Sightlines · a viewing thread

Killers Among Us

A run of films that put a murderer inside ordinary life (the beloved uncle, the charming documentary subject, the polite clerk, the hitchhiker, the man who lives next door) and watch these when you want to see nine decades of cinema working out what it means to live alongside one, from the city hunting a child-killer in M to the rain-soaked sins of Se7en.

Two crowd-favourite thrillers are the way in, backed by film-school canon from Lang, Hitchcock, Welles and Chaplin and a trail of cult objects (Henry, Maniac, Man Bites Dog) that are hard to sit through; the classics are easy watches, but the 80s and 90s deep cuts are deliberately ugly and best saved for when you're ready.

• Se7en (1995)
• The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
• M (1931)
• Dirty Harry (1971)
• Rope (1948)
• Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
• Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
• Frenzy (1972)
• The Stranger (1946)
• Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
• Klute (1971)
• The Vanishing (1988)
• Targets (1968)
• The Hitcher (1986)
• Man Bites Dog (1992)
• Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)
• Maniac (1980)