If you consider yourself a big fan of thrillers, then you need to put these four movies at the top of your watchlist.
Watch With Us loves all types of thrillers — hard-boiled noirs, chilling murder-mysteries, courtroom dramas and fact-based crime procedurals.
But there are plenty of quality thriller movies that have gone all too underseen in the mainstream.
Today, we want to highlight four thrillers that are just about perfect, but you’ve probably never heard of.
Our first choice is Cure, a chilling Japanese procedural that blends crime with the occult.
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‘Cure’ (1997)
In Tokyo, Detective Takabe (Kōji Yakusho) investigates a murder in which a husband has brutally killed his wife, but cannot remember why he did it. Perplexed by the circumstances of the crime, Takabe’s puzzlement only increases when the same circumstances befall a series of other seemingly random, unrelated killings: murders committed in which the perpetrator recalls the act and readily confesses, but cannot pinpoint a motive. At the same time, a strange and amnesiac drifter named Kunihiko Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) seems to have encountered every perpetrator and victim just before their acts of violence.
Cure walked so movies like Zodiac and Memories of Murder could run, but we would argue that Cure is ultimately the superior work. The movie weaves elements of psychological horror to craft a chilling and atmospheric crime story that is carried by a pervasive sense of existential dread and unease. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa finds a compelling and confounding villain in Mamiya, whose murky origins only heighten the disturbing nature of the film. Ultimately, Cure is an unforgettable meditation on the nature of evil.
‘King of New York’ (1990)
New York City drug lord Frank White (Christoper Walken) is released from prison and hellbent on controlling the city’s criminal underground, and he immediately sets out to eliminate his enemies. With the help of his top enforcer, “Jimmy Jump” Colt (Laurence Fishburne), White consolidates his power by taking out his rivals in the local Colombian and Chinese cartels, in addition to executing a Mafia boss who won’t kowtow to him. But part of White’s bloody seizure for power stems from his desire to become a perverse sort of Robin Hood, distributing all his profits to New York’s poor and lower class.
Ultra-violent and extremely dark, King of New York isn’t terribly ambitious with its story, but it’s everything around that story that makes it such an unforgettable experience. With stylish direction from Abel Ferrara, King of New York is handily one of the coolest crime movies ever, featuring an all-timer performance from Walken in addition to the incredible supporting cast that includes Fishburne, Steve Buscemi, Wesley Snipes and David Caruso. The gritty tone and brutal, high-octane action scenes handily set King of New York apart.
‘Klute’ (1971)
When New York City sex worker Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda) is linked to the disappearance of businessman Tom Gruneman, Pennsylvania Detective John Klute (Donald Sutherland) travels to New York to investigate her. Klute rents an apartment in Bree’s building and has her phone line tapped, and before long, Klute and Bree haven’t just struck up a professional rapport, they’ve struck up an intimate romance. But it eventually becomes clear that Bree’s confessed paranoia isn’t just in her head — someone other than Klute has been watching her, and she may be the one who disappears next.
This seminal ’70s conspiracy thriller clinched Fonda an Academy Award for Best Actress back in 1972, yet it’s not nearly talked about enough in the mainstream over 50 years since its release. Fonda and Sutherland carry the picture with their simmering chemistry, but the smart screenplay and agonizing tension are both working in perfect sync to keep you hooked from start to finish. Klute is a solidly written mystery with great acting, but it also stands out as an intelligent and nuanced portrayal of sex work.
‘The Gift’ (2000)
In the small town of Brixton, Georgia, Annie Wilson (Cate Blanchett) is a widowed mother who works as a fortune teller, helping out Buddy (Giovanni Ribisi), a struggling mechanic suffering from CPTSD, and Valerie (Hilary Swank), a woman in an abusive marriage to Donnie (Keanu Reeves). When Annie experiences visions of a horrific murder, she finds her talents thrust further into the spotlight as she assists local law enforcement with the disappearance of a young woman named Jessica King (Katie Holmes), the fiancée of local school principal Wayne Collins (Greg Kinnear).
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This lesser-known but highly underrated supernatural crime story from Evil Dead and Send Help director Sam Raimi is a hidden gem within Raimi’s expansive oeuvre. The twisty whodunnit narrative is enhanced by the incredibly colorful ensemble cast that includes J.K. Simmons and Gary Cole, and the highly stylized, inventive direction typical of Raimi elevates the film into something totally distinct and affecting.
