The 20 Best Thrillers on Netflix Right Now

You’d think we’d all have enough stress, but we still love those heart-pounding thrillers – whether they’re quiet, intense or big action spectacles. Perhaps in real life, it’s things like “wow, look at that medical bill” that make our hearts beat faster, so a spy movie, a botched heist scenario, or even a dark kidnapping story allows us some vicarious (and relatively cheap) thrills. Here are some of the best movies available on Netflix, with a variety of films ranging from mildly suspenseful to very dark.

Prisoners (2013)

After some success with a couple of Canadian indie films, but before turning to sci-fi films like Arrival and Dune , Denis Villeneuve had a hit with Prisoners , a chilling kidnapping thriller. Hugh Jackman plays Keller Dover, whose daughter goes missing along with her friend after a Thanksgiving dinner with family friends (Viola Davis and Terence Howard). Detective Loki, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, is assigned to investigate the case, but his job becomes even more difficult when Keller decides to take matters into his own hands by taking the main suspect (who may or may not be guilty) and torturing him for information.

Spider Head (2022)

While Joseph Kosinski’s Netflix original Spiderhead didn’t make the splash of his mega-blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick , it does deliver a smart thriller with sci-fi overtones. Chris Hemsworth plays Steve Abnesty, who oversees a prison program in which prisoners receive less supervision and shorter sentences in exchange for being test subjects for various pharmaceutical drugs. Supposedly, this is the project of some benevolent geniuses who simply want to improve humanity, but you may not be surprised to learn (if you’ve ever lived in our world) that a pharmaceutical conglomerate has much more to do with it. The experiments become increasingly manipulative and even deadly, thanks to strong performances from Miles Teller and Jurnee Smollett as two prison inmates.

I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (2017)

When nurse Ruth (the superb Melanie Lynskey) comes home to find she’s been robbed, she and her neighbor (Elijah Wood) set out to reclaim her belongings and exact revenge in the most incompetent way possible. As a vigilante farce, it almost reaches Coen Brothers levels of absurdity, but hits many of these points while simultaneously challenging and confirming our worst instincts about our fellow human beings.

Pale Blue Eye (2022)

This dark mystery delivers a gripping (and twisty) tale that plays fast and loose with history even as it creates a cold and brooding atmosphere. Christian Bale plays a retired and troubled detective who teams up with a young West Point cadet you may have heard of: his name is Edgar Allen Poe, and he’s played here by Harry Melling, and he’s great. The two team up to solve a case involving dead students and creepy occult symbols.

Cam (2018)

Director Daniel Goldhaber (upcoming film How to Blow Up a Pipeline ) teamed with writer Isa Mazzei, who based the Black Mirror -style story in part on her own memoir. Madeline Brewer ( Orange is the New Black ) plays online sex worker Alice Ackerman, aka Lola_Lola, who one night discovers that there is another Lola – a webcam girl identical to Alice in appearance and general vibe, but whose willingness going further puts her at a dead end. ahead of the audience. It’s a horror film that talks a lot about the dehumanization of sex workers, with a great central performance from Brewer.

Berlin Syndrome (2017)

Travel broadens your horizons and horizons—unless you’re American and starring in a thriller, in which case you should definitely stay home. Teresa Palmer plays Claire, a Brisbane photographer on a trip to Berlin who meets and falls in love (at least for one night) with a local named Andy, played by Max Riemelt. After a night spent together, the kind and always calm Andy doesn’t want to let her go.

Guilty (2021)

It doesn’t quite live up to the standards of the Danish original, but this 2018 American remake of the film is still great. Director Antoine Fuqua is joined by screenwriter Nic Pizzolatto ( True Detective ) in the film starring Jake Gyllenhaal as Joe Baylor, an LAPD officer who is arrested by a 911 dispatcher for initially unspecified errors in judgment. He receives a call from a panicked woman who forces him to make several dramatic decisions, not all of them good. An exercise in pure tension, the film’s content rests largely on Gyllenhaal’s shoulders, although a few big names appear via voiceover.

Nocturnal Animals (2016)

While not without its controversies (in particular, the film’s beginning and ending are deliberately provocative), it is certainly one of the most gripping thrillers of the last decade, featuring three interconnected narratives: first, Amy Adams is the owner of a high-end art gallery with a personal Life isn’t going well when her ex-husband (Jake Gyllenhaal) sends her a copy of his new novel. From here we are taken into the narrative of the novel itself, which we quickly learn is based on a true story of a couple when they were still married. Each story conveys information to the others as we gradually uncover the violent pasts of the film’s main characters.

Shimmering Lake (2017)

This crime drama begins on Friday with Andy (Rainn Wilson) hiding in his basement while his wife apprehends his brother Zeke (Benjamin Walker), who is also the sheriff. Andy, who escaped with the bag of money, will be dead before the end of the day, but here we go backwards: writer-director Oren Uziel’s narration then takes us to Thursday, and then to each previous day until we understand how everyone ended up where they are There is.

Heat (1995)

Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) plans one last big heist before retiring in Michael Mann’s classic, which pits De Niro against Al Pacino as LAPD Lt. Vincent Hanna. The game of cat and mouse between two men equal in cunning, albeit on opposite sides of the law, elevates the film well above the more typical crime thriller.

Devil’s Own (1997)

The Devil’s Own is not a film that does a half-decent job of dealing with the conflicts surrounding Northern Ireland during the Troubles. But the quiet tension between Harrison Ford’s Irish-American cop and the IRA sympathizer (Brad Pitt) he unknowingly welcomes into his home is compelling enough to offset the somewhat silly plot. Pitt’s character is in New York to buy a gun, and Ford’s character will have to stop him, although his own sympathies are divided.

Gerald’s Game (2017)

Set entirely in an isolated cabin in the woods, this Stephen King adaptation features one immobilized character most of the time. However, director Mike Flanagan manages to create a tense and suspenseful story about a married woman (Carla Gugino) who finds herself trapped in a remote cabin when her husband, played by Bruce Greenwood, dies after handcuffing her to a bed. Delirious, she is forced to face not only her past trauma, but also a hungry dog ​​that constantly sniffs her surroundings.

Lou (2022)

Lou (Allison Janney) is a quiet loner on Orcas Island in 1986; she is also Hannah’s (Jurnee Smollett) mistress. Lou has just arrived to tell Hannah that rent is due when she learns that Hannah’s daughter has been kidnapped by the girl’s father, a former Green Beret and war criminal. Luckily for Hannah, Lou has a few secrets about her past, much like John Wick, making her an unexpectedly good ally in the fight against her kidnapper.

Luther: Fallen Sun (2023)

Continuing the British crime series starring Idris Elba, but also a film that you can watch on its own, the film follows disgraced, jailed former DCI John Luther as he taunts a serial killer (Andy Serkis) who, as he is almost sure, it can only be stopped. if Luther breaks out of prison and tracks him down. If you’ve watched the series, this is an important sequel. If not, now is the time to find out why Elba does a morally gray detective better than anyone else, maybe ever.

Captain Phillips (2013)

We don’t often see Tom Hanks in a proper thriller, but he impresses in this biopic about Rich Phillips and the 21st century pirates who hijacked his container ship from Oman. The result is an incredibly tense two hours, highlighted by an Academy Award-nominated performance from Barkhad Abdi as the pirate leader. Pirates of the Caribbean, it’s not.

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Quentin Tarantino immediately delivered this unforgettable crime drama, his feature debut. The script is pure noir: a diamond heist goes wrong for a group of eight jewel thieves. Thanks to the non-linear storytelling that Tarantino used to even greater effect in Pulp Fiction , we watch the thieves turn on each other as the tension builds. The incredibly memorable sequence involving the ear is just one of the scenes that made this film an instant indie classic.

Emily the Criminal (2022)

Emily (Aubrey Plaza) is a very relatable character: she went to an expensive school and found herself saddled with a mountain of debt. A relatively minor criminal record prevented her from finding a well-paying job. When presented with the opportunity to learn all about credit card fraud, the potential rewards are too good to pass up—that’s about when things go wrong and turn violent. And then we will find out exactly what Emily is capable of. Plaza is so great here as the anti-hero that it’s hard not to root for her.

Paramedic (2020)

Mario Casas plays here Angel, the paramedic of the title – not really the best guy who takes souvenirs from the people he helps, either to sell or keep. An accident causes him to lose the use of his legs, and his confusion and rage do not make him a better person, but instead allow him to be thrown into a world that he blames for almost everything. The girl who left him is especially dangerous. It’s a standard horror/thriller setup, but Casas makes an impressively convincing transformation from run-of-the-mill jerk to full-on monster.

Gray Man (2022)

The Russo brothers took a break from the Avengers films for another blockbuster – costing around $200 million – but they didn’t decide to make the quiet indie drama. Ryan Gosling plays spy Sierra Six, whose latest mission is to take down another agent. He’s soon on the run from a corrupt agency boss (played by Regé-Jean Page) and is aided and thwarted by a supporting cast including Billy Bob Thornton, Ana de Armas, Chris Evans and Alfre Woodard. Sierra Six doesn’t make much of an impression as a character, but the Russos know how to create an action movie, and in this film the action starts right from the start and never slows down.

I Care a Lot (2020)

Rosamund Pike’s Marla Grayson is possibly the worst character on this list, and that’s definitely saying a lot. She’s a con artist who specializes in persuading the courts to grant her guardianship over elderly people she says can’t take care of themselves. She then drains their bank accounts at her leisure. All is going well (for her) until she hooks up with the wrong senior: in this case, Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest), who looks like a perfect score. It turns out she’s the mother of a scary Russian gangster (Peter Dinklage), and things escalate from there. The tone ranges from satirical to comedic, but it’s both tense and satisfying to see the screws turn against Marla.