The best thrillers to watch on Netflix

What is a thriller, anyway?

It’s a style that lacks the everyday signifiers that one thing like horror, comedy, or romance may, however it whenever you really feel it. Thrillers are thrilling — it’s proper there within the identify — whether or not they come from the world of crime, sci-fi, or one thing else completely.

We’ve already put collectively an inventory of the best thrillers you may watch at dwelling, however right here’s the best of the best on Netflix. For extra of the best films on Netflix, try our picks for the best horror films, comedy films, and motion films the platform has to provide.

Apostle

Image: Netflix

This one leans extra into the horror aspect of issues than many of the thrillers on this checklist, however earlier than The Raid director Gareth Evans goes full Grand Guignol within the movie’s latter half, he builds up a mesmerizing interval thriller a few man who’s in approach over his head in a spot the place he doesn’t belong. Dan Stevens stars as Thomas, a traumatized and previously institutionalized man who initially seems to be enjoying out a variation on Robin Hardy’s 1973 basic The Wicker Man. The yr is 1905, and Thomas is making an attempt to infiltrate a distant Welsh island run by an obscure cult, which seems to have kidnapped his sister. He doesn’t know a lot about their beliefs, however he has to pose as one in every of them and examine the island whereas maintaining his personal appreciable demons at bay simply lengthy sufficient to save his sister’s life. And the extra he learns in regards to the place the place he’s landed, the darker and eerier the movie will get. This one’s excellent Halloween-month viewing: bloody as hell and startling proper up to the ultimate shot. But it’s additionally a crackerjack investigative thriller, an unraveling grim thriller that most likely would have been higher left unsolved. —Tasha Robinson

Athena

Image: Netflix

It’s exhausting to consider a scene extra singularly electrifying and unimaginable than the one which opens Athena. This film, a few police raid on a fictional French neighborhood, opens with a bunch of teenagers raiding a police station, beginning a small riot, and stealing the cops’ weapons, and it solely grows larger and extra intense from there. Technically the scene is a oner, however somewhat than showy, the scene’s lack of seen cuts looks like a necessity, as if a single break from this one digicam angle that’s deftly following the group’s chief may trigger us to miss one thing crucial. Almost as spectacular as this singe scene is the truth that Athena is in a position to maintain this similar momentum and nervy, livid power all through all the film because the police and the rebels conflict with the identical operatic depth as a Greek epic. —Austen Goslin

Casino Royale

Image: Sony Pictures

Every James Bond film is a time capsule of when it was made. For Casino Royale (technically the third adaptation of Ian Fleming’s first James Bond ebook, however the first severe one), additionally it is a glimpse again in the beginning of a brand new period for the long-lasting character.

Daniel Craig’s James Bond is in contrast to any of the others that got here earlier than him. He’s drained and worn down, cynical and bitter, however Craig’s distinctive display screen presence means the character by no means loses his signature appeal. Perhaps crucial ingredient of Craig as Bond is his physicality — he’s an underrated display screen fighter who did quite a lot of of his personal stunts all through the franchise, and Bond as a fighter has by no means appeared fairly so good as in his films.

Craig shouldn’t be the one cause to like Casino Royale — Mads Mikkelsen was mainly created in a lab to play a Bond villain, and Jeffrey Wright’s Felix Leiter has electrical buddy chemistry with Craig’s Bond. The film revitalized a stale franchise and was the primary of many stellar entries with Craig within the 007 moniker. —Pete Volk

Collateral

Image: Paramount Pictures/DreamWorks Pictures

In some ways, Collateral is a slasher film, and Tom Cruise is at his absolute scariest in it.

In Collateral, Cruise is Vincent, a hitman with a sequence of murders to commit on one Los Angeles night time. Jamie Foxx is Max, a cab driver who drew the unfortunate straw of being Vincent’s unwitting confederate for the night time. Michael Mann’s digicam evokes the sensation of LA at night time, stuffed with cool tones towards town lights. Foxx is pitch-perfect as a person caught in a state of affairs he doesn’t need to be in, and whose encounter with a person who could as nicely be the satan himself helps him notice he’s not residing the life he needs to. But it’s Cruise that turns this into the horrifying thriller it’s.

Cruise’s Vincent is chilly and calculating, but in addition effortlessly charming. He’s ready to put on totally different masks to meet the conditions of the night time, however by no means loses his ruthlessness. Mann’s talent with constructing pressure each in his digicam placement and music selections heightens this environment, main to a showstopping finale straight out of a extra classical slasher. —PV

Croupier

Image: Channel Four Films

Clive Owen has made a complete movie profession out of being dapper, suave, smug, and only a wee bit condescending — mainly being a James Bond sort with out ever truly getting to play Bond. But he’s by no means been all the above issues higher or extra intently than within the underseen 1998 gem Croupier, a criminal offense thriller that sees Owen overseeing a desk at a small on line casino, and mentally narrating his personal expertise as he coldly, politely judges everybody round him. That consists of his fellow croupiers, who all appear to be on the take or on the make, breaking the on line casino’s guidelines and searching for an edge. Eventually, he’s drawn into an advanced heist scheme that proves he isn’t fairly as answerable for the world as he imagines, however a lot of Croupier isn’t in regards to the prison plot — it’s about all the hassle that goes into what looks like easy cool. —TR

Den of Thieves

Image: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment

Do you want financial institution theft crime thrillers like Heat? Director Christan Gudegast’s function debut is best described as “dirtbag Heat.” If that seems like your jam you’re in for a good time.

Gerard Butler performs a Pepto Bismol-chugging soiled cop who’s chasing a group of ex-military financial institution robbers, led by Pablo Schreiber and together with O’Shea Jackson Jr. and 50 Cent. The group of extremely expert criminals are hoping to pull off their largest job but: robbing the Federal Reserve.

It’s received an important rating from former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Cliff Martinez (I typically use it for background music whereas I write and edit), terrifically sleazy performances from the ensemble solid, and electrifying motion sequences when the heists happen. —PV

Eyes Wide Shut

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures

Stanley Kubrick’s final movie, and one in every of his most exacting, exact, and claustrophobic. Eyes Wide Shut follows a younger physician named Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) who slowly drifts into the chaos of New York’s highest and most secretive society after fears that his spouse, performed by Nicole Kidman, is falling out of affection with him. But as Bill glimpses increased into the clouds of the actually highly effective individuals on the planet, he additionally slips farther from his spouse, as if understanding the key movers of the world and understanding the true depths of a single particular person’s coronary heart are each not possible desires. That the film was filmed amidst the fraying of Kidman and Cruise’s real-life marriage simply provides one other layer to Kubrick’s fascinating, dreamlike, and eerily stunning labyrinth of emotions and thriller. —AG

The Hateful Eight

Photo: Andrew Cooper/The Weinstein Company

Quentin Tarantino’s shaggy Western bottle episode of a film has its notable flaws, which have been debated advert infinitum. It could come down to a easy case of “Tarantino is not for all tastes, particularly for people who don’t enjoy gleeful pile-on violence against women, or watching a white director stage provocative, deliberately button-pushing racial conflict.” All of which is completely respectable. (The similar individuals who don’t get pleasure from these issues don’t a lot get pleasure from Tarantino’s tone-deaf defenses of them, both.) But leaving apart how precisely a given viewer responds to Tarantino’s lifelong deliberate, aware transgressiveness, it’s exhausting to deny that The Hateful Eight is a startlingly lush and exquisite film, filled with indelible performances and large, room-filling pressure. The contrivance that places eight violent individuals with secret connections right into a distant one-room cabin collectively in the course of an impassible blizzard is fastidiously staged, and so is the sequence of face-offs and showdowns that inevitably leaves blood on the ground. It’s a few of Tarantino’s most classic-Hollywood filmmaking, the profanity and gore apart: The characters’ personalities and passions shine by means of in each verbal sparring session, and the strain builds steadily up to the blowout ending. The all-star solid — Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Bruce Dern — is an amazing overflow of expertise in a single tight, taut house, and Tarantino makes probably the most of it. —TR

Hell or High Water

Image: Lionsgate

In latest years, Taylor Sheridan has made fairly the identify for himself within the tv Westerns, creating the extraordinarily well-liked Yellowstone and its spinoff prequel 1883. But earlier than all that, he wrote the superb neo-Western crime thriller Hell or High Water.

Nominated for 4 Oscars (together with Best Picture and for Sheridan’s screenplay), the film follows two bank-robbing brothers and the Texas Rangers despatched to hunt them down. The brothers, performed with completely antagonistic sibling chemistry by Chris Pine and Ben Foster, are excellent foils for one another — Pine’s Toby is calm and picked up, whereas Foster’s Tanner is uncontrolled (an ideal match for Foster’s pure depth). Jeff Bridges (nominated for an Oscar for this) and the superb Gil Birmingham (who reunited with Sheridan on Yellowstone and was additionally just lately one of many fundamental solid members in Under the Banner of Heaven) co-star because the growing older Texas Rangers. Keep your eyes peeled for a short look by future Prey star Amber Midthunder, too. —PV

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Image: Piki Films

Sorry, Thor: Ragnarok, Hunt for the Wilderpeople continues to be Taika Waititi’s best and funniest movie. It sprawls throughout a whole lot of genres — it’s arguably a household drama, a coming-of-age movie, or only a straight-up comedy. But the second act is pure thriller, as a assured orphan (Julian Dennison, who went on to be one of many best components of Deadpool 2) and his cranky foster father (Sam Neill) wind up on the run within the New Zealand bush. And the third act gins up some surprisingly explosive motion for a movie that begins out with such wry humor. This movie is among the huge causes Waititi received the Marvel Cinematic Universe nod within the first place — it’s a bizarre, foolish, extremely particular character piece that mixes pressure and battle with actual hilarity. (Note Waititi’s cameo as a preacher who fumbles badly over metaphors about life and the afterlife.) It’s the uncommon household movie that’s truly nice viewing for all ages, whether or not they’re in it for the heartwarming sincerity, the Tupac jokes, or simply to see Waititi’s longtime comedy associate (and Our Flag Means Death romantic associate) Rhys Darby stand up to some actually goofy shit. —TR

Lost Bullet

Image: Netflix

This French crime thriller executes a easy premise to absolute perfection. Lino (former stunt man Alban Lenoir) is an skilled mechanic compelled to work for soiled cops. When he’s framed for a homicide he didn’t commit, he has to discover the one factor that may show his innocence: a misplaced bullet in a lacking automobile. With high-octane motion sequences and nice automobile stunts, it is a 92-minute thrill journey by means of and thru. —PV

Mersal

Image: Sri Thenandal Films

This one’s a revenge story in regards to the cruelties of for-profit well being care. It options an unforgettable efficiency from one of many world’s most charismatic main males in Vijay (enjoying a number of characters, and I’ll go away it at that), colourful dance sequences, and a searing (and all-too-relevant) political message. —PV

Monster

Image: Media 8 Entertainment

When Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins made her big-screen debut with Monster in 2003, the cultural dialog revolved a lot round Charlize Theron’s transformation for the function (and her Best Actress Oscar win for it) that it virtually drowned out the aspect chatter about how it is a actually terrific film. Yes, it’s nonetheless in some way thought-about “brave” for a reasonably woman to de-glam herself for a film and threat wanting unattractive on display screen, however Monster actually isn’t about Theron daring to be unappealing. It’s rather more in regards to the queasy locations self-justification can lead, particularly when a longtime sufferer finds a approach to make different individuals the victims as an alternative. We’re in the course of a bizarre, bizarre cultural place round serial killers proper now, with true-crime explorations of the world’s Jeffrey Dahmers and John Wayne Gacys cropping up throughout streaming companies, however whereas Monster finds the human aspect of real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos, Jenkins doesn’t shrink back from the methods she turns misogynistic violence into an excuse to justify a way of life of premeditated homicide. It’s a startling, graphically violent, deeply uncomfortable story, nevertheless it’s advised compellingly and in methods designed to get audiences arguing. And Theron earns that Oscar by means of complexity and verve, not simply by means of transformational make-up. —TR

The Night Comes for Us

Photo: Eriekn Juragan/Netflix

Timo Tjahjanto is tasked with the upcoming remake of the smash zombie hit Train to Busan, and his gnarly martial arts crime thriller The Night Comes for Us is a superb showcase for why he’s exactly the correct man for the job. Brutal and visceral, the film options unforgettable characters (I’m nonetheless ready on a derivative centered on Julie Estelle’s The Operator), unimaginable martial arts (it doesn’t get higher than Iko Uwais vs. Joe Taslim), and a depraved humorousness. —PV