Alfred Hitchcock developed his own unique style, and many other filmmakers have taken inspiration from his crime thrillers over the years. The term “Hitchcockian” describes any movie which bears the hallmarks of Hitchcock’s work. No such term exists for most other directors, which just goes to show how original and immediately identifiable Hitchcock’s classics are. The Master of Suspense is still inspiring filmmakers long after his death.
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Hitchcock’s biggest hits share certain visual motifs, including blonde women, famous landmarks and the use of staircases as visual metaphors. His stories often shared some key ideas too, such as wrongly accused men, voyeurism and twisted family dynamics. These common themes helped Hitchcock’s movies stand out, and they became their own subgenre in a way. Other directors pay homage to Hitchcock by using his visual quirks to delve into his favorite subjects.
Related 20 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies, Ranked
Alfred Hitchcock directed over 50 feature-length movies, and his best thrillers are still just as suspenseful and terrifying decades later.
10 Gone Girl (2014)
David Fincher And Alfred Hitchcock Are Both Masters Of The Crime Genre
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8/10 9/10 Gone Girl
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*Availability in US Director David Fincher Release Date October 1, 2014 Cast Ben Affleck , Rosamund Pike , Neil Patrick Harris , Tyler Perry , Carrie Coon , Kim Dickens
Many of David Fincher’s best movies show that he’s a keen disciple of Alfred Hitchcock. Both directors have done some of their best work in the crime genres, and they often focus on the psychology of evil and criminality. Se7en, Zodiac and Fight Club all have elements of Hitchcock’s style, with big plot twists, charismatic everyman protagonists and cold-blooded villains.
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Gone Girl stars Rosamund Pike as a woman who suddenly vanishes, leaving her husband as the prime suspect in her disappearance. She’s the kind of sophisticated platinum blonde who Hitchcock would have put in one of his movies, but her actions make her seem more similar to his most famous villains. There are several allusions to Norman Bates in Gone Girl, from the shot of blood trickling down a drain to Amy’s nonchalant response to questioning.
9 Body Double (1984)
Brian De Palma Doesn’t Conceal His Admiration For Hitchcock
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2/10 Body Double
Director Brian De Palma Release Date October 26, 1984 Cast Craig Wasson , Melanie Griffith , Gregg Henry , Deborah Shelton , Guy Boyd
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Like David Fincher, Brain De Palma is another director who seems to have been particularly inspired by Alfred Hitchcock. While Hitchcock’s influence on the crime genre is impossible to ignore, few directors have followed in his footsteps quite like De Palma. Sisters has a lot in common with Vertigo, not least the score by frequent Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Hermann. Blow Out is another clear product of Hitchcockian influences, as it features an everyman caught up in a dangerous criminal plot.
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Body Double refers to many Hitchcock classics. De Palma isn’t shy about his admiration for movies like Rear Window and Vertigo, and Body Double has the same themes of voyeurism and obsession from these two classics. Like these older movies, Body Double goes deep enough to reflect the audience’s same impulses, and it uses a flawed character as a stand-in for crime movie fans who fixate on moments of violence. The other allusions to Hitchcock serve this central point.
8 Les Diaboliques (1955)
Alfred Hitchcock Almost Directed The Clouzot Thriller
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Les Diaboliques
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*Availability in US Director Henri-Georges Clouzot Release Date January 29, 1955 Cast Véra Clouzot , Simone Signoret , Paul Meurisse , Charles Vanel , Jean Brochard
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Alfred Hitchcock was originally interested in directing Les Diaboliques, but Henri-Georges Clouzot was the one who optioned the rights to Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac’s novel. It’s easy to see why Hitchcock felt that the story suited his style. It follows a woman who conspires with her husband’s mistress to murder her husband. Elements of the movie would later influence Psycho, which came out five years later.
At the time Les Diaboliques came out, it was much darker than anything Hitchcock had directed. Despite this difference, it still contains many of the classic hallmarks of Hitchcock’s style, with two characters being psychologically tormented, striking musical accompaniment, and the use of long shadows to create an ominous sense of danger. It also has a twist ending that rivals the best Hithcock has to offer.
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7 Witness For The Prosecution (1958)
Hitchcock Never Adapted An Agatha Christie Story
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Witness for the Prosecution
Director Billy Wilder Release Date February 6, 1958 Cast Tyrone Power , Marlene Dietrich , Charles Laughton , Elsa Lanchester , John Williams , Henry Daniell , Ian Wolfe , Torin Thatcher
Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock were both luminaries of crime fiction in the 20th century, but they often approached their stories from different angles. Christie’s most popular stories were whodunnit mysteries, usually featuring a large cast of potential suspects and one wily sleuth to sort the facts from the fraud. Hitchcock, on the other hand, liked to give his audience more information, creating a sense of dramatic irony that added to the tension.
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Witness for the Prosecution is one Christie story that feels like it may have suited Hitchcock’s tastes. Unlike And Then There Were None or Murder On the Orient Express, for example, the mystery has just one potential suspect, and it’s all about the tension of characters trying to ascertain one another’s motives in an intense scenario. Billy Wilder’s adaptation shows what a Hitchcock version of a Christie story might have looked like, complete with a brilliantly executed plot twist.
6 From Russia With Love (1963)
The James Bond Series Builds On Some Hitchcock Spy Classics
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From Russia With Love
Director Terence Young Release Date October 10, 1963 Cast Sean Connery , Daniela Bianchi , Pedro Armendáriz , Lotte Lenya , Robert Shaw , Bernard Lee
A common rumor suggests that Alfred Hitchcock was approached to direct From Russia With Love, along with several other James Bond movies. While Terence Young eventually took on directing duties for the second Bond movie, it still bears many of the hallmarks of Hitchcock’s style. Hitchcock made a great spy movie years before Bond, with North by Northwest, and From Russia With Love seems to be influenced by the Cary Grant-led thriller.
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From Russia With Love remains one of the best James Bond movies, thanks in part to the elements of Hitchcock that come into the story. There are some superficial Hitchcockian motifs, like Daniela Bianchi’s blonde bombshell and the use of an iconic landmark in the Hagia Sophia, but there are also deeper themes that Hitchcock might have deployed. Once the action moves onto the train, From Russia With Love becomes a Hitchcockian murder mystery. The most obvious reference to North by Northwest is the helicopter chase, which mimics the iconic cropduster scene.
5 Parasite (2019)
Bong Joon-Ho’s Oscar-Winner Goes To Some Dark Places
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9/10 9.7/10 Parasite
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*Availability in US Director Bong Joon Ho Release Date November 8, 2019 Cast Yeo-Jeong Jo , Myeong-hoon Park , Jeong-eun Lee , Sun-kyun Lee , Ji-so Jung , So-dam Park , Keun-rok Park , Kang-ho Song , Ji-hye Lee , Woo-sik Choi , Seo-joon Park , Hye-jin Jang
Parasite is a wry social satire, but it gets darker and darker as it progresses. The Oscar-winner follows a working-class family as they slowly embed themselves into the lives of their more affluent neighbors. It’s a sort of subverted Hitchcock tale. Whereas one of his movies might focus on an unsuspecting family being torn apart by outsiders, like Shadow of a Doubt, Parasite sees things from the perspective of the outsiders.
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Parasite‘s brilliant script bears many similarities to Hitchcock’s work, but Bong’s directing style also borrows a few techniques. From the gorgeous design of the house to the close-ups of the protagonists, Parasite resembles some of Hitchcock’s best movies. The third act gets increasingly dark and dangerous, just like many Hitchcock thrillers, as the Kim family discover the disturbing secrets propping up the Park family’s life of luxury.
4 Inside (2023)
Inside Is A Single-Location Drama In The Tradition Of Hitchcock
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Inside
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*Availability in US Director Vasilis Katsoupis Release Date March 17, 2023 Cast Willem Dafoe , Gene Bervoets , Andrew Blumenthal , Eliza Stuyck
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Alfred Hitchcock mastered the single-location movie with Rope, Lifeboat and Rear Window. While there have been plenty of other movies that don’t necessarily copy from the Hitchcock playbook, like 12 Angry Men and The Breakfast Club, others certainly have a distinct Hitchcockian flavor. While Hitchcock’s one-room dramas used the limited setting to heap extra pressure onto the characters, Inside uses the same technique to torture just one character.
Willem Dafoe delivers a captivating performance in Inside. He plays a thief who is abandoned by the rest of his team and left for dead inside an expensive penthouse apartment. His performance is part of what keeps the action moving despite the location never changing, but director Vasilis Katsoupis’ framing choices are also important. Like Hitchcock, he constantly finds new ways to shoot the same man in the same room, and the shot composition often reflects the thief’s state of mind.
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3 Shutter Island (2010)
Martin Scorsese Has Always Been Influenced By The Best
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7/10 8.3/10 Shutter Island
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*Availability in US Director Martin Scorsese Release Date February 19, 2010 Cast Leonardo DiCaprio , Emily Mortimer , Mark Ruffalo , Ben Kingsley , Max Von Sydow , Michelle Williams , Patricia Clarkson , Jackie Earle Haley
Shutter Island isn’t the only Martin Scorsese movie that seems to draw inspiration from the work of Alfred Hitchcock. Scorsese is a true student of the history of cinema, and his best movies also nod to Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman and other groundbreaking directors. Cape Fear has the same sense of psychological horror invading a happy household as seen in some Hitchcock movies, and Taxi Driver is a classic tale of crime and obsession.
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Shutter Island may be Scorsese’s most Hitchcockian movie of all, and the period setting helps sell this illusion. The story uses the subjective camera, and this is extended to the script. It’s all about what is shown and what isn’t shown to the audience, so that they are left in the same puzzled state as Leonardo DiCaprio’s character. Shutter Island‘s shocking ending also provides a twist that Hitchcock would be proud of, and the style is comparable to Psycho and Vertigo in particular.
2 Anatomy Of A Fall (2023)
Justine Triet’s Mystery Is As Detailed As A Hitchcock Thriller
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9/10 9/10 Anatomy of a Fall
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*Availability in US Director Justine Triet Release Date May 22, 2023 Cast Sandra Hüller , Swann Arlaud , Milo Machado-Graner , Antoine Reinartz , Samuel Theis , Jehnny Beth , Saadia Bentaieb , Camille Rutherford , Anne Rotger , Sophie Fillières
Oscar-nominee Anatomy of a Fall is a courtroom drama, but it also dives into the investigation of a man’s death. Sandra Hüller plays a woman accused of killing her husband, and she delivers an outstanding performance. Anatomy of a Fall has a simplistic set-up just like Alfred Hitchcock’s best murder mysteries, including Rope and Shadow of a Doubt. Its closest equal is probably Dial M for Murder, however.
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Like in Dial M for Murder, the investigation in Anatomy of a Fall hinges on the most minute details. In Dial M for Murder, it’s the whereabouts of a key, and in Anatomy of a Fall there are things like the different textures of pieces of tape. Both movies make these details feel lively and fascinating, when lesser directors could easily render them too mundane. The ambiguous ending of Anatomy of a Fall lets the audience decide for themselves whether Sandra is guilty or innocent.
1 Decision To Leave (2022)
Park Chan-Wook Adds Some Hitchcockian Flair To His Style
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6/10 Decision to Leave
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*Availability in US Director Park Chan-wook Release Date October 14, 2022 Cast Tang Wei , Park Hae-il , Lee Jung-hyun , Go Kyung-Pyo , Park Yong-woo , Jung Yi-seo
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Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave is a modern Hitchcockian thriller, taking many of the director’s most common motifs and reimagining them for the 21st century. Tang Wei’s femme fatale is more dangerous than Eve in North by Northwest and Judy in Vertigo, as she becomes both a love interest and a villain. Park Hae-il’s troubled detective could also be seen as an evolution of John in Spellbound or Jeff in Rear Window.
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Decision to Leave is a story of obsession and deceit, with two characters with their own secrets. Park entices his audience in for a closer look, but many of the key details are left frustratingly out of reach until precisely the right moment. Many of the framing choices seem to take a leaf out of Hitchcock’s book, contrasting moments of serenity with moments of conflict. Above all, Decision to Leave proves that Hitchcock’s movies continue to inspire filmmakers decades later, and they are still being interpreted in new and interesting ways.