15 Best Movie Thrillers From The 1980s

A taught, sea faring horror, this 1989 Antipodean classic wrangles a whole heap of scares out of three actors and a handful of locations. The premise is as delicious as it is simple: a couple on a boat pick up a young man in a dinghy. He claims the crew of his craft befell a food poisoning disaster - but is there more to him than meets the eye?

Yes is the answer, obviously, or there wouldn’t be much of a film. The young man’s malevolence manifests early on, and the game of cat and mouse begins. John, the Navy officer husband, is knocked from the boat, and wife Rae is left alone with the prowling and mysteriously motivated possible killer.

Solid performances from Billy Zane, Sam Neill, and a pre-superstardom Nicole Kidman and an admirable restraint (up until the last 30 seconds, which are utterly mad) elevate Dead Calm into a seriously tense and frightening proposition. The film’s basis was a novel which Orson Welles wanted to adapt, and while he may have tapped into the complexities of the characters a little more, he likely wouldn’t have made something this tight and efficient.