Everyone loves a good thriller. Unfortunately, they’re hard to come by. Keeping an audience on the edge of their seat, hooked by the actions of a cast of characters and surprised by each successive plot twist, isn’t easy. And a lot of filmmakers use thrillers as an excuse to slack off.
With its shocking midpoint twist, pitch-perfect cinematography and editing, intense musical score, and riveting lead performances, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 masterpiece Psycho is arguably the pinnacle of the thriller genre. But in the more than half a century since it hit theaters, it’s faced some tough competition from other well-made thrillers.
10 Psycho Is The Best: Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates Is A Haunting Icon
When it comes to horror movie antagonists, there are few more iconic than Anthony Perkins’ chilling portrayal of Norman Bates in Psycho.
What makes him so memorable is that we’re led to believe he’s innocent and that his mother is the real killer, building to the haunting revelation that he killed his mom and now dresses up in her clothes to kill others.
9 Closest Contender: Rear Window
Alfred Hitchcock directed so many great thrillers that he ranks among his own competition. Of all the masterfully crafted thrillers to Hitchcock’s name (other than Psycho, of course), from Vertigo to Strangers on a Train, arguably the finest is Rear Window.
James Stewart plays as a photographer with a broken leg, confined to a wheelchair. Using his zoom lens, he spies on his neighbors out of boredom and becomes paranoid that one is a murderer. The suspense in this movie is top-notch.
8 Psycho Is The Best: It’s The Peak Of Hitchcockian Suspense
Alfred Hitchcock is often called the "Master of Suspense,” and he’s more than deserving of that nickname. Any post-Hitchcock filmmaker who’s helmed a suspenseful masterpiece has been heavily influenced by his work.
By the time he made Psycho in 1960, Hitchcock had perfected his craft. With every cut in just the right spot, Psycho is the peak of Hitchcockian suspense.
7 Closest Contender: No Country For Old Men
It’s hard to classify the genre of the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men — it could be a crime movie, a western, a film noir, even a horror movie — but it’s certainly thrilling. Josh Brolin stars as a hunter who finds a briefcase full of cash at the site of a drug deal gone south, then goes on the lam with it as he’s mercilessly pursued by a hitman.
Javier Bardem plays one of cinema’s all-time most terrifying villains as a callous embodiment of evil, while Tommy Lee Jones acts as a mouthpiece for the film’s poignant themes. The realistically baffling plot turns feed into the story’s examination of the consequences of senseless violence.
6 Psycho Is The Best: Bernard Herrmann’s Score Creates A Tense Atmosphere
Every filmmaker from David Lynch to George Lucas has attested to the importance of sound in film. It makes up 50% of the moviegoing experience, and music has a huge influence on the cinematic mood.
Bernard Herrmann’s score from Psycho is instantly recognizable. It’s the quintessential thriller score, creating an unbearably tense atmosphere.
5 Closest Contender: Memories Of Murder
Long before he directed the first non-English-language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, Bong Joon-ho helmed Memories of Murder, a haunting 2003 thriller about a serial killer investigation that reveals more about the investigators than the killer.
It has plenty of the director’s signature pitch-black humor and social commentary, critiquing the nationalism and modernization that Bong saw in South Korea.
4 Psycho Is The Best: It Subverts All The Audience’s Expectations
Hitchcock sets up Psycho as a crime picture, with Marion Crane embezzling money from her boss and going on the run, then turns it into a grisly horror movie somewhere in the middle. Every expectation that the audience has throughout the movie is subverted at some point.
Plot twists are tricky, and successfully pulling off just one is a huge cinematic accomplishment, but Psycho has two.
3 Closest Contender: The Night Of The Hunter
Robert Mitchum gives one of the creepiest performances of his career in The Night of the Hunter in the role of Reverend Harry Powell, a serial killer and self-proclaimed preacher who wants his widowed wife’s children to tell him where their deceased father stashed his fortune.
Charles Laughton’s background in theater led to meticulously staged scenes, while cinematographer Stanley Cortez brought unsettling expressionism to the composition.
2 Psycho Is The Best: The Midpoint Twist Is The Greatest In Film History
Even now, when everyone knows about the shower murder (because it’s one of the most famous scenes in film history), Psycho’s midpoint twist still has the ability to shock. And it was even more shocking back in 1960.
Janet Leigh was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood at the time. Her character was set up as the protagonist. And yet halfway through the movie, when she has a ton of unresolved story threads, she’s slashed to death in the shower.
1 Closest Contender: The Silence Of The Lambs
The first and so far only horror movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs adds a unique twist to the serial killer thriller. Jodie Foster stars as FBI rookie Clarice Starling, who’s sent to track down Buffalo Bill, a serial killer who’s been targeting women. She consults with another serial killer, Hannibal “the Cannibal” Lecter, as she investigates Bill’s crimes.
Thrillers rarely come as perfectly packaged as this. Demme’s masterpiece has grisly violence in spades, but its focus is on earnest character development and eye-opening social commentary about being a woman in a male-dominated field.
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