Few movie scares are engineered as perfectly as the Winkie’s Diner sequence in Mulholland Drive. A nervous man describes a recurring nightmare about something hiding behind the restaurant, then walks outside to prove that fear wrong. David Lynch stretches the approach until every footstep feels poisoned, then lets the figure appear for one savage instant. Twenty-five years later, the scene still lands like a punch.

That staying power helped Mulholland Drive survive a thriller showdown with the cast of Verity, and it walked away with the crown.

While promoting Verity, Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett were asked to choose between classic thrillers in a rapid-fire game of “This or That.”  The game opened with Fatal Attraction facing The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. The trio backed Adrian Lyne’s 1987 classic, with Hathaway pointing to the infamous bunny as instant movie shorthand.

Fatal Attraction then survived Basic Instinct, Cruel Intentions and Black Swan. Hathaway also revealed a neat Verity connection. She explained that the white button-down Michael Douglas wore in Fatal Attraction influenced Jeremy’s recurring look in the new film, tying one erotic thriller generation directly to another through costume design.

Then came the upset. The Talented Mr. Ripley finally knocked out Fatal Attraction and moved into the final round against Mulholland Drive. The decision was close, but Lynch’s dream logic, Hollywood rot and singular atmosphere took the crown. Against a murderer’s row of thriller royalty, Mulholland Drive still found a way to make the final cut.

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That choice feels especially fitting when the trio’s own psychological thriller arrives with plenty of secrets, seduction and unreliable truths.

Verity is now in theaters worldwide as of October 2, 2026. Amazon MGM originally dated the film for May 15 before moving it to the fall, with Michael Showalter directing from a screenplay by Nick Antosca. The movie is a psychological thriller centered on Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer hired to finish the bestselling series of incapacitated author Verity Crawford.

Lowen moves into the Crawford estate and begins combing through Verity’s notes, only to uncover an autobiographical manuscript filled with disturbing confessions. The discovery pulls her deeper into the family’s history while her growing attraction to Jeremy complicates every assumption she makes about truth, manipulation and motive.

Anne Hathaway plays Verity, Dakota Johnson takes on Lowen, and Josh Hartnett stars as Jeremy, with Ismael Cruz Córdova and Brady Wagner also in the cast. The film adapts Colleen Hoover’s 2018 bestseller, following earlier screen versions of her work including It Ends With Us.

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What do you think about Mulholland Drive winning their thriller roulette? Let us know in the comments.