Summer is here and the heat won’t be far behind. But a good thriller is always in season, no matter what the weather is like. If you need a heart-pounding chill or a shot of adrenaline, these are the movies that will get the blood pumping and have you sitting on the edge of your seat. And it’s obviously much better to experience these thrills vicariously than having to live through the experience yourself.
Netflix has a very good library of thrillers to choose from, primarily because it’s not restricted only to Netflix originals. Films from other studios, like Missing and Psycho, carry this category, although there are a handful of Netflix original thrillers that have earned their place as well. If you’re looking for the best thrillers on Netflix right now, then you’ve come to the right place. But we still suggest watching some of these films with the lights on.
We’ve also rounded up the best thrillers on Amazon Prime Video and the best thrillers on Hulu if Netflix doesn’t have what you’re looking for.
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Missing2023 - Psycho1960
- The Pale Blue Eye2022
- The Rental2020
Could you solve a mystery from the safety of your computer? That’s the challenge facing Grace Allen (Storm Reid) in Missing when her mother, Grace Allen (Nia Long), and her new boyfriend, Kevin (Ken Leung), disappear during their vacation to Columbia. While scrambling for answers, Grace finds evidence that Kevin may have hidden some suspicious details about his past.
With Grace stuck in the U.S., she has to turn to a man named Javier (Joaquim de Almeida) to act as her proxy in Columbia. But there’s only so much Grace can do before she has to head into danger herself.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is essentially two thrillers in one. The first part of the film follows Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a woman who makes a very serious mistake in the name of love. Marion is so worried that she will be discovered that her justifiable paranoia captures the attention of a cop. But once Marion meets Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), events take a very sinister turn.
Soon after, Marion’s sister, Lila (Vera Miles), and Marion’s lover, Sam Loomis (John Gavin), travel to the Bates Motel to find Marion and to uncover the truth about what happened to her. Norman holds all of the answers, even if he doesn’t realize it. Netflix subscribers only have until the end of June to enjoy this classic.
Given its extremely short stay in theaters in late 2022, you probably missed seeing The Pale Blue Eye when it was on the big screen. But the cast is too good for this movie to simply disappear among the other streaming thrillers. Christian Bale headlines the film as Augustus Landor, a former detective who has fallen on hard times following the death of his wife.
When Leroy Fry (Steven Maier), a cadet at West Point, is found ritualistically murdered, Landor is coaxed out of retirement to solve the mystery. But Landor can’t do it alone, which is why he turns to one of Fry’s classmates to act as his partner on the case: Cadet Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling).
A vacation turns ugly in The Rental when Charlie (Dan Stevens) and Mina (Sheila Vand) discover a hidden camera in their rental home that may have captured them having sex. Their biggest concern is that Charlie’s wife, Michelle (Alison Brie), and Charlie’s brother/Mina’s boyfriend, Josh (Jeremy Allen White), will find out about their infidelity.
When Charlie and Mina confront the property’s caretaker, Taylor (Toby Huss), events quickly escalate to violence. But Taylor’s death is more than it seems, and the bonds between the two couples will be tested as they decide how to proceed.
It’s very appropriate that Michael Fassbender’s character in The Snowman is a detective named Harry Hole, because his life is in a deep hole when the story opens. Harry has broken up with the woman he loves, Rakel Fauke (Charlotte Gainsbourg), while struggling with his sobriety. Unfortunately for Harry, a serial killer has already started sending him enigmatic messages.
Harry’s new partner, Katrine Bratt (Silo‘s Rebecca Ferguson), is convinced that the killer is somehow linked to a case that was once investigated by Gert Rafto (Val Kilmer), an alcoholic former detective who was very much like Harry himself. But as the mystery intensifies, Harry realizes that Katrine has a personal connection that fuels her obsession with the case.
Written and directed by S. Craig Zahler, Dragged Across Concrete boasts an ensemble cast featuring Mel Gibson, Vince Vaughn, Don Johnson, and many other players. The story focuses on police officers Brett Ridgeman and Anthony Lurasetti (Gibson and Vaughn), partners expelled from the force after video goes viral of them viciously beating a drug dealer.
Over on the other side of town, recent parolee Henry (Tory Kittles) and childhood friend “Biscuit” (Michael Jai White) get into cahoots with a professional thief (played by Thomas Krestchmann), who just so happens to be targeted by the cash-hungry Brett and Anthony. A riveting crime epic from start to finish, Dragged Across Concrete delivers one propulsive thrill after the next.
I See You is the kind of thriller that presents multiple twists and turns, keeping viewers griveted and guessing throughout its entire runtime. Directed by Adam Randall, this slow-burning tale stars Jon Tenney as Detective Greg Harper. Tasked with investigating a missing person’s case, evidence of the crime starts piling up that points toward a series of abductions that took place nearly 15 years before.
But as Harper’s case continues to unfold, his grip on reality weakens, as strange events begin taking place in his home. You’ll start this film thinking one thing, only to be totally redirected multiple times throughout. And thanks to Randall’s assured direction, this is a film you won’t soon forget about.
Adapted from a Stephen King short story, Secret Window stars Johnny Depp as Mort Rainey, a down-on-his-luck mystery writer authoring another book in a rural homestead. One day, a mysterious man named John Shooter (John Turturro) arrives at Mort’s doorstep, claiming Rainey plagiarized one of Shooter’s own stories.
Denying the claim, Mort’s own life then takes a harrowing dive down a rabbit hole of horrors as Shooter begins terrorizing the hapless writer, whom he believes is reaping rewards from his intellectual property. A top-notch thriller with a compelling cast and story, Secret Window is one of the better King adaptations out there, and perhaps one of the most underrated, too.
A sequel to 47 Meters Down (2017), 47 Meters Down: Uncaged brings a whole new cast of characters to the mix, but keeps the threat of shark bite death alive. When four teenagers dive down to the remains of a sunken Mayan city, what begins as a life-changing discovery quickly becomes a harrowing fight for survival when the group discovers that the ancient place is a magnet for man-eating sharks.
While not straying too far from classic “shark movie” tropes, Uncaged instead ups the ante in the shocks department, delivering plenty of bone-chilling sequences that will have us all thinking twice about taking a plunge into any body of water.
Adapted from the true-crime novel of the same name, The Good Nurse stars Jessica Chastain as Amy Loughren, a single mother and ICU nurse. When a series of untimely patient deaths start cropping up around the hospital, Amy begins to suspect that new hire Charles Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) is the man responsible. Both Chastain and Redmayne are the kind of talents we expect greatness from, and truly, both actors go out of their way to foster a sort of surreal pathos for their characters, especially the latter. It’s a solid thriller and a tragic and haunting reminder that we don’t have to dig into fiction to tell some of the most grueling stories imaginable.
If you’re in the mood for something a little more on the action-heavy side, director Anna Foerster’s Lou will likely satiate. It stars Allison Janney as the titular protagonist, a reclusive woman living on Orcas Island, Washington. When a wicked storm threatens the Pacific Northwest, a single mother named Hannah (Jurnee Smollet) begs Lou for help when her young daughter is kidnapped by a vicious ex-pat (Logan Marshall-Green). But as the two women set off on their rescue mission, Hannah soon learns that there’s far more to Lou than meets the eye. A grim gut-punch of an action-thriller, Lou is a big win for the genre.
In director Matt Reilly’s Interceptor, Elsa Pataky stars as Captain JJ Collins, the spearhead of an isolated nuclear missile facility smack-dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. When the weapons hub falls under attack from enemy forces led by a former U.S. intelligence operative (Luke Bracey), Collins must use her military background and quick ingenuity to thwart the evildoers before they overrun the base. Interceptor is a decent example of a Netflix-backed action-thriller, driven by a kinetic pace that hits all the beats but misses here and there. A refreshing change of pace is seeing a woman in a role that would normally be helmed by Bruce Willis, and Pataky tackles her heroine character with muscle and grace.
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