The 25 Best Thrillers of the 21st Century (So Far)

The late, great Anton Yelchin stars as the bass player of a punk band who, ill-advisedly, take a gig at an isolated biker bar where — to their surprise — the clientele are all white supremacists. To their credit, their first song selection is “Nazi Punks F**k Off” by The Dead Kennedies. But if you think that sounds awkward, wait till you see what happens afterwards. The band witnesses a murder in the green room and gets trapped there, fending off Nazi punks using everything they have at their disposal (which ain’t much).

Jeremy Saulnier’s nail-bitingly intense Green Room has a gripping set-up, gruesome violence, and the soul of a punk band. The Ain’t Rights may be young and have everything to live for, but seriously, to hell with these Nazi bastards. And those bastards, led by a quietly terrifying Sir Patrick Stewart, are equal parts formidable and laughable. Saulnier resists the urge to let Green Room ever feel like a straightforward genre exercise, filling his film with memorable characters and violence so visceral that it ceases to be fun, and instead comes across as truly, painfully threatening.

IPark Chan-wook’s adaptation of Sarah Waters’ novel Fingersmith transports the action to Korea, where a young con artist gets enlisted to work for a wealthy Japanese heiress, and convince her to marry a handsome scam artist. But soon enough, Sook-Hee (Tae-ri Kim) finds herself falling for Lady Hideko (Min-hee Kim), and wanting to keep her all for herself.

And if you think you know where this is going, you don’t know The Handmaiden. Park Chan-wook’s stunning photographed, sensual and absolutely astonishing historical thriller reveals one shocking truth after another, tearing the lid off of misogynistic cruelty and the evils of the male gaze, while pitting each remarkable character against the others in a desperate fight for freedom. Unpredictable and absolutely captivating, The Handmaiden is a masterpiece.

Thrillers can be funny too, and not many thrillers are as funny as Paul Feig’s stylish, sexy and self-aware A Simple Favor. The film stars Anna Kendrick as Stephanie Smothers, a wholesome “mommy blogger” who befriends Emily Nelson, a well-dressed, frequently soused socialite played by Blake Lively. When Emily asks Stephanie for “a simple favor,” an emergency babysitting job for her son, Stephanie is eager to please. But when Emily vanishes without a trace, all Stephanie’s got is an extra kid, Emily’s hunky husband, and a mystery that desperately needs solving.

A Simple Favor is a wickedly clever mystery, with funny, smart, suburban thrills. And if all the film had was its brilliant, self-aware dialogue (“Are you try to Diabolique me?!” would make any thriller fan guffaw) it would be one of the most entertaining thrillers of the century. But hidden just behind its masterfully comic performances and clever story is an exceptionally subversive tale of jealousy, possessiveness, and unexpected sexual kink. The humor is just a way to deliver a disturbing message about the ugly underpinnings of the most seemingly benign aspects of society, the internet, parenthood, you name it. And it all comes out the way the best revelations do: in a graveyard, with martinis.

Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here has the plot of a thriller, but absolutely no interest in pandering to the audience’s sense of conventional entertainment. Joaquin Phoenix plays Joe, a psychologically tortured and suicidal man who makes his living rescuing missing children. When his latest job takes him into the wretched world of sex trafficking, and into the crosshairs of a wealthy and influential monster of a man, the job eventually turns deeply personal, and violence ensues.

Joe knows violence, but neither he nor Ramsay revel in it. Violence, physical and psychological, is cruelty, and You Were Never Really Here understands that, to the point where after Joe kills a murderer, he lays down with him and holds his hand while he dies. The world is dark enough already, and that sensitivity only makes this thriller unique and fascinating. Indeed, it transforms what could have been a formulaic premise into bold treatise on despair, about a hero who’s seen so much horror that death might legitimately feel like a blessing. The finale is impossibly insightful and incredibly shocking.

John Cho plays a single father whose teenaged daughter goes missing in Searching, and like any halfway decent father he spends all his time trying to find her. But this is the 21st century, and the search begins online, where his investigation turns up totally unexpected revelations about what his daughter has been doing, who she’s been talking to, how many friends she has (or rather, doesn’t), and why she’s got a bank account full of money.

The story of Searching would be compelling on its own, but director Aneesh Chaganty also chooses to convey the entire narrative on his protagonist’s computers and smartphones, highlighting just how much we all live on the internet and just how many secrets can be mined from exploring social media, photographs, and contacts of the people we love, and the people we thought we knew. Impossibly clever narrative tricks are employed to keep the gimmick fresh throughout, and in the end, they make this ripping thriller seem practically poignant, as it reflects the increasingly shifting way human beings communicate, relate, and learn.