I searched far and wide for lists of best thriller movies of all time. Criteria included the movies being ranked, not just listed, and covering all time, not just a decade. The lists were generally created by groups, whether teams or committees or based on general public voting (like Ranker.com).

I was able to find 17 lists. I took the 17 lists and added all their content into a spreadsheet, noting the rank of every film. The total number was over 1,200 including all the repeats. I experimented with different formulas, trying to balance the value of being ranked high on any list and being included on the most lists. I ended up averaging the rankings each movie got (there were 227 that were on at least 2 lists) and dividing that average by the number of lists that movie was on. The lowest score meant a high ranking average on many lists.

The movies that were on the most lists (out of 17) were:

  • Rear Window (1954) – 13
  • The Silence of the Lambs (1991) – 13
  • Memento (2000) – 12
  • Se7en (1995) – 12
  • Gone Girl (2014) – 11
  • Vertigo (1958) – 11

Here are links to the lists I used along with dates the lists were last updated:

Attached is the Excel spreadsheet with the raw data and the full list with scores and weighting.

Best-Thriller-Movies-of-All-TimeDownload