Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige came out in 2006, just one year after he began work on his incredible trilogy of Batman films began with Batman Begins. Its box office returns were good, but it has since felt rather buried underneath the huge-budget Nolan canon. At its heart, The Prestige is a thriller that makes you think, keeping you on the edge of your seat until the final moments when all you can muster up is: “Woah."
And aren’t they the best sort of films? After all, there's nothing better than a well-crafted thriller that keeps audiences guessing. Here is a list of thrillers that will keep audiences open-mouthed and guessing from the beginning to end. Nolan himself is highly likely to make a few appearances here. Don't worry; there won't be any spoilers here.
Shutter Island (2010)
Shutter Island saw Martin Scorsese, one of the greatest directors of all time, return to the thriller genre, accompanied by Mark Ruffalo and Leonardo DiCaprio. Those who are looking for shocking yet tragic plot twists need look no further from Shutter Island.
Without spoiling anything, viewers should be on the lookout for some clever moments of subtle foreshadowing that Scorsese masterfully planted here and there. This gives Shutter Island loads of replay value that few thrillers can boast.
The Sixth Sense (1999)
The Sixth Sense is arguably the one film that's most synonymous to the mere idea of the plot twist, since its director and writer M. Night Shyamalan practically built his entire career around the concept. Some would argue that Shyamalan only really made two good films before his career dissipated into a confusing mess of failures, and The Sixth Sense is one half of that beloved pair (more on the second half later).
Luckily, the supernaturally charged Bruce Willis-starring The Sixth Sense is undoubtedly the director's masterpiece. Even though almost everybody probably already knows it already, the movie still has one of the greatest twists in cinematic history.
Memento (2000)
Memento is the sort of film Christopher Nolan would have been making time and time again if he hadn’t impressed everyone so much that he can now be given some of the biggest budgets of all time.
This neo-noir thriller is told in a non-chronological way that seems very confusing throughout pretty much the entire film. That is until the very end, when Memento's two chronologies finally collide and make everything crystal clear with a powerful, game-changing twist.
Gone Girl (2014)
David Fincher is known for making films that keep his audiences guessing, and Gone Girl is no exception. He might not have come up with the premise for the film as he adapted it from a book of the same name, but the way he takes such an engrossing tale and makes it work as a cinematic thriller is simply impressive.
The film, which managed to make someone as polarizing as Ben Affleck look like a pretty good actor, is also notable in that the biggest twist actually comes halfway through and throws everything off the rails.
Saw (2004)
The Saw franchise is looked down upon and ignored by many as a non-serious, money-grabbing, story-free waste of time. Admittedly, the later films did begin to wander towards the sort of territory commonly associated with cheap slasher movies, but the franchise's first entry was a masterpiece of independent cinema.
As is tradition with every Saw film, the first hour and a half is a slow, tension-building set-up for a final two-minutes full of mind-boggling twists that make audiences desperate to find out the whole story. While the sequels' quality may be all over the map, the original Saw stands the test of time as an unpredictable and disturbing thriller.
The Perfection (2019)
The Perfection was criminally underrated when it was released directly onto Netflix last year. In fact, critical response was pretty average, leading many to guess that it wasn't really worth watching.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. Not only is it a gripping story led by two excellent lead actors (Alison Williams and Logan Browning), it also tales the Gone Girl approach and hits us with a game-changing twist half-way through.
The Usual Suspects (1995)
The Usual Suspects stars Kevin Spacey in arguably the film’s most important role and was directed by Bryan Singer. Due to the many terrible things about these two men that have since come to light, many potential viewers could be understandably averse to even giving the movie a chance.
However, it’s impossible not to be drawn in by the mystery surrounding Keyser Söze and the massacre that's depicted at the very beginning. Independent of its filmmakers controversies, though, The Usual Suspects remains a great thriller, but things reach a whole new level when Söze’s true identity is revealed in the final seconds.
Identity (2003)
Frequently overshadowed by some of the more famous films in the genre, Identity spends most of its runtime as a fairly standard slasher.
The issue here is that in order to eventually turn into a brilliant, mind-bending film by the time the twist comes around, the film has to spend about an hour being predictable and quite lifeless. Some may tune out during this dragging time but for those who can stick with it until the reveal, Identity will reveal itself to them as a misunderstood masterpiece.
Fight Club (1999)
Fight Club, another David Fincher classic, would probably be considered the ‘best’ film on this list. Despite this, at the time of its release, it was met with a lukewarm critical response and was even a box office failure. Time has since vindicated it, and Fight Club is rightfully heralded as one of the smartest thrillers ever made that still finds relevance today.
The relationship between Brad Pitt and Edward Norton is the star of the show, up until the famous twist turns everything (literally every single thing) audiences thought they knew about the story on its head.
Unbreakable (2000)
Unbreakable is the other of the two truly great films created by M. Night Shyamalan that was mentioned earlier. Granted, its twist doesn’t have the same level of fame as The Sixth Sense, but it’ll blow viewers' socks off and break some hearts even when they know what's coming.
What's more impressive is that Shyamalan managed to create a trilogy of films from Unbreakable without anyone noticing. Though the trilogy finale Glass was polarizing, many agree that Split's (the trilogy's second chapter) twist was genuinely great. The twist here was that the unassuming serial killer thriller starring James McAvoy was in fact a stealth sequel and a super-villain origin movie set in the world of Unbreakable, recontextualizing everything that happened before the credits rolled.