Prime Members Get Instant Access to the Latest Movies, TV Shows and Amazon Originals. Thousands of Popular Movies & TV Shows, Discover the Newest Releases and Classics on Prime
Search results
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...
- 'The Departed' (2006) IMDb Rating: 8.5/10. A daring infiltration of South Boston’s Irish Mafia by sending an undercover officer is at the center of director Martin Scorsese’s The Departed.
- 'The Prestige' (2006) IMDb Rating: 8.5/10. Based on the eponymous 1995 novel by Christopher Priest, The Prestige follows the rivalry between two stage magicians, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale).
- 'Psycho' (1960) IMDb Rating: 8.5/10. Arguably Hitchcock's most iconic movie, Psycho revolves around an unfortunate encounter between a runaway embezzler, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), and a strange motel proprietor, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins).
- 'Léon: The Professional' (1994) IMDb Rating: 8.5/10. Director Luc Besson’s Léon: The Professional is centered on the unique relationship that develops between twelve-year-old Mathilda Lando (Natalie Portman), who loses her parents in a questionable DEA raid, and the titular hitman, who takes her under his wing.
Mar 27, 2024 · From Alfred Hitchcock classics like ‘Psycho’ to modern masterpieces like ‘Zodiac,’ Entertainment Weekly is counting down the 40 best thriller movies of all time, ranked.
- 30 'Marathon Man'
- 29 'The Chaser'
- 28 'Le Samouraï'
- 27 'Double Indemnity'
- 26 'Rear Window'
- 25 'Black Swan'
- 24 'Fatal Attraction'
- 23 'Straw Dogs'
- 22 'Blood Simple'
- 21 'The Conversation'
Director: John Schlesinger
With a dynamite screenplay coupled with excellent performances by Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier, Marathon Man is a movie that never lets up. It stands in contrast to other films from the 1970s that sometimes had slower pacing, with this movie about a man getting wrapped up in a bizarre and convoluted conspiracy likely to make you as breathless as running a real marathon. Some would argue that the genre is at its best when it's at its most stressful, and Marathon Man is indeed a nail-bit...
Director: Na Hong-jin
There have been plenty of great South Korean crime thrillers released in the 21st century so far, and The Chaser's would have to rank among the best of the lot. It follows a corrupt cop who discovers there may be a serial killer targeting prostitutes, and he sets out to try and find this murderer by any means necessary. The results aren't pretty, with The Chaser being an exceedingly dark, gritty, and oftentimes unpleasant movie that's nonetheless difficult to look away from, compelling as it...
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Being an assassin has never looked as cool as it's looked in Le Samouraï, it has to be said. While the film doesn't glamorize the life of its main character, or suggest his line of work is easy by any means, Le Samouraï is ridiculously stylish and just effortlessly suave, thanks to its deliberate pacing, visual aesthetic, and lead performance by Alain Delon. It was also one of the best films released in 1967, which itself was very much a cool and radical year for cinema, in many ways. It tell...
Director: Billy Wilder
It might be most classifiable as a movie within the film noir genre, but Double Indemnity is also excellent when judged as a thriller.It's about an insurance agent being targeted by a cunning femme fatale type of character, and seduced into helping her murder her husband for insurance money. Things go about as well as you'd expect them to (essentially, things end in disaster; it's a film noir tradition, after all). The thrill comes from watching things fall apart in an inevitable yet still so...
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
A classic Alfred Hitchcock movie that ranks as one of the best films released in 1954, Rear Windowis a highly inventive and ambitious mystery/thriller movie with a remarkably confined setting. It follows a man unable to leave his apartment, due to an injured leg, and as a strange hobby of sorts, he begins passing the time by spying on his various neighbors through their windows. It touches on voyeurism and, in turn, paranoia, given the main character begins to suspect that one of his neighbor...
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Darren Aronofsky specializes in making intensely psychological movies, and while most of them could probably be classified more as dramas than thrillers, Black Swan certainly feels like a psychological thriller. It arguably feels like a horror movie in parts, too (as various intense movies from Aronofsky tend to be), telling a fiercely intense story about a young ballerina getting very immersed in her role during a production of Swan Lake, with violent and alarming results. Black Swan is a st...
Director: Adrian Lyne
Fatal Attractionis a movie that has a reputation that precedes it. It's a quintessential 1980s thriller, telling the now familiar-sounding story about one man having an affair with a woman who turns out to be more than he bargained for, and the way his family life is affected when she decides to stalk/terrorize him after he moves on. Some elements date the movie, without a doubt, which can make it a little uncomfortable to watch today. It doesn't handle a delicate topic like mental health wit...
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Anyone familiar with the filmography of Sam Peckinpah probably won't be surprised by the direction Straw Dogsends up going, though it does stick out for being one of the director's few well-known non-Westerns (it's no less violent, though). The plot follows a couple who go to live in a small rural town; one that at first seems to offer a peaceful alternative to life in a busy city. However, things don't go to plan. Certain townspeople harass the new couple, with things escalating from verbal...
Director: The Coen Brothers
Blood Simple is an early Coen Brothers movie, and shows that even when the duo were young, they were already capable of greatness. It's a neo-noir/thriller that's straightforward (befitting the title) but quite remarkable, depicting a chaotic series of events that unfold when a man finds out his wife is having an affair. While the Coen Brothers would come to be fairly well-known for their comedies, Blood Simple keeps things mostly grim and serious, though with some dark humor present. It migh...
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
It's remarkable to think that Francis Ford Coppola released The Godfather: Part II (which won Best Picture at the Oscars) and The Conversation(which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes) in the same year. The former is ultimately more well-known, but the latter certainly shouldn't be overlooked, and can count itself as one of many compelling films that the legendary director made throughout his lengthy filmmaking career. The Conversation is a quiet and low-key thriller, but it works wonders, centerin...
- Jeremy Urquhart
- The Godfather (1972) - Director: Francis Ford Coppola. - Metascore: 100. - Runtime: 175 minutes. "The Godfather" overflows with great actors at the top of their game: Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Talia Shire, John Cazale, and so many more.
- Rear Window (1954) - Director: Alfred Hitchcock. - Metascore: 100. - Runtime: 112 minutes. This iconic film stars James Stewart as an injured photojournalist who passes his time on the mend watching his neighbors through binoculars and composing narratives of their lives.
- Vertigo (1958) - Director: Alfred Hitchcock. - Metascore: 100. - Runtime: 128 minutes. In "Vertigo," a former cop (James Stewart) who has retired early due to acute vertigo and acrophobia, is given another chance when a man named Gavin (Tom Helmore) hires him to trail his wife Madeleine (Kim Novak) and discover the source of her strange behavior.
- Notorious (1946) - Director: Orson Welles. - Metascore: 100. - Runtime: 101 minutes. "Notorious"—which Roger Ebert deemed the "most elegant expression" of Hitchcock's visual style—tells the story of a young American woman (Ingrid Bergman) who is recruited as a spy by the handsome American secret agent Devlin (Cary Grant).
Maniacs, assassins, spies, ghosts, and more. From John Doe to Tom Ripley to Roger Thornhill, here are the best movie thrillers of all time.
People also ask
What are the best thriller movies ever made?
Is a thriller a good movie?
What is a thriller movie?
Are thriller movies a must-see genre?
What is the best horror movie ever made?
Are thrillers a nebulous genre?
Sep 12, 2024 · A good thriller taps into the foundational appeal of all storytelling: our need to know what happens next. Here are the best the genre has to offer.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/blow-out-john-travolta-032224-7d7fd306f6f84d7f94f2215d3bb5d37b.jpg&q=is%20%27thriller%27%20a%20good%20movie%20ever%20made%20movie&ck=FAC6B51567DC333F0A65848D4930C8AC&idpp=rc&idpview=singleimage&form=rc2idp "is 'thriller' a good movie ever made movie1")
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/gaslight-032224-cd10cd6d6533431788af0135c245cfa4.jpg&q=is%20%27thriller%27%20a%20good%20movie%20ever%20made%20movie&ck=49546B6C9469D90125647FDDCEEEB9C1&idpp=rc&idpview=singleimage&form=rc2idp "is 'thriller' a good movie ever made movie2")
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/the-third-man-032224-46c479d4c6ae41b29be40ae93faacec5.jpg&q=is%20%27thriller%27%20a%20good%20movie%20ever%20made%20movie&ck=E7765197B0F0B5204D4ED230EFA8FF82&idpp=rc&idpview=singleimage&form=rc2idp "is 'thriller' a good movie ever made movie3")
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/a-man-escaped-032224-b2d2d169bc01496583cc07cfa1c70482.jpg&q=is%20%27thriller%27%20a%20good%20movie%20ever%20made%20movie&ck=F23A8F94D3CDA71C14BA1465D632A832&idpp=rc&idpview=singleimage&form=rc2idp "is 'thriller' a good movie ever made movie4")
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/Psycho-Perfect-Blue-and-Zodiac-032224-5a00c2da1daa4584bb1c6b9da6dffa4e.jpg&q=is%20%27thriller%27%20a%20good%20movie%20ever%20made%20movie&ck=ED208E83D854135C51DE124E4DA0BACB&idpp=rc&idpview=singleimage&form=rc2idp "is 'thriller' a good movie ever made movie5")
