10 Best Psychological Thrillers Of The 2010s That Still Hold Up

The best psychological thrillers of the 2010s are so masterfully executed that their twists, dread, and moral deviance hit just as hard today as they did when they were first released. The 2010s were a golden era for adult, mid-budget psychological thrillers before streaming reshaped the theatrical market, making this an era for thrillers that now often goes to Netflix and other streaming homes in today’s movie world.

These thrillers come in all shapes and sizes. They include adaptations of literary novels like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, which takes an already proven story and reinvents it for the big screen. This also includes psychological mind-twisters from directors like Darren Aronofsky and horror-based thrillers from today’s top young filmmakers like Jordan Peele. They also include major stars like Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Affleck, and Amy Adams.

While the main purpose of these movies is to provide twists and thrills, they are also award-winning releases as well, with Natalie Portman winning a Best Actress Oscar, Jordan Peele winning an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and Rosamund Pike getting a nomination as well. These psychological thrillers have helped kickstart careers and remain great watches to this day.

Gone Girl (2014)

Gillian Flynn wrote the script for the adaptation of her novel, Gone Girl, which helped make it a loyal adaptation of a psychological thriller in the 2010s, but with a significant change to the very ending. David Fincher directed the movie, which stars Ben Affleck as Nick Dunne, a husband who reports the disappearance of his wife, only to be named as the top suspect in her suspected murder. However, as the mystery unspools, nothing is as it seems.

Rosamund Pike stars as the missing wife, Amy Dunne. She earned an Oscar nomination for a performance split between flashbacks and the present-day scenes where Amy turns the entire mystery on its head. This movie masters the unreliable narrator trope, split between Nick’s present-day account and Amy’s diary, with the mid-film reveal showing that Amy faked her own disappearance to frame him.

Prisoners (2013)

Prisoners is a Denis Villeneuve movie, the English-language movie debut for the director who would go on to make masterpieces like Blade Runner 2049 and Dune. When two young girls are abducted in a small Pennsylvania town, and police release their only suspect, a desperate father kidnaps and tortures him for information. Hugh Jackman plays the father, Jake Gyllenhaal is the detective on the case, and Paul Dano is the suspect.

This is a unique thriller because it isn’t the crime that drives the story, but the moral descent of a grieving father and the ethics of vigilante torture. This all runs in parallel with a labyrinthine detective mystery. The movie earned an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography and served as Villeneuve’s Hollywood breakthrough, leading directly to Sicario.

Nightcrawler (2014)

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Dan Gilroy made his directorial debut with the 2014 psychological thriller Nightcrawler. The movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom, a petty thief in Los Angeles who reinvents himself as a freelance crime stringer, filming accidents and crime scenes to sell to a local TV news station. However, as soon as he sees how lucrative his new job can be, he starts to stage crime scenes and break the law to get the best videos.

Nightcrawler is a sociopathic antihero character study and media satire, with Bloom escalating to staging scenes for better footage. It is also a great acting performance, as Gyllenhaal lost significant weight for the gaunt look. Gilroy was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, and Gyllenhaal was celebrated for his performance in this indictment of news culture.

Shutter Island (2010)

Martin Scorsese directed his own psychological thriller in 2010 with the Dennis Lehane adaptation Shutter Island. The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a U.S. Marshal named Teddy Daniels who arrives on an island to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Ashecliffe, a hospital for the criminally insane on the island. However, when he investigates the case, he realizes not everything is as it seems.

The movie is not a normal Scorsese film, as it is more of a cookie-cutter thriller that lives and dies with its shocking twist ending. Shutter Island presents a paranoid neo-noir atmosphere with a twist revealing Teddy is actually patient Andrew Laeddis, and the investigation is elaborate role-play therapy. The ambiguous final line lingers, and it is one of the most talked-about twists in psychological thrillers.

Black Swan (2010)

Darren Aronofsky has rarely been a director to helm a movie that is an easy watch. However, he delivered a great psychological thriller that helped earn Natalie Portman an Oscar win for her role, while also picking up a Best Picture nomination as well. Black Swan stars Portman as Nina Sayers, a fragile, perfectionist ballerina who wins the lead in Swan Lake and must embody both the innocent White Swan and the sensual Black Swan.

This is a deeply disturbing psychological thriller that delivers psychosexual body horror and unreliable perception as Nina unravels under pressure from her director, her mother, and rival dancer Lily. While not an easy movie to watch, it is an intense thriller that proves Aronofsky can deliver a prestigious horror story.

Sicario (2015)

Directed by Denis Villeneuve with a script by Taylor Sheridan, Sicario is a psychological thriller starring Emily Blunt as FBI agent Kate Macer, an idealistic law enforcement officer who is recruited onto a shadowy government task force operating along the U.S.-Mexico border to take down a cartel leader. Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin co-star as part of her team in this story of how the U.S. government can be as devious as the drug lords.

This thriller runs on moral disorientation and dread, keeping Kate in the dark through set pieces like the border-crossing convoy and the night-vision tunnel raid. It was a huge success, and it spawned a sequel, although Blunt was not back for the second outing.

Get Out (2017)

Get Out is the best psychological horror thriller of the 2010s, and it is one of the rare horror movies to earn an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. Jordan Peele directed the movie in his directorial debut, and it stars Daniel Kaluuya as Chris Washington, a young Black man who goes to meet his white girlfriend’s wealthy family. When Chris arrives at her parents’ home, he realizes something is wrong with the family and the neighborhood around it.

He uncovers a conspiracy where his girlfriend’s parents help their friends transplant their white brains into Black bodies. This is a social-horror satire of liberal racism built on the Sunken Place hypnosis, mounting paranoia, and the teacup-and-spoon trigger. This movie launched Peele’s directing career and ignited a wave of elevated horror movies.

Nocturnal Animals (2016)

Nocturnal Animals is a movie based on Austin Wright’s 1993 novel Tony and Susan and was directed by Tom Ford in his second feature movie. Amy Adams stars as gallery owner Susan Morrow, and Jake Gyllenhaal stars in a dual role as Susan’s ex-husband Edward and the fictional novel protagonist Tony in the novel written by Edward and sent to Susan.

Susan reads a violent manuscript sent by her estranged first husband and reads it as a symbolic revenge tale for how she wronged him. This is a nested story-within-a-story structure driven by dread and guilt, with a West Texas roadside abduction as a metaphor for emotional betrayal. Michael Shannon earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor and Aaron Taylor-Johnson won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor.

Enemy (2013)

Enemy is one of Denis Villeneuve’s lesser-known psychological thrillers, and it is one of his most difficult to understand, straddling the line between a thriller and a sci-fi mind-twisting film. The movie loosely adapts José Saramago’s 2002 novel The Double. Jake Gyllenhaal stars in a dual role as history professor Adam Bell and bit-part actor Anthony Claire, doppelgängers who look alike and trade lives with each other.

The plot starts when a withdrawn professor spots his exact double in a movie and becomes obsessed with tracking him down, entangling both men’s lives. The thriller plays in the realm of doppelgänger paranoia, identity dissolution, and dense recurring spider imagery that Villeneuve added himself, delivering a notorious shock ending. That ending has helped make this film a cult favorite.

Split (2017)

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M. Night Shyamalan is best known for his movie twists, but the only real twist in this film comes at the end when Shyamalan connects it with one of his previous films. In Split, the main story follows Kevin Wendell Crumb, a man with dissociative identity disorder, who abducts three teenage girls as his personalities war over the emergence of a violent 24th identity, known as The Beast.

This is a DID-driven suspense built almost entirely on James McAvoy’s shape-shifting performance and his brilliant portrayals of several of his character’s distinct personalities. The movie plays out like a slasher movie, and it was a huge success, helping resurrect Shyamalan’s career after years of disappointments. It also relaunched the Unbreakable trilogy, which finished off with Glass in 2019.