Alfred Hitchcock, considered the great master of cinematic thrillers, as we know him today, had two maxims. On the one hand, the director used to insist that any film related to the dark side of man – the most violent, twisted and manipulative – had to be simple. At the other extreme, that quality had to be based on having a Good story that had no problems being understood in its entirety.
However, for the British, an element of considerable interest was that everything related to his films showed the ability to be a psychological reflection. At least, a look at how the mind of a man capable of the worst horrors and the most depraved acts works. For Hitchcock, the horror was not in the fearsome actions — although several of his films explored murderers — but what was hidden behind apparently kind faces or even in the most peaceful behaviors.
The long shadow of the director left in his wake an appreciable change in thriller cinema. One that remains to this day. Even so, his views remain fundamental to understanding the genre, even in its most contemporary version. To prove it, we leave you 10 psychological thrillers that you can watch right now on Prime Video. From a heroic act that becomes a reflection on human beings and their circumstances, to a mysterious murder that has consequences on an entire family. The list covers several of the best titles of the genre and their importance in today’s cinematic world. A direct inheritance from the great works of Alfred Hitchcock.
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thirteen lives
In 2018, a youth soccer group and their coach were touring the Tham Luang cave in Thailand when they became trapped inside. Much more, they found themselves isolated and unable to make their way back, which seemed to condemn them to certain death. For 18 days, his rescue became in world news, but for the group, a feat of will and desire to survive.
Director Ron Howard took the story and recreated it, not only emphasizing the logistical feat that the rescue entailed. Also, in the tension and weight of responsibility that was on the shoulders of the rescuers.
Thirteen lives is much more than the heroic reconstruction of the victims. At the same time, it is an exploration about duty and the sense of responsibility. That, moving away from the drama to venture into the suspense of an elegant and well-constructed way. Which makes Howard’s film a real rarity.
The gift
Director Joel Edgerton delves into the wounds of the past that never heal, in this thriller suspense with a seemingly simple premise. Simon Callum (Jason Bateman) and his wife Robyn (Rebecca Hall) They move to Chicago, only to run into an old schoolmate of the former.
Gordon (Edgerton) is eager to regain his old bond of friendship with Simon and makes it clear with some strange behavior. Which includes a series of inexplicable gifts, which baffle the couple.
So what begins with what seems to be a way to rekindle a complicated relationship will take a dangerous turn that will quickly become a terrifying situation. The script — which the director and protagonist also writes — becomes increasingly dense, by narrating how the past can become a horror story that destroys the future.
A date with the past
Director Janus Metz mixed a spy story in the middle of a minefield of betrayals with a bitter romance. The result is a film that combines the perennial feeling of threat with a very human story about pain and loss. All of the above — which might seem irreconcilable — works thanks not only to a script that manages to encompass a series of emotions without losing a touch of suspense. Also, thanks to a talented cast, capable of making sense of all the visions about love and fear that the film raises.
Henry (Chris Pine) is an agent who must discover who is responsible for a betrayal that cost the lives of a hundred agents. Celia (Thandie Newton) is his ex-lover and the only one who can help him in such an undertaking. Together, they will have to explore their harsh past together, while battling to survive an increasingly threatening armed harassment. Which gives the film its strange version of suspense and suffering. Its most intriguing element.
Shutter Island
Agent Edward Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is searching for a murderer in the middle of an unclassifiable situation that becomes increasingly twisted and strange. On the one hand, he must solve a crime that appears to be more complex than he could have suspected. At the other extreme, battle as best you can with the growing feeling that something precious and painful in your life is falling apart.
This rare work by Martin Scorsese combines suffering, suspense and violence in the same setting in a reflection on the incomprehensible places of the human mind. But also, the fine link between sanity and madness. With an ending to the history of cinema, it is one of the big ones thrillers thriller that you can find right now on Prime Video.
Multiple
Director M. Night Shyamalan has become famous for his script twists and unexpected endings. But none compares to this ambitious work that concentrates in a single story, suspense, drama, redemption and the continuation of a decades-long saga. Everything, through a man with 23 personalities who also hides a dangerous creature inside.
The extravagant premise comes to life thanks to the extraordinary performance of James McAvoy, who manages to provide countless nuances to all the visions of good and evil that live within. The film, which in less skilled hands would have become a confusion, ends up being a triumph of imagination and a skillful story. Even more interesting?, the plot turned out to be the sequel to The protected (2000), also by the director.
The name of the rose
In 1986, director Jean-Jacques Annaud dared to make an adaptation of the monumental work The name of the rose, by Umberto Eco. It was a titanic task, which included not only delving into the extensive, detailed and complicated novel. At the same time, construct his strange vision of good and evil philosophical in a way that allowed the general public to understand the essence of the sophisticated text.
The result is a film that, without being a piece of art, is a successful reinvention of the story from which it comes. Starring Sean Connery and a very young Christian Slater, the story of a medieval criminal investigation captivates. But, above all, it turns the original plot into a source of philosophical knowledge that reaches the big screen with the feel of a luxury procedural. A rare combination that, on this occasion, works.
Person
A classic for the list. In 1966 Ingmar Bergman delved into identity, fear and madness, in an extraordinary work that, today, still analyzes evil from a contemporary point of view. Much more, the need for communication, uprooting and loneliness.
The result is a dark work, in which the director investigates the most twisted drives of human beings and their environment. Likewise, he explores the longing to be understood, when an actress and her nurse must fight to understand the bond that unites them. Strange, magnificent and very dark, this Bergman film is a disturbing perspective on love – bitter and random – as a unique bond.
Setback
The Spanish director, Oriol Paulo, takes a story about an inexplicable murder and turns it into a unique journey through the shadows of the human mind. Setback is a search for answers about a crime in which there seems to be only one culprit. But in his efforts to prove his innocence, he will have the help of the best lawyer money can pay for.
However, even so, you will have to prepare your defense in one night. Which will confront him with anguish, fear and his own perception of guilt. Intelligent, at times bitter and with a version of morality and ethics that surprises with its nuances, the film manages to combine several plots at the same time in a single setting. Which does not prevent the center of its plot – a death that must be explained – from remaining a dilemma that must be resolved at frenetic speed. The most unique thing about its premise.
Cell 211
This twisted and distressing story by director Daniel Monzón unites in the same setting a prison drama, an action film and, at the same time, a complex suspense thriller. Little by little, what begins with a mutiny will become a plot that tells how to survive. It can become the focal point of such a compromising situation.
When a guard who has just arrived at a maximum security prison must try to escape from a group of hostile inmates, he will discover that nothing he has been taught until then is useful to avoid being murdered. So he will have to draw on his ability to understand the violent criminals around him in an attempt to escape. Which will lead to a terrifying night that will also show him the darkest part of man.
Millennium: The men who didn’t love women
Director David Fincher took the first novel in Stieg Larsson’s popular saga and turned it into a visually elegant thriller.. Also, with a plot as twisted as the original. Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) is a computer expert with a turbulent past. Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), a journalist in the middle of the worst situation of his life.
Together, they must join forces to explore in the middle of a murder that will lead them to discover a long legacy of horrors. Which will lead them to the end, to the answer to a decades-old enigma. David Fincher turned the brutal original story into a tense and harrowing piece. But much more, in a suspense film worth seeing in all its strange complexity. Something you can do right now on Prime Video.
