The political turmoil of the 1970s and the public's subsequent distrust of the Nixon administration brought to the fore a subgenre of films which had been lurking in the studio system, in one form or another, since 1962's The Manchurian Candidate. Taking their cues from the film noirs of the 1940s and '50s, paranoid thrillers (also known as "conspiracy thrillers") featured flawed heroes trying to "do the right thing" in a society even more corrupt than they were. But where film noirs placed the blame on self-destructive antiheroes or femme fatales, paranoid thrillers usually led back to an overarching system of lies that no one person could dismantle, whether that system was a tycoon's empire, a corporation, or the government. Though early-'70s crime thrillers like Roman Polanski's Chinatown expanded upon the themes of bureaucratic evil once explored by film noir pioneers like Fritz Lang, the paranoid thriller truly came to fruition with director Alan J. Pakula's self-described "paranoia trilogy" of films. 1971's Klute, 1974's The Parallax View, and 1976's All the President's Men, all, to an increasing degree, analyzed the role of the individual in a claustrophobic, Orwellian modern world of constant surveillance and conspiracy. Francis Ford Coppola responded in kind with The Conversation, a moody character piece about a meek audio expert who, while investigating a young couple, finds out that his work is being used against him. Even Coppola's epic The Godfather, Part II added federal indictment and corporate corruption to the masterpiece mob saga. The decade would come to a close with a series of successful paranoid thrillers, among them Three Days of the Condor, Coma, Marathon Man, and (in the early '80s), Blow Out . Throughout the '80s and '90s, the subgenre would take on a more commercial sheen with such films as War Games, The Net, and Enemy of the State (which itself blatantly referenced The Conversation). By the time the turn of the century rolled around, paranoid themes popped up in the most unlikely places, perhaps no more unlikely than the Disney-released Monsters, Inc., which -New York Times critic Elvis Mitchell dubbed "The Parallax View for kids."

Featured Films:

Rating	MPAA	Year	Title
	PG13	2009	Duplicity
	PG13	2008	Eagle Eye
	R	2007	Michael Clayton
	PG13	2007	The Bourne Ultimatum
	PG13	2007	Disturbia
	PG13	2006	Déjà vu
	R	2006	Civic Duty
	R	2006	Southland Tales
	PG	2006	A Comedy of Power
	PG13	2005	The Interpreter
	R	2004	The Manchurian Candidate
		2004	Freeze Frame
		2004	EMR
	PG13	2004	The Bourne Supremacy
	R	2004	Oldboy
	R	2003	Eavesdropper
	PG13	2002	Minority Report
	PG13	2002	The Bourne Identity
		2002	Demonlover
	R	2001	The Caveman's Valentine
	R	2001	Spy Game
	PG13	2001	AntiTrust
		2001	Revolution #9
		2000	Freakylinks
	R	2000	Deterrence
	R	1999	Arlington Road
		1999	Silicon Towers
		1999	The List
	R	1999	Eyes Wide Shut
	R	1998	Enemy of the State
	NR	1998	The Shadow Men
		1998	Safe House
	R	1997	The Game
	R	1997	Conspiracy Theory
	R	1996	The Trigger Effect
		1996	Twilight Man
		1995	Suspect Device
	R	1995	The Innocent Sleep
		1993	Kodeks Beschestiya
	PG13	1993	The Pelican Brief
		1993	The November Men
		1992	Notorious
	R	1991	Dead Sleep
	R	1991	JFK
		1990	Nightmare on the 13th Floor
		1989	Accidents
	R	1989	The Night Visitor
		1988	The Bourne Identity
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