Top 7 Jack Quaid Movies, Ranked

There’s a specific kind of actor who can smile at you for ninety minutes and make you feel completely safe — right up until the moment they shouldn’t. Jack Quaid has built a fascinating career on exactly that tension, moving between sweet and unsettling with a naturalness that’s easy to underestimate. At TV Hulk, we ranked these performances by how much they stuck with us after the credits rolled: the moments that replayed in our heads, the choices that felt surprising in retrospect, and the scenes where Quaid made us forget we were watching someone perform. From a franchise debut to a full-on genre pivot, here are his seven best.

7. Tragedy Girls (2017)

Jordan Welch doesn’t have the biggest role in this sharp little horror-comedy, but Quaid slots into the film’s social-media-obsessed world with an ease that feels completely natural. He plays Jordan as a guy who’s just oblivious enough to be funny and just sincere enough to be sympathetic. There’s a specific quality to how he reacts to the chaos around him, slightly too slow to catch on, which is its own kind of comic timing. Tragedy Girls has earned a devoted following among genre fans who appreciate its mean wit, and even in a supporting capacity, Quaid shows an instinct for dark comedy that would eventually find a much larger audience.

6. Logan Lucky (2017)

Fish Bang is a small part in a film full of big personalities, and that’s precisely what makes Quaid’s work here worth calling out. Steven Soderbergh’s NASCAR heist comedy stacks its ensemble with Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, and a bleached-blonde Daniel Craig. Quaid holds his own by playing Fish with a goofy, guileless energy that fits the film’s Southern-fried charm perfectly. There’s a looseness to how he carries himself in group scenes, like someone who genuinely belongs in the room rather than someone trying to keep up. Logan Lucky remains the most underrated entry in Soderbergh’s late-career run, and hardcore Quaid fans tend to already have this one bookmarked.

5. The Hunger Games (2012)

Marvel is not a sympathetic character, and Quaid doesn’t try to make him one. As the Career tribute from District 1, he plays the role with a cold, athletic confidence that reads as a credible threat even against the film’s enormous scale. The moment that lands hardest is his confrontation in the arena: there’s no hesitation in how Quaid plays it, no flicker of doubt, and Marvel registers as a real danger rather than a plot obstacle. Landing a role in one of the biggest YA blockbusters of that era, in his very first feature film, was a significant opening statement. Everything else on this list grew from that foundation.

4. Novocaine (2025)

Nathan Caine’s whole deal is that he cannot feel physical pain, and Quaid leans into that premise with a commitment that turns what could have been a gimmick into something worth watching. The film’s best sequences put Nathan through increasingly brutal punishment while Quaid plays the reactions not with invincibility but with bewildered determination. This is a guy figuring out his own body in real time, and that confusion makes him weirdly compelling to root for. It’s his most physically demanding work on screen, and the everyman quality he brings keeps Nathan grounded even as the action escalates into full chaos. A Critics Choice Super Awards nomination for Best Actor in an Action Movie confirmed that people were paying attention to what he was building here.

3. Companion (2025)

Josh is a character you have to watch twice, and that’s a genuine compliment. Quaid plays him as warm and attentive in the opening stretch, the kind of boyfriend who seems almost too considerate, and then the movie reveals its hand and every earlier scene suddenly means something different. What’s impressive is how precisely calibrated his performance is: nothing in the first act feels like a lie, but in retrospect it all reads as something else entirely. That kind of retroactive reframing is remarkably hard to pull off without tipping your hand too early. Companion earned Quaid a Critics Choice Super Awards nomination for Best Actor in a Sci-Fi/Fantasy Movie, and this wasn’t just a genre curiosity. It’s a real showcase for what he can do at the center of a film.

2. Oppenheimer (2023)

Richard Feynman barely appears in Christopher Nolan’s three-hour epic, but Quaid makes those minutes count. He plays the legendary physicist as someone who finds the whole Manhattan Project slightly absurd. There’s a bongo-playing, eyebrow-raised irreverence to Feynman that cuts right through the film’s enormous moral gravity, and Quaid deploys it with perfect timing. In a cast that includes Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., and Matt Damon, finding a distinct register is no small task. Quaid does it by playing Feynman as the one person in the room who seems to be enjoying himself. He was part of the ensemble that took home the SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

1. Scream (2022)

Richie Kirsch might be the trickiest role Jack Quaid has taken on, and it’s the one most people think of first when his name comes up. He plays Richie as the devoted, slightly dorky boyfriend, the safe one, the guy you’d want your friend to be dating, and he sustains that performance so convincingly that the third-act reveal lands as a genuine gut punch even for viewers who came in suspicious. The specific achievement is that Quaid never tips his hand. Watch the early scenes after you know the ending and his choices remain plausible, human, warm. That’s a much harder needle to thread than playing a villain from the start. The 2022 Scream had every reason to stumble and instead became a crowd-pleasing hit, with Richie’s reveal a big part of why audiences walked out buzzing. It’s the performance that introduced a lot of people to what Quaid is actually capable of.

Jack Quaid has spent the better part of a decade quietly building toward something, and 2025 feels like the year it clicked. His work as Hughie Campbell in The Boys and Brad Boimler in Star Trek: Lower Decks kept him in front of audiences across wildly different genres, which makes the range he’s now showing on the big screen feel less like a surprise and more like the natural next step.