Techno-thrillers have been the preferred genre for filmmakers, authors, and other creators who enjoy engaging with technology while having a healthy fear of it. These are stories that mesh the pacing of a spy plot, an erotic entanglement, a psychological mind-bender or another thriller framework and elevate it with some form of technology, whether real or speculative. It has been favored by authors like Michael Crichton and Tom Clancyand was evident in the film adaptations of their works through the ’90s.
In the 21st century, major advancements in technology have only amplified the moral quandaries that come with them and humanity’s corresponding concern. The techno-thriller films of this century have likewise expanded their storylines to focus on these emerging and advancing technologies. Artificial intelligence, constant surveillance and social media have all played a major role in these films, in addition to those that haven’t been invented yet. These ten films from the 21st century all offer high-tech thrills that put a black mirror up to humanity’s darker impulses.
10
‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning’ (2023)
Many spy thrillers enjoy a fair amount of gadget play, and the Mission: Impossible film franchise is no exception. Between its hyperrealistic masks and MacGuffins, the action series has had plenty of cool tech, but it wasn’t until Dead Reckoningthat the franchise fully engaged with the dangers of technology with an artificial intelligence villain known as the Entity. A.I. baddies have been a part of cinema since HAL 9000, but in recent years, they’ve begun to hit closer to home as A.I. has infiltrated so many aspects of daily life and has even threatened the livelihoods of flesh-and-blood workers.
Dead Reckoning takes advantage of humans’ distrust in A.I. by making the Entity an all-knowing algorithm that has become sentient and is pulling digital strings to manipulate individuals. Despite the film’s other narrative shortcomings and its overall emphasis on action spectacle over techno-thrills, the Entity remains a potent villain that seems even more sinister than any of the franchise’s human antagonists, with the sole exception of Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose talents could never be replicated by cold machinery. Dead Reckoning puts the seemingly superhuman Ethan Hunt and his ability to continually improvise up against his ultimate villain, who is everywhere all at once and can anticipate every outcome.
9
‘Blackhat’ (2015)
The most underrated film of director Michael Mann‘s career, Blackhatis a globe-trotting thriller that replaces the typical criminal elements with those of the cyber variety, with the title referring to law-breaking hackers. Chris Hemsworth plays an incarcerated hacker who is given a temporary release and a shot at freedom if he helps track down a more dangerous hacker wreaking havoc across the world. Though Hemsworth is miscast in the lead role, the film itself benefits from Mann’s frenetic pacing and use of digital cinematography.
Hacker culture and digital crimes have often been misrepresented in Hollywood, likely due to how inherently uncinematic the image of someone behind a computer can be. Most films dealing with the subject inject outlandish action or other unrealistic elements that make hacking seem more akin to magical powers in order to make it more palatable for mainstream audiences. While Blackhat does include some of the requisite action and chase sequences, it also continues Mann’s penchant for authenticity. The director utilized a number of technical advisors, including real-life hackers, to make his thriller one of the most grounded hacker movies yet made.
8
‘Searching’ (2018)
Every generation is more technologically inclined than the last, and with the rise of social media and smartphones, many people now exist in a state of perpetual online activity. This makes for a potent backdrop for any modern mystery thriller, but Searchingtakes it one step further by taking place almost entirely on computer and phone screens. The film wasn’t the first to use this unique approach to visual storytelling, but it is perhaps the most effective. Starring John Cho as a man searching for his missing daughter, his investigation follows the digital breadcrumbs left in her trail of data.
Searching could very easily come off as a cheap gimmick and grow tiresome in its execution, but its visual presentation actually manages to keep its otherwise straightforward mystery plot fresh and enhances its themes. With so many amateur sleuths online and endless amounts of data streaming every second of the day, the digital landscape has become its own unique setting for old-school mysteries to take advantage of, and Searching is the best of both worlds.
7
‘Source Code’ (2011)
Duncan Jones followed up his sci-fi debut Moonwith the techno-thriller Source Code, which makes clever use of the time loop concept through a fictional piece of technology. Jake Gyllenhaal plays an Army captain whose consciousness has been uploaded to the titular program, which allows him to relive the eight minutes prior to a terrorist attack on a train in order to uncover the identity of the bomber and prevent future attacks. The film progresses through its time-loop plot with taut pacing, but then gives way to a deeper plot regarding fate and alternate realities.
While some viewers and critics took issue with the ending, Source Code is still an otherwise incredibly effective thriller that uses tech to explore its human characters and their individual connections. All things considered, it’s a more low-key thriller that doesn’t feel the need to amplify its thrills into something more overblown and succeeds solely on the effectiveness of its clever concept and strong performances from its cast.
6
‘A Scanner Darkly’ (2006)
Author Philip K. Dick was known for his novels and short stories that explored themes of identity, reality, and perception through sci-fi worlds where technology could often blur those lines. His work was highly regarded, leading to multiple film adaptations, many of which attempted to capture the mind-altering nature of his work but weren’t always wholly successful. Richard Linklater‘s animated A Scanner Darklyperhaps comes the closest to fully capturing the author’s work most authentically, thanks to its surreal visuals and dream-like narrative.
In a near-future United States, where a new potent drug has swept across the nation, Keanu Reeves plays an undercover cop assigned to find a large supplier of the drug, but he has himself become an addict. Though the source novel was inspired by Dick’s heavy drug use and the film is presented in the detached form of rotoscoped animation that Linklater had first used in Waking Life, the world it portrays feels unnervingly too close to reality, where drug epidemics are manufactured by unethical pharmaceutical practices and police surveillance has escalated to an alarming degree.
5
‘Tenet’ (2020)
Christopher Nolan combined his love for Bondian espionage thrillers with puzzle-box narratives in the time-bending sci-fi action film Tenet, which became one of the director’s most divisive films with critics, who felt its visual spectacle overpowered its convoluted narrative and dense technical exposition. Nolan made it clear that the film’s science was completely unsound and in total service of the action instead of a totally cohesive plot. Whether one chooses to fully engage with Tenet‘s themes of determinism and paradoxes or just simply vibes with it as a technically impressive actioner, it’s an incredibly entertaining and cinematic experience.
In the film, the unnamed protagonist played by John David Washington is recruited into the titular organization to help find the point of origin of artifacts being sent back in time for some future purpose. The action sequences involving inverted elements that move in reverse alongside those moving forward in time are the most extravagant of Nolan’s career, and the climax involving a pincer movement of troops moving in both directions in time is virtuosic action filmmaking. Whether it makes any sense at all is ultimately immaterial in the scope of one of the most epic techno-thrillers ever made.
4
‘Possessor’ (2020)
Director Brandon Cronenberg does his father, David Cronenberg, proud with Possessor, a mind-bending thriller with major elements of body horror in a plot involving a highly skilled assassin who carries out her missions by taking over the bodies of unwilling participants. Things get messy and metaphysical quick when she is unable to untether herself from her most recent host body, and their realities and identities begin to merge in ultraviolent and hypersexual fashion. Stylishly shot and provocative in its content, Possessor looks at where technology can take humans and envisions a future that is dark and dystopian.
Both Andrea Riseborough and Christopher Abbott, as the assassin and her unfortunate vessel, respectively, make for a compelling dual protagonist, and the ways in which the film explores their merging psyches are both visually arresting and unsettling. It’s easily the goriest techno-thriller of the 21st century and would make for an absorbing and disturbing night of viewing alongside any of the elder Cronenberg’s technophobic thrillers like Videodromeor Existenz.
3
‘Upgrade’ (2018)
The 21st-century answer to RoboCop, writer-director Leigh Whannell‘s Upgradeimagines a melding of man and machine that’s more sophisticated than Peter Weller‘s slow-moving mandroid but no less lethal. Logan Marshall-Green plays an analog mechanic living in a digital world that gets turned upside down when he’s paralyzed in an attack that leaves his wife dead. He gets a chance at revenge when an experimental chip with an artificial intelligence named STEM is implanted into his brain, giving him full control of his limbs and access to STEM’s high-tech intelligence and fighting capabilities.
Upgrade dresses its high-tech thrills in a grungy aesthetic. It’s set in a world where self-driving cars fill up the freeways, but where poverty and violence are still rampant. Whannell carries over elements of horror from his prior work as a writer on the early Sawfilmsto deliver visceral shocks in the film’s lethally efficient action sequences. The splashes of blood can’t cover up what is still an intriguing premise regarding modern humanity’s reliance on technology and what that technology might do when it decides it doesn’t need humans anymore.
2
‘Ex Machina’ (2015)
Genre writer Alex Garland‘s directorial debut, Ex Machina, is a small-scale thriller with big ideas about artificial intelligence, power-hungry creators, and the intersection of technology and gender dynamics. Set entirely in the spare spaces of the home of Oscar Isaac‘s tech-bro CEO, who has invited Domnhall Gleeson‘s lonely programmer to test the potential humanity of Alicia Vikander‘s advanced android, the movie finds most of its thrills in the questions it raises about consciousness and the uncomfortable atmosphere created by Isaac’s narcissism and megalomania.
Though the movie eventually leads to the expected violent climax, it’s fully earned through the slow-burning suspense it builds over its runtime. Ex Machina is a cerebral techno-thriller that makes its audience question their morals when confronted with an ultra-modern Prometheus. The technology may have changed a great deal since Mary Shelley first imagined a mad scientist creating new life, but the fears remain the same.
1
‘Minority Report’ (2002)
Steven Spielberg‘s big-budget sci-fi noir adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novella The Minority Report has only grown more relevant in the two decades since its release, thanks to its prescient themes and technology. Set in a future where three psychic beings, known as Precogs, can predict murders before they happen, the film gets its fill of thrills with a wrongfully accused man on the run plot that also highlights the themes of free will and the overreach of policing. As Tom Cruise, as the chief of Precrime, is accused of committing his own future murder, he goes on the run to prove his innocence and make his own fate.
Minority Reportis most notable for the technologies it predicted in its plot. Spielberg consulted with a number of experts to try and create a plausible future, and in doing so presaged several technologies such as gesture recognition, targeted advertising, and, most worryingly, predictive analytics in crime prevention. The film’s central conflict of predetermined crime prevention and the questionable ethics behind it were designed to echo the restrictions of freedoms in America in the wake of 9/11, but it remains frighteningly relevant in the modern political landscape, where due process has seemingly been suspended for those deemed a threat by the government. Prescient and thought-provoking, Minority Report is the techno-thriller that opened the 21st century and is still its best.
