Thriller & Mystery

Agatha Christie put Britain on the map as the premiere destination for mystery solving thrillers. Here we see her work next to other marvellous interpretations of the genre, some dark and brooding, and others bordering the experimental. One thing is for sure, plenty of deception, and in some cases death, lies ahead. From the pulse-racing to the hair raising, these British thrillers will keep you on the edge of your seat.

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  • The Third Man

    One of the greatest British films, Carol Reed's classic very consciously emphasises its time and place - post-war Vienna - yet its resonant themes around loss of innocence and a fall from grace render it timeless. Joseph Cotten plays the writer searching the Austrian capital for his missing frien...

  • The Ghoul

    The Ghoul is an atmospheric slow-burn crime film more interested in psychology and the occult than in solving crimes. Tom Meeten’s detective Chris is called to investigate a mysterious, possible double murder. Discovering clues in the house of a shadowy suspect, he goes undercover as a patient to...

  • Seven Days to Noon

    A gripping apocalyptic thriller from the Boulting Brothers, the relevance of which remains undiminished today. Praised upon its release as 'the most intelligent film so far to touch upon one of the problems confronting an atomic age', it used some 70 locations around London and remains a vivid sn...

  • County Lines

    Obeying the first rule – 'write what you know' - former youth worker turned filmmaker Henry Blake turns in an original, stylish debut feature which premiered at the 2019 BFI London Film Festival.

    It exposes the urban-to-rural drugs system of the title, a network which exploits children to use as...

  • Gothic

    Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne) promises his guests a night of horror only a mad poet can deliver and after partaking in hallucinogens, the guests tell ghost stories while exploring the dark corridors of his home - and of their minds. If any director is suited to retelling the wild night that conjured...

  • L'enfer (aka Torment)

    A husband's jealousy and suspicion of his wife drive him to appalling extremes in Claude Charbrol’s unsettling psychological thriller.

  • The Limey

    An English career criminal (Stamp) who travels to the United States to investigate the recent suspicious death of his daughter.

  • 71

    Jack O’ Connell (Unbroken, Starred Up) plays a young British squaddie is caught behind enemy lines in bomb-torn Belfast, who has to navigate his way home while avoiding the competing attentions of rival IRA factions, dangerous loyalists and sinister secret agents.

  • Murder!

    Here, in one of Hitchcock’s few whodunits, even the actress accused of murder is unsure whether she’s guilty, having blacked out before being discovered with the weapon and a colleague’s corpse. Just one juror (Herbert Marshall) – a thesp himself – believes her innocent, and investigates. A fasci...

  • Brighton Rock

    Richard Attenborough is unforgettable as ‘Pinkie’, the brutal gangster who seduces and grooms a simple waitress, Rose (Carol Marsh) in the belief that she could incriminate him in a murder.

  • The Mirror Crack'd

    When a Hollywood movie company arrives, stars in tow, to make a picture, the village of St Mary Mead is delighted. However, when a local woman is murdered, and the poison seems to have been intended for a visiting movie star, local detective Inspector Craddock (Edward Fox) turns to his Auntie, Mi...

  • Silent Scream

    1963: When Larry Winters violently murders a Soho barman in cold blood he is sentenced to life imprisonment. Within ten years he is addicted to prescription drugs and feared as Scotland's most violent inmate. After being transferred to the experimental Barlinnie Special Unit, Winters finds new an...

  • Sweeney!

    Hard-bitten Flying Squad officer Jack Regan gets embroiled in a deadly political plot when an old friend asks him to investigate the death of his girlfriend. Framed on a drunk-drive charge and suspended from the force, with his partner and best mate George Carter unable to help, Jack must rely on...

  • The Man Who Haunted Himself

    Conservative executive Harold Pelham (a harrowing and atypical performance by Roger Moore) is involved in a car accident and declared momentarily dead. When he's eventually released from the hospital, Pelham discovers that an exact double of him has recently been seen in places that he's never be...

  • An Inspector Calls

    It is 1912, and the shadow of war looms over a wealthy family. As they celebrate their eldest daughter's engagement in their lavish Yorkshire manor, they're interrupted by an ominous police detective who is investigating a young woman's suicide, and what role each of them played in her death.

  • Out of the Darkness

    Shot on location around Derbyshire, this atmospheric and entertaining ghost story - which sees the dispossessed spirit of a young plague victim making contact with modern kids - is one of the highlights of the latter days of the Children's Film Foundation. Past intrudes on present with increasing...

  • It Always Rains on Sunday

    The British New Wave came a decade earlier than advertised with Robert Hamer's downbeat postwar thriller. In a dank East End of ration-book misery, dosshouses and black marketeering, a world-weary housewife is shaken by the sudden reappearance of an old lover, now an escaped convict on the run. R...

  • Evil under the Sun

    Peter Ustinov stars as Agatha Christie's immortal detective, Hercule Poirot, in this star-studded murder-mystery. Poirot is tying up some loose ends on a shimmeringly beautiful Adriatic island when he's dragged into the case of an actress' strangling. In typical Christie style, everyone on the be...

  • The Nightcomers

    Set in Victorian England, The Nightcomers follows two orphans - Flora and Miles - as they are left by their tutor in a mansion, under the care of the elderly housekeeper Mrs Grose, the governess Miss Jessel, and the groundskeeper Peter Quint. When Grose attempts to have the master of the house fi...

  • Flight to Berlin

    ‘They asked me the wrong question’ says murder suspect Susannah after being interrogated by the police. She was found in the apartment of a known criminal but this turns out to be the least of her problems as her past begins to catch up with her. Brooding acting and stunning location shooting mak...

  • Melancholia

    The sole directorial credit by the German-born founder of distributor Artificial Eye, Andi Engel, is a cerebral thriller about an art critic drawn into an assassination plot. Jeroen Krabbe plays the German ex-pat who reconnects with his radical past when he's asked to assist with the hit of a Chi...

  • And Soon the Darkness

    Two young English nurses, Jane (Pamela Franklin) and Cathy (Michele Dotrice) embark on a cycling holiday in the French countryside. They happen upon a mysterious man, Paul (Sandor Eles), who seems interested in them. Cathy is intrigued by the man, but suspicious Jane wants to continue on the jour...

  • The Cicerones

    English tourist John Trant (Mark Gatiss) visits an East European cathedral in search of an obscure religious painting. There he encounters enigmatic guides, who lead him deep into the strange church, where horror awaits... With the unnerving black humour you'd expect from League of Gentlemen pedi...

  • Sleepwalker

    When wealthy couple Richard and Angela visit Marion and Alex in their decaying family home, an evening of drunkenness and sexual rivalry turns bloody as the guests fall victim to an unhinged attacker. Featuring a rare performance from director Bill Douglas (Bill Douglas Trilogy, Comrades), and st...