10 Conspiracy Movies That Will Make You Paranoid

2. Klute

Donald Sutherland Klute
Warner Bros.

There are few scores more haunting than the one Michael Small composed for Klute, and it's to his credit that Pakula's first thriller remains one of the director's best.

Released in 1971, the same year the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into the Bureau's Pennsylvania offices, and as its practices of surveillance and harassment gripped the public's attention, Klute stood out as one of the decade's first truly authentic thrillers.

Centred around the eponymous PI John Klute (Donald Sutherland) as he investigates the disappearance of a wealthy businessmen, an investigation that brings him into the path of sex-worker Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda, herself a victim of Bureau harassment), Klute ticks all the boxes when it comes to suspenseful cinema; it has an eerie score and a bone-chilling atmosphere to match, compelling performances from its leads and an anti-establishment undertone that set a precedent for other works in that genre.

What the film does so effectively, however, is orchestrate its own kind of paranoia. You can't help but feel helpless in so many of its moments, but equally, that's just what good - nay, great - thrillers do.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.