The best films for a group don't flatten the experience - they create one. You want something that generates opinions, debates, a reason to stay up later than planned.
The 2010s were defined by a wave of filmmakers who understood that the best genre films work on multiple levels simultaneously.
Great thrillers are built on a simple premise: make the audience care, then put everything they care about in jeopardy. Easier said than done.
All unemployed, Ki-taek's family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.
Under the direction of a ruthless instructor, a talented young drummer begins to pursue perfection at any cost, even his humanity.
World War II soldier-turned-U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane, but his efforts are compromised by troubling visions and a mysterious doctor.
1930s Korea, in the period of Japanese occupation, a new girl, Sook-hee, is hired as a handmaiden to a Japanese heiress, Hideko, who lives a secluded life on a large countryside estate with her domineering Uncle Kouzuki. But the maid has a secret. She is a pickpocket recruited by a swindler posing as a Japanese Count to help him seduce the Lady to steal her fortune.
During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.
These films earn their suspense slowly, deliberately, brick by brick. By the time the pressure peaks, you're completely invested and there's nowhere to go.
Keller Dover is facing every parent's worst nightmare. His six-year-old daughter, Anna, is missing, together with her young friend, Joy, and as minutes turn to hours, panic sets in. The only lead is a dilapidated RV that had earlier been parked on their street.
Barcelona, Spain. Adrián Doria, a young and successful businessman accused of murder, meets one night with Virginia Goodman, an expert interrogation lawyer, in order to devise a defense strategy.
As the deceased soul Ja-hong and his three afterlife guardians prepare for their remaining trials for reincarnation, the guardians soon come face to face with the truth of their tragic time on Earth 1,000 years earlier.
Having died unexpectedly, firefighter Ja-hong is taken to the afterlife by 3 afterlife guardians. Only when he passes 7 trials over 49 days and proves he was innocent in human life, he's able to reincarnate, and his 3 afterlife guardians are by his side to defend him in trial.
Held captive for 7 years in an enclosed space, a woman and her young son finally gain their freedom, allowing the boy to experience the outside world for the first time.
The best mind-bending films don't cheat. They follow their own logic rigorously - which is exactly why the rug-pull, when it comes, is so disorienting.
The best thriller films leave you uncertain â about the characters, about the world, about what you would have done. That uncertainty is the point.