The Most Gripping Thriller Movies: Can You Handle the Suspense?

Every good movie, every good story, has conflict. Some are straightforward, and others are mysterious—but no matter what, they drive the plot forward. When that drive becomes an uncomfortable page-turner, you find a lot of pressure with whatever the conflict is. That pressure kicks off great thrillers.

But how do thrillers keep that pressure on? How do audiences get locked in? With the best stories, it’s often due to two things: suspense and discomfort. 

In suspense, you are aware that things are happening just as the characters learn them. This is the backbone of a good murder mystery, every monster chase, every old-fashioned tragedy. That said, there’s also a need to make the audience uncomfortable. Thrillers need to get a reader or viewer to worry, to feel unsafe or unwell as they watch events unfold. The result of discomfort is seeking catharsis; everything should come to a close, good or bad. The screenplays below all make audiences beg for catharsis with their level of discomfort, keeping people in suspense the whole way.

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Scripts from this Article

The Silence of the Lambs

Parasite

Gone Girl

Se7en (Seven)

Get Out

Chinatown

Saltburn

Misery

North by Northwest

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Inglourious Basterds

Taxi Driver

Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d’une chute)

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

From the utter atmosphere to the impressive and necessary chemistry between the murderer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) and FBI trainee Clarice (Jodie Foster), everything about this movie creates a timeless and disturbing look into criminal minds. Meanwhile, suspense also comes from the impending sense of distress, knowing that another killer is still at large.

Parasite (2019)

As with any good story about a con, Parasite regularly presents the threat of the Kim family being discovered by their unsuspecting victims. But with every new development, tension rises, and the Kims soon cross boundaries that shock even themselves.

Gone Girl (2014)

The tension in Gone Girl comes mainly from a question looming over Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) when the press comes in: Did he cause his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) to disappear? Even when an answer comes, it only gives an audience more things to wonder and worry about.

Se7en (1995)

The kind of mystery thriller that helped set a tone for decades, Se7en still departed from the usual formula, using an ongoing murder investigation and the idea of sin as a means to explore philosophy and cast a pall over relatable struggles to exaggerate them past the accepted limit—forcing even more questions at the end for an observant audience. 

Get Out (2017)

Discomfort starts early and happens often in Jordan Peele’s homage to the social horror icon, Ira Levin. The oppressive weight of undue interracial pressures and microaggressions causes Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) to question his surroundings when visiting his girlfriend’s (Allison Williams) family and find himself caught amid increasingly disturbing discoveries.

Chinatown (1974)

Everything about Chinatown’s story and its visual language makes it a peak thriller: from J.J.’s heightened emotions and senses to the music and the mystery layered regularly within the main narrative. This is no slow burn, despite its roots in noir. Instead, Chinatown puts danger at the forefront and provides one of the most uncomfortable, tense revelations of any film to date.

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Saltburn (2023)

A lot is going on at Saltburn, and it all seems to escalate on the arrival of Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), whose friendship with a wealthy heir (Jacob Elordi) brings him into bizarre contact with high-society people and their incredibly imperfect world. How he uses that contact leaves audiences questioning what has really happened until the last ten minutes.

Misery (1990)

Old-fashioned trapped-and-kidnapped stories are good and fun, but none top Misery, where Kathy Bates lets her crazy shine as the ultimate Number One Fan. Where obsession and possession mean the same thing to Annie Wilkes (Bates), author Paul Sheldon (James Caan) is forced to protect himself and his art from Annie’s fevered whims—though not in equal measure.

North by Northwest (1959)

What happens when a spy thriller meets an unsuspecting businessman? You get a tension-packed ride like the one Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) gets when he is believed to be an agent and is now pursued by spies far and wide. And the usual jump-and-dodge reactions won’t always work, as Thornhill learns the hard way when he’s chased down from the skies by a would-be assassin in a crop duster. 

Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

Something is unsettling about the family in this movie. Despite their positioning as “normal,” their habits, expressions, and dialogue present them as actors in their version of a Greek tragedy. Yorgos Lanthimos’s roots show as his story hangs a ticking clock of actual death over the patriarch (Colin Farrell)—all to prove something poignant using a deep character flaw.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

The threat of death lingers when thinking of “floorboards,” “drei gläser,” or “buongiorno,” all evoking scenes where characters fear discovery by the Nazis occupying France and their local leader, Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). Landa adds even more pressure in the strudel scene, where he corners Shoshanna (Mélanie Laurent) with cream and milk, not too many scenes after we see him discovering her on a dairy farm—indicating to audiences that he knows more than he lets on.

Taxi Driver (1976)

Thrillers work because they make the reader turn the page—they put the watcher on the edge of their seat. For every moment you think you deserve relief, a thriller does the opposite for you. Taxi Driver is one fine example of the devilish sense of unrest that follows an entire character arc, as Travis Bickle’s urges to act violently fling him into a world of trouble.

Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

With this film’s change of pace comes the question: What are thrillers made of? The pressure of a crime that looms over Sandra (Sandra Hüller) grows every time more truth comes out. Though a slow burn, this psychological thriller weights on the audience, deftly using courtroom drama as a knife to finally cut the tension without providing straight answers to a few heavy questions that linger on.

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Whether it’s through impressive power dynamics in the acting or visuals that keep your blood pumping, thrillers are an art of maintain discomfort and suspense. By studying the scripts above, you can start to do the same—keeping your readers or viewers on their toes in ways that fit the genre of your story!

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