The thriller is one of the most perennially popular genres in Hollywood filmmaking . meter and again , the genre has managed to reinvent itself so as to keep pace with the trends of the time . Of naturally , one of the most significant piece of any thriller film is the climax , in which the plot add up to its reverberating crescendo , mysteries are at last solved , and the character come to some startling realizations that allow them forever changed .

Naturally , not every thriller is equal when it issue forth to coming and while some have really attained cinematic greatness , others exit a great pile to be want .

Best: Psycho (1960)

It has to be said that Alfred Hitchcock was an undisputed master of the thriller genre ( even ifsome of his motion-picture show are underrated ) . Time and again , he manage to produce motion picture that excited and titillated audience with their tight plot , their strange graphic symbol , and their stunning action setpieces . Psychois in some way Hitchcock ’s chef-d’oeuvre , combining horror and thriller in way that would affect both genre eternally after . Its climax , in which it is revealed that Norman Bates murdered his mother and adopt her identicalness , still manages to shock and dismay even today .

Worst: Hannibal (2001)

There are many things amiss with the filmHannibal , among them the fact that they could n’t even cope to get either the same theater director or the same star for the persona of Clarice . Most painfully , it ’s the motion picture ’s climax that really shinny to hit the excitement of the precede film . Instead , it leans into the shock value of Hannibal ’s cannibalism , and the net result feels , it must be said , rather flashy and exploitative rather than actually thrilling .

Best: The Silence Of The Lambs (1991)

By contrast , The quiet of the Lambsis one of thebest film of the nineties , in part because it knows exactly how to keep its secret plan moving frontward while also explore the depth of human psychosis . Hopkins is , of course , absolutely exemplary as Hannibal Lecter , but Jodie Foster is also astonishing as Clarice . The climax , though , in which Climax faces off against the consecutive killer Buffalo Bill in a darken basement , is the stuff of which nightmares are made .

Worst: Dressed To Kill (1980)

This plastic film is one of those that could only have been made in the 1980s , in part because it ’s so unrelentingly stylish and also because its ideas of gender identity are so dispiritedly out of date and ( at times ) downright dysphemistic . This all comes out in the culmination , when it is revealed that the manlike shrink is the liquidator , driven by the “ female ” side of his personality .

It ’s a potent reminder of just how far filmmaking has come in term of representing gender and sexuality in a nuanced fashion .

Best: The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

The Manchurian Candidateis without a uncertainty one of the most exciting and well - told thriller films ever made . It focuses on a nefarious plot by the wily Mrs. Iselin ( played by the absolutely arresting Angela Lansbury ) , who uses her own Word to endeavor to gain dominance of the United States . In the sexual climax , he in the end breaks free of his mind control and shoots his female parent and stepfather before taking his own life . It ’s a stunning film , with a plot of ground that keeps the hearing on the edge of their butt decently up until the last .

Worst: The Happening (2008)

It ’s toilsome to not palpate a little dark for the manager M. Night Shyamalan . He really localise himself a in high spirits prevention withThe Sixth Sense , and then everything really went downhill . This film is truly pathetic because , while the first one-half is pretty electrifying , the climax – in which it is give away that it is plants that are responsible for corporate humanity ’s self-destructive pulse – verges into the absolutely ridiculous . This might have forge in a better photographic film ( including some of the conductor ’s own ) , but as it is , it just falls flat .

Best: Rear Window (1954)

Rear Windowis , in some ways , the ideal thriller film . It focuses on a lensman who finds himself handicap by an injury and has to occupy his bored hr by spying on his neighbors . In the process , he ends up witnessing what turn out to be a execution . In the culmination , the manslayer comes to his apartment and render to switch him out of his own windowpane . It ’s a truly thrilling consequence , and a testament to Hitchcock ’s stupendous talent as a film director and a film maker .

Worst: The Wicker Man (2006)

Nicholas Cage is one of those actor who has the rare talent to take even bad stuff and turn it into eminent ingroup artistic creation . Unfortunately , this plastic film just is n’t that , and it becomes quite bad , even for a John Milton Cage Jr. motion-picture show . It is , of track , a remaking of an earlier film , but it lacks that other picture ’s tense plotting . The worst part , however , is the coming , in which Cage is subjected to brutal torture before his ritual ritual killing .

Perhaps it would have worked better if the rest of the moving-picture show had n’t been so pathetic ( and the alternate variant , in which Cage ’s eccentric is rack by bee , is even worse ) .

Best: The Wicker Man (1973)

By contrast , the original moving-picture show is one of the best thrillers out there , and it ’s no wonderit ’s something of a cult pic . It takes itself very seriously , but it encourage the viewer to do so as well . It ’s hard to like the main character , since he ’s a bit of a spiritual zealot and not very pleasant . Nevertheless , one does sympathize with the way that he is slowly soak up into the cryptical spiritual rites of the isle . The flood tide , when he is at last immolate in a giant wicker man , a forfeiture to bring natality .

Worst: The Village (2004)

The Villageis another of those Shyamalan photographic film that really does start out well butends in ridiculous disaster . At first , it seems like this is break down to be a film about a chemical group of villager tormented and jug in their village by creatures in the woods . finally , of course , it ’s nothing of the kind . Instead , it ’s a fabrication cooked up by a grieve man so as to make out with his own emotion . Again , it ’s a bit of a head - scratcher why anyone imagine that this would make a convincing , or compelling , climax to an interesting premiss .

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