98 Best Thrillers Of All Time Ranked

Thrillers are some of the hardest films to pin down: Their versatility is at once a strength and a bit of a conundrum. This genre has been known to encompass many others, from the legal and political to the psychological and historical. At their core, thrillers create a sense of anxiety, excitement, or urgency that engages us as much as it unnerves us.

Sometimes this is done with action sequences, or by exposing a world of crime or espionage. Other times, thrills are orchestrated more subtly: The tension arises within one's own psyche, or manifests in the relationships between characters. Whatever it is that creates that apprehension, however, it's unmistakable to true thrill-seekers — and it's a core part of these 98 films in one way or another.

Updated on April 3, 2023: From action-packed heist flicks to Hitchcockian suspense pics, these classic thrillers have stood the test of time. 

More than just a straightforward spy thriller, "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." has style. It emanates from its leading men and women as well as Guy Ritchie's cinematic storytelling. It's set in a time period notorious for its tension: the height of the Cold War. The plot centers around a CIA agent and former professional thief who uncovers a plot to supply lingering Nazi cells with a nuclear weapon.

Like many spy thrillers, "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." relies on the perhaps implausible but indisputably alluring idea that the fate of the world can rest in the hands of a small and highly skilled but idiosyncratic group of individuals.

• Starring: Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander

• Director: Guy Ritchie

• Year: 2015

• Runtime: 116 minutes

• Rating: PG-13

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 68%

The world of "Michael Clayton" is one of loopholes and malleable truth — in other words, the legal world. George Clooney's title character must juggle all kinds of stressors: the mental breakdown of a colleague, the corruption of the corporate world, and the implications of a class action lawsuit against a major client of his firm.

That sounds like a lot of paperwork, but really, "Michael Clayton" is all suspense and action. The script is impeccable, smart, and efficient, delivering a tense melodrama that refuses to let go of its audience's attention.

• Starring: George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton

• Director: Tony Gilroy

• Year: 2007

• Runtime: 120 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%

Sometimes the hardest thing to escape is the prison of your own habits. When you've made a name for yourself in the world of crime, it can be hard to get out, but that's just what Frank, the titular jewel thief in "Thief," attempts to do when he decides he wants to start a family. Of course, complications arise.

Another indispensable heist film, this one has been praised for its intelligence — so be sure to pay attention when you watch it.

• Starring: James Caan, Tuesday Weld, Dennis Farina, Willie Nelson

• Director: Michael Mann

• Year: 1981

• Runtime: 123 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

The thriller genre seems uniquely equipped to explore toxic relationships. Examples abound in "Gaslight," "Fargo," "Gone Girl," and others, including the thriller "The Invisible Man." Like the wife in "Gaslight," Elizabeth Moss' character Cecilia finds herself psychologically manipulated by her abusive ex Adrian, but this modern film adds a sci-fi twist: She can't prove anything, because Adrian has used his expertise as an optics engineer to fake his own death and make himself entirely invisible.

• Starring: Elizabeth Moss, Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid

• Director: Leigh Whannell

• Year: 2020

• Runtime: 124 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%

One of the most gripping things about "Argo," besides the impeccable performances of the star-studded cast, is the fact that it not only takes place on an international scale but is based on real (though almost too absurd to believe) historical events. Yes, during the 1979-'81 hostage crisis in Iran, the CIA faked the production of a sci-fi movie in Tehran in order to rescue half a dozen diplomats.

You can't make this stuff up — but you can turn it into an Academy Award-winning thriller.

• Starring: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin

• Director: Ben Affleck

• Year: 2012

• Runtime: 120 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%

As surreal and Lynchian as it gets, "Mulholland Drive" isn't the first thriller to use amnesia as a disorienting device to keep the viewer both engaged and confused. (Think "Memento," for example.) Filmmaker David Lynch refuses to explain the basic meaning behind the events in the film, which follows multiple characters throughout Los Angeles, primarily a new-in-town aspiring actress who befriends an amnesiac woman who was recently in a car accident.

The many interpretations of the film include themes of dreams and fantasies versus reality, as well as a surreal treatment of Hollywood itself. "Mulholland Drive" is a treat to watch because it's essentially whatever you want to be, but it's unequivocally dark and thrilling regardless.

• Starring: Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring

• Director: David Lynch

• Year: 2001

• Runtime: 146 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 83%

The great thrillers of cinema have been set in all sorts of places — Mr. Ripley travels all over Italy, and some of the most intense action happens in a little rowboat. In large part, "Fight Club" takes place inside the Narrator's mind. These settings are nothing if not ambitious in their scope, but director Jeremy Saulnier proves that it's just as great of a challenge to set a thriller in a small backstage room (the titular "green room").

When the punk band playing at a club accidentally witnesses a murder, their neo-Nazi hosts turn on them, and their show becomes a showdown as they fight for their lives. The setting inspires a claustrophobic panic that pays off for thriller fans, but not so well for the characters.

• Starring: Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat

• Director: Jeremy Saulnier

• Year: 2015

• Runtime: 95 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%

The term "copycat" takes on a whole new meaning in "To Catch a Thief," which follows a retired and reformed cat burglar named John who has to protect his new reputation by helping to catch a criminal who's copying his crimes. The blame for this new wave of crimes will fall on John unless he can prove his innocence, and catching the new "Cat" is the only way to do that.

Hitchcock serves up a delicious role reversal in which the former bad guy must use the very skills he once used for amoral purposes to stop another evildoer.

• Starring: Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis

• Director: Alfred Hitchcock

• Year: 1955

• Runtime: 106 minutes

• Rating: PG

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%

One might typically conceive of assassins as driven and highly trained individuals, not unwitting pawns. To see someone thrust into that role is startling, and it's uniquely upsetting to see a veteran and member of a powerful political family subjected to brainwashing and turned into a pawn in a conspiracy to overthrow the government. What's most effective about this film is its contagious paranoia and the massive scale of its political thrills.

• Starring: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh

• Director: John Frankenheimer

• Year: 1962

• Runtime: 126 minutes

• Rating: PG-13

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

No list of thrillers would be complete without the one Hitchcock named as his favorite of all the films he'd directed. "Shadow of a Doubt" finds its suspense in the relationship between a charming man and his niece, who discovers he's wanted for murder. The tightly wound film explores how the two navigate her suspicions — which linger in her mind even after one of the suspected murderers is killed and the case is closed.

• Starring: Teresa Wright, Joseph Cotten, Macdonald Carey

• Director: Alfred Hitchcock

• Year: 1943

• Runtime: 108 minutes

• Rating: PG

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

With the tagline "Murder has a sound all of its own," "Blow Out" is a film you're going to want to watch closely and listen intently to. The film's visual style has been praised, but the storyline revolves around sound, following a sound effects tech who, in the course of recording sound effects for a B slasher flick, accidentally captures evidence of an assassination.

Like the protagonists of "Blow-Up" or "The Conversation," John Travolta's character Jack Terry was in the wrong place at the right time. There's something uniquely stirring about an everyday person who falls head over heels into a world of crime and peril.

• Starring: John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow

• Director: Brian De Palma

• Year: 1981

• Runtime: 108 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 84%

Though it drew some controversy at the time of its release, with some critics worried it would encourage copycats, "Fight Club" has become one of the most well-known films in the modern canon. It contains elements of psychological thriller, action film, and dark comedy that conspire to tell the story of an unnamed narrator, Ed Norton, who forms a fight club with soap salesman Tyler Durden.

Durden embodies the freedom from wage slavery and conformity that the Narrator wishes he could attain. While hints of his volatility appear slowly at first, ultimately it becomes clear that his true nature is more alarming than he could have dreamed (that is, if he ever slept).

• Starring: Ed Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter

• Director: David Fincher

• Year: 1999

• Runtime: 139 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79%

Joaquin Phoenix has a long track record of playing psychologically nuanced characters, and this aptitude works to the benefit of the film "You Were Never Really Here," in which Phoenix portrays a mercenary with PTSD who is hired to rescue girls from trafficking rings by any means necessary. The story sheds light on harsh social and psychological realities through the character's work — and then everything changes when his contract to rescue the abducted daughter of a New York senator exposes him to a brutal conspiracy.

• Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Judith Roberts, Ekaterina Samsonov

• Director: Lynne Ramsay

• Year: 2017

• Runtime: 90 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89%

Before "The Hunger Games," a breakout Jennifer Lawrence character went through what is arguably an even more harrowing experience. Once again, she is thrust into an unforgiving landscape and tasked with surviving and protecting those she loves.

This time, the story takes place in the isolated rural Ozarks of Missouri, where Lawrence's character, Ree, must find her missing father (who might have been caught up in some shady business) in order to save her family from eviction. "Winter's Bone" is a gripping mystery that holds our attention quietly but flawlessly.

• Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Garret Dillahunt

• Director: Debra Granik

• Year: 2010

• Runtime: 100 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

Like a relay race, the three storylines in "The Place Beyond The Pines" each hand the narrative off to the next. A lot of the stories in this list have nonlinear structures, but this one is, if anything, ultralinear: It follows the lives that previous characters have touched even after those characters pass away.

The first story is about a motorcycle stunt driver who uses his skills to start a life of crime to support his family. The second is about an officer who confronts police corruption. The third is about two teenagers, 15 years after the events of the previous stories, who are still dealing with its effects. "The Place Beyond The Pines" is ambitious in everything from scope to action to emotion.

• Starring: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes

• Director: Derek Cianfrance

• Year: 2012

• Runtime: 140 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 78%

When you were little, if your parents ever told you that one lie or bad deed spirals and requires you to tell bigger and bigger lies or commit worse and worse acts, Danny Boyle's "Shallow Grave" is the film version of that. In this case, the spiral begins when a group of roommates dismember and bury a mysterious new resident of their flat who died and left behind a ton of money.

• Starring: Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston, Kerry Fox

• Director: Danny Boyle

• Year: 1995

• Runtime: 92 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 69%

The grittiness of the organized crime world in "Looper" is undercut by the science fiction elements upon which it rests. One of the most terrifying parts of the film is its contemplation of how criminals might make brutal use of futuristic technologies as they emerge.

In this film, criminal syndicates from the future send their victims back into the past to be disposed of by hit men in a manner that leaves no evidence in the victims' own time. Eventually, to prevent being traced, each hit man's final victim is himself. "Looper" is insanely creative and smart, but not so convoluted that you can't follow it, making it a great watch for fans of sci-fi, time travel, crime, action, and of course, thrillers.

• Starring: Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano

• Director: Rian Johnson

• Year: 2015

• Runtime: 118 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

The hostage situation depicted in "Dog Day Afternoon" is so gripping that you won't believe it's based on a true story — especially since the real version of events ends with a climactic moment characteristic of a work of fiction. The film chronicles a real bank heist from 1972 in which three perpetrators held Chase Manhattan employees hostage for 14 hours. At the same time an expressive depiction of the era's New York, the film is a window into a suspenseful moment in history and the complicated individuals who inhabited it.

• Starring: Al Pacino, John Cazale, James Broderick

• Director: Sidney Lumet

• Year: 1975

• Runtime: 125 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%

By the late '70s, the James Bond series needed was a return to form, and that's exactly what "The Spy Who Loved Me" provided. If you're looking for a classic Bond film (and one that Roger Moore, in his memoir, counted as his personal favorite), this one should be on your list.

But just because it's an example of classic Bond style doesn't mean the film narrowed its scope: It's about a madman who plans to destroy the world and start a new one under the sea. This outlandish (no pun intended) installment has remained a fan favorite.

• Starring: Roger Moore, Barbara Bach, Curt Jürgens

• Director: Lewis Gilbert

• Year: 1977

• Runtime: 125 minutes

• Rating: PG

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 80%

A cultural touchstone, the 1983 version of "Scarface" is technically a remake, but has earned a legacy in its own right. The tale of a penniless Cuban refugee who builds himself into a powerful Miami drug lord is not only regarded as one of the best remakes, but one of the best crime films of all time. For those who like violence, there's a lot of it, and the language is just as colorful — but underneath it all is the truly gripping narrative of a tense criminal landscape.

• Starring: Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer

• Director: Brian De Palma

• Year: 1983

• Runtime: 170 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82%

Not only is "Prisoners" a thrilling narrative, it is beautifully shot and full of captivating performances by its ensemble cast. What appears to be an abduction story — a tale that's thrilling on its own — escalates to reveal itself as so much more when a father takes it upon himself to solve his daughters' abduction. "Prisoners" is a story of family, trauma, and justice, told with an absorbing sense of dread.

• Starring: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis

• Director: Denis Villeneuve

• Year: 2013

• Runtime: 153 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 81%

This Ben Affleck-directed thriller starts out as an abduction story, inherently chilling because a four-year-old girl is kidnapped right out of her single mother's home. The plot escalates into a much more deeply involved saga surrounding the world of drugs and themes of revenge and moral ambiguity.

Like some of the best classic thrillers, the city setting of "Gone Baby Gone" is very much a character, and the film is something of a portrait of Boston, much as Scorsese's films capture New York — but it's more twisted than anyone would expect.

• Starring: Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Freeman

• Director: Ben Affleck

• Year: 2007

• Runtime: 114 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

The film that finally won Leonardo DiCaprio an Oscar barely left him alive. Like the actor who portrays him, though, DiCaprio's frontiersman Hugh Glass won't be left for dead so easily — even after surviving a bear attack and watching a member of his hunting party murder Glass' son and abandon him in the wilderness.

If it wasn't already apparent, "The Revenant" has all the ingredients that make a thriller worth watching, plus some extra obstacles unique to the wilderness, making this a must-watch saga of vengeance, betrayal, and a struggle for survival.

• Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson

• Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

• Year: 2015

• Runtime:156 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 78%

The second-greatest mystery of "Knives Out" is which member of the ensemble cast is most idiosyncratic. Sure, we all want to know who's responsible for the death of the dysfunctional family's wealthy patriarch. But what really drives this story is its fascinating character dynamics, like the housekeeper who can't lie without vomiting (a convenient trait for a possible murder suspect or witness).

The members of the family are each a bit bizarre in their own ways, each of them has motive, and none of them are particularly likable — but as an ensemble of greedy murder suspects and backstabbers, you can't help but love them.

• Starring: Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas

• Director: Rian Johnson

• Year: 2019

• Runtime: 130 minutes

• Rating: PG-13

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

One of the earliest thrillers on this list and in the cinematic canon, "M" was the first sound film by its director Fritz Lang. And it used that sound to create one of the first instances of a classic motif in thrillers: You know when the serial killer whistles a trademark creepy tune?

These brief notes might be used to taunt a victim, or simply serve to juxtapose the lightheartedness of music with the heinous nature of violent crime. Think of Elle Driver's creepy whistle in "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" or Negan's whistle on "The Walking Dead."

"M," an early procedural chronicling the hunt for a serial killer of children, was one of the first films to utilize this tactic, and it remains a creepy classic today.

• Starring: Peter Lorre, Otto Wernicke, Gustaf Gründgens

• Director: Fritz Lang

• Year: 1931

• Runtime: 111 minutes

• Rating: Not Rated/Passed

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

For a film about an amnesiac, "Memento" has become one of Christopher Nolan's most memorable works. Leonard Shelby suffers from anterograde amnesia, while Nolan's storytelling style benefits from it: As a result of an attack that injured him and killed his wife, Leonard can't form new memories, and his world "reboots" every 15 minutes with no recollection of the previous moments.

Because of this, our story is told in 15-minute increments that occur in reverse chronological order, a creative nonlinear narrative that captures Leonard's pathology and constantly subverts our expectations as Leonard attempts to track down his wife's killer using Polaroids and tattoos in place of actual memories.

• Starring: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano

• Director: Christopher Nolan

• Year: 2000

• Runtime: 113 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

"Misery" follows an author of Victorian romance novels who suffers a car crash and finds himself "rescued" by a nurse who lives in remote Colorado and who just so happens to be his biggest fan. Convenient, right? Until she obsessively holds him captive and tortures him until he writes her the novel she wants.

Bates' unhinged performance and the slow reveal of her sinister nature add up to some of the most chilling moments in cinema.

• Starring: Kathy Bates, James Caan, Richard Farnsworth

• Director: Rob Reiner

• Year: 1990

• Runtime: 107 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%

Contrary to what you might think, this isn't a bomb-defusion caper or an action flick packed with firefights and car chases. "Blow-Up" is a much more subtle thriller, but it's all the more compelling because of it.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but when you're a photographer who believes you've accidentally captured a murder on camera, your life may be worth your silence.

• Starring: David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles

• Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

• Year: 1966

• Runtime: 111 minutes

• Rating: Not Rated

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

There are a lot of great thrillers based on books, but the works of literature in question are typically fictional. "Zodiac" is one of few thrillers based on a work of nonfiction — one that chronicled the as-yet-unresolved search for the notorious Zodiac Killer.

Though the crimes themselves are infamously unsolved, "Zodiac" makes thrilling work of the 1970s manhunt. That said, when you really think about it, the movie is less about the killings themselves and more about the sense of unrelenting anxiety they inflicted, and the nuances of the characters who wrestled with that simmering mood.

• Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey, Jr.

• Director: David Fincher

• Year: 2007

• Runtime: 157 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89%

With enemies like these, who needs giant tarantulas? That's not the way the saying goes, but then again, nothing is typical in the surrealist psychological neo-noir "Enemy," starring Jake Gyllenhaal in two opposing roles.

An admirable contribution to the lore of doppelgängers and the challenging terrain of the subconscious, "Enemy" keeps everyone guessing, especially its characters, who discover that they are identical physically but not in personality or lifestyle. Gyllenhaal layers a sinister complexity with his trademark gravity. Building tension between two characters, which eventually boils over dramatically, is even more impressive when you play both sides and when the lines between delusion and reality are unclear.

• Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Melanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon

• Director: Denis Villeneuve

• Year: 2013

• Runtime: 90 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 71%

In Christopher Nolan's electrifying thriller (excuse the pun), we're graced with elements of history interwoven with science fiction, as rival stage magicians compete in an obsessive and escalating game of one-upmanship that causes fatal collateral damage. The film also incorporates a fictional version of Nikola Tesla who is integral to the plot — though the most essential part is one magician's willingness to go to any lengths to come out on top, and ultimately, to get revenge.

• Starring: Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson

• Director: Christopher Nolan

• Year: 2006

• Runtime: 130 minutes

• Rating: PG-13

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 76%

Thrillers require a certain degree of intensity, and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" takes that deadly seriously. With a run time of over two and a half hours and a 40-year-old cold case at its heart, it might not seem like the most likely candidate to keep your attention. But the dark, suspenseful, and brutal sequences involving the film's uniquely skilled characters keep the investigation into a decades-old disappearance fresh through not just one, but multiple viewings.

• Starring: Rooney Mara, Daniel Craig, Christopher Plummer

• Director: David Fincher

• Year: 2011

• Runtime: 158 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

Brian De Palma's seminal crime thriller is as enjoyable to watch as it is to listen to, with a score by legendary composer Ennio Morricone that includes period-accurate tunes from Duke Ellington. The story centers around Al Capone, the master of one of the greatest criminal empires, and a Prohibition agent who attempts to bring him to justice by recruiting the only lawmen — the titular "Untouchables" — he trusts to remain immune to corruption.

• Starring: Kevin Costner, Charles Martin Smith, Andy Garcia, Robert De Niro, Sean Connery

• Director: Brian De Palma

• Year: 1987

• Runtime: 119 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 83%

Though it seems obvious at first blush, the shadiest character in "Nightcrawler" is up for debate. Is it the unscrupulous freelance journalist, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who unblinkingly captures the city's most violent crimes and sells the footage to news stations? Or is it the ravenous public demanding a window into the tragedies of others?

Either way, the darkness is palpable in this film, and not just because most of the action takes place at night. At first, it seems like Gyllenhaal's character is just fighting to survive and make a living ... But he reveals a much more sadistic bent as the film goes on.

• Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed, Bill Paxton

• Director: Dan Gilroy

• Year: 2014

• Runtime: 117 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%

Before you watch "The Devil All the Time," you should know that the title is pretty much literal: The film is a relentless descent into misfortune and inhumanity, with little reprieve. It's not called "The Devil Some of the Time," after all.

Once you're prepared for (or even delightedly challenged by) the dark tone, this film is an engrossing psychological thriller that looks into the harrowing setbacks in the life and relationships of a young man (played by a stellar Tom Holland) who seems to encounter the worst aspects of humanity wherever he goes.

• Starring: Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgaard, Riley Keough, Sebastian Stan

• Director: Antonio Campos

• Year: 2020

• Runtime: 139 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 64%

If you thought "Stowaway" achieved an impressive number of thrills for a cast of only four people, wait until you see what "The Lighthouse" does with just two (if you don't count the characters' demons). As storms rage inside two lighthouse keepers with their own checkered histories and predispositions to madness, a maelstrom that rages outside their remote island strands them there alone and threatens to plunge them into insanity.

With a nearly square aspect ratio and shot in chilling black and white, "The Lighthouse" is like something straight out of an Edgar Allan Poe story (on which it is loosely based).

• Starring: Willem Dafoe, Robert Pattinson, Valeriia Karamän

• Director: Robert Eggers

• Year: 2019

• Runtime: 109 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%

"We Need to Talk About Kevin" can be a hard film to talk about. It's disquieting because, unlike the thrillers we're used to that take place in city underbellies or cutthroat political environments, the setting of this film is all too familiar: The residential home of a nuclear family. Here, we witness the slow deterioration of the relationship between a troubled son and his mother, culminating in a heinous act that she struggles to come to terms with.

The film is so disquieting that it almost feels like horror, but the evil at hand is all too human — which makes it even creepier.

• Starring: Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller

• Director: Lynne Ramsay

• Year: 2011

• Runtime: 112 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 75%

For Ryan Gosling, actions speak louder than words in his performance as a nameless getaway and stunt driver who falls for his neighbor and attempts to help her debt-ridden husband get the family back on its feet by taking part in a heist.

The sparse dialogue on the part of the main character paves the way for some compelling sound design: "Drive" was nominated for an Oscar for its sound editing. This aspect blends perfectly with sensational visuals and winning performances to create a moody action thriller that maneuvers its plot with the ease of a practiced getaway driver.

• Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, Bryan Cranston

• Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

• Year: 2011

• Runtime: 100 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

Breakups are hard. People do all kinds of things to make it easier: down a pint of Ben and Jerry's, listen to playlists they made in middle school ... And if you're Rosamund Pike's character Amy in "Gone Girl," the implosion of your relationship and the end of your life. At least, that's what someone wants us to believe when Amy's husband, played by Ben Affleck, becomes to his own bewilderment the prime suspect in his wife's potentially violent disappearance.

• Starring: Rosamund Pike, Ben Affleck, Neil Patrick Harris

• Director: David Fincher

• Year: 2014

• Runtime: 149 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

The things that happen to you as a child can have a far greater impact throughout your life than you know at the time. In "Mystic River," a traumatic event among three boyhood friends lingers in their psyches long after they drift apart and into adulthood, and when one of their daughters is murdered, the culprit may be hiding a lot closer than any of the old friends want to admit.

"Mystic River" is one of the most gripping and unsettling mysteries of the century so far, earning six Oscar nominations. The story is bleak and steeped in layers that will leave you with a visceral sense of unease and tragedy.

• Starring: Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon

• Director: Clint Eastwood

• Year: 2003

• Runtime: 138 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

It's been established by two of the films on this list that Rosamund Pike plays characters whose bad sides you want to avoid. And honestly, their "good" sides aren't that peachy either — but they are entertaining and terrifying to watch.

In "I Care a Lot," Pike plays a court-appointed guardian who makes a living by taking advantage of vulnerable elderly people: Gaslighting her charges and the courts into putting them in her care, then seizing and selling their assets.

This pays off incredibly well until she messes with the wrong lady — one who has friends and family in high, and dangerous, places.

• Starring: Rosamund Pike, Peter Dinklage, Eiza Gonzalez

• Director: J. Blakeson

• Year: 2020

• Runtime: 118 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 78%

Of all the unlikely settings for a thrilling caper, rural Minnesota would be pretty unexpected if the Coen brothers' "Fargo" weren't already so beloved. The story follows a pregnant police chief who investigates the fatal fallout after a car salesman hires two outlaws to kidnap his wife so he can get a ransom from her wealthy father. Yup, it's a vintage Coens story, one that will make you chuckle as often as it horrifies you.

• Starring: Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi

• Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen

• Year: 1996

• Runtime: 98 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

Hitchcock is responsible for many of the most iconic thrillers in the history of cinema, titles that have become household names even among those who haven't seen them. But if you know "Rear Window" in name only, now is the time to sit down and see it. This enthralling film, about a homebound man who's people-watching to beat his boredom and believes he has witnessed a murder, is one of the best of all time.

"Rear Window" builds up a sense of psychologically driven menace and mystery, and waits until the absolute last moment to pull the punch.

• Starring: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey

• Director: Alfred Hitchcock

• Year: 1954

• Runtime: 112 minutes

• Rating: PG

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

Technically, it's a film about a woman sitting in bed reading a book. But "Nocturnal Animals" is also a hard-hitting, emotionally raw and ruthless thriller that offers a bleak perspective on love and life through a visually beautiful lens.

An art gallery owner receives a manuscript from her estranged ex-husband and becomes enchanted, and slightly appalled, by the thriller's striking similarities to their former family and relationship — but these versions of their past selves may not make it out alive.

• Starring: Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon

• Director: Tom Ford

• Year: 2016

• Runtime: 116 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 73%

You can always count on the Coen brothers to serve up simmering thrills and slightly off-kilter characters. This time, a man stumbles upon a large sum of money at the scene of a deal gone wrong in the desert, and finds himself hunted down by a mysterious hitman with unconventional methods.

"No Country for Old Men" is darkly humorous and so entertaining that you almost forget the carnage. If you like the feel of classic Westerns but are looking for a twist to keep things fresh, the Coen brothers deliver — and then some.

• Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin

• Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen

• Year: 2007

• Runtime: 122 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

Since "Twilight," Robert Pattinson has taken on an impressively wide-ranging variety of roles: He's been a bumbling and arrogant French Dauphin in Netflix's 2019 film "The King," a morally bankrupt and abusive preacher in "The Devil All the Time," and an amateur lighthouse keeper with a dark past in "The Lighthouse," just to name a few more recent projects.

One of his best roles to date is a bank robber who attempts to rescue his developmentally disabled brother from custody after the heist goes wrong. In the visually compelling "Good Time," Pattinson's character Connie stumbles into and out of luck as the thrills just keep on coming.

• Starring: Robert Pattinson, Benny Safdie, Barkhad Abdi

• Directors: Josh and Benny Safdie

• Year: 2017

• Runtime: 101 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

"Rebecca" is a gothic Hitchcock thriller that incorporates romantic themes without sacrificing any of his trademark suspense. The film follows Rebecca's husband Maxim and his second wife, who feels the weight of Rebecca's memory so strongly that it prompts her to look into the true nature of her husband's relationship with his deceased wife.

• Starring: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson

• Director: Alfred Hitchcock

• Year: 1940

• Runtime: 130 minutes

• Rating: Not Rated/Approved

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

With a distinctive visual style as breathtaking as any of its thrilling scenes, "The Conformist" is anything but. Its multi-layered story is both political and intensely psychological, told through childhood flashbacks that are as gripping as the assassination plot and contest of romantic loyalties that secret police member Marcello finds himself embroiled in.

Visually, the movie is spellbinding and almost poetic, in contrast to some of the brutal sequences and darkly complex characters. Whether you want a visual treat or a psycho-political thriller, "The Conformist" has you covered.

• Starring: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Gastone Moschin

• Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

• Year: 1971

• Runtime: 108 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

There are thrillers, and then there are movies like "Chinatown," which is full of so many layers of psychology and mystery that it should count as a thriller and a half. Inspired by real events surrounding the war over water rights between Owens Valley farmers and ranchers and the city of Los Angeles, it weaves together elements of political corruption, mass exploitation and intimidation, and personal trauma and identity.

A political thriller of expansive scope as well as a psychological drama with deadly consequences, "Chinatown" has enough twists and expertly planted misdirections to thrill audiences for decades to come.

• Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Hillerman

• Director: Roman Polanski

• Year: 1974

• Runtime: 131 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 99%