It is said that the mind, and not space, is the final frontier. If you conquer your mind, you can conquer everything. The mind can tell you the greatest of lies and compel you to believe in them even if the whole world tells you otherwise. It can form diverse personalities and make them co-exist with one another in one body. Hollywood has always taken a keen interest in psychology and has time and again made films that take their cue from the subject. The current pandemic is said to have created a web of anxiety and depression over a locked-down populace told to maintain quarantine for its own benefit. We provide you with a list containing the best psychological thrillers from Hollywood to help shake off those lockdown jitters.

Black Swan (2010)

Directed by Darren Aronofsky, this psychological horror stars Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, and Winona Ryder. The film revolves around a production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake ballet, where the parts of the White Swan and the Black Swan are traditionally performed by the same dancer. Nina (Portman) is perfect for the White Swan’s role but her teacher tells her that a new dancer Lily (Kunis) is more suited to play the Black Swan. Her jealousy and insecurity take extreme forms and she begins to see hallucinations, which lead her to self-harm and even murder. Though she doesn’t understand what part of it is real and what’s not real. The only place where she truly comes alive is the stage, everything else seems like an illusion to her. The film is a thriller alright but can also be interpreted as a study of an artiste’s obsession with reaching the pinnacle of her given craft.

Shutter Island (2010)

Directed by Martin Scorsese, it’s based on Dennis Lehane's 2003 novel of the same name. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as U.S. Marshal Edward Daniels, who is investigating a psychiatric ward on Shutter Island after one of the inmates goes missing. He encounters several false leads in his investigation and comes to believe that the island has been used as a front by the chief psychologist running the institution to conduct mind-control experiments. He even meets a patient who corroborates the theory and says that patients are getting lobotomised as well. The patient also hints that the doctors and other members of the hospital staff are playing games with him. He thinks he’s losing his mind and forcibly breaks into the lighthouse, convinced that it’s the den of some evil conspiracy. What he learns there shocks him even more. It’s one of the best psychological thrillers made in modern times and the ending is surely going to stump everyone who watches it.

Enemy (2013)

Directed by Denis Villeneuve and adapted from José Saramago's novel The Double (2002). The film stars Jake Gyllenhaal in a double role as two men who are physically identical, but different in personality. Adam Bell (Gyllenhaal), a college history professor, rents a film, Where There's a Will There's a Way and spots an actor who looks just like him playing a minor role. He traces other releases of the actor and finally tracks him down to his agent, where everyone believes him to be the actor. He’s given a confidential letter there which he doesn’t open. He finally meets the actor, who abruptly cancels the meeting. Later, the actor becomes obsessed with him, to the extent of telling him that he wants to sleep with the professor’s girlfriend. Strangely, the professor agrees. When his girlfriend discovers the charade, the duo fight and then leave together in a car which meets with an accident. The professor, meanwhile, has gone to the actor’s place in retaliation. His wife too discovers the deceit but agrees to sleep with him. The morning brings the biggest twist of the film, however, which has the professor questioning his sanity and will leave the viewers questioning theirs as well.

Gone Girl (2014)

Directed by David Fincher, it’s based on a novel by Gillian Flynn carrying the same name. The film stars Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, and Tyler Perry. On their fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne (Affleck) returns home to find his wife Amy (Pike) missing. Amy was the inspiration for her parents' popular Amazing Amy children's books and as a result, she’s a minor celebrity. The press gathers around for a story and the media gets convinced she’s been killed by him. The police too begins to suspect that as well. It later comes to light however that Amy has a history of falsely incriminating her boyfriends when she got bored of them or when she believes they deserve some sort of punishment. Her husband lays a trap for her but she proves to be too intelligent for him and even for the lead investigator on her case.

Split (2016)

Split is the second installment in the Unbreakable trilogy directed by M. Night Shyamalan and stars James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Betty Buckley. The film centres around split-personality disorder. Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) has 23 different personalities and compelled by them kidnaps three teenage girls. He says they are to be sacrificed for “The Beast”. The three try to befriend the less violent personalities but to no avail. As news of the girls’ kidnapping spreads, his psychiatrist begins to suspect he might be the culprit. When she visits his house, she finds one of the girls there. He overpowers her as well but the girl says his entire name aloud and that calms him. Kevin asks her to shoot him, and that’s when the other personalities take over and summon The Beast. The girl finds that the other two victims have been killed. The Beast, however, spares her because she’s pure. The film was criticised by a section of healthcare professionals who felt it wasn’t truthful to the depiction of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).

The Joker (2019)

Directed by Todd Phillips, the film, based on the most famous DC Comics villain, stars Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker and provides an alternative origin story for the character. Set in 1981, it follows Arthur Fleck, a failed stand-up comic who goes mad by degrees and starts off his crime spree by murdering policemen but ironically, his crime is seen as an act of defiance against the authorities by the dissatisfied citizens of Gotham and the city, which has a high crime and low employment rate, goes into anarchy. Like Norman Bates from Psycho, he loves his mother and takes care of her -- the difference is that here the mother is alive and not dead. She has fed him a lie that he might be the illegitimate child of Thomas Wayne, Bruce Wayne’s father. Upon learning the truth he becomes more violent. He begins to have hallucinations about falling in love with his next-door neighbour. He sees-saws between moments of vivid clarity and madness, embracing madness instead of coming to terms with his life. He kills a talk show host who has always made fun of him. Arrested by the police, he’s rescued by an army of rioters wearing Joker masks. He’s finally confined to a mental asylum, but his journey isn’t over, it has just begun...

Nocturnal Animals (2016)

Nocturnal Animals, Tom Ford's second film as a director, tells a moving and horrifying tale of isolation, loneliness, and shattered relationships. The neo-noir psychological thriller, which is based on Austin Wright's 1993 novel Tony and Susan, is told through parallel stories that follow a similar arc of loss and dread. In the story, wealthy Los Angeles gallery owner Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) receives a manuscript from her ex-husband Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal), who has dedicated it to her. As she reads, she notices parallels between her relationship with Edward and the portrayal of a marriage that ends horribly in the book.

Us (2019)

Adelaide Wilson's (Lupita Nyong’o) tale is told in the movie Us. Adelaide returns to the location of a rather traumatic event she experienced as a child, which is the origin of her persistent fears. She is now an adult and is vacationing this summer with her husband Gabe and their two kids. Unexpected and eerie coincidences start to happen. Adelaide was right to be worried about her fears, as all of them have now materialised in the driveway of their vacation home (holding hands in a spooky manner). After watching this movie, you'll have nightmares about what happens to these doppelgängers.

The Gift (2015)

Beginning with an attractive, well-off couple buying a large new house, like so many other thrillers before it, Joel Edgerton's The Gift soon takes its own, distinctively tense and twisted path. Additionally, it never deviates from that course. The Gift keeps its attention on the internal phantoms whereas other movies might have chosen to focus on cheap thrills. Its antagonists are doubt, fear, guilt, and rage for the majority of its duration instead of actual people. Young married couple Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn are the focus of The Gift (Rebecca Hall). Simon runs into the eccentric Gordo (Edgerton), a former acquaintance, by chance. Gordo starts surprising the couple with unwanted and progressively ominous gifts. It's one of those extremely uncommon psychological thrillers that actually live up to the description of that genre.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, released in 2017, is one of Yorgos Lanthimos's most well-known works. It tells the story of heart surgeon Steven, who is seemingly cursed by the son of a deceased patient, who first infiltrates Steven's life and family before seeking some karmic retribution for what happened to his father. Colin Farrell plays Steven in The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, and Barry Keoghan is compelling as Martin, the unlikable teen who begins tearing apart Steven's life until Steven is forced to make an impossible decision. The term "sacred deer" (also known as "goat") refers to the beautiful daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, who was sacrificed by her father in the myth of ancient Greece after he disobeyed the goddess Artemis by killing the sacred doe while hunting.

Side Effects (2013)

Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara), despite being reunited with her husband Martin (Channing Tatum), suffers from severe depression, emotional episodes, and attempts at suicide. After consulting with her former physician, her psychiatrist, Jonathan Banks, finally decides to prescribe an experimental new drug called Ablixa. However, the drug's side effects cause Emily to kill her husband while "sleepwalking," which is when she takes her own life. The case appears to be over after Emily entered a plea agreement for mental hospital confinement, and Dr. Banks' practice began to fall apart around him. Dr. Banks, however, is unable to take full responsibility and looks into the matter to clear his name. The journey that comes next poses a threat to destroy what's left of his life even as he learns the nefarious truth behind this tragedy. More on: Best Hollywood Psychological Thrillers, Gone Girl, Black Swan, Shutter Island, Enemy, Split, The Joker, Hollywood Psychological Films,

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