Serial killers in films are fascinating psychopaths that you shouldn’t really want to understand, yet somehow you do. Some movies turn them into brilliant puzzle-makers, while others portray them as ordinary losers who just happen to kill people. The best serial killer films do both—they show how human monsters can be and how monstrous humans can be. Here are the ten best.
10. American Psycho (2000)
Christian Bale is Patrick Bateman, a Wall Street yuppie who kills people at night. During the day, he compares business cards and follows elaborate skincare routines; at night, he hacks colleagues to pieces with an axe while playing Huey Lewis. Mary Harron directs Bret Easton Ellis’s book and makes it satirical—you are never quite sure if Bateman is truly murdering or if it’s all in his head. Bale is perfectly vacant, a maniac who looks like a model citizen.
9. Scream (1996)
Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson created a slasher that mocks horror movies while being one itself. Ghostface calls teenagers, asks them questions about horror films, and kills them if they don’t know the answer. Drew Barrymore dies in the opening scene despite being the biggest name—no one is safe. Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and David Arquette try to survive. It is funny and scary at the same time and launched a franchise that now spans six films.
8. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)
Michael Rooker plays Henry Lee Lucas, a drifting killer without a clear motive. He kills randomly—prostitutes, families, strangers. The film has no music and no dramatic moments; it looks like a documentary. Rooker plays Henry as a normal man who happens to kill the way other people do groceries. It is low-budget and disturbing, and was blocked by censors for years.
7. Zodiac (2007)
David Fincher directed this film about the Zodiac killer who terrorized San Francisco in the late 60s. Jake Gyllenhaal is cartoonist Robert Graysmith who becomes obsessed, Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards are the detectives, and Robert Downey Jr. is journalist Paul Avery. The film lasts 2 hours and 37 minutes and solves nothing—Zodiac was never caught. It is more about obsession and frustration than the murders themselves. The cellar scene is terrifying without anything even happening.
6. Monster (2003)
Charlize Theron plays Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who murdered seven men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. Theron transformed completely—she gained 14 kilos, wore prosthetic tattoos, and used fake teeth. The film portrays Wuornos as a victim of abuse who becomes a killer, not as a monster but as a broken human being. Christina Ricci plays her girlfriend Selby. Theron won the Oscar, and Wuornos was executed in 2002, a year before the film was released.
5. Saw (2004)
James Wan and Leigh Whannell made a horror film for $1.2 million that became a $1 billion franchise. Two men (Cary Elwes and Leigh Whannell) wake up chained in a filthy bathroom with a corpse between them. Jigsaw, the killer, tests whether they want to live through sadistic puzzles—one must kill the other by 6:00 PM or his family dies. The twist at the end became iconic and launched nine films full of torture and traps.
4. M (1931)
Fritz Lang created the first true serial killer film. Peter Lorre is Hans Beckert, a child killer in Berlin who whistles “In the Hall of the Mountain King” before he kills. The police cannot find him, so the underworld goes on the hunt themselves because the police are disrupting their business. It ends with Beckert standing trial before criminals instead of judges. It is expressionistic, black-and-white, and created the template for every serial killer genre that followed.
3. Psycho (1960)
Alfred Hitchcock murders his main character (Janet Leigh) 47 minutes into the film during a shower scene. Marion Crane steals $40,000 and stops at the Bates Motel, where Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) kills her in the shower. The scene lasts 45 seconds, with 77 camera angles and Bernard Herrmann’s screaming violins. The twist—Norman is his own mother—seems well-known now but shocked audiences in 1960. It is Hitchcock’s masterpiece and made every motel visit terrifying thereafter.
2. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Jonathan Demme directed this thriller in which FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) seeks advice from Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), an imprisoned psychiatrist/cannibal, to catch Buffalo Bill—a killer who skins women. Hopkins plays Lecter with intense silences and politeness, while Foster is brilliantly vulnerable. The film won five Oscars—Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay—the last time that happened was “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in 1975.
1. Se7en (1995)
David Fincher’s masterpiece. Detectives Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and Mills (Brad Pitt) hunt for John Doe, a killer who chooses his victims based on the seven deadly sins. Someone is forced to eat until they die (gluttony), a lawyer bleeds out (greed), a drug dealer is tied to his bed for a year (sloth). The city is always wet and gray; everything seems to rot. Kevin Spacey plays John Doe and turns himself in for the last two murders. The ending in the field with the box is one of the darkest final scenes ever—”What’s in the box?” became a meme, but in the film, it is horrific.
