In a big way it seems like thrillers got more and less complicated as the years rolled by. People wanted more of a thrill and less of a neurological chill as they want to think less and feel more. Of course that’s true with everyone but it does seem to be what the masses want at times since the physicality of a thriller can excite people in a way that little else can when it comes to cinema. However banking on just that seems like a bad idea since it seems to invite the idea that there’s no real thought to a thriller, which is hardly ever the case since if one takes the time and sits down to enjoy them then they might realize that the essence of a thriller is that you HAVE to think in order to really get what’s going on, otherwise the movie becomes little more than an action flick cut and pasted into the middle of a drama.
Here are some of the best thrillers from the 2000s.
5. Memento
It’d be a kind of hell to live in if all you could remember was a past that no longer mattered and you couldn’t make a single new memory that would last. Going by tattoos and pictures with notes on them would only get you so far since you’d have to keep deciphering what you’d just written and what it means and why. Plus, the idea that someone could use this condition to get one over on you, continuously, would mean that you really couldn’t trust anyone so long as you had the idea that they might be doing something you don’t approve of in order to get you on their side or use you in manner you don’t like. Of course the problem is that you’d never remember.
4. Hannibal
There were a few gross-out moments in this film but not as many as you might have expected with this being Hannibal Lecter and all. This film was a bit more cultured than the first one largely because of the setting and the fact that Hannibal was no longer being upstaged by another actor that sought to take the main story and make it their own. Of course in all honesty he wasn’t the main point of the first film at all, but it did seem that way after a while. In this movie however Hannibal was the main bad guy no matter what is said and he played it beautifully. In fact he was one of the best actors in the movie.
3. One Hour Photo
This kind of makes you wonder about giving the kind of personal information that’s needed when dropping off your film to be developed, if people still do that these days. Even those orders you send in online are subject to other people gaining your personal information and doing pretty much anything they want with it. That’s a disturbing thought, but it’s also something that thankfully doesn’t happen on a regular basis. Sy was one in a million to be honest and a very disturbed individual that crossed a line that many people wouldn’t simply because the ramifications are intense to say the least.
2. Untraceable
The internet is a tremendous boon to many people but in the wrong hands, especially if those hands are controlled by a sadistic, highly intelligent individual, it can be a tool used for murder. The likelihood of being able to do something like this doesn’t seem all that great unless someone is motivated and has the know-how and the money to pull it off, but the probability that they’ll be caught is still pretty high since the number of people working on cyber crime units and the level of intelligence they possess is kind of scary when you really think about it. Still, if someone with that kind of knowledge ever went rogue it’d be disturbing to say the least.
1. Oldboy
Thrillers sometimes leave you on the edge of your seat but at other times will drop you back into them with a look of bewildered confusion or disgust that can come for a variety of reasons. Oldboy is one of those films that might thrill you, chill you, and rock you to your core since the subject matter is something that seems awful and completely capable of breaking a person, but the twists it offers are so horrible that you might actually feel sick to your stomach after a while unless you’re enjoying the story too much and want to see how it ends. All in all this was a very odd movie that a lot of people have an opinion about, but it’s also something that leaves a bad taste in the mouth when it’s over.
Thrillers don’t always have happy endings after all.
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