Gay thriller films

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But there are some fine performances, not least from Al Pacino in his riskiest role, as a cop who goes undercover and finds himself drawn to the wild side. O’Brien delivers dual performances that critics have called career-best work. The film manages to be both deeply erotic and deeply tragic at the same time (and often in the same scene), and it cements Almodóvar’s reputation as one of the finest living directors.

Set in the post-Korean War era, the film follows a complex web of gambling, hidden desires, and the search for freedom in a rigid society. The cast includes Edie Falco, Brian Cox, Lisa Kudrow and Parker Posey. Even if you know the novel’s secrets, The Handmaiden keeps the character’s motivations hidden until the very end.

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LGBTQIA+Thrillers

In Black Swan, however, he managed to attain the perfect balance of form and content, as the film’s main character, Natalie Portman’s Nina Sayers, finds herself drawn into a perilous romance with Mila Kunis’ Lily.

Based on Shannon Pufahl’s 2019 novel, the film is now streaming on Netflix and HBO Max.

Jimpa

Jimpa stars John Lithgow as an ageing gay man living in Amsterdam.

Released via The Criterion Collection; available to pre-order or buy on Apple TV and Vudu.

Twinless

A twisty psychological thriller starring Dylan O’Brien in a dual role. While the masked killer seems like the villain, the film asks the viewer to consider what makes a person a monster.

The film holds a 97 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Starring Tom Blyth and Russell Tovey, the story centers on an undercover police officer who becomes entangled in the very community he is assigned to entrap, leading to a high-stakes internal conflict. With its gothic trappings and brooding atmosphere, Rebeccaretains its ability to entertain and disturb.

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'Dog Day Afternoon'

Warner Bros via MovieStillsDB

Al Pacino delivers a powerful and electric performance in Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon, in which he plays John Wojtowicz, a young man who takes a bank hostage to get money for his partner’s gender reassignment surgery.

Though its scenes of brutal violence might be off-putting to some, the undeniable style that the directors bring to the film makes it well worth viewing.

Focus Features via MovieStillsDB

Pedro Almodóvar is most famous for his melodramas focusing on women and their experiences, but in Bad Education(original Spanish title:La mala educación), he turns his attention to the gay experience.

The film focuses on Franck, who finds himself drawn to the sinister Michel, who is more than capable of murder. As so often in the thriller genre, desire and death are bound up in an intimate dance, and the film’s cinematography, which so often makes it seem as if the characters are prisoners in the house — engenders a feeling of claustrophobia, even as the chemistry between Sevigny and Stewart makes the viewer cheer for their romance.

What begins as an unlikely friendship takes unexpected turns. The killers (John Dall and Farley Granger) conceal the body in a wooden chest and then, in a twisted act of cruelty, invite the victim’s friends and family over for dinner.

The suspense of waiting to see if the crime will be uncovered is palpable, especially in a scene where the maid prepares to open the chest, unnoticed by the killers.

This is largely due to the many moments of comedy, played up in Al Pacino’s kinetic performance as Sonny, a bank robber seeking money, it is revealed, to fund his partner’s gender reassignment surgery.

Everyone remembers the film’s crazed moments, as more and more pressure is put on Sonny, hopelessly out of his depth from the start of the heist.

The duo plan to steal the gangster’s loot and escape together, but unfortunately for them he is not quite as dumb as he first appears.

Tilly and Gershon have real chemistry, with the former in particular revelling in the camp excesses of her character, panting out every line with steamy suggestiveness. His writing on film and TV has appeared at Screen Rant, Screenology, FanFare, Primetimer, Cinemania, and in a number of scholarly journals and edited collections

10 great LGBTQIA+ thrillers

Tension and suspense may be key components of thrillers but often, unfortunately, they are often joined with a healthy dose of homophobia.

From Russia with Love (1963) is one of the best Bond films, and Lotte Lenya’s Rosa Klebb one of the best Bond villains, but there is no doubt it sees her lesbianism as evidence of her wickedness.

She is far from a passive romantic interest, however, as one of the antagonists finds to their cost in the film’s frantic climax.

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Bound (1996)

Directors: The Wachowskis

Before The Matrix (1999) focused their talents on epic sci-fi, the Wachowskis made this taut film noir, a world away from their sprawling later works.

Yet the best scene is the quietest – a sad telephone conversation amid the chaos between Sonny and his partner (Chris Sarandon). Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Magnus Juhl Andersen and Nina Terese Rask in Sauna. The fact that the killer is a transgender person reads as more than a bit of retrograde from the standpoint of 2023.

Director Sophie Hyde drew on her own experiences growing up in a queer family. Oliver Stone’s fast-with-the-facts but entertaining JFK (1991) offered a chorus line of simpering queens, who, the film affirms, had a hand in the president’s assassination.