This week began on a sad note. On Sunday, August 16, actress Hayden Panettiere passed away at the age of 36. Many former co-stars have spoken out about her passing, which came a few months after the release of her memoir. In addition, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have announced plans to move back to the U.K., drawing mixed reactions. There have been a few more updates in the political world, and The Blast has exclusives ranging from “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” to a legal expert weighing in on the “completely different” strategy playing out in the Tupac murder trial. Check out the latest news and updates in another edition of The Weekly Blast.

Hayden Panettiere Passed Away At Age 36

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Best known for her roles in “Heroes,” “Nashville,” and the “Scream” movie franchise, many fans took to social media to pay tribute to the beloved actress, who was open with her struggles with mental health and addiction.

A doctor once warned her that she could be “dead within five years” if she didn’t get her drinking under control, but she was determined to “leave the world” a better place in final remarks made before her sudden death.

According to the autopsy report, no signs of trauma were found that would have contributed to her death, although 911 dispatch audio said a female was in “cardiac arrest.” The dispatch audio reportedly referenced a possible overdose.

Her mother blamed their estrangement on a “toxic individual,” while actor Jack Coleman called out the “predatory” treatment that she faced from paparazzi. One director who previously worked with the actor also recalled talks about an intervention before her sudden passing.

Questions Have Been Raised About Her Boyfriend, Brian Hickerson

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Hayden Panettiere’s neighbor made some troubling claims about her boyfriend, Brian Hickerson, including repeated calls to 911.

Reports of his money troubles also resurfaced. It is not clear if the two were involved following her death, but one source claimed that he had “inserted himself” into her life. Yet another insider said that they had gotten back together in a romantic relationship before he passed away.

Prince Harry & Meghan Markle To Return To The UK

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Following brutal advice to “disappear professionally” as they faced another major Hollywood flop, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are heading back to the UK with their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.

One expert claims that the decision has Prince William and Kate Middleton “tearing their heart out,” while others have questioned what the move means for the brothers’ estrangement.

For Meghan Markle, it’s been said that she is dealing with “mixed emotions” regarding the move, which may have been fueled by growing financial concerns.

Ariana Grande Gets Political & More Trump News

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Ariana Grande has asked the White House to stop using her music once again. It’s not the first time that she’s made the request. The singer has never been shy about discussing politics with her fans, and openly supported Kamala Harris during the 2024 Presidential Election.

Meanwhile, current U.S. President Donald Trump is in hot water after he told a little boy that he wouldn’t have jumped in to rescue him after a near-drowning, prompting backlash online.

Trump also threatened “tremendous” consequences for Iran allies and pushed a new crypto bill – the Clarity Act – after his family’s crypto ventures generated more than $1 billion in 2025.

His wife, Melania Trump, is also reportedly about her husband’s allegedly close relationship with his aide, Natalie Harp. The aide’s brother has also spoken out about the “sad” reason she is “infatuated” with the current U.S. President.

The Blast Exclusives: Everything You Missed This Week

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This week, the “Sexiest Data Scientist,” Bianca Stanciu, revealed the unexpected compliment that men secretly yearn for.

Jen Affleck teased a “huge divide” on “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” spin-off.

One Vegas attorney broke down the “completely different” strategy playing out in the Tupac murder trial.

Edwin McCain joined a “Big Time Rush” star for an unexpected Olivia Rodrigo cover.

One popular Vegas influencer turned a childhood magic dream into reality with a brand new show.

See inside the $37,000 “Let’s Marry Harry” plane that took Harry Jowsey to Vegas!

Anya Taylor-Joy is on top of the world right now after the release of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which was the first feature film of 2026 to reach $1 billion at the global box office. Other movies such as Michael, Toy Story, The Odyssey, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day have also reached the milestone. Taylor-Joy can also be seen on Apple TV starring in one of the most underrated crime thrillers of the year, Lucky, with Timothy Olyphant. Later this year, she’s confirmed to return and reprise her role as Alia Atreides in Dune: Part Three, which opens in theaters on December 18. Her wacky thriller with Chris Evans, Sacrifice, has been acquired by Netflix for release later this year — safe to say ATJ is as booked and busy as any star in 2026.

One of the most underrated movies of Anya Taylor-Joy’s career came back in 2022 when she teamed up with director Robert Eggers for The Northman. Taylor-Joy previously starred in The Witch for Eggers, who has gone on to direct other hits like Nosferatu. The Northman infamously bombed at the box office due to its bloated $90 million budget — the film grossed only $75 million, but it’s become one of the most popular movies in the world on streaming over the last few years. Right now, it’s available to stream on Netflix, and the streamer has not announced any plans for it to depart the platform anytime soon. Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, and Ethan Hawke all have key roles in The Northman, which was co-written by Sjón and director Robert Eggers.

What Is ‘The Northman’ About?

The official synopsis for The Northman, which earned scores of 90% from critics and 64% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, reads as follows: “Prince Amleth watches his father slain and his mother stolen away, escaping with one vow burning in his heart: avenge his father, save his mother, kill his uncle. Years later, grown into a fearsome Viking warrior, Alexander Skarsgård’s Amleth infiltrates his uncle’s (Claes Bang) fortress in disguise, aided by a mysterious sorceress (Anya Taylor-Joy), as fate drives him toward a brutal reckoning.” The Northman is the perfect mash-up of Gladiator and Vikings, as it features some all-time great historical action scenes set against the backdrop of a world steeped in immersive Norse lore.

Check out The Northman before it’s removed from Netflix and stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of Anya Taylor-Joy’s future projects.

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Release Date

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April 22, 2022

Runtime

137 minutes

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Superheroes are inescapable nowadays, but there was once a time when they were actually a novelty, especially on live-action TV. Although DC and Marvel now dominate even prestige television programming, it was NBC’s Heroes that reintroduced the genre to larger audiences back in 2006, when most people thought about it only as Saturday morning cartoons. Created by Tim Kring, it imagined a world where some individuals suddenly found themselves dealing with newfound superpowers, and it even introduced traditional comic book structures and narrative formats before they became a thing on visual media. With one of the best first seasons on 2000s TV and three competent following installments, now is the perfect time to binge or revisit Heroes, as it has just arrived on Netflix, too.

‘Heroes’ Told an Original Superhero Story on TV Before the Rise of Marvel and DC

When Heroes first premiered in 2006, “Save the cheerleader, save the world” was repeated ad nauseam among viewers and in marketing pieces, making it one of the most celebrated phrases in 2000s pop culture. It was one of the many things about the series that stuck with the audience, one of the first things people usually remember about it, and the simplest way to describe the story, really, as the cheerleader in question, Claire Bennet (played by the late and great Hayden Panettiere), plays a pivotal role.

It all begins when, after a solar eclipse, seemingly random people around the world discover that they now have superpowers. Claire has superhuman fast healing, Japanese office worker Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka) controls space-time, New York nurse Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) can mimic other powered individuals’ abilities, and so on. The scope of their powers varies between each person, but, in general, they try to keep their abilities concealed — until a common threat brings them together to prevent a catastrophe in New York.

Of course, not every superhuman intends to use their powers for good. The story is put into motion when Claire, the cheerleader, is targeted by a serial killer who has been killing superhumans with particular cruelty. Soon, the few non-powered humans who are aware of this new reality start organizing, too, and what starts as a collection of individual stories about destiny and responsibility quickly grows into a larger conspiracy with stakes being constantly raised for everyone.

‘Heroes’ Also Introduced Typical Comic Book Structure and Devices Into Live-Action Television

Image via NBC

If Heroes sounds too similar to superhero comic book stories, that’s entirely by design. Tim Kring conceived the story to be relatable to the larger audience, but still rooted in a typical comic book structure. The biggest difference from other regular series of that time is that, although Heroes does have four seasons, the story is actually divided into volumes; Seasons 1 and 2 are one volume each, while Seasons 3 and 4 are two volumes a piece, each with its own conflict, dynamics, and looming threat.

Besides structure, Heroes also draws from the storytelling language, framing each episode as if it were an actual comic book issue. They end in cliffhangers more often than not and work like pages in a larger, overarching story where different storylines converge. The same goes for the visual language of the series; the most obvious nod is the in-universe 9th Wonders! comics, but even the framing in most shots feels as if they were taken straight from a comic book. It’s no surprise, then, to learn that big names from the comic book industry also worked on Heroes, like writer Jeph Loeb and artist Tim Sale.

Nowadays, this is all easy to spot in Marvel movies and series, but it was Heroes that blazed a trail for these tools to be incorporated into live-action. Two years before the MCU even began with Iron Man and its crossovers and event-based storytelling filled with post-credits scenes as cliffhangers, the NBC series was already keeping audiences hooked for the following week, excited to see who could even save the proverbial cheerleader. No multiversal shenanigans here, just good old-fashioned character-driven storytelling.

‘Heroes’ Well-Built Mythology Helped Launch and Consolidate Many Acting Careers

Saving the cheerleader to save the world might be the entry point, but as it gets there (and, eventually, past it, too), Heroes builds one of the best and most elaborate mythologies on 2000s television, and that’s saying something considering it aired at the same time as Lost. Besides learning how to control and conceal their powers, each character also has to understand their place among the other superpowered individuals, and that usually comes at a high price in terms of personal sacrifice.

Building mythologies from the ground up often requires sprawling ensemble casts, too, and, luckily, Heroes has that, too. The undeniable best, Zachary Quinto‘s Sylar, easily remains among the best villains in the superhero genre. His polar opposite, Milo Ventimiglia’s Peter Petrelli, brought the actor to a wider audience between his works on Gilmore Girls and This Is Us. And, of course, Hayden Panettiere will always be remembered for her standout roles in Scream and Nashville, among many others, but for some of us, she will always, always be the most important cheerleader in the world.

So, watching Heroes nowadays has an interesting double effect. First, it’s about how superhero stories were told on TV before they became a huge cultural phenomenon, and how much of what made the genre so big was already making Heroes special. Second, it’s like watching a time capsule of actors before they became the stars everyone knows them as today, and not just limited to Quinto, Ventimiglia, and Panettiere, of course. Considering this legacy, there’s just no better weekend binge than Heroes right now.

Heroes is available to stream on Netflix.

The weight of expectation hangs heavy over any HBO television production. Audience anticipation of a spectacle of unflinching storytelling and high-end production value is ever present, but this air of prestige and acclaim can be treacherous, especially when a series pivots away from tradition in an attempt to offer something completely original. While HBO has founded its brand on the back of series that excel in this regard, the network has also produced a number of hidden and misunderstood gems that simply didn’t click with viewers on release.

This can be for any number of reasons, from the first handful of episodes of a show being considered relentlessly bleak, thus seeing the series become known as a morbid and nihilistic slog, to detailed and intricately complex storytelling being received as incomprehensible by many who then label the show a convoluted mess. Whether they were misunderstood by the masses, maligned by critics, or dismissed by too many, these TV series should all be viewed as being among the network’s greatest releases, but they seldom are.

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‘We Own This City’ (2022)

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Created by David Simon and George Pelecanos—two of the forces behind HBO’s The Wire—and based on Justin Fenton’s nonfiction book of the same name, We Own This City uses a shocking basis on real-life events to analyze corruption in the police system, the bureaucratic and cultural reasons why it is so hard to punish, and the intensifying divide between essential societal institutions and the public they are meant to serve. Framed as the FBI’s investigation into the illegal practices of the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force, the six-part miniseries implements intense non-linear plotting that jumps sporadically between points between 2003 and 2018.

It is undeniably an approach that demands attentive viewing from audiences, but We Own This City was too quickly dubbed a convoluted and heavy-handed crime drama that veered away from the tone of David Simon’s earlier work in the genre. This reputation of excessive complexity and overbearing thematic work has endured to an extent, seeing the miniseries become something of a forgotten masterpiece when its piercing urgency and eloquent dissection of such relevant issues is timely. Brilliantly analytical, masterfully layered, and exuding a realism and intensity that is truly unforgettable, We Own This City is leagues better than its reputation of clunkiness would suggest.

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‘Tokyo Vice’ (2022–2024)

Image via HBO Max

To some extent, Tokyo Vice was shrouded in controversy and dismissed by many long before its first episode had even aired. There were multiple reasons for this, from the casting of Ansel Elgort in the lead role to the dubious accuracy of Jake Adelstein’s memoir, which was the series’ source material, and even the decision to explore the Japanese underworld through an American protagonist. To be fair, all of these criticisms are valid, and the series was not at all helped by HBO’s suspiciously low-key marketing campaign and abrupt cancelation after its second season. But is Tokyo Vice’s reputation as a hollow “White savior” narrative entirely fair?

The answer to that question is yes and no. When the series focuses on Elgort’s American journalist, it lacks essence and punch. However, when it pivots away from him and invests more in the characters that surround him, such as Ken Watanabe’s Detective Katagiri and Sho Kasamatsu’s Yakuza enforcer, it soars as a rich and engrossing descent into a fascinating world of neon-lit style and cut-throat morality. Also bolstered by Michael Mann’s creative involvement, Tokyo Vice does largely surpass its uninspiring reputation, even if it still holds its fair share of faults.

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‘Entourage’ (2004–2011)

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There was a time when Entourage was lauded as being the flagship series of HBO’s ventures into comedy television. But times change, and with them, so too do cultural sensitivities, attitudes, and interests. This point of evolving social standards is always difficult to address with regard to comedy entertainment, and Entourage is simply another once universally beloved genre highlight that has since come to be viewed as archaic, derogatory, and tastelessly offensive. To a point, the matter of whether this view is a valid criticism or a knee-jerk overreaction is up to each individual, but there are several elements of the series that its critics overlook.

It follows Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier), a young breakout movie star relishing his new life of luxury and wealth in L.A. with his childhood friends. It is easy to regard as a shallow male fantasy that combines its crude irreverence with casual misogyny, but there is a point to be made that Entourage never treats its main characters as beacons of morality. While they’re fun and relatable, they are marked with a satirical edge rather than idolized glory. It may not pry into the characters’ adolescent wish-fulfillment lifestyles with quite as much depth as some would like, and its sense of escapist entertainment can, at times, stray close to casual endorsement, but Entourage has enough sense as an insider-look of Hollywood lavishness to mostly evade its reflective reputation as a harmful, outdated, and demeaning series, even if its eight-season run did get a bit long in the tooth.

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‘Station Eleven’ (2021)

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Over the past 15 years particularly, television lovers have been given a set vision of the end of the world. It doesn’t matter whether it’s due to zombies, humanity-decimating viruses, or nuclear war, post-apocalyptic drama is supposed to be bleak pessimism accentuated by glimmers of hope and, ideally, plenty of action. Station Eleven indulges none of this, with the miniseries adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel’s novel occupying an air of optimism and humanity as it follows a group of traveling actors roaming between settlements 20 years after a devastating flu virus decimated civilization.

An important point to make regarding Station Eleven’s initial reception is that it did air in 2021, amid the world of COVID-19, which perhaps didn’t make a story of deadly flus and hopeful Armageddons all that appealing. Moronic review bombing targeting the series’ diverse casting only added to its fledgling reputation. It was an unfortunate perfect storm that saw what is a beautifully tender and profoundly emotional exploration of humanity dwindle in the eyes of many as an uneventful misfire of apocalyptic suspense. That being said, Station Eleven did earn critical acclaim and has come to be viewed as something of a television cult classic.

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‘Generation Kill’ (2007)

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HBO has mastered large-scale war drama through miniseries like Band of Brothers and The Pacific, both of which were defined by the enormity of their productions and the sentimental humanity that serves as a tragic undercurrent to the sheer brutality of war. Generation Kill operates much differently, and anyone who went into it expecting the same balance of grandiose, albeit harrowing, spectacle and relatively comfortable morality would have had their expectations immediately shattered. Based on Evan Wright’s nonfiction book, the seven-part miniseries delivers an unflinching dramatization of the US Marine Corps’ 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, immersing viewers in the soldiers’ experiences during the first weeks of the Iraq War.

Defined by a tone of coarse realism, Generation Kill defies Hollywood’s penchant for realizing war drama with patriotic fervor and comfortable moral challenges. Even the unit camaraderie is presented with an acidic, darkly comic edge that normalizes the characters, but distances them from the traditional image of war heroism. Also buoyed by its authentic illustration of dysfunctional leadership, military bureaucracy, and the frustrating monotony of a soldier’s journey, Generation Kill is the definitive examination of modern warfare in media thus far. It’s a shame that it has come to be a largely underappreciated gem that is more renowned for its slow pacing, modest budget, bleak themes, and its less reassuring image of America’s armed forces than its dramatic ferocity and punishing commitment to realism.

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‘The Leftovers’ (2014–2017)

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The Leftovers is perhaps HBO’s single most underrated production of all time. The three-season series unfolds in a world of grief, loss, and unresolved trauma. On October 14, 2011, two percent of the world’s population mysteriously vanished without a trace in an event that is known as the “Sudden Departure”. The show opens three years later, plunging viewers into a world of unedifying grief and depression, festering nihilism, and simmering unrest between people who believe humanity must never forget the “Sudden Departure” and those who simply want to move on with their lives.

It is an interesting series to analyze in terms of its cultural impact and reputation. Its narrative style isn’t so much plot-driven as it is a lingering meditation on characters, thematic ideas, and expressions of misery. Needless to say, it is a departure from traditional television storytelling that can take some time to acclimatize to. However, many viewers didn’t, and instead of persisting, they wrongly dismissed the series as a relentlessly pessimistic and depressing watch that refuses to give satisfying, easy answers. It has led to something of a split reputation wherein some people deride it as a laborious, soul-sapping bore while others herald it as being one of the greatest feats in television history. That The Leftovers is viewed as anything other than a flawlessly written, perfectly performed, and ceaselessly absorbing masterpiece that epitomizes deep television drama at its empathetic and excruciating best is an injustice.

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The Leftovers

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Release Date

2014 – 2017-00-00

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Showrunner

Damon Lindelof

Writers

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Damon Lindelof, Tom Perrotta

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Coined all the way back in 1968, the term “Great American Novel” has been a subject of interminable debate for well over a century, but what about the Great American Novel of the 21st century? That’s a question that’s not often talked about nearly enough, a question that can bring up several unforgettable books—even ones that aren’t actually novels—that will likely go down in history as some of the greatest from these first three decades of the 21st century.

Whether it’s a sharply modern behemoth of a novel of the caliber of Honorée Fanonne Jeffers‘ The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, or a non-fiction masterpiece like Isabel Wilkerson‘s The Warmth of Other Suns, the best American books published since 2001 are all proof of the remarkably quality of the country’s literary output in modern times.

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‘All the Light We Cannot See’ (2014)

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Inspired by a train ride where he overheard a passenger being frustrated over having no cell phone signal, which he felt was neglecting the miracle of long-distance communication, Anthony Doerr came up with the idea for the World War II drama All the Light We Cannot See. For it, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

Those were fully deserved awards, too, because All the Light We Cannot See is one of those book masterpieces that are perfectly written. Doerr’s prose is beautifully poetic and powerfully visual, greatly elevating the book’s thematic exploration of things like empathy, fate, and the beauty of the world. Rarely has an American novel seen a use of alternating perspectives this effective or emotionally striking.

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‘The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois’ (2021)

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The debut novel of the poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is a sprawling 800-page behemoth of a novel spanning from the time right before the Civil War until the present. It’s an incredibly ambitious, absolutely engrossing family saga that takes full advantage of each and every last page of that daunting length. But as challenging as it may look, the book is so impeccably written that it becomes surprisingly easy to breeze through it as if it were 400 pages shorter.

The way Jeffers explores the trauma of Black and Indigenous families in the American South while also celebrating their heritage and resilience is truly remarkable, the whole book feeling like a work of art centuries in the making because of it. And like all the best historical epics, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois does a phenomenal job of balancing the scope of its premise with surprisingly intimate and intricate character development.

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‘The Fifth Season’ (2015)

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American speculative fiction has been top-notch throughout the entirety of the 21st century, too, as perfectly demonstrated by N. K. Jemisin‘s science fantasy masterpiece The Fifth Season. Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2016, it served as the first volume in Jemisin’s acclaimed Broken Earth series. But fantastic though its sequels may be, there’s simply no beating the original in this particular case.

The Fifth Season is one of those fantasy books better than most movies, a scathing critique of systemic oppression, impressive in its thematic depth, its groundbreaking structure, and its unique worldbuilding. Jemisin’s writing here is bold, incredibly immersive, and even shockingly experimental at times, which includes some parts written in second person. That’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the creativity contained within The Fifth Season.

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‘There There’ (2018)

Image via Random House

The debut novel of Cheyenne and Arapaho author Tommy Orange, There There is perhaps the highest-quality example of a category of American books that has seen a tremendous boom and resurgence throughout the 21st century: Native American literature. In fact, the novel as a whole is a powerful exploration and celebration of Native American history and identity, the sort that anyone intrigued by that facet of the United States’ identity as a country ought to check out at least once.

Whereas many Indigenous books from around the world end up being period pieces about Indigenous trauma and suffering, Orange crafts a stunning, absolutely gripping account of what it’s like to be Native American in the modern-day US. Wonderfully character-driven, masterfully structured and paced, and treating complicated topics like violence and addiction with the utmost sensitivity, it’s a true must-read chapter of 2010s American literature.

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‘James’ (2024)

Image via Random House

Another example of why American literature has been absolutely exceptional throughout the 2020s so far, Percival Everett‘s James is a potent reinterpretation and reimagining of Mark Twain‘s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. For it, Everett won multiple awards, including the Kirkus Prize, the National Book Award for Fiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It would be difficult for anyone to read James and think that the hype was entirely unwarranted.

One would think that radically revising one of the books that’s most often brought up in the Great American Novel debate would likely result in a novel that feels pretentious, overly ambitious, or even just downright disastrous. Not James. Everett’s dissection of how imposed social roles and internal self-identity relate to systemic racism is as fascinating as it is sensitively explored, and it’s a story that couldn’t have been told without Huckleberry Finn as its scaffolding. James shows why and how any nation’s literary canon, the United States’ included, can never be fully finished, but simply reinterpreted and forced to evolve.

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‘The Sympathizer’ (2015)

Image via Grove Press

The inspiration for one of the most underappreciated HBO miniseries of the 2020s so far, Vietnamese-American professor Viet Thanh Nguyen‘s debut novel, The Sympathizer, is considered by some to be one of the best books of the last 100 years. Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, it’s a genre-bending masterpiece that functions equally well as a mystery spy thriller, a dark comedy, and a war drama.

Like all the best American novels, The Sympathizer deals with a multitude of themes and interweaves them in a way so complex that it’s surprisingly rereadable. At its core, though, it’s a deeply tragic story about how dual identity can be a curse, and about how the media flattens and trivializes the haunting realities of war. It’s definitely not a feel-good novel, but it’s one so impeccably crafted that everyone should read it at least once in their lives.

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‘The Nickel Boys’ (2019)

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Yet another instance of an award-winning novel that’s just about as far as you can get from a feel-good book, The Nickel Boys is based on the infamously abusive Florida reform school Dozier School. For it, Colson Whitehead won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Whitehead has written other exceptional books that deserve to be counted among the best in America’s 21st-century bibliography, most notably The Underground Railroad, for which he also won the Fiction Pulitzer. However, it’s the book that made him the fourth author in history ever to win the Pulitzer for Fiction twice that’s arguably his very best.

Before it inspired one of the best movie masterpieces of the last 10 years, The Nickel Boys presents its hauntingly horrific story—made all the more horrific by the fact that it was inspired by true events—with a refreshing amount of restraint. Instead of exploiting the subject matter for sensationalized melodrama, Whitehead creates an emotionally stirring critique of institutional violence and racism so deeply tied to America’s cultural identity that not counting it among the country’s best 21st-century books would be a crime.

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‘The Corrections’ (2001)

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Though Jonathan Franzen‘s The Corrections was published exactly 10 days before the September 11th attacks in New York City, the way the book explores the culture, domestic anxieties, and economic unease of late-capitalist America proved terrifyingly prophetic. A whopping 25 years after its publication, The Corrections still reads as a surprisingly modern book, having aged like fine wine. For it, Franzen won the 2001 National Book Award.

It’s a novel that captures the thematic, emotional, and psychological complexities of the contemporary United States to absolute perfection. Pulling American literature out of the postmodernism that had come to dominate it throughout the late 20th century, The Corrections almost single-handedly breathed new life into the Great American Novel conversation. It proved that books could still intimately tap into the American psyche without the detachment of postmodernism and the Internet age.

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‘The Road’ (2006)

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Cormac McCarthy is widely regarded as one of the greatest, most important and influential authors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the mind behind masterpieces as groundbreaking as the incredible The Road. It’s one of the best post-apocalyptic books of all time, winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and a phenomenal introduction to McCarthy’s whole oeuvre.

What makes The Road one of the most universally fascinating Great American Novels of the 21st century is that even though it is set in a post-apocalyptic United States, and even though its thematic core can be interpreted as a portrayal of the death of the American Dream, it’s built on an almost mythological premise that anyone should be engrossed by. Written with a powerfully stripped-down prose and the thought-provoking central question of what morality means when civilization has withered away, it’s a 21st-century American classic for a reason.

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‘The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration’ (2010)

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As incredible as the United States’ literary output in the fictional department has been throughout the last 26 years, American non-fiction in particular has seen a resurgence ever since the turn of the century. This shift has resulted in many a non-fiction book that’s still a must-read in 2026, most notably Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns. It’s a study of the Great Migration that turns the topic into a surprisingly accessible epic.

Wilkerson spent a whopping 15 years conducting research to write The Warmth of Other Suns, and all that effort absolutely paid off. Far from ever feeling tedious or didactic, the book humanizes the subjects of its story to a level never before seen in any book about the Great Migration. It’s such a complex, beautifully crafted, wonderfully novelistic work of non-fiction that it should be considered essential reading for anyone who loves 21st-century literature, no matter where they’re from.

Most filmmakers today rely on delivering a big, last-minute twist that takes the story to a whole new level. And there’s no denying that the approach has worked for several blockbusters. However, this formula of saving everything for the last five minutes and hoping that the audience will forget the slow burn that came before it is getting a little old. Everyone loves a jaw-dropping final reveal, but the best films know that the key to success is to keep twisting.

Great thrillers operate on the principle that tension must be sustained, so the audience has no reason to look away. Classic bait-and-switch that doesn’t serve as a gimmick, but as a storytelling tool that works to deepen the narrative. Here is a list of seven thrillers that do exactly that and are packed with plot twists that keep the viewers wanting more.

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‘The Invisible Guest’ (2016)

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The Invisible Guest is a film that wastes no time placing the audience right in the middle of absolute chaos. The story follows businessman Adrián Doria (Mario Casas) after he is accused of murdering his lover in what looks like an impossible crime, with only a few hours to build his defense. As Doria recounts the events leading up to the crime, the narrative quickly turns into a series of conflicting versions of the truth where nothing is really as it seems. The film thrives on its unique structure, where every piece of information casts doubt on whatever came before it.

Every time the audience feels like they’ve pieced things together, the story shifts, and they are pulled right back into uncertainty. The twists don’t come as sudden shocks, but quiet realizations of how carefully the protagonist has been constructing his reality. The Invisible Guest is essentially just one long conversation, but it never feels static because of how everything can change in the blink of an eye. By the time everything finally falls into place, the audience is already itching to rewatch the whole thing and analyze everything with a completely different perspective.

6

‘Fight Club’ (1999)

Image via 20th Century Studios

Fight Club is a masterpiece that completely rewired Hollywood despite not performing well at the box office. The film, directed by David Fincher, follows Edward Norton as an unnamed narrator who is an insomniac office worker trapped in a life that feels increasingly hollow. However, that changes when he crosses paths with charismatic soap salesman Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), who lives by a radically different philosophy. Their strange friendship quickly takes a turn as the two start an underground fight club where men seek meaning through pain and rebel against a system where they are reduced to cogs in a machine.

Soon enough, though, the club starts growing into something far more dangerous, and the introduction of Project Mayhem transforms this personal rebellion into full-blown organized violence. What’s even more unsettling is how the narrator’s perspective becomes increasingly unreliable, and the film starts blurring the line between reality and fantasy. Fight Club is a masterclass in storytelling, especially with how meticulously it builds toward the final reveal. The film doesn’t rely on last-minute shocks because it carefully weaves its plot twists into the story from the very beginning. Beneath all this, though, Fight Club is a sharp critique of masculinity, which is why it still feels relevant over two decades later.

5

‘The Sixth Sense’ (1999)

Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Some films use plot twists for shock value, but The Sixth Sense uses them with purpose and intention like no other. The film is one of M. Night Shyamalan’s most influential works and explores a kind of horror that feels disturbingly real to the audience. The story follows child psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), who takes on a troubled young patient, Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), a boy who claims he can see dead people. Malcolm approaches the situation as a case study in trauma, but slowly, Cole’s fears start to feel disturbingly real.

The dynamic between the two characters is the heart of the story and grounds the film in something deeply human while leaning into the supernatural. Cole’s encounters with spirits become increasingly unsettling, but Malcom encourages him to listen to them instead of resisting, and that completely reshapes the young boy’s understanding of his own ability. The plot twists in The Sixth Sense hold real, emotional meaning. Every little twist is building toward Cole’s eventual transformation, and this deliberate framing elevates the film from a straightforward psychological thriller to something that feels far more intimate.

4

‘The Game’ (1997)

Image via PolyGram Filmed Entertainment

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The Game, directed by Fincher, is best described as a ruthless mind trick that takes its audience for a ride that just gets wilder. The film follows a wealthy investment banker, Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas), who receives an unusual birthday gift from his estranged brother. He is invited to participate in a game that promises to change his life. At first, the whole thing feels like an elaborate prank, but soon enough, Nicholas begins to experience strange interruptions and coincidences that throw him into a constant state of paranoia. The protagonist and the audience are never quite sure of what is real and what is just part of the game, and this is where the film’s sense of tension comes from.

The Game escalates in a way that feels both methodical and overwhelming. Slowly, Nicholas is stripped of everything and everyone he once relied on because the game works on dismantling the very identity he built his life around. The twists here aren’t just narrative surprises. Instead, they serve as steps in breaking the protagonist down and forcing him into desperate situations. The Game is an immersive experience that invites the audience to actively experience how scary it feels to lose control. That’s exactly why it continues to outshine most modern thrillers even now.

3

‘The Handmaiden’ (2016)

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The Handmaiden is not for the weak, but every second of the film is a masterclass in control and deception. The story is set in Japanese-occupied Korea and follows young pickpocket, Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri), as she is hired to serve as a handmaiden to the secluded heiress, Lady Hideo (Kim Min-hee), as part of an elaborate scheme to steal her fortune. At first, the narrative unfolds like a typical thriller as Sook-hee carries out her duties. However, the deeper she is pulled into Hideo’s world, the more unstable the plan becomes. The story unfolds in three parts, and the film keeps revisiting key events from different perspectives to reveal new motives, hidden dynamics, and secrets that completely reframe everything the audience thought they knew.

This structure drives the story forward and forces the viewer to keep reassessing every little detail. The film’s plot twists are closely tied to its themes of performance and identity. The characters are constantly deceiving each other, but in doing so, they are actively constructing roles depending on whatever the situation demands. The Handmaiden’s visual aesthetic mirrors this narrative through mirrors and obstructed views. This is a film that keeps rewriting its own reality and demands the viewer’s full attention to drive the point home. By the end, the twists and turns start feeling inevitable rather than shocking, but that’s the entire point.

2

‘Gone Girl’ (2014)

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Another Fincher masterpiece on the list is Gone Girl. The film begins with a familiar missing-person mystery, but quickly takes a much more disturbing turn. The story follows Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), who becomes the prime suspect when his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) suddenly disappears on their anniversary. The whole thing turns into a media spectacle where the public has already decided that Nick is guilty. The narrative follows the events leading up to the disappearance through alternating timelines and Amy’s diary entries. Everything the audience sees paints the picture of a marriage that has slowly fallen apart.

It all makes perfect sense until Fincher shifts the perspective, and Amy’s perfectly constructed story begins to fall apart. Most thrillers save the big twist for the climax, but Gone Girl reveals Amy’s elaborate scheme halfway through. That shifts the story from a simple whodunit mystery to an intense psychological battle between two people. Gone Girl is the definition of a postmodern thriller, where the plot isn’t essentially leading to a resolution. The film keeps layering twists throughout its runtime and constantly keeps the audience on their toes. Nothing is ever as it seems in Gone Girl, and that uncertainty is the film’s driving force.

1

‘The Prestige’ (2006)

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The Prestige is Christopher Nolan at his absolute best. The film mirrors the structure of a magic trick and rewards the audience for paying attention every step of the way. The story follows rival magicians Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman), whose professional competition slowly spirals into a dangerous obsession where they will go to any lengths to outdo each other. The plot unfolds through a fragmented, non-linear structure. This constant shifting between times, perspectives, and even unreliable narrators makes it almost impossible to grasp what is real and what isn’t.

The film actively works to misdirect the audience and presents things as true, only to later pull the rug from under them. The twists in the film aren’t confined to just a single moment, but are a continuous part of the story. Each revelation adds more context to the narrative and pushes the characters into unsettling territory. The Prestige doesn’t just tell a story about illusion — it embodies the illusion — and that creates a viewing experience like no other.

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The Prestige

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Release Date

October 20, 2006

Runtime

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130 minutes

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