The human mind is deeply complex, which is why psychological thrillers are among the most entertaining films in any genre. These movies explore the psyche of characters who are often unstable and emotionally disturbed. Psychological thrillers play with the audience’s mind and evoke a visceral emotional response that is unlike any other subgenre of film.
The most memorable psychological thrillers are gripping from start to finish. Think of movies like Shutter Island or Gone Girl where the audience is blown away by the end of the film. While those movies rely on plot twists, there are other psychological thrillers that conclude in a way that’s satisfying for audiences. These thrillers have mastered the formula, providing the most shocking and nuanced endings of all time.
10 AI Becomes Unsettlingly Independent in Ex Machina
Director: Alex Garland
- Metascore: 78
- IMDb: 7.7/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
Many tech wizards are changing the world. In Ex Machina, one of them is Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac), the CEO of a search engine called Blue Book. He is exploring artificial intelligence through a humanoid robot named Ava (Alicia Vikander), and he needs a programmer on his team to interact with Ava to see if she’s capable of genuine thought and emotion. Nathan ends up hiring Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson), an awkward young man who quickly becomes entranced by Ava. Everything takes a turn when Ava shuts down the power and warns Caleb not to trust Nathan.
The world has now been overrun by AI, but back in 2014, it was a relatively new concept. The movie Ex Machina came out at just the right time to exploit the world’s fears about this rising technology. While the film isn’t a bona fide classic just yet, it still deserves to make the list of psychological thrillers with the best endings. Audiences will be blown away by Ava’s decision to kill Nathan, trap Caleb, and venture into the world. Her choice represents the idea of AI running away on its own and being a freethinking entity. It’s terrifying and will make audiences think about what’s in store for the future long after the credits roll.
9 Cecilia Triumphs Over Her Abuser in The Invisible Man
Director: Leigh Whannell
- Metascore: 72
- IMDb: 7.1/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
The Invisible Man is highly regarded as one of the most visually stunning movies of the 2020s. The movie follows a woman named Cecilia Kass (Elizabeth Moss) who has been in an abusive relationship with a man named Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) for years. Adrian is a powerful, wealthy optics engineer who has developed an invisibility suit that he uses nefariously to torture Cecilia. Throughout the movie, she’s forced to convince everyone else to believe that Adrian is following her, even though they can’t see him.
Director/writer Leigh Whannell put a modern twist on the classic monster movie by infusing technology and interesting themes about domestic violence. It’s all packaged in a tense, white-knuckle psychological thriller rather than a complete horror movie. This turned out to be a great decision since The Invisible Man is captivating and intense from start to finish. In the end, Cecilia is able to triumph over her abuser by wearing an invisibility suit and slitting his throat. It’s a deeply cathartic conclusion for anyone who has dealt with gaslighting or emotional or physical abuse in a real-life relationship.
8 A Teenage Boy Meets His Fate at the End of Donnie Darko
Director: Richard Kelly
- Metascore: 71
- IMDb: 8.0/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 87%
Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) isn’t the average teenager. He is prone to sleepwalking, and in his nighttime wanderings, has visions of a large man in a rabbit costume who tells him that the world will end. Donnie has 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds before a giant jet engine will crash into his bedroom. Until then, he visits a psychotherapist, gets “attitude lessons” from a motivational speaker, and falls in love with a mysterious girl named Gretchen Ross (Jena Malone).
The ending of Donnie Darko is strong because it comes full circle from the beginning. The unsettling bunny Frank has been counting down the days until the apocalypse and that world-ending moment inevitably comes for Donnie in the final scene. Viewers could watch the movie in reverse and have an experience that’s just as entertaining as a narrative. Not many psychological thrillers are able to offer that unique element, which is why Donnie Darko stands out. The ending of the movie is still sad and surprising, even though it was calculated and had been foreshadowed throughout the runtime.
7 Cape Fear (1991) Has an Intense Thriller Movie Ending
Director: Martin Scorsese
- Metascore: 73
- IMDb: 7.3/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 75%
Cape Fear pairs Robert De Niro with Martin Scorsese once again. Set in 1977, the movie follows a man named Max Cady (De Niro) who has just been released after 14 years in prison. Cady’s attorney, Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte), has greatly underestimated the dangerous nature of his client. This ends up being to his detriment when Cady hunts him and his wife Leigh (Jessica Lange) and their daughter Danielle (Juliette Lewis) down to New Essex, North Carolina, where they live. The family is in a battle for their lives against Cady.
Robert De Niro has run the gamut of the types of roles he has played. Arguably, he’s the most captivating when he’s playing unhinged characters like Max Cady in the 1991 remake of Cape Fear. Cady is sneaky about the way he terrorizes the Bowden family throughout the film. He’s one of the most deplorable characters ever put on film, so it’s validating to see him get his comeuppance onboard the boat at the end. There’s also a bit of an unsettling nature to the ending, since through her narration, Danielle tells viewers that the family was changed by the experience and never spoke about it again.
6 The Ending of Fatal Attraction (1987) Is Gripping Yet Violent
Director: Adrian Lyne
- Metascore: 67
- IMDb: 6.9/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 74%
Fatal Attraction gives new meaning to the idea of toxic relationships. The protagonist of the film is Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas), a married attorney in Manhattan whose bad choices come back to haunt him. He had a one-night stand with a woman named Alex Forrest(Glenn Close) whom he met at a work function. Alex becomes obsessed with Dan, to the point where he has to change his phone number and move to a different town with his wife Beth (Anne Archer) and daughter Ellen (Ellen Latzen).
The ending of Fatal Attraction is pitch-perfect for the intense nature of the rest of the movie. The violence ramps up in the final 20 to 30 minutes, with Beth attacking Alex and Alex attacking Beth and Dan. When it comes to the best endings to psychological thrillers, Fatal Attraction falls right in the middle since it has a mixed reception. It’s well-loved by audiences, but star Glen Close has expressed disdain for how it all unfolds. Either way, there’s no arguing that Beth and Dan’s battle with Alex will keep viewers on the edge of their seats.
5 Lenny’s Memories Make More Sense at the End of Memento
Director: Christopher Nolan
- Metascore: 83
- IMDb: 8.4/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 94%
Viewers who are willing to pay attention shouldn’t miss the 2000 psychological thriller, Memento. In the movie, a man named Leonard “Lenny” Shelby (Guy Pearce) tries to piece together clues about who killed his wife Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss). He has a Polaroid of a dead body, vague notes left behind on scraps of paper, and tattoos to help keep track of information. Lenny needs all the clues he can get since he suffers from anterograde amnesia.
Christopher Nolan made a name for himself with his Dark Knight Trilogy. Fans of the director, however, know that he was creating amazing thrillers long before then with movies like Memento. The story in the movie isn’t told chronologically. By the end, all the pieces come together in a black-and-white sequence where Lenny strangles his wife’s killer and takes a Polaroid photo of the body. The justice Lenny wanted for his wife’s death is never fully realized, since it’s implied that he will continue relying on his fragmented memory for the rest of his life, even though he’s possibly found the killer. It’s a bleak ending that traps viewers in the time loop created throughout the rest of Memento.
4 A Ballerina Embraces Her Dark Side in Black Swan
Director: Darren Aronofsky
- Metascore: 79
- IMDb: 8.0/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 85%
Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) has big dreams of being a prima ballerina for the New York City Ballet. She’s worked at her goal for years, sacrificing her body and training nonstop. It finally seems like her opportunity has arrived when her artistic director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) announces that he’s looking for a dancer to play the dual roles of the White Swan and the Black Swan in a production of Swan Lake. Nina’s biggest competition for the part is a beautiful new dancer in the company named Lily (Mila Kunis).
Black Swan expertly balances the lightness and darkness within Nina. She starts the film as a sweet, virginal girl who would never defy the wishes of her mother. As she embraces the Black Swan character, she starts to embrace her wild, more rebellious nature. In the end, it all crescendos to the final performance in Swan Lake with Nina starring as the Black Swan. It’s unclear at the end whether she actually killed Lily and stabbed herself and is bleeding out on the stage, or if it’s all a figment of her imagination. While she’s maybe dying, she chillingly tells her director how she felt about her performance: “I felt it. It was perfect.”
3 Travis Bickle May Not Actually Be a Hero in Taxi Driver
Director: Martin Scorsese
- Metascore: 94
- IMDb: 8.2/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 89%
Taxi Driver is a highly-regarded psychological thriller. In the movie, a man named Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) has been honorably discharged from the Marines and is looking for work. He takes a job as a taxi driver in New York. While on his route, he meets a beautiful woman named Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) who is volunteering for the political campaign of presidential candidate Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris). He also comes across a prostitute named Iris (Jodie Foster) who he is determined to help.
Long before Joaquin Phoenix took on the role of the Joker, Robert De Niro was slowly losing his mind as Travis Bickle in the classic, Taxi Driver. Travis spends most of the movie aimless and lonely, but something in his mind seems to snap. Through the narration, viewers get to know Travis’s fractured psyche. At the end of Taxi Driver, he takes out all the men to save Iris and sits on the couch as the police swarm in during the aftermath. There are theories that everything that follows, including him being regarded as a hero in the newspapers, is all unreal since it mirrors Travis’s earlier diary entries.
2 Clarice May Not Be Safe in The Silence of the Lambs
Director: Jonathan Demme
- Metascore: 86
- IMDb: 8.6/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 95%
Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is a young FBI agent determined to prove herself. She gets her chance when she takes an assignment to interview an intelligent cannibalistic serial killer named Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). Starling visits Lecter in his cell at Baltimore State Hospital and has a series of chilling conversations with him. The FBI hopes that by her speaking with Lecter, they can gain valuable insight into a man named Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) who has been skinning women around Tennessee.
The meeting between Clarice and Buffalo Bill is inevitable in The Silence of the Lambs, but the ending is still surprising. Clarice saves Catherine Martin (Brooke Smithe) in the basement and kills Buffalo Bill before he can kill her. Meanwhile, Hannibal Lecter escapes from prison by cutting off his own hand and is living in the Bahamas. He calls Clarice to tell her that he will not be hunting her down; therefore, she should extend the courtesy by not pursuing him. Clarice, and in turn, the audience, are not meant to feel a sense of peace when Lecter asks, “Have the lambs stopped screaming?” He’s a terrifying killer, so Clarice may never feel safe while he’s still alive.
1 The Mysterious Photograph Raises Questions in The Shining (1980)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
- Metascore: 86
- IMDb: 8.4/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 83%
The Shining is one of the best horror movies of all time. Viewers are haunted by the creepy imagery in the movie, including the Grady twins at the end of the hallway, the creepy woman in room 217, and most notably, the unhinged rage of Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) as he chases Wendy (Shelly Duvall) and Danny (Danny Lloyd) through the Overlook Hotel. The story of the movie follows Jack’s descent from a regular dad taking a job as a caretaker to a man driven by madness.
There’s often a fine line between horror and psychological thriller. The Shining toes that line expertly by offering plenty of tense, gripping scenes from start to finish. The ending of the movie famously deviates away from what Stephen King wrote because director Stanley Kubrick didn’t want it to be cliché. Jack Torrance ends up being frozen inside the maze outside the hotel, while Wendy and Danny escape. The camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph on the wall. The photo could mean that either Jack’s spirit is stuck in the hotel or he’s been reincarnated and will haunt it forever. It’s up to viewers how to interpret the ending, which is why it’s the best in psychological movie history.