What are the best thriller movies on Netflix?

Netflix has a massive library of shows and movies, including original titles and third-party content. Sometimes it can be daunting to wade through the massive lists of entertainment, especially if the algorithm isn’t quite nailing your mood. So, if you’re looking for something to keep you on the edge of your seat, let’s narrow down your options. We’ve compiled a helpful list of the best thriller movies on Netflix.

See also: What to watch on Netflix

Below, you’ll find 25 titles, broken down into subgenres. Hopefully you’ll find just what you’re looking for. And if you aren’t already a member, you can sign up for Netflix by hitting the link below.

The best thriller movies on Netflix

David Fincher directs a taught, gripping thriller with Panic Room. Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart star as a mother and daughter trapped in their New York brownstone’s panic room during a home invasion. With no way in or out, and no way to contact the outside world, the two will simply have to wait it out. But there’s a hitch. The burglars aren’t interested in anything in the house. What they want is in the panic room itself.

It’s pretty hard to make the world of finance interesting, let alone suspenseful. That’s exactly what J.C. Chandor does with Margin Call, though, one of the best thriller movies on Netflix. On the eve of the 2008 financial crash, an analyst at an investment firm makes a shocking discovery that could bring the whole organization down. With top brass called in, a team of experts and newbies works through one fateful night to limit the damage, knowing everything is about to change.

Sofia Coppola combines lush period drama with wartime suspense in The Beguiled, a terrific thriller on Netflix starring Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, and Colin Farrell. An injured Union soldier seeks refuge at an all-female Southern boarding school after deserting. Soon, students and faculty alike are tending to him and competing for his affection as the sexual tension rises.

This dark satire of the art world stars Jake Gyllenhaal as art critic Morf Vandewalt, reteaming with his Nightcrawler director Dan Gilroy. When work from an unknown artist becomes the talk of the town, Morf works to secure a big payday, but mysterious tragedies start stacking up, and Morf realizes he may have hitched his wagon to the wrong horse.

In 1980s Tehran, a mother and daughter survive a bombing during the Iran-Iraq war. But the threat may not be gone, as a superstitious neighbour believes they were hit by a cursed missile carrying malevolent Middle-Eastern spirits. Now, they’re being haunted.

This much-talked-about erotic thriller was the very last film by legendary director Stanley Kubrick. In it, Tom Cruise plays a man who has just found out his wife had an affair. Now, obsessed with having an affair of his own, he discovers an underground sex club and attends meetings. He soon discovers he’s out of his depth, and the arcane group may be involved in crime.

A dark and bizarre bit of cosmic horror, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s Synchronic is one of the best psychological thrillers on Netflix. Starring Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan, it sees a New Orleans paramedic losing his grip on reality and time itself as he looks for his partner’s daughter and digs into a new mystery drug that has been causing gruesome deaths all over town.

From the director of Top Gun: Maverick, Spiderhead is a fresh new psychological thriller on Netflix starring Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller, and Jurnee Smollett. It follows the inmates of an experimental prison, where a billionaire offers an uncommon level of freedom in exchange for conducting experiments with mind-expanding drugs on his patient-inmates.

Not for the claustrophobic viewer, Oxygen is a tense and suspenseful thriller about a woman who wakes up in a small pod, not remembering who she is or how she got there. Now, with the help of a built-in AI, she needs to figure out how to free herself before she runs out of air.

In a dystopian future, prisoners are housed in a vertical prison with multiple levels. Food is served first on the top level before making its way down level by level until the bottom level gets whatever is left. The arrangement leads to conflict and massive inequality in this evocative sci-fi thriller, a Spanish Netflix original.

This remake of the Danish film of the same name is directed by Antoine Fuqua and stars Jake Gyllenhaal, and it’s one of the best crime thrillers on Netflix. A 911 operator demoted from his job as a detective struggles to help a distressed woman on the phone over one chaotic night. But as it gets later and later, he realizes he may have read the situation wrong.

State of Play came and went pretty quietly in 2009, despite some good reviews. It’s a shame it didn’t get more attention because it’s a solid political thriller. When an up-and-coming congressman’s mistress is killed, two journalists work together to uncover the truth behind what happened, blowing a massive conspiracy wide open in the process.

Breaking Bad had a fantastic run of five seasons from 2008 to 2013. Its success was even bolstered by Netflix when tons of new viewers could get caught up via streaming. It seemed like there’d be no need to continue the story, but the Netflix original film El Camino proved there was more story to tell, following Jesse as he reacclimates to life as a free man after the events of the series finale. It’s a terrific afterword to Breaking Bad and one of the best thriller movies on Netflix.

Directed by Oliver Stone from a story by Quentin Tarantino, Natural Born Killers is among the most controversial films of the 90s, and it’s one of the best crime thrillers you can stream. Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis play two serial killers, obsessed with the media attention they’ve been getting as they murder 52 people.

This comedy thriller stars Melanie Lynskey and Elijah Wood and is among the best thriller movies you’ll find on Netflix. When a depressed woman is burglarized, she decides she’s had it and teams up with her weird neighbor to get her stuff back. That means standing up to some scary criminals though.

Tom Cruise plays brilliantly against type in this critically-acclaimed Michale Mann thriller. An LA cab driver receives one last fare before he’s about to clock out. The mystery man makes the cabbie an irresistible offer: $600 to make five stops. Of course, when something seems too good to be true, that’s often because it is. The driver soon realizes the five stops are different sites for planned murders. His fare is a hitman. Now, he has to figure out a way to survive the night without being an accessory to murder.

A chilling New Hollywood classic, Deliverance is certainly one of the best thriller movies on Netflix, and in cinema history. A group of friends head out on a canoe trip in rural Georgia but are soon terrorized by hostile locals. After being brutalized, they still have to fight the elements to get home in this shocking and powerful exploration of masculinity and class division.

J.C. Chandor directs this gripping heist thriller, one of the best Netflix original movies you can stream. A former special ops squad reunites when a chance to take down a South American drug lord presents itself. With their skillset, they can get in and out undetected and get away with tons of cash. But when things go south, they have to get home safely without starting an international incident.

Another Michael Mann action thriller, Blackhat never got the same kind of love as Collateral. With a cool 33% on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s a truly underrated gem. After some major international hacking incidents, America and China work together on finding the criminals responsible. To do so, they enlist the help of a convicted hacker, releasing him from prison to join the team. Things quickly escalate, as the hackers reveal their true motives.

Luc Besson’s Léon: The Professional is a timeless thriller classic, featuring Natalie Portman’s very first screen role. Portman plays Mathilda, a 12-year-old whose family has just been murdered. Seeking refuge with a mysterious neighbour, Mathilda realizes her new guardian is a contract killer, and she convinces him to help her avenge the murder of her little brother.

One of the most underrated Netflix originals and a terrific horror movie, Cam is also among the best thriller movies on Netflix. When a camgirl is locked out of her channels, replaced by a mysterious doppelganger, she has to find out who is pulling the strings and how to regain control of her identity and livelihood.

Another Netflix original horror film that didn’t get anywhere near enough attention, The Perfection is a haunting story of a musical prodigy who returns to her old school, where a new pupil has taken her place as the next rising star. What starts as a simple rivalry soon reveals grim, disturbing, and sinister truths hidden within the music academy.

Before wowing audiences and critics with Netflix miniseries like The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, Mike Flanagan directed this Stephen King adaptation. A couple on a romantic getaway are trying something new in the bedroom, but when the husband suddenly dies, leaving his wife handcuffed to the bed, things get scary fast, if she can’t get free, she’ll surely die, but that’s not all she has to worry about as demons from her past begin visiting her. 

A moving and terrifying commentary on consent and sexual trauma, It Follows is one of the best horror thrillers on Netflix. A teen girl finds herself haunted by figures who follow her everywhere after a strange sexual encounter. She’s the latest victim of a curse. A mysterious force that can take any shape follows her at a walking pace. If it catches her, she’ll die. The only way to get rid of it is to pass it on through another sexual encounter. If she dies, the person who passed it on to her in the first place is on the chopping block again.

Part of the mumblecore movement, or more specifically “mumblegore,” Creep follows a woman who responds to a cryptic add online. She travels to a remote home where she’ll film a stranger for a project he plans to show his unborn child. But as the day goes on, his behavior becomes increasingly eratic, and she realizes she may have made a big mistake.

Those are some of the best thriller movies on Netflix that you can stream now.

What are your favorites? Let us know in the comments.

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