The 2010s gave the movie world some truly astonishing entries into the psychological thriller genre and many of them conquered critics' yearly Best Of lists as well as the box office tallies. From explorations of cultural trends to examinations of psychotic minds, many of the movies struck a real chord with audiences all over the world.
If you like your thrills chilling, and your drama cerebral, then make sure to check out all of these mind-blowing psychological thriller movies from the past decade as they're all but guaranteed to stick in the mind days after the credits have finished rolling.
10 Enemy (2013)
Denis Villeneuve's loose adaptation of the novel "The Double" from Nobel Prize for Literature recipient José Saramago is a heady cocktail of literary detail and cinematic auteurism.
The story follows a history teacher who stumbles across his doppelgänger and his fascination with him leads both men on a dark journey of self-exploration that examines a number of captivating ideas, particularly the nature of watching and being watched as well as repressed desires and cyclical behavior.
9 Split (2016)
The typical big twist of M. Night Shyamalan's return to cinematic form may be fairly common knowledge now but, aside from still packing as much punch as it ever did, it was always just the cherry on top of an already perfect sundae.
James McAvoy's central performance(s) of a man grappling with a severe case of disassociative identity disorder is cuttingly astute in its depiction of modern-day delusions and Shyamalan's direction earns every comparison to Hitchcock that it's garnered.
8 Side Effects (2013)
The plot of Steven Soderbergh's paranoid conspiracy movie may look simple enough on the surface but has numerous layers to its mystery and its revelations.
Side Effects starts out as a cautionary tale of psychopharmacological excess but switches up its perspective and transforms into an almost-neo-noir crime thriller full of passion and duplicity.
7 Black Swan (2010)
Natalie Portman's Oscar-winning performance as a subdued ballet star, and her inner demon fighting for control, elevates Black Swan from being just another scary movie and into the realm of accomplished character study.
Her obsession with her work, and the dual nature of the Swan Queen, takes her on a dark journey into her own psyche.
6 Shutter Island (2010)
Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Denis Lehane's novel of the same name is anything but boilerplate or by the numbers and explores the most integral themes of the director's work through a dynamic–and strikingly modern–lens.
The plot begins with Leonardo DiCaprio's U.S. Marshal being sent to a secluded island asylum to investigate the disappearance of a patient but, as you would imagine, nothing is as it seems.
5 Gone Girl (2014)
David Fincher's journey into contemporary suburbia in Gillian Flynn's adaptation of her hit novel is no less twisted than a movie like Se7en and no less psychoanalytical than a movie like Fight Club.
Ben Affleck plays the disappointing husband of a brilliant woman who goes missing, leaving him as the prime suspect. Gone Girl may be driven by the twists in its plot but its focus is on its fascinatingly–and controversially–flawed characters.
4 Super Dark Times (2017)
Of all of the breakdowns of late 20th-century/early-21st century mindsets featured on this list, Super Dark Times contains one of the most hauntingly real.
Very likely the closest that audiences will ever get to seeing a live-action South Park movie and all of the horrific imagery that such an endeavor would produce, Kevin Phillips' coming-of-age psychodrama unravels the violence at the heart of adolesce and puts perhaps the final nail in the 'kids on bikes' genre's creative coffin.
3 Creepy (2016)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa's slow-burning domestic thriller sees a cop and his wife become steadily entranced by a hypnotically weird neighbor who's full of secrets.
Teruyuki Kagawa's performance as the titularly creepy neighbor, Nishino, transcends the procedural puzzle at the heart of the plot but Kurosawa's deft hand in capturing the indescribable energy of each scene is equally impressive.
2 Nightcrawler (2014)
Jake Gyllenhaal delivered another iconic performance in the genre after two stunning transformations in Enemy and Prisoners the previous year for Denis Villeneuve.
Nightcrawler goes far beyond most murky views of L.A. showbusiness as Gyllenhaal's ambitious sociopath finds a niche talent for recording violent material for TV news and no bottom to the industry's lust for blood.
1 Bluebeard (2017)
A down and out doctor's life begins to unravel even further after hearing what he believes to be the confession of a prolific serial killer coming from one of his patients in Lee Soo-youn's very belated second movie after her equally strange and underrated take on supernatural horror with The Uninvited.
Bluebeard slips so readily between fantasy and reality that the audience's idea of what's true or not within the story is fundamentally challenged right up until the final seconds.
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June 18, 2020 at 05:30AM
