Thrillers are designed to hold your interest and elicit feelings of suspense and anticipation. You’ll often hear the term ‘nail-biting’ and ‘edge of your seat’ attributed to a thriller.
Movies categorized as thrillers can produce anxiety towards characters within the narrative. The protagonist will more than likely be in danger from the very beginning of the film.
Thrillers generally don’t include a lot of graphic violence unless specifically included with another genre.
n The Surfer (2024), Nicolas Cage returns home only to face spiritual and social exile from a brutal beachside cult. Set in a warped vision of Australia, the film unpacks toxic masculinity, ritualistic control, and identity collapse under the sun-bleached weight of the past.
“The Rule of Jenny Pen” is an unsettling psychological horror featuring Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow. In a New Zealand nursing home, a former judge must stop a twisted resident who uses a puppet to terrorize patients. Based on Owen Marshall’s short story, the film explores aging, justice, and institutional neglect with grimy cinematography and dread.
In Vitro (2024) review: This Australian sci-fi thriller explores biotechnology gone wrong in the outback. With only three cast members, directors Will Howarth and Tom McKeith create a claustrophobic psychological horror about livestock cloning that turns personal. Featuring excellent cinematography by Shelley Farthing-Dawe and distributed by Saban Films, this indie gem delivers genuine tension. A minimalist and intimate horror film.
In Dead Mail, a postal investigator’s routine case spirals into a deadly game of cat and mouse when he uncovers a musician’s desperate plea for help, revealing a twisted tale of obsession, manipulation, and creative imprisonment.
It Feeds review: Chad Archibald’s psychological horror explores trauma, family therapy, and supernatural predation. Ashley Greene leads this atmospheric Black Fawn Films thriller about entities that feed on human vulnerability and the dangerous territory between helping and enabling.
Phobia 2013: Jonathan MacKinlay is stuck at home, trapped not by walls, but by his own fear. Ever since the crash that took his wife, he’s lived the same lifeless routine, every day blending into the next. But lately, something feels…off. Dark visions creep in, nightmares that don’t fade when he wakes. Is his mind playing tricks on him, or is something truly sinister closing in?
