30 classic thrillers everyone needs to watch in their lifetime

In one of the most originally crafted sequels ever, we follow a woman (Elizabeth Winstead) who after a car accident is held captive in a shelter by a man (John Goodman) convinced the outside world is uninhabitable due to a chemical attack. Turns out it's something much worse.

You know what we mean if you've seen the first movie in this franchise, 2008's "Cloverfield."

John Krasinski directs and also stars in this thriller about a family who tries to survive in a world taken over by murderous aliens.

The originality of the story and the performances Krasinski gets out of his cast, including his wife Emily Blunt, is quite impressive.

This movie gets better the more times you watch it (especially if it's with someone who has no idea what they are about to watch).

Jennifer Kent writes and directs this mysterious horror about a single mother, who must battle the sinister "Mister Babadook," the children's book character that has suddenly taken over her and her son's lives.

Natalie Portman earned an Oscar for her performance as Nina, a determined dancer who begins to lose her sanity when she wins the lead role in a production of "Swan Lake."

Nobody does a thriller like director Darren Aronofsky, so buckle up.

Steven Soderbergh's gripping thriller has become a must-see since the pandemic hit.

The movie looks at what happens when a deadly global pandemic occurs and the authenticity of the entire story, nine years before COVID-19, is chilling to watch.

A group of friends come together to embark on a cave expedition in the woods. It becomes deadly when they realize deadly flesh-eating mutants live there.

Neil Blomkamp plays on issues like immigration and racism in this sci-fi thriller about a government agent (Sharlto Copley) who slowly transforms into a member of the extraterrestrial race that frightens his country.

This one was a surprise box office hit when the movie came out in 2016 thanks to director Fede Alvarez's great storytelling and rich cinematography.

The story follows a group of thieves who try to rob the wrong house. It leaves them trying to escape the clutches of a blind man (Stephen Lang) who lives there.

Doug Liman creates an instant classic in this thrilling sci-fi movie that stars Tom Cruise as a soldier who fights an alien race by repeating the same day over and over again. Cruise gets help from Emily Blunt.

Jordan Peele instantly hit auteur status thanks to this gripping tale of a Black man (Daniel Kaluuya) who goes to visit his white girlfriend's parents for the weekend and suddenly realizes he has to fight for his life to escape the clutches of a racist cult that wants to take over his body.

This adaptation of the beloved book series by Stieg Larsson is what you'd expect when director David Fincher gets his hands on it.

It's an edge-of-your-seat thriller topped with explosive performances from Daniel Craig as Michael Blomkvist and Rooney Mara as the mysterious Lisbeth Salander.

Fincher is back on the list, taking on another popular novel.

This time he uses Gillian Flynn's book about a couple who go through a rough patch when the husband (Ben Affleck) is the main suspect of the disappearance of his wife (Rosamund Pike).

Things get pretty twisted from there.

Liam Neeson is in full-on hero mode in this thriller as he plays an oil worker, who after surviving a plane crash, must take on the cold elements and a group of wolves trying to kill him.

One of the most disturbing horror movies of the last few years is Ari Aster's debut feature.

It looks at a family who can't outrun the disturbing inevitability of their terrifying ancestry.

Eli Roth's contribution to the "torture porn"-era is a twisted tale that follows a group of friends, who while in Amsterdam find themselves unwittingly part of a psychotic secret organization that tortures and kills kidnapped tourists.

Will Smith is fantastic as the last man living in New York City following a deadly virus that killed most of mankind.

We watch as he spends his days trying to create a vaccine. That is, if he can survive the mutants that constantly try to kill him.

Already a modern classic, though it's only been out for a year, this creative take on the classic "Invisible Man" story is topped by a fantastic performance by Elisabeth Moss, who is convinced that the unseen person terrorizing her is her abusive ex.

In Karyn Kusama's perfect thriller, Logan Marshall-Green plays a guy who agrees to come to his ex-wife's dinner party but becomes convinced that there's something very wrong with the get together.

It's a movie that has given us nightmares for years now and convinced us that clowns really can be pure evil. The latest adaptation of the classic Stephen King novel is a thrilling experience with plenty of jump scares.

Octavia Spencer is great playing as a disturbed woman who decides to get payback on the people who bullied her in high school by taking it out on their own kids.

Opening up her home to become a party site for high schoolers who want to get drunk, things quickly unravel leading to a horrific conclusion.

Dan Gilroy wrote and directed an instant classic thriller that's heightened by the talents of Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays a con man that finds success selling footage of gruesome accidents and murders to an L.A. news station.

The Coen brothers are at their pulp crime best with this one.

The story follows Josh Brolin as a Vietnam veteran who stumbles upon a bag full of money and then finds himself in a cat-and-mouse chase with a crazed assassin (Javier Bardem) leading to a whole lot of death.

One of the best "found footage" movies ever made, director Oren Peli launches the successful franchise thanks to this horror that follows a couple who begins to videotape themselves while sleeping as they are convinced their house is haunted.

Spoiler: It definitely is.

Denis Villeneuve delivers a tense thriller in this story that follows a group of parents and a driven detective, trying to find a group of missing kids.

The launch of the successful franchise began here: Ethan Hawke stars as a wealthy man who comes home to find his family held hostage during the 12-hour legal purge.

This creative thriller stars John Cho as a father who tries to track down his missing daughter by using her laptop.

The entire movie is viewed through the POV of laptop screens and smartphones.

This twisted tale from Martin Scorsese stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a US Marshall, who is tasked with trying to solve how a murderer escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane. But his own past could play a major part in how things will pan out.

Villeneuve is on the list again for this perfect crime thriller that follows an FBI agent (Emily Blunt) as she dives deep into the war on drugs at the border between the US and Mexico where the line between good guy and bag guy are very skewed.

Another example of a creative way to do a sequel, M. Night Shyamalan delivers a fantastic thriller that focuses on a kidnapper who has 23 different personalities living inside him.

James McAvoy as the kidnapper delivers a performance that is one of the best in 2017.

And stick around to the very end to see how the movie connects to Shyamalan's 2000 movie "Unbreakable."

Though all of these movies listed here are a must-watch, this David Fincher's title is on another level. To be up on your movie thriller game, drop everything and watch this movie.

It focuses on the Zodiac killer, who terrorized the San Francisco Bay area in the 1960s and 1970s.

We watch as detectives (Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards) and a newspaper cartoonist (Jake Gyllenhaal) try to crack the code to figure out who the Zodiac really is — before he kills again.