10 Best Thriller Movies in Film History

Image via Orion Pictures Published Jul 25, 2026, 2:28 PM EDT Diego Pineda has been a devout storyteller his whole life. He has self-published a fantasy novel and a book of short stories, and is actively working on publishing his second novel. A lifelong fan of watching movies and talking about them endlessly, he writes reviews and analyses on his Instagram page dedicated to cinema, and occasionally on his blog. His favorite filmmakers are Andrei Tarkovsky and Charlie Chaplin. He loves modern Mexican cinema and thinks it's tragically underappreciated. Other interests of Diego's include reading, gaming, roller coasters, writing reviews on his Letterboxd account (username: DPP_reviews), and going down rabbit holes of whatever topic he's interested in at any given point. Sign in to your Collider account There's a good reason—or plenty of them, rather—why the thriller genre has remained one of cinema's most popular and prolific throughout the entire history of the art form. These are, after all, precisely the kinds of stories that movie-goers tend to crave: Sky-high stakes, endless amounts of suspense, shocking twists, and no shortage of satisfying surprises are the order of the day when it comes to thriller movies. Whether we're talking about an animated cult classic like Perfect Blue, a gem from Hollywood's Golden Age like Psycho, or a groundbreaking modern masterpiece like Parasite, history's greatest thrillers are proof of why this genre has been as popular as it has for this long. These legendary films are pure excitement in cinematic form. 10 'Perfect Blue' (1997) Satoshi Kon passed away from pancreatic cancer at the tragically young age of 46, but the legacy he left behind consists of several of the greatest anime feature films the world has ever seen. Case in point: Perfect Blue, probably Kon's best, one of the greatest and most thought-provoking movies ever made about art, obsession, and trauma. It's one of those classic animated movies that have aged like fine wine, even though it deserves infinitely more love than it typically gets nowadays. It's visually stunning and mind-bendingly surreal in the sorts of ways that only Kon was capable of, delivering a story that's immensely entertaining without ever sacrificing the urgency of its themes and messages. 9 'Oldboy' (2003) Image via Show East Based on the Japanese manga Old Boy written by Garon Tsuchiya and illustrated by Nobuaki Minegishi, Oldboy is almost universally regarded as the magnum opus of South Korean legend Park Chan-wook. It is, however, not a film for the faint of heart. But as gut-wrenchingly brutal as it can be, its shock value always feels perfectly measured, never gratuitous. All in all, it's one of the best psychological thrillers of the last 99 years, one every bit as stylish as it is intense. It definitely may feel like a bit of an endurance test for some, but those with the stomach for a harrowing experience of this caliber are in for the ride of a lifetime. Tense, action-packed, and with one of the most jaw-dropping and twisty third acts in film history, it's proof that the thriller genre is alive and well in the 21st century. 8 'Memento' (2000) Image via Newmarket Films Before he was the Christopher Nolan, current king of Hollywood's blockbuster landscape, he was just Christopher Nolan, up-and-coming indie filmmaker. From very early on, though—his sophomore feature effort, to be more precise—, he showed that he was a voice to look out for going forward. Who, if not a filmmaking master, could have possibly made a movie as genius as Memento? The movie, probably still Nolan's best to date, is told in reverse chronological order, but at no point does that framing device feel like a cheap gimmick. Instead, it feels like the essential foundation of a gripping, psychologically intense story about the lengths that people will go to in order to give their lives meaning. In every way imaginable, Memento is one of those thriller movies without any flaws. 7 'Parasite' (2019) Image via NEON Bong Joon Ho is another South Korean auteur who has done nothing but further establish himself as one of the greatest filmmakers of his generation as his career has gone on. Never was that clearer than when he released Parasite, the first non-English-language movie ever to win the Best Picture Oscar, and easily one of the best films of the 21st century thus far. It's one of those psychological thrillers that are perfect from the first scene to the last, impeccably written and directed by Bong at the very top of his game. Though its social critiques aren't all that subtle, neither do they ever mean to be. Heavily satirical without ever feeling any less dramatic as a result, Parasite is a genre-juggling masterclass whose every element works in perfect conjunction with the others to create a perfect social drama. 6 'The Silence of the Lambs' (1991) Image via Orion Pictures Aside from being one of the greatest psychological thrillers of all time, The Silence of the Lambs is also one of the most universally acclaimed horror movies of all time. Anchored by Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins delivering two of the greatest acting performances of 1990s cinema, it's not only Jonathan Demme's magnum opus, but also one of the best and darkest films of the 20th century. The Silence of the Lambs has aged like fine wine, as it's still every bit as eerie and suspenseful today as it was back when it was a brand-new thriller. Masterfully shot and even more masterfully written, it's a lesson in how to do everything that a thriller should do absolutely flawlessly: constantly raise the stakes, constantly surprise the audience, and offer plenty of moments that ensure the audience never forget the film. Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best PictureIs Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one. 🪜Parasite 🌀Everything Everywhere ☢️Oppenheimer 🐦Birdman 🪙No Country for Old Men FIND YOUR FILM → 01 What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind. ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely. BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once. CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching. DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do. ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours? AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity. BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart. CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen. EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does. NEXT QUESTION → 03 How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means. AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different. BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride. CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence. DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety. ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more. NEXT QUESTION → 04 What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you? AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face. BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most. CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect. DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance. EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical. NEXT QUESTION → 05 What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like? AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it. BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess. CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after. DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later. EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is. NEXT QUESTION → 06 Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible. AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation. BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person. CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades. DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap. EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable. AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience. CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching. DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them. ESilence and restraint — what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could. NEXT QUESTION → 08 What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you. ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure. BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other. DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense. NEXT QUESTION → 09 How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately. AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal. BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. CEpic runtime doesn't scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours. DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout. EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action. NEXT QUESTION → 10 What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want? AUnsettled — like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about. BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto. CHumbled — like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming. DExhilarated — like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before. EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days. REVEAL MY FILM → The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works. ParasiteYou are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image. Everything Everywhere All at OnceYou want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about. OppenheimerYou are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort. BirdmanYou are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all. No Country for Old MenYou are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 5 'The Dark Knight' (2008) Image via Warner Bros. Pictures By the time 2008 rolled in, Christopher Nolan had already solidly established himself as one of the most exciting blockbuster filmmakers working in Hollywood, but it was The Dark Knight that offered him the crown. As exceptional as Batman Begins was, there's nothing quite like its sequel, which many still recognize as the best superhero and comic book movie ever made. At the very least, The Dark Knight is one of the most thrilling movies since 2000, a testament to Nolan's most effective sensibilities as an action and thriller director. Bolstered by Nolan's preference for practical effects, Heath Ledger's legendary performance as the Joker, and several of the most compelling action scenes and character moments of any superhero movie, it really is one of the greatest action blockbusters of all time. 4 'Heat' (1995) Image via Warner Bros. Michael Mann is widely regarded as one of the most important action and crime filmmakers of modern times, and there's really no question as to what his best work to date it: It has to be Heat, probably the greatest heist thriller ever made. But as fun as each second of its 170 minutes of runtime is, it's also one of the most wonderfully slow-burning and character-driven thriller masterpieces of the '90s, almost bordering on being arthouse-coded. Those with the patience for a heist film that has plenty of fun with its grand action sequences, but also knows when to slow down and let its story and characters breathe, are pretty much guaranteed to love the undeniable classic that is Heat. It features several of the best action scenes from any crime movie, including the most enthralling heist sequence in the history of Hollywood cinema, and it's nothing short of a must-see. 3 'Se7en' (1995) Image via New Line Cinema There are those who could claim that David Fincher is the current king of the thriller genre, and looking at masterpieces like Se7en, it would be difficult to disagree with them. It's a thriller so dark and borderline terrifying that there are those who would even say it counts as a horror movie. Regardless of whether it does or doesn't, one thing is certain: It's one of the greatest Hollywood films of the 1990s. It's also definitely Fincher's best-ever thriller movie, as well as the bleakest and most cynical film ever to make over $300 million dollars at the box office. Fatalistic though it may be, Se7en is so impeccably directed, so powerfully acted, and so effectively suspenseful that it's no wonder it was as financially successful as it was back in the day. 2 'Psycho' (1960) Image via Paramount Pictures To this day, several decades after his death, Alfred Hitchcock is still the Master of Suspense. No director understood the thriller genre quite as well as he did, and even the most superficial look at his illustrious filmography is irrefutable proof of that fact. Such a superficial look will likely lead to what's his most popular movie, Psycho, and it just so happens that it may also genuinely be his best work. Part psychological thriller, part Golden-Age Hollywood horror flick, Psycho is undeniably one of the most enthralling thrillers that the United States have ever produced. From the perfection of Anthony Perkins' legendary performance to the mastery with which Hitchcock subverts expectations at every turn, Psycho is undeniably one of the best psychological thriller movies of all time. 1 'High and Low' (1963) Image via Toho Akira Kurosawa was undoubtedly the greatest Japanese filmmaker that's ever lived, and there are some cinephiles who would go so far as to call him the best movie director in history. His body of work is filled to the brim with pretty-much-perfect masterpieces that prove his quality beyond a shadow of a doubt, and though he's best-known for his work in the samurai genre, one of his greatest films is not a period piece at all. Instead, it's the crime masterpiece titled High and Low. It's one of the most perfect crime movies of the 20th century, a masterclass in how to make a thriller where the stakes keep escalating as the narrative goes on. The narrative is essentially divided into three stages: A highly theatrical single-location thriller, followed by a traditional police procedural, followed by a gritty social thriller with elements of surrealism. Airtight writing, genre- and tone-juggling direction, and an unrelenting pace are all essential to High and Low being one of the best motion pictures of all time.