![]() ![]() All of the terror is there behind his eyes, but he plays the character as a hopeless, shattered figure. He doesn’t so much tap into the horror and intensity of paranoia as he does the tragedy of it. The power of Shannon’s work is how devastating it is. He experiences hallucinations and becomes an isolated shell of himself as his friends and family worry he’s gone mad. ![]() In Jeff Nichols’ unforgettable psycho-drama “Take Shelter,” Shannon plays a man who begins to believe his dreams of an impending apocalypse are a warning sign. Michael Shannon has one of the great paranoid faces in modern cinema. Caul’s fears seem to be backed up by bloody evidence – but as with so many films on this list, nothing is what it seems, and his employer will stop at nothing to get what he’s paid for, even at the cost of Caul’s sanity. Caul’s attempts to uncover the truth lead him to mistrust everyone around him, including his friends and his mysterious employer, who is paying a hefty sum for the surveillance. When Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), a surveillance expert, bugs a conversation between two lovers, he realizes that someone is planning to kill them. Right from the very beginning of Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation” we’re duped, and it doesn’t stop there. Tensions begin to mount, no one trusts each other, and paranoia tears the camp apart. From here, a virus begins to spread throughout the base camp of a group of American researchers, but we don’t know who is infected – and neither do they. The film kicks off with a group of Norwegians trying to kill an escaped dog, and when their explanation for this isn’t translated on screen, we know nothing will be what it seems. Shults may be the director, but it’s Edgerton’s unnerving decent into something monstrous that makes “It Comes At Night” an indie nightmare.Īlthough it was reviled upon release, John Carpenter’s “The Thing” is highly regarded as a sci-fi classic, and it’s also a perfect example of how isolation and mistrust make for a bad combination. It’s not just the end of the world driving Edgerton’s fear, but also the jealousy of Abbott’s superior manhood. It doesn’t help that Abbott, wearing rugged masculinity on his sleeve, forms a bond with Edgerton’s son. Is Abbott seeking refuge or is he more dangerous than we’re led on to believe? Can he be trusted? These questions drive Edgerton’s paranoia, forcing him to commit unspeakable acts and tearing down his resolve. The former has been protecting his family against an unseen threat terrorizing the world, but his secure lifestyle is changed by the arrival of the latter. ![]() The crux of the tension comes from the distrust between Joel Edgerton and Christopher Abbott. A brilliant, unreliable narrator is hard to believe but even harder to flat out ignore, and Gullette takes you on a wild ride through his character’s unsolvable obsessions.Ī24 is marketing Trey Edward Shults’ “It Comes At Night” as a psychological horror movie, but it plays more effectively as a paranoia drama. Part of Aronofsky’s trickery is in building Max’s ambiguously defined reality. This wasn’t a movie star delivering a go-for-crazy performance, it was a seemingly everyday guy completely lost in his own paranoid delusions of numbers, conspiracies and Biblical prophesies. Sean Gullette was a complete unknown when he appeared in the lead role of Darren Aronofsky’s “Pi,” which made his anxiety-filled performance as Maximillian “Max” Cohen hit like a punch to the gut. We’ve gone on an exhausting journey with Rosemary (was it morning sickness or was she being poisoned?), fumbling in the dark for answers that seemed far-fetched (“all of them witches”), but in that moment we know: Rosemary was not only right, but it’s so much worse than she - or we - could have ever imagined. Farrow’s willowy Rosemary has been bullied throughout the film, having her suspicions laughed off or explained away by her husband, interloping neighbors and even her doctor. The penultimate moment in “Rosemary’s Baby” comes when Rosemary (Mia Farrow) discovers that her son, Adrian, is not only alive, but he is also inhuman. Click through the gallery for crazy good paranoid movie performances. Characters unable to trust themselves and the people around them have often led to some of the most intense and unnerving movie performances in history, so we decided to take a trip down memory lane and pick some of our favorites. Trey Edward Shults’ horror movie “It Comes At Night” is now playing in theaters nationwide, and with it comes a paranoid-fueled performance from Joel Edgerton that ranks as one of his very best.
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