10 Best Movies With An Unseen Enemy

9. Duel

Steven Spielberg's 1971 directorial debut Duel is an exercise in minimalist filmmaking brilliance, a ruthlessly efficient thriller in which motorist David Mann (Dennis Weaver) is doggedly pursued through dusty rural California by a rusted-out tank truck, the driver of which is never clearly seen.

Spielberg's film has only scant dialogue and focuses almost entirely on the suspenseful thrill of the chase, a superbly streamlined effort that ditches fancies like character development in favour of a tight 89-minute vehicular cat-and-mouse game.

The script by legendary author Richard Matheson, who adapted his own short story, explicitly stated that the driver would never be seen, and beyond a handful of distant shots of the driver's body, confirming him to be an actual human being, we get no discernible glimpse of his face.

Spielberg stated in interviews that the intent was to evoke a fear of the unknown in the viewer, and by focusing on the truck rather than the man driving it (stuntman Carey Loftin) or his motives, it makes the truck the "real" villain of the film.

While countless versions of this story would doubtless give the driver a lengthy, guff-filled backstory and try to engage him as a person, Spielberg jettisons all that for the sake of a white-knuckle thrill-ride that kick-started his unprecedented run of all-timer suspense pictures.