5 Most Haunting Psychological Thrillers

According to director John Madden, psychological thrillers focus on story, character development, choice, and moral conflict; fear and anxiety drive the psychological tension in unpredictable ways.

Here are five of the most haunting and touching psychological thrillers of Hollywood.

5. The Butterfly Effect (2004)

A young man blocks out harmful memories of significant events of his life. As he grows up, he finds a way to remember these lost memories and a supernatural way to alter his life. (113 mins.)

Director: Eric Bress, J. Mackye Gruber
Stars: Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Melora Walters, Elden Henson

4. Memento (2000)

India copied the idea and made it into a freakish awful ‘Ghajni’. Memento, the original is a treat to watch.
Synopsis
A man creates a strange system to help him remember things; so he can hunt for the murderer of his wife without his short-term memory loss being an obstacle. (113 mins.)

Director: Christopher Nolan
Stars: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, Mark Boone Junior

3. Se7en (1995)

Two detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his modus operandi. (127 mins.)
Director: David Fincher
Stars: Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Kevin Spacey, Andrew Kevin Walker

2. Inception (2010)

A thief who steals corporate secrets through use of dream-sharing technology is given the inverse task of planting an idea into the mind of a CEO. (148 mins.)

Director: Christopher Nolan
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe

1. Shutter Island (2010)

The Number One on the list, ‘Shutter Island’ is a thriller that many failed to understand after the first watch.

Synopsis

In 1954, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels is investigating the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and is presumed to be hiding near-by.
As Teddy quizzes Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), the head of the institution, he begins to suspect that the authorities in charge might not be giving him the whole truth, and that a terrible fate may befall all the patients in the spooky Ward C — a unit devoted to the most heinous of the hospital’s inmates.

Complicating matters further, Teddy has a secret of his own — the arsonist who murdered his wife is incarcerated on Shutter Island.
Driven to confront his wife’s killer, and stranded on the island because of a hurricane, Teddy must unravel the secrets of the eerie place before succumbing to his own madness.
(138 mins.)
Director: Martin Scorsese

Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Emily Mortimer, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley