Done right, a thriller can make for one of the most engaging moviegoing experiences imaginable. But done wrong, they can be incredibly dull and even boring. And it’s easy to tell the difference just from sitting in a theater with a packed audience and seeing if the tension is palpable. If viewers are on the edge of their seats, magic has been created.
The 2000s were a great time for thrillers, with everyone from the Coens to Martin Scorsese delivering captivating cinematic thrill-rides. Unfortunately, as the Hollywood studio system got set in its ways, the decade also brought some lazily made thrillers that failed to, well, thrill.
Best: The Departed (2006)
When awards season came around and Martin Scorsese was being showered with trophies for his work on The Departed, he joked that it was the first movie he ever made with a plot after years of working on character studies and slice-of-life pieces. For his first ever plot, he picked the most complex one he could find, a remake of Hong Kong's Infernal Affairs.
The Departed is a two-way cat-and-mouse thriller as a mob informant in the police (Matt Damon) and an undercover cop in the mob (Leonardo DiCaprio) both try to figure out each other’s identities.
Worst: Hannibal (2001)
In 1991, Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar with less than half an hour of screen time in The Silence of the Lambs, one of the greatest thrillers in cinema history, making an icon out of cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter.
Unfortunately, the sequel Hannibal, which hit theaters a decade later, didn’t manage to recapture an ounce of the suspense found in the original, despite the efforts of director Ridley Scott and legendary writers Steven Zaillian and David Mamet.
Best: Taken (2008)
This movie was so successful that it changed the trajectory of Liam Neeson’s entire career. He’d been a respected dramatic actor for years, but ever since Taken captivated audiences, he’s been a certified action star, pioneering the “geriaction” subgenre.
Everyone can root for Bryan Mills on quest to save his daughter from the Eastern European sex traffickers who abducted her during a trip to Paris, while the brisk pacing and bare-bones storytelling make this a timeless thriller for the ages.
Worst: Law Abiding Citizen (2009)
The simplicity of vigilante movies is usually their greatest asset. Film like Death Wish and Walking Tall establish simple goals, then satisfy audiences by achieving them in delightfully brutal fashion.
F. Gary Gray’s Law Abiding Citizen has a familiar setup, as a man decides to take the law into his own hands when his family is killed, but the script is entirely lacking in smart storytelling and the violence is just needlessly gruesome.
Best: Panic Room (2002)
David Fincher has always proudly worn Hitchcock on his sleeve as one of his formative filmmaking influences, but his most Hitchcockian film is Panic Room, harking back to the claustrophobic setting and subjective perspective of Rear Window.
Jodie Foster gives a compelling performance as a single mother, with a young Kristen Stewart providing strong support as her daughter. When burglars break into their new house, they hole up in the panic room and try to alert the cops.
Worst: Eagle Eye (2008)
The spread of technology and increased levels of surveillance are a great basis for a thriller, but this mindless schlock-fest — starring Shia LaBeouf on the run from a mysterious woman using technology to spy on him — doesn’t live up to that potential.
It was initially conceived as an Asimov-inspired sci-fi story for Steven Spielberg to direct, but after he dropped out, Eagle Eye became distorted from that original vision into a lame techno-thriller.
Best: Oldboy (2003)
Not for the faint of heart, the second installment in Park Chan-wook’s “Vengeance Trilogy” packs a serious punch. In Oldboy, a man is released from imprisonment after 15 years and given five days to learn who imprisoned him in the first place or his romantic interest will die.
As the man goes on a violent rampage of bloody revenge, Oldboy becomes a movie about humanity’s darkest capabilities.
Worst: The Butterfly Effect (2004)
The concept of “the butterfly effect,” the idea that small changes to the past could have massive ramifications for the present, is a fascinating one. The Butterfly Effect stars Ashton Kutcher as a college student who uses his ability to travel through time to fix his past mistake and improve his loved ones’ lives.
Of course, all his changes have unintended consequences and his present keeps getting worse and worse. The movie is somewhat enjoyable, but not as smart as it needs to be.
Best: No Country For Old Men (2007)
Cormac McCarthy’s bleak writing style doesn't easily translate to film, but the Coen brothers perfectly captured the spirit of his literary masterpiece, No Country for Old Men in their 2007 adaptation, and won themselves a shelf-load of Academy Awards as a result.
The movie is anchored by three incredible performances: Josh Brolin as a regular guy caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, Tommy Lee Jones as a cop who can’t make sense of the senseless crimes taking place around him, and Javier Bardem as the chilling embodiment of violence.
Worst: Basic Instinct 2 (2006)
After the tremendous success of the first Basic Instinct movie, a sequel promptly entered development hell, eventually getting spat out at moviegoers in 2006. Basic Instinct 2 maintains what audiences liked about the first one — Sharon Stone and graphic nudity — but manages to have even less artistic merit.
It sometimes borders on so-bad-it’s-good, but those entertaining flickers are too few and far between for the movie to belong in the same league as Troll 2 or The Room.