10 Most Underrated Psychological Thrillers of the 2010s, Ranked

The medium of film feels like a particularly appropriate one for the psychological thriller genre, with various cinematic techniques being well-suited to get the viewer in the headspace of a troubled/conflicted/stressed-out character (or characters). That’s what psychological thrillers are all about, really; telling intense stories from an uncomfortably close point of view, helping a viewer understand the ramifications of being in all sorts of unpleasant or high-stakes scenarios.

There are a large number of movies that can be categorized as psychological thrillers, with the genre being popular enough that it’s inevitable certain ones will get overlooked and subsequently feel underrated. To hone in on just the 2010s, the following movies are all psychological thrillers (or at least contain elements that can make them definable as such), with all being worthy of more attention and exposure.

10 ‘The Dirties’ (2013)

Director: Matt Johnson

The Dirties is certainly a feel-bad movie, and might not initially feel like a traditional thriller at first, but it goes there at a certain point. There is an element of very dark comedy to this high school movie, though it eschews coming-of-age tropes and conventions and instead looks at bullying in a way that can be surprisingly intense and realistic, while also exploring the nature of filmmaking and revenge.

To be more specific, the plot of The Dirties involves friends making a movie about getting revenge on those at their school who’ve been bullying them, and the consequences that unfold when one of them starts taking things too far. It unfolds in a way that feels uncomfortably realistic, and though there is enough humor to call it a dramedy, the way it builds in intensity makes it feel increasingly like it belongs to the psychological thriller genre as it goes along.

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9 ‘The Stanford Prison Experiment’ (2015)

Director: Kyle Patrick Alvarez

Revolving around an experiment involving a simulated prison, The Stanford Prison Experiment nonetheless manages to give movies about actual imprisonment a run for their money when it comes to being unnerving and suspenseful. It’s a retelling of actual events that happened in August 1971, where the titular experiment occurred at Stanford University, making some volunteers act as prison guards and others act as prisoners.

The psychological study was controversial and eventful, and though 2015’s The Stanford Prison Experiment can’t be a 100% accurate retelling, it does capture this surprising and heavily publicized event well. Indeed, the film is successful in getting across the toll the experiment had on the people involved, capturing how quickly seemingly normal people turned on each other and how abruptly they began to act a certain way based purely on the “role” they were given.

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8 ‘Be My Cat: A Film for Anne’ (2015)

Director: Adrian Țofei

Likely to no one’s surprise at all, the movie called Be My Cat: A Film for Anne is an incredibly weird one, and additionally very hard to even explain. It pushes things pretty far when it comes to horror, being about a disturbed individual who’s infatuated with Anne Hathaway, and goes to some surprising/distressing lengths in an attempt to persuade her to feature in a movie he’s making.

Be My Cat: A Film for Anne unfolds in a found footage/mockumentary style, with the entire thing being uncomfortable to watch, owing to how it aims to place the viewer in the shoes of one very strange character. Blending horror, crime, and psychological thriller genres, it’s certainly rough around the edges and proves hard to watch at times, but you can’t deny its capacity to leave a mark while proving hard to shake/forget.

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7 ‘Grand Piano’ (2013)

Director: Eugenio Mira

Before his breakout success with Whiplash, Damien Chazelle was mostly well known for writing Grand Piano, a film directed by Eugenio Mira that, as the title suggests, features music prominently, as Chazelle often seems to like doing with the films he’s directed. Running for a tight 90 minutes, Grand Piano is wonderfully simple, with the plot involving a pianist on stage who finds out he’s the target of a sniper.

Further, the hapless protagonist of Grand Piano learns that one wrong note will result in him being shot, which naturally gets things feeling very intense and appropriately high-stakes right from the start. It’s not able to stick the landing quite as well as it takes off, but the simplicity of Grand Piano does make it often satisfying for those who like straightforward thrillers, with Elijah Wood turning in a strong lead performance as the very unlucky and stressed-out pianist.

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6 ‘Cold Fish’ (2010)

Director: Sion Sono

Anyone familiar with the films of Sion Sono will know that he’s a director who tends to push many a boundary, and few movies of his go quite as far as Cold Fish. This 2010 release is a gritty and uneasy crime movie about a man who runs a fish store and becomes involved with a family, only for the members of the family to realize that the seemingly kind man isn’t exactly who he initially appeared to be.

Cold Fish can afford to unfold slowly, owing to its runtime of almost 2.5 hours, and this duration/pacing means it can very effectively build up dread and eventually despair as it chugs along. It’s not a movie for the faint of heart, being psychologically distressing on top of being very gory in places, but will likely work for anyone who’s after an intense crime/thriller/horror movie and is prepared to see some rather challenging things.

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5 ‘Operation Avalanche’ (2016)

Director: Matt Johnson

Three years on from The Dirties (and a few years before the excellent and underrated BlackBerry), Matt Johnson directed Operation Avalanche, which feels arguably even more under-appreciated than his aforementioned 2013 movie. Once again, things revolve around people making a movie (kind of), but in Operation Avalanche, things take place in 1967, and the “film crew” are actually CIA agents going undercover at NASA.

As one might expect, conspiracies start to get uncovered and paranoia runs high, with Operation Avalanche overall doing a fantastic job at being a nail-biting psychological thriller, a dark mystery film, and a fairly funny comedy. It’s clever and a little bit weird, sure, but does feel criminally underrated, even compared to the already fairly underrated movies for which Johnson is slightly better known for making.

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4 ‘Raman Raghav 2.0’ (2016)

Director: Anurag Kashyap

Anurag Kashyap is perhaps best known for directing the amazing gangster epic Gangs of Wasseypur, but his accomplishments as a filmmaker go far beyond the remarkable duology. He’s one of the best and most prolific Indian filmmakers working today, and tends to specialize in making ambitious thriller/crime/dark comedy movies, with Raman Raghav 2.0 leaning mostly towards the thriller genre.

Raman Raghav 2.0 takes a premise most have likely seen before and puts a relatively fresh spin on it, broadly being about two morally dubious people on each side of the law – one a serial killer and the other a corrupt cop – getting into a game of cat and mouse with each other. The pacing is relentless, the film looks stylish, and it’s overall quite exciting, being a worthwhile watch for anyone burnt out on contemporary American/English-language thrillers.

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3 ‘The Endless’ (2017)

Directors: Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson

It wouldn’t be accurate to simply label The Endless as a psychological thriller and nothing else, because much of the time, it also feels like an eerie blend of science fiction and horror. Additionally, it’s heavy on mystery and can get pretty surreal, with the plot centering on a pair of brothers who re-evaluate and rediscover the cult that they’d escaped from years prior, changing the course of their respective lives in unexpected ways.

The less known about The Endless going into it, the better, because it takes some wild and mind-bending turns over the course of its runtime, with those narrative/creative risks generally paying off. The budget isn’t necessarily high, but the level of creativity and ambition found within The Endless are, and it’s definitely worth seeking out for anyone who wants an eerie and unique psychological thriller experience.

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2 ‘A Record of Sweet Murder’ (2014)

Director: Koji Shiraishi

A Record of Sweet Murder may only be 86 minutes long, but feels a good deal longer because of how sustained its tension is. Usually, saying a movie feels longer than it is would be a criticism, but that doesn’t apply here, because the intent here is to make something that feels pervasive in horror and dread; arguably even something of a cinematic endurance test.

Like a good many effective psychological crime/thriller/horror movies, A Record of Sweet Murder unfolds in a mockumentary format, being about a journalist and camera person following around a dangerous escaped patient from a mental institution who wants to engage in a killing spree. It feels like a rawer and even more horrific Natural Born Killers, in some ways, and is easily one of the most intense and underrated movies of its kind from the 2010s.

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1 ‘The Guilty’ (2018)

Director: Gustav Möller

One of the best single-location thrillers in recent memory, The Guilty is relatively well-regarded and decently well-known, but this 2018 version feels underrated nowadays, owing to a more high-profile American remake being released in 2021. That one’s not bad, but it’s a case where the original is definitely the best, not only proving more original (obviously) but also more suspenseful and gripping.

The premise of The Guilty involves a police officer working as a dispatcher, and what happens when he gets a call from a woman who says she’s been kidnapped. It’s a movie where most of the story is told with sound, given the officer is contained to the police station while the entire situation unfolds, and that’s also where the camera stays. The Guilty is stripped back and simple, but works wonders with the few ingredients it has, emerging as a top-notch psychological thriller/mystery film.

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