Thriller

Mystery Road

An Aboriginal cop returns to his hometown to solve the brutal murder of a teenage girl, uncovering a web of corruption and a growing body count, in Ivan Sen's acclaimed Australian riff on the Western genre.

Crime
Drama
2013
121 mins
Ivan Sen

Crimes of Passion

Ken Russell's second Hollywood film is a deliriously excessive erotic thriller with Kathleen Turner as an imperilled prostitute.

Thriller
1984
107 mins
Ken Russell

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

Dario Argento's hugely influential thriller, about a murder witness who becomes amateur detective, added sex and style to the murder-mystery and kick-started Italy's 'giallo' genre.

Thriller
1969
97 mins
Dario Argento

The Third Man

Carol Reed's timeless classic, one of the greatest British films, lavishly marries a perfect script, an unforgettable theme tune and the star power of Orson Welles.

Thriller
1949
105 mins
Carol Reed

L'Assassino

Elio Petri’s dazzling first feature stars Marcello Mastroianni as dandyish antiques dealer arrested for murder by a Kafkaesque police force.

Crime
1961
98 mins
Elio Petri

Wake in Fright

In this classic, broiling Australian thriller, an exasperated schoolteacher finds himself stranded in the dusty outback town of Bundanyabba, where the growing isolation and unhinged locals begin to eat away at his sanity.

Drama
1971
109 mins
Ted Kotcheff

Female Human Animal

Josh Appignanesi's art-world psycho-thriller blends reality and fiction to delirious effect, in its tale of an exhibition curator pursued by a mysterious figure.

Drama-documentary
2018
74 mins
Josh Appignanesi

White of the Eye

British visionary Donald Cammell directs this kaleidoscopic, highly stylised thriller about a series of brutal murders in an isolated desert community.

Thriller
1987
111 mins
Donald Cammell

Trans-Europ-Express

This stylish, cult 1966 erotic thriller stars French New Wave icons Jean-Louis Trintigant and Marie-France Pisier.

Thriller
1966
95 mins
Alain Robbe-Grillet

M

Peter Lorre is unforgettable as the compulsive child murderer on the run from both police and criminals alike, in Fritz Lang’s seminal crime film.

Crime
Thriller
1931
111 mins
Fritz Lang

The Headless Woman

A woman is plagued by paranoia after she hits something – or someone – with her car in Lucrecia Martel’s acclaimed psychological thriller.

Drama
2008
86 mins
Lucrecia Martel

Mother

Cult Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s (The Host, Snowpiercer) fourth feature is a startlingly original and thrilling account of the limits of maternal devotion.

Thriller
2009
129 mins
Bong Joon-ho

King of New York

Christopher Walken is the dogged drug-lord determined to keep his empire together, in Abel Ferrara's brutally gritty crime thriller.

Crime
Thriller
1990
103 mins
Abel Ferrara

Audition

Takashi Miike burst to international prominence with this deeply disturbing tale of a deadly young woman who turns the tables on her middle-aged suitor.

Horror
1999
115 mins
Takashi Miike

Capricorn One

Stunning sci-fi thriller steeped in post-Watergate paranoia, following a hoaxed mission to Mars and a trio of astronauts' desperate flight for survival, with Elliott Gould, James Brolin and O.J. Simpson.

Science Fiction
1977
123 mins
Peter Hyams

For Queen and Country

Denzel Washington stars as a British paratrooper who returns to the London council estate of his youth, only to find his wartime service counts for nothing.

Drama
1989
101 mins
Martin Stellman

Chameleon

Two women are terrorised by an unwanted stranger in this impeccably-styled bourgeois nightmare.

Drama
Thriller
2016
82 mins
Jorge Riquelme Serrano

Flight to Berlin

Chris Petit’s sparse moody thriller begins with a mysterious death.

Drama
1984
90 mins
Chris Petit

Gomorrah

Matteo Garrone's unnervingly authentic Naples crime drama won the Grand Prix at Cannes before inspiring a hit TV series.

Crime
2008
132 mins
Matteo Garrone

The Hunt

Mads Mikkelsen stars in a distressing examination of a false indictment, and the collective hysteria that ensues, in this electrifying drama from Festen director Thomas Vinterberg.

Drama
2012
111 mins
Thomas Vinterberg

A Hijacking

Tobias Lindholm’s thriller refreshes the genre as a ship's cook, Somali pirates and a CEO negotiate an endgame.

Thriller
2012
103 mins
Tobias Lindholm

The 39 Steps

Sublime and suspenseful version of the popular John Buchan spy thriller from the master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock.

Thriller
1935
83 mins
Alfred Hitchcock

Secret Agent

Long before James Bond, Alfred Hitchcock tried the story of a suave spy.

Thriller
War
1936
83 mins
Alfred Hitchcock

The Man Who Knew Too Much

An English couple are drawn into espionage when their daughter is kidnapped.

Thriller
1934
72 mins
Alfred Hitchcock

The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog

Ivor Novello plays a strange lodger who may be behind a number of Jack the Ripper-style killings in Alfred Hitchcock’s silent thriller.

Crime
1926
91 mins
Alfred Hitchcock

Sabotage

A cinema owner works with a ring of terrorists, with drastic effects on his wife and her brother, in Hitchcock’s London-set thriller.

Thriller
1936
77 mins
Alfred Hitchcock

The Lady Vanishes

An old woman disappears mysteriously on a busy train in Hitchcock’s delightful classic.

Thriller
1938
96 mins
Alfred Hitchcock

Night Moves

Jesse Eisenberg and Dakota Fanning star in a taut political thriller about radical environmentalists planning to commit an act of eco-terrorism.

Thriller
2013
113 mins
Kelly Reichardt

Frozen River

Nominated for two Oscars (Best Actress – Melissa Leo - and Best Original Screenplay) Frozen River is a riveting thriller that raises questions about the borders we construct, between countries, communities and each other.

Crime
2008
93 mins
Courtney Hunt

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

John Cassavetes’s uncompromising character study of a gangster, with Ben Gazzara as the small-time club owner whose life begins to spin out of control.

Gangster
1976
109 mins
John Cassavetes

High and Low

Akira Kurosawa’s procedural crime masterpiece, from Ed McBain’s gritty novel, follows an industrialist who faces an agonising choice as a result of a botched kidnapping by ruthless criminals.

Crime
Police drama
1963
143 mins
Akira Kurosawa

The Ipcress File

The coolest spy of all – Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer – makes his brilliant big screen debut in this landmark British spy thriller.

Crime
Thriller
1965
108 mins
Sidney J. Furie

Hell Is a City

Punchy crime thriller with a realist streak as Stanley Baker pursues a fugitive through the streets of Manchester.

Police drama
1960
96 mins
Val Guest

Peeping Tom

Michael Powell’s dark, disturbing, once controversial tale of a shy camera technician who films women as he kills them is now rightly deemed a classic.

Drama
1960
101 mins
Michael Powell

It Always Rains on Sunday

Austerity noir: Ealing's downbeat but compelling East End thriller.

Drama
1947
88 mins
Robert Hamer

Tiger Bay

A young girl witnesses a murder, befriending the killer and shielding him from the police.

Police drama
Thriller
1959
113 mins
J. Lee Thompson

Face

Robert Carlyle and Ray Winstone are members of a criminal gang that tears itself apart after a heist goes wrong, in Antonia Bird’s stylish thriller.

Crime
Gangster
1997
101 mins
Antonia Bird

Melancholia

Cerebral thriller about a German art critic who reconnects with his radical past when he agrees to be involved with an assassination attempt.

Thriller
1989
87 mins
Andi Engel

Man in Fear

Luke Treadaway stars as a paranoid man convinced he is destined to be the victim of a conceptual art 'accident'.

Thriller
2011
11 mins
Will Jewell

Victim

This thought-provoking classic stars Dirk Bogarde as a homosexual lawyer who risks his career to hunt down a blackmailer.

Crime
Drama
1961
100 mins
Basil Dearden

Odd Man Out

Wounded during a robbery, a gunman attempts to escape police in Carol Reed's moody Irish thriller, starring James Mason.

Crime
1947
116 mins
Carol Reed

Assault

Violent British crime film about a murderer on the loose near a girls’ school, starring Suzy Kendall and Lesley Anne-Down.

Detective drama
Thriller
1971
87 mins
Sidney Hayers

The American Friend

Acclaimed director Wim Wenders, with the help of Dennis Hopper, transforms Patricia Highsmith's novel 'Ripley's Game' into a gripping European noir.

Film noir
1978
121 mins
Wim Wenders

Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler Part 1 (The Great Gambler - A Picture of the Time)

Fritz Lang's legendary epic of silent cinema, following the diabolical crimes of the titular arch-villain, is a masterpiece of conspiracy, fear and paranoia.

Crime
1922
155 mins
Fritz Lang

Dr Mabuse, the Gambler Part 2 (Inferno, A Game for the People of Our Age)

The second part of Fritz Lang's legendary epic of silent cinema, following the diabolical crimes of the titular arch-villain.

Crime
1922
115 mins
Fritz Lang

The Ninth Configuration

From the writer of The Exorcist, one of the ultimate cult film experiences: William Peter Blatty's unclassifiable blend of unhinged psychological thriller and anarchic comedy.

Horror
Thriller
1979
118 mins
William Peter Blatty

Get the latest from BFI Player