The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The Psycho-thriller has been used as an umbrella term in older genre studies to refer to any horror film where the menace is not supernatural or science-fictional and is mundane in nature. The menace of such shows are commonly Psychos and Serial Killers, although not all psycho-thrillers necessarily feature psychos.
Psycho-thrillers can be murder mysteries – stories that build up to the revelation of who among a group is the killer – where there is more emphasis on the murders and stalking. Others take the structure of a Gothic novel where a protagonist may be at the centre of a series of happenings that unveil in terms of elaborate deception and gaslight schemes, where there is an emphasis on the suspense and horror elements.
The psycho-thriller began on screen in the 1920s as part of the Old Dark House thriller. Its greatest flourishing was in the 1960s with the success of Psycho (1960), which saw a number of copycat films about killers with gender-conflicted issues. Many of the copies draw on the earlier French classic Les Diaboliques (1955) in their creation of elaborate (frequently improbably contrived) plots involving schemes to kill, defraud or drive the protagonist insane. A unique subset of these were the Italian Giallo thrillers that offered up psycho-thrillers plots with an emphasis on extravagant visuals, sado-sexual eroticism and ultra-violent despatches.
The 1980s brought a series of thrillers about female stalkers with Fatal Attraction (1987) and several other works with people having their homes and workplaces invaded by disturbed individuals. In the 1990s, Basic Instinct (1992) brought the psycho-sexual thriller where there was much emphasis on eroticism and usually a desirable but psychopathic Femme Fatale at the centre.
Since the mid-2000s, the psycho-thriller has largely died away as a genre in theatrically-released films, although is still alive and well in numerous thrillers made for cable tv.
Forgotten Canadian film about a series of murders around a former funeral home that has been converted into a guest house. Released at the height of the slasher cycle but this comes more in the vein of Psycho
One of the psycho-thrillers made by he great and underrated Curtis Harrington during the 60s/70s. The film draws much from Les Diaboliques, right down to casting its leading lady. Harrington delivers suspense with an expert hand
The most obscure among the classic horror titles produced by Val Lewton – a beautifully stark and haunted piece about a man trapped at sea aboard a ship with a murderous captain
Dario Argento makes a disappointing return to the giallo thriller where he made his name. With Argento’s characteristic murder set-pieces having been toned down, the results are nothing special
Blumhouse thriller about an old school friend who inserts himself into the lives of a successful couple and proceeds to stalk them. This produces several effective twists but ultimately feels too mannered
A modest and reasonably effective psycho-thriller about a brother and sister who are adopted after the death of their parents only to find their step-parents have sinister intent
A sequel to The Glass House, this time with different cast or orphaned kids and different evil step-parents. This has the bland feel of a tv movie
This feels like a post-Silence of the Lambs thriller with Amanda Seyfried as an abduction survivor trying to find her missing sister. The film never rises above the cliches of the genre
Stephen King writes a screen adaptation of his own story about a wife who discovers that her husband is a serial killer. A strong premise that oddly misses most of the opportunities.
A variant on the evil child psycho-thriller, this seems set up specifically to allow Macaulay Culkin, the obnoxious cute kid from Home Alone, to trash his wholesome image
Essentially a classical music version of Phone Booth with Elijah Wood trapped at a grand piano in front of a concert audience by a sniper. The results prove quite gripping
A modest, little known horror film about two children who go to stay with their grandparents and finding that they are up to no good. Can be considered a precursor to M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit
Director Neil Jordan delves into the psycho-thriller with Chloe Grace Mortez being stalked by over-friendly senior Isabelle Huppert. Jordan makes an often contrived script into a gripping ride
One of the thrillers influenced by Fatal Attraction with Rebecca De Mornay giving an ice cold performance as a nanny who infiltrates a family seeking revenge for the death of her husband.
A remake of the 1992 film that starred Rebecca De Mornay as a psychopathic babysitter who enters a household seeking revenge. This updates the story for the 2020s, although is no less a conservative version than the original
BBC produced film with Helen Mirren as a housewife who believes her husband might be a serial killer. Despite promise, this never digs in like a good thriller should
Highly confused psycho-sexual thriller in which Jennifer Jason Leigh inherits a nightclub and begins to experience hallucinations after moving in. It is not at all clear what is going on
A psycho-thriller about birdwatching? Adapted from a stage play, this takes place on a single set consisting of only two men in a hut talking. The nuances of dialogue hold great subtlety and the film arrives at an effective twist ending
A variant on the sinister child’s invisible companion theme. A fine cast has been assembled but the film goes and kills itself with a lame twist ending
William Castle gained fame for his horror films made with a series of promotional gimmicks. With the success of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Castle made a blatant copy here, the first of his psycho-thrillers
Psycho-thriller that plays out like a creaky old deranged relative in the cellar film retooled as a teen romance until an absurd mid-film conceptual twist irredeemably kills the film off
Low-budget psycho-thriller about amnesia that tries hard in many areas but fails to generate enough contortion in terms of plot twists to make the show work
Spanish director Jose Larraz gained a small cult reputation for his work amidst the 1970s Anglo-horror cycle. This is a psycho film where a model is stalked after witnessing a murder
An airport psycho-thriller that feels like wannabe Gillian Flynn that has been mounted as a vehicle for the talent-handicapped Sydney Sweeney. The whole plot hangs on a believability stretching mid-film twist revelation
Histrionic thriller that reminds of the various copies of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? in which pregnant Gwyneth Paltrow has evil mother-in-law Jessica Lange trying to steal her baby
A British psycho-thriller that draws much from Steven Spielberg’s Duel with its story of a motorist trying to rescue his girlfriend after she is abducted by a never-seen truck driver
Robert Aldrich’s successor to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? with Bette Davis on the receiving end this time. This is arguably a superior film with a tightly contorted psycho-thriller plot and a decaying Southern setting
Kevin Williamson’s follow-up to Scream. There is not quite the same witty game-playing but this is still an above-average slasher film with a reasonable cast and more-than-adequate suspense generated
Widely ridiculed psycho-thriller starring Lindsay Lohan at the height of her tabloid headline phase and giving a zero effort performance as twins. Quite what is going on in the confused screenplay is anybody’s guess
Gimmick master William Castle turns to making a psycho-thriller about two teenage girls making prank calls and uttering the title phrase – only to inadvertently call a man who has just killed his wife
TV movie remake of a 1960s psycho-thriller about two girls making prank calls and uttering the title phrase – only to inadvertently call a killer. The premise makes a lot more sense updated to the 80s
The sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer. This misses the playful humour and twists of Kevin Williamson’s script and becomes no more than a routine slasher movie
John Cusack leads a star cast line-up in what appears to be a slasher where a group of people gathered at a motel are being killed by someone among their number. Big conceptual twists then ensue
A New Zealand-made film about a crime writer joining a party tramping through the bush as the group starts to be killed off by one among their number
This is sold with the appealing idea of someone slaughtering their way through a bitchy teen clique. However, the film on show is far tamer than anything that it is promises to be
Christopher Nolan’s second film, an English-language remake of a Norwegian thriller. The action is relocated to Alaska and gets the addition of Robin Williams as a serial killer but is far less effective than the original
British psycho-thriller that is a little too laidback to work but does eventually put some effective twists on its audience
Another variant on the evil child theme, this suffers from far too mannered an approach where you keep waiting for it to pull back and sink its teeth into something shocking
Teens on a road trip play a practical joke using an old CB radio but prank a psychopathic truck driver. A film where director John Dahl delivers the goods with considerable style
Produced by Guillermo Del Toro, this Spanish film is an extremely good work about a blind woman stalked by a killer, featuring a script of sharp twists and grippingly suspenseful directorial set-pieces
A psycho-thriller in the vein of Fatal Attraction with Kari Wuhrer stalking best friend Farrah Forke insisting they are meant to be together as a lesbian couple
Quite good British tv mini-series psycho-thriller in which calculating Hermione Norris sneaks her way in and takes over the home of Julie Graham stealing her husband and gaslighting her
Fine Australian psycho-thriller about a couple on the run from an accidental murder. This comes with sharp twists and ambiguities and a great sense of humour
A home invasion thriller starring Olivia de Havilland as a wheelchair-ridden woman who is brutalised and tormented after three hoodlums break in as she is trapped in an elevator cage during a power cut
Witty psycho-thriller with Talia Shire giving the performance of a lifetime as a psychopathic landlady who becomes fixated on a handsome border
Tightly wound British tv thriller where Jemma Redgrave has a big secret that her ex is a jailed serial killer and she now cannot be certain if her son or fiance is responsible for a murder
A British thriller Eddie Redmayne stars in a about a mystery in a boys boarding school involving murder and secrets from history leading to Knights Templar bloodlines
Gimmicky thriller about teen girls making prank phone calls who end up calling and then becoming the target of a serial killer
The last great film from Mario Bava, an exquisitely dreamy giallo/haunted house film that had the ignomity of being butchered and made into an Exorcist copy when it came out
A psycho-thriller with a difference where Jodie Foster plays a teenager with secrets who maintains the pretence of living with her late father while fending off a pedophile Martin Sheen
Taut, well-scripted psycho-thriller with William R. Moses as a man involved in the hunt for money appropriated by his late father
Giallo thriller from Lucio Fulci who gained a cult following in the 1980s for his gore-drenched films. This comes with more style than all of Fulci’s other unadulterated hackwork put together
Sound remake of the silent Alfred Hitchcock film, starring big man Laird Cregar as the new lodger that a family believe might be Jack the Ripper. Cregar gives a wonderfully melodramatic performance
The first of William Castle’s films set around outrageous promotional stunts – here he took an insurance policy out against audience members dying of fright. The film entirely belies its promise to scare an audience to death
One among the spate of 1960s psycho films with Stella Stevens dealing with her brother and sister, one of whom is a killer
The fourth film version of The Lodger with Jack Palance as a new tenant that a family believe might be Jack the Ripper This has neither the style or the melodrama that the previous versions did
One of the psycho-thrillers made by Hammer Films during the early 1960s. The absurdly contrived plot is blatantly borrowed from Les Diaboliques, although eventually produces passable tension
Strong and effective UK tv thriller where Stephen Tompkinson becomes obsessed with the girlfriend who went missing years earlier after he thinks he sees her again
An obscure Canadian-made thriller about an evil twin
One of the better copies of Basic Instinct with detective Ellen Barkin being tempted as she investigates a serial killer who is targeting women who were involved with a lesbian call girl
In his last ever produced screenplay, cult director Larry Cohen turns in a wonderfully playful script with Matthew Lillard as a screenwriting lecturer harassed by a killer only to find real-life doesn’t obey the same rules that screenplays do
From a Larry Cohen script, a side-splitting effort with Kevin Dillon as a psychopathic sperm donor who forcibly intrudes into the life of his baby’s mother
There was undeniable shock value watching 1960s sex symbol Diana Rigg cast as a venomous middle-aged woman with murder on her mind. While this BBC mini-series won awards, you feel that a 1960s Hammer psycho-thriller would have conducted it in half the time
Thriller with Jamie Lee Curtis as a psychopathic mother determined to get her boys back from her ex
A gripping directorial debut for Anthony Waller where a mute assistant on a film set in Moscow witnesses the shooting of a snuff film and is targeted by the Russian underworld
From Jeepers Creepers director Victor Salva, a gripping road movie thriller that owes somewhat to The Hitcher with a series of psychological games between Lance Henriksen and hitcher Eric Roberts where we can never be sure what is what
A tawdry erotic thriller copy of Basic Instinct where psychologist Rebecca De Mornay is drawn in to become involved with possible stalker Antonio Banderas
A stylishly directed Australian psycho-thriller about Jackie Kerin who inherits a retirement home and takes it over only to find that someone is killing the seniors
A giallo film with Anthony Steffen as an aristocrat who likes to pick up red-haired girls and kill them in the dungeon in his villa, who then becomes haunted by the ghost of his late wife
James Mason stars as a brooding composer who may be a murderer in this Gothic thriller
Gripping psychological thriller in which a niece suspects that Robert Montgomery who has charmed her aunt may be a psychopathic killer
Absolutely extraordinary directorial debut from actor Charles Laughton who transforms the story of an evil preacher (Robert Mitchum) pursuing two children into something approaching a stylised Expressionist fairytale
William Castle psycho-thriller (from a Robert Bloch script) that creates an incredibly haunted mood between dream and reality only to fall apart in an absurdly contrived ending
Called the only horror film Elizabeth Taylor ever appeared in (although one would dispute that somewhat), this feels like a Hammer psycho-thriller made with an A-list cast
An eerie work of film noir adapted from Cornell Woolrich in which Kevin McCarthy has a nightmare of killing a man and then wakes up and finds that details of his dream are starting to come true
One of several psycho-thrillers made by Hammer Films soon after the success of Psycho. Despite a plot that collapses under its contrivances, Freddie Francis shoots amazing cinematographic compositions
Gripping Danish thriller in which morgue attendant Nicholaj Coster Waldau finds a serial killer is playing games with him. Filled with paranoia, sharp twists and lashings of black humour
Ole Bornedal conducts an English-language remake of his Danish thriller Nattevagten. Rich in black comedy and dark twists, Bornedal demonstrates a mastery of Hitchcockian suspense
Nightwatch about the paranoia of a morgue attendant on the night shift was a festival hit. After 29 years, the principals reunite for a sequel
Psycho-thriller with Lisa Zane as a nurse seeking vengeance for the death of her father
Brian De Palma with Paul Schrader on script make a homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo with Cliff Robertson wandering Venice believing he has found the reincarnation of his late wife
This may well be the finest of Dario Argento’s giallo thrillers. Set around the production of an opera, this offers a series of murder set-pieces staged with an artistry that is as extraordinary as their sadism
Another variant on the evil child film featuring a maliciously psychopathic Isabelle Fuhrman
Thriller following several different people as they drive towards the title Texas town, while a serial killer calls into an all-night radio talkback
An abduction thriller that draws much influence from The Silence of the Lambs with Adrien Brody as a smooth criminal genius manipulating his interrogator
Tense and twist-filled thriller with Rachel Nichols trapped inside a carpark building by a psychopathic Wes Bentley
Thriller in which landlords Matthew Modine and Melanie Griffith’s lives are terrorised by psychopathic tenant Michael Keaton
One of the psycho-thrillers made at Hammer Films by Freddie Francis, starring Oliver Reed at his bad boy best. Francis’s visual compositions are absolutely extraordinary
Low-budget director Fred Olen Ray makes a softcore variation on Fatal Attraction with a vengeful Shauna O’Brien obtaining a job as the babysitter with the married man who jilted her
David Twohy has shown himself a standout screenwriter and director with the Riddick films but came unstuck with this effort where tourists in Hawaii come to believe their traveling companions are wanted killers. A film killed by far-fetched twists
Modest psycho-thriller with Tracy Nelson as a psychopathic babysitter who kills all in the way to romancing her employer
Okay psycho-thriller with Maxwell Caulfield as the tenant who moves into Linda Purl’s sleepout with the intention of taking revenge against her
Psycho-thriller with Shannon Sturges as a woman who marries Perry King with the intent of destroying his life
A British psycho-thriller in the Baby Jane mold with Lana Turner as a deranged mother determined to wreck son Ralph Bates’s marriage
Psycho-thriller with an unknown Lucille Ball as a showgirl used by Scotland Yard as a lure to trap a maniac killer
Another of Dario Argento’s giallo thrillers filled with all his trademark artily extravagant deaths. At the centre of the film is a teenage Jennifer Connelly who can psychically communicate with insects
The great John Huston, the director of The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen and other classics, directs a psychotherapy psycho-thriller. Alas the thriller essentials slip entirely through his hands
Bert I. Gordon, best known for his giant bug films of the 1950s, makes a torrid psycho-thriller about a young girl being cheated of her inheritance as people around her are being killed possibly by the ghost of her mother (Zsa Zsa Gabor)
The second of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films with Vincent Price. This feels too much as though Corman was trying to make another House of Usher, nevertheless it creates its own thunderously overwrought atmosphere, even if it has little to do with the Poe story
The third of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films, the only one without Vincent Price. Here Ray Milland develops a fearful obsession of being buried alive