A brief list of Thrillers are considered “the best of all time”?

• Silence of the Lambs
• North by Northwest
• Rear Window
• Vertigo
• Shawshank Redemption
• The Sixth Sense
• Memento
• Seven
• The Usual Suspects
• Dirty Harry
• Jaws
• Die Hard
• Heat
• Planet of The Apes
• Taxi Driver
• Pulp Fiction
• Jurassic Park
• Dog Day Afternoon
• Kill Bill vol 1
• Reservoir Dogs
• Fargo
• The Shining
• The Birds
• The Matrix
• Blade Runner
• The Terminator
• Fight Club

The films listed below will the films that are considered "the best of all time" and I have seen, although that does not necessarily mean that I personally rank them the "best of all time". The thriller films which I consider my favourites are on a separate post.

Silence of The Lambs - This film was released in1991 and was directed by Jonathan Demme, Starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins. The film's plot follows federal agent Clarice Starling who is assigned to investigate a series of Murders done by a serial killer known as Buffalo Bill but decides to interrogate a cannibalistic killer, Hannibal Lecter as his help may be of use to the case.

Shawshank Redemption - This film was released in 1994 and was directed by Darabont, his other works include the Green Mile (1999), The Majestic (2001) and Stephen King's The Mist (2007). The film stars Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne who is convicted for the murder of his wife and sent to Shawshank State Penitentiary.

The Shining - A 1980 psychological horror film directed by Stanley Kubrick, his other famous works include,  2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Full Metal Jacket (1987). The film follows Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) who has recently taken the job of winter caretaker of the Overlook hotel. He is warned that the previous caretaker suffered from cabin fever and ended up murdering his family before taking his own life. This is actually one of my personal favourite films as well as it was dubbed by critics to be one of the greatest horror films ever made.

Pulp Fiction - A 1994 American crime film, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. The film stars Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, Uma Thurman and Bruce Willis. The film's style of story telling is in a non chronological timeline, following the main characters, Vincent, Jules and Butch (Travolta, Jackson and Willis), in their own stories which intertwine throughout the film. The seven main story sequences in the film are all connected in one.

This is the order in which they occur:
1. "Prologue-The Diner" (i)
2. Prelude to "Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife"
3. "Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife"
4. Prelude to "The Gold Watch" (a-flashback, b-present)
5. "The Gold Watch"
6. "The Bonnie Situation"
7. "Epilogue-The Diner"(ii)




The Birds - A 1963 horror/thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, the "king of suspense", also one of the most praised and recognised directors in all film,not just thriller. Many of his works are considered some of the "best of all time". But this film in particular is unique n that it was summarised by critics as being Hitchcock's "last unflawed film". The film stars Tippi Hedren as Malanie Daniels who visits the town of Bodega Bay, a town which soon gets attacked by hordes of various species of birds, mostly crows. I may just have an underdeveloped taste or I'am simply crazy because in my opinion, I found the film to be rather dull. I now dislike the film even less since discovering a B-movie with strikingly similar ideas and plot points called "Birdemic" as in the word 'epidemic' mixed with 'bird'.




Planet of The Apes (1968) - Is a sci-fi thriller film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner starring Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter. The film's premise is based on a number of humans which have crash landed their ship on an alien planet where apes are the dominant species while humans are subservient. This is the film that has the famous shot of the remains of the statue of liberty, revealing that the supposed new planet was actually a desolate Earth. The movie had spawned numerous followups in the form of sequels and tie-ins, such as the infamous Tim Burton adaptation and the recent prequels, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. In my opinion though, the recent prequels are excellent films, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes being great and Rise of The Planet of Apes being phenomenal.



The Terminator/Terminator 2: Judgement Day - Both films are sci-fi thrillers. The Terminator released in 1984 and T2 Judgement Day released in 1991. Both are directed by James Cameron, both star Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton and both films were critically acclaimed. In the first film, Schwarzenegger (the Terminator) plays the antagonist who is programmed to terminate Sarah Connor as she was the mother of John Connor, the leader of the resistance fighting against the machines in the near future. The sequel is similar except Schwarzenegger is an ally to John Connor as a child, protecting him from a new, more powerful terminator, the T-1000 (Robert Patrick). My preference out of the two (since the rest of the sequels aren't anything special" would actually be T2 Judgement Day. My reasoning for this is that the action/chase scenes are executed in a different way from the first film, combined with the revolutionary special effects used for T-1000, make the film highly engaging (not that it's much better than the original).





Jurassic Park - An American Adventure thriller directed by Steven Spielberg. The film, starring Sam Neill and Laura Dern, features scientists who have opened a safari park for dinosaurs which were made using genetics and cloning. The rights for this film was being bided for, which Spielberg, alongside Universal Studios, obtained the rights for 1.5 million dollars. The film ended up breaking records, grossing over 900 million dollars worldwide, becoming the highest grossing film at that time, a record which was held for several years before being beaten by James Cameron's Titanic (1997), which was then beaten again by one of Cameron's own films, Avatar (2010).

What is it that these films have in common? Why is it that these films in particular are considered the “best of all time”? All the films listed include elements of suspense, action, scares, anything which a film utilises to simulate situations with high stakes and conflict.

By taking a look at the films listed as “best of all time”, we can tell why they’re on that list as many of them were directed by some of the most respected individuals of the thriller genre. Films such as The Birds, Psycho, Vertigo and Rear Window are all under Alfred Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense, while Reservoir dogs and Kill Bill were directed by Tarantino who also directed Pulp Fiction which is considered to be one of the best films in general of all time. Who directs a film has a major impact on how the film is made and how it turns out as most directors specialise in certain genres. For the case of Hitchcock and Tarantino, they specialise in their own areas of film, meaning that they are more likely to direct in their own specialised genre, and therefore are more likely to make a great film.

Another reason why a film may be considered one of the “best of all time” is that certain aspects of the film may have been revolutionary to the genre, a type of storytelling, the way it’s filmed and more. For example, in Pulp Fiction, the story is told in way way that there are three connected stories in an non chronological timeline. When the movie was released in 1994, it was praised by audiences and critics alike and went on to be rewarded with twenty six oscar nominations, winning six categories including the “Best Director” category for Quentin Tarantino.