2024 has been a surprisingly strong year for everyone’s favourite adrenaline-delivery mechanism – the thriller.
The fastest way to irk a certain kind of film director (trust me on this one) is to tell them they’ve made a genre movie.
It’s an understandable response, really. They’ve just spent the last couple of years – sometimes much longer – agonising over every detail of the plot, creating elaborate backstories for their characters, choosing the wallpaper for the villain’s kitchen, only to have shmucks like us reduce their efforts to a single word. The best they can hope for in this scenario is the kind of hyphenated behemoth Amazon uses to make its bestsellers lists: West-Country-Slashers, for example, or Submarine-Romances-Featuring-Chipmunks.
The reason plenty of creatives hate this kind of labelling is precisely why we, as film-watchers, love it. A good genre label gives us familiarity. We look for “horror” when we want to be spooked; “comedy” when we’re struck down by the flu; “porn” when we [DELETE THIS – ED]. For most genre flicks, the quality of the story being told is an inessential bonus (some more so than others). Horror fans are notorious for having a remarkable tolerance for absolute drivel, and the Hallmark channel in the US has based its entire business model on churning out objectively ropey holiday romances.
Though we might not admit it, often it’s the predictability in these stories we love, and it’s why, historically, awards voters and smartly dressed industry people have shied away from giving “genre films” their due. But of all the categories that fall into the much-maligned “genre” label (horror, sci-fi, comedy, rom-com etc), the one that really bucks the trend is the one most often overlooked by critics and audiences alike: the thriller.
Once the absolute staple of popular cinema, the humble thriller has been in a bit of a rough patch of late. Unlike its contemporaries, a good thriller lives or dies on its plot, its twists and turns, its ability to disrupt and deliver the unexpected. This focus on narrative has made it prime material for high-end TV production, whether it’s Line Of Duty and Nightsleeper on the BBC or Squid Game and Baby Reindeer on Netflix.
As a result, the thriller has slunk deeper and deeper into the shadows on the big screen, pulling up the collar of its trench coat to hide the single tear falling down its cheek. But peek below the surface (or on it, in some notable cases), and you’ll find that 2024 has become a gangbuster of a year for thrill-seekers almost without anyone noticing.
In the last month or so, we’ve had Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut Blink Twice – a whip-smart, sarcastic wink of a film that isn’t afraid to lean into the genre’s most-used and most-loved cliches (billionaires, private islands, things that look, smell and quack a lot like cults) – as well as French-Candian film Red Rooms – a disturbing, edge-of-your-seat dive into the corrosive world of true crime.
On the goofier end of the spectrum, M Night Shyamalan has been up to his usual tricks with Trap – a movie-with-a-capital-m that reignites the lost art of the premise movie so enthusiastically a number of people have convinced themselves it’s not a stupendous amount of fun (I, and by extension the public-facing body of Film Stories, absolutely loved it).
Earlier in the year, everyone had a lot of opinions on Alex Garland’s Civil War, a thriller less interested in mystery and intrigue than a full-throttle dive into an alarmingly possible dystopian future. It might be chock-full of guns, journalists and shoot-outs, but this is no action-movie: I’d wager you’ll struggle to find a film more tense or, yes, thrilling in cinemas this year.
Read more: Civil War and collapsing American society on film
Rose Glass’ much-anticipated return to the director’s chair after the astonishing 2020 horror Saint Maud demonstrated her mastery of another out-and-out genre flick. Love Lies Bleeding is a taut, mischievous and incredibly sweaty combination of classic thriller tropes mixed up in the world of lesbian bodybuilding. Its ending, though controversial amongst purists, really takes the genre’s potential to surprise and runs with it.
Speaking of spooks, the surprise horror hit of the year, Longlegs, encroaches heavily into some classic thriller territory. Borrowing heavily from The Silence Of The Lambs – another horror-thriller hybrid – and starring a much-missed antagonist of recent years, the serial killer, it’s as much a creepy game of cops and robbers (read: murderers) as it is an out-and-out scare-fest.
Not every thriller can debut to widespread acclaim, however, but even the swings and misses of the genre have plenty in them to like. Ti West’s conclusion to his X trilogy, Maxxxine, again swaps his horror roots for a brilliantly stylish 80s noir. The story itself might end up feeling a little thin, but its neon streets are still beautiful to look at.
And the internet was very mean about Ethan Coen’s first brother-less stint behind the camera, Drive-Away Dolls, but there’s much to love in there. Like a Coen Brothers flick of ye olden times, it’s as light and sweet as candyfloss, with some brilliantly comic performances buoying up a ride which might not go anywhere too insightful – but you’ll have a whole heap of fun while you’re on it.
Read more: 28 Years Later was shot on iPhones
The film section of your favourite streaming service is positively overflowing with good thrillers, too. Hit Man, Rebel Ridge, The Instigators and next week’s Wolfs all find directors dedicated to the different facets of the genre and resisting the urge to turn their visions into more marketable mini-series.
Between them, these examples make for a stunning showcase of the thriller’s flexibility as a genre, and give us plenty of hope that the traditions of the likes of Hitchcock or the Coen Brothers aren’t out for the count just yet. Reading back over that list of titles, 2024 starts to look like a bloody good year – one I’m sure plenty of directors would be thrilled to be a part of.
