Underrated Suspense Movies That Will Have You On The Edge Of Your Seat

What are the key components of suspense? In film, suspense is the anxiety and anticipation that an audience feels while watching a film. All films want to create suspense of some kind: it's what keeps viewers engaged with the film, puzzling out what they think will happen next. 

Two genres that rely heavily on suspense are thrillers and horror. While many thrillers and horror movies are fast-paced, others usually employ a slow burn, with the tension in the film building as an underlying mystery reveals itself with an often surprising climax. Although modern films are more fast-paced, there is still something to be said for taking the time to build that tension and the delayed gratification of suspense movies.

Many recognize Alfred Hitchcock as the master of suspense, and watching his movies is like taking a class where you learn the film techniques used to create that cinematic tension. Filmmakers can use lighting and composition to make the audience feel off balance. Changes in POV and the audience knowing more than the characters build tension. Creepy music is a mainstay for eliciting emotions, as are unnerving color schemes and set design. The story can increase suspense through uncertainty and raising the stakes, while the performances can create anxiety.

If you're a cinephile, you've probably already seen the mainstays of the genre, so instead let's look at some underrated suspense movies that will have you on the edge of your seat.

When Patty (Melanie Griffith) and Drake (Matthew Modine) buy their dream home, a Victorian in San Francisco, they resort to renting out the two downstairs units to fund the remodel. Their first tenants are a pleasant couple, but when Drake rents the second unit to Carter Hays (Michael Keaton) without running a credit check, things take a turn for the worse. Carter moves in before the wire transfer goes through, and turns their dream home into a living hell.

Before long, Patty and Drake are in a dispute with Carter, who is now protected by tenants' rights despite never paying a penny to move in. As they become embroiled in a legal battle with Carter, they realize he might ruin more than their credit, as tensions between Carter and Drake rise. This slow-burn suspense movie will make you fear becoming a landlord and being shackled by the law.

Although "Pacific Heights" was met with mixed reviews from critics, audiences love the film, giving it universal acclaim on Metacritic. Although it wasn't a runaway hit at the box office, it turned a respectable profit. The film uses interesting camera angles and shadows to increase suspense, and the score lends a hand. Keaton is incredibly creepy in this role, while Griffith and Modine actually make you feel sorry for the landlords. If you haven't seen this underrated domestic thriller, you can stream it on Peacock.

"Sleeping with the Enemy" follows a young woman, Laura (Julia Roberts), who fakes her own death to escape her abusive and controlling husband, Martin (Patrick Bergin). We quickly learn that Laura, who changes her name to Sara, was planning her escape, moving her ailing mother to a new rest home in Iowa where she would meet her.

Once Sara escapes and lets her guard down, enjoying a budding romance with her neighbor, there are moments of joy where it seems we are watching a romantic comedy. But these are contrasted with her hyper-vigilance: she is paranoid, constantly wondering if Martin will find her. Then Martin arrives, determined to get her back. Bergin's creepy performance, the score, and Roberts' jittery performance elevate the underlying tension in this domestic thriller.

"Sleeping with the Enemy" received mixed critical reviews, but has solid audience scores on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, and did great at the box office thanks to Roberts' then-peaking star power. With a storyline geared toward female audiences, a poor critical response may be more indicative of the fact that male critics still outnumber female critics (per Variety) than the quality of the film, which is a startling portrayal of domestic abuse.

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

"Stir of Echoes" actually has pretty good scores with audiences and critics on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, but it didn't earn the box office numbers that it could have. That's because it had the misfortune of coming out the same year as "The Sixth Sense," making this film the less popular suspense movie about people who can see ghosts. 

After being hypnotized by his sister-in-law (Illeana Douglas), Tom (Kevin Bacon) starts seeing things and behaving strangely. The violent visions unsettle him, and he becomes even more distressed after learning that the girl whose image he's seeing, Samantha (Jennifer Morrison), was reported missing months ago. The mystery is compounded when Tom and his wife Maggie (Kathryn Erbe) learn that their young son, Jake (Zachary David Cope), can see her too. Tom is convinced that Samantha is a ghost and becomes obsessed with discovering what happened to her.

Bacon is great in the lead role, and the entire cast follows suit, delivering excellent performances. The mystery is compelling and rooted in a realistic tragedy despite the supernatural elements. Music is well used to heighten the tension in the film, as are the disturbing flashes that Tom experiences. "Stir of Echoes" is an engaging and underrated thriller about ordinary people contending with restless spirits seeking justice. Bacon's sweaty desperation sells the story and Cope's wide-eyed innocence is unnerving.

Caroline (Kate Hudson), a hospice nurse living in New Orleans, accepts a new position and moves into a crumbling plantation house on a bayou to care for Ben Devereaux (John Hurt), who was incapacitated by a stroke. After a series of unexplained incidents and underlying feelings of suspicion toward his wife, Violet Devereaux (Gena Rowlands), Caroline questions her beliefs about Hoodoo (folk magic) as she becomes embroiled in a mystery surrounding the estate's violent history and the elderly residents she was hired to care for.

Jill (Joy Bryant) tries to convince Caroline to leave the position and come back to New Orleans. Instead, Caroline, who feels responsible for poor old Ben, seeks information about Hoodoo from practitioners in New Orleans while snooping around the creepy attic of the plantation house. Devereaux's estate attorney, Luke (Peter Sarsgaard), flirts with the line between creepy and solicitous, leaving the audience unsure about his sincerity.

Although "The Skeleton Key" was received poorly by critics, it has solid audience scores on Metacritic, and did admirably at the box office, turning a small profit on the star power of the actors. This suspense movie is atmospheric, moody, and delivers plenty of supernatural thrills. The decaying mansion and the storyline set this film in the Southern Gothic tradition, exploring the sins of the South while delivering a fantastic twist ending that is too good to give away. If you enjoy Gothic horror, this unappreciated film deserves another viewing.

"Dark Places" comes from the mind of Gillian Flynn, who also wrote the novel "Sharp Objects" and both the novel and script for "Gone Girl." Charlize Theron plays Libby Day, a woman who can't get past the trauma of surviving a massacre. When she was eight years old, Libby's mother, Patty (Christina Hendricks), and two older sisters were brutally murdered on their family farm in the middle of the night, with her brother Ben arrested for the killings.

Desperate for money, Libby agrees to revisit the crime with a true-crime group after Lyle (Nicholas Hoult), the group's treasurer, offers to pay her to investigate. Libby works her way through Lyle's case file, interviewing people about the night of the murder and the arrest of Ben, played by Tye Sheridan in flashbacks and Corey Stoll in the present. During her investigation, Libby questions her brother's sentence and begins to understand why people believe he was wrongly convicted because of rumors and Satanic panic in their rural Kansas community.

Although this film was a miss at the box office and with critics, it fared better with audiences on Metacritic, and it is worth checking out if you love dual timeline mysteries and a good twist ending. "Dark Places" has an excellent cast and uses flashbacks to draw out the suspense slowly, revealing a complex plot that explores the extreme choices people make to protect the ones they love.

"The Manor" is an Amazon Studios original starring Barbara Hershey. After suffering a mild stroke on her 70^th birthday, Judith, a vivacious retired dancer, moves into a care facility in a historic home near where she lived with her daughter and teenage grandson. When Judith arrives, she is troubled by the "no cell phone" policy and not being allowed to explore the grounds unaccompanied, but reluctantly hands over her phone anyway.

Judith has terrifying visions at night that the nurses dismiss as dreams, and her doctor says her mental faculties are declining at an alarming rate because of progressive dementia. After a failed escape attempt, Judith becomes convinced there is something nefarious and supernatural at work, keeping a core group of residents from aging while other patients die at alarming rates. 

Filled with things that go bump in the night and creepy visuals, "The Manor" is for viewers who enjoy Gothic horror and movies that make one question reality. Although it met mixed reviews from critics and audiences on Metacritic, the cast is excellent and the film is an interesting meditation on the fears of growing old. The film is less concerned with death and more focused on the infantilization many elderly people experience once they need more care than their families can provide. "The Manor" has the atmospheric dread of Gothic horror and a surprise twist ending worth streaming on Prime Video.