Josh Hartnett Horror + Thriller Movies, Ranked

Josh Hartnett made a very strong debut as a horror actor, starring in both Halloween: H20 and The Faculty in 1998. He filmed both roles concurrently, but H20 was technically his first film. Since then he has starred in a number of other horror and thriller movies and TV shows. He’s also known for his portrayal of Ethan Chandler in the horror drama television series Penny Dreadful and starring with Aaron Paul and Kata Mara in one of the best Black Mirror episodes, “Beyond the Sea”.

This summer, Hartnett returns to horror in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap. He’ll play a serial killer and father who takes his daughter to a pop singer’s concert. He finds himself in trouble when he learns that the concert is a trap police have created to catch him.

Here are Josh Hartnett’s horror and thriller roles, ranked:

8. The Black Dahlia (2006)

Despite being directed by Brian De Palma, The Black Dahlia is a pretty forgettable mid-2000s neo-noir thriller. Hartnett plays Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert, an LAPD detective intent on solving the murder of Elizabeth Smart, known as the Black Dahlia. Originally the film was set to be directed by David Fincher, who ended up passing to helm 2007’s Zodiac, a horror movie about another unsolved case from decades ago. Zodiac ended up being the superior film in every way except for one: it lacked Hartnett’s involvement.

7. O (2001)

A modernized interpretation of Shakespeare’s Othello, O updates the setting of the tragedy from the Venetian army to a private high school’s elite basketball team. Hartnett plays Hugo (based on Othello‘s Iago), a clever and manipulative character who is outwardly friendly with O (the Othello character, played by Mekhi Phifer) but privately plots to ruin him with a false rape accusation involving Desi (based on Desdemona, played by Julia Stiles). While Hartnett is great in this role, the film’s attempt to be a sexy teen tragedy is awkward. People with nostalgia for the millennium era will enjoy this movie, but everyone else should just watch Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) again.

6. Ida Red (2021)

An action thriller heist movie, Ida Red stars Josh Hartnett as Wyatt Walker, the son of a crime boss (Melissa Leo) who comes to terms with her terminal diagnosis by plotting one last big heist. While Wyatt is a good natured bad boy, his brother Dallas (Frank Grillo) is a sadist who enjoys killing people. Both sons hope to please their mom by pulling off the heist, but it may come at the price of their freedom. This is a decent heist movie, but there are many better films in that genre.

5. I Come with the Rain (2009)

Hartnett headlined this dark neo-noir thriller as a Kline, a police detective who has been working as a private investigator ever since he killed a serial killer in the line of duty. Hired by a wealthy businessman to track down his son, Kline travels to the Philippines and then Hong Kong, but his past continues to haunt him. Fans of metaphorical neo-noir movies (think 1987’s Angel Heart), will like this. As a nice bonus, the film’s score is co-written by Radiohead.

4. Wicker Park (2004)

Wicker Park is a romantic thriller about an engaged man (Matt, played by Hartnett) who obsessively searches for a former lover who vanished suddenly years ago (Lisa, played by Diane Kruger). While Matt searches for Lisa, flashbacks show their relationship before Lisa’s disappearance. Matthew Lillard plays Matt’s best friend Luke, whose girlfriend is also entangled in the mysterious disappearance of Lisa. Wicker Park is a remake of L’Appartement (1996), a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

3. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

Hartnett made his movie debut as John Tate, the son of Laurie Strode, in this Halloween sequel that rebukes all of the franchise’s sequels except the first two films. Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) faked her own death decades ago and started a new life as Keri Tate. She is now the headmistress of a boarding school in California and relies on medication and alcohol to deal with her enduring nightmares about her brother, Michael Myers. As Halloween approaches, John is restless for some independence from his mother and makes a risky decision. While this Halloween sequel has the antagonist wearing one of the goofier Michael Myers masks, it’s a great teen horror movie with major Scream vibes. Also, the opening scene with Joseph Gordon-Levitt is pure 90s horror excellence.

See also: All the ‘Halloween’ Movies in Order, Separated by Timeline

2. 30 Days of Night (2007)

This vampire movie takes place in the sprawling isolation of Barrow, Alaska — a small town so far north that it experiences an entire month without sunlight each winter. When the sun sets on the first day of polar night, a group of vampires enter the town and slaughter everyone they can find. Sheriff Eben Oleson (Hartnett) and his police officer ex-wife (Melissa George) try to save as many townspeople as possible and evade the vampires until the sun rises. 30 Days of Night is a great horror movie. Hartnett and co-star Melissa George are compelling heroes, Ben Foster is creepy and unsettling as a harbinger character and Danny Huston is very scary as the vicious leader of the vampires.

1. The Faculty (1998)

The Faculty is a sci-fi horror movie about an eclectic group of Texas high school students who band together when they discover their school is ground zero for an invasion of parasitic aliens. Hartnett plays Zeke, an intelligent underachiever whose side hustle selling crushed up caffeine pills to his classmates comes in handy when the group discovers the dehydrating effects of his homemade stimulant kills the aliens. The Faculty is a cult classic that in the words of Hartnett’s character is, “guaranteed to jack you up.”

Further reading:

• The 60 Best 90s Horror Movies
• M. Night Shyamalan Movies
• Black Mirror Season 6, Ranked
• 27 Trivia Facts About ‘Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later’ (1998)
• ‘The Faculty’ (1998): 24 Facts And Trivia About The Teen Horror Cult Classic