These Psychological Thrillers Will Mess With Your Mind
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Sometimes all you want to watch is a really scary film—and a classic horror just won't do. That's when you need to turn on a psychological thriller, namely one that will mess with your mind.
Alfred Hitchcock, who directed many classic psychological thrillers like Rear Window, Vertigo, and Pyscho, once said, "Fear isn't so difficult to understand. After all, weren't we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It's just a different wolf. This fright complex is rooted in every individual." He understood fear—and used it to dramatic effect in his movies, but he isn't the only director who can give you nightmares.
From Hitchcock classics like Rear Window, to modern mind-benders like the work of Ari Aster or Bong Joon-ho, we’ve compiled the 21 most heart-pounding psychological thrillers you can stream online right now.
Psycho
Any list of best psychological thrillers has to begin with Alfred Hitchcock's classic Pyscho, about Marion (Janet Leigh), a secretary who goes on the run, checking into a motel run by a shy, creepy man (Anthony Perkins) and his mother.
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Parasite
Bong Joon-ho's Parasite won Best Picture at the Oscars in 2020, and cemented its status as a modern classic. The film focuses on two families: the wealthy Parks and the struggling Kims. The Kims scheme to all get employed by the Parks, and then things begin to take a turn for the worse.
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The Talented Mr. Ripley
Adapted from the classic Patricia Highsmith novel, this masterful thriller follows a chameleonic conman named Tom Ripley (Matt Damon), whose obsession with a wealthy playboy and his wife (Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow) spirals into darkness. Directed by the late Anthony Minghella, The Talented Mr. Ripley weaves a hypnotic tale of violence and loneliness in 1950s Italy.
Plus, a brand-new Netflix adaptation is now streaming, starring Andrew Scott, Dakota Fanning, and Johnny Flynn.
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Gone Girl
When a beautiful young wife (Rosamund Pike) goes missing on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, suspicion immediately falls on her husband (Ben Affleck). Based on the genre-redefining novel by Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl is a subversive, merciless deconstruction of romantic tropes, and a gripping thriller about the lies and facades that often sustain relationships.
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Leave the World Behind
Based on Rumaan Alamn's novel of the same name, Leave the World Behind begins when a family of four goes on an impromptu weekend getaway. Soon, the vacation home owners show up, saying that there's a blackout and they didn't know where else to turn. It's an apocalyptic psychological thriller that begins with the very real question of what would happen if we lost WiFi and all other modern technology.
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Taxi Driver
This Martin Scorsese film follows Travis (Robert De Niro), a mentally unstable veteran who takes a job as a taxi driver to help deal with his insomnia. However, what he witnesses in New York City at night fuels his violent tendencies.
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Rebecca
This new adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Gothic novel is the tale of Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer), a wealthy aristocrat, and his new wife (Lily James). After a brief courtship, they marry and move to his home, Manderley, but the new Mrs. de Winter begins to uncover details how his first wife, Rebecca, died under mysterious circumstances.
The 1940 version directed by Alfred Hitchcock is also available to stream online.
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Whiplash
Playing like a dark mirror image to every inspirational teacher-student movie you've ever seen, this electrifying drama focuses on the toxic relationship between a driven young drummer (Miles Teller) and his sadistic instructor (J.K. Simmons). Written and directed by Damien Chazelle, Whiplash is a dizzying and thrilling thriller that shows how easily ambition can become addiction.
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The Sixth Sense
Even if you haven’t seen The Sixth Sense, you may be familiar with a famous quote from one of the film’s lead characters, Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment): “I see dead people.” Sear’s strange claims lead to intervention from psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), but through their meetings, Crowe discovers more about himself than he could’ve ever imagined.
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Midsommar
Ari Aster’s folk-horror/psychological-thriller, Midsommar, is the kind of film that haunts your dreams (and, lets be honest, waking hours), for days to come. The movie tells the story of a group of friends who travel to Sweden for a fabled mid-summer festival. Things start off peaceful, though one of the travelers (Florence Pugh) shows apprehension from the start. The idyllic getaway devolves into a horribly violent nightmare, involving the ancient rituals of a pagan cult.
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Gaslight
Ever wonder where the term "gaslight" comes from? It's this 1944 psychological thriller, directed by George Cukor and starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Bergman plays Paula, who marries Gregory (Boyer) after a whirlwind romance. They move into her dead aunt's townhouse, and Gregory starts to convince Paula she's going insane.
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Don't Worry Darling
While the press tour drama may have overshadowed the rollout of Don't Worry Darling in 2022, the film is a very compelling psychological thriller. Starring Florence Pugh and Harry Styles, the film follows a couple living in an idyllic company town—but all is not what it seems.
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Gerald's Game
Many of Stephen King’s novels have been turned into movies, but Gerald’s Game is one we’ve turned to time and time again for some bone-chilling thrills. A husband and wife, Jessie (Carla Gugino) and Gerald (Bruce Greenwood) decide to spend quality time at a remote lake house in Alabama. The two quickly head to the bedroom, where Gerald restrains Jessie to the bed with handcuffs in an attempt to spice things up. Jessie becomes uncomfortable and asks Gerald to remove them, but within minutes Gerald has a heart attack and dies, leaving Jessie to fend for herself while handcuffed to the bed. Jessie begins hallucinating, and eventually spirals into nights of pure horror.
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Mother!
Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! is a psychological horror that tests the bounds of viewers' imaginations, while drawing from the Bible and Victorian literature to tell a tale of a woman, “Mother” (Jennifer Lawrence), who is a housewife to a writer (Javier Bardem), known as “Him.” When uninvited guests begin entering their home without Mother’s approval or acceptance, their existence becomes tested, eventually spiraling out of control.
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Oldboy
This thriller, directed by Park Chan-wook, follows Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) who is kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years. When he's finally released, he finds himself still tangled up in a conspiracy—and he's desperate to understand why he was kidnapped.
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Fight Club
The first rule of Fight Club? Don't talk about Fight Club. David Fincher's 1999 film is a classic psychological thriller for a reason, starring Edward Norton as an insomniac who starts an underground fight club with a strange soap maker (Brad Pitt).
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Phone Booth
If an elevated heart rate is your mark of success when watching a psychological thriller, then Phone Booth should be added to your watch list ASAP. When Stu Shepard (Colin Farrell) picks up a ringing phone in a booth in the heart of New York, an anonymous caller threatens to shoot him if he hangs up or disobeys his rules. What happens from there is a cinematic rollercoaster: he must reveal the many hidden truths of his life—or watch it come to an end.
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Get Out
Jordan Peele’s debut psychological thriller tells the story of a man whose meeting-the-parents experience goes horribly, horribly wrong. Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), heads upstate to meet his girlfriend’s (Allison Williams) parents, but their overwhelming kindness soon reveals itself to be a complete disguise.
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Uncut Gems
From the moment Uncut Gems begins, viewers become fully immersed in the anxiety-ridden story of a New York City jeweler (Adam Sandler) with a gambling problem and a lot of debts—all of which come crashing down on him at once. While this psychological thriller doesn't involve traditional “horror,” the movie makes you feel like you’re really in it, keeping you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.
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Se7en
In this David Fincher thriller, detectives (Morgan Freeman and BRad Pitt) try to stop a serial killer, who is committing murders based on the seven deadly sins.
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Black Swan
An incredibly passionate ballerina named Nina (Natalie Portman) is chosen to replace the prima ballerina as the White Swan in “Swan Lake.” But shortly after she is given the good news, Nina is met with competition from a new ballerina, Lily, (Mila Kunis) who is set to dance as the Black Swan. The initial rivalry takes a dark turn, and the relationship between Nina and Lily devolves.
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Shutter Island
When U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is tapped to investigate the disappearance of a murderer at Ashecliffe Hospital—an insane asylum located on a remote island—he joins forces with investigator Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) to push the investigation forward. Over time Daniels discovers that he must look inward to make it out alive.
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Disturbia
When a troubled teenager (Shia LaBeouf) on house arrest becomes transfixed by a neighbor he suspects is a serial killer, he uses his free time at home to obsess over what may be happening across the street. But spying on the neighbors proves to be nothing but trouble.
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Rear Window
Rear Window is said to have inspired Disturbia (above), and the Hitchcock classic follows a news photographer, Jeff (James Stewart), who believes he witnessed a murderer. Confined to a wheelchair, Jeff spends countless hours watching his neighbors, which only further proves his theory that a murder has taken place.
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Nope
In Jordan Peele's third film, siblings Otis Jr. and Emerald (Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer) try to find evidence of a UFO on their horse ranch. Don't google the twists and turns of the film, because Nope is best enjoyed knowing nothing about the plot...
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Saltburn
Emerald Fennell's Saltburn is the story of Oliver (Barry Keoghan), an Oxford student who falls into the orbit of the wealthy Felix (Jacob Elordi). Soon, Felix invites Oliver back to his family's estate (Saltburn) for the summer. "There’s something so enduring and seductive about the British country house subgenre," Fennell told T&C. "The containment, the unattainable beauty, the impossibly opaque rules, the sense of watching and being watched, the fear of being discovered as an interloper—all make a country house such a rich and gothic place to tell a story."
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The Shining
Another thriller based on a Stephen King novel, The Shining tells the story of a passionate writer (Jack Nicholson) who decides to take his family along with him to the Overlook Hotel, where he assumes the role of caretaker in an attempt to cure his writer’s block. It’s not long before Jack discovers the dark history of the hotel, as his son, Danny, develops disturbing visions that may tell some terrifying truths.
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Vertigo
Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film follows a San Francisco detective (James Stewart) who retired after he developed an extreme fear of heights, accompanied by severe vertigo. He starts a second career as a private investigator, and is hired to follow a friend's wife (Kim Novak) after her husband thinks she's behaving oddly.
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Enemy
Adapted from The Double by José Saramago, Denis Villeneuve's The Enemy stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Adam Bell, a college history professor, who discovers he has a doppelg?nger, an actor named Anthony Claire (also played by Gyllenhaal). Adam quickly becomes obsessed with Anthony, and what results is a surrealist psychological thriller that will definitely keep you up all night.
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The Killer
One day, a professional assassin who goes by the Killer (Michael Fassbender) has a hit go wrong. The miss sets him out on an international vendetta, and makes him slowly lose his mind.
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Silence Of The Lambs
If you enjoy the jump-out-at-you kind of horror, but still want the depth of a psychological thriller, Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs is for you. The film adaptation of Thomas Harris’s novel of the same name tells the story of a young FBI trainee, Clarice (Jodie Foster), who is in pursuit of a serial killer named Buffalo Bill. In order to get a firm grasp of the inner workings of the murderer, she seeks advice from another (imprisoned) serial killer, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, with unexpectedly dire consequences.
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