The Best Thrillers With Social Commentary

Sometimes, movies and shows have a distinct message they want to get across through all the fictional and surreal elements, which also makes for much smarter, original, and more thoughtful storytelling. Social thrillers serve as the best genre to leave you reflecting on the profound topics being examined throughout the movie’s runtime.

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Some notable directors famous for making social thrillers include Bong Joon Ho, Jordan Peele, and Emerald Fennell, and you’ll see their movies here. These films deal with serious topics such as mental health, class and societal issues, fascism, racism, as well as misogyny and toxic masculinity, but they have a creative and layered way of approaching them.

10

Men

Director

Main Cast

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Rotten Tomatoes Score

IMDb Rating

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Alex Garland

Jessie Buckley, Rory Kinnear, Paapa Essiedu, Gayle Rankin, Sarah Twomey, Sonoya Mizuno, and Zak Rothera-Oxley

2022

69%

6

VOD

Men is a gorgeously scenic and well-shot thriller from the mind of Alex Garland. Jessie Buckley’s Harper Marlowe goes on a retreat after tragically losing her husband to suicide. However, the place she visits is eerily full of men who all look alike and harass and gaslight her, with things continuing to escalate further and further.

Although ideated by a man, Men makes an impactful and visually grotesque statement that all men are horrible, toxic, and behave the same, especially relevant in the wake of Me Too and all the other cases in Hollywood you hear about. Garland does this through the folklore of the Green Man, seemingly the creator of all the identical men Harper encounters in the village.

9

Saltburn

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Main Cast

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Emerald Fennell

Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Alison Oliver, Archie Madekwe, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Carey Mulligan, Sadie Soverall, and Ewan Mitchell

2023

71%

7

Amazon Prime Video

Saltburn is like Emerald Fennell’s version of Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite. The story centers around a college boy named Oliver, played by the ever-eerie Barry Keoghan, who comes from a lower-class background and befriends Felix, a wealthy student whose family owns the titular estate, Saltburn.

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Felix invites Oliver to Saltburn to meet the rest of his elite family in the wake of Oliver losing his father, but things aren’t what they seem. Oliver and his cruel intentions quickly start to show, and what will follow are some very outlandish and perfectly dark moments that only Emerald Fennell can think of to include.

8

Mother!

A close-up of Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence's characters surrounded by a group of people in Mother!

Director

Main Cast

Released

Rotten Tomatoes Score

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Darren Aronofsky

Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, Brian Gleeson, Kristen Wiig, Stephen McHattie, Jovan Adepo, Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse, Emily Hampshire, and Patricia Summersett

2017

68%

6.6

Peacock

With films like Pi, Black Swan, and Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky is a master of psychological thrillers and original cinematic experiences. Mother! is a claustrophobic psychological horror disguised as an analysis of the Bible and well-framed commentary on humanity’s corruption of the Earth from the point of view of Mother Earth herself, played by Jennifer Lawrence.

The movie starts with the Creator of the universe (personified as Javier Bardem’s Him) creating Mother from a crystal. She’s confined to their home and meets a variety of characters, ultimately undergoing a traumatizing odyssey full of Biblical references. By the end, Mother is anguished at seeing so much death, destruction, and societal decay that her own death becomes mercy.

Ralph Fiennes as Chef Julian Slowik with his back to the camera facing guests, where you can see Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult in the background in The Menu.

Director

Main Cast

Released

Rotten Tomatoes Score

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Mark Mylod

Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Fiennes, Nicholas Hoult, John Leguizamo, Hong Chau, Janet McTeer, Paul Adelstein, Aimee Carrero, Reed Birney, Judith Light, Arturo Castro, Mark St. Cyr, Rob Yang, Rebecca Koon, Peter Grosz, and Adam Aladerks

2022

88%

7.2

Amazon Prime Video

The Menu comes from Mark Mylod, an executive producer and director of HBO’s Succession, and the movie is part celebrity chef culinary experience satire, part romantic comedy, and a very dark and disturbing commentary on social class. It stars Oscar-nominated actor Ralph Fiennes as Chef Julian Slowik and also Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult.

Taylor-Joy’s Margot and Hoult’s Tyler are from two opposite social classes. Tyler and the rest of the ultrarich guests are there to indulge in Slowik’s creations, but little do they know that they’ll be doing so for the last time. Fed up with all of them, Chef Slowik will serve his courses with a side of revenge and ultimately death.

6

His House

Sope Dirisu's Bol eating at his dining table with the room carved out in a hazy orange dimension in His House.

Director

Main Cast

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Remi Weekes

Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Matt Smith, Malaika Wakoli-Abigaba, Javier Botet, Cornell John, Emily Taaffe, Bradley Banton, Gamba Cole, Viviene Soan, Kevin Layne, and Lola May

2020

100%

6.4

Netflix

His House is a psychological thriller film that hits on racism and immigration. Bol and Rial Majur are two asylum-seeking immigrants from South Sudan grappling with guilt, with certain elements even feeling like a Silent Hill narrative set in a ramshackle house in London.

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Bol and Rial face a challenging life as immigrants in Britain, facing racism and alienation from their neighbors and locals, and their tough asylum agent Mark (played by Matt Smith) holds them to strict standards. Soon, there’s a demonic ‘night witch’ from Dinka mythology called an apeth haunting them, causing them to further destroy the house.

5

Joker

Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck during the bathroom dance scene after killing the Wall Street guys on the train in Joker (2019).

Director

Main Cast

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Todd Phillips

Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Frances Conroy, Zazie Beetz, Brett Cullen, Glenn Fleshler, Leigh Gill, Shea Whigham, Bill Camp, Josh Pais, Sharon Washington, Douglas Hodge, and Marc Maron

2019

68%

8.3

HBO Max

While Joker may be popular in DC, Todd Phillips chose to dive deep into a character study with a version now called Arthur Fleck. Phillips essentially made Fleck a combination of De Niro’s Travis Bickle and Rupert Pupkin from Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, focusing on the mental health aspect.

Arthur is from a rough lower-class background and suffers from severe mental illness as a result of the abuse he suffered as a child, and then loses his job while also getting his social services taken away from him. Arthur becomes a ticking bomb, and one day, he kills three Wall Street guys who assault him, rising to a figure of class revolution in Gotham.

Joaquin Phoenix won the Oscar for his portrayal of Joker, and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir won the Oscar for Best Score.

4

Get Out

Daniel Kaluuya as Chris Washington surrounded by a large group of white people in Get Out.

Director

Main Cast

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Jordan Peele

Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Lil Rel Howery, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Caleb Landry Jones, LaKeith Stanfield, and Stephen Root

2017

98%

7.8

Peacock

What could be so unnerving about a Black man going to visit his white girlfriend’s family for the weekend? Well, a lot, as you’ll see in Blumhouse’s Get Out. Peele plays into commentary on racism in a satirical and disturbing way, with Daniel Kaluuya’s Chris Washington and others going through something so unbelievably horrific that it also becomes a greater metaphor.

Chris Washington and Rose Armitage are madly in love and go to visit the latter’s family. However, Chris is quickly alerted by his TSA friend that some of the Black people in the Armitage’s circle have been declared missing. Chris eventually discovers the sinister secrets harbored by Rose’s family, which threaten to erase his identity, both figuratively and literally.

3

Sinners

Sinners main poster art featuring all the main cast designed onto a guitar with the main vampire's giant face and red eyes over them.

Directors

Main Cast

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Ryan Coogler

Michael B. Jordan, Miles Caton, Delroy Lindo, Hailee Steinfeld, Omar Benson Miller, Wunmi Mosaku, Jack O’Connell, Jayme Lawson, Li Jun Li, Yao, and Saul Williams

2025

97%

8.1

HBO Max (After theatrical release)

When you go into Sinners, know that this isn’t your traditional vampire movie. Ryan Coogler demonstrates creative genius in how he delivered a layered social commentary on immigrants and marginalized communities during the Jim Crow era in Sinners, particularly the Black community, the Asian community, Native Americans, and Irish immigrants, as well as touching upon religion and ‘vice.’

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Sinners is a symbolic vampire thriller, and the bigger picture of the themes and messages playing out might not be all too clear without further analysis, but it hits best about cultural appropriation, Black identity, and Black ownership. It’s even more meta since Ryan Coogler’s deal for making Sinners gives him full ownership of his own film after 25 years.

2

Parasite

The main Kim family in Parasite playing outside the wealthy family's home with the dogs also present.

Director

Main Cast

Released

Rotten Tomatoes Score

IMDb Rating

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Bong Joon Ho

Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam, Lee Jeong-eun, Jung Ji-so, Jang Hye-jin, Park Myeong-hoon, and Jung Hyun-jun

2019

99%

8.5

Netflix, Paramount+

Oscar-winning director Bong Joon Ho always makes sure that his films include commentary on class and society, whether it’s his American films like Snowpiercer, Okja, and Mickey 17 or his Korean cinema like The Host and 2019’s Parasite.

Parasite is a well-crafted thriller following an impoverished family who con and hijack their way into upper-class life. You have the Kim family, whose son becomes a tutor for the wealthy Park family, and then his dad becomes their chauffeur, the mother the maid, and the sister an art therapist for the Park’s younger son. Well, let’s just say, the Kim family soon discovers they weren’t the first.

Neon’s Parasite won both the Palme d’Or and Best Picture (along with three other Oscars), making it one of only four other films in history to do so, including Neon’s Anora.

1

V For Vendetta

A large wave of citizens donned in Guy Fawkes masks in V for Vendetta.

Director

Main Cast

Released

Rotten Tomatoes Score

IMDb Rating

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James McTeigue

Hugo Weaving, Natalie Portman, Stephen Rhea, John Hurt, Rupert Graves, Stephen Fry, Tim Piggot-Smith, Roger Allam, Ben Miles, Sinéad Cusack, Cosima Shaw, Natasha Wightman, Eddie Marsan, and John Standing

2005

73%

8.1

VOD

V for Vendetta is one of the best dystopian thrillers with anti-fascist commentaries in cinema from acclaimed graphic novelist Alan Moore. The film envisions Britain as a fascist regime reminiscent of Hitler’s Germany, with masked anarchist vigilante V staging an uprising against the fictional Norsefire government.

Donned in a costume reminiscent of Zorro with a Guy Fawkes mask, V continually disrupts the totalitarian society, hoping to spark more freedom fighters to his cause. He also rescues Natalie Portman’s Evey Hammond, who becomes his companion and admirer. The ending and overall story are important and fantastic, and the film is full of memorable quotes.

V for Vendetta was adapted by The Matrix writer-directors Lana and Lilly Wachowski.

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