Top 5 Mason Thames Movies, Ranked

Mason Thames is barely out of his teens and he’s already carried a horror blockbuster, stepped into one of animation’s most beloved franchises, and proven he can do it without leaning on the same tricks twice. That kind of range in such a short window is rare. At TV Hulk, we ranked these performances by how convincing and emotionally present Thames is in each role — the moments where you forget you’re watching a young actor figure things out and just believe him completely. Five films, five completely different demands, and he’s met most of them head-on.

5. Monster Summer (2024)

Noah Reed is the scrappy heart of this one, a kid trying to make sense of something genuinely strange happening in his small town while the adults around him, including a gruff, weathered Mel Gibson, aren’t exactly listening. Thames plays Noah with the kind of wide-eyed determination that fits the movie’s Amblin-flavored creature-feature energy perfectly. There’s a scene where Noah has to convince skeptical adults that what he saw was real, and Thames plays the frustration and desperation without ever tipping into melodrama. Monster Summer didn’t make a huge splash at the box office, but it showed Thames could anchor a coming-of-age adventure outside the horror lane that first made people pay attention to him.

4. Regretting You (2025)

Stepping into a Colleen Hoover adaptation is a completely different challenge than anything else on this list, and Thames commits to it fully as Miller Adams, a teenager navigating first love with all the messy emotional stakes that genre demands. Where horror lets an actor externalize fear, romantic drama asks for something quieter and more exposed, and Thames finds that register. There’s a scene where Miller tries to hold himself together during a conversation that’s clearly breaking him; he keeps his voice steady while everything else in his face gives him away, and that restraint is what brings real weight to a film that could easily have felt lightweight.

3. The Black Phone 2 (2025)

Coming back to Finney Blake after the first film’s massive success means Thames is no longer the unknown kid audiences are discovering in real time. He’s the lead now, with all the expectations that come with it, and he handles that shift well. Finney in the sequel carries the trauma of what happened in that basement in a way that feels earned rather than performed; Thames keeps it grounded and real rather than leaning into anything showy or overwrought. Returning to a beloved character is always a risk, but he makes Finney’s evolution feel natural rather than forced.

2. How to Train Your Dragon (2025)

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III is one of the most beloved characters in animated history, and stepping into that role for a live-action adaptation is an enormous amount of pressure for any actor, let alone one still building their filmography. Thames plays Hiccup with the right mix of awkward sincerity and quiet courage; he’s not trying to do a Jay Baruchel impression, he’s finding the emotional core of the character and rebuilding it from the ground up. The scene where Hiccup first makes real contact with Toothless is the film’s key emotional beat, and Thames plays it with a stillness that leaves every second of it hard-won. His Saturn Award nomination for the role signals that genre fans felt he delivered on the franchise’s legacy.

1. The Black Phone (2021)

Finney Blake spends most of this film alone in a basement, and Mason Thames has to carry every second of that isolation convincingly. He does. The performance works because Thames never plays Finney as a victim waiting to be rescued; even in the film’s most terrifying moments, there’s a stubborn, quiet defiance in the way he holds himself, the way he listens to the voices on that disconnected phone with concentration rather than panic. The scene where Finney finally fights back is the movie’s payoff, and it lands because Thames has spent the entire runtime building toward it without telegraphing it. That slow build is what put his name in franchise conversations and made audiences show up in the first place.

Thames is still in the early chapters of what looks like a remarkably interesting career. What’s already clear is that he gravitates toward characters who are scared but not defeated, and he plays that specific emotional space better than most actors twice his age. The baseline he’s already set is high, and he hasn’t peaked yet.