30 Day Movie Challenge – Day 8: Favourite Thriller

Black SwanFor every article and category in the 30 Day Movie Challenge, I’ve been helping myself by reading the best/worst lists that iMDB compiles on each genre. Just to get a feel for which films fall into that category and to make sure I haven’t overlooked any really good films. (I’ve seen quite a few and my memory isn’t so great.) Based on the list for Thrillers, I should be picking The Godfather, but I don’t consider that a thriller, so I won’t. Pulp Fiction? Nah. Inception? Very, very good so possibly. The Dark Knight wasn’t much of a thriller. Neither was Fight Club or Goodfellas. Most of these films resist being pigeonholed into one genre and the first real thriller on that list is Psycho, which I haven’t taken the time to watch yet.

The film on that list that I’ve seen that comes closest to being a thriller is Black Swan, which I thought was absolutely amazing. There’s a good chance I might be overlooking a few top notch, classical thrillers out there at the moment, but this is the most recent film that I’ve seen that a) I consider an actual thriller and b) I was amazed by to the point where it remained on my mind for a long time afterwards. The subject matter is just so disturbing, especially when you start seeing the mother/daughter sexual abuse theme. It was incredibly well played — to the point that I got genuinely annoyed at Natalie Portman’s character — and visually incredibly solid. The suspence was properly built up and the foreshadowing was subtle yet impactful. All in all I thought this was a truly amazing film.

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