Thrillers are all about suspense, sky-high stakes, and nail-biting sequences of pure tension; and over the course of the last six years, several movies have met those qualities remarkably well. From 2021 until the present, many excellent thrillers have been released around the world, ones that are bound to go down in history as some of the best of the 21st century many years from now. Every year has a standout in virtually every genre, however, and thrillers have been no exception. Every year, there’s always one masterful thriller that stands out above the rest, one particular gem that gets you to watch the whole thing from the very edge of your seat.
Whether it’s a more realistic and down-to-earth thriller like Boiling Pointor a horror thriller like this year’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, the best thriller of each of the last six years has proven that the genre is as healthy nowadays as it has always been. These movies provide a safe environment to experience intense adrenaline rushes that one could never live through otherwise, and as a result, it’s hardly a surprise that they have been as successful as they have.
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2021: ‘Boiling Point’
Vinette Robinson and Stephen Graham as Carly and Andy, preparing plates in Boiling PointImage via Vertigo Releasing
Sometimes, all you need to make a tension-filled thriller that makes one run out of nails to bite before the credits roll is a kitchen. Philip Barantini‘s criminally underappreciated British drama Boiling Point provides ample proof of that fact, with its impressive 99% score on Rotten Tomatoes being entirely deserved. Starring Stephen Graham at the top of his game, the film plays out in real time in an upscale London restaurant, and the result is as emotionally riveting as a movie about cooking can possibly get. The term “hell’s kitchen” had never felt this much like a reality.
Indeed, Boiling Point is one of the most intense movies of the 21st century, a truly gripping drama with a hearty side of humor and emotion. The enthralling set pieces play out at a non-stop pace, constantly barraging the audience with a ferocious sense of stress that feels oddly intoxicating. The whole film rests on the excellence of Graham’s performance, while Graham finds in the script’s claustrophobic, character-driven nature the foundations for what may just be the best work of his career.
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2022: ‘The Batman’
Batman leading citizens out of a flood in The BatmanImage via Warner Bros. Entertainment
There are many superlatives that can easily be applied to Matt Reeves‘ The Batman. It’s the greatest superhero movie since 2008’s The Dark Knight, it’s one of the greatest action thrillers of the 2020s thus far, and it’s one of the best crime movies of the last six years. Inspired by 1970s neo-noirs and the work of filmmakers like David Fincher, it’s a complete deconstruction of the tropes of the superhero genre and everything that the Caped Crusader represents.
This is no traditional comic book movie. It’s grim-toned and wonderfully atmospheric, it’s a refreshingly character-driven detective tale through and through, and it offers a kind of take on the Batman mythos that the big screen hadn’t really seen before. Masterfully combining the grounded, gritty nature that made The Dark Knight so iconic with the kind of stylish, somewhat campy tone that characterized the character’s older films, The Batman showed that the superhero genre could provide some legitimately exceptional thrillers even at a time when the genre was starting to fatigue some viewers.
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2023: ‘Anatomy of a Fall’
Sandra Hüller as Sandra Voyter, standing outside and looking dismayed in Anatomy of a FallImage via Neon
Winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s 2023 Palme d’Or, Justine Triet‘s Anatomy of a Fallis one of the best legal thriller movies of all time. It’s the quintessential courtroom drama of the 2020s, a careful study and playful deconstruction of the genre itself. What is truth? What can the justice system do when it’s more ambiguous than truly, fully objective? These are all questions that concern Triet’s masterpiece, an absolutely brilliant whodunnit led by a powerhouse Sandra Hüller and orchestrated by a filmmaker in full control of her craft.
Smart, dramatic, mysterious, and injected with just the right doses of humor in all the right spots, Anatomy of a Fall is complex tonally, structurally, and thematically. In other words, it’s everything that a good thriller should aim to be. The way Triet surgically peels back the narrative’s many layers without ever sacrificing the ambiguity of the mystery that fuels the story is nothing short of genius, so by the time the credits roll, the audience is left inevitably pondering vital questions on the nature of justice and how society perceives women’s ambition.
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2024: ‘Conclave’
It’s not every year that we get a political and psychological thriller set within the walls of the Vatican. In fact, it’s difficult to think of any film of that sort other than Conclave, though its uniqueness is by no means the only thing that the movie has going for it. It is, all in all and through and through, one of the best thriller masterpieces of the last 10 years. Tense, nuanced, and layered with a surprising amount of humor, it’s far more than just a film about modern Christianity: It’s a legitimately perfect political thriller that just so happens to find its story within the confines of a papal election.
For one, every actor is delivering some of the best work of their career here, from an impeccable Ralph Fiennes to a fierce yet understated Isabella Rosselinni. Add to that some of the most elegant visuals of any thriller of the 2020s, perfect pacing, and an engrossing set of twists and surprises, and you get one of the most special thrillers of the 21st century as a whole, let alone of the 2020s. As sophisticated as it is entertaining and as wonderfully crafted as it is marvelously written, it’s a testament to the sort of tonally distinct thrillers that the last six years have provided.
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2025: ‘One Battle After Another’
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
It was One Battle After Another, the entirely deserving winner of the latest Best Picture Academy Award, that finally made Paul Thomas Anderson an Oscar winner after decades of its being long overdue. Like anyone would expect from a film made by one of the greatest and most acclaimed auteurs currently working in Hollywood, this is one of the most tremendous masterpieces the big screen has seen in many years, easily one of the most perfect action thrillers of the last 40 years. Part action epic, part dark comedy, part political statement, and 100% masterful, it’s a must-see for all those who love the thriller genre.
It’s hard to know where to even begin singing One Battle After Another‘s praises. Perhaps with the exceptional cast, led by Leonardo DiCaprio at the top of his game and breakout superstar Chase Infiniti; perhaps with Anderson’s direction, which perfectly balances suspenseful drama with political satire in ways that never cease to work and never lose their edge; or perhaps with just how technically flawless the whole film is, Michael Bauman‘s titillating camerawork to Jonny Greenwood‘s unforgettable score. Whereve one chooses to look inside this modern epic masterpiece, one is bound to find at least a few things worthy of praise.
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2026: ’28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’
Ralph Fiennes in 28 Years Later: The Bone TempleImage via Sony Pictures Releasing
So far, 2026 has been a relatively prolific year for thrillers, but there is one in particular that’s pretty easily the best one of the year so far: Nia DaCosta‘s zombie horror thriller 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, a very direct sequel to last year’s 28 Years Laterby Danny Boyle. Yet another exceptional 2020s thriller starring Ralph Fiennes, this one was unfortunately a significant box office bomb, despite easily being one of the best horror films of the decade so far. In quite the same way that the original 28 Days Later redefined 21st-century zombie movies, The Bone Temple further subverts the genre by injecting its tropes with fascinating philosophical and relgious themes.
Psychologically intense, visually stunning, and every bit as fun as it is disturbing—which is to say, very—, it may very well be counted among the best fourquels in the history of franchise filmmaking. There’s a deepening of the lore, world, and profoundly human drama of the franchise here that feels like a very welcome change of pace in this age of soulless horror movie sequels, wonderfully laying the foundations for what is bound to be a breathtaking final chapter that brings the franchise to a resounding close.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
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What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
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Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
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How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
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What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
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What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
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Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
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What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
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What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
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How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
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What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
