The thriller genre is consistently entertaining, and Amazon Prime Video has some of the most compelling movies in this department. Prime Video’s library is sure to cater to fans of the genre, boasting all-time classics and contemporary hits alike. The addition of last month’s Academy Award-winning Oppenheimer will likely keep the spotlight, but July includes highly acclaimed older titles like No Country for Old Men and Taxi Driver.
Audiences can be overwhelmed by choice, so this monthly-updated guide focuses on the best thriller movies on Prime Video.
Amazon Prime may have a robust catalog, but it doesn’t have everything. Luckily, we’ve also curated roundups of the best thrillers on Netflix and the best thrillers on Hulu.
Joel and Ethan Coen, otherwise known as the Coen Brothers, are the most revered directing duos in Hollywood, and No Country for Old Men is among their finest works. The crime thriller follows a trio of characters, opening with Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin). The Vietnam veteran finds a massive sum of money that puts him in the crosshairs of ruthless hitman Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem).
Meanwhile, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) follows the trail of what becomes a bloody crime spree. No Country for Old Men was critically acclaimed for its take on the Western genre, subverting narrative tropes and using the modern setting to its advantage. Bardem’s role holds up as the standout performance, portraying one of the most unnerving movie villains to date.
Director Martin Scorsese is a legacy name in the industry, and Taxi Driver is one of his early highlights. This grim thriller revolves around Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), a Vietnam War veteran in a dangerously unstable mental state.
Travis works nights as a taxi driver, but the more he sees his idea of moral degradation through the streets of New York City, the more emboldened he becomes to take violent action. Taxi Driver earned universal praise for how it blended the neo-noir genre with psychological thrillers. The movie’s intense POV-driven plot makes his deteriorating mental state feel unsettling and intimate, resulting in one of the best character studies in movie history.
The Beekeeper has been one of the most surprising successes in the thriller genre. Directed by David Ayer, the story sees former “Beekeeper” operative Adam Clay (Jason Statham) go on a gruesome killing streak.
When his compassionate landlady and retired school teacher Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad) dies by suicide after being caught in a phishing scam, Adam decides to hunt down the perpetrators. The Beekeeper earned a moderately positive critical reception for embracing its over-the-top nature. The movie didn’t pretend to be anything it wasn’t, and it delivered an easily entertaining action-thriller for its efforts.
Directed by Lynne Ramsay, We Need to Talk About Kevin is a gripping psychological drama and thriller. The plot revolves around Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton), a former travel writer, who struggles to cope with her psychopathic son Kevin (The Flash‘s Ezra Miller) and the atrocities he’s committed.
Eva now works at a travel agency near the prison where he’s being held, with the story unraveling the former’s troubled memories. We Need to Talk About Kevin received positive reviews for its harrowing mix of horror, drama, and thriller elements. It’s also regarded as one of Swinton’s strongest performances, portraying Eva’s tortured psyche convincingly.
What hells may wealth bring? This is the question posed and explored in writer-director Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn. Barry Keoghan stars as Oxford student Oliver Quick, who is unmoored and disillusioned in his studies. That is until he strikes up a friendship with devil-may-care aristocrat Felix Catton (Priscilla‘s Jacob Elordi). After accepting an invitation to spend the summer at Felix’s luxurious family estate, he becomes immersed in a whirlwind world of socialites. Keoghan delivers an excellent performance in Fennell’s kaleidoscopic follow-up to Promising Young Woman.
What would you do if you were cut off from the rest of civilization by an invisible wall? Short of panicking, most of us would have no clue, but these are the cards dealt to our main character in writer-director Julian Pölsler’s 2012 film The Wall. Starring Martina Gedeck as the unnamed protagonist, when our hero discovers the titular barrier between her and the rest of the world, the woman and her dog Lynx are forced into survival mode as nature starts taking over. Will she succumb to the unmovable façade, or will she perish? Watching The Wall may be a bit of a slow-going experience at times, but if you’re willing to go along with the nearly two-hour runtime, you’ll be privy to quite an amazing performance from Gedeck.
Once in a blue moon, a solid psychological thriller comes along that truly dips its toes into the world of disturbed and narratively unreliable psyches. Sure, there are plenty of films that try to dive deep into mental hellscapes, but when you see how brilliantly this type of conflict is pulled off by movies like The Swerve, you realize how many other flicks simply miss the mark. Starring Azura Skye as Holly, a high-school teacher, wife, and mother of two, Holly’s life is seemingly good on the surface. That is until a series of strange and hallucinatory events start unfolding around her. Compounded by the many stresses of daily life, including her rebellious children and an unusual student, Holly’s façade begins to crumble as past demons rear their heads. An excellent story of a methodically-paced breakdown, The Swerve is steered by an emotionally arresting lead performance from Skye.
In director Ron Howard’s harrowing and emotional Thirteen Lives, is the real-life story of the Wild Boars, a Thai soccer team made up of twelve players and their coach. When the team ventures off into the Tham Luang cave, heavy rains flood the cavern, trapping them inside. After the parents of the boys alert authorities, a globalized rescue effort, comprised of professional divers and other emergency responders, must race against the clock to save the Wild Boars before it’s too late. Dialing in the dramatized strengths from other Howard-honed pictures like Apollo 13, there’s plenty at stake in Thirteen Lives, and the longtime auteur deftly tackles the many anxiety-inducing feats of one of the world’s most death-defying search-and-rescue efforts.