20 Psychological Thrillers You Must See Before You Die

6. JFK

One of the best-directed films of all time, JFK is a psychological thriller in that, rather than showing the imbalanced psyche of its characters (though it does do that too), it shows the imbalanced psyche of a nation, with director Oliver Stone meshing about five styles of filmmaking together to create a paranoid tapestry perfectly at one with America's confusion over the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Maligned upon release for jumping to conspiracy theory conclusions, the film is now rightly being reassessed as a masterpiece, with Stone's vision finally recognised as a fitting commentary on a crime as yet still unsolved. At the centre of it all is Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison, the real life New Orleans D.A. who becomes convinced that the JFK murder is a cover up, and that Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman) was a patsy. JFK contains two extended, fifteen minute+ scenes that rank as some of the finest cinema ever made, five or six truly great performances, and the overriding emotion that the American people have been duped into believing that their great hope for freedom was killed as part of a government conspiracy, something which they'll never truly know for certain. It doesn't get much more psychological than that.