S Thriller Movies

SYMPATHY, SAID THE SHARK – When a young couple reluctantly answers their door during a storm, in rushes their estranged friend, soaked, bloodied and insistent that someone is trying to kill him. The night is soon set off the rails, as all three must confront their own darkest secrets – and each other – in the face of a powerful threat that comes knocking. The story is told with innovative camera work, shifting from the explicit first-person point-of-view of each of its three protagonists. Each time the POV shifts, there is an overlap of time when where see or hear something that the previously character missed, forcing the viewer (and the characters) to reconsider who’s good, who’s bad, and what’s really going on.

SWORD OF VENGEANCE – From the creator of Hammer of the Gods, starring Stanley Weber and Annabelle Wallis (Annabelle) comes the story of a Norman Prince, freed from slavery, who seeks revenge on his father’s murderer and ruthless uncle, Earl Durant (Karel Roden). Gaining the trust of a band of exiled farmers, he leads them into battle against Durant, exploiting them in his quest to satisfy his code of honor. Will the Prince sacrifice everything and everyone to quench his thirst for bloody retribution? After years of being in slavery, a Prince returns to his homeland to seek revenge against his father’s murderer. The target for revenge is his ruthless uncle, who has controlled his farmers with impunity.
SWOON – Was it a crime of passion? Or a passion for crime? The true story of gay lovers, Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold Jr. who kidnapped and murdered a child in the early 1920s for kicks. The plot covers the months before the crime, the investigation, trial and final fate of the two men. Tom Kalin directed this cool and aloof black-and-white study of the infamous Leopold and Loeb case, a case told before in two previous films – Rope and Compulsion. In 1924, in Chicago, Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb, two 18-year-olds, kidnapped and murdered the 13-year-old Bobby Franks, immediately killing him and then stuffing his naked body up a culvert. The motive for the crime was simply that they wanted to prove to themselves that they were smart enough to get away with it. The previous film versions downplayed Leopold and Loeb’s homosexuality, but Kalin’s version plays it up into a psychosexual motif. Loeb (Daniel Schlachet) is the calculating intellectual, while Leopold (Craig Chester), the amateur ornithologist, is the emotional and weak one. In love with Loeb, Leopold is willing to do anything for him and when Loeb uses the withholding of sex as a prompt, Leopold is even willing to commit murder to have his sexual desires satisfied by Loeb.
SWEET, SWEET LONELY GIRL – Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl is a gothic horror film that chronicles the experience of Adele as she goes to live as a caregiver for her aging Aunt Dora. Soon after moving in, Adele meets Beth, seductive and mysterious who tests the limits of Adele’s moral ground and sends her spiraling down a psychologically unstable and phantasmagoric path. Set against the social security crisis of the 1980 Reagan-Carter election, Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl is an innovative play on genre, striking a bold intersection between the apparitions of a ghost story and the moralist of the after school special. Soon after moving in with her aging Aunt Dora, Adele meets Beth, seductive and mysterious, who tests the limits of Adele’s moral ground and sends her spiraling down a psychologically unstable and phantasmagoric path.
SWIMFAN – His biggest fan has just become his worst nightmare. Ben Cronin (Jesse Bradford) has everything going for him: He is the school’s star swimmer, he has just earned a swimming scholarship to Stanford, and he has a beautiful girlfriend, Amy (Roswell’s Shiri Appleby). One slipup with Madison, the new girl in town, sends his life into a downward spiral. In the same vein as Fatal Attraction, Swimfan is a cautionary tale about deadly obsession. A high school senior with a promising swimming career has a one-night stand with consequences. Ben Cronin has it all: The admiration of his many friends, a terrific girlfriend, and an appointment with swim scouts from Stanford. It’s not easy; Ben must train for countless hours in the pool for a critical swim meet, work at the local hospital and find quality time with high school sweetheart, Amy. His wonderful life is disrupted by the arrival of Madison Bell. The new girl in town quickly sets her sights on the impressionable Ben. While their first few meetings are innocent enough, the seductive Madison wants more. New Jersey high school senior Ben Cronin is a former juvenile delinquent, whose past criminal behavior was fueled by and for drug use. He credits the support of his now long-time girlfriend Amy Miller and getting into competitive swimming as the primary reasons for turning his life around, which includes working part-time at the hospital where his single mother works. He has become the star swimmer of his high school team, so much so that scouts from Stanford University are coming in a week’s time to watch Ben swim. Ben has a new swim fan in Madison Bell, a recent transfer student to Ben’s high school. Despite Ben making it clear that he is in a committed relationship, Madison seduces him, the seduction to which he succumbs. They agree afterward that their encounter was a onetime only event, but Ben slowly comes to the realization that despite Madison’s assertions to the contrary, she has more in mind with him. He feels her constant unspoken threats to expose their tryst and ultimately when he rebuffs her totally, unspoken threats to ruin his life in whatever means possible. Ben quickly learns to what extremes Madison is willing to go, especially when he finds out about her past. He has to figure out how to regain his life back from his known stalker, which is aided by the reason Madison is New Jersey in the first place.
SWIFT CURRENT – This riveting documentary exploring former NHLer Sheldon Kennedy’s journey from a young hockey player sexually abused by his junior hockey coach, Graham James, to Kennedy’s work today as a crusader for victims of abuse in Canada and worldwide. During a speaking engagement in Ontario, Canada Shelton meets two university students who disclose the sexual abuse they suffered and ask him for help. The film tells the story of these three victims of child sexual abuse and challenges they face while attempting to recover from the horrific trauma they suffered as children. Swift Current tells the story of former NHL Hockey Player Sheldon Kennedy who was sexually abused by his junior hockey coach and has gone on to become one of the world’s leading advocates for victims of child abuse. During a speaking engagement at a University in Ontario, Canada, Sheldon met two students, a young woman and a young man, who disclosed the sexual abuse they had suffered as children to Sheldon and 200 members of the student body and faculty. In addition to Sheldon’s journey, the film follows the early recovery of two students, Mikki and Graham, ultimately providing a never before seen look at the long-lasting effects of trauma from sexual abuse.
SWEET SIXTEEN (2016) – Based on an extremely popular Chinese Internet novel, Sweet Sixteen (Xia You Qiao Mu) stars Kris Wu, Han Geng and Joo Won as three men troubled by their own pasts; intertwined among the men is each’s specific relationship with Shu Yawang. She is a rock in their past, present and future and her life is influenced by the trials and tribulations of these three wandering souls. Xia Mu is a troubled child whose salvation comes in the form of Shu Yawang. When something terrible happens to her, he seeks revenge. Nothing is the same in their lives after that. Three young men looking for their place in life and are forever changed after meeting Shu Ya Wang. When a terrible fate befalls her, one of her admirers seeks revenge on her tormenters. Based on the popular Internet novel Xia You Qiao Mu Wang Tian Tang by Yue Xi.
SWEET SIXTEEN (1983) – What terrors are released when a girl turns sweet sixteen. Big city girl Melissa Morgan (Aleisa Shirley) tries to make new friends in the small Texas town she just moved to. The only problem is, each of the boys that she spends time with ends up brutally murdered. Her sixteenth birthday is on the way, but Melissa turns out to be a suspect when it seems she’s the last person who has seen her boyfriend’s alive. Teenager Melissa moves into a small town filled with racial prejudice and bullying and each time she meets up with one of the boys in town, they end up murdered – but who is the killer? A beautiful lonely girl named Melissa tries to make new friends from a town she’s currently living in. The only problem is, each of the boys that she spends time with end up brutally murdered. Her sixteenth birthday is on the way, but Melissa turns out to be a suspect when it seems she’s the last person who has seen her boy friends alive. This standard slasher film from director Dimitri Sotirakis (using the pseudonym “Jom Sotos”) is notable only for its fascinating cast. The story is a rather predictable affair as young Melissa (Aleisa Shirley) sees all of her friends being murdered after their 16^th birthdays. Her mother (Susan Strasberg) worries, and Sheriff Dan (Bo Hopkins) is convinced that the local Indians led by Greyfeather (Henry Wilcoxon) are to blame, but when the “shock” ending finally comes, it is no surprise, Patrick Macnee, Don Stroud, Larry Storch and Sharon Farrell lead the familiar cast, which also includes such genre favorites as Michael Pataki, Steve Antin and Dana Kimmell, who starred in Friday the 13^th: Part III the same year.
SEPTIMO – In this suspenseful thriller, Ricardo Darin and Belen Rueda star as a troubled couple who find themselves in a desperate search to track down their children after they vanish racing down the stairs of their 7^th floor apartment building. No one knows anything. No one’s seem anything. From there they instigate their own frantic investigation, where everything and everyone they know is a suspect. When a man’s children suddenly disappear, he begins to suspect his wife, from whom he’s separated, may be behind it. A father gets into a desperate search to find his children who disappeared while going down stairs from their apartment in the seventh floor. Secrets about Mammy Sebastian is a successful lawyer in Buenos Aires and is in the middle of an important case. He is divorced from Delia and they have two children, Luca and Luna. Delia wants to move to Spain to live with her father and wants full custody of the children, but Sebastian is reluctant. Sebastian goes to Delia’s apartment on the seventh floor of an old building to take Luca and Luna to school and Delia leaves the place. The siblings ask to go down playing on the stairs while Sebastian takes the elevator. When he arrives in the lobby, he realizes that the children have vanished. Sebastian needs to be in court for an important case but he seeks them out with the janitor and his neighbor Rosales, who is a police detective. He calls Delia who returns to the building and suspects everyone until a woman calls him asking for a one hundred thousand-dollar ransom in two hours. How can the desperate Sebastian raise this amount in a short time period and who might have kidnapped his children?
SWIMMING POOL – Dive into the mind-bending thriller that’s soaked with raw sensuality! A murder-mystery author’s search for inspiration takes a wicked turn when she meets a sexy and provocative young woman with an explosive past, in the movie Interview calls “A thrilling film! Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier sizzle!” Francois Ozon’s psychological thriller Swimming Pool stars Charlotte Rampling as a mystery writer. When Sarah (Rampling) is offered the use of her publisher’s vacation home, she accepts the offer. The conservative, repressed Sarah clashes with the house’s other inhabitant, Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), the uninhibited daughter of the publisher. Julie’s promiscuous sex life intrigues Sarah and starts to lead to the thawing of the emotional deep-freeze between the two. The death of one of Julie’s nightly assignations complicates their lives. Swimming Pool was screened in competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. Sarah Morton is a famous British mystery author. Tired of London and seeking inspiration for her new novel, she accepts an offer from her publisher John Bosload to stay at his home in Luberon, in the South of France. It is the off season and Sarah finds that the beautiful country locale and unhurried pace is just the tonic for her – until late one night, when John’s indolent and insouciant French daughter Julie unexpectedly arrives. Sarah’s prim and steely English reserve is jarred by Julie’s reckless, sexually charged lifestyle. Their interactions set off an increasingly unsettling series of events, as Sarah’s creative process and a possible real-life murder begin to blend dangerously together. A British mystery author visits her publisher’s home in the South of France, where her interaction with his unusual daughter sets off some touchy dynamics. Sarah Morton is a famous British mystery author. Tired of London and seeking inspiration for her new novel, she accepts an offer from her publisher John Bosload to stay at his home in Luberon, in the South of France. It is the off-season and Sarah finds that the beautiful country locale and unhurried pace is just the tonic for her – until late one night, when John’s indolent and insouciant French daughter Julie unexpectedly arrives. Sarah’s prim and steely English reserve is jarred by Julie’s, sexually charged lifestyle. Their interactions set off an increasingly unsettling series of events as Sarah’s creative process and a possible real-life murder begin to blend dangerously together. Sarah Morton, a middle-aged English mystery author, who has written a successful series of novels featuring a single detective, is having writer’s block that is impeding her next book. Sarah’s publisher, John Bosload, offers her his country house near Lacoste, France for some rest and relaxation. After becoming comfortable with the run of the house, Sarah’s quietude is disrupted by a young woman claiming to be the publisher’s daughter, Julie. She shows up one night claiming to be taking time off from work herself. She also claims that her mother used to be Bosload’s mistress, but that he would not leave his family. Julie’s sex life consists of one-night stands with various oafish men, and a competition of personalities develops between the two women. At first Sarah regards Julie as a distraction from her writing. She uses earplugs to allow her to sleep during Julie’s noisy nighttime adventures, although she nonetheless has a voyeuristic fascination with them. Later she abandons the earplugs during one of Julie’s trysts, beginning to envy Julie’s lifestyle. The competition comes to the fore when a local waiter, Franck is involved. Julie wants him but he appears to prefer the more mature Sarah, having struck up a relationship with her during her frequent lunches at the bistro. An unexpected tragedy occurs after a night of flirting among the three. After swimming together in the pool, Franck refuses to allow Julie to continue performing oral sex on him, once Sarah, who watches them from the balcony, throws a rock into the water. Franck feels frightened and tells Julie he is leaving. The next day, Franck is missing. While investigating Franck’s disappearance, Sarah learns that Julie’s mother has been dead for some time, though Julie had claimed that she was still alive. She returns to the villa, where a confused Julie thinks that Sarah is her mother and has a breakdown. She eventually recovers and confesses that Franck is dead because Julie repeatedly hit him over the head with a rock as he tried to leave her at the pool. His body is in one of the sheds. When Marcel becomes suspicious of the mound of fresh soil where the body is buried, Sarah seduces the elderly gardener to distract him. Julie leaves, thanking Sarah for her help and leaving her the manuscript of an unpublished novel written by her late mother, which she had previously claimed that John made her burn. Sarah returns to England and visits her publisher’s office with her new novel. His daughter also shows up just as Sarah is leaving, but is revealed to be a completely different girl than the one Sarah spent the weekend with.