Top 10 Thrillers - IMDb
1) I Am Number Four (2011)
Extraordinary teen John Smith is a fugitive on the run from ruthless enemies sent to destroy him. Changing his identity, moving from town to town with his guardian Henri , John is always the new kid with no ties to his past. In the small Ohio town he now calls home, John encounters unexpected, life-changing events-his first love , powerful new abilities and a connection to the others who share his incredible destiny.
2) Unknown (2011)
A biochemist and his dishy wife arrive in Berlin for a conference at which a scientist and his controversial Arab funder will announce breakthrough research. While his wife checks into the hotel, he grabs a cab to return to the airport for his briefcase, left at the curb. En route, an auto accident puts him in a coma, from which he awakes four days later without identification and with gaps in his memory. He goes to the hotel: his wife refuses to recognize him and another man has claimed his identity. With help from a nurse, the cab driver, a retired Stasi agent, and an academic friend, he tries to unravel what's going on. Is the answer in the briefcase?
3) The Next Three Days (2010)
Lara Brennan is arrested for murdering her boss with whom she had an argument. It seems she was seen leaving the scene of the crime and her fingerprints were on the murder weapon. Her husband, John would spend the next few years trying to get her released, but there's no evidence that negates the evidence against her. And when the strain of being separated from her family, especially her son, gets to her, John decides to break her out. So he does a lot of research to find a way.
4) Black Swan (2010)
Nina is a ballerina in a New York City ballet company whose life, like all those in her profession, is completely consumed with dance. She lives with her obsessive former ballerina mother Erica who exerts a suffocating control over her. When artistic director Thomas Leroy decides to replace prima ballerina Beth MacIntyre for the opening production of their new season, Swan Lake, Nina is his first choice. But Nina has competition: a new dancer, Lily, who impresses Leroy as well. Swan Lake requires a dancer who can play both the White Swan with innocence and grace, and the Black Swan, who represents guile and sensuality. Nina fits the White Swan role perfectly but Lily is the personification of the Black Swan. As the two young dancers expand their rivalry into a twisted friendship, Nina begins to get more in touch with her dark side - a recklessness that threatens to destroy her.
5) 127 Hours (2010)
127 Hours is the true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston's remarkable adventure to save himself after a fallen boulder crashes on his arm and traps him in an isolated canyon in Utah. Over the next five days Ralston examines his life and survives the elements to finally discover he has the courage and the wherewithal to extricate himself by any means necessary, scale a 65 foot wall and hike over eight miles before he can be rescued. Throughout his journey, Ralston recalls friends, lovers, family, and the two hikers he met before his accident. Will they be the last two people he ever had the chance to meet?
6) Drive Angry 3D (2011)
John Milton is up against the clock: Jonah King, the leader of a Satanic cult, has murdered Milton's daughter and kidnapped her baby. In three days, King and his followers will sacrifice the child at midnight. Milton picks up the trail in Oklahoma as well as rescuing a waitress named Piper from her brutal, two-timing fiancé. There are odd things about Milton: his driver's license is out of date, he has a very strange gun, and he's being pursued by a man in a suit who carries FBI ID and calls himself the Accountant. Piper, who's lived a life on the sidelines, has to piece things together on the fly as they close in on King.
7) The Mechanic (2011)
Assassin Arthur Bishop is an artist at his craft; he can make any job seem like natural causes or an accident if necessary. He has learned to stay detached. But when he is told to kill his friend, Harry, it's hard for him but he does it anyway. He makes it seem like a car jacking. Harry's son Steve so despondent over his father's death sets out to go after every carjacker he can find. But when he gets over his head, Arthur saves him. Arthur then decides to make Steve his apprentice. And while Steve is not as refined as Arthur, they continue with their collaboration. Arthur later learns that the circumstances surrounding Harry's hit is not what he was told.
8) Sanctum (2011)
The teenager Josh McGuire welcomes his friend Carl and his girlfriend Victoria in Papua, New Guinea, and they immediately fly to the Esa-ala Caves where Josh's father Frank McGuire is heading a cave diving expedition. Josh has a bitter relationship with his father and Carl is the sponsor of the expedition. When Frank and the diver Judes explore an unknown cave system with a restricted access, Judes has an accident and dies. When the team is preparing to hoist her body, there is a storm that blocks the exit from the cave. The group is trapped with few supplies and has to find a way out to the sea through the labyrinth of the cave system. But fear and panic are their greatest enemies.
9) Inception (2010)
Dom Cobb is able to use his unique skills to his advantage - he can enter people's minds through their dreams and thereby learn their secrets. He is a thief for hire but Japanese businessman Mr. Saito has a somewhat different proposition for him. He wants Cobb to enter the mind of Robert Fischer Jr., who is about to inherit his father's massive business empire, to plant a simple notion: to break-up his father's conglomerate and sell it off. In return, Saito will make it possible for Cobb to freely return to the US where he is currently wanted by the police. Cobb accepts and assembles his team with a plan to plant the idea deep in Fisher's mind by generating a series of dreams within dreams so that he eventually thinks he came up with the idea himself. As the intended deception grows ever more complex, Cobb has to deal with his own emotions and feelings of guilt, which are projecting themselves into the dreamspace. Cobb has to deal with the eventual question of what is real and what is only a dream.
10) The Game (1997)
Nicholas Van Orton is a very wealthy San Francisco banker, but he is an absolute loner, even spending his birthday alone. In the year of his 48th birthday (the age his father committed suicide) his brother Conrad, who has gone long ago and surrendered to addictions of all kinds, suddenly returns and gives Nicholas a card giving him entry to unusual entertainment provided by something called Consumer Recreation Services (CRS). Giving up to curiosity, Nicholas visits CRS and all kinds of weird and bad things start to happen to him.
Top Ten Psychological Thrillers:
1)The Unusal Suspects(1995)
Police investigating an exploded boat on a San Pedro pier discover 27 bodies and $91 million worth of drug money. The only survivors are a severely burned and very scared Hungarian terrorist and Verbal Kint, a crippled con-man. Reluctantly, Kint is pressured into explaining exactly what happened on the boat. His story begins six weeks earlier with five criminals being dragged in by New York police desperate for suspects on a hijacked truck and ends with the possible identification of a criminal mastermind.
2)The Butterfly Effect (2004)
Evan Treborn grows up in a small town with his single, working mother and his friends. He suffers from memory blackouts where he suddenly finds himself somewhere else, confused. Evan's friends and mother hardly believe him, thinking he makes it up just to get out of trouble. As Evan grows up he has fewer of these blackouts until he seems to have recovered. Since the age of seven he has written a diary of his blackout moments so he can remember what happens. One day at college he starts to read one of his old diaries, and suddenly a flashback hits him like a brick!
3)Inception(2010)
Dom Cobb is able to use his unique skills to his advantage - he can enter people's minds through their dreams and thereby learn their secrets. He is a thief for hire but Japanese businessman Mr. Saito has a somewhat different proposition for him. He wants Cobb to enter the mind of Robert Fischer Jr., who is about to inherit his father's massive business empire, to plant a simple notion: to break-up his father's conglomerate and sell it off. In return, Saito will make it possible for Cobb to freely return to the US where he is currently wanted by the police. Cobb accepts and assembles his team with a plan to plant the idea deep in Fisher's mind by generating a series of dreams within dreams so that he eventually thinks he came up with the idea himself. As the intended deception grows ever more complex, Cobb has to deal with his own emotions and feelings of guilt, which are projecting themselves into the dreamspace. Cobb has to deal with the eventual question of what is real and what is only a dream.
4) Identity (2003)
Strangers from all different walks of life: a limo driver escorting a fading television star, parents with a young son whose marriage is in crisis, a cop transporting a dangerous convict, a beautiful call girl, a couple of young newlyweds, and a nervous motel manager are caught up in a severe rainstorm, stuck at a motel in desolate Nevada. Soon they realize they may be at the motel for another reason when one by one, people start getting killed off. As tensions flare and fingers are pointed, they have to get to the bottom of why they're there. Meanwhile in an undisclosed location, a psychiatrist is trying to prove the innocence of a man accused of murder in an eleventh hour trial. How these two through-lines are related can only be found in Identity.
5)Shutter island (2010)
Federal Marshall Teddy Daniels and his new partner Chuck Aule travel to a government-run mental institution for the criminally insane on Shutter Island, near Boston, when there is a report that one of the prisoners has gone missing. Daniels has his own reasons for wanting to get to the island and carries baggage of his own. He is still traumatized from what he saw when his army unit liberated one of the Nazi concentration camps at the end of World War II and is still haunted by the more recent death in a fire of his wife and children. The head of the hospital, Dr. John Cawley, treats him alright but others give the agents a less than warm reception. Daniels particularly wants to find out what is going on in one of the wards, reserved for the most serious offenders. As Daniels begins to peal away the layers of deceit, it becomes obvious that not all is as it seems.
6)Fracture (2007)
Ted Crawford shoots his unfaithful wife, confesses to the police - orally and in writing - but then pleads not guilty and opts to defend himself in court. The young DA assigned to the case, Willy Beachum, has had a successful career with a 97% conviction rate. Beachum however is actually on his way to a lucrative position in a big private law firm, but his desire to win keeps him on the case. What ensues is a battle of wits between the two as Crawford systematically destroys his opponents case.
7)Memento (2000)
A memory inside a memory, Memento is a complicated head spinning adventure. Leonard is determined to avenge his wife's murder. However, unable to remember anything that happens day-to-day due to a condition he sustained, short term memory loss, he has to write himself note after note that still don't mean anything after he falls asleep. The film goes back in time to reveal each little bit of the puzzle as he tries to find out the person who killed his wife and makes the audience feel just as confused as he is. The narrative closely follows a phone call Pearce has in which he talks about Sammy Jankis a former client of his who he believed had the same condition. The film takes an unexpected twist as the two characters have a lot more in common than is initially put across.
8) Se7en (1995)
Taking place in a nameless city, Se7en follows the story of two homicide detectives tracking down a sadistic serial killer who chooses his victims according to the seven deadly sins. Brad Pitt stars as Detective David Mills, a hopeful but naive rookie who finds himself partnered with veteran Detective William Somerset. Together they trace the killers every step, witnessing the aftermath of his horrific crimes one by one as the victims pile up in rapid succession, all the while moving closer to a gruesome fate neither of them could have predicted.
9)Fight Club (1999)
A ticking-time-bomb insomniac and a slippery soap salesman channel primal male aggression into a shocking new form of therapy. Their concept catches on, with underground "fight clubs" forming in every town, until an eccentric gets in the way and ignites an out-of-control spiral toward oblivion.
10)The Game (1997)
Nicholas Van Orton is a very wealthy San Francisco banker, but he is an absolute loner, even spending his birthday alone. In the year of his 48th birthday (the age his father committed suicide) his brother Conrad, who has gone long ago and surrendered to addictions of all kinds, suddenly returns and gives Nicholas a card giving him entry to unusual entertainment provided by something called Consumer Recreation Services (CRS). Giving up to curiosity, Nicholas visits CRS and all kinds of weird and bad things start to happen to him.
Taken from IMDB website.
