These are five superior Canadian psychological thrillers to screen this Halloween. Have you seen them?

Serial killers plagued with the memories of their dead mothers, FBI agents fraught with premonitions and obsessions that are equally as debilitating — the cat-and-mouse chase between these two figures often makes up the psychological thriller, a sub-genre that is as interested with the mind as it is with the procedure of criminal violence and its detection. Two of this year’s most talked-about horror films, both released last summer, fall into this category: Oz Perkins’ “Longlegs” follows an FBI agent on the hunt for a satanic killer, while M. Night Shyamalan’s “Trap” tracks the ingenious, and sometimes funny, manoeuvring of a killer as he evades the FBI.
It is a sub-genre characterized by unreliable narrators, erroneous memories, and tedious bureaucracy, and such Hollywood greats as Alfred Hitchcock and David Fincher have played with these devices to create works that are equal parts salacious and cerebral.
In the frightful spirit of Halloween, the five Canadian psychological thrillers on this list are as worthy of your time as classics like “Vertigo” (1958) and “Zodiac” (2007). They play into and challenge our expectations, sometimes toying with comedy, science fiction and fantasy — to prove that the thriller offers potent creative ground for both film legend and burgeoning talent alike.
Obsession is both a hallmark of the psychological thriller and Atom Egoyan’s long and celebrated filmography. Egoyan’s characters are often obsessed with truth, meaning or just each other, most evident in works like “The Adjuster” (1991), “Exotica” (1994) and “The Sweet Hereafter” (1997). While perhaps a lesser-known entry in his oeuvre, “Felicia’s Journey” finds the filmmaker doing what he does best: pitting the disparate obsessions of two complicated characters against one another. Felicia (Elaine Cassidy) is a pregnant Irish teenager travelling to England in blocky heels and with a small backpack, dead-set on tracking down her lover and father of her baby.
In Birmingham, she is chanced upon by Joe (Bob Hoskins), a bumbling, well-liked old man, who tries to help her in her search, first by offering directions, then by letting her stay with him in his manor which, like him, is both imposing and welcoming. By acknowledging her vulnerability and portraying himself as a grief-stricken widow, Joe exploits her trust, culminating in an alarming final act that is sure to stay with viewers long after the end credits roll.
What’s most notable about this thriller is Egoyan’s sensitivity toward Felicia and women like her; he doesn’t ascribe blame for her faith in a stranger. Rather, he notes how our inner desire to be cared for can cloud every other sense, particularly that of alarm. Available to stream on Prime Video.
David Cronenberg made a name for himself early in his career as the father of body horror: films like “The Fly” (1986), “Videodrome” (1983), and “Scanners” (1981) feature detailed depictions of men metamorphosing into insects, weaponry fusing with flesh, and heads exploding with such force, you’d think they were watermelons squeezed to bursting. “Spider” stands out among Cronenberg’s filmography for its restraint, both in its thematic imagery and lead performances.
Ralph Fiennes plays Spider, a schizophrenic man living in an English halfway house, who attempts to piece together a memory from his childhood when he believes his mother was murdered by his father. We travel between the smog of the industrialized postwar London of his youth and the gloom of his adult home, attempting to surmount the obliqueness of memory while guided by someone who is even more confused than we are. In this devastating thriller, Cronenberg explores how we erroneously ascribe meaning to things — moments, people, phrases — that make us feel strongly, suggesting that our senses and reality are, during the most crucial times, at odds. Available to rent on Apple TV+ and YouTube.
Infatuation, mania, passion — whatever you may call the obsessive need to track a serial killer, it is at the heart of Quebecois director Pascal Plante’s fourth feature film. “Red Rooms” follows hacker Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy), whose consistently stoic manner hints at something deeper, something either nefarious or vulnerable. We first meet her camping out outside a Montréal courthouse before the trial of an infamous serial killer and it is unclear, until the shocking final act, whether she is a groupie convinced of the murderer’s innocence or the loved one of a victim set on seeing him brought to justice.
It is this uncertainty, which grows more and more imposing the longer we follow Kelly-Anne’s alienating actions, that allows Plante to turn a mirror to ourselves and force us to reflect on our own morbid interest in violence and crime, and how the internet has transformed what initially may have been an innocent curiosity into a perverse attraction. Available to stream on Crave and Prime Video.
There is no actual beast in “The Beast in the Jungle,” Henry James’ classic 1903 novella, the story of a man who believes he is fated for catastrophe and so spends his days waiting for this disaster to strike, letting the love of his life pass him by. Bertrand Bonello’s masterful adaptation is one that stretches this fatalistic treatise through space, time and modality: in a future world where sentiment is undesirable, Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) intends to purify her DNA by erasing the emotional ties that bind her to her past lives.
As she passes through different eras — Paris in 1910, Los Angeles in 2014 — she finds herself drawn to the same man, though their love proves hopeless, cut short by different cataclysms. Departing from the psychological thriller’s interest with obsession, Bonello turns his camera (and his pen) toward loneliness, exploring how it fuels and is fuelled by gendered violence, the climate crisis and technological modernization. “The Beast” is a challenging, haunting film, whose insistence that our need for connection is what makes us human could not be timelier. Available to rent on Apple TV+.
Human sacrifice has proven to be a trope rife with potential in the horror sphere. Whether as the crowning act of a cult, as in the folk horror classic “The Wicker Man” (1973), or as the condition in a deal with the devil, as in “Ready or Not” (2019), filmmakers have used this idea to challenge us to think about the ties that bind and how quickly our connection to others and society at large can disintegrate, particularly during times of crisis. Caitlin Cronenberg’s debut film prods at a similar instability. Through her cast of toxic, self-involved characters, she asks: what does sacrifice mean and who can determine the recipient of its sentencing?
“Humane” takes place in a world embroiled in environmental collapse: the relentless heat has resulted in countries turning to euthanasia programs to shed nearly a quarter of their populations. Hit hardest are those in the lower classes, as the government incentivizes conscription with payments. Though their wealth has left them comfortably on the outskirts of this crisis — near enough to profit off of it but not to be pressured to participate — the four York children, headed by smarmy anthropologist Jared (Jay Baruchel), find themselves forced to choose a sacrifice when their father signs up for the program. Both bleak and funny, this satirical thriller finds the root of our sense of security, examining how we rely on material wealth to placate our internal anxieties and why this fickle balm is prone for failure. Available to rent on Prime Video.