on one dark and stormy night, picks up a hitchhiker (Rutger Hauer). The script operates like those great seventy-minute B-movies of the thirties and forties, wasting no time with back stories or set-ups. Howell picks up Hauer in the opening moments and minutes later, Hauer calmly explains he’s going to kill this good Samaritan.

The script manages to keep its foot on the gas for the rest of the movie, finding clever ways to leap to where other movies like this might end, and pressing on to more unexpected, and depraved terrain. Jennifer Jason Leigh does her best to elevate her roadside waitress into someone more interesting and nearly pulls this off. But this is Hauer’s movie, and rarely has an actor seemed to delight as much in playing an apex predator. The movie wisely subscribes to the Michael Myers school of character development for its antagonist, understanding that childhood trauma and rationales only make monsters in such movies less intimidating.

Howell makes for a fine everyman here, though stumbles when the movie needs him to process his trauma is more disturbing ways. Richard Harmon directs this with competence and care, benefiting from an era where he got to blow up real cars, so the chases and crashes have a weight missing from contemporary movies that aren’t Fury Road. It’s a satisfying little thriller, but its screenwriter Eric Red would go on to produce far more intriguing genre experiments, writing both Near Dark and Blue Steel for Kathryn Bigelow. And unfortunately, Hauer would never get the chance to bare his teeth like this again.

2. Joyride (2002)

Before JJ Abrams became the anointed remixer of juggernaut franchises, he co-wrote this nifty B movie with Clay Tarver about a trio of young folks who play a nasty prank on a truck driver using an old CB radio. It earned some respectable reviews and its money back, but like a few others on this list, its reputation only grew over time.

Here Paul Walker offers to drive his college crush (Leelee Sobieski) home, with his clownish pal (Steve Zahn) along for the ride. By this movie, Zahn perfected his persona as a destructive, if well-meaning, moron. Zahn’s prank fuels the story and builds organically, never lurching into outright cruelty, but hurtful enough that the wrong person would take it very, very personally, which a truck driver with the CB handle of Rusty Nail (sumptuously voiced by Ted Levine) most certainly does. The twists are small but satisfying, refusing to take the big plot swings that made JJ’s company Bad Robot so famous for intriguing premises, jaw-dropping second acts, and deeply flawed endings.

The movie’s secret weapon is oddly enough the director, who quietly built his name on a string of accomplished neo-noirs in the nineties like Red Rock West and The Last Seduction. John Dahl balances the tone well, keeping this a high-grade thriller with nasty streak, as opposed to a more overt horror play, that might strip the plot down to a grocery list of kills. Rusty Nail and this trio are well-matched the whole way through, with an ending that can still produce shivers after repeat viewings. It’s exactly the type of thriller that people shrug off as simple, when in fact it’s a high-wire walk few pull off.

3. Breakdown (1997)

The generic title didn’t do this movie any favors, but it still became a small bore hit on its release, reminding everyone why its lead, Kurt Russell, has been a star for decades. The movie opens with Russell in a near collision with a truck driver, followed by a brief argument at a gas station, only to find his car breaking down in the middle of nowhere. He lets his wife hitch a ride with another trucker to get help, and naturally, she disappears into thin air. What follows is hardly groundbreaking, but the tension swells with rock solid story logic that too few of these movies ever bother to employ.

This was the directorial debut for Jonathan Mostow, who has the reliable chops that would have made him the second coming of Don Siegel or Robert Aldrich given enough time cranking out movies like this. Hardly a revelatory stylist, Mostow knows what he has in Russell and his script, and isn’t afraid to let those things shine here. But he shows a gift for sharing narrative information visually and letting the audience add two and two for themselves, as at one point, he unveils the time and scope of the conspiracy at work in a single image.

Still, this movie relies on Russell to deliver the goods, and he does, as he’s a delight to watch get frustrated, lose his cool, regain it, all with his average Joe aplomb. Few actors can play exasperated without ever falling into self-pity as Russel does so naturally. He’s just doing the best he can and looking for a break that is long overdue. This is stellar middlebrow entertainment, of the kind that shouldn’t make that an insult.

4. Detour (1946)

Long heralded as one of great no-budget noirs of the 1940s, Detour is a miracle for more than its financial constraints. Its director Edward G. Ulmer managed to stitch together his movies with used sets, hungry actors and a few, very few, well-placed lights. In this one, a down on his luck piano player (Tom Neal) hitches a ride with a bookie (Edmund MacDonald) to California to meet up with his girlfriend in Hollywood. Along the way the bookie ends up dying in an accident no one would believe happened. Too nervous to trust the police, Neal assumes the bookie’s identity and if his luck wasn’t already circling the drain, it’s flushed away upon picking up the one hitchhiker (Ann Savage) that knows that bookie.

Savage swiftly blackmails Neal, assuming exactly the kind of foul play the cops would. She’s not a garish femme fatale though, looking to gobble him up whole. She’s a fragile, broken soul that believes the only way to get what she needs is to harass, cajole and snatch it from the world around her. And Neal, desperate to put the detour behind him tries to escape her any way he can.

Now an established classic, Detour has the strange luxury of looking better now than it did in 1945. A recent 4K restoration has turned its glaring whites into a hypnotic glow, and its blacks into velvet shadows. Its longevity can’t be credited only to its place as an early noir, but rather, what kind of noir it is. Yes, the genre is built around bad, mostly criminal decisions, but the best have an aura of inevitability. It’s not simply a matter of falling for the wrong girl or aiming for the quick fix, but of trying to do the best with bad circumstances only to sink even deeper into trouble. Neal didn’t want anything but to reunite with the love of his life and yet, the open road had other plans.

5. The Vanishing (1988)

Stanley Kubrick once called this French-Dutch thriller the scariest movie he’d ever seen, and reached out to its director George Sluizer, to discuss how he edited it. This makes sense given that the suspense is built on the need to know, which had to resonate with Kubrick, a man who clearly had a ravenous curiosity.

It begins with a haunting rehearsal of the crime to come, as a pair of lovers, played by Gene Bervoets and Johanna ter Steege are separated when their car breaks down, only to be swiftly reunited. But then at a crowded rest stop, she goes to the bathroom and never returns. Bervoets waits and waits, but there is simply no sign of her, though some workers saw her with another man, implying that she might have simply left her boyfriend behind. This is a movie, so that’s clearly not the case, and soon The Vanishing splits its POV, following the killer (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu) as he plots the kidnapping, and Bervoets as he devotes his life to finding out what happened.

As it turns out, Donnadieu is a sweet family man and chemistry professor whose sociopathic tendencies are bundled up as tight as those in a 19th century Russian novel, intellectualized until it’s a bloodless act within an indifferent universe, until it’s not. As Bervoets unravels from his grief, Donnadieu only grows in calm and power, sending him post cards inviting him to meet, only to stand him up over and over again. Truly great horror filmmakers require an expansive understanding of the human condition to avoid relying on crude sadism and genre clichés alone. And here, the shocking finale arrives when the lead can’t resist the urge to know, and credibly becomes a willing ally in the killer’s larger design.

8 Replies to “The 10 Best Road Trip Thriller Movies”

Thanks for a good solid list (road films are a weakness of mine), I appreciate your knowledge and insights.

…….Vanishing Point….YES! Looking for Kalifornia but alas, no.

It should be noted that Charlotte Rampling’s appearance in Vanishing Point is in the U.K. version of the film.

Damn, some excellent stuff here.

Solid collection, and I only clicked the link to make sure Hitcher was #1 – one of the most underrated thrillers

And never mentioned that shoddy remake.

Where is Stranger than paradise?

What about indy Thomas Jane’s Dark Country (2009)?

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

🙌 Awesome, you're subscribed!

Thanks for subscribing! Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon!

Get us in your inbox

Sign up to our newsletter for the latest and greatest from your city and beyond

By entering your email address you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receive emails from Time Out about news, events, offers and partner promotions.

Awesome, you're subscribed!

The best things in life are free.

Sign up for our email to enjoy your city without spending a thing (as well as some options when you’re feeling flush).

Déjà vu! We already have this email. Try another?

Love the mag?

Our newsletter hand-delivers the best bits to your inbox. Sign up to unlock our digital magazines and also receive the latest news, events, offers and partner promotions.

• Things to Do
• Food & Drink
• Arts & Culture
• Time Out Market
• Coca-Cola Foodmarks
• Los Angeles

The best thriller movies of all time for a suspense-packed film night

Dirty cops, femme fatales, grinning killers and bone-deep paranoia: Welcome to our ranked list of classic thrillers

A great thriller is something you experience as much as watch. When done right, a thriller provokes a physical response more than almost any other film genre. You feel it in your palms as they grow increasingly clammy and your teeth as you grind away the enamel. Your heart starts pumping and your leg begins shaking uncontrollably. That may not sound like fun, but they don’t call them ‘thrillers’ for nothing.

Not every thriller takes the same path in initiating those reactions, though. In the pantheon of the best thrillers ever made, you’ll find murder, political intrigue, espionage, conspiracy, manipulation, gaslighting and, of course, lots and lots of crime. You’ll also find examples of science fiction, horror, heists, action, even comedy, along with sex-crazed ‘erotic thrillers’ and the ever-nebulous ‘psychological thriller’ subdivision . But no matter how they go about it, the best thrillers will always grab your attention, make you sweat and leave you breathless. Here are the 100 greatest thriller movies ever, ranked by our TimeOut editors.

Written by A bbey Bender, Joshua Rothkopf, Yu An Su, Phil de Semlyen, Tom Huddleston, Andy Kryza, Tomris Laffly & Matthew Singer

RECOMMENDED:

🕯️   The 35 steamiest erotic thrillers ever made 😬   The 22 best thriller movies on Netflix 🧨  The 60 most nerve-racking heist movies ever 🔪 The greatest pyschological thrillers ever made  

Been there, done that? Think again, my friend.

Best thriller movies

1.  north by northwest (1959).

If there’s a thriller out there more exhilarating, sexier or packed with iconic moments than this one, we’ve yet to see it. The greatest joy in Alfred Hitchcock’s spy caper is how effortless it all feels: a gliding magic-carpet ride from New York to Mount Rushmore, via Chicago and a Midwestern bus stop, as Cary Grant’s ad man suffers a potentially fatal outbreak of Wrong Man-itis. Of course, making a movie this effortless is hard work. It’s all a tribute to Hitch and his ensemble of behind-the-camera talents, including screenwriter Ernest Lehman, Saul Bass (designer of the iconic title sequence) and Bernard Herrmann, whose score lends menace and levity in equal measure. And the cast? Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau and Jessie Royce Landis – heroes, villains and worried mothers, they’re all having a ball. But it’s Grant’s movie: a Hollywood A-lister happy to be the punchline when the scene calls for it.

The killer moment: It has to be the crop-duster sequence, which begins like a Western standoff and ends with the suavest man in cinema face down in the dirt.

2.  M (1931)

Several real-life child murderers, cannibals and serial killers – their nicknames are grisly enough: the Butcher of Hanover, the Vampire of Düsseldorf – terrorised Germany in the 1920s. Berlin's most moneyed and celebrated director, Fritz Lang, was drawn to the subject, which would become the spine of his first sound film, in many ways the commercial birth of the modern psychothriller. M  is cinema's darkest landmark: a portrait of awful appetites that was revolutionary for also being an oblique mirror on society at large. (Filmed under the working title Murderer Among Us, Nazi party members refused Lang studio space.) The movie is immortal for Peter Lorre's career-defining performance as Hans Beckert, trapped by sweaty urges and a dragnet of cops and mobsters. Lang also turned Edvard Grieg's ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ – whistled by Beckert, but not Lorre, who couldn't whistle – into an instant signature of aural menace.

The killer moment: In front of a wanted poster, a dark silhouette appears. Leaning down, Beckert lures a child into conversation: ‘What a pretty ball you have there.’

3.  Chinatown (1974)

The absolute zenith of New Hollywood's 1970s-era adventurousness (it was all downhill from here), Roman Polanski's majestic conspiracy thriller is the ultimate L.A. movie, locating seediness under the sun – even in the water. Robert Towne's well-researched screenplay about land grabs, murder and one ‘nosy fellow’ remains the gold standard for aspiring writers hoping to grab a whiff of sociocultural currency; watching Chinatown  is, for some Angelenos, like learning that you live in a stolen paradise, or hell itself. But for all the movie's substance, it took a rascally Jack Nicholson, an absorbingly skittish Faye Dunaway, a fearsome John Huston and Polanski himself (working at the peak of his powers) to sock it over on audiences. The movie shimmers like a '30s period romance but its veins pump black bile: a toxic masterpiece.

The killer moment: A withering Noah Cross makes his sole priority clear to our hero: ‘The future, Mr. Gittes! The future!’

4.  The Third Man (1949)

Set in a post-World War II Vienna filled with canted angles and stark shadows, The Third Man  is expressionist perfection. Orson Welles’ performance as Harry Lime – thought to be dead by his childhood friend, Holly (Joseph Cotten), a down-and-out novelist, only to make a dramatic return – is one of cinema’s best. Welles swaggers through the film with cool self-assurance and delivers many an iconic line in his famous baritone. Faking one’s death is, of course, a risky proposition, and it’s challenging to present it believably. Director Carol Reed invests us totally in Lime’s fate, thrilling us with every plot twist. After watching this utterly engaging film, you’ll never look at tunnels or Ferris wheels (or hear zither music) the same way again.

The killer moment: After riding the wheel, Welles makes his famous quip (ad-libbed on the day), comparing violent Italy under the Borgias with peace-loving Switzerland. ‘And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.’

5.  Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Nothing about Quentin Tarantino’s breakthrough was exactly new: the suits were pure Rat Pack, the dialogue was Scorsese intensified and even the plot was lifted from a Hong Kong crime flick called City on Fire . But like household ingredients blended to make a bomb, the result was incendiary. Reservoir Dogs  changed cinema, and we’re still dealing with the aftershocks (see the smooth criminals of Baby Driver  or the entire career of Three Billboards  director Martin McDonagh for evidence). But even if none of that were true, it’s still such a joyful film to experience and re-experience: every line crackles like electricity, every performance is punchy perfection and every shot feels like a bracing bucket of water in the face. Tarantino hasn’t come close to it since – but neither has anyone else.

The killer moment: Too many to mention, but the off-camera ear-slicing scene set to the peppy ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ will go down in history.

6.  Touch of Evil (1958)

Famously, Orson Welles’s involvement in this magnificently sleazy borderlands crime flick was meant to be strictly in front of the camera: he was hired to play Hank Quinlan, the grotesque corrupt sheriff, and nothing more. It was star Charlton Heston who lobbied for Welles to be handed the directorial reins, and who backed him – at least initially – against interference by the studio, Universal. The result was an impossibly rich Welles movie that could be held up to Citizen Kane : a brutal, explicitly sexual crime story; a satire on race and prejudice; a sad-eyed lament for wild pre-conformist America; and one of the most gorgeously directed films of all time – even the dialogue scenes play like ballet. Not that Universal noticed. They eventually recut the film against Welles’s wishes. It’s only in the past two decades that we’ve been able to appreciate this masterpiece nearly as its creator intended.

The killer moment: The legendary opening tracking shot – an uninterrupted three-and-a-half-minutes following a bomb’s delivery in a car trunk – is the obvious choice (and the correct one).

7.  The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Set in a troubled America that hides an undercurrent of violence under its skin, Jonathan Demme’s taut serial-killer procedural borders on Grand Guignol horror. Unconventionally finding its saviour in the shoes of a female law enforcer – FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster, blending strength and vulnerability) – The Silence of the Lambs  divides its terrors between grotesque moths, a blood-curdling butcher of women and the cannibalistic Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a nightmarishly manipulative collaborator with a taste for liver and fava beans. Featuring exceptional cross-cutting leading up to its grand finale (a twisty reveal sends shivers down your spine), Lambs is one of the greatest movies of the ’90s, and the rare thriller to be recognised at the Oscars in a major way.

The killer moment: Using night vision, Buffalo Bill pursues Clarice in the dark. In the seconds that follow, no one dares to breathe.

8.  The 39 Steps (1935)

Robert Towne once raved that ‘all contemporary escapist entertainment begins with The 39 Steps’ – and as the man who wrote Chinatown , he’d definitely know what he’s talking about. The magic in this endlessly re-enjoyable Hitchcock effort, an early blueprint for Hitch classics to come, comes via its fine balance between the looming menace and frothy sense of fun. The Master knew how to make his stars’ chemistry work to counterbalance the deathly predicaments he placed them in, and he rarely found a more perfect squabbling-flirting double act than Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll.

The killer moment: When the respectable Professor Jordan shows Hannay that part of his finger is missing, revealing that he’s an enemy agent and that Hannay is properly up the loch without a paddle.

9.  The Maltese Falcon (1941)

John Huston’s magnificent adaption of Dashiell Hammett’s noir has so much going for it, it’s hard to know which parts to praise first: The plotting is drum-tight; the villains are indelibly slippery (especially Sydney Greenstreet’s ‘Fat Man’ and Peter Lorre’s Joel Cairo); Mary Astor’s femme fatale is a sexy, amoral joy; and the titular MacGuffin, a black statuette, is so iconic, the prop itself fetched $4 million at auction. (That’s a lot for a 12-inch bird that was once dropped on Humphrey Bogart’s foot during shooting.) How about the hero, then? Sam Spade is everything you want from a noir gumshoe: whip-smart, hard-bitten, cocky and unfazed by that pea-shooter you’ve got pointed at him. It’s not even that he’s a particularly good guy, it’s that everyone else around him is so much worse. Bogie’s Spade was the embodiment of a new kind of Hollywood protagonist to emerge during the war years: a man who can slip from heroism to obnoxiousness and back again, all during the same slug of whisky.

The killer moment: ‘What is it?’ a detective asks of the falcon. Spade answers, immortally: ‘The stuff that dreams are made of.’

10.  Les Diaboliques (1955)

A creepy boarding school, a monstrous headmaster, his quietly fed-up wife, another disgruntled lover – thrillers rarely come better stocked for suspense. France’s own Alfred Hitchcock, Henri-Georges Clouzot, subversively teams up the timid spouse (Véra Clouzot, the director's wife, playing a plain Jane in braids) with the hedonistic mistress (Simone Signoret, sporting a contrastingly provocative look) for a vengeful murder scheme against their common enemy. Clouzot uses every device at his disposal: eerie corridors, grimy swimming pools, ear-splitting kids. The result is a truly scary thriller that influenced Psycho . Clouzot’s fiendish nail-biter climaxes with such a domino chain of reversals, it even had a title card at the end asking the audience to not spoil the film for others. Don’t expect to know who’s deceiving whom until the last frame.

The killer moment: Unforgettably, the headmaster’s white-eyed corpse rises up above the surface of a bath – but not as the ladies planned.

11.  Double Indemnity (1944)

Film noir doesn’t get more iconic than Billy Wilder’s tale of an insurance salesman (Fred MacMurray) roped into a devious scheme by a femme fatale (Barbara Stanwyck) intent on murdering her husband. To watch the film, with its shadows and Stanwyck’s swaggering seduction, is to lose oneself in a gritty and mysterious world that has influenced countless movies since.

The killer moment: In a brightly lit Los Angeles supermarket aisle that’s suddenly ominous, Stanwyck purrs, ‘It’s straight down the line for both of us,’ setting the template for women up to no good.

12.  Zodiac (2007)

Scraping up against the limits of knowability, David Fincher's mind-blowing crime thriller targets the truth itself as a serial killer's final victim. Zodiac  is the definitive movie of its troubled decade, showing us good men thwarted by the elusive spirit of a murderous ghost. The real-life exploits of California’s Zodiac Killer haunted Fincher as a child; his film is an expression of obsession, onscreen and off.

The killer moment: We're seated in a break room with a creep who's full of unsettling excuses (the ominous John Carroll Lynch). His watch has the killer's target symbol on it, but that's not enough for these cops to pounce. ‘I am not the Zodiac,’ he says. ‘And if I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you.’

13.  Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

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. Robert Aldrich's perverse masterpiece brings Mickey Spillane's vicious Mike Hammer (a grinning Ralph Meeker) to life: a vain bottom feeder prone to using his fists. He's the sourest of antiheroes. Los Angeles has made him that way.

The killer moment: ‘I want half,’ Lily Carver demands, wielding a gun. Soon enough, she's hovering over the most influential suitcase in movies (see also Pulp Fiction  and Repo Man ), one she can't help but open.

14.  The Fugitive (1993)

When people say ‘they don’t make ‘em like they used to’, they’re mainly talking about The Fugitive , a blockbuster murder-mystery set on a big canvas that boasts sophisticated character work, complex motivations and action-movie thrills. Headlining it all, of course, is Harrison Ford as Dr Richard Kimble, who is framed for the murder of his own wife, only to escape while in transit to prison. Ford brings a stewing rage to this ’80s reprise of the Wrong Man archetype, while a perfectly cast and Oscar-winning Tommy Lee Jones plays the unblinking, relentless cop on his trail – and delivers that much-imitated ‘hen house’ monologue). Nowadays, its more outlandish turns would be delivered with a knowing wink (and Kimble’s protests that ‘a one-armed man’ killed his wife would launch a thousand memes), but it works so well because of its sincerity. It’s Hitchcock with a straight face. 

The killer moment: Gerard finally has Kimble cornered, where his choices are to either surrender or take his chances plunging into the raging water flowing off a massive dam. If you don’t know what happens next, you didn’t grow up in the ’90s.

15.  Vertigo (1958)

Often regarded as cinema’s greatest achievement, Vertigo  presents the peak of Hitchcock’s psychosexual fixations in gloriously shot Technicolor. Playing Judy Barton – or is it Madeleine Elster? – Kim Novak personifies twisty femininity. Jimmy Stewart’s ‘Scottie’ Ferguson, an ex-detective increasingly consumed by her, is a perfect subversion of the actor’s wholesome image.

The killer moment: Writhing in his sheets, Scottie plunges into a wordless, psychedelic nightmare: an unforgettable jolt of creepy graveyard shots, wild colours, Bernard Herrmann’s seesawing score and Stewart’s disembodied head.

16.  Mulholland Drive (2001)

David Lynch’s uncrackable masterpiece meets at the intersection of Hollywood dreams and dream logic. In Lynch’s crazy-quilt Tinsel Town, anything can be lurking around the corner, be it a grime-caked urban ghoul, mysterious puppetmasters in cowboy hats, splintered realities, hapless gangsters or a cuckolding Billy Ray Cyrus. Mulholland Drive ’s legacy will always be its lucidity, but in all the conversations about what the hell it means, people tend to lose track of the fact that it thrills from beginning to end: it’s a puzzle box with no answers that still functions as a masterful noir, a compelling mystery and an ethereal horror yarn.

The killer moment: Winkie’s Diner hides the film’s most jarring moment, but the Club Silencio sequence is an uncut bump of pure Lynch so deliriously callibrated you can practically feel the director yanking at the rug beneath your feet.

17.  Taxi Driver (1976)

An agitated sociopath gains access to a firearm and decides to make America great again. Sound familiar? Nearly 50 years later, Martin Scorsese’s masterful portrait of alienation and male delusion still manages to shock and disturb – in fact, it’s probably more shocking and disturbing now than it was then. It’s certainly just as relevant: you could be sure that if Robert De Niro’s Vietnam vet-turned-vigilante antihero Travis Bickle existed today, he would definitely have turned up inside the Capitol Building on January 6.

The killer moment: while preparing for a rampage, Bickle confronts his own reflection in a mirror and asks the immortal question: ‘You talkin’ to me?’

18.  Seven (1995)

Here's the pivot point for David Fincher – the inflection at which he transitioned from being a maker of super-stylish Madonna videos into something more substantial. Seven  certainly delivers a signature gloom, from those powerhouse opening credits to its rainy urban hellscape. But beyond the gloss, the movie feels as subversive as a Fritz Lang thriller, indicting the police as thoroughly as it does its moralising serial killer. Andrew Kevin Walker's script contrasts theoretical bookishness with impulsive action, but Fincher's genius is to show those modes for what they really are: survival strategies that only get you so far. 

The killer moment: The sloth victim traumatised us, but the movie's small piece of immortality happens in the desert, where the tables are turned: ‘What's in the box?’

19.  The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Fear of Soviet domination may have engulfed America in the early 1950s but in Hollywood, things weren’t so simple. In the wake of the Joseph McCarthy hearings, filmmakers knew they had just as much to fear from their own government as they did from some shady foreign power. The Manchurian Candidate  is the clearest expression of that anxiety, a razor-sharp study in manipulation filmed in stark monochrome, a paradox for a movie in which nothing is black and white.

The killer moment: Suddenly we realise that lovely Angela Lansbury isn’t just playing a domineering mom, but a ruthless monster.

20.  LA Confidential (1997)

Staple anxieties of classic ’50s noir often get rebooted for contemporary audiences. But Curtis Hanson’s genre homage dared something even grander by going back to the source and recreating the bloody era itself, in an immaculately shot saga of knee-deep Tinseltown corruption. It’s a deceptive labyrinth of self-serving cops, movie-star wannabes and one priceless Lana Turner cameo; Hanson does the films that came before him proud.

The killer moment: Guy Pearce’s straight-laced sergeant earns his nickname, Shotgun Ed, at a cost while pursuing a murder suspect.

21.  The Conversation (1974)

Released between the twin giants of The Godfather   and The Godfather: Part II , Francis Ford Coppola’s relatively small and quiet character study remains largely overlooked, but it is a highlight not just of Coppola’s career, but the entire era. That’s due in large part to Gene Hackman’s emotionally walled-off yet deeply compelling lead performance as Harry Caul, a private surveillance expert who knows better than anyone that the concept of privacy in the modern world is illusory. Plagued by guilt over his chosen profession, he’s driven to paranoid self-destruction after capturing what he believes to be a murder confession on tape. While it scanned as a Watergate allegory at the time, it’s just as relevant in the modern era of doorbell cameras, smart devices and targeted advertising.

The killer moment: After tearing his apartment apart in search of a bug, Caul sits alone in the wreckage, playing a mournful saxophone.

22.  The Killing (1956)

Stanley Kubrick’s racetrack heist movie helped inspire a swathe of crime flicks – not least Reservoir Dogs  – and it still stands up as a sharp-edged morality tale elevated by unorthodox structure, amoral characters and a third act that twists like a drunk blackjack player. Sterling Hayden, ever the embodiment of the stand-up guy gone to seed, is the meticulous robber who has thought of everything, except for the one variable that’s going to bring the whole scheme crashing down.

Killer moment: What’s that tiny dog doing on the tarmac? An accident results in the most expensive baggage-check fee ever levied.

23.  Rififi (1955)

Film noir comes to France (the country that first invented the term for a specific kind of Hollywood thriller), as blacklisted American director Jules Dassin turns out a flawless Paris-shot thriller on a budget of about ten centimes. Rififi  laid out the ground rules for the heist movie: a mismatched gang, an intricate plan, a grindingly tense break-in and, of course, a disastrous final act in which it all falls apart.

The killer moment: It’s the single best heist sequence in movie history – so convincing, it actually inspired a series of copycat crimes.

24.  The Big Sleep (1946)

This Raymond Chandler adaptation may be best known for being almost impossible to follow, but that doesn’t make it any less potent. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall bring their legendary charisma to a convoluted tale of criminality filled with noir intrigue. Co-written by William Faulkner and featuring much pervy evasion of contemporary production codes, Howard Hawks’s classic is truly the kind of thriller they don’t make anymore.

The killer moment: A sexually charged bookstore encounter between Bogart and a bespectacled clerk (the unforgettable Dorothy Malone) is just as invigorating as any of the wider mysteries presented elsewhere.

25.  Blue Velvet (1986)

Calling Blue Velvet  a thriller is like calling the Mona Lisa a portrait: It’s 100 percent true but hardly the whole story. Fueled by coffee, hamburgers and transcendental meditation, David Lynch crafted one of the 1980’s true masterpieces, a haunted cruise into a netherworld of desperate damsels, corrupt cops, underworld crooners and well-dressed fuckin’ men. Impossible to describe, harder still to fully comprehend, it’s more nightmare than film.

The killer moment: Dean Stockwell leans into the light and brings the Roy Orbison-scored menace: ‘A candy-colored clown they call the sandman tiptoes to my room every night…’

26.  Rear Window (1954)

Alfred Hitchcock’s housebound thriller took on fresh relatability at the height of the pandemic: after all, few of us had anything better to do than stare out the window and get a little too invested in the lives of our neighbours. James Stewart is a New York photojournalist laid up in his Greenwich Village apartment with a leg injury. As he spends his days peering across the courtyard, he becomes convinced one of his fellow residents has committed a horrific crime, and enlists his girlfriend, Grace Kelly, to help investigate. Big mistake. Hitchcock had staged claustrophobic mysteries before – see 1948’s Rope – but pound for pound, this might be his greatest achievement as cinema’s ‘master of suspense’: a movie that manages to induce stomach-knotting levels of tension while staying in essentially one place. You’ll recognise the feeling.

The killer moment: Grace Kelly gets caught snooping around the suspected killer’s apartment – and all James Stewart can do is watch.

27.  Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Sidney Lumet’s NYC crime thriller was revolutionary in its day for its matter-of-fact representation of marriage equality and a supportive stance on trans rights. It follows the true account of an attempted bank robbery on a red-hot summer day. With uncompromising tension and flashes of humour, it also examines the ever-exploitative American media that loves a good circus.

The killer moment: ‘Attica! Attica!’ In the infamous scene, Al Pacino leads a riot outside of the bank, delivering one of his fiercest onscreen outbursts.

28.  Dr No (1962)

• Action and adventure

Many thrillers are beloved; some have become classics. But only one can claim to have kicked off a five-decade-and-counting spy franchise grossing billions of dollars worldwide. Ground Zero for the James Bond phenomenon, Dr No  explodes out of the chamber with casual Rat Pack insouciance, brutal action and Ursula Andress in a bikini. Sean Connery holds it all together with scowling attitude; his future installments would perfect the formula but there’s simply no devaluing the first outing, a culture-changing effort.

The killer moment: So hard to pick. Is it our first sight of those gun-barrel opening credits? The first use of the twangy guitar theme? We like Connery’s lazy line delivery at the baccarat table: ‘Bond, James Bond.’

29.  Blow-Up (1966)

The premise itself is a thrill: A jaded photographer (David Hemmings) may have captured a murder in the background. Michelangelo Antonioni’s reality-altering ‘Swinging London’ yarn is a scrupulously composed slow-burn of eye-popping mod fashions, mischievous nudity and a smashing Yardbirds cameo. Bonus: The art-house sensation helped instigate an era of serious stateside moviemaking with European sensibilities, prompting today’s ratings system.

The killer moment: Come for the murder, stay for the greatest mime scene in film history: a tennis game with an imaginary ball.

30.  The Wages of Fear (1953)

It’s one of the most perfect plot concepts in action cinema: Four desperate men are hired to drive a pair trucks of highly explosive nitroglycerin across the Amazon rainforest to the site of a raging oil fire. If they make it, they get big money. If they don’t, they’re dust. Henri-Georges Clouzot’s bruising masterpiece takes its time – there’s an awful lot of grim, sweaty negotiation before the trucks start rolling. But as the jungle closes in around them, the clammy hand of fear exerts its grip.

The killer moment: In the blink of an eye, half the cast is wiped out. The rest press on regardless.

31.  Oldboy (2003)

Moving with the ominous velocity of a freight train, Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy stands as an epochal contribution to the genre. A tragedy fuelled by adrenaline – like Shakespeare on steroids – it follows stoic salaryman Oh Dae-su, played by the brilliant Choi Min-sik, as he seeks to uncover the reasons (and people) behind the inexplicable 15-year imprisonment he’s just suffered. Cue a wreaking of terrible vengeance on those that stole his life. Bloody hammers, thug-filled hallways and at least one wriggling octopus spearhead a revenge tale with a body count that goes up … and up. The film’s ending lands like a punch in the solar plexus.

Killer moment: Clutching only a hammer, Dae-su’s brutal beatdown of a horde of thugs in an equally beaten-up hallway is a high-water mark for both movie fight scenes and DIY equipment. 

32.  The Usual Suspects (1995)

Yes, it’s harder to watch in the wake of recent news regarding both director Bryan Singer and leading man Kevin Spacey, but let’s focus on the film itself. Taking its title from a Casablanca  quote, The Usual Suspects  blends old-school Hollywood style with a modern playfulness and unpredictability, weaving a web of crime, coincidence and flat-out lies. The cast is phenomenal, from mumbling Benicio del Toro to smooth Gabriel Byrne, spiky Kevin Pollak to ominous Pete Postlethwaite.

The killer moment: ‘Man, you’re a slob,’ one detective tells another, looking over the detritus of a junky office. The shoe is just about to drop.

33.  The Vanishing (1988)

On top of a list of brilliantly twisted European thrillers that got really bad Hollywood remakes ( Diabolique , Open Your Eyes , etc.), you’d find George Sluizer’s tar-black study of obsession and evil most ordinary. It follows Dutchman Rex (Gene Bervoets) as he tries to uncover the fate of his girlfriend, Saskia (Johanna ter Steege), who disappeared from a rest-stop service station years earlier. The ending is a jaw-dropper.

The killer moment: A psychopath practices his abduction techniques, even going so far as to chloroform an imaginary victim in his passenger seat.

34.  Notorious (1946)

Alfred Hitchcock plays twisted games with the very concept of decency, as Ingrid Bergman’s desperate daughter of a Nazi scientist is prostituted to the enemy by Cary Grant’s smooth, unflappable government agent – and ends up falling for him anyway. Set in Rio right after the war, ‘Notorious’ is all glamour on the surface, as Bergman and Grant swan through a selection of spectacular aristocratic mansions. But the undertones are grotesque and still challenging: a story of sexual exploitation, murder, manipulation and state-sanctioned cruelty.

The killer moment: People don’t think of ol’ Hitch as a purveyor of erotic work, but this could be the single greatest screen kiss of all time: lusty, lingering, loaded with the unspoken.

35.  The Night of the Hunter (1955)

British acting legend Charles Laughton’s sole film as a director is part grim fairy tale, part adventure and part serial-killer thriller, long before that last term was even invented. Working with cinematographer Stanley Cortez, who shot The Magnificent Ambersons  for Orson Welles, Laughton crafted a story of fear and flight steeped in Southern Gothic and Bible allegory, as Robert Mitchum’s murderous preacher – a killer of women (‘Perfume-smellin' things, lacy things, things with curly hair’)–attempts to hunt down two children who hold the secret to a hidden treasure.

The killer moment: Mitchum’s reverend tells us about the story of ‘right hand, left hand, good and evil.’ The monologue was so good, Spike Lee used it for Do the Right Thing .

36.  The Long Goodbye (1973)

A genius orchestrator of meandering conversations, Robert Altman left behind a string of classics, from Nashville  and 3 Women  to The Player  and Gosford Park . But can this shaggy-dog private-eye movie – a delicious perversion of Raymond Chandler’s 1953 novel – be Altman’s most lasting achievement? You can see its influence in everything from The Big Lebowski  to Inherent Vice , and any L.A. thriller that wends its way into a haze of pot-scented trouble. Elliott Gould’s scuzzy Philip Marlowe, buying cat food in the middle of the night in between solving crimes, is an iconic ’70s creation.

The killer moment: Neurotic gangster Marty Augustine (played by future On Golden Pond  director Mark Rydell) brings his beautiful mistress into the room to make a savage point to Marlowe with the help of a Coke bottle: ‘Now that's someone I love! You, I don't even like.’

37.  Heat (1995)

The simplest of thriller conceits – cops and robbers as two sides of the same coin – is elevated to a showstopping new level in Michael Mann’s loose remake of his own TV pilot,  LA Takedown . Helmed by masterful, winningly showy, performances by Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, Mann’s crime epic combines philosophical rumination with OTT machismo (think Pacino’s ‘great ass’ moment) to paint a compelling but bleak picture of life outside the law. This winning combination slings us through each intricate, explosive set-piece to create a crime opus that’s still revered nearly three decades on. Killing moment: It can only be the quiet, yet loaded diner confrontation between Pacino and De Niro. In contrast to the rest of the movie – a violent game of cat and mouse – this is two lone wolves – and two Corleones – marking their territory over coffee.

38.  Point Blank (1967)

Director John Boorman, had only made one feature – a breezy vehicle for the Dave Clark Five. Actor Lee Marvin, meanwhile, had just won an Oscar for Cat Ballou . The latter believed in the former’s talent, using his star power to support Boorman’s vision: a radical departure for the double-cross thriller in both form and content. Along with Bonnie and Clyde  (released only two weeks earlier), Point Blank  signals the moment at which Hollywood boldly leapt into sex, violence and a new kind of radically disjointed storytelling.

The killer moment: The granddaddy of hallway scenes has Marvin striding through a nondescript office. His heels echo hypnotically and Boorman takes off, cutting away from the action but never losing that forward momentum.

39.  Deep Red (1975)

Italy’s tradition of the giallo thriller – so-called for deriving from yellow-covered pulp novels – is as significant as film noir was to Hollywood: a major evolution of onscreen style linked to a cultural malaise of ennui and free-floating amorality. Inspired director Dario Argento perfected the form with Deep Red , a diabolical killing machine marked by leather-gloved hands (often Argento’s), shiny objects, lavish spurts of blood and the prog-rock tinklings of Goblin.

The killer moment: Oh, so the puppet in Saw  scared you? Poor thing. Wait until you see this guy, wheeling out of a dark corner with a canned laugh.

40.  Elevator to the Gallows (1958)

Louis Malle’s narrative-feature debut is a gorgeously atmospheric crime tale, featuring a score by Miles Davis. Taking place over the course of a single night, this grim story of a murder plan gone awry holds us rapt, thanks in large part to the glamorous yet weary visage of screen legend Jeanne Moreau.

The killer moment: Moreau makes wandering aimlessly thrilling, as she walks the Paris streets at night, calling her lover’s name in a moody, doomed funk.

41.  Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Hitchcock rated this blackly comic suburban thriller as one of his very best, and who are we to argue? He embroiders it with little details: blink-and-you’ll-miss-it evidence that builds up to a portrait of breathtaking sociopathy in the lady-killing Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten). To his teenage niece – the young, bored, yearning-to-be-elsewhere Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Newton (Teresa Wright) – his visit is a welcome diversion. At least until she realises that he’s actually a cold-blooded murderer.

The killer moment: In his first unguarded moment (a terrifying camera creep), Uncle Charlie shares his real feelings about elderly widows: ‘fat, wheezing animals’.

42.  Blood Simple (1984)

The sweat-soaked feature debut of the Coen brothers hints at much of what would come: the half-smart schemers of Fargo , the explosive violence of No Country for Old Men  and – making her first screen appearance – Frances McDormand, a force of nature. Blood Simple  is still scrappy and surprising: a Texas-shot thriller of limited means but maximum punch, and an indie that still plays beautifully decades later.

The killer moment: In a sweltering office filled with the sound of crickets, the gun goes off. Excruciatingly we watch dark red trickle down a white shirt. ‘Who looks stupid now?’ the shooter asks a corpse.

43.  The Grifters (1990)

Novelist Jim Thompson was a genius of hardboiled crime fiction: his books are lean and gripping, generally following a rugged, amoral, none-too-bright hero as he’s messed with by a sharp-witted woman with a lust for cash. This Martin Scorsese-produced, Stephen Frears-directed black comedy is one of the strongest adaptations of his work. John Cusack plays the lunk in question, a con-man who thinks he can get one over on his own mother, played with delicious savagery by Anjelica Huston. Needless to say, it doesn’t quite pan out.

The killer moment: A dagger-eyed hospital showdown between Huston and Annette Bening (as Cusack’s outrageously oversexed partner in crime) supplies enough fireworks for a shelf of thrillers.

44.  Knife in the Water (1962)

Roman Polanski’s subtle thriller takes a sail through the waterlogged cracks of a marriage rocked by a handsome vagabond (Zygmunt Malanowicz). An allegory for upper-crust privilege and masculine arrogance – intensified by a hypnotizing score by Krzysztof Komeda – ‘Knife in the Water  landed on the cover of Time magazine (‘Cinema as an International Art’) and scored an Oscar nomination, launching Polanski’s career in earnest.

The killer moment: The film’s title clues us into the fate of the drifter’s precious pocket knife, but there’s even more that goes overboard.

45.  The French Connection (1971)

Taking cues from Italian neorealism and the French new wave, director William Friedkin’s punchy police procedural follows ‘Popeye’ Doyle (Gene Hackman) and his partner ‘Cloudy’ Russo (Roy Scheider), two NYC detectives attempting to bust up a heroin-smuggling ring. Based loosely on actual events, the film brought a bracing verisimilitude to the cop flick, as Popeye bellows and brutalises his way through a criminal fraternity. The sequel is every bit as good.

The killer moment: Eat it, Bullitt  – this one’s got the best car chase in movies, largely shot from a bumper-level perspective.

46.  Blow Out (1981)

Brian De Palma’s reworking of the ’60s thinker Blow-Up  is a superbly stylised tale of paranoia, featuring John Travolta as a movie sound-effects technician who believes he’s captured a political assassination in his recordings. The film is bolstered by a number of high-strung set pieces; its combination of slasher-flick imagery, political intrigue and tragedy is intoxicating.

The killer moment: De Palma’s camera lurks through a tawdry B-movie women’s dorm, until a showering co-ed screams unconvincingly: cut to the men mixing the movie.

47.  Le Samouraï (1967)

Pure panache and an admitted inspiration on such nobodies as Jim Jarmusch, Walter Hill and John Woo, Jean-Pierre Melville's cryptic thriller channels an almost abstract sense of fate and beauty. (If you liked Drive , you've got homework.) At its core is actor Alain Delon's hitman: trenchcoat-clad, chiseled, a dude of few words. He glides through the film as if doomed; there's not an inch of fat on this plot, which never get sentimental, only colder and more aggressively on target.

The killer moment: Delon's assassin cruises on and off several Metro lines, even jumping a moving walkway to shake several different pursuers. The guy is smooth.

48.  One False Move (1992)

If there’s one film here that deserves wider exposure, it’s this. In his most honest and heartfelt performance, the late Bill Paxton plays Dale Dixon, a small-town sheriff who dreams of escaping to the city. When word comes that a gang of notorious killers are headed his way, Dale tools up for battle, High Noon -style. But playing the hero isn’t the same as actually being one. Balancing clear-eyed observations on race and class with nerve-shredding tension and a bottomless sense of empathy, ‘One False Move’ is a small, sharp masterpiece.

The killer moment: The opening home invasion is still shocking in its offhand brutality.

49.  Mother (2009)

A decade before his class-warfare masterpiece Parasite struck a global nerve, South Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho tapped his inner Hitchcock with this small-scale whodunit. A coldly calculating procedural punctuated with devastating tenderness, Bong’s film follows a fiercely protective back-alley herbalist (South Korean national treasure Hye-ja Kim) playing detective in an attempt to absolve her mentally vulnerable son of a heinous murder. Like its protagonist, the film is unafraid to explore the dark recesses of society, following Mother through a labyrinth of desperation, dead ends and, eventually, moral decay. It’s a heartbreaking, clenched-jaw mystery from front to back. But the greatest trick Bong pulls is forging an unquestioning empathy for the family at its center, even as things take an impossibly dark turn in the third act. 

The killer moment : Mom takes a well-earned bus tour to the countryside and samples her own medicine as the credits roll.

50.  Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

The average presidential tweet packs more controversy these days than anything in Kathryn Bigelow’s geopolitical thriller, so it’s strange to think that when it came out, it spawned a litany of think pieces and even threats of a congressional inquiry. The main accusation leveled at Bigelow – that she condoned the use of torture in her depiction of the hunt for Osama bin Laden – is hardly borne out in a deeply unmisty-eyed look at U.S. foreign policy. A smart thriller that doesn’t skimp on the pyrotechnics when the time comes, it’s basically The Bourne Ultimatum  for people who read The Atlantic .

The killer moment: Overlooking a table model of Obama’s hideout, CIA agents believe their years of searching are about to pay off. ‘Who are you?’ asks the director of an operative (Jessica Chastain). ‘I’m the motherfucker that found this place,’ she replies, ‘sir.’

51.  The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

Orson Welles’s tale of betrayal, lust and murder, in which he stars as a naive Irish sailor alongside Rita Hayworth as a captivating femme fatale, is filled with visual flourishes and hard-boiled twists. As one of cinema’s great masters, it’s no surprise that Welles made crime films that became so enduring.

The killer moment: The shootout in the hall of mirrors is a breathless achievement of cinematic illusion and mise-en-scène. Only Welles could pull off this literal fracturing of the image so confidently.

52.  Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

The allegedly Buddhist opening epigraph is fake (writer-director Jean-Pierre Melville simply made it up), but the sense of Zen purity that runs through this flawless French heist movie is wonderfully convincing. Melville’s stylish, crumpled leading man, Alain Delon (also of Le Samouraï ), plays Corey, a career crook who is released from prison, drives back to Paris and immediately starts setting up his next job. As lean and meticulous as Japanese calligraphy, this is precision-tooled filmmaking.

The killer moment: The silent robbery sequence is a 30-minute master class in sustained tension.

53.  The Big Heat (1953)

An upright but rash cop (Glenn Ford) declares war on organised crime in Fritz Lang’s unrelenting noir of ‘vice, dice and corruption’. This brutal, rug-pulling revenge classic ushered the way for the likes of Chinatown  and L.A. Confidential , and still stings like a cigarette burn, with its string of victimised femmes and menacing final line, ‘Keep the coffee hot.’

The killer moment: Gloria Grahame’s angelic face becomes the target of a sinister attacker with a boiling pot of joe. Mercifully, it happens off-screen.

54.  The Lady Vanishes (1938)

An oblique allegory for England’s precariousness on the brink of World War II, Alfred Hitchcock’s breezy, chatty train thriller has its roaring locomotive echoing in almost every train movie since, from Silver Streak  to The Girl on the Train . Plus, it introduced the world to the cricket-obsessed comedic characters Charters and Caldicott, who went on to many more films and even a TV series.

The killer moment: Is Michael Redgrave the original Ethan Hunt or what? He fearlessly hangs out of his carriage’s window and faces a fast-approaching train.

55.  Sicario (2015)

Denis Villeneuve’s devastating Incendies  warned us what to expect from this chilly drug-war thriller: no moral certainties and no happy endings. Like Alice in a narco wonderland, Emily Blunt’s greenhorn FBI agent disappears down the rabbit hole and into a violent world of realpolitik on the Mexican border. Villeneuve mounts spectacular set pieces (the convoy sequence, shot by the great Roger Deakins, is a pulse-pounding standout), while also painting a bleaker picture of the lawless badlands than even Trump can muster.

The killer moment: Benicio del Toro’s avenging cartel man sits down to a very short dinner with a drug lord and his family.

56.  Dressed to Kill (1980)

Brian De Palma burnishes his Hitchcock fixation to a high sheen in this supremely confident New York City-set thriller, which features something of a surrogate character for the director himself: a teenage tech whiz (Keith Gordon) obsessed with cameras and spying devices who's bent on avenging the unsolved murder of his glamorous mother (Angie Dickinson). Trans movies have come a long way since this one.

The killer moment: It's one of De Palma's purest sequences of total craft: a wordless flirtation between two strangers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (actually shot in Philly) that becomes a missed connection, a painful rejection, then a chase.

57.  Black Swan (2010)

The dramatic world of ballet is fertile ground for an exploration of professional jealousy and obsession. Darren Aronofsky’s lurid psychological horror film delves into the compellingly creepy idea of doppelgangers, via committed performances from Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, who push the backstage maneuvering to dizzying extremes.

The killer moment: Warring prima donnas grapple in an intense, shape-shifting fight scene. With such over-the-top delirium, who could ever think of ballet as prissy?

58.  The Untouchables (1987)

The Godfather  and Goodfellas  play more like studies in power than straight-up thrillers. No such quibbles, though, with Brian De Palma’s stylised, semi-fictional slice of Chicago crime-fighting lore, which ticks every box on the thriller checklist. With its brilliant, bloody set pieces, tons of quotable dialogue (‘You’re nothing but a lot of talk and a badge’) and a jittery Ennio Morricone score that amps up the tension, it’s De Palma knocking it out of the park.

The killer moment: The unbearably suspenseful Battleship Potemkin -homaging Union Station shootout still sends our systolic readings through the roof.

59.  Memento (2000)

A treatise on the act of remembering, a study in loss and grief, and a story told both backward and forward, Memento  ought to be impenetrable: a movie for the art house, not the multiplex. So it’s a testament to the craftsmanship of writer-director Christopher Nolan that the film wasn’t just a solid hit, but launched one of the most successful filmmaking careers in contemporary Hollywood. Huge respect is also due to leading man Guy Pearce, who at times seems to be holding the whole project together through sheer force of will.

The killer moment: Vicious Carrie-Anne Moss circles our hero, taunting him for his amnesia, knowing he’ll forget everything in a matter of minutes.

60.  The Last Seduction (1994)

Where is Linda Fiorentino these days? Her Lauren Bacall-level cool in John Dahl’s erotic neo-noir (the Gone Girl  of its year) is sorely missed. Watching her sleek seductress Bridget double-cross an abusive husband and manipulate her naive small-town boy toy with a playful shrug is a turn-on in itself. Her effortless villainy is just as steamy as the film’s sex.

The killer moment: A nosy private eye falls for Bridget’s cunning ways and voluntarily unzips his pants during a drive – but guess who lives to tell the tale?

61.  Klute (1971)

Jane Fonda gives an iconic performance as Bree, a prostitute who finds herself involved in a missing-person case being investigated by the titular detective (Donald Sutherland). Bree is a fascinating mix of liberated yet vulnerable ’70s womanhood and the film is filled with paranoia and corruption. New York City’s streets make for a perfect moody backdrop.

The killer moment: Late at night, Bree lies in bed as her phone rings and rings, and the camera zooms out slowly. It’s an eloquent, ominous depiction of the threat she faces.

62.  The Thin Man (1934)

Never discount our need to laugh, especially when thrillers are involved. Nick and Nora Charles – crime-busting couple, doting dog owners and constant drinkers – are two of the wittiest creations to ever grace the genre. William Powell and Myrna Loy were never better than they were in this film and its sequels. One might erroneously call The Thin Man  a light entertainment but can you find a more romantic depiction of a working partnership, sass and all?

The killer moment: All the murder suspects are gathered at a dinner table, as Nick holds court in a big reveal that goes sideways.

63.  Deliverance (1972)

Yes, the base thrills of John Boorman’s wilderness survival film are primal as two alphas (Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds) and a pair of betas (Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox) experience the canoe trip from hell. Want conflict? Take your pick between man vs nature, man vs hillbilly and man vs self. But for all the hicksploitation trappings and Bear Grylls set pieces, it’s the constant battle between man and his own masculinity that weighs the heroes down throughout the tragic, meditative survivalist yarn.

The killer moment: Following the infamous ‘squeal like a pig’ sequence, a post-traumatic canoe accident renders Reynolds’ grown boy scout incapacitated… completely shifting the group dynamic as things turn deadly.

64.  Cape Fear (1962)

Whenever Robert Mitchum’s revenge-thirsty ex-con Max Cady occupies the screen with his fedora, cigar and signature sleazy grin (accompanied by Bernard Hermann’s alarming orchestra score), we’re seeing a baddie for the ages. J. Lee Thompson’s incendiary adaptation of John D. MacDonald’s 1957 novel The Executioners  avoids the word rape entirely, but Cady’s spine-chilling sexual offences can be detected in Mitchum’s terrifyingly dim stare.

The killer moment: In the film’s operatic conclusion by the river, Cady cracks an egg and suggestively smears it on his next potential victim.

65.  In a Lonely Place (1950)

Humphrey Bogart is a Dixon Steele, a tempestuous screenwriter who may have committed a murder in this Hollywood-set slice of noirish excellence. Dixon and his neighbour turned lover, Laurel (Gloria Grahame), make for a compelling and tricky pair, and the fog of moral ambiguity that surrounds them keeps us on our toes until a dramatic final twist.

The killer moment: Bogart recites a fatalistically romantic line he’s written for a script, and then has Grahame repeat it: ‘I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.’

66.  Basic Instinct (1992)

As Hitchcockian as ultra-chic blondes come, the rough-edged murder suspect Catherine Tramell made Sharon Stone an ageless star overnight. It might not be the finest erotic thriller of the ’90s, but Paul Verhoeven’s sweltering, controversial whodunit is among the most legendary with its no-holds-barred sex scenes between Stone’s bisexual novelist and Michael Douglas’s understandably powerless detective.

The killer moment: No ice picks necessary: Stone’s tyrannical (and much-parodied) leg-cross in the iconic white dress shows her interrogators who’s on top.

67.  Dead Calm (1989)

Blending the beautiful expansiveness of the sea with the claustrophobia of a ship’s cabin overtaken by a madman, Dead Calm  creates a tense setting for a twisty two-hander between Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane. With her husband (Sam Neill) stranded on a distant sinking boat, our flame-haired heroine gets resourceful, with plenty of shocks along the way. 

The killer moment: Husband and wife, each in an unstable vessel, attempt to communicate by radio and every word, barely heard, could be their last.

68.  Funny Games (1997)

Ultimately a breaker of one of the most central tenets of the home-invasion thriller (no telling), Michael Haneke's sickening landmark of pure nihilism remains the hardest of his films to squirm through – and this is the guy who made The Piano Teacher . Advice: If a pair of preppy strangers appears at your door asking to borrow some eggs, turn them away. Haneke truly believes in indicting our bloodlust; he remade this film, shot for shot, with Naomi Watts in 2007.

The killer moment: Already a winking Ferris Bueller who talks directly to the lens, ruthless Paul (Arno Frisch) reveals himself to be nothing less than an evil god when his plan goes awry and he grabs the TV's remote control, ‘rewinding’ the scene we just watched and starting over.

69.  Dirty Harry (1971)

A cultural depth charge of vigilante-cop brutality, neo- High Noon  cynicism and an extra long .44 Magnum (‘You’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?’), Don Siegel's crime thriller didn't play by the rules of police procedurals, infusing them instead with the dead-end desperation of the unsolved Zodiac murders. It also made a huge star out of Clint Eastwood, hardened into iconic fury. –

The killer moment: Chased down in an empty football stadium, the perp squeals like a pig – ‘I have the right to a lawyer!’ – as Harry steps on his leg wound and the camera helicopters up to a foggy, nightmarish stalemate.

70.  The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse (1960)

The third Dr Mabuse  film came nearly 30 years after The Testament of Dr Mabuse  and more than four decades after the malevolent medic unleashed his first foul scheme in Dr Mabuse: The Gambler . Director Fritz Lang dispenses with his anti-Nazi allegories to craft a byzantine story in which the not-so-good doctor (Wolfgang Preiss) has every room in a hotel under surveillance. With gadgets aplenty and paranoia rife, it feels like a forebear to a whole generation of techno-thrillers: Enemy of the State  and even, dare we say it, Sliver .

The killer moment: A sniper takes out a TV reporter who’s behind the wheel of his car. A high-angle shot isolates the suddenly motionless car.

71.  Z (1969)

With its Rashomon -esque structure of shifting perspectives, Costa-Gavras’s Z  (based on the true story of a liberal Greek official’s assassination) revolutionised political thrillers with its maximalist punch: both entertaining and incessantly suspenseful. Its essential theme – the need to seek the truth – exemplifies the chaotic, activism-defined moment in which it was released, and rings urgently true in our era of fake news and government corruption.

The killer moment: Right-wing thugs in a truck speed toward a circle of protestors and beat a peaceful politician with a club.

72.  The Handmaiden (2016)

Just when we thought of erotic thrillers as forbidden fruit of a bygone era, along came Park Chan-wook’s gothic stunner set in 1930s Korea. The luxuriant visual pleasures of The Handmaiden  aren’t exactly male-gaze-proof, but the film’s juicy payoff is a devious slap in the face of any self-appointed abusers.

The killer moment: Bodily fluids flow freely during an ‘educational’ multi-position sexual rendezvous between female bedfellows.

73.  Where Eagles Dare (1968)

This classic   boy’s-own   thriller features the cool-as-fuck double act of Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood – the dialogue mostly involves growling – giving Hitler a headache by rescuing a captured general held in a Bavarian mountaintop   schloss. At least, that’s the plan: even the twists have twists here. It’s one of those rare war films that keeps getting better with age (even if we still don’t know who’s ‘Broadsword’ and who’s ‘Danny Boy’).

The killer moment:   A cable-car fight is an exercise in white-knuckle excitement, despite looking like it was rear-projected in the MGM parking lot.

74.  The Parallax View (1974)

A central piece of Watergate-era thrill-mongering, The Parallax View  joins director Alan Pakula's earlier Klute  and later All the President's Men  in a trilogy with no equal for state-of-the-nation gloominess. Warren Beatty plays a crusading reporter who takes a deep dive into a secret organisation of political assassins; unwittingly, he has no idea how much they'd like to welcome him among their ranks.

The killer moment: Beatty's Joe Frady goes for an interview: He's led to a screening room where, Ludovico-style, he's subjected to one of the most radical silent montages ever presented by a Hollywood film.

75.  Strangers on a Train (1951)

Two men meet, entirely by chance. Both have someone they want to get rid of, but they’re terrified of getting caught. Why don’t they swap murders? Alfred Hitchcock’s film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s most celebrated novel may play fast and loose with the book but it does retain one of her key themes, offering a subtextual portrait of closeted homosexuality in an era of McCarthyite conformity. The result is witty, strange and endlessly fascinating.

The killer moment: After a movie’s worth of circling, the climactic struggle on an out-of-control carousel is dizzying.

76.  Coup de Torchon (1981)

Set in French West Africa in the 1930, Bertrand Tavernier’s story of a bumbling, humiliated police chief (Philippe Noiret) who turns murderous offers a caustic look at colonialism and masculinity. The thrills here leave a high body count, but are tempered by a sizable dose of existentialism, and the reliably great Isabelle Huppert brings welcome mischief to the role of a young mistress.

The killer moment: Huppert practices shooting a gun while saying, ‘I’ll never use it.’ We know she will – it’s only a matter of when.

77.  The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

This Gotham-set ’70s thriller is salted with cynicism and a contempt for authority – and that’s just the good guys. Walter Matthau is jowly Transit Authority cop Zachary Garber, whose bad day suddenly gets worse when Robert Shaw’s posse hijacks one of his trains. Quentin Tarantino tipped his hat to these villains – Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, Mr. Grey and Mr. Brown – in Reservoir Dogs . Unforgivably, the 2009 Tony Scott remake ditched the brilliant final twist.

The killer moment: Cinema’s greatest sneeze: ‘Gesundheit!’

78.  Plein Soleil (Purple Noon) (1960)

No man has ever looked better on screen than Alain Delon in this French adaptation of author Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley. That’s not just a shallow observation – his hotness is crucial to this take on Tom Ripley. He’s a smokeshow using his absurd good looks as a smokescreen, hiding an icy duplicitousness beneath a veneer of tan-and-chiselled beauty. It only makes his psychopathy more disturbing when it gradually comes into view under the blazing Mediterranean sun. In comparison to Anthony Minghella’s take years later, director René Clément takes more liberties with Highsmith’s novel, churning out a suave stolen-identity thriller. But for all its handsomeness, it still manages to leave viewers feeling vaguely icky by the end.   

The killer moment: Ripley’s first kill – further proof that you should never go yachting with a mysterious stranger, no matter how handsome they are.

79.  Stray Dog (1949)

Tokyo, 1949. A heat wave rips through the city, and a rookie policeman has his gun stolen by a pickpocket on a crowded trolley. Shamed into action, he pursues the weapon across the city, uncovering a major gun-running ring. Just four years after the end of World War II, Akira Kurosawa’s second major film (following 1948’s yakuza picture Drunken Angel ) focuses as much on place and social context as plot and character, utilising documentary footage of the bombed-out city and exploring how ordinary Japanese citizens were coming to terms with their shock defeat.

The killer moment: In a grungy, mud-caked showdown in the woods, who’s more desperate, cop or crook?

80.  The American Friend (1977)

Wim Wenders isn’t exactly synonymous with the genre, but he spins out Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game into an winningly off-kilter thriller. It has Dennis Hopper in the Ripley role as a rich American drifter who latches onto Bruno Ganz’s dying German picture framer and persuades him to start doing hits for a criminal gang. The plotting is not what you’d call Hitchcockian but Wenders is more interested in the existential fog that envelops his characters – and their conspiratorial bond – than the motives behind their crimes. It’s film noir as murky buddy movie.

The killer moment : Ganz’s unlikely assassin carries out his first hit on the Parisian Métro.

81.  Dead Man’s Shoes (2004)

A brutal outlier within director Shane Meadows’ warm, humanist filmography, this revenge thriller is a British exploitation flick with real emotional weight. Paddy Considine plays ex-soldier Richard, bringing a touch of Travis Bickle to the Peak District; Toby Kebbell is his abused, vulnerable brother, Anthony, preyed upon by drug dealers who don’t know what’s coming. Watch this one with Kill List  for a rural England double-bill that’ll have you sticking close to the city.

The killer moment: A spooky raid in which Richard wears a nightmare-inducing gas mask is straight out of an Otto Dix painting.

82.  Caché (2005)

Funny Games director Michael Haneke understands the hidden guilt of the blissful bourgeois, tormented by outside forces – in this case, an unknown stalker with a camera. Among the auteur’s masterpieces, this Juliette Binoche-starrer agitates through its meticulously concealed anxiety, culminating in a political statement on the contemporary residues of historical violence and racism.

The killer moment: Husband Daniel Auteuil doesn’t see it coming (neither do we) when a gruesome splash of blood slits open a heretofore sterile film.

83.  Kill List (2011)

Ben Wheatley’s DIY debut Down Terrace  was a blast, but nothing could have prepared us for his second feature. Like a DVD-bin thriller given a massive jolt of quality, Kill List  takes the basic elements of low-rent Britcrime-bickering hit men, a shady aristo crime boss, dreary suburban locations – and transforms them into art. With its improvised dialogue, pin-drop sound design and shocking violence, the result is terrifying, occasionally frustrating and utterly compelling.

The killer moment: If you can watch the hammer scene without wincing, you’re made of stone.

84.  Night and the City (1950)

Hounded out of the U.S. by the ‘reds-under-the-bed’ brigade, filmmaker Jules Dassin plied his trade on the other side of the Atlantic in the ’50s. Hollywood’s loss was Europe’s gain as he made his two greatest movies there: the seminal heist flick Rififi  and this London noir featuring a career-best turn from the perennially underrated Richard Widmark. Sheened in sweaty desperation, Widmark’s hustler Harry Fabian is an antihero for the ages as he weaves a web in the criminal underworld so tangled, he eventually becomes caught in it.

The killer moment: A climactic foot chase along the Thames shows off Hammersmith in way that’s never looked cooler.

85.  In the Cut (2003)

Meg Ryan is cast intriguingly against type in director Jane Campion’s dark spin on the erotic thriller. As Frannie, a teacher who becomes entangled with a detective investigating a series of murders, Ryan is basically the opposite of a cute rom-com heroine, and Campion creates a world of sexual menace, thick with violence yet never played for exploitation.

The killer moment: Early on, Frannie witnesses a woman going down on a man in the back room of a bar. This startling, surprisingly graphic moment sets the voyeuristic plot in motion.

86.  Misery (1990)

Outside of fairy tales and erotic thrillers, truly maniacal female villains like Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) – Misery ’s unhinged fangirl turned torturer – are sadly in short supply. We need more of them. Unorthodox, hilarious and increasingly frightening, Rob Reiner’s Stephen King adaptation is a plunge into the lonely, melancholic corners of celebrity obsession, set against the ticking clock of the deadliest deadline.

The killer moment: Annie’s shockingly violent ‘hobbling’ of her bed-bound houseguest remains a tough watch.

87.  King of New York (1990)

In some key way the crux of Christopher Walken's spooky, stilted persona, Abel Ferrara's louche gangster picture has come to occupy a central piece of NYC iconography. Walken plays Frank White, a vacant-eyed coke lord who, immediately upon release from prison, resumes his high-flying lifestyle – and idle mayoral aspirations – from a headquarters at the swank Plaza Hotel.

The killer moment: We all know Walken can dance, but you haven't seen how weirdly electric and menacing he can be until you've seen his flapping bird.

88.  The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Over five decades, the James Bond franchise has morphed from Cold War thrills to globe-trotting action, via whatever the heck Moonraker  was. This instalment, the best of the Roger Moore days, is a fantastically entertaining breakwater between those two phases: escapist fun before the gadget-drenched silliness to come. Special props go to Ken Adam, the production designer charged with creating an oceanic evil lair on a Pinewood backlot.

The killer moment: 007 and man-mountain Jaws (Richard Kiel) face off in Egypt’s ancient Temple of Karnak.

89.  Animal Kingdom (2010)

This Melbourne-set crime thriller packs all the energy of an early Scorsese picture, while bringing something fresh and distinctively Aussie to the genre. David Michôd’s feature debut has its roots in the real-life slaying of two cops in the late ’80s, and those incidents’ recreation is just one of the bursts of violence in a movie that carefully picks its moments for maximum shock. Caught in the middle is wide-eyed innocent Joshua (James Frecheville), wondering who he can trust in the clan of criminals he’s been adopted into. The answer? No one, least of all Jacki Weaver’s Smurf, a matriarch of real menace.

The killer moment: The odious but oddly charismatic Pope (Ben Mendelsohn, before he became Hollywood’s go-to villain) seethes in his living-room chair plotting evil, while Air Supply’s ‘All Out of Love’ makes an ironic counterpoint.

90.  Play Misty for Me (1971)

Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut is a potent portrait of obsession. Characteristically cool, he plays Dave, a California DJ dealing with an increasingly unhinged fan-turned-hookup-turned-stalker (Jessica Walter). The dark impulses on display make for an intriguing contrast with the sun-dappled, ultra-’70s aesthetic; the device of the single-minded madwomen, pushing the thrills close to horror, would prove highly influential.

The killer moment: Hell-bent on getting closer to her lust object, Evelyn (Walter) breaks into Dave’s bachelor pad and vandalises his possessions – the aftermath is as bad as you’d expect.

91.  The Ipcress File (1965)

Swinging London must be partying elsewhere than in this paranoid spy film, transplanted from the pages of Len Deighton’s novel with the help of a jazzy John Barry score. Behind it all was James Bond producer Harry Saltzman, who gave us Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer, the antithesis of 007. He’s an insubordinate trickster and womaniser (okay, so not completely different), but he wears glasses and – shocker of shockers – cooks. He’s also the deeply cool central cog in this magnificently calibrated espionage thriller.

The killer moment: The brainwashing sequence is a trippy foreshadow to a similar scene in The Parallax View .

92.  Gaslight (1944)

There’s a reason why the concept of gaslighting is forever potent: The image of emotional abuse presented in this film is viscerally uncomfortable. Charles Boyer is the viciously manipulative husband; Ingrid Bergman plays his victimised wife; and the audience is left desperately hoping for the cycle of mind games to finally end.

The killer moment: ‘Are you trying to tell me I’m insane?’ Bergman asks Boyer, crawling out of her skin and lunging for a real answer. It’s the film’s dark psychological predicament in a single line.

93.  Run Lola Run (1998)

Berlin makes an unforgiving industrial backdrop in Tom Tykwer’s techno-scored time twister. Lola (Franka Potente) needs to find a fortune in 20 minutes or her petty criminal boyfriend gets the chop. Cue three wildly different scenarios that play out like a cross between a video game, an infinitely more gonzo Sliding Doors  and a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ story. There’s even a Simpsons homage to it, which you can’t say about many low-budget Euro-thrillers.

The killer moment: Lola’s first attempt at boyfriend-rescuing ends very badly.

94.  Gone Girl (2014)

Deliriously nuts and a treat for fans of the double cross, Gillian Flynn's 2012 bestseller found the ideal adapting filmmaker in David Fincher, whose doomy way with a thriller proved a ruse in itself. The noose tightens around Nick (Ben Affleck, impressively shifty), a bar owner and former hot-shot journalist whose wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike, revelatory), a minor celebrity, has disappeared from their Missouri home.

The killer moment: Fed up and vicious, Amy coos from the afterlife – or maybe it's much closer – about the ‘cool girl’ she was required to be.

95.  Thief (1981)

Michael Mann’s breakthrough noir stars James Caan as an expert safecracker dreaming of leaving the criminal business and going straight, while simultaneously aware that a dream is all it can ever be. Caan gives a tremendous, livewire performance, throwing on a heavy Chicago accent and coming across something like Joe Pesci channelling Ric Flair. Mann, meanwhile, shows off the stylistic trademarks that’d make him one of Hollywood’s coolest auteurs: moody, neon-lit cinematography, icy electronic score (courtesy of Tangerine Dream) and loads of tension that builds toward a violent climax.

The killer moment: on a coffee date with Tuesday Weld, the woman he hopes will drag him out of his life of crime, Caan bares his soul and reveals he left most of it behind in prison. It’s a scene with no big explosions or heisty action, but it’s gripping all the same.

96.  The Talented Mr Ripley (1999)

Literature’s Tom Ripley, a con artist, gets captured in René Clément’s Purple Noon , but he murders his way to a grimmer finale in Anthony Minghella’s handsome spin on Patricia Highsmith’s novel. This sun-dappled thriller glimmers with a first-rate cast led by Matt Damon, enviable real estate and a complex gay protagonist (still a mainstream rarity) whose reflection on a polished piano splits apart in a mind-blowing shot. All hail cinematographer John Seale.

The killer moment: Suspicious of the title character, Freddie (Philip Seymour Hoffman, superbly obnoxious) repeatedly pounds on a high-pitched piano key, shredding away at Tom’s patience.

97.  Infernal Affairs (2002)

You know the plot, because Martin Scorsese used it for his Oscar-winning remake, The Departed . As entertaining as that movie is, the Hong Kong original is even better. Tony Leung and Andy Lau play moles: the former, a cop infiltrating a vicious triad; the latter, a criminal rising through the police ranks. Blazing its way through gunplay and excruciating scenes of hazardous undercover work, Infernal Affairs  is the thriller fan’s John Woo.

The killer moment: Inevitably, both men stand on a rooftop, sizing each other up, profile to profile. Leo and Matt were never this subtle.

98.  The Long Good Friday (1980)

John Mackenzie’s Cockney crime-athon is packed with chances to unleash your best Bob ’oskins impression (‘The Mafia? I’ve shit ’em!’). But thanks to gutsy performances by Hoskins as ambitious gangland fixer Harold Shand and Helen Mirren as his icy moll, it never lapses into cliché, slowly cranking up from blood-splashed character study to strangely affecting tragedy. If Shakespeare grew up in post-war Stepney, Shand could have been his Macbeth.

The killer moment: A lingering tight shot on Hoskins, complex emotions playing across his face as he’s driven to a date with destiny, is some of the best wordless acting in movies.

99.  The Stranger (1946)

Not perhaps as polished or as enduring as The Lady From Shanghai, the thriller Orson Welles would make a year later, this potboiler is nonetheless a rollicking good time in a Blue Velvet -y dark-side-of-smalltown-America kind of way. Welles plays a high-ranking Nazi (and amateur horologist) masquerading as a history professor in New England with the perfect cover of a devoted wife (Loretta Young). Edward G Robinson is the war crimes hunter who has his number. It’s a winning blend of clammy tension-building and Welles’s innovative filmcraft. If you’re a fan of clocks, you’ll love it.

The killer moment : Edward G Robinson’s shows Loretta Young’s haunted newlywed footage from the Nazi death camps – the first time Holocaust footage has been used in a Hollywood movie.

100.  Wild Things (1998)

The erotic thriller at its sweatiest, most stylised best, John McNaughton’s Wild Things  presents the story of an elaborate, sex-filled long con with lurid abandon. The thrills here are exaggerated and while they may be trashy, they’re also shrewdly executed. Which is all by way of saying: don’t even think about missing the end credits.

The killer moment: Neve Campbell and Denise Richards make out in a swimming pool, in what must be one of cinema’s most rewound scenes. But which one of these high-school girls has the upper hand?

Our latest thriller reviews

Blink twice.

• 4 out of 5 stars
• Recommended

‘Are you having a good time?’ It’s a refrain heard constantly throughout Blink Twice, always delivered by men to women as a thinly veiled threat. For the audience, the answer is never in doubt. Best known as an actor for Mad Max: Fury Road, The Batman and TV’s High Fidelity, Zoë Kravitz delivers a supremely entertaining directorial debut – a twisty-turny crowd-pleaser that’s as confident with its thrills and surprises as it is with its deftly handled sexual politics. Intelligent, funny, gory and deeply cinematic, it’s a constantly shifting delight that marks Kravitz as a storyteller of huge promise. Originally titled ‘Pussy Island’, which hints at the film’s boldness but belies its sophistication, Blink Twice centres on Frida (Lady Macbeth’s Naomi Ackie, terrific), a waitress with ambitions to build a nail-design brand. Along with pal Jess (Alia Shawkat), she finds herself invited to the private island of disgraced billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum, fully understanding the assignment). Joining a fun gang of tech bros (Christian Slater, Haley Joel Osment. Levon Hawke, Simon Rex) and party girls (Adria Arjona, Liz Caribel,Trew Mullen), Frida and Jess are plunged into a high-end world of luxury: gourmet dining, designer drugs, complimentary clothes, and sheets with a thread count higher than Stephen Fry’s IQ.  Early on, Kravitz over-indulges on the indulgence. Much screen time is expended on glasses of champagne being topped up, blunts being smoked and kick-ass parties, a

Only the River Flows

This analogue noir set in central China evokes satisfying memories of Bong Joon-ho’s great Korean crime thriller Memories of Murder. It’s Jiangdong province, 1995. An elderly lady has been found brutally murdered on the banks of a small town’s slow-moving river. Detective Ma (Yilong Zhu) and his willing but gormless sidekick are soon sifting through possible suspects: a local man with learning difficulties, a hairdresser who seems weirdly keen to hand himself in, or maybe some other malevolent figure. A cassette tape leads them to a young woman and her illicit partner. Maybe they hold the answer?Played by the leather-jacketed Zhu, 36 years old but carrying himself like a world-weary fortysomething, Ma is a jaded sleuth in the best noirish mode: all tired eyes and the faint sense that he’s three or four murder cases past his best.That applies to the police force as a whole, led by a ping-pong-obsessed chief who cranks up the pressure on Ma while rattling on vaguely about ‘collective honour’. Director Wei Shujun brings a subtly satirical lens to all this small-time hubris: the older lady is ‘Granny Four’; the river bank lurker is dubbed ‘Madman’ – lazy nicknames that betray a slapdash methodology. It evokes Bong Joon-ho’s great crime thriller Memories of Murder Near-constant rain backdrops a serial-killer procedural that also evokes David Fincher’s Seven. The killer is two steps ahead, even as Ma spirals into a madness of his own. Early in the piece, his small team is exiled t

The Conversation

• 5 out of 5 stars

Francis Ford Coppola’s sparse, prescient thriller is inner, rather than outer-directed film about the threat of electronic surveillance, conceived well before the Watergate affair broke.Acknowledged as the king of the buggers, Gene Hackman’s surveillance expert Harry Caul is an intensely private man. Living alone in a scrupulously anonymous flat, paying functional visits to a mistress who plays no other part in his life, he is himself a machine; and the point Coppola makes is that this very private man only acquires something to be private about through the exercise of his skill as a voyeur.Projecting his own lonely isolation on to a conversation he painstakingly pieces together (mesmerising stuff as he obsessively plays the tapes over and over, adjusting sound levels until words begin to emerge from the crowd noises), he begins to imagine a story of terror and impending tragedy, and feels impelled to try to circumvent it. In a splendidly Hitchcockian denouement, a tragedy duly takes place, but not the one he foresaw; and he is left shattered not only by the realisation that his soul has been exposed, but by the conviction that someone must have planted a bug on him which he simply cannot find. A bleak and devastatingly brilliant film. Re-released in UK cinemas Jul 5, 2024.

Motel Destino

• 3 out of 5 stars

Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz (Futuro Beach) channels the spirit of James M Cain’s classic pulp novel ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’ in a hot and heavy erotic thriller that goes like a clappers, before running out of steam in its final stretches, like a film gasping for a post-coital ciggie. Motel Destino is set almost entirely in the establishment of the title, a neon-lit lodgings frequently by horny couples in a dusty Brazilian beach town. The kind of place soundtracked by banging walls and loud groaning, it’s run by the impetuous Elias (Fábio Assunção) and his dissatisfied younger wife Dayana (Nataly Rocha). She does the day-to-day stuff; he shops for sex toys and roams the corridors in sweaty shirt and shorts, occasionally peeking in on the guests through the rooms’ shutters. It’s the Bates Motel on Viagra, and the arrival of the handsome 21-year-old Heraldo (Iago Xavier) only stirs things up still further. A gang member who messed up a job that left his brother dead, he needs a place to hole up while a ruthless mob matriarch hunts him down. But he and Dayana are soon stealing off for their own covert assignations, with the bullish but oblivious Elias none the wiser. After his so-so stab at Tudor history with last year’s Firebrand, Motel Destino has Aïnouz back on home turf, and he creates a magnificently lurid seaside setting for this three-hander to play out. With legendary female cinematographer Hélène Louvart, he makes liberal use of crimson filters and hazy light

[image] [title]

Discover Time Out original video

• Press office
• Investor relations
• Work for Time Out
• Editorial guidelines
• Privacy notice
• Do not sell my information
• Cookie policy
• Accessibility statement
• Terms of use
• Modern slavery statement
• Manage cookies
• Advertising

Time Out Worldwide

• All Time Out Locations
• North America
• South America
• South Pacific

Things you buy through our links may earn  Vox Media  a commission.

12 Turbulent Airplane Thrillers to Stream Right Now

Airplanes are spaces where we sort of can’t help but be vulnerable. It’s cramped, you can’t simply “pull over” and get out any time you want, and you have to smell whatever foods your fellow passengers brought onboard with them whether you like it or not. So it’s no wonder that this particular space has become a creative playground for thriller storytellers.

Hijack , the Apple TV+ drama starring Idris Elba, is the latest in a long line of thrillers set on airplanes, and after seven riveting episodes, it’s coming to an end this week. So just in case you’re in the mood to take another flight from the comfort of your couch, we’ve rounded up a dozen of the best airplane thrillers — that is, thrillers primarily set on airplanes , not thrillers that feature an airplane — for your viewing pleasure. Movies or shows about plane crashes don’t qualify (sorry, Lost , Yellowjackets , Flight , and Sully ), and there’s a big difference between action on a passenger plane and action in the cockpit of a military jet (so no Top Gun: Maverick ).

Now, sit back, relax, and pay attention to the seatbelt sign because these are some bumpy rides.

Airport ’77 (1977)

The Airport films have long been credited with popularizing the disaster movie genre, but their influence also helped to establish the airplane thriller as a subgenre all its own. If you want pure, unfiltered, airplane-centric insanity, though, your best bet in the franchise is Airport ’77 . The third installment packs yet another cast of major stars (Jack Lemmon with a mustache! Darren McGavin growling his way through the flight! Olivia de Havilland in all her glory!) into a luxury airliner, only to bring that airliner crashing down in the Bermuda Triangle … underwater. That’s right, this is a film brave enough to ask the question “What if a plane was a submarine?” and while it doesn’t necessarily go well for the passengers, you’ll have a lot of fun watching water trickle through the ’70s-ass airplane carpet.

Passenger 57 (1992)

One of several “ Die Hard on a Plane” movies to crop up in the 1990s, Passenger 57 is also one of the films that helped make Wesley Snipes an action star. Looking back, it’s easy to see why. If you love bombastic action cinema, this movie has everything: a soundtrack that’s mostly bass solos, early ’90s Elizabeth Hurley whipping her hair around, Wesley Snipes one-liners like “Always bet on Black,” and Bruce Payne playing a terrorist in a performance so wonderfully cartoonish it makes Disney villains look positively understated. At one point, Snipes’s airline-security expert, trying to stop a hijacking mid-flight, finds a leather jacket in the cargo hold and puts it on just because he can. It’s that kind of movie, and it’s great.

Executive Decision (1996)

I’m convinced that Executive Decision got its name simply so a character could offer a resigned sigh at one point in the film and say, “It’s an executive decision now.” The executive in question is the president, but he’s an offscreen presence for most of the film. The real man in charge is Kurt Russell, a tuxedo-clad intelligence analyst who gets roped into a counterterrorist operation by a grudge-holding colonel (Steven Seagal as a man named “Austin Travis” who, against all odds, doesn’t seem to be from Texas). The operation in question: Get onboard a hijacked plane via an experimental technology that allows them to “dock” with the plane and tunnel onto it in midair. When Seagal’s typical action-hero character can’t complete the mission, it’s up to Russell to play the reluctant hero, all while looking good in a tux and a pair of glasses. That’s right, it’s Kurt Russell doing “Nerd Who’s Secretly Good at Punching,” and that’s as fun as it sounds.

Con Air (1997)

If you knew nothing else about Con Air , and I told you John Malkovich plays a criminal mastermind named “Cyrus the Virus,” you’d definitely want to watch it, right? Good, because that’s only, like, the fourth or fifth most awesome thing about this movie, which features a bunch of con victs hijacking the air plane they’re being transported on The rest of the ensemble cast includes Nicolas Cage (with one of his sweetest accents) as a man who killed someone in self-defense and just wants to get home to his family, Steve Buscemi as a serial killer, John Cusack as the federal marshal just trying to keep this whole planeload of felons in check, and Ving Rhames as a dude named “Diamond Dog” (let him into the group, Coach Lasso). Plus there’s power-ballad queen Diane Warren’s “How Do I Live?,” a stuffed animal in constant peril, and of course the action, which all culminates in a chase down the Las Vegas strip and a literal rain of money. All that and Cyrus the Virus, too.

Air Force One (1997)

Ah yes, what if “ Die Hard on a Plane” was “ Die Hard on the President’s Plane“? Directed with style and bravado by Wolfgang Peterson, who even manages to make some questionable CGI work out okay, Air Force One is one of those great Harrison Ford vehicles that’s comfortable just because you know he’s going to get the job done eventually, no matter how far he has to go. Opposite him in the battle for the commander-in-chief’s ride is Gary Oldman as a Russian separatist trying to get his leader released from prison, which means you get Gary Oldman shouting and Gary Oldman doing a very pronounced accent. Throw in Glenn Close holding down the fort as one of the best vice-presidents ever committed to film, and you can already taste the popcorn.

Red Eye (2005)

Though he’s best known for films dominated by Freddy Krueger’s claws and Ghostface’s hunting knife, Wes Craven should also be remembered as a meticulous cinema craftsman who could ratchet up tension even without the trappings of horror. For proof, check out Red Eye , a nail-biting masterpiece about a hotel manager (Rachel McAdams) and the terrorist (Cillian Murphy) who ropes her into his deadly plans in the middle of a quiet night flight. McAdams and Murphy both make absolute meals of the premise, and Craven proves he can play Hitchcock with the best of them. Plus, unlike a lot of movies on this list, which make planes feel like flying open-concept living rooms, Red Eye really traps you in the close quarters that come with coach seating. You can basically smell the dirty socks of the person with their feet up on your armrest, and believe it or not, for this movie, that’s a good thing.

Flightplan (2005)

For much of its runtime, Flightplan is a movie about a panicked widow whose daughter has gone missing in the middle of a nighttime flight, which means Jodie Foster has to spend a lot of it running back and forth on a jetliner, trying to sustain the tension of whether or not her daughter was real or a trauma-wrought hallucination. With another actor, it might not work, but damn it, this is two-time Oscar-winner Jodie Foster . When she says her daughter is missing, her daughter is missing , and you will follow her into hell to find out what happened. That’s reason enough to watch this movie. The bonkers back half of the plot is just icing on the Jodie Foster cake.

Snakes on a Plane (2006)

Remember that old Patton Oswalt bit about how the title Texas Chain Saw Massacre makes you see a free movie in your head? The same rules apply to Snakes on a Plane , a movie about a plane that … well, has snakes on it. You get it. Of course you get it; you get it so much you’re wondering if this movie is even worth watching, if it can ever possibly live up to the promise of the title. But trust me, Samuel L. Jackson yelling at airborne serpents for 100 minutes really is as fun as it sounds. This is glorious Meme Movie Cheese from before meme movies were really a thing, and the horror is effective enough that you’ll be double-checking the overhead bins for reptiles on your next flight.

Non-Stop (2014)

The Liam Neeson Grizzled Action Hero Pipeline has not stopped flowing since Taken hit big, but if you’re looking for some gems beyond the Taken -verse (and of course The Grey , the Neeson-versus-wolves showdown of our dreams), Non-Stop is a good place to start. The film stars Neeson as an alcoholic, divorced, bitter air marshal still mourning his dead daughter, trapped on a plane with a killer who promises to off a passenger every 20 minutes until his demands are met. It’s a slick concept, Neeson carries it well, and director Jaume Collet-Serra keeps the tension mounting while managing to comment in surprisingly insightful ways on the nature of post-9/11 air travel paranoia. It’s even Key & Peele -approved .

Blood Red Sky (2021)

Okay, you might be going into Blood Red Sky — the film that dares to ask, “What if ‘ Die Hard on a Plane’ was interrupted by a vampire?” — expecting some kind of over-the-top action film or even a horror-comedy. I’m here to tell you right now that’s not the case, so manage your expectations. If you approach with an open mind and an eye for thoughtful horror, what you’ll get from this film is a surprisingly moving, often viscerally creepy journey about a mother and son just trying to survive in an unkind world. Of course, you’ll also get a vampire ripping into hijackers in some very satisfying ways, so I guess don’t manage your expectations too much.

Plane (2023)

Despite the title, Plane actually spends much of its runtime outside of the plane in the island jungle around the plane, but we’re counting it anyway because … well, it’s called Plane , it’s got a Plane, and it’s got Gerard Butler reminding us that he is now in his Liam Neeson era. Butler plays a determined pilot — in the parlance of the Barbie era, his job is Plane — who must team up with a convicted murderer (Mike Colter) who just happened to be one of his passengers after Plane goes down in the jungle, surrounded by criminals who’d love to ransom off the American passengers. Granted, the film spends too much time away from Plane, but when it finally gets back to Plane, Plane gears up for a really fun finish, complete with an unforgettable death for the film’s main villain.

Hijack (2023)

Thrillers set on airplanes are usually fairly short, because generally speaking, even in fiction, we don’t want to spend that much time thinking about the hassles of air travel. Hijack is seven episodes long, which just goes to show that if you give us Idris Elba’s handsome face to look at, we’ll stay on the flight as long as it takes. But the success of the Apple TV+ thriller extends beyond Elba, who’s terrific in the series as a business negotiator trying to gain control over a hijacking on his flight. Through a great ensemble, sharp writing, and twists that leave you anxious for every new episode, Hijack manages to make our extended time on a plane fly by. It’s the next best thing to falling asleep and waking up at your destination.

• vulture lists
• vulture picks
• airplane movies

Most Viewed Stories

• The 15 Best Movies and TV Shows to Watch This Weekend
• Cinematrix No. 152: August 25, 2024
• Osgood Perkins Unpacks All the Hidden Demon Appearances in Longlegs
• What Happened With Kendall and Nicole From Love Island USA ?
• A Baby Bieber Has Been Born
• Evil Series-Finale Recap: Last Rites

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

What is your email.

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

• Lower case letters (a-z)
• Upper case letters (A-Z)
• Numbers (0-9)
• Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.

The 14 Best Thrillers Of 2021 Ranked

2021 has been a great year for film fans, although the second year of the new decade has certainly been an unpredictable one in terms of release schedules. Between the Academy Awards pushing their eligibility window to February and the simultaneous release of new Warner Brothers films in theaters and on HBO Max , it's become more difficult than ever to keep track of what films came out when, and where they're available.

The constraints of COVID-19 continued to impact cinephiles, as the production of many films was completed amidst the pandemic. In addition, many of the most anticipated films of 2020 were pushed back until 2021, so this year's slate of releases was even more packed with exciting projects than normal. At the same time, new thrillers have become more accessible than ever thanks to the continued success of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Disney+, and Apple TV+. Not only do these services serve as a platform for major big budget releases, but they can help spotlight under the radar titles as well.

Thriller fans had no shortage of options in 2021. Here are the 14 greatest thrillers of 2021, ranked.

14. Encounter

Great thrillers can not only tell gripping stories that audiences will be riveted by, but they can explore serious issues through genre-inspired premises. "Encounter" is a great example. It follows the former soldier Malik Khan (Riz Ahmed) as he deals with post-traumatic stress disorder. Khan tries to protect his two young sons amidst an ongoing alien invasion, which causes him to reminisce on his service.

"Encounter" is thrilling because Khan's perspective cannot entirely be trusted. It's unclear at points how much of the danger is real, and the film does a great job at deepening the viewer's understanding of Khan's condition without stigmatizing him. Ahmed delivers a sensitive, impactful performance, and is believable as a protective father. "Encounter" skillfully teases the science fiction plot without any heavy exposition; instead, it forces the viewer to pay close attention to background details as Khan's paranoia increases during his travels.

13. Siberia

Abel Ferrara is one of the most distinguished voices in the thriller genre, and while he may not crank out a classic like "Bad Lieutenant" or "The King of New York" every time he steps behind the camera, it's commendable that the older filmmaker continues to work on new films. Ferrara also released the thriller "Zeroes and Ones" this year, but his summer film, "Siberia," had been sitting on the shelf for a while. The psychological thriller was first screened at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival and had been awaiting an official release ever since. Thankfully, in 2021, cinephiles finally got the chance to enjoy the film's complex narrative.

"Siberia" follows lonely bartender Clint (Willem Dafoe), who tends to a bar in the middle of the frozen Siberian desert. Clint's infrequent customers speak little English, and he's cut himself off from almost any other social interactions. However, Clint becomes fascinated by a mysterious cave near his bar. Inside, he finds haunting visions of his past that force him to question the nature of his reality.

12. Shadow in the Cloud

2021 was a great year for female representation on screen. "Shadow in the Cloud" had a tumultuous journey to theaters, as the screenplay came from Max Landis, who has been accused of abuse and sexual misconduct . However, director Roseanne Liange was able to rewrite large portions of the script and make it her own, and "Shadow in the Cloud" ended up being one of the best creature features in recent memory as a result.

In the final stage of World War II, Pilot Officer Maude Garrett (Chloe Grace Moretz) demands entry to a flight traveling between Auckland and Samoa. Garrett is mocked and dismissed by her male crew, who force her to stay below decks on the B-17 known as the Fool's Errand. While Garrett is isolated, a gremlin-like creature latches itself to the ship's posterior, leaving her unable to communicate with the rest of the crew.

11. The Courier

Cold War-era thrillers are an important part of film history, and half a century after their emergence, modern filmmakers continue to find ways to reinvigorate their well-worn cliches. This year's "The Courier" combines the Hitchcockian notion of a common man in over his head with a detailed look at international relations reminiscent of the works of the great John le Carre. As such, Dominik Cooke's highly entertaining thriller is both an entertaining throwback and a novel reinvention.

"The Courier" follows a British businessman, Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch), who is recruited by MI6 officer Helen Talbot (Rachel Brosnahan) to make contact with the Soviet Union military intelligence officer Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze). Wynne has no experience as a spy, and it's entertaining to watch an outsider enter the fragile world of politics as the Cuban Missile Crisis breaks out. While there are some early comedic beats as Wynne adjusts to his new reality, the film becomes increasingly suspenseful as Wynne's paranoia increases and the stakes grow ever-higher.

10. Judas and the Black Messiah

This year's release calendar has been so chaotic that it's easy to forget that some of the best films of the year were released in its first few months. Due to the untraditional eligibility period of last year's Academy Awards, February's "Judas and the Black Messiah" competed against the films of 2020 for the top prizes. Daniel Kaluuya took home the best supporting actor award for his incredible performance as the Black Panther party leader Fred Hampton, and the film was also nominated for best picture, best adapted screenplay, best original song for "Fight for You," best cinematography, and best supporting actor (Lakeith Stanfield).

While it tells an important story that is often unfortunately overlooked, "Judas and the Black Messiah" is also a great throwback to classic '60s and '70s crime thrillers. It follows the rise of Hampton in the aftermath of the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. FBI informant Bill O'Neal (Stanfield) is tasked with infiltrating Hampton's inner circle by case handler Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons), who begins orchestrating the assassination of the renowned leader.

9. The Harder They Fall

Westerns, which frequently intersect with thrillers, have had a resurgence over the past decade thanks to the more realistic takes on the genre. Films like "The Revenant," "The Nightingale," "The Sisters Brothers," "Hostiles," and this year's "Power of the Dog" examined the actual history behind many of the western's established cliches and recurring tropes. It's important for these new perspectives to emerge, but as a result, the old-fashioned gunslinger adventure has fallen out of fashion.

Thankfully, this year's "The Harder They Fall" was a welcome throwback to the older era of westerns that tells its story from a Black perspective. The film follows the exploits of notorious murderer Rudus Buck (Idris Elba), who escapes from imprisonment on a train thanks to Trudy Smith (Regina King) and Cherokee Bill (Lakeith Stanfield), who are members of his gang. Local sheriff Bass Reeves (Delroy Lindo) is desperate to stop the infamous criminal, and reaches out to another gunslinger, Nat Love (Jonathan Majors). Love has a personal score to settle with Buck, and gathers his allies Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz), Jim Beckwourth (RJ Cyler), Cuffee (Danielle Deadwyler), and Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi) to help hunt him down.

8. The Guilty

The 2018 Danish thriller "The Guilty" is one of the most essential international films of the past decade, and one that was unfortunately overlooked for an Academy Award nomination. The crime thriller is a more sensitive take on the police procedural that doesn't lionize law enforcement or glorify the profession, but instead shows the reality of what life with such a demanding career is like. The film takes a fascinating approach to the material, as it is entirely set within one room and follows a 24-hour ambulance dispatcher as he answers a series of calls over one stressful night.

This year, noted genre filmmaker Antoine Fuqua remade the film, moving the setting to modern Los Angeles. Jake Gyllenhaal leads the American cast as LAPD officer Joe Baylor, who becomes obsessed with a caller whose emergency message he receives. Baylor attempts to solve a complex crisis while bound to his desk, but is constantly interrupted by the demands of his superiors and other callers. The supporting voice cast includes Ethan Hawke, Peter Sarsgaard, Paul Dano, Riley Keough, and Bill Burr.

7. Stillwater

2021 was a great year for reflective political commentary. "Stillwater," for example, examined the paranoia and vulnerability of an American who ventures overseas. While it hardly lionizes the middle-American point of view that is frequently referenced in the news media, "Stillwater" is still sensitive to a character caught in over his head. In it, director Tom McCarthy, who so brilliantly explored modern journalism with his best picture winner "Spotlight," masterfully examines the challenging nature of international court proceedings.

Bill Baker (Matt Damon) is an Oklahoma oil worker who learns that his young daughter Allison (Abigail Breslin) has been imprisoned in France, where she is studying. Baker is shocked to learn that Allison has been accused of murder, and decides to travel overseas for the first time to begin defending her on his own. Baker is forced to question his daughter's innocence, and unravels a complex conspiracy involving local gangs and law enforcement. Damon gives one of his most restrained and emotional performances as an overwhelmed father.

6. The Card Counter

Few filmmakers are as integral to the development of the thriller as Paul Schrader, who influenced generations of neo-noir classics with his brilliant screenplay for Martin Scorsese's 1976 classic "Taxi Driver." Schrader has frequently worked as Scorsese's screenwriter since then, but he's also developed as an incredible director in his own right. 

Schrader isn't always consistent, as he can be an indulgent filmmaker, and not all of his work is equal in quality. Thankfully, Schrader's 2021 effort continues the hot streak he began with 2017's "First Reformed." "The Card Counter" is a fascinating combination of different influences. While the gambling movie elements are more classic, Schrader crafts an entirely unpredictable narrative and explores modern themes by focusing on the addictive nature of the gambler's lifestyle. He also incorporates a heavy dose of commentary about post-traumatic stress disorder and corruption in the modern U.S. military.

The film centers on serial poker player William Tillich (Oscar Isaac), who embarks on a road trip alone in order to compete in the World Series of Poker. William is approached by a mysterious young man, Cirk (Tye Sheridan), who claims to have knowledge of William's experience fighting overseas. William also encounters a prominent military figure he knows very well: Major John Gordo (Willem Dafoe), who performed illicit experiments on him, and many other soldiers, without their consent.

5. House of Gucci

In 2021, Ridley Scott released two old-fashioned Hollywood thrillers with big budgets and star-studded casts within a month of each other. Both "The Last Duel" and "House of Gucci" were based on shocking true stories. In the case of "House of Gucci," the epic nature of the film's spectacle didn't prevent Scott from including gripping sequences of paranoia, violence, and suspense. The 157-minute runtime flies by, thanks to the real scandals and controversies that plagued the Gucci family from the early 1970s to the late 1990s.

The film follows the young heir apparent to the Gucci brand, Maurizio (Adam Driver), who falls in love with the working-class office manager Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga). Maurizio owns a 50% stake in Gucci, but he's disinherited by his pretentious father Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons), who doesn't approve of his marriage to Patrizia. However, Patrizia is able to gain the favor of Rolfo's brother Aldo (Al Pacino), who is frequently frustrated by his own son, Paolo (Jared Leto). Patrizia manages to negotiate Maurizio back into the family, and they begin to take ownership of the infamous fashion brand together.

Maurizio is content living outside of his family's sphere of influence, but Patrizia is more ambitious and aims to take complete control of the lucrative business. She forces Maurizio to help her pit Aldo and Paolo against each other to increase their stake in the business, but their relationship grows rockier when Maurizio becomes disenfranchised by his initial passions.

4. The Many Saints of Newark

"The Sopranos" is one of the most thrilling television shows of all time, and the life of Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) closed with an uncertain final note in the season 6 finale, "Made in America." Not only did the ambiguous nature of Tony's fate make it unlikely that there would ever be a sequel project, but Gandolfini's tragic real-life passing made it impossible for the show to continue. However, showrunner David Chase had more stories to tell in "The Sopranos" universe, leading to this feature film prequel.

"The Many Saints of Newark" explores the adolescence of Tony Soprano, who is played here by Gandolfini's son, Michael. The film examines Tony's relationship with Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), the father of Christopher (Michael Imperioli), who fans know from the series. Although some details of Dickie's life were explained in "The Sopranos," there were many secrets that fans had been speculating about. "The Many Saints of Newark" tells the definitive story of how Tony became the famous gangster that he was in the show.

While the fact that he looks exactly like his father certainly helped, Michael Gandolfini delivers an incredible performance, and shows a more sensitive side to the ruthless character. Tony isn't necessarily a bad kid, but he's caught between the warring influences of his distracted mother (Vera Farmiga) and his criminal father (Jon Bernthal). As a result, Dickie becomes his mentor, and Nivola is fantastic as he brings a complex character to life. The shocking closing moments also provide additional insights that recontextualize the entire history of "The Sopranos."

3. The Last Duel

The first of Ridley Scott's two 2021 projects, "The Last Duel" returned Scott to the medieval epic, which has been integral to his entire career. Scott's directorial debut was 1977's "The Duellists," and he's returned to the genre frequently with "Robin Hood," "Kingdom of Heaven," "Legend," and "1492: Conquest of Paradise." Unfortunately, his 2021 effort didn't quite connect with audiences in the same way, as "The Last Duel" was one of the year's biggest box office bombs, which Scott himself blamed on "millenials" during an appearance on the "WTF" podcast (via Variety ).

Perhaps it was the film's nuanced depiction of sexual assault that kept viewers away, or maybe audiences are no longer supportive of serious big-budget dramas made for adults, because "The Last Duel" is an excellent medieval thriller that explores deeply disturbing material from a fascinating point of view. The film follows the story of former allies Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon) and Jacques le Gris (Adam Driver) as they return home from the Caroline War. Jacques grows obsessed with Jean's wife, Marguerite (Jodie Comer). After she rejects his romantic advances, he rapes her.

The film is told in three chapters, one from each of the main characters' point of view, ending with Marguerite's segment, which is titled "The Truth." It's fascinating to see the same events depicted multiple times, and how each of the characters interpret the others' actions. "The Last Duel" tells an impactful story about believing women; screenwriter Nicole Holofcener helped to flesh out Marguerite's perspective, working from a script by Damon and Affleck.

2. Riders of Justice

There are many types of thrillers, and film fans will certainly enjoy this untraditional project, which includes influences from many other genres. The Danish film "Riders of Justice" is hardly a standard revenge thriller, as it blends elements of action, suspense, melodrama, and comedy to create an entirely unpredictable narrative. Rather than following the traditional route of a revenge shoot 'em up, "Riders of Justice" examines and satirizes the nature of vengeance and how it relates to trauma.

The film opens with a shocking explosion at a train station that leaves many dead and wounded. In Afghanistan, the soldier Markus (Mads Mikkelsen) hears the heartbreaking news that his wife was killed in the terrorist attack, and that his young daughter Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg) is in critical condition. As he returns home, Markus comes into contact with idiosyncratic scientists Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), Lennart (Lars Brygmann), and Emmenthaler (Nicolas Bro).

The trio of analysts are looking for a formula that will help them predict future events, and they believe that they've found evidence that links the train explosion to a tattooed gang. Feeling that they owe it to Markus to share the details with him, Otto, Lennart, and Emmenthaler end up helping him pin down the terrorists' location. It's entertaining to see the bumbling analysts train for action and interact with solemn Markus. However, the film is also respectful of each character when it focuses on how they process grief.

Nicolas Cage is never not working, as the prolific movie star appears in multiple projects every year, many within the thriller genre. For the better part of the decade, Cage has appeared in mostly direct to VOD, DVD, and streaming films with low budgets and poor reviews. It's a sad reality for one of the most versatile and ambitious actors of his generation, but Cage still occasionally takes on interesting projects that remind film fans of his glory days. In 2021, Cage appeared in slightly more elevated titles like "Willy's Wonderland" and "Prisoners of the Ghostland."

However, the independent drama "Pig," directed by debut filmmaker Michael Sarnoski, saw Cage deliver one of the best performances of his entire career. It was an emotional, methodical dramatic role that showed a more subtle side to an actor who'd become known for his eccentricities. However, "Pig" has no shortage of thrills. Many intense sequences are packed into its tight 90 minutes.

"Pig" follows Cage as the Portland truffle forager Robin Feld, who was once a renowned chef and now lives alone in the wilderness. Robin's only companion is a pig who helps him find the best local ingredients, which he sells to a supplier, Amir (Alex Wolff). It's been a long time since Robin has had any normal interactions, but he's forced to travel back to the metroplex when someone kidnaps his loyal pig. The quest to get the pig back becomes an emotional mystery as Robin encounters old acquaintances and deals with the demons of his past.

• Tickets & Showtimes
• Trending on RT

• Best Movies/TV
• Fan Favorites
• Movies by Genre
• TV by Genre
• Past Winners

Best Thriller Movies 2021

A good thriller offers gripping mystery and edge-of-your-seat tension, and the movies featured here prove that thrills come in all sizes. Boiling Point demonstrates just how tense things can get in a kitchen, while Riders of Justice features the classic hunt for revenge with darkly comedic twist. At the top of this list, Azor  is an uncommonly patient thriller that critics say gets better with multiple viewings.

The order reflects Tomatometer scores (as of December 31, 2021) after adjustment from our ranking formula, which compensates for variation in the number of reviews when comparing movies or TV shows.

Azor (2021) 98%

Riders of Justice (2020) 96%

Boiling Point (2021) 99%

No Sudden Move (2021) 92%

The Novice (2021) 93%

Titane (2021) 90%

The Beta Test (2021) 92%

Nobody (2021) 83%

The Courier (2020) 85%

Only the Animals (2019) 93%

More golden tomato awards 2021.

Best Movies 2021

Best Wide Release Movies 2021

Best Limited Release Movies 2021

Movie & TV News

Featured on rt.

Poll: Vote for Your Most Anticipated TV or Streaming Show of September

August 23, 2024

Poll: Vote for Your Most Anticipated Movie of September

8 Must-Watch Films at the Venice International Film Festival

The Crow Movies, Ranked by Tomatometer

Top Headlines

• Box Office 2024: Top 10 Movies of the Year –
• The Crow Movies, Ranked by Tomatometer –
• The Crow Movies In Order –
• 100 Best Anime Movies of All Time –
• All Quentin Tarantino Movies Ranked –
• Andrew Garfield Movies and Series Ranked by Tomatometer –

• Work With Me

Home » Blog » 25 Best Travel Movies On Netflix

25 Best Travel Movies On Netflix

I think every wanderlust lover enjoys a great travel movie! These films can make you travel the world in a little under two hours and can be super inspiring. Though finding the right movies to watch when traveling can be time-consuming and even complicated if you’re on an international trip. That’s why Netflix is life-saving for all travel lovers wanting to watch movies on the road! 

For me, one of the best gifts for travel lovers is a streaming subscription! This allows us to download movies and watch them whenever suits us better while on a trip. It’s practical and stress-free! Plus, Netflix has an impressive movie catalog that includes some of the most beloved travel films out there. That’s why I decided to create this roundup. Keep reading to find out what are the best travel movies on Netflix! 

1. Eat, Pray, Love (2010)

This movie is an absolute classic! Not only is this story filled with beautiful landscapes, but it’s also quite moving. It’s based on a true story, so you’re for sure getting the real deal here. The plot follows a freshly divorced woman, Liz, as she embarks on a 9 month-long trip to find herself. The story kicks off in New York but Liz travels to Italy, India, and Bali on this self-discovery journey. It’s fast-paced (only about an hour and a half long) and filled with travel motivation. As you can probably tell, this movie is as inspiring as it gets! 

2. Lion (2016)

This is another touching film based on true events. It’s the story of Brierley, who got lost and separated from his parents at only 5 years old. He ended up on the other side of his home country, India, and never saw them again, getting adopted later and moving to Australia. But the story kicks off when Brierley decides to go on a journey to find them! The movie will take you on a heart-wrenching journey across India and Australia. It lasts almost two hours, so get cozy! 

3. Chasing Liberty (2004)

For anyone longing for a 2000’s rom-com after two emotional films, I’ve got you! This is such a feel-good type of movie that it’s perfect for anyone stuck at a boarding gate, bus terminal, or rainy day when camping ! The story follows the daughter of the President of The United States as she steps off on a European adventure to rebel against the constant security imposed on her. It’s got European travel destinations, 2000’s nostalgia, and romance! 

4. Expedition Happiness (2017)

If you want to check out some of the best United States road trip destinations , then this film is for you!  Expedition Happiness follows a German couple as they set off on a road trip across the USA, Mexico, and Canada. They explore all of North America with their dog and a converted school bus. The views are spectacular and will definitely inspire you to travel!  It lasts 96 minutes and will convince you to pack your bags before you even get to watch half of it! 

5. Mamma Mia (2008)

Another outstanding classic! I couldn’t leave Mamma Mia out of this list, especially when it’s such an uplifting and comforting film. The story takes place on a Greek island ( anyone else longing for some sun right now?) and follows a young woman named Sophie who’s about to get married. She wants her father to be there but doesn’t know who she is. So Sophie invites all three of her potential dads to the wedding! It’s a true rollercoaster of a film. Plus, it’s a musical, so there’s even more to love about it! 

6. Ibiza (2018)

Okay, so this movie is pretty much a rulebook for what NOT to do on a business trip. Which makes it all that much more fun and enjoyable! The plot follows Harper, a 30-year-old woman from NYC who travels to Barcelona for work. But (of course) everything goes off track when she meets a handsome DJ! It’s only an hour and a half long, so you can definitely squeeze it in the middle of any busy day! 

7. The Fundamentals of Caring (2016)

Alright, we’re back to the moving travel movies category. For real now, this is the ultimate road trip movie! It follows the story of Ben, a writer turned caregiver in charge of a teenager with muscular dystrophy, Trevor. As the boy loves American roadside attractions, Ben convinces his mother to go on a road trip across the country. It’s an emotional film packed with views of the open road! 

8. The Terminal (2004)

Pretty much everyone and their mother knows this is a great movie. This commercial success follows the ordeal of an Eastern European man stranded inside of New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport because his passport is no longer valid. But the same reason why they won’t let him in is the same reason why he can’t leave: his country suffered a military coup and his life would be in danger. So he stays there, making a terminal his new home as he waits for asylum. This is a classic and you should not miss it! 

9. Casino Royale (2006)

James Bond films are always quite the show! They’re bound to make you have fun while traveling. This one follows Bond as he is earning his license to kill and is involved in a high-stakes poker game at the Casino Royale, Montenegro. The movie was shot in the Czech Republic, the Bahamas, Italy, and the United Kingdom. So you’ll see lots of different places! 

10. Amelie (2001)

If you’ve ever longed for a trip to Paris, then this movie is for you! The story follows Amelie, a girl whose childhood was conditioned by her mistakenly diagnosed heart condition. As she barely got any real-life interactions with people, she resorted to her own fantasy world that resulted in a vivid imagination even as an adult. Her life changes when she moves to Paris and that’s where this story begins. It’s a cinematic masterpiece and a very acclaimed film! 

11. Into the Wild (2007)

This great movie will take you deep into the wilderness of Alaska. It’s the story of Christopher McCandless, as he sells all of his possessions after graduating from university and departs to Alaska. He even donates all of his savings to give it all up and live in the wild. Along the way, he’ll encounter people that will forever make an impact on his life. It’s quite a long film (almost two and a half hours long) but definitely worth your time! 

12. Adrift (2018)

This moving film is based on an inspiring true story and will leave you shaken. It follows the adventures of two sailors who embark on a trip across the seas only to find themselves in the eye of one of the most catastrophic hurricanes in history. After the storm, their boat is shredded to pieces and one of them is badly injured. Now all they have to do is try to survive. It’s a gripping story, that’s for sure! 

13. Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus (2013)

This movie is for those who want a bit of fun when they’re away or daydreaming of being on the road! Meet Jamie, a let-loose American who’s traveling in Chile. There, he joins a woman keen to discover the benefits of a local South American hallucinogen: the San Pedro cactus. You’re bound to have a good laugh with this one. It’s short (1:40 hours) and hilarious!

14. Forrest Gump (1994)

This American classic is one you’ve probably seen dozens of times before. But we never get tired of this movie! This story follows the beloved character, Forrest Gump, across a tale of his eventful life while he waits at a bus stop. His memoirs also depict a series of key events in American history, so it’s quite the emotional ride. It’s a longer movie, almost two and a half hours long, but certainly an unskippable one! 

1 5. Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011)

This Netflix documentary follows the life of 85-year-old sushi master Jiro Ono and his work at his renowned sushi restaurant. It also touches upon his relationship with his son as he is under the pressure of taking over the restaurant. Meanwhile, Jiro sets out on his lifelong quest to create the perfect piece of sushi. It all happens in Tokyo, so it’s a great movie for those longing to visit Japan! 

16. Faces places (2017)

This documentary is the perfect road trip film! The French protagonists, 89-year-old New Wave director Agnés Varda and 33-year-old photographer JR, embark on an artistic journey that’s caught on camera. They travel around the small villages of rural France, as they create portraits of the people they come across on their trip. It’s simple, subtle, and comforting! It’s a great movie for a road trip, so head over to our Road Trip section to start planning your next one.  

17. In Search Of Fellini (2017)

This story is both dreamy and relatable in certain ways! The protagonist is a small-town girl from Ohio who isn’t too keen on reality but adores movies. When she discovers the artistic and bizarre films of Federico Fellini, she takes off on a passionate trip across Italy just to find him. It’s a coming-of-age memoir mixed with a heavy dose of wanderlust. And if you like Italy’s landscapes, you can’t skip it! 

18. The Mummy (1999)

This one is another classic! If you’re in the mood for an adventure comedy, this is what you need to watch. Out of all these travel movies, The Mummy has a very distinct vibe. Is a mix of romance, adventure, comedy, and terror that just ticks all the right boxes! It tells the story of an expedition of treasure-seeking explorers in the Sahara Desert. When they uncover an ancient tomb, they set free a  3,000-year-old mummy by accident. And I’ll let you find out the rest from there! Get ready to visit Egypt! 

19. The Way (2010)

The Way is visually stunning and emotionally touching. It tells the story of a man who goes to St. Jean Pied de Port, France to gather the remains of his deceased adult son. His son died in a storm while attempting to complete the Camino de Santiago (The Way of Saint James trail). There, he decides to embark on the pilgrimage himself to honor his son’s desires. It’s an emotional ride but a beautiful one! 

20. The Bucket List (2007)

A travel movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman is a film worth watching! This comedy-drama follows two men suffering from a terminal illness as they set out on a once-in-a-lifetime kind of road trip. On their journey, they will check off everything they need to from their bucket lists before actually “kicking the bucket”. It’s funny, it features lots of cool places and activities, and it’ll sure keep you company while on the open road! 

21. On The Road (2012)

On The Road is the compelling take of a road trip fuelled by grief and a need for inspiration. Writer Sal Paradise embarks on a trip across the open road to regain clarity and motivation. On his journey, he encounters the free-spirited Dean Moriarty and his charismatic girlfriend. Together they travel the American Southwest in search of the unknown. The landscapes present in this movie are stunning and it’s always great to get to see more of the US! 

22. Wild Oats (2012)

This film is for those who want to watch movies that are a ton of fun! Wild Oats is a great movie capable of getting a laugh out of most of us. The story kicks off when a retired high school teacher receives a $5,000,000 check for her deceased husband’s $50,000 life insurance policy. Influenced by her friends, she decides to make the most out of the mistake and embark on a wild trip to the Canary Islands. The location of this film is beautiful and the storyline is hilarious! 

23. The Da Vinci Code (2006)

Everyone knows The Da Vinci Code in one way or another, right? Whether you’ve read the book or seen the film, this is a travel movie worth watching. The story follows symbologist Robert and cryptologist Sophie as they find themselves in the middle of a political and religious battle amid different believers. I don’t want to spoil anything else but this one is a must-watch!

24. Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) 

This is one of the best comedies/rom-coms of all time! Not only does it make everyone laugh and cringe a little, it’s also set in beautiful Hawaii. The plot follows Peter, who was dumped by his girlfriend (actress Sarah Marshall) and decided to take off to Hawaii. He hopes to relax but, as he’s checking in, he spots Sarah and her new boyfriend. The events that follow are bizarre, hilarious, and worth watching! 

25. Cairo Time (2009)

Finishing off this roundup of travel movies on Netflix with Cairo Time seems like the right move. This movie is poetic to its core and has some really strong performances. It’s a romantic drama that focuses on an unexpected affair in Cairo. Of course, it features the best views of the city and a few of Egypt’s most iconic landmarks. For those of you who love the Pyramids, this one’s for you! 

What are your favorite travel movies and shows on Netflix?

Those are the 25 best travel movies on Netflix! Each and every one of these films is perfect for sparking that wanderlust flame or preparing for an upcoming trip. Even more, you can watch them while traveling on a road trip or at the hotel! So just download them and get ready to be entertained for a while. What is your favorite travel movie? Let me know in the comments. Now go enjoy those wanderlust-packed films! 

PIN for Later

Related Guides

Arctic Expedition on the Seabourn Venture – Greenland and Canada

The 5 Best Beginner Mountain Biking Tips

How To Stay Healthy When Traveling

Join our mailing list for exclusive resources, events, and more.

Thank you for subscribing!

Wonderful & Amazing Blog Post about Travel Movies on Netflix!

Hello and warm regards from sunny Singapore!

Been following your IG and now subscribed to your blog. Thanks for this travel list. Cant wait to watch them. Thanks for your recommendations.

Ms Shan Lim

This is such a great list!! I am such an Egypt fanatic, how I have never heard of Cairo Time? Totally going to watch that tonight, thanks for the recommendations!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Follow Along on Instagram

Entertainment

Thriller is a genre so loosely defined it that it easily encompasses political intrigue, cyborg future assassins, mysterious Korean playboys, and even bored housewives. Though the general formula seems to be "action movie + sexy results/political elements," the one thing that all thrillers really have in common is a tension that should keep your heart rate up for the full duration of the film. And if you're looking for a movie to immediately get your blood pumping, look no further than these 39 thrillers with near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes scores , all of which you can stream right now.

The Tomatometer isn't the end-all, be-all of movie judgment, especially considering how it evaluates and compiles critical assessment . But like Roger & Ebert's thumbs, IMDB's stars, or the AV Club's letter-grading, it's a decent enough guide to general competency and craftsmanship. There's also personal and social taste to consider. The Thriller category saw a spike in action-packed political conspiracies in the late '70s (none of which seem to be available streaming, a true shame), while the late '80s to early '90s were the heyday of erotic thriller hits, such as No Way Out and Body Heat . Sketchy brotherhood betrayal also seems to be a timeless thriller trope, from early runs like The Third Man and The Manchurian Candidate to the more recent Blood Simple, Infernal Affairs , and Let The Right One In . Modern takes on the genre such as Drive, Cam, and Good Time are intensely color-saturated, highly stylized looks at one poor sap trying to handle the situation they've been put in.

Who's to say what thrillers will become in the future, but in the meantime, you can enjoy the highly regarded films below right now.

1 'The Terminator'

Tomatometer: 100%

Before he made good on his promise to be back, Arnold Schwarzenegger was an unstoppable killing machine hunting down poor Sarah Connor, not yet the sinewy rebel leader she'd become. At heart a love story between Sarah and the soldier sent to protect her, the film doesn't skimp on action.

Available to stream on Amazon Prime and Hulu and with ads on YouTube, Roku, and Tubi.

With a child predator on the loose and police cracking down, the criminal underworld pools its resources to catch the perp themselves (and take the heat down a notch). Peter Lorre plays the hunted creep with a humanity that makes his crimes all the creepier.

Available on Hoopla, The Criterion Channel, and Kanopy.

3 'Chinatown'

Tomatometer: 99%

A dark neo-noir with Jack Nicholson as Jake Gittes, a gumshoe who unravels a conspiracy of corruption beyond what any one man can comprehend. Jake's frustrations echo the present day, where the Mr. Mulwrays of the world remain untouched and we feel about as powerless.

Available on Hoopla, Tubi, and Kanopy.

4 'Night Of The Hunter'

Robert Mitchum's murderous preacher and his knuckle tats are just one part of this parable of good and evil, as two siblings flee his determination to uncover hidden cash at any cost.

Available on Fubo.

5 'Let The Right One In'

Tomatometer: 98%

A quieter film than many on this list, this story of a bullied young boy and his vampiric new friend creates tension from the hush of fallen snow.

Available on Hulu, Hoopla, Kanopy, and Shudder.

6 'The Third Man'

Writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) slowly learns his childhood friend Harry (Orson Wells) wasn't the pal he thought as Martins tries to solve the mystery of his death.

Available on the Criterion Channel and Flix Fling.

7 'The Vanishing' (1988)

A woman enters a highway rest stop. She never comes back.

The memory of her and his ideas of what might have happened torment her boyfriend Rex so badly that he refuses to give up searching... while we see the making of a man who likely had a lot to do with the disappearance.

Available on The Criterion Channel and Kanopy.

8 'Body Heat'

Sexy affairs, double-crosses, and murder plots simmer as a shady lawyer (William Hurt) plots with an unhappy wife (Kathleen Turner) to take the money and run.

Available on HBO Go.

9 'The Lady Vanishes' (1938)

When her travel companion goes missing, a young woman makes inquiries, only to be told by everyone there was no woman. The film unfolds as a screwball comedy/murder mystery as she teams up with her fellow passenger to figure out what happened.

Available on The Criterion Channel.

10 'Maria Full Of Grace'

Tomatometer: 97%

A pregnant young woman (Catalina Sandino Moreno) risks life as a drug mule to get money for herself and her family in this tense tale.

11 'The Manchurian Candidate'

Tomatometer: 96%

Coming back from the Korean War, Captain Marcos (Frank Sinatra) is troubled by disturbing nightmares and a sense that something is wrong. Working with other members of his platoon, they start to unravel a sinister political plot.

Available on Amazon Prime.

12 'One False Move'

Three criminals hole up in a small Arizona town, unaware the town's sheriff (Bill Paxton) is on to them.

Available on Sony Crackle.

13 'In The Heat Of The Night'

Detective Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) deals with racism, secrecy, and lies while investigating a murder in a small Mississippi town.

14 'In The Line Of Fire'

Clint Eastwood plays a Secret Service Agent who's haunted by the fact that he failed to save John F. Kennedy from assassination (seriously) and taunted by calls from someone planning to kill the current president (seriously).

15 'To Catch A Thief'

A retired cat burglar (Cary Grant) sets out to clear his name after a series of copycat crimes put the heat on him and sour his budding romance with one of the victims (Grace Kelley).

16 'A Hijacking'

Somali pirates take over a Norwegian ship and haggle with the ship's owners on the mainland for hostages. The tension comes not just from seeing what takes place onboard, but in hearing others put literal value on human life.

Available on Kanopy and with ads on Youtube and Tubi.

17 'Burning'

Tomatometer: 94%

A chance encounter leads a young man (Steven Yeun) to reconnect with a woman from his town who loops him into catsitting. She returns with a handsome playboy who reveals a disturbing hobby.

Available on Netflix and Hoopla.

18 'Blood Simple'

The Coen Brothers' first feature is a grimy, Texan noir about a detective who turns the tables on the jealous husband and cheating wife he's asked to investigate.

Available on Max Go.

19 'Infernal Affairs'

An idealistic cop goes undercover with the Triad to root out corruption, but, at the same time, a new Triad member graduates from the police academy to become an internal mole.

Available on Hoopla.

20 'Icarus'

Initially a documentary about the effects of doping, director and human guinea pig Bryan Fogel accidentally uncovers a global scandal after getting advice from a Russian scientist.

Available on Netflix.

Camgirl Alice (Madeline Brewer) is determined to do whatever it takes to get and keep her top ranking, but when an identical imposter takes over her account and seems more popular, Alice needs to figure out what's happening.

22 'The Great Escape'

An unbreakable team led by Steve McQueen repeatedly escape from a Nazi POW camp — a dangerous gambit not only for their freedom, but to divert Nazi attention from fighting on the front lines.

Available on Amazon Prime, Roku, and Hoopla.

23 'Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol'

Tomatometer: 93%

Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is on the lam after he's accused of an act of terrorism in the fourth movie in the series. And once the "Ghost Protocol" is enacted, he's utterly on his own.

Available on FXNow and Fubo.

24 'The Lives Of Others'

Listening in to check the loyalty of a playwright, a Communist spy sympathizes and falls for the playwright's lover, an actress. When the spy's boss decides he likes the actress and wants the playwright out of the way, the spy's thrown into conflict.

25 'Insomnia'

Tomatometer: 92%

An experienced police detective (Al Pacino) heads up to a small Alaskan town to investigate the murder of a teen girl. The main suspect (Robin Williams) messes with his head under the midnight sun, to the point where sanity is questioned.

26 'Ex Machina'

An eccentric genius (Oscar Isaac) invites one of his company's coding lackeys (Domhnall Gleeson) to his remote mansion to examine his latest invention: an A.I. he claims is indistinguishable from human (Alicia Vikander). The employee agrees... and wants to help her escape.

Available on Netflix, Hoopla, and Kanopy.

27 'Sicario'

Emily Blunt plays an FBI agent recruited for a dangerous mission led by a shady Benicio del Toro. The plan is to use one cartel leader to flush out another as the team criss-crosses the Mexico-U.S. border.

28 'Children Of Men'

In a near future where infertility threatens the future of humanity, a depressed paper-pusher (Clive Owen) must help a pregnant woman (Clare-Hope Ashitey) escape the web of political corruption and mania to get to safety.

Available on Starz.

29 'Good Time'

A failed bank robber (Robert Pattinson) runs ragged across the city, desperate to get his brother safely out of prison.

A Hollywood stunt driver (Ryan Gosling) gets roped into a high-stakes heist job. When it goes awry, he tries to protect his neighbor and her husband from the heist's higher-up orchestrators.

Available on IMDB TV.

31 'Hotel Rwanda'

Tomatometer: 91%

When what would later be known as the Rwandan Genocide breaks out, with Hutu military slaughtering the ethnic Tutsi minority, Hutu hotel manager Paul (Don Cheadle) tries protecting his Tutsi wife. When the U.N. leaves him and the growing number of refugees high and dry, Paul must work on his own to save as many lives as he can.

Available on Hoopla and with ads on Pluto TV.

32 'No Way Out'

Navy Lieutenant Tom (Kevin Costner) has a steamy fling with a woman (Sean Young) who ends up dead. Tom's put in charge of her murder investigation, uncovering that his superior (Gene Hackman) also had an affair with her and that he too is a suspect.

33 'Minority Report'

In the near future, a "pre-crime" unit, led by Tom Cruise's Chief John Anderton, catches criminals before they act. When the psychic "pre-cogs" predict that he commits a heinous political murder, John goes on the run to prove his innocence.

34 'Green Room'

After a gig, a punk band witnesses heinous violence, only to become the target of racist skinheads who want to eliminate all evidence of their crime.

35 'A Simple Plan'

Tomatometer: 90%

When a local man (Bill Paxton), his dimwitted brother (Billy Bob Thorton), and their friend find a downed plane containing millions of dollars, the plan's simple (hence the title): split the money three ways. But almost immediately, things go awry in a way only the Coen Brothers could unfold.

Available on Amazon Prime and Kanopy and with ads on Tubi and Pluto TV.

36 'We Have Always Lived In The Castle'

Tomatometer: 89%

Based on the Shirley Jackson novel, sisters Merricat (Taissa Farmiga) and Constance (Alexandra Daddario) live happily in isolation with invalid uncle Julian (Crispin Glover). The local folk believe Constance poisoned the rest of their family and harass Merricat when she comes to town on errands. When a suspicious cousin (Sebastian Stan) shows up with designs on their fortune, their refuge is threatened.

37 'The Talented Mr. Ripley'

Tomatometer: 83%

Matt Damon stars as a chameleonic charmer who works his way into the life of wealthy gadabout Dickey (Jude Law) and will do anything to stay there.

38 'The Constant Gardener'

The social activist wife (Rachel Weisz) of a British diplomat (Ralph Feinnes) is found dead in the wild, but when he investigates further, he discovers some disturbing motivations.

39 'Oceans 11'

Tomatometer: 82%

This star-packed heist movie (featuring George Clooney, Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Bernie Mac, and many others) has a lifelong conman recruit others to pull off the biggest heist in history.

Available on Hulu.

Put together a marathon of some of these thrillers, and the edge of your seat might start to get overcrowded.

• Fantasy Movies
• Sci-Fi Movies

The 25 Best Time Travel Movies of All Time, Ranked

If you buy something using our links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks for your support!

Time travel movies have been done to death, and many time travel movies suck because they rehash the same old predictable tropes and cliches. But there's still a lot of potential left to be mined in the genre!

Despite the vast number of lackluster time travel movies, there have also been many notable films that came out in the past few decades—and that's on top of the sci-fi classics that still hold up.

At the end of the day, all movies are meant to deliver an entertaining experience for the viewer. With that in mind, here are what I consider to be the best time travel movies of all time.

Warning: I hate spoilers as much as anyone, so I've taken care to exclude spoilers from all movie descriptions in this article. However, knowing that a movie involves time travel could itself be a spoiler! Read on at your own risk.

25. Project Almanac (2015)

Directed by Dean Israelite

Starring Jonny Weston, Sofia Black-D'Elia, Virginia Gardner

Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi (1h 46m)

6.3 on IMDb — 38% on RT

Project Almanac is an underrated time travel movie that probably flew under your radar. Don't let the fact that it seems like a teen drama deter you from checking it out.

A group of high schoolers find something strange in an old home video, which spurs them to investigate—and uncover secrets plans for a time machine. They build it, of course, and that's when the trouble starts.

24. ARQ (2016)

Directed by Tony Elliott

Starring Robbie Amell, Rachael Taylor, Shaun Benson

Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller (1h 28m)

6.3 on IMDb — 43% on RT

A strange energy-providing device causes a couple to be stuck in a time loop while being forced to defend the device against a group intent on stealing it. The setup is strange, the ending is stranger.

This low-budget film is really nothing more than a popcorn flick, but it's a fun ride as long as you don't think too deeply about it. Compared to other thought experiment-type time travel movies, this one's pretty good.

23. Click (2006)

Directed by Frank Coraci

Starring Adam Sandler, Kate Beckinsale, Christopher Walken

Comedy, Drama, Fantasy (1h 47m)

6.4 on IMDb — 34% on RT

Using a magical universal remote, a workaholic finds himself able to skip ahead or rewind back to various points in his life. During those skipped times, his body continues to live on autopilot.

Don't be turned away by the fact that this is an Adam Sandler movie. In one of his best performances ever, Sandler effectively carries this funny-but-heart-wrenching story on his back.

22. Time Lapse (2014)

Directed by Bradley King

Starring Danielle Panabaker, Matt O'Leary, George Finn

Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi (1h 44m)

6.5 on IMDb — 74% on RT

When three friends discover a machine that can take photos 24 hours in the future, things take a dark turn as each photo reveals more than they could've anticipated.

Smart writing makes up for the mediocre performances in Time Lapse . If you go into this indie film without much in the way of expectations, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

21. The Endless (2017)

Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead

Starring Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson, Callie Hernandez

Drama, Fantasy, Horror (1h 51m)

6.5 on IMDb — 92% on RT

Sci-fi horror done well tends to be pretty rare, but The Endless is a shining example of when it goes right.

The film centers on two brothers who used to belong to an alleged UFO death cult when they were young. Years later, after they'd escaped, they both have different memories of what the cult was like—so they agree to return for one day to set the record straight.

What they find is that the supposed UFO death cult is nothing like how either of them imagined, and they end up embroiled in all kinds of mysterious happenings, including a time loop.

20. The Adam Project (2022)

Directed by Shawn Levy

Starring Ryan Reynolds, Walker Scobell, Mark Ruffalo

Action, Adventure, Comedy (1h 46m)

6.7 on IMDb — 67% on RT

The Adam Project stars Ryan Reynolds as Adam Reed, a man from the future who goes back in time to save his wife. He's injured and takes refuge in his childhood home, but is accidentally discovered by his younger self. They work together to complete Adam's mission of saving his wife.

It's a simple story with Ryan Reynolds basically playing Ryan Reynolds—which is great, if you're into that—but what sets The Adam Project apart is the deeply moving emotional threads that undergird the characters and weave together into a surprisingly cathartic climax.

19. Primer (2004)

Directed by Shane Carruth

Starring Shane Carruth, David Sullivan, Casey Gooden

Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller (1h 17m)

6.8 on IMDb — 73% on RT

Four entrepreneurs accidentally invent a time travel machine, which ends up ruining their lives when they decide to give it a spin. Primer is the quintessential time travel film and a must-see movie for time travel fans who love poring over the tiniest details.

It's short (only 77-minute runtime) but insanely dense—the kind of movie you have to watch multiple times to really understand what actually happened, and even then you may not fully get it.

18. Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

Directed by Colin Trevorrow

Starring Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass, Jake Johnson

Adventure, Comedy, Drama (1h 26m)

6.9 on IMDb — 91% on RT

Safety Not Guaranteed is a comedy romance film centering on three magazine staffers who go out to interview a strange man who's looking for a partner for his upcoming time travel mission. They think it's all a joke, but the truth slowly shows itself to be something more.

While the actual act of time traveling doesn't play a huge role, Safety Not Guaranteed is a must-watch for anyone who's looking for a heartfelt drama that's well-written and infused with depth by a solid cast.

17. Triangle (2009)

Directed by Christopher Smith

Starring Melissa George, Joshua McIvor, Jack Taylor

Fantasy, Mystery, Sci-Fi (1h 39m)

6.9 on IMDb — 80% on RT

In the wake of a yachting accident, a group of friends are rescued by what appears to be a mysteriously empty cruise ship. As they further explore the ship's interior, they encounter horrors unknown.

Again, well-done science fiction horror films are hard to come by, and Triangle stands out for its premise and execution, particularly in how time travel is revealed and incorporated. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but it's certainly interesting and memorable.

16. The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

Directed by Robert Schwentke

Starring Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams, Ron Livingston

7.1 on IMDb — 39% on RT

In The Time Traveler's Wife , Henry is a man who has a genetic anomaly that causes him to time travel. The thing is, he can't control when or where he travels to, and thus struggles to keep his marriage alive.

Based on the novel by the same name, The Time Traveler's Wife may not be able to capture the full magic that made the book so great—there's just too much content to fit into one movie—but it's still a stirring romantic drama with several twists and moving moments.

15. Timecrimes (2007)

Directed by Nacho Vigalondo

Starring Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernández, Bárbara Goenaga

Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi (1h 32m)

7.1 on IMDb — 90% on RT

In the Spanish-language Timecrimes , an average man accidentally travels back in time one hour, unleashing a series of disastrous events. That's all you really want to know about this film before diving in.

More to the tune of mystery than action, Timecrimes is a flawless example of a "What actually happened?" narrative that asks you to puzzle things together as events unfold before you. The twists are plentiful here.

14. Palm Springs (2020)

Directed by Max Barbakow

Starring Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, J. K. Simmons

Comedy, Fantasy, Mystery (1h 30m)

7.4 on IMDb — 94% on RT

Palm Springs takes place at a wedding in Palm Springs, California. Two guests inadvertently get stuck in a time loop, reliving the same exact wedding day over and over, and try to find a way to escape.

The premise may not seem like anything special, but the performances by Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti elevate this film to new heights. Infused with comedy, drama, and romance, Palm Springs makes full use of its time loop situation to tell an impactful story.

13. Predestination (2014)

Directed by Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig

Starring Ethan Hawke, Sarah Snook, Noah Taylor

Action, Drama, Sci-Fi (1h 37m)

7.4 on IMDb — 84% on RT

A time-traveling agent's final assignment is to track down the one criminal who he's never been able to capture. But the further down the rabbit hole he goes, the more mind-bending the truths become.

Predestination isn't just a time travel film. What sets this film apart from most sci-fi movies is how deftly it handles its deeper themes, how deep it's willing to go with its characters, and how expertly the narrative unfolds. It's truly one of the most complex time travel movies ever made.

12. The Butterfly Effect (2004)

Directed by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber

Starring Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Melora Walters

Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller (1h 53m)

7.6 on IMDb — 34% on RT

A man discovers he has the ability to change the present by traveling back into the mind of his younger self, but around every corner await unintended consequences.

You've heard of "the butterfly effect" before, and The Butterfly Effect effectively takes that concept and turns it into a dark thriller. Ashton Kutcher stars in this film against type and delivers a surprisingly great performance in this gripping film about regret and control.

11. About Time (2013)

Directed by Richard Curtis

Starring Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy

Comedy, Drama, Fantasy (2h 3m)

7.8 on IMDb — 70% on RT

A man who can travel through time decides to use his power to woo the girl of his dreams, but things aren't as easy as they seem—and the limits of his power cause him to make a tough and important decision.

With Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams taking the lead, About Time ends up being a romantic comedy that's far better than it has any right to be, complete with a superbly moving ending that's completely earned.

10. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

Directed by Alfonso Cuarón

Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint

Adventure, Family, Fantasy (2h 22m)

7.9 on IMDb — 90% on RT

It's Harry Potter's third year at Hogwarts and this time Lord Voldemort isn't his main concern. Instead, Sirius Black—the one who was suspected as betraying his parents—has escaped from Azkaban Prison and rumor has it that he's coming to finish Harry off.

Often praised as the best film in the Harry Potter franchise—thanks to impeccable direction by Alfonso Cuaron— The Prisoner of Azkaban isn't just a standout for its time travel subplot but also for its cohesive narrative that combines numerous themes with stellar cinematography.

9. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Directed by Doug Liman

Starring Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton

Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi (1h 53m)

7.9 on IMDb — 91% on RT

In the face of an alien invasion, a soldier somehow ends up reliving the same day over and over every time he dies. He must somehow use this to his advantage and defeat the invading aliens while also finding a way to escape the endless loop in which he's trapped.

As far as time loop movies go, Edge of Tomorrow is one of the better executed ones. Not only is the tight story well-paced, but stars Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt put in excellent performances that carry the narrative forward from start to finish.

8. The Man From Earth (2007)

Directed by Richard Schenkman

Starring David Lee Smith, Tony Todd, John Billingsley

Drama, Fantasy, Mystery (1h 27m)

7.8 on IMDb — 100% on RT

During a retirement party, an aging professor reveals that he's been alive longer than his colleagues can imagine.

The Man From Earth is best described as a "play caught on camera," delivering an engaging mystery that's built on the foundation of an interesting thought experiment.

Not many dialogue-only films are this riveting, which is why you should definitely give this one a watch.

7. Arrival (2016)

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker

Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi (1h 56m)

7.9 on IMDb — 94% on RT

When aliens arrive on Earth, a linguist is brought to the frontlines to decipher their language and establish communications.

Easily one of the most cerebral science fiction movies ever made, Arrival takes things to the next level by exploring deep themes and ideas that few other films have dared to touch. You won't ever forget this one.

6. 12 Monkeys (1995)

Directed by Terry Gilliam

Starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt

Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller (2h 9m)

8.0 on IMDb — 88% on RT

In the year 2035, a convict is sent back in time to 1996 with one mission: to investigate the cause of a man-made virus that decimated the world. But his mission is sidetracked when he's sent back to the wrong time period and ends up in a mental hospital.

Featuring one of Bruce Willis's best performances, 12 Monkeys starts off slow but ends with a bang. There's a lot to love about this mind-bending movie if you can get through the slow but necessary setup.

5. Donnie Darko (2001)

Directed by Richard Kelly

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell

Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi (1h 53m)

8.0 on IMDb — 87% on RT

A high schooler begins to see visions of a man in a deranged bunny suit who warns him that the world is going to end in a few days—and convinces him to commit all sorts of crimes and unsavory deeds to prevent the oncoming apocalypse.

Donnie Darko is a strange film with time travel elements that aren't as overt as in other time travel films. But if you're itching for a uniquely surreal film experience, it doesn't get much weirder than Donnie Darko .

4. Groundhog Day (1993)

Directed by Harold Ramis

Starring Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott

Comedy, Drama, Fantasy (1h 41m)

8.0 on IMDb — 94% on RT

An insufferable weatherman finds himself caught in a time loop, reliving the same mundane day over and over again with seemingly no way out of it—and after thousands of repeats, it starts to take its toll on him.

Groundhog Day is a hilarious comedy that's also surprisingly deep if you're willing to unpack it, acting as a lesson in what really brings about happiness and self-improvement. If you're a fan of Bill Murray and haven't seen this yet, what have you been waiting for?!

3. Your Name (2016)

Directed by Makoto Shinkai

Starring Michael Sinterniklaas, Stephanie Sheh, Kyle Hebert

Animation, Drama, Fantasy (1h 46m)

8.4 on IMDb — 98% on RT

One day, a high school boy in Tokyo and a high school girl in the countryside start swapping bodies, seemingly at random but only when they go to sleep. But then the swapping stops. The boy is compelled to find the girl, but investigating leads to a heartbreaking answer.

Your Name isn't just one of the best animated movies of all time, nor simply one of the best Japanese movies of all time, but one of the best, period. It's incredibly heartfelt with a climax that'll hit you in the gut.

2. Back to the Future (1985)

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Starring Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson

Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi (1h 56m)

8.5 on IMDb — 93% on RT

A teenage boy from 1985 accidentally goes back in time thirty years with his mad scientist friend. Not only does he need to find a way home, but he accidentally puts his own existence in danger and must make sure his future parents end up falling in love.

Back to the Future is a classic time travel movie and you owe it to yourself to make it the next movie you watch if you've never seen it. Look past the 1980s cheesiness and you'll see an engaging story beneath it all.

1. Interstellar (2014)

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain

Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi (2h 49m)

8.7 on IMDb — 73% on RT

With Earth on the brink of extinction, a team of astronauts must travel through a wormhole to find a new planet for humans to colonize. But journeying through outer space comes with all kinds of complications, and finding a habitable planet isn't going to be so easy.

For all its flaws, Interstellar packs a thrilling story on top of dazzling visuals and one of the most moving soundtracks of any film, period. This is the kind of film that'll have you thinking long after the credits roll, and for many reasons beyond just time travel.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories

38 best thriller movies that will keep you on the edge of your seat

You’ll be guessing ’til the end…

The best thriller movies are best served up under the covers with a glass of wine in hand. I mean, what better way to spend your nights piecing together the puzzle of a nail-biting movie, all while feeling all the feels of suspense, surprise, anticipation and excitement?

Luckily for us, thriller films fall under plenty of subgenres. Whether it’s a tense whodunnit, a psychological mind-bender or even a dark comedy , there’s plenty of viewing material out there that can keep us entertained and terrified for hours.

From absolute classics such as the Natalie Portman-starring Black Swan , Gwyneth Paltrow’s movie Se7en and Harrison Ford’s 1993 flick The Fugitive to recent favourites such as Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick’s A Simple Favour and the critically acclaimed movie Promising Young Woman , we are spoilt for choice when it comes to thrillers. There are also recent releases, such as Love Lies Bleeding —starring Kristen Stewart— Mothers’ Instinct and Dev Patel’s directorial debut Monkey Man .

Let us help you decide on the best thriller movies to watch to make the most of your evenings…

All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Love Lies Bleeding

Starring Kristen Stewart and Katy O'Brian, this bonkers movie follows a queer couple who fall in love, but are pulled under by Lou (Stewart)'s criminal family, and Jackie's obsession with becoming a professional bodybuilder.

Skins and Lion star Dev Patel absolutely smashes it as director and star of this amazing movie. He plays Kid, whose childhood trauma bubbles to the surface as he makes a living in an underground fight club. He swears to take revenge on the man who took everything from him by infiltrating a city's sinister elite.

Mothers' Instinct

This star-studded movie follows Alice (Jessica Chastain) and Celine (Anne Hathaway), two 1960s housewives who are best friends. But their bond is threatened when an unthinkable tragedy occurs, causing them to question absolutely everything about their lives, including their friendship and what they know about each other. Seriously tense stuff.

Fair Play (2023)

Bridgerton 's Phoebe Dynevor brings down the house in this thriller/drama centred around the misogynistic norms in corporate culture and how they infiltrate women's lives and their romantic relationships. It follows the story of Emily (Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) who keep their relationship under wraps when they're at work as financial analysts. But dynamics get intense when Emily is promoted over Luke, exposing patriarchal values in places you never want to find them – in the heart of someone you love.

TW: sexual assault and violence.

The Wonde r (2022)

Florence Pugh leads the cast of this eerie period drama, based on Emma Donoghue's novel of the same name, which is set in Ireland just after the Great Famine, where a girl has been gaining notoriety for surviving without food for months. An English nurse (Pugh) visits the remote village where the girl resides to investigate if all is as it seems.

Black Swan (2010)

It's the movie that earned Natalie Portman a much-deserved Oscar for Best Actress, so you know Black Swan is one to watch. The movie centres on ballerina Nina, who is the first choice to replace her dance company's prima ballerina for the opening production of Swan Lake. However, Nina is soon met with stiff competition for the role of newcomer Lily, and the rivalry between the two dancers takes shape in a series of twisted twists and turns.

Gone Girl (2014)

Based on the bestselling book of the same name, Gone Girl stars Ben Affleck as New York-based writer Nick Dunne and his glamorous wife Amy, who appear to be the picture-perfect couple when they move to Missouri. However, when Amy suddenly goes missing, Nick becomes the prime suspect. With the relentless police interrogation and the media circus, his seemingly perfect life appears to crumble and begs the question of who Nick and Amy truly are.

A Simple Favour (2018)

Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively were the duo we never knew we needed until we saw them in A Simple Favor . There's no room for girls' getaways and fun BFF nights out in the movie, which follows recently widowed, single mother Stephanie as she makes a glamorous new friend Emily, who appears to have it all. However, when she soon mysteriously disappears, Stephanie must race against time to find her, and that involves digging into her friend's past, which comes with shocking surprises along the way.

Advanced search

• COLLABORATIONS

Enter full date

or just enter yyyy, or yyyy-mm below

1. Twisters

2. Borderlands

3. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

4. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

6. Kingsman: The Secret Service

8. Bad Boys: Ride or Die

9. Civil War

10. Love Lies Bleeding

11. Kingsman: The Golden Circle

12. Mad Max: Fury Road

13. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

14. Madame Web

15. Kalki 2898 AD

16. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

17. X-Men: Days of Future Past

18. Inception

19. The King's Man

20. Venom: The Last Dance

21. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

23. Jurassic Park

24. War for the Planet of the Apes

25. The Hunger Games

Recently viewed.

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes

The 24 best thriller movies on Netflix right now

Time for some Netflix and thrills: Check out these 24 must-watch movies from the platform’s deep catalog of spine-tingling flicks.

Ilana Gordon is an entertainment, culture, and comedy writer originally from Connecticut. She currently lives in Los Angeles.

It's hot outside, so let's cool it down with some thrills and chills. Scary movies aren't just reserved for Halloween, and the films on this list feature some of the best actors of this generation and beyond. With scripts based on real stories and inventive flights of fancy, Netflix 's deep catalog of thrillers includes the works of filmmakers who helped jumpstart the genre, those who advanced it, and those whose work serves as a pastiche to those who paved the way. With so many compelling titles and gripping narratives available to stream, the hardest part is selecting the right film for your mood — but what a thrill when you get it right.

American Psycho (2000)

Meet the carefully curated facade of Patrick Bateman — a man who not only slays a morning skincare routine but also, well, slays. Adapted from Bret Easton Ellis' controversial 1991 novel, American Psycho follows Bateman as he leads a double life, hobnobbing with his narcissistic co-workers as a slick N.Y.C. investment banker while moonlighting as a serial killer.

This satirical horror brilliantly dissects the soulless '80s capitalist culture, where materialism reigns supreme and vanity is a virtue, while Christian Bale conjures a monumental character study with his mordant and monstrous Bateman. EW's critic writes , "Funny, pungent, and weirdly gripping, American Psycho is a satire that feels like a hallucination" draped in a "tone of rambunctious, light-fingered malevolence." —James Mercadante Where to watch American Psycho : Netflix EW grade: N/A ( read the review ) Director: Mary Harron Cast: Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe , Jared Leto , Josh Lucas , Chloë Sevigny, Samantha Mathis , Cara Seymour, Justin Theroux , Reese Witherspoon

Anon (2018)

Privacy and anonymity are luxuries afforded to no one in the 2018 British-American sci-fi thriller  Anon .  Clive Owen  stars as Det. Sal Frieland, a troubled cop operating in a dystopia where the entire populace is implanted with an ocular device intended to record and track the movements of the people around them. The government's transparency methods ensure that all criminal activity is caught on tape — but when a mysterious woman with no digital footprint ( Amanda Seyfried ) crosses paths with Sal, he realizes she might have a connection with a series of unsolved murders he's investigating.

Director  Andrew Niccol tells EW , "I always wanted to do a movie about privacy and the fact that there was never a war for privacy because we already lost — we gave away our privacy without a fight, all for convenience." — Ilana Gordon

Where to watch  Anon : Netflix

EW grade:  B– ( read the review )

Director:  Andrew Niccol

Cast:  Clive Owen, Amanda Seyfried,  Colm Feore , Mark O'Brien

A Simple Favor (2018)

Peter Lovino/Lionsgate/Everett Collection

There’s nothing simple about the plot to A Simple Favor , a thriller about a mommy blogger’s ( Anna Kendrick ) quest to find her friend Emily ( Blake Lively ) who disappears under mysterious circumstances. A romantic thriller with a fair amount of dark comedy thrown in courtesy of director Paul Feig , A Simple Favor benefits from excellent performances, Hitchcockian vibes, and a duplicitous tension that carries the audience through the film’s many zig and zags — even the ones that fail to pay off.

As EW’s critic writes , the movie is “full of panache, from its sexy French score to its glistening gin martinis, and it weaponizes style, using it to keep audiences off balance as the mystery unfolds.” Enjoy A Simple Favor , and keep an eye out for the sequel, which was greenlit in March of 2024 . — I.G.

Where to watch A Simple Favor : Netflix

EW grade: B+ ( read the review )

Director: Paul Feig

Cast: Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, Henry Golding , Andrew Rannells , Linda Cardellini , Rupert Friend , Jean Smart

Bird Box (2018)

Sight becomes a handicap in Bird Box , a post-apocalyptic thriller where the enemy must go unseen, or else. Sandra Bullock stars as Malorie Hayes, a woman responsible for transporting two young children down a river while wearing blindfolds, a strategy intended to help the survivors avoid seeing the entities that attacked Earth five years earlier, and who cause those who look upon them to commit suicide.

Jumping between their present journey and the past events that led Malorie and the children to this point, director Susanne Bier leans into the tension of the unknown and relies on her talented but eclectic cast to do the rest. Released the same year as A Quiet Place , and possessing a somewhat similar premise, Bird Box received less attention when it first premiered, but this sci-fi horror film is a great option for fans of both genres. — I.G.

Where to watch Bird Box : Netflix

EW grade: B ( read the review )

Director: Susanne Bier

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes , John Malkovich , Danielle Macdonald , Sarah Paulson

Captain Phillips (2013)

Columbia Pictures

Inspired by the Maersk Alabama hijacking incident in 2009 where four Somali pirates seized a U.S. cargo ship sailing through the Indian Ocean, Captain Phillips features the expected tour de force performance from Tom Hanks , while also debuting an astonishing new face, and staying true to the story on which the film is based. Hanks takes on the role of Capt. Richard Phillips, a man who squares off with pirates armed only with his thick Massachusetts accent. Meanwhile newcomer Barkhad Abdi, who plays the desperate pirate leading the raid on Phillips' ship, balances violence with vulnerability in an Oscar-nominated turn.

The kind of film where you find yourself rooting for the heroes while still empathizing with the villains, Captain Phillips ' performances and script are tough enough to navigate the most dangerous waters. —I.G. Where to watch Captain Phillips : Netflix EW grade: B+ ( read the review ) Director: Paul Greengrass Cast: Tom Hanks, Catherine Keener , Barkhad Abdi

The Devil All the Time (2020)

A Netflix original and period thriller, The Devil All the Time explores several interconnected groups of people living in two small towns in Southern Ohio between the end of World War II and the mid-1960s. Linked by religious evangelism, war, corruption, suicide, abandonment, and serial murder, the cast — which includes a host of young Hollywood heavy hitters — makes the most of the story's melodrama and dark subject matter.

Based on the 2011 novel and directed by Antonio Campos ( The Staircase ), The Devil All the Time takes the "all the time" portion of the film's title literally: the sins are multitudinous and the depths of human depravity on full display. Still, EW's critic writes that Campos' biggest accomplishment as the film's director is "toeing a tricky line between art-house atmosphere and Southern Gothic soap opera, and somehow still managing to land on the grim side of fascinating." —I.G.

Where to watch The Devil All the Time : Netflix

Director: Antonio Campos

Cast: Tom Holland , Robert Pattinson , Sebastian Stan , Riley Keough , Eliza Scanlen, Haley Bennett , Bill Skarsgård , Mia Wasikowska , Jason Clarke

El Camino (2019)

The best meth cook in Albuquerque is back, bitch. Breaking Bad ' s Walter White ( Bryan Cranston ) and Jesse Pinkman ( Aaron Paul ) return for El Camino , a film based on AMC 's beloved show, with far more attention paid to Pinkman's character. Freewheeling through time and flashing back to events depicted in the series, El Camino picks up right where Breaking Bad left off, and includes a host of cameos from the show's five-season run.

Jane, Skinny Pete, and Badger are all back in one form or another, but it's Nazi Todd ( Jesse Plemons ) who informs most of the film's plot. Breaking Bad fans will be gratified to see Jesse Pinkman finally get the time to mentally process the last couple years of his life — even if Paul looks markedly older than he did when the show wrapped in 2013. — I.G.

Where to watch El Camino : Netflix

Director: Vince Gilligan

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Jesse Plemons, Jonathan Banks , Matt Jones

Emily the Criminal (2022)

Drowning in debt and student loans, Emily is one of Los Angeles' many broke artists on the verge of financial ruin. With a former felony conviction preventing her from finding a job that might pay enough to survive, Emily finds purpose — and quick cash — by getting involved with a credit card fraud ring. What starts as a survival tactic soon balloons into much more, as Emily distances herself from the corporate world she can never quite crack and leans into the world of criminality.

Aubrey Plaza is in her element here, her blunt practicality and signature deadpan delivery serving as the perfect stand-in for an audience whose dreams of hitting milestones like home ownership and retirement have been deadened by current economic realities. —I.G.

Where to watch Emily the Criminal : Netflix

Director: John Patton Ford

Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi , Bernardo Badillo, John Billingsley

Fair Play (2023)

For newly engaged couple Luke ( Alden Ehrenreich ) and Emily ( Phoebe Dynevor ), their sizzling, can't-keep-their-hands-off-each-other love must remain discreet within their workplace. However, when Emily secures a managerial position at their dog-eat-dog hedge fund, the power shift within the bullpen begins to splinter their romantic bliss.

Praising its "lean, crackling script," EW's critic observes how Fair Play 's final act is "so freighted with increasingly unhinged possibilities" yet "both leads hang on, throwing themselves headlong into the tar pits of contemporary workplace politics and gender roles without being drawn into clumsy, one-dimensional ideas of victimhood or villainy." — J.M.

Where to watch Fair Play : Netflix

Director: Chloe Domont

Cast: Phoebe Dynevor, Alden Ehrenreich, Eddie Marsan , Rich Sommer

The Gift (2015)

Not to be confused with Sam Raimi 's 2000 fortune teller movie, Joel Edgerton 's directorial debut (which he also wrote and starred in) starts out like a typical stalker thriller. Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall play Simon and Robyn, a married couple who move from Chicago to California, where they run into Simon's old high school classmate Gordo (Edgerton). Gordo soon becomes clingy, with frequent unexpected drop-ins, and floods the couple with a series of unsettling gifts. When Simon tries to cut the relationship off, the trouble starts in earnest.

As EW's critic colorfully describes , The Gift "effectively sees what other films in the genre do for their scares, shakes its head, and says, 'No, no, no. I'll show you messed up.'" But The Gift transcends the usual stalker movie tropes because it's not content to stack all the blame on the obvious heavy. Instead, it expands on the concepts of villain and victim, exploring how difficult it is sometimes to keep the past in the past. —I.G.

Where to watch The Gift : Netflix

EW grade: N/A ( read the review )

Director: Joel Edgerton

Cast: Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall, Joel Edgerton, Tim Griffin, Allison Tolman , Katie Aselton , Wendell Pierce , Beau Knapp, Adam Lazarre-White, David Denman, P.J. Byrne, Busy Philipps

The Good Nurse (2022)

Nurses are angels with the power to do the work of demons. In the Netflix original psychological thriller The Good Nurse , Amy Loughren ( Jessica Chastain ) is a night nurse with a work husband: Charles Cullen ( Eddie Redmayne ). A single mom with a serious heart condition, Amy is shocked to learn that the recent death of one of their hospital's patients is thought to have occurred intentionally, and that Charles might be involved. And the more Amy digs, the more she realizes the co-worker she trusts is actually someone far more nefarious.

Based on the true story of how the real-life Amy Loughren helped authorities take down serial killer Charles Cullen, The Good Nurse is good old-fashioned, ripped-from-the-headlines cinema with a story made all the more terrifying because so little of it is exaggerated. Trust us — you've never seen Eddie Redmayne like this before. —I.G.

Where to watch The Good Nurse : Netflix

Director: Tobias Lindholm

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Eddie Redmayne

I Care A Lot (2021)

Seacia Pavao/Netflix

Rosamund Pike builds on her Gone Girl villainess status to portray Marla Grayson, a con artist who fronts as a professional "legal guardian" to fleece the elderly of their life savings. But Marla takes it a step too far when she meets Jennifer Peterson ( Dianne Wiest ), who seems infirm at first but actually has ties to important, dangerous people (like Peter Dinklage ) who Marla would do well to stay clear of. Pike's duplicitous performance is a blast to witness, but seeing Marla meet her match is just as gratifying. As EW's writes in their review , "There's good fun in I Care a Lot' s setup, and in Marla's ruthless M.O." — Gwen Ihnat

Where to watch I Care a Lot : Netflix

Director: J Blakeson

Cast: Rosamund Pike, Dianne Wiest, Peter Dinklage, Eiza González, Chris Messina , Isiah Whitlock Jr.

I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore (2017)

After Yellowjackets , Togetherness , and Mrs. America , we'd straight-up watch Melanie Lynskey in anything, but even we missed Macon Blair's 2017 sleeper. Lynskey plays Ruth, a down-on-her-luck nursing assistant who decides after her house gets broken into that she's fed up. She hooks up with her odd neighbor Tony ( Elijah Wood ) to go out on a quest to get her stuff back, leading to a quirky journey that's both suspenseful and inspiring for the downtrodden.

Second only to Lynskey in luminescence in this movie is Wood, whose Tony named his dog Kevin and specializes in nunchucks and ninja stars. And Jane Levy is unrecognizable as one of the unsavory thieves. As EW ' s critic points out , the film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival for its reconfiguration of "the buddy-cop film — at one point, Ruth even flashes a toy police badge." — G.I.

Where to watch I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore : Netflix

Director: Macon Blair

Cast: Melanie Lynskey, Elijah Wood, Jane Levy

The Little Things (2021)

The Little Things spent more than 25 years in development hell before finally making its way into production in 2019. And while the film may have cycled through several different directors in its early years (including Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood ), the story never deviated from the ‘90s time period during which it was written and set.

Genre lovers who value conclusive endings and mysteries tied up in neat little bows may find themselves disappointed by The Little Things ’ climax — or lack thereof. But thriller fans who can appreciate obsessive detectives, a slow burn plot, and a trio of strong actors — Denzel Washington , Rami Malek , Jared Leto —  who know how to bounce off each other and play up the story’s intensity, will find much to enjoy in this suspenseful thriller. —I.G.    

Where to watch The Little Things : Netflix

Director: John Lee Hancock

Cast: Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Jared Leto, Natalie Morales

Liane Hentscher/Netflix

Allison Janney knows how to deliver a line, and thanks to stunt training for her new Netflix film, Lou , she also knows how to deliver a punch. Janney stars as the film's titular character, a misandrist landlord who rents a home to a single mother named Hannah ( Jurnee Smollett ) and her young daughter, Vee. After Vee is kidnapped, Lou agrees to help Hannah bring her back, but saving Vee's future will require Lou to confront her own messy past.

Director Anna Foerster asked a lot of her cast during production, as evidenced by the fact that both Smollett and Janney spend much of the film covered in mud. ( Smollett tells EW , "The mud is a character in itself!") As for Janney, she hopes this role will showcase her rarely-seen physical abilities — and maybe land her a role in the next John Wick movie. —I.G.

Where to watch Lou : Netflix

Director: Anna Foerster

Cast: Allison Janney, Jurnee Smollett, Logan Marshall-Green

Missing (2023)

One might have suspected that the novelty of "screenlife" thrillers had run its course after Searching (2018), but Will Merrick and Nick Johnson exalted the genre with its standalone sequel, Missing : a story about a teenager ( Storm Reid ) investigating her mother's ( Nia Long ) disappearance in Colombia via all her digital resources. While the film's logic sometimes flirts with absurdity, the infinite pathways of the internet prove to be an imaginative tool for peeling back the mystery's myriad layers.

Glowing with a sharp and witty portrayal of 2023's techno-centric culture, Missing grounds itself with a heartfelt journey of repairing a strained mother-daughter relationship. (And when the credits roll, you might want to reconsider using the same password for everything!) —J.M. 

Where to watch Missing : Netflix

Directors: Will Merrick, Nick Johnson

Cast: Storm Reid, Joaquim de Almeida, Ken Leung , Amy Landecker, Daniel Henney, Nia Long

Natural Born Killers (1994)

"Oliver Stone's vision has changed the way we saw our past. Now he takes a look at where we are and where we’re going.” So begins the official trailer for Natural Born Killers , Oliver Stone ’s 11th — and arguably most evocative — movie. Starring Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as Mickey and Mallory Knox, feral lovers with a fetish for murder, Killers follows as the couple’s homicidal rampage is broadcast nationally, transforming the Knoxes into overnight celebrities.

Offered up by Stone as a satirical jab at a culture overstimulated by media and underwhelmed by empathy, Killers remains one of the most polarizing films around. If you can stomach the gore, Natural Born Killers is worth a watch, if only to see Stone’s masterful filmmaking at work. —I.G. Where to watch Natural Born Killers : Netflix EW grade: A ( read the review ) Director: Oliver Stone   Cast: Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr. , Tommy Lee Jones , Tom Sizemore  

The Novice (2021)

IFC Films/Courtesy Everett Collection

The obsession with perfection crosses the line from competitive to dangerous in Lauren Hadaway’s directorial debut, The Novice. Orphan ’s Isabelle Fuhrman stars as a compulsive college student who is determined to make her school’s varsity rowing team at all costs. Fuhrman gives a virtuoso performance as Alex, a queer first-year student whose addiction to being the best torpedoes her mental and physical health, her academic performance, and her social and romantic life.

Anyone who has ever met a self-destructive, Type A teenager will recognize the anxious thrill that comes with watching someone who can’t relax work themselves into a terrifying state, and The Novice transforms that feeling into a thriller with aplomb. —I.G.

Where to watch The Novice : Netflix

Director: Lauren Hadaway

Cast: Isabelle Fuhrman, Amy Forsyth, Dilone, Charlotte Ubben, Jonathan Cherry, Kate Drummond

Oldboy (2003)

Mary Evans/Egg Films/Show East/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection

South Korea’s Oldboy — not to be confused with the American version directed by Spike Lee — is considered one of the greatest films ever made, and since its release more than two decades ago, the movie’s fight sequences have challenged action directors and stunt coordinators to up their game. Oh Dae-su ( Choi Min-sik ) is a businessman who has spent 15 years in captivity with no idea of who his kidnapper is or what they want with him. After his release, he wants vengeance — but he only has five days to hunt down his captor.

Beloved for its memorable plot twist, hallway fight scene, and terrifying use of a living octopus, the film is beyond memorable. At the time of its release in 2003, EW’s critic writes, “ Oldboy caused a love-it-or-hate-it stir at Cannes last year, and how could it not: It’s an onslaught made to cause a sensation.” —I.G.  

Where to watch Oldboy : Netflix

Director: Park Chan-wook

Cast: Choi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jung

Oxygen (2021)

A nightmare come to life for claustrophobics everywhere, Oxygen is a French language sci-fi film that thinks outside the box in terms of action. At the genesis, an unidentified woman ( Mélanie Laurent ) awakens in an airtight medical unit, unsure of who or where she is. Interactions with the system's AI — dubbed M.I.L.O. (Medical Interface Liaison Officer) — provide some clarity as to her identity, but no matter what she tries, she cannot escape her prison.

As she seeks to understand who placed her in the box and why, truths about her personal life and the current state of the world come into focus — but her search for context is actually a race to outwit the slowly depleting oxygen levels. Laurent is excellent, and despite being forced to perform on her back, she manages to imbue the film with a strong sense of determination and humanity. —I.G.

Where to watch Oxygen : Netflix

Director: Alexandre Aja

Cast: Mélanie Laurent, Mathieu Amalric , Malik Zidi

Society of the Snow (2023)

In 1972, the Andes Mountains became a crucible of survival when a Uruguayan flight crashed en route to Santiago, Chile. Sixteen remaining passengers found themselves stranded in one of Mother Nature's most life-threatening terrains, pushing them to take ineffable means to find their way back. While Hollywood attempted to soften this tragedy with a more glossy depiction in Alive (1993), Society of the Snow delivers a far more raw and emotive experience — enriched by the director's conversations with the real-life survivors — that sinks viewers into the gut-wrenching terror of the situation without being overly insensitive.

"A story that is based on humanism," J.A. Bayona (the director who also helmed another intense disaster film, 2012's The Impossible ) describes the story as "more about emotional survival. It's not only physical survival. It's to understand that there's something bigger than yourself." —J.M.

Where to watch Society of the Snow : Netflix

Director: J.A. Bayona

Cast: Enzo Vogrincic, Matías Recalt, Agustín Pardella, Felipe González Otaño, Luciano Chatton, Valentino Alonso, Francisco Romero, Agustín Berruti, Andy Pruss, Simón Hempe, Juan Caruso, Esteban Bigliardi, Rocco Posca, Esteban Kukuriczka, Rafael Federman, Manuela Olivera, Agustín Della Corte, Tomas Wolf

They Cloned Tyrone (2023)

Parrish Lewis/Netflix

A single genre isn't enough to contain one of Netflix's 2023 releases,  They Cloned Tyrone .  A sci-fi comedy that combines '70s Blaxploitation with mystery and social satire, the film has similar vibes to movies like  Get Out  (2017) or  Sorry to Bother You  (2018) while employing a far more absurd premise. Fontaine ( John Boyega ) is a drug dealer living in an impoverished area called the Glen. While trying to collect funds owed to him by a local pimp named Slick Charles ( Jamie Foxx ), Fontaine is shot and killed — but that doesn't stop him from showing up on Slick's doorstep the next day to collect his money.

Joined by a sex worker named YoYo ( Teyonah Parris ), the trio attempts to get to the bottom of what appears to be a massive government conspiracy aimed at exploiting their disenfranchised community as medical subjects. A satirical romp that has as much to say about class and racial injustices as it does about mystery movie tropes,  They Cloned Tyrone  is smart, silly, and uniformly well-acted.  —I.G.

Where to watch  They Cloned Tyrone : Netflix

Director:  Juel Taylor

Cast:  John Boyega, Teyonah Parris, Jamie Foxx

The Weekend Away (2022)

Leighton Meester stars in this murky mystery as Beth, a married new mom who goes off to visit her more glamorous friend Kate (Christina Wolfe) in a palatial apartment in Croatia. But when Kate disappears, Beth runs into one dead end after another trying to find her, until she eventually becomes a suspect in her friend's disappearance herself. The gripping whodunnit is only augmented by the idyllic seaside backdrop, which may make you long for a (less-eventful) weekend in the Balkan region yourself. —G.I.

Where to watch The Weekend Away : Netflix

Director: Kim Farrant

Cast: Leighton Meester, Christina Wolfe, Ziad Bakri

Wild Things (1998)

Columbia Pictures/Getty

A late-‘90s mystery thriller with more twists and turns than a NASCAR racetrack, it’s easy to see where Wild Things starts and much harder to predict where the film is headed. Set in an upscale, fictional South Florida town, the film focuses on two high school girls ( Neve Campbell and Denise Richards ) who accuse their guidance counselor ( Matt Dillon ) of rape. As the trial and police investigation — led by Kevin Bacon — unfold, the question of who is working together and who is sleeping together becomes much harder to answer.

Scandalous, violent, and sexually progressive for its time, Wild Things pairs all the high school drama of Beverly Hills, 90210 with the duplicitousness of Gone Girl , and comes out with a pulpy, daring thriller. Full of beautiful people, luxurious shots, and lurid, murderous moments, Wild Things is like a car crash: You might not love every moment, but you certainly can’t look away. —I.G.           

Where to watch Wild Things : Netflix

Director: John McNaughton

Cast: Kevin Bacon, Matt Dillon, Neve Campbell, Theresa Russell , Denise Richards, Daphne Rubin-Vega , Robert Wagner , Bill Murray

Related Articles

The 15 Best Time Travel Movies Ever Made, Ranked

Your changes have been saved

Email is sent

Email has already been sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

The True Story of 'The Great Escape' Is Even More Thrilling Than the Movie

'deadpool & wolverine’ proves we didn’t need a channing tatum gambit movie, that 'alien: romulus' twist ending just blew the entire franchise wide open.

Making a great time-travel movie, as it turns out, is not very easy. Quite a few films have tried and failed for a variety of reasons. There’s the logic, obviously, which can become an issue, but oftentimes a story might rest too heavily on the plot device, resulting in a lack of rich or memorable characters. But there are some truly phenomenal movies involving time travel that seize upon the premise and craft unforgettable and inventive stories, many of which have long stood the test of time.

With that in mind, I’ve looked back at the lexicon of films involving time travel and curated a list of the best of the best. Some are silly, some are sweet, and some are just a hell of a lot of fun. As with all lists, this one’s subjective, and there will undoubtedly be one or two of your favorites that don’t make this cut, but I’ve done my best to make the case for why these 15 films, in particular, are the best time-travel movies ever made.

RELATED: The Best Sci-Fi Movies of the 21st Century So Far

Most time-travel movies try to keep the actual mechanics of the time-travel simple, but that’s definitely not true of writer/director/star Shane Carruth ’s head-spinning 2004 film Primer . The indie drama revolves around two engineers who accidentally discover a mechanism of time travel while tinkering with entrepreneurial tech projects. Carruth doesn’t “dumb down” any of the science of the movie, and indeed charts have been made to explain the exact mechanics of what’s going on in this film, but it nevertheless remains one of the most scientifically intense time-travel movies ever made.

14. The Terminator

I mean, this has to be on the list right? Director James Cameron ’s groundbreaking 1984 sci-fi action flick is far more grounded and low-key than its sequel, but The Terminator still packs a punch all these years later. With a truly inventive premise, charismatic performance from Linda Hamilton , and proof that Arnold Schwarzenegger could act, The Terminator ’s influence reaches far and wide.

13. About Time

About Time is certainly the most emotional entry on this list. Writer/director Richard Curtis had previously melted hearts with Love Actually and Pirate Radio , but About Time brought the filmmaker back to his Four Weddings and a Funeral roots (which he didn’t direct, but he did write). The time-travel genre offers the opportunity to wax philosophical about death and regret, and About Time seizes it in a unique way by focusing on a very earnest relationship between a father and a son. The romantic comedy portion between Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams is the hook, but the relationship between time-traveling father and son Gleeson and Bill Nighy is this film’s tearjerking heart.

12. Back to the Future Part II

There are people who say Back to the Future Part II is a bad movie, and those people are wrong. Director Robert Zemeckis ’ original is untouchable, but for the first sequel the notoriously ambitious filmmaker doubles down on the time travel premise while also echoing the first movie in a brilliant way. First, we get a kitschy, Easter Egg-filled vision of the future, then we get to see the events of the first film recontextualized as Marty McFly has to go back in time once again to save the future—all while avoiding his other time-traveling self. It’s a tight rope walk of an extremely difficult sort, and one that only a director with this much vision and guts could pull off.

11. Idiocracy

You know, that movie that was ridiculous fiction until it kind of became reality. Filmmaker Mike Judge couldn’t have predicted just how spot-on Idiocracy would be over a decade after its release, but indeed Judge and co-writer Etan Cohen certainly had their finger on the pulse of what was happening in America at the time—enough to hit upon ugly truths that remain relevant today. While the central premise of a man being “frozen” for hundreds of years has been done before, the comedic precision with which Judge executes his dumbed-down vision of America’s future is what makes Idiocracy endure. And also the batin’ jokes.

Whether it’s in an indie noir-like Brick or a massive blockbuster like Star Wars: The Last Jedi , writer/director Rian Johnson has always showcased an impeccable mix of ambition and meticulousness, never allowing his reach to exceed his grasp. Looper marked Johnson’s first foray into the sci-fi genre, and he did so with vigor, offering up a twisty time-travel story rooted in character first and foremost. The film takes the premise of, “What would you do if you went back in time and met your younger self?” and spins it on its head, adding in terrifically tense action sequences and heady moral quandaries for good measure.

9. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

As the best movie in the franchise (fight me), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban also stands as one of the best time-travel movies ever made. Director Alfonso Cuarón shook up the aesthetic and narrative approach to the adaptation of J.K. Rowling ’s beloved book series, and while the foundation of the storytelling is all Rowling, Cuaron’s execution really makes this thing soar. From tremendous cinematography to aural motifs that clue the audience in to the shifting time scenarios, Azkaban is full of wonder, curiosity, and danger, and it’s an absolute joy to behold.

8. Star Trek (2009)

Director J.J. Abrams ’ 2009 reboot of the Star Trek franchise sidestepped the problem of “erasing” the legacy of the films/TV shows that came before by using one specific device: time-travel. This genius idea allows Abrams’ wildly entertaining film to both exist in the same universe as the previous Star Trek movies with Kirk and Spock and the whole gang, while also opening up new possibilities for the future—even though Abrams’ Trek focuses on Young Kirk, he exists in a new and changed timeline, so the future is not 100% set. That the film is able to explain this concisely while also serving as an incredibly entertaining adventure all its own is the minor miracle that is Star Trek (2009) , and while the sequel Star Trek Into Darkness hampered some of that goodwill, Abrams’ initial film still stands as one of the most effortlessly rewatchable blockbusters of the 21st century.

RELATED: 7 Must-Watch Time-Travel TV Shows

7. 12 Monkeys

While filmmaker Terry Gilliam is no stranger to time travel ( Time Bandits just missed the cut on this list), his 1995 film 12 Monkeys remains one of the most memorable entries in the genre. The sci-fi drama combines Gilliam’s more odd sensibilities with gritty and grounded time-travel, resulting in a dirty and unforgettable experience. Brad Pitt delivers a pretty phenomenal performance as a maybe-crazy mental institution patient while Bruce Willis plays a future prisoner sent back in time to discover the origins of a deadly virus that ravaged the Earth. Never one for the traditional, Gilliam keeps things delightfully strange throughout.

6. Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomorrow is the perfect cocktail—a dash of Tom Cruise action, a sprinkle of Emily Blunt strength, a swirl of writer Christopher McQuarrie ’s unique sensibilities, and a heavy helping of director Doug Liman ’s wild ambition. Many have tried and failed to imitate the “stuck in a loop” premise of Groundhog Day , but Edge of Tomorrow takes that nugget and runs with it, keeping every single scene fresh even if we’re watching the same day play out over and over again. The secret sauce is having Tom Cruise play an out-and-out coward, which stands in contrast to the public perception of his onscreen persona and results in a wonderfully refreshing viewing experience. Edge of Tomorrow is the White Whale of Hollywood: a genuinely unique and wildly entertaining blockbuster.

5. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

1989’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure combined the sci-fi genre with the teen comedy to result in a wonderfully inventive—and hilarious—adventure. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are perfect as a pair of burnouts who use a time machine to complete a history report. The whole thing is an incredibly silly affair, but it’s made with such affection for its characters that it’s impossible not to love. There are terrific jokes aplenty, especially involving historical figures, and George Carlin ’s Rufus remains an icon to this day. It’s a movie that probably shouldn’t work, but totally does. Be excellent to each other, indeed.

4. Planet of the Apes

So Planet of the Apes is technically a time-travel movie, even though audiences who first laid eyes on the 1968 film didn’t know it until that final, jaw-dropping scene. Charlton Heston ’s astronaut Taylor hasn’t simply stumbled upon a planet made of apes, he’s traveled into a future Earth where apes have actually taken over the planet. The film is rife with socio-political commentary, which continued throughout its underrated sequels, and features one of the best Jerry Goldsmith scores ever created. But that ending, which paints the rest of the film in a whole new light, is what solidifies it as a classic.

3. Terminator 2: Judgment Day

We should have known, given Aliens and The Abyss , that director James Cameron ’s Terminator 2 wouldn’t just be any old sequel. Indeed, the ambitious filmmaker made a very different movie than the original Terminator , weaving in shades of a buddy comedy, PTSD drama, and family story into this sci-fi actioner. Terminator 2 is a minor miracle of a film, turning its own premise on its head to present a time-travel story that’s similar to the first Terminator , but different in key ways. It also feels positively epic. This one ticks all the boxes.

2. Groundhog Day

Star Bill Murray and director Harold Ramis famously butted heads while making Groundhog Day . Murray reportedly wanted the film to be more philosophical, while Ramis was always pushing the comedy. But it’s the push-and-pull between these two ideas that makes Groundhog Day a stone-cold classic. It’s hilarious, featuring some of Murray’s best comedic moments, but it’s also profoundly sad. The film doesn’t disregard the inherent loneliness of the premise—being stuck in the same day over and over again. It goes to some surprisingly dark places, but Murray’s humanity always shines through, and Andie MacDowell does some terrifically understated work as his foil. It’s a classic, full-stop.

1. Back to the Future

But there’s really nothing like Back to the Future , is there? Filmmaker Robert Zemeckis ’ 1985 original takes a universal idea—the fact that we’re never able to truly know what our parents were like when they were our age—and adds his usual dash of insane ambition by playing that out as a time-travel story. And given the hardships during production, it’s crazy the movie turned out as great as it did. Michael J. Fox is a revelation, Christopher Lloyd is perfect, and Lea Thompson is so good you forget she’s actually playing Marty’s mom. It’s hilarious and new and different and inventive, but it’s also rooted in universal truths that make it so relevant throughout the decades. And yes, it’s also a movie about trying not to bone your mom.

• Movie Features
• Back to the Future (1985)

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Manage Your Subscription
• Give a Gift Subscription
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes
• Travel Destinations A-Z

Volcanoes Safaris Was the First to Bring International Travelers to Rwanda’s Gorillas — Here’s Why It’s Still the Best

Nearly 25 years since its founding, Praveen Moman's Volcanoes Safaris is as focused on community and sustainability as ever.

Brad Japhe/Travel + Leisure

When viewed in pictures, the silverback gorilla is a foreboding beast: a hairy, barrel-chested warrior weighing as much as 600 pounds with an arm span that can stretch more than eight feet. But, when observed in their native habitat of Sub-Saharan Africa, there is nothing menacing about Earth’s largest living primate. Juveniles are as playful and innocently curious as their human counterparts, while adults are wholly enveloped in a zen aura. It is a spellbinding spectacle.

So, it’s no wonder that approximately 50,000 visitors a year make the trek to experience it for themselves — and despite the steep cost of entry (a permit is $1,500 per day in Rwanda and $800 per day in Uganda), that number is rising. They’re arriving not just for the silverback but for all the great apes of the region, which includes chimpanzees and critically endangered golden monkeys.

Still, despite the interest in the region and its incredible ecosystem, with increased tourism comes the continual risk of over- tourism. Sadly, the communities and ecosystems directly threatened by such are largely denied the added revenue it generates.

Brad Japhe/Travel + Leisure

One man, however, is working hard to ensure a more equitable — and sustainable — outcome. Praveen Moman, a native Ugandan and a successful hotelier and passionate activist, leads Volcanoes Safaris , founded in 2000 as the first international safari company to take clients to Rwanda. Five years later, it became the only safari company to sign the United Nations Kinshasa Declaration on Saving the Great Apes. By 2009, Moman had started a non-profit trust dedicated to promoting their conservation while simultaneously enriching the livelihoods of those in surrounding villages.

“We believe that responsible tourism can be a powerful force for positive change,” says Moman, who was listed as an A-List Travel Advisor for chimpanzee and gorilla safaris earlier this year by Travel + Leisure . “We are proud to support the communities and habitats that make gorilla trekking experiences possible.”

SHAUN S. RITCHIE/Courtesy of Volcanoes Safaris

What exactly does that look like in practice? For one, the lodges he operates — which now include five properties spread across the high mountain jungles of Rwanda and Uganda — are built by a local labor force who are paid salaries that exceed the going market rate. They also rely on locally sourced materials and incorporate eco-friendly technologies, including water recapture, to reduce energy consumption and waste.

Through the Volcanoes Safaris Partnership Trust, a litany of ongoing projects improves infrastructure in the remote villages that border conservation land. In recent years, it has donated water tanks to these towns, improved road conditions, and set up solar energy sources, all while rewilding wetlands and ensuring the safety of the gorillas and chimpanzees that bring the tourists here.

Because Volcanoes Safaris was the first to bring five-star luxury to gorilla trekking two decades ago, with its now-legendary Virunga Lodge, the brand enjoys an edge of expertise over its competition. It’s had extra years to train and develop a knowledgeable workforce comprised exclusively of local talent.

Propping up these communities while protecting the wildlife is a complicated task. It is often viewed as an either-or supposition because these small villages turn to any form of tourism as a potential lifeline — even those that don’t employ best practices. But Moman is proving that you can serve both. When Volcanoes Safaris established its Kyambura Gorge Lodge back in 2009, it opened concurrently to an ecotourism project fueling conservation efforts in and around its namesake ridge. Within the immediate area is an isolated community of chimpanzees, and by creating a nearly two-mile-long buffer zone around the canyon, the population of these animals has climbed from 15 to 33 in the ensuing years.

On July 1, the company cut the ribbon on its latest offering, Kibale Lodge . Positioned along the Albertine Rift in southwestern Uganda, the eight-villa estate reinforces the ethos of its sister property at Kyambura Gorge. It will partner with the Jane Goodall Institute in the town of Kibale to help ensure the safety of neighboring primate populations, and it’s working with the Rwenzori Sculpture Foundation to support and showcase the output of local artisans.

None of these brand missions sacrifice anything to the quality of the hard product. In fact, they only enhance a sense of luxury routed in an authentic vernacular. A deluxe banda at the new Kibale Lodge brandishes plush kingsize bedding, a stone-ringed fireplace, and an unfettered sightline of the Rwenzori Mountains climbing high above the distant plain. It’s all contained charmingly under a vaulted ceiling thatched with exposed wooden beams. Personal butler service is offered to all guests, along with access to a pool and spa.

In many ways, the look and feel of the latest addition to the portfolio is an extension of what was laid down at Virunga Lodge two decades prior. That original property, suspended high on a spine between two of Rwanda’s largest lakes, remains a vibrant icon of five-star forest trekking. Each of its 12 spacious villas is appointed in a decor that Moman originally coined as “Rwandese Afro-chic.”

Rates there start at $1,030 per person during the low season of October through May and climb up to $2,230 for single occupancy if you book from June through the end of September, on par with the pricing you’ll find at the Kibale Lodge. It includes food, drink, post-trek massages, laundry, and butler services. There are cheaper places you can stay — indeed, the jungle trekking landscape is crowded with options in this day and age — but you’ll be hard-pressed to find an operator fully committed to the sustainable cause.

“Volcanoes Safaris is the pioneer of great ape tourism in East Africa and, for the last 25 years, has been solely focused on providing the premier gorilla and chimpanzee trekking experience,” Moman says. “But that’s all pretty hollow if we’re not providing social support for local communities.”

In this particular pursuit, Volcanoes Safaris wasn’t just the first; it remains the best.

Related Articles