My Top 10: Thriller Films

A great thriller really stimulates peoples emotions. It is all about suspense, anticipation, uncertainty, shock, anxiety and even terror. The best way to realise that you have watched a thriller is to see if you ended up having an adrenaline-rush or maybe there are scratch marks on objects near by to where you watched a thriller.

The phrase 'on the edge of your seat' is commonly used with thrillers and there are plenty that do that. I feel that my top 10 are all terrific and will have you behind the sofa, especially when some of them were directed by the 'master of the suspense', Alfred Hitchcock. If you do not know who he is, read up on him, and watch his best work which is nearly everything he has done.

Here is my top 10:

10) Battle Royale - Quentin Tarantino's favorite film. That pretty says it all for this Japanese film about a world where the Japanese government forces a class of young students to kill each other under the 'Battle Royale' act.

It's pretty tense and frightening, and you will be amazed by it. Well, unless you've seen The Hunger Games.



9) Black Swan - One of the best films of 2010 which managed to get an Oscar for Best Actress by Natalie Portman. She is pretty spectacular in this surprisingly creepy tale of a ballet dancer who becomes the lead of their new show, Swan Lake.

As she struggles to become the Black Swan, the tension gets to her and her paranoia goes into overdrive and we are now in the middle of a pretty scary ride.

8) Phonebooth - Was not expecting this one. Remember seeing the trailer and instantly thought it would o.k and nothing more.

But it is SO much more then what I imagined. All the performances are amazing, especially the man on the phone to Colin Farrell. See if you can recognise who it is. Also for a film to be directed Joe Schumacher who ruined the Batman franchise, have very little budget, and virtually have one set location, it just shows you don't always need a mega budget to be successful.

7) Shutter Island - A bit out of Martin Scorsese's comfort zone, but he still manages to create terrific films. Starring Leonardi DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, it has two detectives investigating the disappearance of a patient on an island that has a hospital for the insane.

It is a pretty big twist, and has a really powerful final line that changes your views of the film completely.


6) Silence Of The Lambs - Best Picture winner of 1992 and a winner of four more Oscars, this a terrific tale consisting of the dangerous Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins in probably his most recognisable and successful role.

I only recently saw this, and thought I was expecting everything that I was about to watch. But I was quite wrong, there is another story within this that just adds to the overall tension.


5) The Birds - Another Hitchcock classic that had me hating birds for quite a while after seeing what was probably his final hit.
Quite a strange story of a wealthy woman pursuing a possible boyfriend who comes into a town where the birds suddenly start attacking this town as soon as she arrives.

It also containing one of the most tense scenes in film history in my opinion.

4) Vertigo - Seen by the American Film Institute as the greatest film of all time. A lot of the younger generation will probably think it's boring, but if you appreciate the works of Alfred Hitchcock, you will love his 1958 classic.

Starring the incredible James Stewart and Kim Novak, this is full of mystery, thrills, romance, quite a few surprising twists and a pretty ground-breaking camera trick that wowed audiences.

3) Gravity - Just seen this at the cinemas and was completely amazed by it. Director Alfonso Cuaron has created not only the most realistic space film, but a pretty impressive visual masterpiece. You feel like you are constantly in peril, and the ground-breaking cinematography really puts you in the characters situation. It really shows you how dangerous space truly is and how worse it could get in the near future.


2) Jaws - Steven Spielberg's most successful film and became one of the highest-grossing films ever made.

A pretty simple story about a shark that terrorizes a popular coastal town.

But the ground-breaking style of film-making and the terrifying theme music made it something much bigger then anyone could have imagined.

1) V For Vendetta - Not only the best film in this genre in my opinon. But I have ranked this the best movie I've ever seen in my top 100 films of all-time list.

The action never lets up from the very beginning, the performances are terrific, it's dramatic, it's action packed and it is very emotional. It works for me every time.