A Guide To The Best Book-To-Movie Psychological Thrillers
These uniquely horrifying book-to-movie adaptations will haunt you long after the credits roll.
Jennifer Lawrence stars as a new breed of heroine in this intense, audacious and sexy spy thriller. Red Sparrow is in cinemas on March 1.
There’s something perversely addictive about psychological thrillers onscreen. We yearn to experience the fear, the paranoia, the voyeuristic peek into morally transgressive minds, and the resulting adrenaline high, all from the comfort and safety of our cinema seats.
The genre is overwhelmingly ruled by book adaptations, likely because the suspense translates so effectively onto the screen. The result is a canon of engrossing, finely detailed and uniquely horrifying films that haunt you long after the credits roll.
Ahead of the release of Red Sparrow this Thursday, which stars Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Lawrence, we’ve pulled together the very best book-to-movie adaptations that will leave you feeling psychologically thrilled.
The Silence Of The Lambs (1991)
Based on Thomas Harris’ novel, Jonathan Deme’s The Silence Of The Lambs is a seminal film of the psychological thriller genre. It raked in five Oscars across the most prestigious award categories, including best actor awards for Jodie Foster as Clarice, the rookie FBI agent, and Anthony Hopkins as the infamous, cannibalistic serial killer, Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
There is a seductive friction between the grotesqueness of Hannibal’s crimes and the refined charm he exudes. Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter is iconically creepy — his gaze is impenetrable and his demeanour is unsettlingly attractive, drawing on a stylistic trope that codes sexuality as dangerous.
A disturbing intimacy develops between him and Clarice, defined by an adoration for her that is simultaneously fatherly and sexual. “People will say we’re in love”, he jeers, relishing in the perversity of their relationship. As Hannibal Lecter gets under her skin and inside her head, we too experience the distress of his masterful manipulation and pervasive presence.
Gone Girl (2014)
Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is renowned for its mastery of a favourite trope of the psychological thriller: ‘the twist’. Both the novel and David Fincher’s film adaptation were wildly successful, offering a refreshing blend of romance, satire and black comedy amongst the genre’s trademark psychological warfare.
Gone Girl takes the concept of the idyllic suburban marriage and subverts it into something menacing, defined by entrapment and deception. Nick and Amy have the marriage from hell, and it’s hard to pick a side. Both are unreliable narrators, leaving the story shrouded in uncertainty and the audience suspicious of who is lying.
Rosamund Pike steals the show with her performance as Amy, the seemingly perfect but secretly masochistic wife. Her character is fractured between outward innocence and internal malice, doubled by her fictional and mockingly idealised counterpart, the picture book heroine “Amazing Amy”, created by her parents. This use of what Freud termed ‘doubling’ contributes to a sense of ‘uncanny’ that defines psychological thrillers.
The Girl On The Train (2016)
Paula Hawkin’s novel was touted as the next Gone Girl before being transformed into a DreamWorks film production of similar box office success. Directed by Tate Taylor and starring the faultless Emily Blunt, The Girl On The Train envelops the audience in the mental and emotional torture of gas-lighting topped off with a perfectly executed (and devastating) twist.
Between the scattered chronology of the storytelling, the questionable veracity of the alcoholic title character and the gaps left between the various narrators, the audience is left guessing for the majority of the film. The sense of confusion and helplessness is an inexplicably enthralling element of the mystery plot.
As we watch three women whose downfalls are violent and emotional manipulation at the hands of self-righteous men, the horror lies in the painful relevance of this narrative that transcends fiction.
Nocturnal Animals (2017)
Tom Ford’s screen adaptation of Austin Wright’s novel, Tony and Susan, Nocturnal Animals tells the story of a woman (Amy Adams) who reads a manuscript from her estranged and seemingly deranged ex-husband (Jake Gyllenhaal). The disturbing part? Her ex-husband has imagined the violent rape and murder of both her and their daughter, in the guise of fiction.
Being presented with this graphic nightmare in such an intimately haunting way inflicts a mental torture on both protagonist and audience. The film draws suspense from the vulnerability of women to the threat of sexual violence, and horror from their eventual victimisation.
It’s a problematic and arguably overused trope but the possibility of sexual violation remains prevalent in the psychological thriller genre, and Nocturnal Animals uses that subject matter to delivers a cocktail of fear and paranoia.
Red Sparrow (2018)
Based on a bestselling novel by former CIA operative Jason Matthews, Francis Lawrence’s Red Sparrow pushes the boundaries of the psychological thriller in a heart-racing lesson in suspense.
Jennifer Lawrence graces the screen in one of her boldest roles yet as Dominika. A Russian prima ballerina who suffers a career-ending injury, she is coerced into joining the world’s most ruthless spy network and is trained to use her sexuality to entrap enemies of the state.
Stripped of everything she cares about, Dominika emerges as one of the intelligence network’s most dangerous recruits. The film follows her as she tries to wrest back control of her life.
As the sinister game of chess plays out, the audience remains in the dark as to what the next move may bring and whether we can trust the protagonist in this world of lies and manipulation. With a masterful sense of suspense — a hallmark of the genre – Red Sparrow continues the trend of psychological thrillers that play on your mind long after the credits have rolled.
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(Lead image: Red Sparrow/20th Century Fox)
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Don’t miss Red Sparrow, in cinemas March 1.