15 Underrated Hindi Thriller Movies That Deserve a Much Bigger Audience

Ask people for the best Underrated Hindi thriller movies and the same dozen titles come back, usually the glossy, twist-heavy ones. This list goes the other way. It stays with thrillers that rarely make those lists: films with no songs, films too slow or too strange for their release year, and films that premiered at Cannes or other festivals.

How these 15 were picked

Every film here is Hindi-language and was made for cinemas, so nothing built for streaming. Each has critical or festival recognition, or a documented, lasting audience following. I left out the titles that appear in nearly every list of this kind, so no Andhadhun, Kahaani, Drishyam or A Wednesday!. The span runs from 1960 to 2016. Within each group, films appear in order of release. Credits, years and reception were cross-checked against published reviews and trade and national press.

Look at the credits and a pattern appears. Ram Gopal Varma directed or produced three of these (Kaun?, Ab Tak Chhappan, Ek Hasina Thi). Anurag Kashyap wrote, directed or produced five (Kaun?, No Smoking, Ugly, Raman Raghav 2.0, Trapped). The same few people kept placing the genre’s riskiest bets.

Crime and conspiracy

These crime films treat crime as a system rather than a duel: campuses, police units, phone calls from nowhere. Together they make a fair case for the Hindi crime thriller as a form worth revisiting.

1. Haasil (2003)
Directed by Tigmanshu Dhulia. With Jimmy Sheirgill, Irrfan Khan, Ashutosh Rana, Hrishitaa Bhatt.

Student politics at Allahabad University, played as a small-scale gang war between two factions led by Gauri Shankar Pandey (Rana) and Ranvijay Singh (Irrfan). Irrfan won a Filmfare award for his performance in a negative role. The film was shot in and around Allahabad itself, and Avijit Ghosh included it in his 2013 book 40 Retakes: Bollywood Classics You May Have Missed, a collection of films he felt had been overlooked. Good for anyone who likes crime stories rooted in one specific town.

Also Read: India’s Oscar entries since 1957, and the three that made the final five

2. Ab Tak Chhappan (2004)
Directed by Shimit Amin, his first film. Written by Sandeep Shrivastava, produced by Ram Gopal Varma. With Nana Patekar, Revathi, Yashpal Sharma.

Patekar plays Inspector Sadhu Agashe, an encounter specialist inspired by the Mumbai police officer Daya Nayak. There are no songs. Pick this if you want a Mumbai police story with the swagger left out.

3. Sehar (2005)
Directed by Kabeer Kaushik. With Arshad Warsi, Pankaj Kapur, Sushant Singh, Mahima Chaudhry.

Warsi plays Ajay Kumar, a newly appointed young SSP of Lucknow, in a story loosely based on the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force’s pursuit of the gangster Shri Prakash Shukla. Ghosh’s 40 Retakes picks it out as one of the more neglected gangster films. Suits viewers who prefer procedure and politics to shootouts.

4. Aamir (2008)
Directed by Raj Kumar Gupta, his debut. With Rajeev Khandelwal.

A doctor lands in Mumbai, is handed a phone, and is made to follow instructions from a voice he never sees. It is filmed documentary-style on real Mumbai streets and runs about 100 minutes. For an evening when you want something tight.

Also Read: Rajinikanth Highest Grossing Movies, Ranked Before Jailer 2

5. Ugly (2013)
Directed by Anurag Kashyap. With Rahul Bhat, Ronit Roy, Tejaswini Kolhapure.

A struggling actor’s daughter disappears, and she turns out to be the stepdaughter of the police chief, who detests him. It premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 2013, where reviewers noted that almost nobody in it is innocent. It is bleak, with graphic police brutality and domestic abuse on screen, so choose your evening carefully.

Double-crosses and noir

6. Ek Hasina Thi (2004)
Directed by Sriram Raghavan, his first film. Produced by Ram Gopal Varma. With Urmila Matondkar, Saif Ali Khan.

Sarika is betrayed by the man she loves, jailed, and sets out to take him down. Reviewers praised the performances of both leads. Try it if you like revenge stories with a sense of style.

7. Johnny Gaddaar (2007)
Directed by Sriram Raghavan. With Neil Nitin Mukesh (in his debut), Dharmendra, Vinay Pathak, Zakir Hussain.

Five men who run a gambling den pool money for a deal, a bag goes missing, and the youngest member plans a double-cross. The audience stays ahead of the characters, so the tension comes from watching the plan tighten rather than guessing. It is the closest thing here to a caper, and the easiest entry point in this group.

8. Manorama Six Feet Under (2007)
Directed by Navdeep Singh, his first film. With Abhay Deol, Gul Panag, Raima Sen, Vinay Pathak, Kulbhushan Kharbanda.

Abhay Deol plays a suspended junior engineer and failed crime novelist hired by a minister’s wife to watch her husband, in a small Rajasthan town called Lakhot. Singh has spoken of the film’s hat tips to Chinatown. It drew critical praise without making much money, and a cult following grew after it aired on TV. If you liked Chinatown, start here.

Psychological and survival thrillers

These four work on the viewer’s nerves more than their curiosity, and they do it very differently.

9. Kaun? (1999)
Directed by Ram Gopal Varma. Written by Anurag Kashyap. With Urmila Matondkar, Manoj Bajpayee, Sushant Singh.

A woman alone at home hears news of a serial killer on the loose, and a stranger rings the doorbell. It is shot in one house with no songs, and Matondkar’s character is referred to only as ‘Ma’am’. It came after Satya. Bajpayee has said audiences still bring it up in detail more than two decades on. Good for a night in with the lights off.

10. No Smoking (2007)
Directed by Anurag Kashyap. With John Abraham, Paresh Rawal, Ayesha Takia, Ranvir Shorey.

Adapted from Stephen King’s short story ‘Quitters, Inc.’, it follows a chain-smoker, simply called K, who signs up with an underground clinic. It premiered at the Rome Film Festival and was a box-office failure, with Indian critics largely harsh. Later writers, including ZEE5’s own retrospective, have called it Kafkaesque. It rewards viewers who are comfortable with a film that refuses to explain itself.

11. Raman Raghav 2.0 (2016)
Directed by Anurag Kashyap. With Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vicky Kaushal, Sobhita Dhulipala.

Loosely inspired by the serial killer who terrorised Bombay in the 1960s, it stars Siddiqui as the killer and Kaushal as the young cop he becomes obsessed with. It premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 2016 under the title Psycho Raman, where The Hollywood Reporter called Siddiqui’s performance exceptionally scary. It is violent and relentless. Pick it when you want a thriller that never lets up.

12. Trapped (2016)
Directed by Vikramaditya Motwane. With Rajkummar Rao, Geetanjali Thapa.

A man accidentally locks himself in a high-rise Mumbai flat with no food, water or electricity. It was shot largely over 20 days in one Mumbai apartment, premiered at the Mumbai Film Festival in October 2016, and reached cinemas in March 2017. It runs without an intermission. For viewers who like their suspense physical and close.

Courtroom and jury-room drama

These three use a courtroom or jury room as the pressure chamber.

13. Kanoon (1960)
Directed by B.R. Chopra. With Ashok Kumar, Rajendra Kumar, Nanda, Mehmood.

A black-and-white courtroom film with no songs, built around a murder and an argument against capital punishment. Madhulika Liddle’s review praises how it balances crime detection and social questions. Suits anyone curious how Hindi cinema handled the form in 1960.

14. Ek Ruka Hua Faisla (1986)
Directed by Basu Chatterjee. With Pankaj Kapur, Annu Kapoor, K.K. Raina, M.K. Raina, Deepak Qazir.

A Hindi remake of Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men (1957), set in an Indian jury room, with a teenage boy from a slum accused of stabbing his father. All the jurors but one are convinced of his guilt, and K.K. Raina plays the pivotal role. Pick this if you like talk-driven drama in a single room.

15. Shaurya (2008)
Directed by Samar Khan. With Kay Kay Menon, Rahul Bose, Javed Jaffrey, Deepak Dobriyal, Minissha Lamba.

Based on Swadesh Deepak’s play Court Martial and loosely on A Few Good Men, it follows the court martial of a captain who shot his superior officer during a counter-insurgency operation in Kashmir. Two friends, both army lawyers, end up on opposite sides, and the accused does not want to be defended. Taran Adarsh gave it three stars and praised the ensemble. Good for viewers who want a military courtroom drama with moral weight.

Where to start with the best Hindi thriller movies on this list

Match the film to the evening. If you want something quick, Aamir and Trapped both run under two hours. If you want the most conventional pleasures, Johnny Gaddaar is the easiest entry. For slow-burn noir, try Manorama Six Feet Under, and for the oldest film here, Kanoon. If you only want to be unsettled, Kaun? and No Smoking do it in opposite ways. Each of these deserves a place on a watchlist.