The Best Thrillers on Netflix Right Now (July 2023)

Unlike many of the titles on this list, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022) eschews the “dark and gritty” for the “bright and humorous”. But make no mistake, Rian Johnson‘s follow-up to 2019’s Knives Out is an extremely thrilling story with a gripping plot. The comedy of the film arises from the satirical depictions of its cast of suspects, whose lives intertwine in a complicated, multi-layered narrative that’s simultaneously obvious and obscure, much like the titular “Glass Onion”. World-famous detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) receives an invitation for a weekend at an eccentric billionaire’s private island, where the host (Edward Norton) has gathered his closest friends for what is to be a fun murder mystery game. But when the threat of a real murder makes itself clear, Blanc must solve the case, which has its roots in the pasts of all the people assembled. The plot is, as mentioned, a brilliantly crafted classic whodunit but what sets this film apart is the sheer style that Johnson brings to his mystery sequel. Everything from the costumes to the set design is top-notch, presenting a well-made, well-crafted film that’s enjoyable for every type of audience.- Remus Noronha

Chris Hemsworth (The Avengers) returns as the black ops mercenary Tyler Rake, along with writer Joe Russo (The Gray Man) and director Sam Hargrave (Extraction) in Extraction 2. The film finds a retired Rake resting in Austria, but his tranquility doesn’t last long once a strange man asks him to break a mother and her two daughters out of a Georgian prison. As expected from a collaboration between Russo and Hargrave, who previously worked together on several MCU films, the film is a thrilling ride filled with intense action and suspenseful chases that get the heart pumping throughout this dangerous escort mission. – Tauri Miller

This 2014 horror thriller is one of those films that take a relatively simple enough premise and elevate it to new heights of tension. The film follows the events that unfold when Jay (Maika Monroe) contracts a curse after having sex. Now she is being hunted by a mysterious force, and both Jay and the viewer are taken through a paranoid journey, with every new face being a potential threat. It Follows is a truly tense thriller, and it’s a must-watch for horror and thriller fans, especially for Maika Monroe’s breakout performance. – Remus Noronha

The mystery and thriller genres would be a whole lot poorer without the contributions of the great American writer Edgar Allan Poe. This, however, is not an adaptation of a Poe story (though it is adapted from the novel of the same name by Louis Bayard); instead, The Pale Blue Eye presents a fictional detective tale that happens to take place during the unhappy years that Poe spent at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. A period piece that blends horror and mystery elements, the movie’s story kicks off when a cadet at the academy is found hanging from a tree. A case of suicide, perhaps? Except that his heart had been carved out of his dead chest. A grizzled old detective (played by Christian Bale) is called in but he soon discovers that in order to uncover the secrets of the academy, he will need the help of a bright young cadet: Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling). Bale is as brilliant as ever, delivering what’s arguably his best performance of the year, but Harry Melling is the one to watch out for in this dark eerie tale. The film proceeds with all the careful terror of an uncoiling snake, revealing new secrets at every turn, and even when you think you know who the killer is, there’s always another surprise waiting around the corner. The Pale Blue Eye is a must-watch for fans of gothic mystery, whether you’re a fan of Poe or not. – Remus Noronha

Director Joseph Kosinski made quite a splash in 2022 with Top Gun: Maverick but his Netflix thriller Spiderhead is just as engaging. Set at a private research facility/prison, the film stars Chris Hemsworth as an enigmatic scientist who’s running chemical tests on the prisoners. Miles Teller plays one of the prisoners, who begins to question the purpose of the experiments they are being subjected to. It’s a gripping film that escalates slowly but surely toward a rather unexpected twist. Teller and Hemsworth share excellent chemistry and Jurnee Smollett‘s performance is both layered and endearing. With great acting and a gripping narrative, Spiderhead is one of the best movies Netflix has released this year. The fact that the film’s premise is one that could very well be a reality soon just makes it all the more powerful. – Remus Noronha

This is for when you want a real slow-burner, and we do mean slow. Based on the Stephen King novella of the same name, 1922 moves ever so slowly with a dark inevitability that draws you in. It’s not too heavy on the gore and yet manages to instill a terrible sense of fear in the viewer. The story is narrated by (and centers around) a farmer named Wilfred “Wilf” James (Thomas Jane), who decides to kill his wife Arlette (Molly Parker). Simple enough, right? But what follows is the story of good people consumed by the consequences of greed. It’s unsettling, macabre, almost on par with the most intense Edgar Allan Poe stories. This is easily one of the most gripping thrillers that Netflix has to offer. – Remus Noronha

Based on real-life events, Operation Mincemeat is a tense historical war drama about one of the most daring deceptions that won World War II. The movie stars Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen as two intelligence operatives who concoct a scheme to use a dead body to divert attention from the Allies’ attack on Sicily. While perhaps not as gripping as some of the other entries on this list, Operation Mincemeat does involve a lot of twists and turns. Numerous obstacles, both foreseen and otherwise, continuously pop up throughout the planning and execution of the operation. But the spy drama elements are balanced with character moments and some interesting exploration of the relationships that form between the people involved in the scheme. – Remus Noronha

This 2020 black comedy movie earned Rosamund Pike a Golden Globe for her role as a ruthless con artist who preys on the elderly. I Care a Lot follows the story of Marla Grayson (Pike), a court-appointed guardian who uses her legal hold over her victims to take control of their assets. Her sordid scam hits a snag when her latest mark, a woman who calls herself Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest) turns out to be connected to a dangerous gangster, played by the iconic Peter Dinklage. With dark humor, biting satire, and a wild story, I Care a Lot should definitely be on every thriller fan’s watchlist. – Remus Noronha

A fabulous high-concept thriller that toes the line between genres, The Platform is set within the confines of an impossibly tall building where residents either feast or famine depending on which floor they’re on. Every day, a massive table is stuffed with a banquet of food and slowly dropped through the building, one floor to the next, with the folks on top thriving in gluttony while those far below them starve to death – but there’s a catch, every once in a while, the inhabitants are gassed, reshuffled, and they never know which floor they’re going to wake up on next. It’s a bit of a long set-up, but a tremendously effective vehicle, both for the social themes it explores and the non-stop suspense of investigating the beak world between these cramped walls. – Haleigh Foutch

From High Tension to The Hills Have Eyes to Crawl, Alexandre Aja is responsible for some of the most pulse-pounding, skin-crawling, relentlessly intense movies of the 21st Century. With his 2021 Netflix original Oxygen, the filmmaker steps (slightly) back from the horror and leans all the way in on the thrills, following a woman (Mélanie Laurent) who wakes up in a cryogenic pod with no memory of who she is, how she got there, or – her biggest problem – what to do about her rapidly dwindling supply of oxygen. Aja doesn’t fully leave behind his horror touch and the flourishes of body horror only serve to further ramp up your adrenaline. Oxygen doesn’t always land its twists before you figure them out, but when a filmmaker is as attuned to dialing up the tension as Aja is, your stomach’s gonna wind up in your throat whether you see the next drop in the track coming or not. – Haleigh Foutch

If you’re in the mood for an overlooked thriller with a tremendous cast, twisty plot, and gorgeous aesthetic, check out Nocturnal Animals. The film is the second directorial effort from Tom Ford after the critically acclaimed A Single Man and follows an art gallery owner (Amy Adams) as she reads the new novel written by her first husband (Jake Gyllenhaal). As she reads the novel, the events inside play out on the screen and you being to connect the dots between this supposedly fictional story and the gallery owner’s real-life – and the reason her marriage fractured in the first place. – Adam Chitwood

In novella form, Gerald’s Game makes for one of Stephen‌ King’s queasiest, most relentlessly gripping works. It’s the very definition of a page-turner, keeping you glued to the next word, following one woman’s seemingly impossible fight to survive a very slow, silent death while tending to the trauma she’s buried deep inside herself. It’s also entirely first-person, taking place inside the mind of a woman left handcuffed to the bed in a remote cabin after her husband dies of a heart attack in the middle of a tryst. Understandably, it was long thought unfilmable, but Mike Flanagan’s tender, terrifying 2017 adaptation proved the naysayers wrong with a heartfelt but oh-so-horrifying film that’s faithful to King’s work in all the right ways. Gore-phobes be warned though! At its core, Gerald’s Game is a lovely film about surviving trauma, but it is also a brutal survival film and one climactic scene (which was infamously hard to read, let alone watch) wins the gold star for the most vocal audience freak-out I’ve ever heard in a movie theater. – Haleigh Foutch

If you liked Nightcrawler, you should check out writer/director Dan Gilroy’s kind of insane Netflix movie Velvet Buzzsaw. One part thriller and one part slasher, the movie is set in the art world and revolves around a cache of art that is found to have been created by a mysterious and deceased artist. Once it’s put on display, people begin dying in grisly ways. The film has a lot of dark humor to it, and Jake Gyllenhaal gives a really colorful performance as Gilroy goes for the jugular as far as the art world is concerned. – Adam Chitwood

Netflix squeezed in one last streaming sensation before the end of 2018 with Bird Box, the star-studded and meme-friendly new thriller starring Sandra Bullock as a mother trying to protect her children in an apocalyptic world Set across two timelines, Bird Box follows a group of survivors through the end of the world after a mysterious force starts causing people to kill themselves on sight. Naturally, that sets up director Susanne Bier for plenty of thrills and gags based on the anxiety of trying to survive without sight (some more believable than others) and she uses the opportunity for all its worth, staging some pulse-pounding set-pieces in the fight for survival. Bullock carries Bird Box with a commanding performance that reminds you why she’s an old-school movie star and she’s matched by Trevante Rodes, who sets his charm level to “dangerously high” and John Malkovich, who leans into his gift for playing smart men of a nasty disposition that you just can’t help but love/hate. — Haleigh Foutch

Brace yourself for some bloody, brutal thrills with Apostle, the horror-thriller from The Raid director Gareth Evans, who turns his attentions from breathless action to stomach-churning tension. Legion star Dan Stevens delivers another swing-for-the-fences performance as a man who infiltrates a rural cult that’s taken his sister hostage and discovers some deeply disturbing truths behind the utopian facade. Evans’ slow-burn pays off with a mighty explosion of viscera, and a strong stomach is required for the blood-soaked finale, which veers from suspense to full-on carnage. — Haleigh Foutch

A tense thriller about ambition, identity, and survival in the internet age, Cam stars Madeline Brewer as Alice, a successful cam girl intent on climbing to the top of the ranks — an ambition that’s going rather well until she logs on one day to find she’s been replaced by a cheerful doppelganger who’s taken her face and her career. From there, Cam follows Alice down a surreal rabbit hole as she tries to discover who’s behind her new web clone and how to reclaim her life, building a growing sense of unease and sick helplessness as Alice’s reality drops out from under her. Screenwriter Isa Mazzei and director Daniel Goldhaber are a dynamite creative team, who bring a refreshing sex-positive, non-exploitative approach to the often untouched subject matter while staging a dazzling and disorienting plummet through the pitfalls of internet identity and the intensity of ambitious careerism. — Haleigh Foutch

Clare Havel (Teresa Palmer) is a young Australian photojournalist on vacation in Berlin. She’s living the dream. Taking in the sights, falling in love with a new city, and just maybe falling in love with a handsome local man, Andi (Max Riemelt), who strikes up a passionate romance with her. But after she goes back to his place for a romantic night, she wakes up to the next morning to realize he’s locked her in his apartment on his way to work, and with a slow dawning terror, she understands that he never intends to let her out. This is how we enter Berlin Syndrome, Cate Shortland‘s taut thriller, which takes us through every step of their courtship and Clare’s subsequent imprisonment in a slow-burn portrait of psychological terror and the human capacity for survival.

Palmer is excellent in the role of a smart woman in captivity, who discovers new depths of strength with each passing day, and Shaun Grant‘s script gives her great material to work with, never treating Clare like a fool. She makes clever, assertive choices the whole way through, a fact that incites you to root for her and drastically notches up the tension at the same time. Her instinct for survival is met by Andi’s capacity for cruelty, unfolding a bit each day as Clare realizes how dire her predicament truly is. Consummately tense and emotionally challenging, Berlin Syndrome kicks up a slow boil battle of the wits that constantly notches up the dread and pays off in a breathless finale. — Haleigh Foutch

Who knew Mark Duplass could be so damn creepy? Duplass worked with director, co-writer and co-star Patrick Bice to explore the psyche of “Josef” a mysterious and deeply unsettling man whose need for intimacy spurs him to post a Craigslist ad in search of a filmmaker to chronicle his strange story. There’s just one problem — he may or may not be a killer. Bice stars as Aaron, the young filmmaker who lands the job and once he sets foot on Josef’s turf, Aaron is immersed in an uncomfortable and unusual situation that always threatens to go off the rails. As Josef, Duplass channels the charming, disarming and freaky as hell disposition of corporate snakes and thriving sociopaths. Is he a killer or just a weirdo you can’t say no to? Bice and Duplass have fun playing with audience expectations all the way up to the finale payoff — a fantastic, earned moment that cements the tension for long after the film. And here’s even more good news: If Creep gives you the thrills you’re looking for, the sequel is just as good.– Haleigh Foutch

Jim Mickle‘s sci-fi crime thriller mixes up time travel, Zodiac-like levels of obsessive detective work, and a dash of politics with this underseen Netflix original. Boyd Holbrook stars as a police officer who stumbles into horrendous series of crimes and winds up locked in the cat-and-mouse change that will define decades of his life… and mix him up in some twisted, tragic time-travel saga that could save the future of the country. An obsessive crime drama that mostly keeps it lowkey despite the extreme stakes, In the Shadow of the Moon has an occasional unfortunate habit of thinking it’s more ahead of the audience than it really is, but its still an intriguing, engrossing, and damn good-looking time-travel saga that’s well worth a watch. — Haleigh Foutch