Top Ten Thriller Movies: Just in Time for Halloween!

My top ten thriller movies may just make you get really scared if you watch them! The following top ten thriller movies in my list includes well known and lesser known films. My top ten thriller movies list includes both suspense and horror films, and they are listed alphabetically.

Coma (1978)

Based on the novel by Robin Cook, Dr. Susan Wheeler (Genevieve Bujold) begins to suspect that something terrible is going on at the Boston hospital she works at when patients are going into comas after undergoing routine surgical procedures (including a character played by Tom Selleck). This was one of the first thriller suspense movies that I was able to watch, and I gotta tell you that this personal top ten of movies had me cringing with fear, especially during the times that Wheeler was wondering around less active areas of her hospital all alone trying to solve the mystery. Her boyfriend in the film, Dr. Mark Bellows, is convincingly played by Michael Douglas. We are made to wonder how much he knows about the evil-doings going on in the suspense-filled hospital. Because much of the film is shot in a darkening tone, this film is made even more creepier!

The Conversation (1974)

To me, the ending of this personal top ten of thriller suspense movies put the hooks into me more than any other because I was totally unprepared for it! Surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is paid to spy on two people having a conversation in a busy downtown venue. They are obviously having a tryst, but as we listen to them over and over via the recesses of Caul's mind and tape reviewing, we are led to believe that they are really nice and caring people who seem to worry that the woman's husband (Robert Duvall) is going to kill them. That theory is reinforced even more through interactions with Caul and the husband's assistant Martin Stett (Harrison Ford), who gives the impression that the surveillance tapes are going to be used to zap the adulterous couple. But what happens at a San Francisco hotel between the parties is not only very horrific, but very troubling indeed. I felt like I was viewing the events of suspense as if I was Harry Caul!

Damien Omen II (1978)