Thriller Night? Put On A Jake Gyllenhaal Film

Among film genres, the thriller can be a difficult beast to tame—and I mean as a viewer. Is Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), a brilliant new restoration of which is playing in select screens across Mumbai, a mystery or a thriller? Isn’t Bong Joon Ho’s 2003 masterpiece, Memories of Murder, more of a neo-noir the real thrill of which is the fact that its killer couldn’t be caught for years and years? The same is true of films by many modern masters—like, say, Denis Villeneuve or David Fincher—a lot of whose films generate pulse-quickening tension across a wide gamut of premises and subjects.

Calling these films ‘thrillers’—which is how we describe movie-watching experiences with a solid payoff—is to render them something of a monolith. Thriller should be an adjective, not really a noun: any good film can send frissons of joy, fear and tragedy upon your skin. However, when we do look for solid payoffs in terms of mood, plots and characters, TV recently hit a jackpot with Presumed Innocent on Apple TV+. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal in the first season, the anthology series was renewed for a sophomore season, but minus its leading man. Which is a bit of a bummer.

Perhaps that’s because Gyllenhaal is a different sort of ‘thriller’ man. A man we’ve come to love for the unhinged intensity he brings to the parts he’s played, from the disturbing cult darling, Donnie Darko (2001), to Tom Ford’s brooding, stylish and atmospheric Nocturnal Animals (2016). Over the years, Gyllenhaal’s become a subgenre unto itself, playing men teetering on the edge of insanity, trauma and unease with the flair of someone born to do it. In 2021, he starred in Antoine Fuqua’s hugely divisive The Guilty—a remake of the Danish original from 2018—playing a troubled police officer demoted to 911 operator, who witnesses and navigates a distressing civilian emergency.

But the actor’s at his most delicious when he’s playing men on the other side of moral rightness. Over a 30-year career (he’s 44, by the way), Gyllenhaal’s darting eyeballs, low voice and clipped delivery have become synonymous with a parallel sort of thrill-making. Put on a random Jake Gyllenhaal film on streaming and chances are, you’ve got yourself a late-night nail-biter worth sleeping in the following Sunday.

Except, don’t make it random. Start with these:

Enemy (2013)

JG plays Adam, a history professor, who becomes obsessed with tracking down his doppelganger, a small-time actor named Anthony, in this Denis Villeneuve film based on José Saramago’s The Double. A slow-burn mind-bender, The Enemy explores duality with genuine tension… and a dash of creepy imagery (giant spiders anyone?).

Nightcrawler (2014)

Gyllenhaal plays an amoral, desperate, scheming street rat of the kind that think he’s Mephistopheles reborn. Not really, but yes—he’s Lou Bloom, a petty thief who becomes a photojournalist specialising in violent and sensationalist footage to Nina. Until the chickens come home to roost.

Source Code (2011)

He’s an Army pilot waking up in another man’s body, tasked with reliving the same eight minutes on a Chicago commuter train until he finds a bomber. Directed by Duncan Jones, Source Code is both time-loop puzzle and moral reckoning, with Gyllenhaal threading urgency through a ticking clock. The film also stars Michelle Monaghan and Vera Farmiga.

Zodiac (2007)

He’s a shy, almost stubbornly earnest cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle who gets pulled into the long, obsessive hunt for the Zodiac Killer. What starts as curiosity curdles into compulsion, and the chase seems to etch itself into his very frame.

Prisoners (2013)

Gyllenhaal stars in yet another Denis Villeneuve film, a disturbing moral drama. Playing Detective Loki—buttoned-up, methodical, with a hint of barely-contained twitch under the surface—the character tries to solve the disappearance of two little girls. Stuck between a grieving father’s rage and a labyrinthine case, he becomes the hinge on which justice may—or may not—turn.

Donnie Darko (2001)

He’s a troubled teenager who sleepwalks into the middle of the road one night and starts seeing a man in a grotesque rabbit costume. Between visions, time travel theories, and the end of the world, Gyllenhaal makes Donnie feel like both a danger to himself and the only one who really understands what’s coming.