You cannot have a conversation about the best suspense thrillers out there without bringing up Rear Window. This movie has appeared on so many of the best Alfred Hitchcock movie lists, and for good reason. Rear Window manages to craft a tale that slowly draws you in, gets you invested, and then ramps up the tension until its breaking point.

Rear Window is one of those “single location” movies, with the entire movie taking place in our protagonist’s apartment. Jeff is a photographer who has been bedridden for the past six weeks because of a broken leg. During that time, he’s become bored out of his mind and has resorted to just watching what his neighbors are doing. One of his neighbors begins to catch his attention, however, when he notices some mysterious late-night activities, and before long he begins to suspect that the man next door has murdered his wife.

I think the best thing about staying in the apartment with Jeff for the whole movie is that we really get to feel like we’re in his shoes. The movie immediately draws you in by showing slices of everyone’s lives in the apartment building next door. It also smartly allows us to continue seeing all of these characters throughout the movie. There’s an element of voyeurism throughout Rear Window, and we get to feel all of the highs and lows that come with that along with Jeff. We feel the guilty pleasure of seeing what other people are doing when they think they’re not being watched, and we also feel the shame of seeing something we shouldn’t. Also, by seeing the movie through Jeff’s perspective, we’re also trapped with him. When the movie starts to get really tense, we’re as helpless as Jeff, who can’t get out of his wheelchair. There’s a standout moment in the movie that exemplifies this, where Jeff’s girlfriend Lisa is searching through the suspected killer’s apartment, and Jeff witnesses the man about to enter. We want to warn Lisa, but we can’t move anymore than Jeff can. If nothing else, Rear Window is an interesting exploration of a unique perspective that we get to live through a film.

Outside of that, though, the movie just fires on all cylinders. It’s possible that some people might not like the “slow burn” nature of the movie for its first half, since not a lot is actually happening. But for me, I still found the peeks into others’ lives as enticing, and so I think the movie is able to draw you in even in the quieter moments. This all helps serve the later moments in the film, where the suspense builds and builds until some really exciting things start happening.

I don’t know what else I can say about Rear Window that hasn’t already been said a million times by now. If you know anyone that loves film, you’ve probably at least heard of this movie at some point. I think Psycho is still probably Hitchcock’s most popular movie, but Rear Window should never be discounted from the conversation of his best films. This is one of the best suspense thrillers ever made, period.

5/5