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.
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
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
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
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
Michael Polish is one of the underrated American directors. Here an amnesiac Wes Bentley wakes up a prisoner of a wonderfully chilling Kate Bosworth who insists that she is his wife
A 1940s good/bad twin psycho-thriller with Albert Dekker as a psychopathic twin escaped from an asylum come back to claim the inheritance taken by his brother
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
Another pointless 1970s remake, in this case of the little-known British psycho-thriller about two tourists stalked in the French countryside (now transplanted to Argentina) with ho-hum results
Made in the aftermath of the 1974 Murder on the Orient Express, a star-studded Agatha Christie adaptation about a guests at a remote hotel being bumped off by someone among their number
Agatha Christie created the slasher film (sort of). This murder mystery (usually known by several less politically correct names) with a series of murders on an isolated island holds the kernel of what became the slasher template. This was the first film adaptation.
Psychological thriller where an uptight Colin Firth gets a handsomely charming roommate in Hart Bochner who proceeds to seduce everybody in the building with sinister intent
Psycho-thriller in which Daphne Zuniga is a woman accused of the murder of her psychiatrist and may or may not have been faking her mental illness
A formulaic copy of Fatal Attraction. The difference here is that the sexes have been reversed and the key parts cast with African-American actors
In a similar vein to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, this a work of Gothic madness as Carrie Snodgress tends cranky sadistic father Ray Milland in a big old house
Italian thriller that attained some censorship controversy when it came out. Minsy Farmer is an assistant coroner haunted and obsessed by the corpses she tends
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
This slick eroticised thriller was a huge success and made the career of Sharon Stone. The absurd plot bears no resemblance to human motivation but Paul Verhoeven makes an undeniably provocative and entertaining package
Sequel to Basic Instinct made fourteen years later. Sharon Stone vamps her way across the screen but the heated sexuality of the original has been watered down to a lukewarm whimper
Film about a series of sensationalistic murders at a circus. Producer Herman Cohen is clearly trying to replicate the success of his Horrors of the Black Museum. Joan Crawford chews the scenery in grand style as the circus owner
Very obscure but undeniably interesting film in which boarding house owner Ida Lupino hires Robert Ryan as a handyman before finding he is mentally disturbed and he makes her a prisoner
Italy’s Dario Argento is a cult director and the essence of the style he patented is laid out in his first giallo film here – the extravagantly arty murder set-pieces; the flamboyant camerawork; the stylish music scores; and the randomly sketched psycho-thriller plots
Antonio Banderas is a writer with a block, Jonathan Rhys Meyers a sinister stranger who moves in. Lots of tense psychological games between the two begin only for the film to almost immediately blow the premise
Award-winning Darren Aronofsky film about the rivalry between two ballerinas. At heart though, this is no more than a Brian De Palma psycho-thriller with pretensions
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
A unique thriller in which therapist Megan Gallagher becomes obsessed with blind patient Brad Johnson and keeps sneaking into his house, he unaware she is there. The film proceeds to place some fine twists on this
A Basic Instinct-inspired erotic thriller where Shannen Doherty gets into light bondage and attracts the attentions of a killer. A hypocritical film that is predicated on erotic tease then condemns it as disturbed behaviour
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
This blatantly copies the plot of Basic Instinct with detective David Bradley being seduced by bisexual blonde Anna Thomson who is also the suspect in a murder investigation
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
The second film from Kathryn Bigelow in which Jamie Lee Curtis is a rookie cop who is stalked by a creepily psychopathic Ron Silver. A beautifully stylish rendering of an increasingly improbable plot
Brian De Palma psycho-thriller that blatantly copies Hitchcock’s Vertigo with more than a few dashes of Rear Window. De Palma’s stylish moves collapse under the weight of an absurdly contrived plot
British tv mini-series reminiscent of And Soon the Darkness about an English couple who have their children abducted by sinister strangers while holidaying in France. From the director of Ginger Snaps
A cougar version of Fatal Attraction with Jennifer Lopez stalked by a teenage boy. On every level this invites ridicule, from J-Lo sleepwalking through her performance to a director who has never made a good film to a script detached from human psychology
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
A formulaic psycho-thriller from the usually worthwhile Brad Anderson with Halle Berry as a 911 call operator who answers a call from an abducted Abigail Breslin that feels like a cable thriller ended on the big screen
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
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
Martin Scorsese remakes the classic thriller with Robert De Niro playing the ex-con seeking revenge against his lawyer. Scorsese makes the morality more ambiguous and bring out tensions within the family, although the original works more starkly
Blatant Saw copy from Roland Joffe, a director better known for his arthouse works, from a script by cult director Larry Cohen. This starts stylishly before collapsing in a series of ridiculous twists
A disappointingly tame giallo thriller from Dario Argento about a poker-playing serial killer. Disappointingly, Argento has cut back on all his customary extravagantly arty and sadistic murder set-pieces
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
Modest film with Allison Lange being stalked by one of the men in her life. A film that vies between false jumps and moments of reasonable atmosphere
Psycho-thriller that borrows from Rashomon and leaves us unsure if Roxana Zal is a stalker or an innocent caught up in a murder plot by the married man she was having an affair with
Modestly effective indie psycho-thriller in which a couple develop a twisted psycho-sexual relationship with their unwelcome tenants
One among the series of German krimi films adapted from Edgar Wallace about a series of murders at a girls college. Shot with wonderfully lurid and colourful schemes
A blatant copy of Basic instinct with psychologist Bruce Willis getting involved with Jane March as his patients start being murdered. Much bare flesh but the film is killed by ludicrous plot twists
One of the films from Pete Walker, a greatly underrated director working in the British horror film in 1970s, in which pop star Jack Jones retreats to a country house only to be stalked by a psycho
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
A psycho-thriller that has gained a modest cult reputation. This comes seeped in Catholic guilt and director Alfred Sole delivers twists and turns with a fine hand. Featuring a young Brooke Shields in her film debut.
One of Hammer Films’ psycho-thrillers. Unlike the others, this is in colour where it loses much of the edgy tension the others had from shooting in b/w. The plot is slow to kick in but does produce some worthwhile twists
From the heyday of the giallo film, an extravagantly colourful psycho-thriller involving the killing of models by a killer with a black cat. This works all the tropes of the genre with considerable style
A copy of Fatal Attraction where Cary Elwes rents a room from a family only to find himself dealing with a psychopathic underage Alicia Silverstone determined to seduce/wreak vengeance
Smart and intelligent slasher film in which a campus game among students turns deadly as it appears that a killer whose identity they made up may be eliminating their numbers for real
A low-budget copy of the Vincent Price Edgar Allan Poe films with a patriarch seemingly returned from the dead and eliminating his relatives with a series of sensationalistic deaths
A formulaic evil child psycho-thriller where young Gabrielle Boni kills to protect her perfect adopted family. At least young Boni conjures an effective nastiness on screen
Psycho-thriller about a woman who has an abortion and then years later is married and pregnant when she is stalked by her ex-boyfriend demanding that the child is his. From an early Larry Cohen script
A passable psycho-sexual thriller that copies Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct with Andrea Roth caught between two men, one of who seems to be stalking her
A forgotten item from the Anglo-horror cycle in which brother and sister Christopher Lee and Joan Collins conspire to fake a series of hauntings in order to obtain an inheritance hidden in a mansion
Psycho-thriller with Gregory Hines as a radio talkback host dealing with a psychopathic caller who plays a series of taunting games with him
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
Oddball psycho-thriller from low-budget director Ron Ford about a series of killings and games of suspicion occurring in and around an off-season bed and breakfast
Erotic thriller where detective Shannon Tweed must go undercover as a call girl to find a killer eliminating girls at the agency. A blatant copy of Basic Instinct
A work of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? inspired Grand Dame Guignol with Agnes Moorehead as a Southern matriarch whose relatives are eliminating one another in the hunt for the family fortune
A police interrogation film that becomes a psycho-thriller as suspect Tim Roth turns the interrogation back on the detectives. Despite a strong cast, the film eventually strains plausibility
Another of the giallo psycho-thrillers from Dario Argento in his heyday as David Hemmings is witness to a murder and tries to find the killer. As with Argento’s films of this period, focused around a series of stylish and sadistic dispatches
The second film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, a psycho-thriller made for Roger Corman where Coppola shows the glimmerings of style that made him a major director a decade later
Dementia 13 was a routine psycho-thriller elevated by the hand of a young Francis Ford Coppola. This remake adds ghosts and a home invasion to the mundane original, but fails to come anywhere near Coppola’s style
Inferior sequel to the modest Devil in the Flesh which had Rose McGowan as a psychopathic schoolgirl. Recast with Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, this is now a routine slasher effort
One of the better copies of Fatal Attraction with Rose McGowan as school pupil with a crush on her teacher who proceeds to ruthlessly eliminate all in her way
Les Diaboliques is one of the great all-time thrillers. This remake, designed to highlight a post-Basic Instinct Sharon Stone, is an abortion that rewrites the classic twist ending for something upbeat
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
Pete Walker was one of the most underrated directors of the 1970s Anglo-horror wave. This was his first film. Compared to Walker’s later works, this is more a psycho-thriller that sits on the borderline of being horror
Shabbily made psycho-thriller where Piper Laurie tries to scam niece Olivia Hussey out of an insurance payout at the same time as Olivia starts to see visions of her dead husband
A hackneyed rehash of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window where Shia LaBeouf is a teenager on home detention spying with a pair of binoculars who realises that his neighbour might be a serial killer
A creaky old-fashioned psycho-thriller – one that draws heavily on Les Diaboliques and a contrived plot to drive somebody crazy – that came out the same year as Halloween and feels a whole world apart
George Cukor was one of the legendary Hollywood directors. Here he dives into film noir with Ronald Colman as a stage actor who psychopathically over-identifies with Shakespeare’s Othello
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
Thriller where Sylvester Stallone is a detective who goes into alcoholic rehab after his wife is killed by a serial killer only to realise that the killer is posing as one of the attendees
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
An obscure British thriller about murders in an apartment building of eccentric tenants. This turns into something really quite strange
An amnesiac girl returns home to a large estate in the English countryside only to be made prisoner by her family. Reminiscent of one of the 1960s Hammer psycho-thriller, this is well-made and builds out a fine sense of alienation
A strange thriller in the Basic Instinct-mold with surveillance expert Ewan McGregor obsessed with tracking serial killer Ashley Judd, while haunted by the imaginary companion of his daughter
Psycho-thriller where derelict Michael Sarrazin is taken home by Gayle Hunnicutt and gets wound up in a series of games between her and batty aunt Eleanor Parker
A giallo film from Umberto Lenzi, best known for creating the Italian cannibal film but Lenzi’s direction is crude and lacking style in comparison to the others working in this genre
Faye Dunaway is a fashion photographer who gains a psychic link into the mind of a killer. From a John Carpenter script but the thriller plotting is never up to the chic suggestiveness the film is given
Classic and highly influential psycho-thriller with Glenn Close as a deranged woman who stalks married man Michael Douglas after he has a fling with her. The film’s stature has been overstated and beneath the surface it holds a very conservative outlook on gender politics
An occasionally amusing Airplane-styled spoof of film noir and psycho-thrillers, including parodies of then recent films like Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction, among others
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
Psycho-thriller with William Petersen trying to protect daughter Reese Witherspoonan from being ensnared by a charming, psychopathic boyfriend played by an unknown Mark Wahlberg
One of the better psycho-thrillers made by Hammer Films where a deft script is aided by good performances including Peter Cushing and a wonderfully bitchy Joan Collins
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
Brian De Palma makes a return to the classic psycho-thrillers where he made his name, shouting virtuoso directorial flourish from the rafters and pulling off an amazingly contrived plot
One of the earlier films from British director Pete Walker, a whodunnit with a psycho stalking the cast of a theatrical rehearsal. Walker doesn’t stint on the flesh but proves tamer than usual when it comes to the blood
Film adaptation of Virginia C. Andrews’ popular Gothic potboiler about a brother and sister who develop an incestuous relationship after being locked in the attic by their mother. Andrews’ turgid melodrama gets the screen adaptation it deserves
TV movie remake of Virginia Andrews’ best-selling Gothic melodrama about children imprisoned in an attic. Even if more faithful to the book, this is no better than the 1987 film
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
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
A modest and well directed psycho-thriller from the Anglo-horror cycle with Susan George as a babysitter stalked by a deranged Ian Bannen
A psycho-thriller featuring Bo Derek as an agoraphobic wife dealing with the shock of seeing her husband murdered only to then find that his body has disappeared