As evidence emerges describing the accumulation of small plastic particles in various organs and tissues of the body, a much deeper understanding of the effects of these particles on human health is urgently needed.
The world is awash with plastic — 6 billion tons’ worth. In 2019, 353 million tons of plastic waste were produced, with a tripling of that number to more than one billion tons predicted by 2060 (ref. 1). More than 10,000 chemicals are present in plastics2, including carcinogens and endocrine disruptors. Plastics find their way into the human body in the form of tiny particles called microplastics (less than 5 mm in diameter) and nanoplastics (less than 1 μm in diameter). Microplastics and nanoplastics (MNPs) can arise from a variety of sources, including by design, as in the case of microbeads used in cosmetic and personal care products, or inadvertently, as the result of degradation of larger plastic products, such as through the laundering of synthetic clothes or abrasion of tires. MNPs are found everywhere on the planet, including the oceans, air and food supply.
MNPs enter the body mainly through ingestion or inhalation. For example, one might ingest MNPs by drinking liquid or eating food that has been stored or heated in plastic containers from which MNPs have leached, or by using toothpaste containing MNPs. One startling study found that infants may be exposed to high levels of microplastics by ingesting formula prepared in propylene feeding bottles3.
The biological effects of MNPs have been researched for decades, mainly in studies of laboratory rodents and human cells. In rodent studies, microplastics have been shown to have detrimental effects on a wide variety of organs, including the intestine, lungs and liver, as well as the reproductive and nervous systems4. More recently, MNPs have been found in a variety of tissues and organs in humans, including blood, lungs, placenta and breast milk5.
The effects of MNPs on human health are just beginning to be documented. For example, a recent report described a potential link between MNPs present in blood vessels and cardiovascular disease6. In samples of atherosclerotic plaques that had been surgically excised from the carotid arteries of 304 people, plastic was detected in plaques from approximately half of this cohort, with polyethylene in 150 of the samples and polyvinyl chloride in 31 of them. Using electron microscopy, the researchers found jagged-edged particles, identified as MNPs, in the plaques. Deposition of plastic in the plaques was strongly associated with the development of subsequent cardiovascular disease: over the course of 34 months, people with evidence of MNPs in their plaques had a 4.5-fold higher risk of a composite endpoint of nonfatal myocardial infarction, nonfatal stroke or death from any cause, relative to the risk for those without such evidence.
In another study focusing on a potential link between microplastics and inflammatory bowel disease, 15 types of microplastics were detected in human feces7. The concentration of fecal microplastics was higher in people with inflammatory bowel disease than in healthy people, and the level of fecal microplastics correlated with the severity of the disease.
Although these studies did not demonstrate a causal link between the presence of MNPs and disease, they underscore the need to accelerate research on this topic. Among the most pressing questions are the amounts of MNPs that are absorbed through ingestion, inhalation or skin exposure, the amounts of MNPs that accumulate in different tissues over the lifetime of a person, and how the different characteristics of MNPs — including their chemical composition, size and shape — affect those tissues. Mechanistic studies are also needed to probe how MNPs might lead to damage, including systemic effects mediated by the immune system or the microbiome, or direct cytotoxic effects. There is also a need for study of how exposure to MNPs and its consequent effects on health may be influenced by environmental, social and economic factors.
As the world’s burden of plastic becomes more and more untenable, international public health initiatives are aiming to manage the production, design and disposal of plastics more responsibly. In the case of microplastics, from October 2023, the European Union has restricted the intentional addition of microplastics to products and has set a target to reduce microplastics pollution by 30% by 2030. In a wider effort, the UN Environment Assembly, with the support of 175 nations, adopted a resolution on 2 March 2022 to develop a global plastics treaty8, with the intention of drafting the treaty by the end of 2024.
The health risks of exposure to microplastics are just beginning to be understood. More detailed and conclusive evidence of how MNPs accumulate in the body and have detrimental effects on human health can only spur the development and adoption of policies with the teeth necessary for reducing the global impact of plastics and improving public and planetary health.
Since the end of World War II, historians and artists alike have been fascinated by the brilliant, enigmatic J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who led the Manhattan Project laboratory that developed the atomic bomb. Beginning as early as 1946, documentaries, television miniseries, plays, books, graphic novels, feature films and even an opera have explored the scientist’s life, work and legacy. In recent years, however, much of that complexity has been reduced to a single popular image: the broken genius, haunted by his own invention, reciting a line from the Bhagavad Gita in a 1965 NBC News documentary. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” Oppenheimer intones.
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer,which opens in theaters on July 21, will be the first feature-length film to tackle the scientist’s life in its entirety, and it promises to be spectacular. Starring Cillian Murphy of “Peaky Blinders” fame in the title role alongside an ensemble A-list cast, the film (which uses American Prometheus as its main source material) will reintroduce the scientist and the top-secret bomb project he helmed to a new generation of Americans. Oppenheimer provides an opportunity to revisit this charismatic, contradictory man and reconsider how previous attempts to tell his story have succeeded—and failed—at fathoming one of the 20th century’s most fascinating public figures.
Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project
Born into a secular Jewish family in New York City in 1904 and educated at Manhattan’s Ethical Culture School, Oppenheimer graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in just three years. If Harvard was easy, growing out of his awkward adolescence was harder. He struggled with mental health issues while pursuing a graduate degreeat the University of Cambridge—“I was on the point of bumping myself off,” he later recalled—and ended up on probation after lacing an apple with chemicals and leaving it on his tutor’s desk. But by the time World War II broke out in 1939, Oppenheimer had transformed himself into a respected physicist at the University of California, Berkeley. “He was sort of a caricature of the eccentric professor,” Bird says, an intellectual omnivore who read Sanskrit, loved Elizabethan poetry, rode horses and made a great martini.
He had also fallen in love with Jean Tatlock (played by Florence Pugh in Nolan’s film), a dues-paying member of the Communist Party who awakened his interest in politics. Oppenheimer was “likely sympathetic to … communist goals,” according to the nonprofit Atomic Heritage Foundation, but he never officially joined the party. (“Any attempt to label Robert Oppenheimer a party member is a futile exercise—as the FBI learned to its frustration over many years,” wrote Bird and co-author Martin J. Sherwin, who died in October 2021 at age 84, in American Prometheus.) But many of his closest friends and family were party members at one point or another: his brother, Frank Oppenheimer; his friend Haakon Chevalier; and his future wife, Kitty Oppenheimer. These associations would cast suspicion on the physicist himself later in his life.
Oppenheimer’s political leanings didn’t prevent him from being recruited, in early 1942, for a secret project authorized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that was drawing scientists from all over the country. Three years earlier, Albert Einstein had written a letter to Roosevelt warning that breakthroughs in nuclear fission promised “extremely powerful bombs of a new type.” Now, the race was on to figure out how to build one of these bombs before Germany did.
In the summer of 1942, Oppenheimer organized a series of secret seminars at Berkeley, where the United States’ top physicists roughed out the outlines of a possible bomb. As it turned out, Oppenheimer was a natural manager. “I don’t know how he had acquired this facility for handling people,” saidEdward Teller, a colleague who would later testify against him. “Those who knew him well were really surprised.”
That September, General Leslie Groves (played by Matt Damon in the new film), an Army engineer who’d previously overseen construction of the Pentagon, took over as head of what was by then called the Manhattan Project, after its inaugural offices in lower Manhattan. Groves knew construction but not physics, so the charming Berkeley physicist caught his eye. “Oppenheimer was the first scientist Groves had met on his tour who grasped that building an atomic bomb required finding practical solutions to a variety of cross-disciplinary problems,” wrote Bird and Sherwin. He wasn’t an obvious choice—“He couldn’t run a hamburger stand,” said a Berkeley colleague—but in October 1942, Groves named Oppenheimer the project’s scientific director.
The government operation brought hundreds, and eventually thousands, of scientists, civilians and Army personnel to a mesa in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Their ranks eventually included Teller, Hans Bethe, Richard Feynman, Seth Neddermeyer, Robert Serber, Kenneth Bainbridge, Enrico Fermi and many others. (Nolan’s film portrays each of these figures and, judging by the full cast list, more or less recreates the entire field of theoretical physics in the 1930s and ’40s, including Kenneth Branagh as Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr.) The scientists reported directly to Oppenheimer, who, at 38, was learning on the job how to run a lab.
Oppenheimer’s lab was only one part of the Manhattan Project. Built on the site of a former boys’ school, Los Alamos was one of three “secret cities” seized and transformed by the U.S. government in late 1942 and early 1943. The other two—Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington—accounted for the vast majority of the manpower, expense and industrial scale of the project, which employed an estimated half a million people between 1942 and 1945. At Oak Ridge, uranium was refined at the largest factory in the world, newly built for that purpose. In Hanford, an area half the size of Rhode Island was cleared of residents, their houses bulldozed to make way for reactors to produce plutonium. “I told you it couldn’t be done without turning the whole country into a factory,” Bohr said to Teller in 1944. “You have done just that.”
At Los Alamos, Oppenheimer came into his own as a gifted leader. “[He] had a very distinctive voice that was very soft,” says Bird. “You had to listen very carefully, but he was magnetic.” That magnetism kept the lab productive even after an initial design for the bomb, known as Thin Man, had to be scrapped in July 1944. Ultimately, the scientists settled on two workable designs for a bomb, which they called Fat Man and Little Boy. At 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, almost three years of work culminated in the first nuclear detonation in history. Known as the Trinity test, it lit the hills of the New Mexico desert.
A group of physicists at a 1946 Los Alamos colloquium. Oppenheimer is third from left in the second row, wearing a black jacket and tie. Other scientists featured in the image include Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller and Richard Feynman. Los Alamos National Laboratory via Wikimedia Commons
Oppenheimer, already famously thin, had lost weight during the project, and during the countdown, he reportedly barely breathed. Later dramatizations had the scientist reciting the line from the Bhagavad Gita during the moment of detonation (Oppenheimer himself later claimed the line had come to him then), but he reportedly said something closer to “It worked.”
After the test, Oppenheimer was transformed by relief. “I’ll never forget the way he stepped out of the car,” fellow Manhattan Project scientist Isidor Isaac Rabi later said. “His walk was like High Noon … this kind of strut. He had done it.”
On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay dropped Little Boy on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, Bockscardropped Fat Man on Nagasaki. Estimates of deaths from the two bombingsvary widely, from a contemporary figure of around 110,000 to a later estimate of closer to 210,000. On August 15, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender.
The battle over the bomb
In the years immediately following the war, public opinion about the use of the atomic bomb hadn’t yet solidified. The first time Oppenheimer appeared on the big screen was in August 1946, when he starred in the 18-minute documentary “Atomic Power,” which was part of Time’s “The March of Time” series. Onscreen, Oppenheimer (one of several figures who participated in the film, including Einstein, Groves and Rabi) re-enacts waiting anxiously for the detonation at Trinity with Rabi, who gives a stilted performance as he reassures his boss, “It’s going to work all right, Robert. And I’m sure we’ll never be sorry for it.”
In fact, Oppenheimer was already sorry. In October 1945, he told President Harry S. Truman (played by Gary Oldman in Nolan’s film), “Mr. President, I feel I have blood on my hands.” The tide of public opinion was also beginning to turn. Three weeks after “Atomic Power” was released, John Hersey’s searing, book-length article “Hiroshima” appeared in the New Yorker, awakening many Americans for the first time to the horrors of the bomb.
Fearing they were losing the battle for the history books, Truman and other officials sprang into action, compelling former Secretary of War Henry Stimson to defend the use of the bomb in a Harper’s magazinearticle published in February 1947. The story, which reads as a simple recitation of the facts, portrays the decision to use the bomb as one made with sagacious care. It introduced the argument—repeated often since—that the bomb prevented an Allied land invasion of Japan that would have cost “over a million casualties, to American forces alone.”
“That article really set the history for most Americans for the next generation,” Bird says. “And the narrative was, ‘Oh, it was a difficult decision. It was terrible. But it was necessary, and it saved perhaps a million American lives.’”
The first major Hollywood film about the bomb, The Beginning or the End, debuted the month after Stimson’s article. Initially conceived by atomic scientists as a way to educate the public about the dangers of nuclear warfare, the movie went through script approvals and retakes ordered by Groves and Truman that turned it into a “pro-bomb celebration—dictated by the Pentagon and White House,” wrote Greg Mitchell in his 2020 book, The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Poster for the 1947 film The Beginning or the End Metro-Goldwyn-MayerThe Hiroshima atom bomb cloud two to five minutes after detonation Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Directed by Norman Taurog, the film “is so instructive because it is the earliest, and one of the most complete, reassertions of the pro-bomb narrative just when doubts were being raised,” Mitchell tells Smithsonian magazine. “Even Truman got involved, to the extent of ordering a costly retake and getting the actor playing him fired. The studio voluntarily handed over control of the film to the Pentagon, via Groves, and the White House. Oppenheimer himself caved to pressure.”
The Beginning or the End claimed the American military dropped warning leaflets about the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and that the Enola Gay came under attack from Japanese antiaircraft missile fire on its bombing run. Like Stimson’s article, it depicted Truman carefully working through the decision to drop the bomb before arriving at a pivotal moment.
In fact, the U.S. did not drop leaflets warning of the atomic bomb specifically, though pilots may have dropped more general notices of impending attacks on Hiroshima, and the Enola Gay did not come under antiaircraft fire. Many historians disagree that there was a single moment of “decision” on Truman’s part. In an essay included in the 2020 anthology The Age of Hiroshima, Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, wrote that Truman “was actually quite peripheral to most of the decisions that led to the use of the weapons.” Wellerstein argued that Truman may have even mistakenly believed that Hiroshima was a military target rather than a city made up largely of civilians. As for that figure of one million projected American casualties, Bird later asked Stimson’s ghostwriter, Mac Bundy, where he got it. “He looked at me,” Bird recalls, “and he says, ‘Oh, we pulled it out of thin air.’”
Oppenheimer described the script of The Beginning or the End as “without purpose or insight.” Another physicist, Leo Szilard, put it even more bluntly: “If our sin as scientists was to make and use the atomic bomb, then our punishment was to watch The Beginning or the End.”
Murphy, as Oppenheimer, walks through a crowd of photographers. The real Oppenheimer started speaking out publicly about the dangers of atomic warfare soon after the war’s end. Universal Pictures
The Oppenheimer security hearing
Almost immediately, Oppenheimer began speaking out publicly about the dangers of atomic warfare, even as he continued to act as a nuclear weapons consultant for the U.S. government. In November 1945, he told an audience in Philadelphia that the bomb was “by all the standards of the world we grew up in … an evil thing.” He gave television interviews starkly elucidating the risk of nuclear war. In 1949, as the head of an advisory committee for the newly formed Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), he delivered a report warning against developing a hydrogen bomb—a fusion weapon more powerful than the Trinity, Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs—that had been conceived by fellow Manhattan Project scientist Teller. “A super bomb might become a weapon of genocide,” Oppenheimer wrote. “A super bomb should never be produced.” In 1953, he gave a speech likening the nuclear-capable United States and Soviet Union to “two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.”
Oppenheimer’s outspoken warnings made him a target, and in December 1953, amid McCarthy-era paranoia about Soviet spies in the highest levels of government, AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss (played by Robert Downey Jr. in Nolan’s film), who harbored a dislike for Oppenheimer, called the scientist into his office and told him his top-secret security clearance had been revoked. Oppenheimer insisted on defending himself, leading the AEC to call what became a highly publicized security hearing to resolve the matter.
The monthlong hearing, which began on April 12, 1954, amounted to an X-ray of Oppenheimer’s adult life. Transgressions large and small were dragged into the open and held up to exacting scrutiny. Key pieces of the case against Oppenheimer included his close friendship with Chevalier, a scholar of French literature at Berkeley and a card-carrying Communist whom the physicist had once protected from incrimination, as well as Oppenheimer’s opposition to Teller’s hydrogen bomb. The usually persuasive scientist panicked under questioning by AEC lawyer Roger Robb; at one point, caught in a contradiction, Oppenheimer accounted for his defense of Chevalier by admitting bluntly, “I was an idiot.” But he also had to defend personal matters, such as his decision to spend a night with his communist ex-fiancée, Tatlock, in the summer of 1943, while he was working at Los Alamos, six months before she died by suicide in 1944. Why did he have to see her? The committee asked. “Because she was still in love with me,” Oppenheimer responded.
On May 27, the board overseeing the hearings voted 2 to 1 not to reinstate Oppenheimer’s security clearance. “I personally think that our failure to clear Dr. Oppenheimer will be a black mark on the escutcheon of our country,” wrote lone dissenter Ward V. Evans. Either way, Oppenheimer’s relationship with the U.S. government was now officially over. He returned to Princeton, New Jersey, where he’d been the director of the Institute for Advanced Study since 1947. The hearings “destroyed him,” Rabi later said. Another friend, diplomat George Kennan, remembered trying to comfort Oppenheimer by telling him he’d surely be welcome abroad. “His answer, given to me with tears in his eyes: ‘Damn it, I happen to love this country.’”
Oppenheimer tried to minimize the importance of the hearings. “I think of this as a major accident, much like a train wreck or the collapse of a building,” he told a reporter. “It has no relation or connection to my life. I just happened to be there.” As much as he might have wished that to be true, Oppenheimer’s downfall during the hearings came to define him in the public eye. In 1964, the German playwright Heinar Kipphardt drew directly on the published transcripts of the security hearings for his In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Discussing the play with the Washington Post,perhaps still trying to prevent his downfall from defining him, Oppenheimer said, “The whole damn thing was a farce, and these people are trying to make a tragedy out of it.”
In an attempt at public rehabilitation, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented Oppenheimer with the Enrico Fermi Award, the AEC’s highest honor, in 1963. Nonetheless, the physicist never fully recovered from the blow to his reputation. He lived out the rest of his days in Princeton, where he kept his job at the Institute for Advanced Study until 1966, and died of cancer there in February 1967. As the New York Timeswrote in his obituary, “This bafflingly complex man nonetheless never fully succeeded in dispelling doubts about his conduct.”
Florence Pugh (left) as Jean Tatlock and Murphy (right) as Oppenheimer Universal Pictures
Oppenheimer’s security clearance remained revoked until December 2022, when the Department of Energy vacated the commission’s 1954 decision. “Oppenheimer occupies a central role in our history for leading the nation’s atomic efforts during World War II and planting the seeds for the Department of Energy’s national laboratories,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm in a statement. “As time has passed, more evidence has come to light of the bias and unfairness of the process that Dr. Oppenheimer was subjected to, while the evidence of his loyalty and love of country [has] only been further affirmed.”
The myth of Oppenheimer
In the more than 50 years since Oppenheimer’s death, popular culture has taken varied approaches to exploring his life. The Peabody Award-winning 1981 documentary The Day After Trinityfocused on his regret over his role in building the bomb. The 1980 BBC TV miniseries “Oppenheimer,” by contrast, starred a thin, quietly charismatic Sam Waterston and was more interested in the question of Oppenheimer’s communist ties and his downfall.
Later fictional depictions of Oppenheimer grew less interested in complex readings of his psychology and often flattened him into a character who sometimes bordered on the ridiculous. In 1989, director Roland Joffé made a big-budget bet on the story of the Manhattan Project inFat Man and Little Boy. Despite an A-list cast—Paul Newman as Groves, John Cusack as a fictional Manhattan Project scientist, Laura Dern as that scientist’s girlfriend—the film flopped. The script was simplistic, the dialogue groan-inducing (“Naked. Isn’t that a beautiful word?” Dern says to Cusack when propositioning him) and veracity an afterthought. But the film suffered most from the performance of Dwight Schultz, best known to viewers from “The A-Team” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” as Oppenheimer. Schultz brought a blankness to his portrayal of a man who famously had charisma to spare. “Schultz is stiff and actorly,” wrote the Washington Post. “Like an irredeemably tone-deaf singer, he hits only false notes.”
In the otherwise excellent TV show “Manhattan,” which ran for two seasons in 2014 and 2015, Daniel London played Oppenheimer as an already broken man, as though the actor’s only reference for the character was the famous “I am become death” interview. His Oppenheimer was more interested in self-preservation than the success of the project, whereas the real Oppenheimer of the Los Alamos years was a nimble ball of energy, guiding the complex endeavor toward completion thanks to his keen feeling for the challenges his fellow scientists faced.
No list would be complete without one other fictional depiction of Oppenheimer: Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams’ 2005 opera, Doctor Atomic. If Oppenheimer objected to Kipphardt’s play, he surely would have found Doctor Atomic’s elevation of his life into an operatic Faustian tragedy ridiculous. But the opera, which centers around the days leading up to the Trinity test and culminates in the detonation of the first atomic bomb, was rapturously received by critics and has been restaged several times since its debut. In the New York Times, science writer Dennis Overbye wrote that the opera had disabused him of his preconceptions about the bomb: “I long ago concluded that there was not much new to say about the atomic bomb. But I was wrong. As I was watching … I began to wonder if anything had yet been said that counted.”
Before Sherwin’s death in 2021, he and Bird read several scripts based on American Prometheus. One, Bird says, was boring. Another was just weird: “It had dream sequences, a ghost speaking Oppenheimer’s poetry. It had a scene in which [Oppenheimer] is at a cocktail party in Berkeley and imagines himself dropping a cyanide pill into Edward Teller’s drink and watching him collapse on the floor and die in agony.” Bird and Sherwin sent back a long memo detailing the script’s many historical errors.
So Bird was relieved when, in fall 2021, he became one of a handful of people outside the film’s production to read Nolan’s take on Oppenheimer. “I think it’s a fabulous script,” Bird says. Unlike other recent depictions, it covers scenes from Oppenheimer’s entire life and doesn’t shy away from the moral questions of the bomb. “Nolan covers in a very deft way the argument among the physicists over whether the bomb was necessary or not and has Oppenheimer after Hiroshima saying the bomb was used on a virtually already defeated enemy,” Bird adds. “People who know nothing about Oppenheimer will go thinking they’re going to see a movie about the father of the atomic bomb.” Instead, “they’re going to see this mysterious figure and a deeply mysterious biographical story.”
Regardless of whether subject matter experts believe there is nothing new to say, the general public’s understanding of Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project hasn’t changed significantly since Stimson’s 1947 Harper’s article. After all, most people’s sense of history doesn’t come by way of the academy or densely researched biographies. Visiting Los Alamos myself a few years ago, I asked a docent what they thought might renew public interest in the history of the Manhattan Project.
The answer? “A movie.”
Murphy as Oppenheimer (center, speaking into microphone) Universal Pictures
“Oppenheimer himself couldn’t make up his mind how he felt about making and helping to use the bomb, right to the end of his life,” says Mitchell. Until now, “filmmakers also couldn’t seem to get a handle on his conflicting emotions and statements. In that sense, he is a valuable audience surrogate, severely divided or conflicted on these questions.”
Nolan’s film arrives at a precarious moment in which optimism about nuclear disarmament is giving way to talk of a new nuclear age. Few world leaders today have direct experience with the horrors of nuclear bombs, and some younger people are ignorant of even basic facts about World War II. But perhaps our distance from Oppenheimer’s era also presents an opportunity.
“Today, almost 80 years have passed since the end of World War II,” says Cynthia C. Kelly, president of the Atomic Heritage Foundation. Now, she adds, “the public can more openly consider different interpretations of atomic history.”
Why did it take so long for a director of Nolan’s caliber to take on Oppenheimer’s story? Perhaps it’s because we’re only now far enough away from those world-changing events to be open to seeing them—and him—with fresh eyes.
That’s no easy task. As Oppenheimer himself told an interviewer in 1948, “If you’ve lived a life that isn’t free and open with people, it’s almost impossible to unsnarl it, to unravel the ball of twine.”
It’s time to fire up your Oscars ballots, folks. On Tuesday morning, Zazie Beetz and Jack Quaid announced the nominees for the 2024 Academy Awards.
Surprise, surprise: Oppenheimer led the field with 13 nominations. The film about theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was recognized for Best Picture, Best Director (Christopher Nolan), Best Actor (Cillian Murphy), Best Supporting Actress (Emily Blunt), Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.), Cinematography, Adapted Screenplay, Costume Design, Original Score, Makeup & Hairstyling, Editing, Sound, and Production Design
Meanwhile, Poor Things exceeded expectations with 11 nominations, while Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moongarnered 10 nominations. In what’s easily the biggest shocker of the morning, Barbie failed to break double digits at this year’s Academy Awards, with just eight nominations in total. Though the film was nominated for Best Picture, director Greta Gerwig and star Margot Robbie were both snubbed from the field. However, Ryan Gosling was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, America Ferrera was tapped for Best Supporting Actress, and Gerwig earned a nod for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Other big winners include American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, The Holdovers, Maestro, Past Lives, Poor Things, and The Zone of Interest. They’ll compete against Barbie and Oppenheimer for Best Picture. Paul Giamatti and Cillian Murphy will square off in the Best Actor race, alongside Maestro‘s Bradley Cooper, Rustin‘s Colman Domingo, and American Fiction‘s Jeffrey Wright. Leonardo DiCaprio‘s exclusion from the Best Supporting Actor list may come as a shock, but the actor has always had a strange relationship with the Academy Awards. Remember, he had to fight a bear in 2015’s The Revenant to finally win the coveted award. With Margot Robbie out of the Best Actress race, this year’s awards-season mainstays—Flower Moon‘s Lily Gladstone and Poor Things‘ Emma Stone—are now joined by Maestro‘s Carey Mulligan, Nyad‘s Annette Bening, and Anatomy of a Fall‘s Sandra Huller.
Elsewhere in the field, Best International Feature Film nominations included Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days (Japan), Society of the Snow(Spain), The Zone of Interest (UK), The Teacher’s Lounge (Germany), and lo capitano (Italy). Anatomy of a Fall—which is up for Best Picture—and France’s other critically acclaimed film of the year, The Taste of Things, both fell short. Many Best Documentary Feature titles came as a surprise, including nominations for Bobi Wine: The People’s President, The Eternal Memory, Four Daughters, To Kill a Tiger, and the timely 20 Days in Mariupol.
The 96th Academy Awards nominations were presented by Jack Quaid and Zazie Beetz.
In the Best Animated Feature competition, Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron,Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Pixar’s Elemental, Netflix’s Nimona, and surprise international contender Robot Dreams will duke it out. As for Best Original Song, Barbie‘s “I’m Just Ken” and Billie Eilish‘s “What Was I Made For?” will battle it out for the golden statue. They’ll see competition from “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” from Killers of the Flower Moon, “It Never Went Away” from American Symphony, and “The Fire Inside” from the Eva Longoria-directed Flamin’ Hot.
Other snubs include the performance of May December, which received praise for Charles Melton, Natalie Portman, and Juliane Moore’s turns, only to walk away with one Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. The Color Purple also received just one nomination for Best Supporting Actress (Danielle Brooks). Ferrari, Asteroid City, Priscilla, Napoleon, AIR, Bottoms, Origin, and All of Us Strangers were completely excluded from the final list of nominations.
The 96th Academy Awards will air on ABC on March 10, with Jimmy Kimmel hosting for the fourth time.
Science fiction movies are a popular genre that combines imaginative storytelling with scientific and futuristic elements. These films often transport viewers to worlds beyond our own, exploring advanced technologies, extraterrestrial life, and the impact of scientific advancements on society. This genre started as early as 1902 with Georges Méliès’ science fiction film, “A Trip to the Moon,” which featured a group of astronomers who traveled to the moon and kidnapped one of its lunar inhabitants. The silent picture thrilled audiences and opened the door for more space-themed films to come. From 1902 to 2023, there has certainly been a fair share of sci-fi movies produced. With franchises like “Star Wars” dominating the genre and other hits like “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once” hitting it big at the 2022 Academy Awards, there is nothing if not a plethora of great films to pick from. This only makes our job harder at narrowing it down to the best science fiction movies of all time!
But before we dive in, let’s talk about what makes sci-fi such an intriguing genre. Unlike most genres where art imitates life, the sci-fi genre featuring alien life and a futuristic Earth is open to so many different interpretations. Because of this, instead of art imitating life, in the sci-fi world, life can sometimes go on to imitate art. Take, for instance, just last year, when a “Star Trek”-style detector here on Earth was said to act like “long-range sensors” and spot alien spaceships traveling through the Milky Way galaxy. Researchers with New York think tank Applied Physics say the device picks up gravitational waves—incredibly fast ripples formed by the movement of massive objects. Named LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory), the instrument could hold the key to identifying extraterrestrials’ mega-technology! LIGO could possibly point out “warp drives,” the same theoretical engines that fueled the USS Enterprise’s interstellar missions in the cult TV series. However, they would only have to come within about 326,000 light-years of Earth for LIGO to spot their waves. More sensitive machines are already in the planning stages, and they would extend the range even further. It sounds like the plot of a J.J. Abrams movie, doesn’t it?
Another instance where life is imitating art comes in the form of a new “Terminator”-like liquid metal being developed in China. James Cameron’s 1991 film “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” is considered a cinematic classic, in large part due to its iconic villain: a vicious killer robot capable of morphing into liquid form and taking on various shapes and sizes. Now, it seems that Cameron’s take on the future of robotics may very well be on its way to coming true. Chinese researchers have developed a new liquid metal capable of being moved and stretched through the use of magnets. With this breakthrough, the possibility of creating a real-life shape-shifting robot like the one portrayed in the “Terminator” movies becomes more real. Imagine a robot that can seamlessly adapt to its environment by changing its shape and size, making it highly versatile and adaptive. It is both fascinating and slightly scary to think about how these advancements in technology could be used.
Are you fascinated by the storylines that take place within the science fiction universe? Luckily, we at StudyFinds feel the same, which is why we have set out to research across multiple expert sources to bring you the top five best science fiction movies of all time. Don’t agree with our list? We would love to hear from you in the comments down below! Now onto the list!
The List: Best Science Fiction Movies, According to Experts
“2001: A Space Odyssey” is a visionary science fiction film directed by Stanley Kubrick, released in 1968. Set in the not-so-distant future, the film explores the profound impact of a mysterious monolith on human evolution, taking viewers on a mesmerizing journey through time. “‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ is so close to being the best science fiction film ever made, but it is undoubtedly the most important. Audiences can track the evolution of sci-fi by breaking it down into two categories: before ‘2001’ and after ‘2001’. The Stanley Kubrick masterpiece is perhaps the defining film of the 1960s and arguably the first modern sci-fi film, in terms of technology, special effects, narrative, and ideas,” writes MovieWeb.
“2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968)
“‘2001’ hits absolutely everything: space spectacle (the work within the work), AI (the double), fever sequences (contamination of reality by dream), and time travel (voyage through time). It hits all these themes, and it hits them in an original and (still today) salient manner. A goddamn classic for a reason,” raves Men’s Health.
“Like so many of the best films on this list, ‘2001’ feels alien. It has shape, weight, and a clear sense of itself. We leave it knowing we’ve seen something truly awesome, even if we can’t quite articulate what exactly we saw. Stanley Kubrick’s dizzying achievement towers in this pantheon of a film like the monolith that beguiles its cast, a lush and indelible exploration of ideas that, more than a half-decade later, continue to fascinate: artificial intelligence, space exploration, and the evolution of consciousness. So, too, do its audio and visual elements: The awe-inducing blare of ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra,’ the space station’s humbling grandeur, and the lonely drift of an unleashed astronaut, lost to the cosmos. One of a kind in any genre,” adds EW.
Though not originally a box office success upon its release, this Harrison Ford classic has gained more popularity through time (and through multiple new cuts). “What sci-fi film can best Ridley Scott’s genre classic ‘Alien’? His other genre classic, the unbeatable ‘Blade Runner—an initially misunderstood masterpiece that, over multiple decades and several recuts, stands as the pinnacle of cinematic science fiction. Based on Philip K. Dick’s ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’, ‘Blade Runner’ conjures a bleak vision of a then-future 2019 Los Angeles—an imperious flame-belching hellscape in which Harrison Ford’s ‘blade runner’ cop Rick Deckard is tasked with tracking down a group of human-engineered Replicants who have escaped back to Earth from a working colony,” describes Empire.
“Blade Runner” (1982)
“Pluck any quote from the mouth of Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty, and you’ll land upon a classic. ‘It’s not an easy thing to meet your maker,’ for instance. He speaks as a human-engineered replicant, of course, but try turning that concept back on ourselves—what would we do if we met our creator? The ideas overflow in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi masterpiece, But it’s not all philosophy; ‘Blade Runner’ is a spectacle, its choked, dystopian, post-capitalist cityscapes growing more and more familiar as the years pass. The film’s exquisite clutter extends to its eccentric ensemble, a collection of enigmas that brim with weariness and wonder,” says EW.
“It’s a film that, upon first viewing, feels almost unbearably harsh and claustrophobic, lingering on images of cruelty, decay, and exploitation. It was only years later, abetted enormously by the film’s ‘Director’s Cut’ reissue, stripped of its clunky voiceover and crass happy ending, that we began to realize exactly what ‘Blade Runner’ was offering alongside its spectacular visuals. This wasn’t just a grim dystopian action flick, but a meditation on the meaning of life, morality, memory, creation, procreation, nature, nurture—the whole shebang,” adds TimeOut.
In space, no one can hear you scream, but back on Earth, people have been screaming their lungs out for over 40 years at the sight of the Xenomorph from “Alien.” Released right at the end of the ’70s, “It’s fitting that, of all things, Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’ feels in many ways unknowable, filled with elements that feel genuinely, well, alien. As the Nostromo touches down on the ravaged surface of LV-426 and discovers a mysterious hall filled with extraterrestrial eggs, it’s clear the human crew is well out of their depth, and once their quarantine measures are broken, all hell breaks loose. There’s a warning in there somewhere. From the dark, dank corridors of its space freighter ship to the unmistakable nightmare imagery of H.R. Giger to the arrival of Sigourney Weaver’s heroic Ripley, the original ‘Alien’ remains a landmark piece of science fiction, let alone its innovations in horror. Some science fiction makes us dream of the stars. Alien warns us of the sheer violent chaos awaiting us in the vast reaches of outer space,” comments Empire.
“Alien” (1979)
“As much a horror movie as it is science fiction, ‘Alien’ introduces one of the most iconic and viscerally scary movie monsters of all time. Just as notably, director Ridley Scott influenced generations of filmmakers to come by creating a wet, grimy, lived-in future that contrasted against the idealized, chrome-plated worlds of its sci-fi contemporaries,” reports Looper.
“It’s the endless expanse that sets the stage—the sense that, despite being surrounded by so much open space, there is absolutely nowhere to run. There’s no dialogue for the first six minutes of ‘Alien’, nor is there music. It’s just ambient sound, as cold and alienating as the crowded, grimy halls of the Nostromo, cinema’s most notorious intergalactic haunted house. All the crew—an out-of-this-world ensemble consisting of Tom Skeritt, John Hurt, Yaphet Kotto, and, of course, Sigourney Weaver—has is each other, so when a worm bursts from their buddy’s stomach and begins picking them off one by one, the ugly, pipe-strewn walls close in. Director Ridley Scott embraces the claustrophobia, embedding his Xenomorph into the fabric of the ship and, by extension, our nightmares,” notes EW.
There are fewer sequels as iconic and outstanding as the sequel to 1977’s “Star Wars: A New Hope.” With more Jedi lore, a bigger budget, and better special effects, “Empire” had everything working for it to be one of the best. “‘The Empire Strikes Back’ takes the ‘escape your hometown’ joyride aspects of its groundbreaking predecessor and adds an adult sensibility and thematic throughline that bring a real depth to George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away. While one hesitates to use the well-worn terms ‘dark’ and ‘stylish’ when describing director Irvin Kershner’s installment in the series, the film nonetheless is the darkest and most stylish of the ‘Star Wars’ movies,” says IGN.
“Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back” (1980)
“The continuation of the epic space opera, ‘The Empire Strikes Back,’ follows the battle between the rebels led by Princess Leia and the Empire under Emperor Palpatine. Meanwhile, Luke trains with Jedi Master Yoda to learn how to use the Force in preparation for his climactic confrontation with the powerful Sith Lord, Darth Vader. There are several iconic moments from the highest-rated ‘Star Wars’ film that explain why it’s still a beloved entry in the franchise. It further fueled the cultural phenomenon that would stick around long after the 80s, as it continues to inspire fan clubs, spinoffs, parodies, merchandise, and more,” adds Collider.
“‘The Empire Strikes Back’ is Exhibit A in the category of sequels that surpass the original, taking the wondrous world we were granted in ‘A New Hope’ and deepening, expanding its purview in every direction. It gives flesh to the idea of the ‘Rebel Alliance,’ showing us how this ragtag band of freedom fighters operates while slowly winning the ideological battle and drawing more support to their cause. Every character undergoes positive growth. The mysticism and wonder of ‘Star Wars’ are at their zenith in ‘Empire’,” raves Paste.
“The Matrix” is a science fiction film set in a dystopian future where intelligent machines have enslaved humanity. Though there are multiple films in the franchise, it’s the original that has stood the test of time and been ingrained in pop culture. “Most fans would agree that the Wachowskis’ first entry in ‘The Matrix’ franchise is still the best one. ‘The Matrix’ introduced viewers to Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), who goes by his hacker name ‘Neo, an unassuming computer programmer who learns the truth about his simulated reality. He soon joins forces with the resistance to free others from the manipulation and control of extraterrestrial beings. The film won numerous accolades and is known for its novel concepts and cutting-edge visuals. Even those who have never seen the movie before may recognize its cyberpunk imagery and ‘bullet time’ moments that have become an irreplaceable part of cinematic history,” writes Collider.
“The Matrix” 4-film collection
This “stone-cold stunner sci-fi actioner broke all the rules, captured the zeitgeist, and snagged four Academy Awards (notably beating ‘Star Wars: The Phantom Menace’ for visual effects and ‘American Beauty’ for film editing). With every trip down the rabbit hole, ‘The Matrix’ loses none of its allure or heart-pounding excitement,” adds Parade.
“At the dawn of the Internet age, the Wachowskis gave Hollywood science fiction a major upgrade. Drawing from cyberpunk anime, philosophy, and religion, the sisters cooked up an era-defining tale that spoke to generational malaise, the rise of technology, and a pre-millennial society ready to break out of its long-held programming. It’s one of the coolest films ever made, deeply stylish, and incredibly visionary. Plus, it has a whole new layer of meaning in its reassessment as a piece of blockbuster queer cinema, a story exploring the idea that internal and external realities may be different, coming from a pair of trans creators. In a word, woah,” concludes Empire.
Let me introduce you to a genre where viruses take over the world, turning ordinary folks into brain-hungry, shuffling corpses. What will they do? How will they survive? No one knows, and that’s the best part. The best zombie movies range from terrifying tales to survival tactics loaded with comic relief. Either way, you might not want to watch them in the dark.
Zombie movies tap into our primal fear of being hunted. The idea of a relentless horde of the undead, hungering for your flesh, plays on our deepest anxieties about survival. These movies keep us on the edge of our seats, making us squirm and squint at the screen as we watch the characters try to survive in a world where there seems to be no safe space.
Scary movies may not be for everyone, but they are fan favorites for many. People love to be scared, but only in a recreational sense, according to a study. There is a fine line, though, between the level of fear that is enjoyable and that which is unpleasant. So, indulge in these undead titles at your own pace.
But it’s not just the fear factor that makes zombie movies so interesting. They also offer a captivating commentary on human nature. Stripped of society’s rules and norms, the characters must confront their most basic instincts for survival. Friendships are tested, alliances are formed and shattered, and moral dilemmas abound. It’s a fascinating exploration of what it means to be human in the face of an apocalypse. We have sifted through the best zombie movies from experts to present the perfect film for your next movie night. Let us know if we missed one in the comments below!
Number one on our list of the best zombie movies you do not want to die without watching is 1985’s “The Return of the Living Dead.” “Dan O’Bannon’s The Return of the Living Dead creates the perfect concoction between funny and scary, solidifying its place in the genre’s history. Part gruesome, part scary, and raucously entertaining as a whole, Bannon’s film gives teenage stupidity a new meaning, as it follows a group of nihilistic punks who accidentally release a strange gas that turns corpses into flesh-eating zombies, unleashing them on a sleepy town that’s got no clue what’s coming their way,” adds Movie Web.
“The Return of the Living Dead” (1985)
Why is it that when the safety of the world is in jeopardy, the weirdest group of people seem to be the only ones who can do something about it? Variety shares their opinion, “When a strange toxic gas is accidentally released in the basement of a medical supply building in Kentucky, a group of nihilistic punks, a jittery mortician, and a few dopey warehouse workers find themselves battling hundreds of zombies in director Dan O’Bannon’s deliciously gruesome horror comedy. Propelled by a killer soundtrack of hits from bands like The Flesh Eaters, The Cramps, 45 Grave, and The Damned, this eminently quotable zombie pic introduced the world to the idea that zombies’ favorite food is ‘brains!’ The film’s young cast is uniformly excellent, but it’s veteran character actors Clu Gulager, James Karen and Don Calfa who truly shine on screen.”
You wouldn’t believe this is Dan O’Bannon’s first time as a movie director because he created a classic. He hit every high point of the zombie genre. “These zombies can talk, run and reason, are not killed by brain damage, and eat only human brains,” says BFI. “And as they take on a gang of punks, and a pair of old ‘friends’ named Burt and Ernie, all to a raucous soundtrack including The Cramps, 45 Grave and The Damned, the end of the world is knowingly mirthful.”
Even if you have never watched it, “Night of the Living Dead” truthfully solidified the genre as a standalone subset of horror movies. “George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was the first in a series of zombie movies he made that established him as a horror auteur. He’s widely considered the creator of the ‘Hollywood zombie,’ AKA the infected, flesh-craving monsters we’re used to. Romero’s zombies are technically derived from the original zombies of Haitian mythology, but the two are pretty different overall. Regardless, Romero’s movie is a classic and gave the world its first taste of zombie gore,” writes Buzzfeed.
“Night of the Living Dead” (1968)
Movie experts critique “Night of the Living Dead” like it was written by Shakespeare. Try not to laugh when you read how The Wrap describes this zombie film: “Few horror films can boast its influence, whether a superior blend of political commentary under genre makeup or the beginnings of zombie mythologies (then called ‘ghouls’). Judith O’Dea put aside her fears of horror movies to star alongside Black stage actor Duane Jones, a boldly progressive choice of on-screen hero in the 60s (heck, even still). Romero’s identification of the horror genre as a place where rules can be broken is alive and well in ‘Night of the Living Dead,’ a patient zero film that stands on its own unsettling merits beyond historical prestige.”
Slant writes, “Roger Ebert memorably described the effect George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead had on a group of Saturday matinee kids, writing that their accelerating awareness that the film wasn’t going to play nice—and was, in fact, going to plunge a garden trowel deep into Mommy’s chest cavity—drove them to hysterical tears. Perhaps they subconsciously recognized in the film’s political and social subtext the many ways adults were failing them, how upheavals were destroying all illusions of social stasis, how the arms race was pushing the doomsday clock toward midnight, how the nuclear family unit was on its deathbed. Or maybe Romero’s pitch-black, impressionistic, gory depiction of the living under siege by the dead simply was and remains among the scariest goddamned films ever made.”
It is interesting that the remake for the original 1978 “Dawn of the Dead’ ranks higher than the original, yet here we are. “Hot take: Were it called anything but Dawn of the Dead, Zack Snyder’s George A Romero riff would be beloved based on the corker of an opening scene alone. With the name in place, though, it seems like sacrilege: a commercial director tackling the most sacred of horror satires with only the barest thread of anti-consumerism commentary present. Yet somehow, Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead works as a kinetic zombie-action flick soaked with gore and sporting wholly likeable survivors, courtesy of screenwriter James Gunn,” writes Time Out.
“Dawn of the Dead” (2004)
According to reviewers, the premise of the 2004 remake is the same as the original with one less stressor. “The biggest difference is the absence of overt political commentary and the increased gore, if that’s even possible. But of course it is! You can never have too much blood in a zombie movie,” shares Buzzfeed.
Fans who believe zombie movies and gore are art will not be disappointed by this film. “The union of Zack Snyder’s vision and James Gunn’s screenwriting birthed the best zombie remake, without argument,” writes The Wrap. “‘Dawn of the Dead’ defines the ‘dark and gritty’ remake modes of the early 2000s, while going 100% harder in almost every conceivable aspect. Gunn’s nuttiness leads to ‘Mad Max’ style weapon-fitted vehicles, parents forced to confront their zombie babies, and bleak commentaries about the reprehensible nature of humanity when morality is no longer in style. It’s one of the earlier ‘runner’ zombie movies and becomes more frightfully impactful since walkers turn into sprinters with tremendous stamina, as Snyder exploits American megamall cultures of the modern era. All that, and the smooth lounge-singer crooning of Richard Cheese’s ‘Down With the Sickness’ rendition? ‘Dawn of the Dead’ is what we call a total package.”
Fourth on our list of the best zombie movies is “Shaun of the Dead.” Released the same year as the ever-popular 2004 remake of “Dawn of the Dead,” you would think that one would cancel the other out yet, audiences embraced both films. “When a breakup violently disrupts the complacent man-child bubble of its hero, zombies arrive to violently disrupt the whole world along with it, reframing one man’s personal efforts to grow and learn the value of responsibility as a more literal question of life and death,” writes Slant.
“Shaun of the Dead” (2004)
Some movie experts believe “Shaun of the Dead” is an asset to the horror genre. “Arguably one of the most influential zombie films of our times, Shaun of the Dead accentuates the point that a good filmmaker doesn’t rely on a big budget to get his point across,” says Movie Web. “Edgar Wright deploys every trick in the textbook of filmmaking, adding his own spin to it. From visual comedy, to audio cues, Wright’s filmmaking vocabulary compliments his taut and comic screenplay. A mix between a parody, thriller, zombie film, and comedy, Shaun of the Dead is essential viewing for everyone and anyone.”
Variety writes, “When a genre’s popularity wanes, spoofs and satires inevitably appear like vultures overhead, signaling that death is imminent. But director Edgar Wright’s hilarious and heartfelt zom-com about two loveable slackers fighting to save their friends and family from an undead apocalypse not only celebrated the zombie genre, it reinvigorated it. Co-written by Wright and lead actor Simon Pegg, the movie’s clever script is chock full of knowing references to George Romero’s frightening filmography, and the performances across the board are superb. Not since Mel Brooks’ immortal ‘Young Frankenstein’ has a horror comedy hit its mark this successfully.”
The most recent zombie movie that has earned a place among the greatest horror films is the 2016 film, “Train to Busan.” “Yeon Sang-ho’s standout K-horror entry ‘Train to Busan’ (2016) deftly balances unexpected, bloody bursts of comedy with a nail-shredding ‘Snowpiercer’-esque train ride through a zombie apocalypse. ‘The Age of Shadows’ star Gong Yoo plays Seok-woo, a workaholic who’s distracted by his job in finance, and estranged from his kid daughter and wife, who lives in Busan. For her birthday, Seok-Woo agrees to agrees to take her to her mother in Busan via train from Seoul to Busan. But a meant-to-be-simple father-daughter journey turns into the ride from hell, as a virus of unknown origin rapidly spreads on the train, transforming victims into zombies in swift and hideous ways,” shares Indie Wire.
“Train to Busan” (2016)
Collider adds, “This is, ultimately, a story about sacrifice vs. selfishness and what it means to the characters in conflict. Would you risk your life to save a stranger? How much do you value your loved ones? Enough to sacrifice yourself?”
“Train to Busan” pushes us right into the midst of the worst-case zombie scenario. “It’s not just a zombie movie,” notes Slash Film. “It’s a ‘trapped in a confined space with zombies’ movie, which is infinitely more terrifying than your standard garden-variety setting. The traditional zombie film often involves some sort of temporarily safe space where our heroes can take refuge, barricading the doors and windows with lumber that always seems to be on hand. But where do you go on a train? Where can you hide? ‘Train to Busan’ is an intelligent horror film, willing and able to tackle social commentary in between its gruesome killings. Packed with engaging characters and plenty of action, ‘Train to Busan’ was a massive success both in its native South Korea and abroad.”
Are you ready to enjoy your next zombie film? Which zombie movie will you watch tonight? Leave a comment to let us know!
The best thriller movies are masterpieces of suspense and intrigue, expertly weaving captivating narratives that keep audiences on the edge of their seats from start to finish. These films skillfully balance tension, plot twists, and memorable characters, leaving viewers both captivated and unnerved. With their ability to elicit intense emotions and provoke thought long after the credits roll, the finest thriller movies continue to be celebrated for their enduring impact on the world of cinema.
That being said, these films might even do more for you than entertain you. Perhaps, prepare you for a global pandemic. A recent study conducted at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed fans of horror films and other post-apocalyptic movies handled the real-life fear brought on by the coronavirus better than others. They’ve had practice courses.
Thriller movies occasionally dip a toe in the water of horror. So, if you’re into that (and we know you are), you’ll love to know what flicks were picked as the scariest. A survey of 2,000 American adults revealed that the most terrifying film ever created was “The Exorcist”, followed by the first iterations of “Halloween”, “Friday the 13th” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. But what do the critics say? Find out in our list of best horror flicks.
So, why do people even watch scary movies? Perhaps for the villains. Fifty-one percent of Americans “always” or “often” root for the bad guy or gal when watching a movie or TV show. And in a survey of 2,011 U.S. adults, 60 percent say they watch a series or movie just for the villain. If you’re looking to watch a movie with the best villains, horror and thriller are of course in the go-to genres.
What’s the difference between horror and thriller genres? Horror movies elicit fear or disgust in its audience, whereas thrillers are characterized by suspense and excitement. If you need some thrilling examples, you’re in luck! We searched 13 (not an accident) expert websites to find the consensus from critics on the best thriller movies. These movies are going to make you want to double check if your front door is locked! Leave your favorite flicks in the comments below.
“The Silence of the Lambs” isn’t just a chilling thriller; it’s a cinematic masterpiece. Critics rave about its intriguing plot, where a young FBI trainee must play a dangerous game of wits with a cannibalistic killer to catch another psychopath. This “serial killer vs. serial killer” dynamic, as Parade puts it, is just one reason the film grips audiences. But it’s more than just thrills.
The film’s historical significance can’t be ignored. Winning the coveted “Big Five” Academy Awards places it in a league of its own, as Parade reminds us. The Manual delves deeper, praising the film’s ability to seamlessly blend thriller and horror while earning critical acclaim.
But “The Silence of the Lambs” offers more than just chills. It delves into deeper themes like gender dynamics and the lasting impact of trauma, as The Manual highlights. Clarice Starling’s journey isn’t just about catching a killer; it’s about confronting her own demons.
From its gripping plot and suspenseful cat-and-mouse game to its nuanced storytelling and award-winning excellence, “The Silence of the Lambs” is a film that stays with you long after the credits roll. It’s a must-watch for anyone who appreciates a masterful blend of thrills and psychological depth.
Hitchcock’s “North By Northwest” reigns supreme in the thriller hall of fame. IGN says this espionage adventure, overflowing with intrigue and iconic sequences, could be the sole champion. Cary Grant’s mistaken identity throws him into a whirlwind of relentless pursuit, setting the gold standard for thriller storytelling.
But “North By Northwest” isn’t just good, it’s exhilarating, sexy, and unmatched.TimeOut champions its effortless charm, calling it a “gliding magic-carpet ride” through suspenseful locations and unforgettable moments. Cary Grant’s ad-man-turned-accidental-spy steals the show with his charisma, while Hitchcock’s masterful direction weaves an action-packed tapestry that remains unrivaled in its brilliance.
Esquire echoes the sentiment, praising it as a “classic crime caper” where Grant’s peak performance and Hitchcock’s signature flair collide. The mistaken identity sparks a cross-country chase, fueled by Grant’s irresistible charm and Hitchcock’s knack for crafting thrilling, iconic action sequences that countless others have tried, but never truly replicated.
It’s not just a movie, it’s a masterclass in suspenseful storytelling. With its captivating plot, unforgettable characters, and Hitchcock’s incredible filmmaking, it stands tall as a thriller masterpiece that continues to enthrall audiences with its timeless charm and unmatched excellence.
It’s not psycho to be a fan of this movie. In fact, it’s very common. Hitchcock’s “Psycho” isn’t just a chilling tale of suspense; it’s a genre-defining masterpiece that continues to captivate audiences over six decades later. Collider hails it as one of the director’s best, praising its taboo-tackling story and iconic moments like the infamous shower scene.
The plot itself, as IMDb highlights, is deceptively simple: a secretary on the run stumbles into a remote motel shrouded in unsettling secrets. But Hitchcock’s magic lies in the execution. Flickside rightly praises the film’s masterful use of suspense, weaving a web of tension through monochromatic visuals, extreme close-ups, and clever foreshadowing.
Psycho is more than just a thrilling ride; it’s a cinematic landmark that pushed boundaries and redefined the possibilities of filmmaking. Its exploration of dark themes creates a lasting impact that keeps audiences hooked even after multiple viewings. No wonder it remains among the highest-rated films on IMDb.
“Mulholland Drive” is a hypnotic labyrinth of psychological mystery that burrows deep into your mind. Taste of Cinema crowns it the “definitive thriller,” chilling in a way no other film has achieved. Forget linear narratives – this is a puzzle box, an “unending abstraction” waiting to be unlocked.
Critics may debate its genre-bending ways, but one thing’s clear: “Mulholland Drive” captivates. Its troubled starlet spirals through a mesmerizing world of make-believe and twisted realities, leaving viewers piecing together clues long after the credits roll. Men’s Health advises: let the film’s insanity linger, delve into its rabbit holes, and only then find solace in the cryptic “Silencio.”
While its meaning remains open to interpretation, the film’s power lies in its chilling atmosphere and unforgettable characters. There is a touch of dark humor to the unsettling journey, ensuring you’ll never forget your trip down “Mulholland Drive.” So, buckle up for a surreal ride – this isn’t a film to be passively watched, it’s an experience to be dissected, absorbed, and ultimately, cherished.
In Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” the thrill resides in the intimate confines of an apartment window. Lethal voyeurism becomes the key theme, as a wheelchair-bound photographer named L.B. Jefferies seeks solace in observing his neighbors. What is lethal voyeurism? It refers to obsessive observation that escalates to harm or threatens the lives of those being watched. This innocent curiosity, fueled by boredom, metamorphoses into a dangerous obsession, blurring the lines between spectator and participant.
The film excels in its masterful construction of suspense. Confined to one setting, Hitchcock transforms Jefferies’ window into a stage, each neighboring window a portal to a private drama. Long takes draw us into his growing interest, amplifying the tension with every stolen glance and hushed whisper. This culminates in a nail-biting sequence, where Jefferies and his girlfriend get caught snooping, leaving viewers helplessly witnessing the rising stakes.
This film delves into the human psyche, exploring the allure and peril of observing others. Jefferies’ obsession isolates him, forcing him to grapple with the ethical implications of his actions and the responsibility that comes with witnessing a potential crime.
The film shines not only in its Hitchcockian suspense, but also in its stellar performances. James Stewart delivers a nuanced portrayal of Jefferies, his charm masking a growing desperation. Grace Kelly, as his sophisticated girlfriend, complements him perfectly, transforming from a glamorous observer to a risk-taking heroine.
Through its masterful direction, unforgettable performances, and timeless themes, “Rear Window” remains a cinematic gem. It serves as a chilling reminder of the thin line between curiosity and obsession, and the captivating, yet dangerous, allure of the secrets that may lurk just beyond our own windows. So, the next time you find yourself drawn to a neighbor’s life, remember L.B. Jefferies and the perilous price of voyeurism in “Rear Window.”
You’d be forgiven for missing Denzel Washington’s return to the big screen in 2023, as the third and supposedly final installment of the Equalizer franchise hit theaters amid a historic Hollywood shutdown. Save for the myriad posters of Washington smoldering in shadow as Robert McCall, The Equalizer 3 didn’t have much in the way of promotion. With both the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America on strike, Washington was unable to promote the film.
For what it’s worth, it probably didn’t need it, as Washington is a performer who comes with a built-in fanbase. Few are holding out for an appearance on Hot Ones or a BuzzFeed puppy interview before they buy their ticket (not that we would say no to either). Denzel-heads need only hear of a new starring vehicle, and they’ll turn up in modest droves. This is especially true for the Equalizer saga, the latest of which became the highest-grossing of the trilogy despite a dearth of promotion.
The Equalizer 3 now continues its hot streak on Netflix, the streaming platform that’s given so many blistering B-movies a much-needed second life. Washington reteamed with director Antoine Fuqua (this film marks their fifth collaboration) for this installment, and they took McCall’s virtuous vigilantism abroad.
The eponymous avenger finds himself somewhere along the Amalfi coast after a near-fatal run-in with some Sicilian mafiosos. He’s taken in by a kindly doctor (Remo Girone) in a tucked-away village where McCall nurses his wounds, observes its idyllic life, orders daily at the local café, and gets to know the locals.
From the beginning, it’s clear McCall is having something of a Mamma Mia! moment. He bonds with merchants and flirts with the cafe’s owner (Gaia Scodellaro). He even finds a way to coach a junior CIA agent (Dakota Fanning) through her first case, all without getting his hands dirty. For the first time in a long time, McCall might have finally found some peace. But his vacation is, of course, short-lived.
It doesn’t take very long for McCall to realize that this town, like so many others, is under the control of a vicious mafia cell. The Equalizer 3 wastes no time establishing this new threat, and its hero is just as eager to shed some more blood so his new friends can live without fear.
The Equalizer 3 reunites Washington, Antoine Fuqua, and Dakota Fanning.Sony Pictures
As with so many films of this ilk, the stakes aren’t necessarily high. We all know McCall is going to defeat these villains in spectacularly brutal fashion. We know his adversaries will try to put up a fight by threatening those closest to McCall. And while the fights often feel like live-action homages to Mortal Kombat, it’s much more exciting to watch McCall open up to the idea of a new family.
Despite the inherent brutality of its premise, the Equalizer films have always been deceptively kind-hearted. McCall only does what he does to right injustice and make life easier for the downtrodden. Equalizer 3 leans hard on sentimentality, introducing a handful of endearing Italians that anyone would raise hell to protect. It goes a long way in justifying the pain McCall inflicts, but it also leaves us wondering whether McCall can actually leave this life behind and choose peace for himself when the dust finally settles.
For all his inherent tenderness, McCall has always drifted in and out of people’s lives. Equalizer 3 introduces genuine connections, friction, and tension unlike any of its predecessors. The dynamics presented here still aren’t all that sophisticated, but they help make this final installment feel like a fitting end to McCall’s story. Sure, you’ve seen movies like this before, and you might not even remember this one after the credits roll. But Washington and Fuqua’s partnerships will always be entertaining and, like a good European vacation, they never overstay their welcome.
How Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece revolutionized sound design and film scoring.
Universal Studios/Getty Images
In early 1963, screenwriter Evan Hunter sat in a screening room with Alfred Hitchcock. They were watching an early cut of The Birds, the avian-nightmare classic that Hitchcock directed from Hunter’s screenplay. As the opening titles appeared, blue lettering superimposed over footage of fluttering birds, Hunter noticed something strange: There was no music. Just the trilling, high-pitched sounds of the creatures themselves.
Hitchcock had decided “there would be no score for The Birds,” Hunter recalled in his memoir, Me and Hitch. “Unmindful of his artistic pretensions for the film, I told him I thought that would be a mistake; that music could subtly foreshadow dire events to come or stridently accompany bird attacks until we had the audience screaming. He said no. No music.”
Alfred Hitchcock during production of The Birds.STF/AFP/Getty Images
The film, which arrived 60 years ago this week, remained true to this radical formal experiment: Alone among the major studio films of its day, The Birds is completely bereft of nondiegetic music (that is, music that is external to the world of the film and cannot be heard by characters), pulling viewers into a world of threat and danger without the conventional guideposts of a musical score. Instead, the emphasis is on the terrifying screeches, squawks, and wing flutters of the birds themselves — a pioneering electronic sound design generated with the help of a Mixtur-Trautonium, an early synthesizer — and the eerie quiet in between their attacks on a small coastal village.
“I would say it’s the grandest audio experiment,” veteran sound editor Skip Lievsay tells Inverse. “It’s the most dramatic audio choice that you can make, even more than silence.” Lievsay is known for his collaborations with directors such as Joel and Ethan Coen and Alfonso Cuarón.
And it isn’t just sound specialists who speak reverently about Hitchcock’s sonic brilliance.
“I think that’s an underutilized opportunity, [to use] sound design in a way to sort of pull you into something and set some rules down,” says Todd Field, the filmmaker behind Tár. “There’s nothing more frightening or more thrilling than this idea that you’re being hunted — and that you get to hear the sound of the creature that’s doing the hunting.”
Hitchcock’s musicless approach was a staggering departure from Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), and Psycho (1960), all of which used memorable scores by Bernard Herrmann to underscore action and suspense. By eschewing music in The Birds, Hitchcock wasn’t just exploring the opposite extreme, he was instilling the film with a frightening sense of vérité, forcing viewers to hear only what his protagonist Melanie (Tippi Hedren) and the other characters hear.
And he employed cutting-edge sound technology to achieve such an effect. “Even by today’s standards, the sound effects are really spectacular and varied,” Lievsay says. “And high-fidelity, too. In an average movie of that time, cars and ambiences and even doors and stuff aren’t necessarily very authentic-sounding. And yet, those birds are such a home run. They really are scary.”
“Just quiet (or disquiet), like real life.”
Hitchcock was challenging himself to work outside the confines of Hollywood convention, wherein musical score provides an emotional shorthand for the audience. As the filmmaker once famously remarked, “In a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.”
Few stylistic choices in The Birds proved more audacious or more influential — and not just in the horror sphere. Although Hitchcock had flirted with eschewing music in limited-location films such as Rope and Lifeboat, The Birds broke with decades of Hollywood tradition and gave filmmakers permission to explore unnerving sonic realism. Inverse spoke to two acclaimed filmmakers and several sound editors to understand how the sound of The Birds influenced everything from the modern “quiet horror” movement to the Coen Brothers to Todd Field’s singular character study Tár.
The quiet horror revolution
Kevin (played by Lucas Paul) in Skinamarink (2022).Mutiny Pictures/ERO Picture Company
In 1963, Hitchcock’s approach polarized critics. Sixty years later, it’s clear that The Birds expanded the parameters of sound editing, made room for more ambient sound design, influenced subsequent generations of filmmakers, and arguably paved the way for the “quiet horror” movement.
“One thing that stands out, particularly for the era, is how realistic the sound feels due to the lack of background music,” Canadian director Kyle Edward Ball tells Inverse. “No sweeping symphony. No lush Bernard Herrmann music. Just quiet (or disquiet), like real life.”
In 2022, Ball’s feature filmmaking debut, the eerie, no-budget Skinamarink, has become the sleeper hit of the horror season. Filmed in the director’s childhood home on a budget of $15,000, Skinamarink is minimalist in both sound and vision. More atmosphere than plot, its grainy, abstract tale involves two children awoken in the middle of the night to discover that their father is missing and a mysterious force is in the house. There is no nondiegetic score. Instead, the film’s only music emanates from vintage cartoons flickering on the television. Ball describes the sound design as “quiet, crunchy, realistic, and eerie.”
“From day one, I wanted to forgo a background score,” he says. “I think it’s scarier this way. In the silence, all you have is yourself.”
“It’s just this constant creeping of something being wrong.”
Naturally, he was inspired by the Master of Suspense.
“The lack of background score in The Birds was part of the inspiration for not using a score in my movie,” Ball says. “The Birds has had a huge impact on me as a filmmaker. It’s just this constant creeping of something being wrong. Something out of place. Long stretches of silence followed by cacophonies of sound. The flashlight up the stairs scene, where Tippi Hedren discovers the room full of birds in the upstairs room, is a 101 in suspense building.”
Some critics have describedSkinamarink as part of a “quiet horror” movement, a loosely defined category that includes hushed thrillers A Quiet Place (2018) and its 2021 sequel, as well as The Silence (2019) — films that centralize silence in both style and plot. (Ball doesn’t object to this classification.)
John Krasinski in A Quiet Place.Platinum Dunes/Sunday Night Productions
But if there’s a connective tissue leading from The Birds to Skinamarink, it may lie in the found-footage flicks that have dominated horror studios in recent decades: franchise starters like Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield, as well as the modern crop of “screenlife” movies, like Unfriended or Host. Such films reward low budgets, avoid non-source music, and emphasize harsh, realistic sound design to better give audiences the illusion of “authentic” footage. They reflect a guiding principle of The Birds: The less you underline the horror with cinematic scoring, the more truthful it feels.
The Blair Witch Project, the 1999 pseudo-documentary that launched found-footage horror into the mainstream, crystalized this approach. Made on a microbudget with deliberately amateurish production values, the film follows three young filmmakers camping out in the Maryland woods in search of a mythical witch. Until the end credits, there is no music, because why would raw footage have music?
In one of The Blair Witch Project’s most terrifying scenes, sound design supersedes image. As in The Birds, our protagonists are in a remote place, being stalked by some malevolent force which they initially can hear but not see. The three are in their tent at night, petrified by the sounds of sticks snapping and bizarre guttural noises growing steadily louder outside the tent. That we can’t see what’s making the noises makes it all the more frightening; that there is not a musical pulse manipulating our emotions makes it all the more real.
No music for old men
Javier Barden as Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men (2007).Scott Rudin Productions/Mike Zoss Productions
Skip Lievsay knows firsthand how influential The Birds’ sound design has been. In his capacity as longtime sound editor for the Coen Brothers (with whom he’s worked since 1984’s Blood Simple), he contributed to perhaps the most celebrated narrative film ever to echo the Hitchcock flick’s uneasy quiet: No Country for Old Men.
“Joel Coen was specifically interested in trying to do the movie with no music as an experimental attempt to make a movie like The Birds,” Lievsay recalls. “It’s the most well-known example of a studio movie that doesn’t have music.”
“The music cues must enter on the wind.”
The Coens’ 2007 neo-Western masterpiece does contain snatches of music, composed by their usual collaborator Carter Burwell, but they’re kept to a minimum: ambient murmurs that blend in with the unforgiving desert landscape. Just as The Birds was a one-eighty from Hitchcock’s prior work with Herrmann, No Country was a stark departure from the Coens’ previous emphasis on music: the high-octane yodeling of Raising Arizona, the orchestral sweep of Fargo, the Creedence grooves of The Big Lebowski, and the vintage bluegrass and folk immersion of O Brother, Where Art Thou?
“It wasn’t a unanimous choice. Ethan, I think, always expected that there would be music,” Lievsay says. But during an early screening of the film with composer Burwell, they all agreed that it worked with minimal music. “Ethan said, ‘OK, Carter, you make music cues for the movie. The music cues must enter on the wind, be indistinguishable from the wind, and exit where it came in.’ I think it was a fair compromise. And, in fact, Carter made several cues. They all hover right in the sound design area.”
Craig Berkey, the re-recording mixer and sound designer, recalls, “As we were going to do the final mix, I was expecting somebody to walk through the door at some point and go, ‘OK, the music’s here! Let’s put it in.’”
Anyone who saw No Country for Old Men in a theater will recall the film’s unusual quiet, filling the remote Texas landscape with a sense of desolation and dread as the cat-and-mouse game between bounty hunter Llewelyn Moss and psychopathic hitman Anton Chigurh slowly unfurls. Even in a sold-out screening, you could hear a pin drop. Tiny sounds are imbued with immense weight: the jangling of a coin toss, the creaking of a floorboard.
It’s the culmination of the Hitchcockian suspense the Coens first explored decades earlier with Blood Simple, but this time without music to set the mood. The film understands that our most frightening moments often occur in desolate, abandoned settings, without music or chatter to fill the silence.
“You get a little numb when you’re working on something because you see it hundreds of times,” Berkey says. “When I saw that with a large audience, I was like, ‘Oh my God. I had no idea that it was this intense.’”
A Tár is born
Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) plays the piano in the movie Tár (2022).Standard Film Company/EMJAG Productions
Few movies about music contain as little music, quantitatively speaking, as Tár. And few contemporary American filmmakers approach sound design as deeply or precisely as Todd Field, the writer and director who dreamed up the world-renowned conductor known as Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett). The nondiegetic music in Tár is so faint that, on first viewing, I scarcely noticed it was there. Instead, the music Lydia is playing or conducting — Bach’s Prelude in C Major, Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, even the deranged accordion romp “Apartment for Sale” — effectively becomes the score to her own downfall.
“Our birds in this movie are a character who’s attenuated to sound in a very particular manner,” Field tells me from Mexico, where he’s on holiday. He notes that Lydia Tár suffers from misophonia and misokinesia. “If you speak to people in that position who are conductors, it’s not uncommon that they have a version of this affliction. There’s a reason they’re drawn to that vocation because it’s the only time they can control sound. They’re bothered by sound. They don’t like background music.”
Thus, what Tár has in common with The Birds is a heightened sensitivity to sound, a certain awareness of sound as an encroaching threat. Both films use diegetic sound rather than score during their opening credits — Tár incorporates the sound of Lydia Tár recording an Icaro song from an indigenous tribe in Peru — and both films prioritize intense aural subjectivity, forcing the viewer to hear what our icy blond protagonist is hearing.
“It would have been absurd to underscore someone’s life who makes music for a living,” Field says. “People have done it recently in several films. But I don’t know why one would do that. It seems like a gigantic missed opportunity because the interesting part for me in someone’s life is the in-between places. And if they’re making music, then the in-between places become really important.”
“The Birds has infected anyone, consciously or subconsciously, probably, that thinks about films.”
The unnerving quiet of Tár makes the unwelcome sounds that disturb Lydia’s daily life (a ticking clock, a caregiver alarm, a far-off scream) that much more striking. And when there is music emanating from an orchestra on screen, “it’s real,” Field notes. “What you hear is what you’re seeing.”
Like No Country, Tár does, in fact, have a musical score (this one composed by the Icelandic musician Hildur Guðnadóttir), but it operates with great subtlety and restraint. It’s a low, ambient hum that merges with the overall sound design. “The big thing Todd said about that, he wants it to be felt rather than heard,” recalls sound editor Stephen Griffiths. “So you’d kind of have this sense of mounting dread.”
“It’s not meant to be noticed,” Field says, noting that he deliberately had the score mixed very, very low. “And I did the same thing on the other two films [I directed],” 2001’s In the Bedroom and 2006’s Little Children.
Was The Birds an influence on Tár? “Not consciously,” answers Field. “I would say that The Birds has infected anyone, consciously or subconsciously, probably, that thinks about films. The way that film begins is so magnificent.”
And then he speaks about Hitchcock’s film — particularly the opening sequence, in particular — with such detail and passion that it’s clear he’s watched and absorbed it many times.
“You know that there is inherent threat from the very beginning. You know that you feel like you’re being tracked. The sounds of the birds are further away from you, and the way he deals with perspective, by the time they’re coming into frame, it feels like they’re descending on us. Like they’re preying on us.
“We’re like pigeons, no pun intended,” Field adds. “Hitchcock has you eating out of his hands.”
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