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.
Forget the grim and sadistic sequels that followed, this low-budget directorial debut from James Wan is a masterwork that conjures unbearable dread and tension in its study of characters forced to consider the horribly inconceivable
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
One of the defining classics of the genre, enormously influential, muchly imitated and parodied and possibly the most over-analysed film ever. Alfred Hitchcock expertly creates a creepy psycho-thriller in which he delights in lulling us and undermining expectation
Classic French psycho-thriller that is gripping in its psychological games before reaching an unforgettable twist ending. It has been twice remade and its plot much imitated by others but never bettered
The first film from Steven Spielberg, a tv movie that was released to theatres. Spielberg demonstrates style to spare in the gripping tale of a lone man on the road who finds himself stalked and followed by a murderous truck
Classic psycho-thriller with Robert Mitchum (who was never better) as an ex-con determined to take revenge against lawyer Gregory Peck. Stark and superbly sustained psychological suspense
A grippingly good Dutch thriller about a husband who becomes obsessed following the disappearance of his wife, while at the tame time we also get a parallel plot about the comically jolly serial killer responsible
Standout thriller with great scripting and performances where detective Al Pacino goes undercover in the dating scene to track a killer and comes up against a sultry Ellen Barkin
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
The film that formulated giallo cinema. Drawing inspiration from the success of Psycho, Mario Bava strips the psycho-thriller down to a parade of killings amid extravagantly arty surroundings and with a gorgeous colour palette
Gripping psychological thriller in which a niece suspects that Robert Montgomery who has charmed her aunt may be a psychopathic killer
One of the most darkly engrossing of Alfred Hitchcock’s thrillers, a classic about two strangers who make a murder pact after meeting on a train. Where any other director would have made a straight thriller, Hitchcock lingers on the mordant humour with unnerving effect
Great psycho-thriller with Terry O’Quinn as a man determined to marry into the perfect family who then slaughters the family when they fail to meet expectations. This digs into 80s Family Values with scabrous regard
Brian De Palma’s homage to Psycho. With De Palma at absolute peak form, this is dazzlingly stylish in its directorial set-pieces and comes with an often outrageous sexual pathology
Psycho-thriller from Otto Preminger about the disappearance of a young girl. As much for the twists and turns of the story, Preminger enjoys the portrayal of the darkly laced characters on the periphery
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
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
Psycho did not need a sequel but this does a scrupulous and exacting job, bringing back Anthony Perkins and paying a great deal of homage in many small details. The script comes with a considerable cleverness
A standout Australian psycho-thriller with Stacy Keach as a truck driver who believes he has seen a killer on the highway. Director Richard Franklin creates a series of astonishing set-pieces.
Alfred Hitchcock conducts an experiment in shooting a film in only eight takes. Based on the true-life Leopold-Lowe case where two gay students murdered a child as an exercise in moral superiority.
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
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
Dazzlingly stylish psycho-thriller from the underrated Donald Cammell with David Keith as a serial killer in a small Arizona town
Excellent psycho-thriller in which family man William R. Moses has his life taken over by an evil twin. Filled with a series of gripping unexpected twists and tensions
An exquisitely directed homage to giallo cinema – a fascinating work that has been stripped of almost all dialogue that takes place on a purely visual level of sensation and body movement
Alfred Hitchcock’s second-to-last film, a thriller with Jon Finch as a man on the run wrongly hunted as a serial killer. Hitchcock is on superb form and his dark humour perfectly tuned
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
Fine Curtis Hanson psycho-thriller in which dull yuppie James Spader befriends charismatic psychopath Rob Lowe and is drawn into a series of taunting psychological games
A surprisingly good road movie psycho-thriller focusing on various people travelling a desert highway where it becomes apparent that one of them is a serial killer
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
Robert Aldrich had massive success with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and later produced another Grand Dame Guignol film here with Geraldine Page and Ruth Gordon playing psychological games with one another
Psycho-thriller featuring a mad Bette Davis torturing her sister Joan Crawford. This held considerable shock at the time for seeing two former glamorous Hollywood stars beyond their glory days and going nuts. The film’s success inspired a whole fad of imitators
Fine studied Atom Egoyan thriller in which Elaine Cassidy, a teenage runaway from Ireland, is offered a home and befriended by Bob Hoskins who is a serial killer who targets runaways
James Franco’s younger brother Dave makes a very impressive directorial debut in a taut psycho-thriller of sharp adept twists about two couples whose weekend getaway is torn asunder by guilty secrets and a lurking psycho
Stunningly photographed yachtboard psycho-thriller with Nicole Kidman (in her first major film performance) and husband Sam Neill taken prisoner by a psycho Billy Zane. Produced by George Miller
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
Dark and gripping thriller from Denis Villeneuve about child abductions and a distraught parent who decides to torture a suspect to find their whereabouts.; Superbly well written thriller that raises some big contemporary issues about the legitimacy of torture. Both Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal give utterly convincing performances
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
Witty psycho-thriller with Talia Shire giving the performance of a lifetime as a psychopathic landlady who becomes fixated on a handsome border
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
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
Fine copy of Eyes of Laura Mars from Rockne S. O’Bannon in which clairvoyant Ally Sheedy gains the ability to see through the eyes of a serial killer
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
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 thriller that develops quite a degree of eerie suspense as Juliette Lewis moves into a new apartment and finds she is surrounded by some very strange neighbours
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
Obscure but worthwhile psycho-thriller with Richard Burton as a priest at a Catholic boy’s school dealing with a pupil playing taunting psychological games
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
Psycho-thriller that should have gotten better notice than it did. Katie Holmes plays an A-student at an Ivy League college who is stalked by a missing ex. Slick and coolly written, before arriving at an effective twist ending
Beautifully tightly wound thriller that takes place in a hotel room between a bank robber, his hostage and an escaped convict where nothing is what it seems
Considered one of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest films, this centres around Joseph Cotten as the favourite uncle who comes to town as his niece increasingly suspects that he may be a serial killer
A giallo thriller from Mario Bava that is often regarded as the prototype of the slasher film. The film borrows from Agatha Christie with people isolated on an island being killed amid Bava’s artily extravagant set-ups
A sharp, sophisticated thriller reminiscent of 1940s film noir with FBI agent Debra Winger tracking Theresa Russell as a femme fatale who marries and kills her husbands
David Hemmings stars in a well written thriller about a school teacher whose pupils confess to a murder and engage in a series of psychological games with him
Unexpectedly good film with Madolyn Smith as a woman living alone in a cabin in the woods and Malcolm McDowell as a caller where the two engage in a series of cat and mouse games where nothing is what it seems
Dario Argento’s third film as director sees him firmly in giallo thriller territory, delivering a series of extravagantly arty and sadistic set-pieces as James Franciscus tries to find clues to a killer’s identity
The English-language debut from South Korea’s Park Chan-wook is a supremely controlled film, more like a period arthouse film than drenched in the buckets of gore we expect of Park … Essentially a reworking of Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, a film that takes place all in smouldering tensions
Excellent thriller set around a roadside diner where Radha Mitchell becomes caught between parties hunting the other where seems to be who they appear
Overlooked psycho-thriller from Robert Fuest, director of the Dr Phibes films, about a girl whose friend goes missing while on a cycling tour through France. Fuest does an great job in making the French countryside into something sinister
Cited as the first film noir, this is a fascinating psycho film about a man tormented by guilt over convicting the wrong man
Smart and tightly wound psycho-thriller as psychotherapist Annabella Sciorra is wound into the murder of a patient
French psycho-thriller where Sergi Lopez gives an unnervingly charming performance as a psychopathic schoolfriend who inserts himself into Laurent Lucas’s life
One of Brian De Palma’s most stylish psycho-thrillers, featuring John Travolta as a sound engineer who becomes targeted after he accidentally records evidence of a political assassination
A Paul Schrader director psycho-sexual thriller set in a beautifully brooding Venice as a couple are befriended by menacing husband and wife Christopher Walken and Helen Mirren
Italy’s Dario Argento laid out the essence of the style – the arty murder set-pieces; flamboyant camerawork; the stylish music scores; and the psycho-thriller plots – in his first giallo film here
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
One among the spate of 1960s psycho films with Stella Stevens dealing with her brother and sister, one of whom is a killer
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
Usually a scriptwriter, Wesley Strick makes a reasonable directorial debut in this psycho-thriller about a white trash couple killing those in their way to getting back the daughter that was taken away from them
British tv movie variant on Fatal Attraction where a woman is stalked by her ex-husband Peter Davison
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
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
Taut, well-scripted psycho-thriller with William R. Moses as a man involved in the hunt for money appropriated by his late father
Reasonable psycho-thriller where landlord Lindsay Crouse takes on increasingly deranged tenant Zoe McClellan
Another giallo thriller from Dario Argento filled with all the wild bursts of imagination, bizarre plot twists and set-pieces we have come to expect from him
Nicely chilling film in which Maika Monroe believes that the person in the apartment opposite might be stalking her
Modest psycho-thriller about the psychological games between a psychopathic lighthouse keeper (a fine Tom Berenger) and his young assistant
Colin Minihan is an up and rising genre directors well worth keeping an eye. Here he makes a taut and effective survival story where a woman is hunted by her wife who turns psychopathic after a getaway to a cabin in the woods
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
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
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
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
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
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
UK. 1976. Crew Director/Producer – Pete Walker, Screenplay – David McGillivray, Photography – Peter Jessop, Music – Stanley Myers, Makeup Supervisor – George Partleton, Art Direction – Chris Burke. Production Company – Peter Walker (Heritage) Ltd. Cast Lynne Frederick (Samantha Gray Falconer/Jean Longmarsh), Jack Watson (William Haskin), John Leyton (Alan Falconer), Stephanie Beacham (Beth), John […]
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
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
Creepy UK tv mini-series with David Tennant as a psycho boyfriend obsessed with Kate Ashfield
1970s disaster movie with George Segal tracking Timothy Bottoms as a mad bomber blowing up rollercoasters
Tense psycho-thriller with Mia Farrow as a blind woman stalked through her home by a killer who has slaughtered her family
While the title suggests something of the classic The Hitcher, this reminds more of And Soon the Darkness with its image of tourists being stalked in the pastoral French countryside. Ravishingly photographed, creating a strong sense of dis-ease to arrive at a great twist ending
The second effort from the revived Hammer Films, which creates some reasonable creepy effect in the story of Hilary Swank dealing with Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a stalker landlord after moving into a dream apartment
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
An erotic thriller that stars Angie Everhart as a probation officer who is drawn into the web of her client Richard Grieco who may or may not be a serial killer
This tv movie was the first English-language remake of the classic French thriller Les Diaboliques. It follows the original closely and still works effectively, although being shot in colour rather than black-and-white lacks the stark tension. Sam Waterston gives a performance of amazing cruelty as the husband
Interestingly torrid 1960s psycho-thriller featuring a number of then unknown faces
Early Vincent Price film with he as a sinister psychiatrist terrorising a woman who witnessed him murdering his wife
Julia Roberts plays a wife fleeing from an abusive and psychopathic husband (a darkly urbane Patrick Bergin in a quite demoniac performance) in this psycho-thriller that was a considerable hit in its day. Slick and beautifully photographed, this sustains a commendable head of tension
One of the lesser known John Carpenter films, a tv movie in which Lauren Hutton is stalked by a neighbour spying on her from the apartment building opposite