Best Thriller Movies – Methodology
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:
- Parade – 23 Sep 2022
- Looper – 19 Aug 2022
- Elle – 12 Aug 2022
- PinkVilla – 2 Aug 2022
- IGN – 19 Jul 2022
- TimeOut – 12 Jul 2022
- Entoin – 11 Jun 2022
- SlashFilm – 13 May 2022
- Bored Panda – 1 May 2022
- Reader’s Digest – 22 Mar 2022
- Cinemaholic – 21 Feb 2022
- Screenrant – 18 Feb 2022
- Studio Binder – 31 May 2020
- Bustle – 23 Sep 2019
- American Film Institute (AFI) – date unknown
- Metacritic – date unknown
- The Numbers – date unknown
Attached is the Excel spreadsheet with the raw data and the full list with scores and weighting.