10 of My Favorite Cult-Thriller Films
“Thriller,” a moniker to denote filmographic convention involving around one or more of the following elements: suspense, horror, mystery, drama and/or crime. While I’d consider the title somewhat nebulous, considering what typically gets grouped into this “genre” of film – serving more of a catchall, in my opinion – there are certain visual tenants, plot devices or themes that can help us deduce what exactly a thriller constitutes. Generally, films relegated to old adages of mystery or suspense are what we contemporaneously call thrillers, in addition to any horror-adjacent films with a focus towards tension, psychological twists, the supernatural, paranormal or noir-crime. These are all, of course, just my suppositions backed by opinion, and everyone will have their own definitions, but I thought I’d at-least attempt to explain myself before going into the list.
So, combining the “cult” prefix, in specificity for films (i.e. “cult,” a film more often than not wasn’t popular and/or critically received, but garnered a cultic following its release), these are some of my favorite modern thrillers, some maybe not as polished as their blockbuster counterparts, for example, movies like Vertigo, Taxi Driver, etc.
Without further ado (in no particular order):
#1. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Written by Stanley Kubrick and Frederic
Without a doubt, my favorite thriller, and within the list of favorite all-time films. I’ve already done a writeup about this movie, so I’ll just put it here: What are dreams, things that happen in our subconscious, or conscious fantasies that pervade our daydreams? Is there something greater underneath it all, or are we, at the end of the day, just a large group of under-sexed, unhappily married, mammals? Eyes Wide Shut takes it upon itself to play around with said questions, all in the form of a psycho-sexual thriller. For me, this is the best Stanley Kubrick film, and it feels like a greatest hits or amalgamation of his entire body of work. There’s no clear answers given in this movie, and what conclusions to deduce are fickle given that, Eyes Wide Shut doesn’t make the “realness” of its plot pertinent to tell a story. I like to think this film is about class, and how the escapades of society’s petty-bourgeoisie are ultimately unknowing, myopic, occult fever-dreams that are a parallel reality to our own.
#2. Fear (1990)
Written by Rockne S. O’Bannon
The Breakfast Club’s Ally Sheedy plays a medium and criminal profiler who helps solve cold cases by utilizing psychic powers until one day, she’s confronted by a serial killer who shares her powers. What Fear does with its tone and plot isn’t perhaps exceptionally executed in-comparison to other psychological thrillers of its time, but what it manages to pull off is combine various sub-genres of noir all under the same hood: paranormal, horror, crime and psychological thriller. For what could be an easily over-the-top plot involving dueling psychics feels abnormally grounded, its world and characters, at-times gritty due to the subject matter. The screenplay by writer and director Rockne S. O’Bannon surprisingly works, especially given the lack of any notable twists nor surprises, though Ally Sheedy carries what the screenplay misses, delivering an emotionally compelling performance of vulnerability and neuroses. Without a doubt, this film feels quintessentially cult, rough around the edges, imperfect, but full of character and interesting ideas. If you can look past the vaporwave aesthetics of 1980’s yesteryear, fashion and hairdos, you might just be able to enjoy this sleeper thriller that juggles its share of tropes into something that feels unique, or in the very least, memorable.
#3. Blue Velvet (1986)
Written by David Lynch
The first film in what would be the Mulholland Drive trilogy, Blue Velvet feels like a filmographic proof-of-concept for Lynch’s hit (and cult) show, Twin Peaks, in addition to its sister films, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. It seems Lynch loves to depict stereotypical Americana and its white-picket-suburbia before diving into whatever-given-town’s seedy underbelly, something Blue Velvet plays with, with remarkable stylization. Twin Peaks and Portlandia star Kyle MacLachlan plays the unassuming Jeffrey Beaumont returning to his humble (and very real) hometown of Lumberton to help family, one day discovering a severed ear, which sparks his curiosity and subsequent descent into corruption. The late-Dennis Hopper delivers an amazing albeit, larger-than-life performance as the drug-addled Frank, serving as the film’s heart of evil who effortlessly skirts his role between seducer and gangster. There’s quite a lot of imagery to unpack here, from kink to paraphilias, fetishism, sadomasochism, drug use, the paranormal and surreal anachronisms, for which Blue Velvet introduces in a way that feels subconsciously natural, given what gets thrown into its short runtime. Something about this film’s sensibilities feels arthouse, noir, thriller-ish and absurd from moment to moment, perhaps at-times too tongue-in-cheek, but it never falls apart. Though I consider Lynch’s Mulholland Drive to be his magnum opus and the best film of the trilogy, Blue Velvet holds a special place in my heart for being one-of-a-kind, unforgettable, salacious as it is controversial, but for all the right reasons.
#4. Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
Written by Bruce Joel Rubin
Okay, so it’s not exactly a well-kept secret that Jacob’s Ladder went on to be an influential cult film, inspiring many movies to follow, in addition to Konami’s beloved Silent Hill. At its core, Jacob’s Ladder is a paranormal-psychological thriller, although because it contains a host of terrifying imagery, I could consider it to also be a horror film (thriller and horror seem colloquially synonymous). Tim Robbins plays the part of Jacob believably, delivering an understated yet earnest performance that just works with each successive viewing. I don’t want to spoil too much about the plot, but for the sake of simplicity, I’ll just say this film is all sorts of literal and metaphorical interpretations of post-war veterans’ reintegration into society. At-times, some of the analogous messages and images feel (unconsciously) racially-coded, as Jacob’s predominately black & brown neighborhood and community are likened to infernal existence, while his past life of white family depicted as-if heaven. The pacing of the second act drags past the midway point, and some of Jason Alexander’s scenes feel a bit out of place, but I’d attribute that more on the production. Overall, this is a visionary film, if-not purely on an aesthetic level, and I’d recommend any cult-film and/or thriller fan to at least give this one watch.
#5. Run Lola Run (1998)
Written by Tom Tykwer
What if, for every decision you didn’t make, you were given the ability to quickly get a synopsis of what could have happened? What about the same, but with your actions influencing another person’s life as well? Run Lola Run, an interesting and experimental 1998 German film, decidedly has a go at the aforementioned, told in snapshot vignettes tethered to a supercharged crime story. The plot revolves around Lola, who’s tasked to raise $100K in just 20 minutes in order to save her boyfriend Manni’s life. Within several points of the film’s 3-act-3-alternate-realities shtick, certain side and background characters are given rapid-fire visual summarizations when Lola happens to change or interact with them (in one instance, a stranger Lola bumps into falls down, prompting another to tend to them, where we’re shown a photo collage outlining their courtship to marriage, all within seconds, just because Lola bumped them). It’s a strange energy throughout Run Lola Run, something of a bizarro, crime-fueled Ozzie and Harriet intermixed with comedic, self-aware existentialism, experimental filmmaking and late 90’s/Y2K touch of nostalgia, all intertwined in a compelling, rewarding, and rewatchable experience.
#6. Flatliners (1990)
Written by Peter Filardi
The now-late Lost Boys director Joel Schumacher rouses a star-studded cast of early-90’s faces into this campy and existential, medical sci-fi thriller. There’s a lot going for this film in terms of its originality and aesthetic; Flatliners has such a simple and unique premise that’s impossible to forget: a group of outsider medical students begin conducting an experiment on themselves that requires going under heavy anesthesia to induce temporary death (aka, “flatlining”) for a certain duration of time, before being brought back to life. Their goal to “cheat death,” so to speak, reiterated throughout the film, and the stakes – which already high, given they’re playing with life/death – are intensified when their egos, competitiveness and traumas begin to manifest, as each individual wants to outdo the other by going under for longer periods of time. Things begin taking turns for the paranormal, bizarre and at-times, comedically so, when events that happen “on the other side” begin to intrude into the realm of reality. Paralleling Flatliners’s plot and themes are the film’s visually striking (and excessive) set design, invoking the hubris of then-Hollywood budgets, as well as some potpourri of neo-gothic-surrealist-dystopian-esque atmosphere that gives this movie a larger-than-life feel. Just as The Lost Boys, director Joel Schumacher manages to wedge sexiness amid camp and flamboyancy, lending to an innate and unconsciously absurdity embedded into the horror, to which I laughed at moments when perhaps I wasn’t supposed to, but, with cult-films like these, that’s all part of their charm and allure.
#7. Donnie Darko (2001)
Written by Richard Kelly
Writer and director Richard Kelly managed to synthesize what would be a coming-of-age film set in 1980’s suburbia and paranormal-thriller, giving Donnie Darko a sense of familiarity, along with atmospheric eeriness. The plot for this film is as heady, convoluted and esoteric as it gets, though I’d say what you can’t piece together kind of adds some to its mystery. There’s a bunny rabbit named Frank, time travel, alternate realities and existential-theological questions, high school drama, love, and a slice of affluent Americana, like someone threw Blue Velvet and Back to the Future into a blender, adding a dash of John Hughes. This film scores high on rewatchability: Donnie Darko is innocuous enough, lacking heavy offensiveness or controversy, just as it’s relatively tame with its subject matter and melodrama, juggling horror alongside a coming-of-age aesthetic intermixed 1980’s nostalgia, coalescing into a film that’s familiar yet original.
#8. Abre Los Ojos (1997)
Written by Alejandro Amenábar and Mateo Gil
Translated to English as, “Open Your Eyes,” Abre Los Ojos is a Spanish psychological thriller with a thematic focus on consciousness and dreams. In-addition to its themes, the film employs both ephemerality and sentience to drive the plot, one that revolves around a man filled with vanity, who, upon waking after a birthday party thrown by his best friend, finds himself at the center of a murder-mystery. A myriad of subjects are visually engaged and explored in the film’s roughly 2 hour runtime; topics ranging from love to friendship, the meaning of dreams and the afterlife, are all navigated by Abre Los Ojos’s flawed protagonist, and that’s why I find it compelling: building something up, or rather, someone, doesn’t always make for the best dramatic material when they are torn down. Our protagonist, César, who is depicted as a young, arrogant, externally successful man that’s never had to ponder what he has or his existence, is suddenly thrust into a situation beyond his control, becoming his unraveling, catharsis, and ultimately, Kafkaesque-transformation. While I find merit in Abre Los Ojos’s American remake/reimagining (2001’s Vanilla Sky), I think this is the better film through and through, a thriller rife with beauty, tragedy, and curious imagination.
#9. Zodiac (2007)
Written by James Vanderbilt, based on the novel by Robert Graysmith
Having read Graysmith’s true crime book that became this film’s namesake, I can say the Zodiac is an incredible work of adapting source material that shouldn’t have worked in movie form. The acting is good, casting, set design, music, tone, cinematography all work here, but that’s to be expected when you see a neo-noir directed by David Fincher. I think what makes Zodiac stand out as Fincher’s best is what it does with its plot and characters, being something of a hybridization between horror-adjacent noir, newsroom movie and period piece, in addition to having an unorthodox screenplay that feels almost like it trades protagonist and deuteragonist in the second act. Considering that Zodiac’s horror which involve the man himself are drawn from real life events, I think what we see is handled in a way that tastefully depicts the terror his victims experienced, as well as their humanity. There are some leaps the screenplay takes in order to justify the film’s conclusions and premise (from what I’ve read), but all the major beats are emanant, sans for the biggest mistake the SFPD ever made, when, following one shooting, a pair of patrolmen unknowingly apprehended Zodiac, but let him go due to racial profiling (something that the 2 hour, 37 minute film glosses over).
#10. Summer of Sam (1999)
Written by Spike Lee, Victor Colicchio and Michael Imperioli
A true cult classic, Summer of Sam recounts what became known as the infamous summer of 1977, a summer in New York City’s history of which blackouts, extreme heat, racial uprising, Yankee Reggie Jackson’s on-field athleticism, and the .44 Caliber Killer all were talk of the town. This film is part horror, drama, period piece, and commentary about the ways trauma affects communities. Our vantage point is through a small Italian-American enclave of the Bronx, a neighborhood where everybody thinks they know everyone, but that all begins to change as the Son of Sam continues his rampage. Mira Sorvino and John Leguizamo are mesmerizing, a tour de force of their own, their drama already compelling by itself, while their marriage is depicted as working class beguiled by infidelity, jealousy and drug use (and that’s before the murders affect their community). This film definitely won’t be for everybody, considering that our protagonists don’t interact with the serial murderer, but are-of course, affected by his actions, like two parallel plot lines at the same time (this film’s strong point, in my opinion). Cocaine to disco, queer culture, BDSM, Studio 54, intergenerational violence and racism are all affronted amid the .44 Caliber Killer’s rampage, and something about how these seemingly unrelated things begin to adjoin still feel fresh to me.
