Every Friday night for as long as I can remember, my family and I would huddle together in the living room, with various snacks between us, eager to dive into the latest thriller. These weekly movie nights with my parents and grandparents were a cherished tradition, with a cesspool of suspense in an otherwise routine week. It wasn’t just about the adrenaline of the plot twists or the chilling sense of unease; it was about being on the edge of our seats together, sharing the collective thrill of the movie.
Yet, over the years, something has changed. The more recent the movies, the more faded the thrill. Where we were once captivated by unpredictable plots, complex characters and heart-stopping suspense, we are now bombarded with films that feel more like a checklist of representation than the once riveting storytelling. Thrillers have unfortunately become more about ticking off whichever diversity box is needed to market the movie rather than crafting truly compelling narratives. This shift from thrilling to tokenistic has made our once beloved Friday nights less and less thrilling.
Representation has become a major focus in media, which is great for amplifying the voices of minorities. There is a positive shift that the industry has needed for years. But there’s a downside to this push for representation in thrillers. Often, it feels like filmmakers are so focused on checking boxes they forget which components in a thriller are, well, thrilling. Thrillers have always been about suspense, the fear of what’s to come, the uncertainty of what’s going to happen next. The excitement should come from the characters’ struggles to survive, outwit their enemies or unravel mysteries. Lately, though, demand for representation has become the main focus, taking away from the authentic, thrilling feeling.
Take “The Woman in the Window” (2021), for instance. The movie is supposed to be a psychological thriller built on the protagonist’s agoraphobia and her belief that she’s witnessed a crime next door. It is a great setup for suspense, but the filmmakers spend so much time exploring her mental health — an important part of the plot, to be sure — but these explorations don’t add anything to the movie. It was a forgettable moment and detracted from the actual thrill of the mystery. The chilling moments expected of not knowing who to trust soon become a lecture on agoraphobia. The focus on mental health, while important, is tales from the heart of the thrillers.
Another example is “Murder Mystery” (2019) and “Murder Mystery 2” (2023). I loved some of the comedy in the movie, but the filmmakers tried too hard to appeal to every audience. Each character seemed to fit a certain stereotype from a different background, making the whole movie feel forced. The jokes, too, came off as stale and rather predictable. Instead of an edge-of-your-seat experience, it felt like a parody of a thriller, more about showing off different identities rather than creating a genuine mystery.
“Death on the Nile” (2022), a movie based on Agatha Christie’s classic mystery novel of the same name, is another example of this The original story is a timeless “whodunit,” full of twists and red herrings. But in the film, the diverse cast is introduced with so much emphasis on race and class subplots that they feel like they’ve become the focal point of the story. It is a movie that is more interested in discussing social issues than sticking to the enthralling book. The murder at the heart of the story becomes secondary to these subplots, and that is a shame, because the story had so much potential to be a real nail-biter. Bringing social issues to light is incredibly important, but sometimes keeping true to the classic can help us understand the setting better and what was going on in that period in history. Instead, it feels like the filmmakers were more concerned with making a political statement than crafting a captivating thriller.
The pressure of representation as a tool in marketing is artificial and lacks the genuine approach that is needed to tackle these tough social issues. They are so bent on being politically correct or inclusive that they forget what makes a thriller work: tension, danger, and unpredictable plot twists. When I’m sitting down to watch a movie, I want to feel like I’m in that world. The characters are in actual danger, and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. The minute I feel like it’s a story and it’s checking boxes for diversity or social messages, it takes me out of it. It feels like the agenda is more important than the story, and that makes it hard for me to care about the characters or the outcome.
My parents and grandparents, who have been watching thrillers for decades, have also noticed it. They always say that thrillers used to be about the plot, the suspense and the twists that kept you coming back for more. It wasn’t who the characters were or what kind of background they came from; it was about what they had done, how the mystery was trying to be solved, and how they were surviving all the danger. Social commentary can be beautifully curated into screenplay with it being an additive element to the plot, rather than subtractive. These new thrillers are all about “representing” something and not actually about telling a good story. And I believe them. I think the genre has really lost its essence.
