Building suspense is all about stakes. Any good movie has stakes at the heart of the story, but the best thrillers make those stakes feel like they are yours. The easiest way to do this is with fighting, explosions, car chases, or gunshots.
However, some thrillers put you on the edge of your seat and get your heart racing without the use of those elements. The stakes—like job stress, romance, crime, and personal achievements—are more grounded and human.
In some ways, these thrillers are more suspenseful because they allow you to put yourself in the main characters’ shoes easily. Who hasn’t felt the suspense of asking out a crush or awaiting the results of an application?
Catch Me If You Can
What makes Catch Me If You Can so thrilling is the fact that Frank Abagnale Jr. (Played by Leonardo Di Caprio) was essentially making it all up as he went, which led to some very close counters. Watching Catch Me If You Can feels like the ninth inning of a World Series game.
In an era dominated by the “anti-hero,” it's hard to remember a time when rooting for the bad guy wasn’t so commonplace. Catch Me If You Can centered around a thief who never used violence or harmed anyone (physically) and generally used his skills to steal from corporations.
This made it actually pretty easy to find yourself rooting for him. This felt like a real departure from the norm in 2002. To do it so easily added to the thrills and excitement that came every time he bested Officer Carl Hanratty, played superbly by Tom Hanks.
A Few Good Men
Courtroom thrillers are among the most suspenseful films there are. They are often violence adjacent, as they are trials for violent crimes (murder, assault) with violent stakes (imprisonment, death penalty).
However, they play out in a non-violent arena with non-violent means. They are often two-plus-hour ordeals that hinge on a single line uttered by a member of a jury. What maximizes a legal thriller’s suspense factor is a case that has a lot of gray areas, debated by two sides who are bringing their A-game.
A Few Good Men is as compelling a legal drama as there ever was! The case at the center of the film is a pretty heinous one that involves members of the military. Tom Cruise is at his absolute best as a hotshot young military attorney.
The script, written by the master of dialogue himself, Aaron Sorkin, is fast, smart, and brilliantly paced. What builds suspense in this film so well, other than the obvious fretting over the verdict, is when they choose to reveal certain information, as well as, the slow build of tension between Cruise and Jack Nicholson’s character.
You not only wonder how the case will go, but you wonder which of the two will break first.
Locke
Locke is one of those movies where the less you know going into it the better. If you knew the bare-bones plot points, you wouldn’t believe how suspenseful it is.
Tom Hardy stars as Ivan Locke, who is driving to an unknown destination all the while taking phone call after phone call. Pretty early on you learn that he’s a construction project manager and they are doing a massive concrete pour the next day, which involves a lot of moving parts.
If this movie was only about the stress of tomorrow’s concrete pour, it would still wreak havoc on your nerves.
However, some of these phone calls are also personal. Through these calls, we learn of some drama going on in his marriage and personal life.
As the movie unfolds we watch Hardy drive for an hour and a half trying not to let the stress of these two situations bury him. You will never care more about concrete pouring in your life.
Whiplash
There’s a certain sense of dread that comes with movies that are about greatness. In Whiplash, this is especially true. Andrew, played by Miles Teller, is a student at a prestigious music school.
He is being mentored by a prominent music professor whose methods are, to say the least, pretty intense. In a film where the stakes are not life or death, you certainly feel like they are.
While watching Whiplash, you will feel like Teller is your son/brother/friend and his success and well-being will be as important to you as they are to him.
Every interaction between him and Fletcher (JK Simmons in an Oscar-winning performance) is as tense as any scene in any horror movie.
This movie is as far from violent, in the sense we have come to expect from thrillers, your heart will be racing faster than the drum beats Andrew plays over and over again.
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Despite not showing much in the way of violence, the suspense and stakes of this movie feel like violence against your psyche. Ezra Miller plays Kevin, a young boy who wages mental warfare against his parents, played by John C. Riley and Tilda Swinton.
This is another film that is violence adjacent, however. The main character does commit a pretty horrific act of violence, but it is a story that takes place mainly in the mounting emotional distress of Tilda Swinton as her son grows up to become a monster.
I would also argue that the violent act he commits is not incredibly necessary and could be considered overkill, as all of the other insane behaviors he exhibits are enough to shake you to your core.
Featured image: Still from We Need to Talk About Kevin vi BBC Films
