POPULAR DIRECTORS AND PERSONAL FAVOURITES

POPULAR DIRECTORS ASSOCIATED WITH THIS GENRE

Director Guillermo del Toro once described suspense as being about the withholding of information: either a character knows something the audience doesn’t know, or the audience knows something the character doesn’t. 

The best thrillers leave us scanning the screen with anticipation. They invite us to guess what happens next, but then delight in thwarting expectations. We can all name the great thriller filmmakers of the past - Alfred Hitchcock, Carol Reed, Brian De Palma - but what about the current crop of directors? Here’s my pick of the filmmakers who’ve made some great modern thrillers over the past six years - that is, between the year 2010 and the present.

Lynne Ramsay - We Need To Talk About Kevin - Lynne Ramsay is a Scottish film director, writer, producer, and cinematographer. Ramsay’s We Need To Talk About Kevin may be the most effective psychological thriller of recent years. About the difficult relationship between a mother (Tilda Swinton) and her distant, possibly sociopathic son (Ezra Miller), Ramsay’s film is masterfully told from beginning to end - which is impressive, given that the source novel by Lionel Shriver is told via a series of letters. Ramsay takes the raw material from the book and crafts something cinematic and highly disturbing: a study of guilt, sorrow and recrimination. 

Anton Corbijn - The American, A Most Wanted Man -  Anton Johannes Gerrit Corbijn van Willenswaard is a Dutch photographer, music video director, and film director. Corbijn’s direction remains gripping because he doesn’t give us huge action scenes to puncture the tension. We can sense the capacity for violence coiled up beneath the hitman’s calm exterior, and Corbijn makes sure we only see rare flashes of that toughness - right up until the superbly-staged climax.

David Fincher - The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl - David Andrew Leo Fincher is an American director and producer, notably for films, television series, and music videos. Based on Gillian Flynn’s novel (and adapted by the author herself), Gone Girl is both a gripping thriller and a thoroughly twisted relationship drama. Fincher’s mastery of the genre is all here: his millimetre-perfect composition, seamless touches of CGI and subtle yet effective uses of colour and shadow. While not a straight-up masterpiece like the period thriller Zodiac, Gone Girl is still a glossy, smart and blackly funny yarn in the Hitchcock tradition. If there’s one master of the modern thriller currently working, it has to be Fincher.



Denis Villeneuve - Sicario, Prisoners - Here’s one of those directors who can pack an overwhelming sense of dread in a single image: in Sicario, his searing drug-war thriller from last year, it was the sight of tiny specks of dust falling in the light scything through a window. That single shot proved to be the calm before the storm, as Villeneuve unleashed a salvo of blood-curdling events: an attempted FBI raid on a building gone horribly awry. And this, I think, is the brilliance of Villeneuve’s direction, and why he’s so good at directing thrillers like Sicario or 2013’s superb Prisoners - he understands the rhythm of storytelling, and how scenes of quiet can generate almost unbearable tension.

Another case in point: the highway sequence in Sicario, where Emily Blunt’s FBI agent is stuck in a traffic jam outside one of the most violent cities in the world. Villeneueve makes us feel the stifling heat and the claustrophobia; something nasty’s going to happen, we know that - but it’s the sense of anticipation which makes for such an unforgettable scene.

Prisoners hews closely to the template of a modern mystery thriller, but it’s once again enriched by Villeneuve’s expert pacing and the performances he gets out of his actors. Hugh Jackman’s seldom been better as a father on the hunt for his missing child, while Jake Gyllenhaal mesmerises as a cop scarred by his own private traumas.

MY OWN PERSONAL FAVOURITES : 

FAVOURITE DIRECTORS : 

I can sometimes be a bit picky with choosing to watch the right film however when something catches my eye... Bring it on. I only have two favourite directors in the whole entire world, one of them is : Jaume Collet-Serra, he is a Spanish film director and producer. He is known for directing the horror remake House of Wax, the psychological thriller Orphan, and the action-thrillers Unknown, Non-Stop, and Run All Night and obviously the best 2016 Horror-Thriller... THE SHALLOWS ! It is an energetic thriller.



My second favourite director is Adam Wingard, he is an American film director, editor, cinematographer, and screenwriter. He is notable for his works in the horror genre, especially the films You're Next, The Guest, and BLAIR WITCH ! I love the movie blair witch therefore that is why he is my favourite.To Wingard, the method to his madness was to achieve reality in the moment, something he never tried before Blair Witch. 

THRILLER FAVOURITES : Wikipedias page of what it is and what they think about it.

Shutter Island

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio team up for a fourth time for this adaptation of Shutter Island, a novel by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River). The film opens in 1954 as World War II veteran and current federal marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), ferry to Shutter Island, a water-bound mental hospital housing the criminally insane. They have been asked to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), a patient admitted to the asylum after she murdered her three children. As Teddy quizzes Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), the head of the institution, he begins to suspect that the authorities in charge might not be giving him the whole truth, and that a terrible fate may befall all the patients in the spooky Ward C -- a unit devoted to the most heinous of the hospital's inmates. Complicating matters further, Teddy has a secret of his own -- the arsonist who murdered his wife is incarcerated on Shutter Island. Driven to confront his wife's killer, and stranded on the island because of a hurricane, Teddy must unravel the secrets of the eerie place before succumbing to his own madness. Max von Sydow, Emily Mortimer, Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson, and Jackie Earle Haley round out the supporting cast. 

The Black Swan (2010)

A psychological thriller set in the world of New York City ballet, BLACK SWAN stars Natalie Portman as Nina, a featured dancer who finds herself locked in a web of competitive intrigue with a new rival at the company (Mila Kunis). A Fox Searchlight Pictures release by visionary director Darren Aronofsky (THE WRESTLER), BLACK SWAN takes a thrilling and at times terrifying journey through the psyche of a young ballerina whose starring role as the duplicitous swan queen turns out to be a part for which she becomes frighteningly perfect. BLACK SWAN follows the story of Nina (Portman), a ballerina in a New York City ballet company whose life, like all those in her profession, is completely consumed with dance. She lives with her retired ballerina mother Erica (Barbara Hershey) who zealously supports her daughter,s professional ambition. When artistic director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) decides to replace prima ballerina Beth MacIntyre (Winona Ryder) for the opening production of their new season, Swan Lake, Nina is his first choice. But Nina has competition: a new dancer, Lily (Kunis), who impresses Leroy as well. Swan Lake requires a dancer who can play both the White Swan with innocence and grace, and the Black Swan, who represents guile and sensuality. Nina fits the White Swan role perfectly but Lily is the personification of the Black Swan. As the two young dancers expand their rivalry into a twisted friendship, Nina begins to get more in touch with her dark side with a recklessness that threatens to destroy her.

Sinister : 

Sinister is a story made of darkness: mysterious loud bangs in the attic, distant moans from the dead, vulnerable children, an egomaniac crime writer and his long-suffering wife, who is plenty fed up even before she discovers he has moved his family into the same house where horrifying murders took place. It is an undeniably scary movie, with performances adding enough human interest to give depth to the basic building blocks of horror. Ethan Hawke plays an introverted, driven man who wrote a best-selling, true-crime book some years ago and is convinced a book about those ghastly hangings will be another success — especially since one member of the doomed family is still missing. I totally love it and would not mind watching it again and again and again.