Typically when you hang out on your couch at home and put on a movie, you're trying
to unwind.
But what if you want to get your heart pumping and work up a sweat, but you don't want to,
y'know, exercise?
There's really only one solution: queue up a pulse-pounding thriller, sit back, and don't
relax.
Here are some hidden gems that have enough thrills to replace leg day at the gym.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has a talent for playing bad guys with tortured hearts.
In Shot Caller, he plays a man who's struggling to walk the line between good and evil.
Married father Jacob Harlon lands himself behind bars after drunkenly running a red
light and accidentally causing the death of his pal Tom in the back seat.
In order to survive prison life, Harlon gets violent, rising in the ranks of one of the
prison's bloodthirsty gangs.
When Harlon finally gets paroled two years before his sentence is up, he's a totally
different man.
What's more, he's forced to stay one step ahead of the ruthless gang leader who's threatened
his ex-wife and son in exchange for Harlon's loyalty outside the joint.
The result is a dark, gritty film that'll keep you feeling the tension right up until
the final frame.
Murder, revenge, and old family rivalries erupting into modern day violence this is
the stuff great thrillers are made of.
Blue Ruin is the gripping 2013 film by Jeremy Saulnier, the same guy behind the punk rockers
vs. Nazis thriller Green Room that came out two years later.
Blue Ruin's premise is simple, but what unfolds as the movie progresses is anything but.
Dwight, a bearded drifter living out of his car, is informed that a man named Wade, who
was convicted of killing Dwight's parents two decades earlier, is soon going to be released
from prison.
Naturally Dwight has one thing on his mind: vengeance.
Once the wheels of the plot begin to turn, it isn't long before blood begins to spill
everywhere you look.
Let's just say that this movie seems to argue that revenge murders are like potato chips...
it's hard to stop at just one.
"Recognize it?
Duhn-duh-duh-duhn.
It's the A-Team gun, man.
From the show."
Picture this: You're driving along, on your way to see your kid, and suddenly your cell
phone rings.
It's a woman you've never met or even spoken to before, and she's begging for you to help.
She's in trouble, and things might end violently for her if she doesn't get rescued.
Do you drop everything and put your own life in jeopardy to try and save her?
That's the setup for Connected, a 2008 Hong Kong thriller co-written and directed by Benny
Chan.
If that story sounds familiar, it should it's the same premise as the 2004 American movie
Cellular, which Chan set out to remake with Connected.
Chan's goal with the remake was to give it some Hong Kong action movie flair, and he
definitely succeeded.
If you're looking for a life-or-death, ticking-clock plot mixed with a healthy dose of action,
you should definitely not hang up on Connected.
Some of cinema's most famous and exciting badasses are relatively normal folks who get
thrust into extraordinary circumstances, and who have to rise to extraordinary heights
to win the day.
That's basically the story of Donal in 2017's Bad Day for the Cut.
The middle-aged amateur car repairman lives with his old mother on a small farm in Northern
Ireland.
While he may long for some small bit of adventure, he's content to grab a pint at the pub and
keep things slow.
That all changes when he wakes up to find his mother dead, the apparent victim of a
botched robbery in his home.
When Donal is targeted for elimination soon after, he's had enough...and starts looking
for answers.
What unfolds is a tangled web of crime, revenge, and decades of secret grudges coming to light.
It's hard to imagine many thrills coming out of attending a dinner party held by your ex-wife
and her new husband.
Tension, sure.
Awkwardness?
Check.
"Will.
Come here."
But thrills?
Well, only if there's something seriously weird going on underneath the surface.
Fortunately, that's exactly the case in the 2015 low-budget drama The Invitation.
Years ago, Will and Eden suffered the loss of their son, and their relationship fell
apart.
When the movie opens, Will and his current girlfriend Kira arrive at a dinner party held
by Eden and her new husband David.
It should be no surprise, then, that things are pretty tense.
As the couple and the other guests start to learn more about a strange group that Eden
and David have joined, things go from tense to terrifying pretty quickly.
How far would you go to protect the people you love from those who'd harm them?
Now answer that same question, but imagine you also happen to be a surgeon, a job that
requires you to make a promise, an oath if you will, to do no harm.
That's one of the main conflicts at work in The Oath, a 2016 Icelandic film starring and
directed by Baltasar Samper.
Samper plays Finnur, a surgeon who's disturbed by his daughter's growing relationship with
a drug dealer named Ottar.
As Finnur tries to intervene and pull his daughter out of her boyfriend's orbit, Óttar
starts pushing back violently.
What's a doting dad to do?
The answers will have you on the edge of your seat.
The best plans are the ones that go exactly how they're supposed to.
It's ironic, then, that the best movies are the ones about plans doing the exact opposite.
Nothing's better than watching a plan blow up in the characters' faces especially when
they're all trying to do some nasty things.
Such is the case in Sweet Virginia, a 2017 thriller set in a small town in Alaska, where
a hit man has come to do a job.
Naturally, things go wrong, and instead of one dead person, the town finds several.
And that's only the start of everyone's troubles.
With haunting direction from Jamie M. Dagg, Sweet Virginia features stellar performances
from all of its leads, not to mention a slow-burn plot that'll keep you guessing about what'll
happen next right up until the very end.
Stopping a murderer before they strike is pretty standard fare for the thriller genre.
And just because that's the kind of premise you see in lots of movies doesn't make it
any less enjoyable when it's done well.
But what about catching a killer after he's already snuffed you out?
That's the hook in Every Time I Die, an independent film that dropped in 2019.
A paramedic named Sam is involved in an affair with a married friend, and he's also haunted
by a secret trauma in his past.
But when his lover's husband finds him and kills him, that's not the end of Sam's story
it's actually just the beginning.
What follows is a twisty, turny thrill ride that sees Sam jump from body to body, all
while trying to stop the man who killed him from killing him again.
With only five main characters whose stories are all tightly interwoven, Every Time I Die
is a great showcase of how inventive a low-budget indie film can be.
Thanks for watching.
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