For a Friday with friends, you need a film that doesn't require perfect silence to work. Something engaging enough that it holds attention even in a room with people in it.
In retrospect, the 2010s were a decade of quiet excellence - films doing serious work without demanding credit for it.
Great thrillers are built on a simple premise: make the audience care, then put everything they care about in jeopardy. Easier said than done.
When a zombie virus pushes Korea into a state of emergency, those trapped on an express train to Busan must fight for their own survival.
When Lou Bloom, desperate for work, muscles into the world of L.A. crime journalism, he blurs the line between observer and participant to become the star of his own story. Aiding him in his effort is Nina, a TV-news veteran.
A reclusive pawnshop owner goes on a brutal rampage to rescue a young girl kidnapped by a criminal organization.
A committed dancer struggles to maintain her sanity after winning the lead role in a production of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake."
In Chinatown, law and order is turned upside down when a trio of feral Chinese gangsters arrive, start terrorizing civilians, and usurping territory. The beleaguered local gangsters team up with the police, lead by the badass loose cannon Ma Seok-do, to bring them down. Based on a true story.
The best thrillers are the ones where you're not sure who to trust â including yourself. Moral clarity dissolves. You're left with only the tension.
Bacurau, a small town in the Brazilian sertão, mourns the loss of its matriarch, Carmelita, who lived to be 94. Days later, its inhabitants notice that their community has vanished from most maps.
Palermo, Sicily, 1980. Mafia member Tommaso Buscetta decides to move to Brazil with his family fleeing the constant war between the different clans of the criminal organization. But when, after living several misfortunes, he is forced to return to Italy, he makes a bold decision that will change his life and the destiny of Cosa Nostra forever.
Chris and his girlfriend Rose go upstate to visit her parents for the weekend. At first, Chris reads the family's overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter's interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he never could have imagined.
After fighting his way through an apartment building populated by an army of dangerous criminals and escaping with his life, SWAT team member Rama goes undercover, joining a powerful Indonesian crime syndicate to protect his family and uncover corrupt members of his own force.
A series of mysterious events changes the life of a blind pianist who now must report a crime that was actually never witnessed by him.
The best hopeful films aren't naive. They acknowledge the difficulty and find the humanity anyway. These do that.
Great thrillers stay with you because the tension never fully releases. You were there. You made those choices alongside the characters. You carry it out.