Thrillers are supposed to get the audience’s heart rate up, and this is easier when they’re beautifully crafted and filled with bold imagery. Many of the best thrillers are those with a unique sense of style, blazing a trail that doesn’t pay much attention to cinematic trends and traditions.
Watching a great thriller can feel like being lulled into a strange trance, as filmmakers present unsettling worlds that feel more dangerous and volatile than our own. With these types of movies, beautiful cinematography is vital to the substance as well as the style.
Under the Skinwas a box-office flop at the time, but it has since developed a cult following.Jonathan Glazer’s unsettling sci-fi thriller stars Scarlett Johansson as a mysterious alien who stalks the Scottish countryside in search of male victims, which she banishes to a strange, silent void.
Under the Skinis mostly left open to interpretation.
Under the Skin’s slow, methodical pace might be partly to blame for its poor commercial performance, but this is what makes it such a beguiling and unique sci-fi thriller. Glazer is able to gradually ratchet up the tension as he reveals a few more breadcrumbs about the mystery that drives the narrative. Still,Under the Skinis mostly left open to interpretation.
Driveis one ofRyan Gosling’s best movies, thanks partly to a subtle but powerful performance. Gosling plays a Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver for various Los Angeles criminals. Rather than leaning into the explosive, frantic pace of other thrillers, Nicolas Winding Refn takes a low-key approach that feels even more powerful.
Drivehas a pulse all of its own, using diegetic sound to create some deeply immersive action scenes. While the sound is often naturalistic, Refn allows himself a little indulgence with his stylistic visuals, and he colors Los Angeles in an ethereal light that lifts the romantic side of the story.
Natural Born Killerscame from a script by Quentin Tarantino, but Oliver Stone made plenty of changes to make the story his own. His directorial style also distinguishesNatural Born Killersfrom any thematically similar movies, with a frenzy of quick cuts, black-and-white shots and countless Dutch tilts. The horizon is almost never level in Stone’s nausea-inducing compositions.
Oliver Stone’s movies are usually controversial in some way, and his exploration of the link between real-life violence and media sensationalism has as many critics as admirers. WhileNatural Born Killersis too esoteric and experimental to appeal to everyone, its devoted fans will find a lot to love in Stone’s psychedelic imagery.
North by Northwestcame out three years beforeDr. Nokicked off theJames Bondfranchise, and it’s easy to see how it shapedBondand the entirety of the espionage franchise in the decades since. The helicopter scene inFrom Russia With Loveis one of the most obvious allusions toNorth by Northwest,but Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller also shaped the way that many on-screen secret agents carry themselves.
North by Northwestis one ofAlfred Hitchcock’s best movies, andarguably his most relentlessly entertaining. Cary Grant stars as a man thrown into a frantic cross-country chase after a case of mistaken identity. He gets a few chances to flex his comedy chops, but he mostly provides a charming, relatable presence which perfectly suits the stylish scenery.
Although he has only directed two feature-length films so far, Richard Ayoade has proven that he’s not afraid to blaze his own trail.The Doubleuses his rigid compositions and unsettling, uncanny dialogue to create a tense psychological thriller, as opposed toSubmarine’s quirky coming-of-age romance.
The Doubleis based on a lesser-known novella by Fyodor Dostoyevskywritten in 1846, and Ayoade’s vision captures a strange amalgamation of the old and the new. There’s an odd tension to every element ofThe Double,especially Jesse Eisenberg’s superb performance as a downtrodden office drone and his charismatic doppelgänger.
Gravitykicked off a minor boom forspace exploration moviesin the 2010s. Its immense box office success speaks to the quality of Alfonso Cuarón’s tight direction, but it also reflects howGravitywas seen as a must-watch cinematic spectacle, offering a short, exhilarating thrill ride for a huge audience.
Gravitymanages to squeeze into its brief runtime because the story is so simple and economical, and this gives Cuarón room to paint on a broad canvas. His vision of outer space is frequently breathtaking, and it goes beyond mere spectacle. He uses empty space to emphasize the danger and isolation of his space, raising the tension of his claustrophobic thriller without needing much dialogue or exposition.
The Third Manis a classic film noir thriller, and it hasn’t lost any of its potency over the years. The story follows a man who travels to Vienna after the Second World War to meet up with an old friend, only to discover upon arrival that his friend died recently. This sets up a fiendish mystery plot that quickly turns deadly.
The Third Manis one ofOrson Welles' best movies, as he steals the show from the moment he appears. Carol Reed gives him the introduction he deserves, and his performance is utterly captivating right up until the iconic chase scene in the sewers.The Third Man’s black-and-white compositions of a war-torn city are often striking, adding a melancholy beauty to a relentless thriller.
Many ofDavid Fincher’s moviesare violent, gritty crime thrillers, likeFight Club, Se7enandGone Girl,but they also have a quality of macabre beauty. Fincher often controls his camera with such poise that he’s able to track every minute movement of his subjects, creating an unbreakable bond between character and audience.
Zodiacis replete with glorious period details, as Fincher recreates San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s with meticulous care. This setting is the perfect playground for him to experiment with sweeping long shots and focused, intimate shots of his characters. All in all, this has the effect of dragging the audience into an engrossing murder mystery with no way out.
Eyes Wide Shutisn’t as popular as many of Stanley Kubrick’s highly-vaunted classics, but his fans ought to put some stock into the fact thathe selected it as his personal favorite shortly before his death.Eyes Wide Shutis just as mysterious and packed with confronting imagery asThe Shining, 2001: A Space OdysseyorBarry Lyndon.
Eyes Wide Shuttakes a diversion into a surreal occult world which provides a jolt of the unexpected.
AlthoughEyes Wide Shuttakes place in New York City in a contemporary setting, it takes a diversion into a surreal occult world which provides a jolt of the unexpected. Kubrick’s camera becomes a silent voyeur, taking in the hedonistic and the mundane with the same scrutiny, reflecting the narrative’s opaque logic.
