What is the best psychological thriller of all time?

By YPB Team

Reality-bending masterclasses in dread spanning from Hitchcock's shadow to modern social horror — seven decades of films that made audiences question everything they were watching. Cast your vote!

Psycho (1960)

Alfred Hitchcock's landmark that killed its star in the first act and made audiences question every assumption about narrative safety — the shower scene remains cinema's most dissected 45 seconds.

1000pts

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Jonathan Demme's Oscar-sweeping thriller in which FBI trainee Clarice Starling enlists imprisoned cannibal Hannibal Lecter to catch a serial killer, a clinical study in the psychology of evil.

714pts

The Game (1997)

David Fincher's paranoid puzzle in which a wealthy banker receives a birthday gift of a mysterious real-world game that quickly appears to be trying to destroy him — a perfectly calibrated anxiety machine.

641pts

Shutter Island (2010)

Martin Scorsese's deliberately disorienting 1954 mystery set in a remote asylum for the criminally insane, a puzzle-box thriller that rewards patient rewatching with its devastating revelation.

494pts

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Roman Polanski's claustrophobic Manhattan horror in which a young wife suspects her neighbours — and husband — are complicit in a Satanic conspiracy involving her pregnancy.

385pts

Nightcrawler (2014)

Dan Gilroy's Los Angeles thriller about an amoral, sociopathic freelance crime journalist who stages news footage to advance his career — Jake Gyllenhaal's hollow-eyed performance is deeply unsettling.

385pts

Repulsion (1965)

Roman Polanski's terrifying study of a young Belgian woman's mental disintegration in a London flat, a virtuoso subjective-horror film of suffocating dread shot in luminous black and white.

384pts

Gone Girl (2014)

David Fincher's icy adaptation of Gillian Flynn's novel — a wife disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary and her husband becomes the prime suspect — a cold-blooded dissection of marriage and media.

231pts

Gaslight (1944)

George Cukor's suspense classic about a Victorian husband who systematically manipulates his wife into doubting her own sanity — so definitive it gave the English language the verb 'to gaslight'.

231pts

Hereditary (2018)

Ari Aster's debut — a family unravels after a grandmother's death unlocks a hereditary secret — featuring one of the most traumatic mid-film sequences in modern horror and a genuinely Biblical finale.

231pts

Se7en (1995)

David Fincher's rain-soaked serial-killer procedural following seven deadly-sin murders, building to one of cinema's most devastating final scenes — 'What's in the box?'

1pts

Black Swan (2010)

Darren Aronofsky's psychosexual ballet thriller in which Natalie Portman's obsessive perfectionist gradually loses her grip on reality while preparing for Swan Lake, a descent into terrifying beauty.

1pts

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Ron Howard's Oscar-winning portrait of mathematician John Nash's schizophrenia and recovery, deploying its unreliable narrator structure to make the audience experience his distorted reality.

1pts

Get Out (2017)

Jordan Peele's razor-sharp debut in which a Black man visiting his white girlfriend's family uncovers a horrifying truth about liberal racism and bodily autonomy, launching a new era of social horror.

1pts

Parasite (2019)

Bong Joon-ho's Palme d'Or-winning class thriller about a poor family that infiltrates a wealthy household, which pivots from dark comedy to genuine horror as buried secrets surface beneath their feet.