Thrillers are often built around surprise and unforeseen twists. And the month of August has already had a twist of a different kind for Netflix, which has premiered a Universal Pictures flick, River Wild, that immediately rose to become one of the most-streamed films on the platform. This River Wild reboot pulled off this feat with minimal promotion, but it was quickly discovered and embraced by Netflix subscribers.
Netflix also added a handful of classic thrillers this month including In the Line of Fire and Collateral, both of which are on loan from other studios. That goes a long way towards giving Netflix a very impressive lineup of thrillers. But if you need a hand narrowing down the options, we’ve updated our list of the best thrillers on Netflix right now.
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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River Wild2023 -
Collateral2004
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Non-Stop2014
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In the Line of Fire1993
River Wild (2023)
5.4/10Nearly three decades ago, Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon headlined a white-water thriller called The River Wild. And while River Wild isn’t quite a remake, it’s not really a sequel either. Leighton Meester stars as Joey, a woman who has trust issues with her brother, Gray (Taran Killam). Much to Joey’s chagrin, Gary invites one of their childhood friends, Trevor (Adam Brody), on a white-water trip with two other people.
When one of their party is attacked, Joey realizes that the only option to save them is by braving the waters to get help. But there may be a killer among the group, and Joey isn’t sure who she can trust.
Collateral (2004)
71%
7.5/10Tom Cruise seems to avoid playing villains for the most part, but he embraced his dark side in Michael Mann’s thriller, Collateral. The film focuses on Taxi driver Max Durocher (Jamie Foxx), a man who has grand ambitions of launching his own driving service. When Vincent (Cruise) offers Max $600 to drive him all night, it sounds like a good deal.
Unfortunately for Max, it quickly becomes clear that Vincent is a hired killer who is using him to take out his targets. And Max knows that once the last name on Vincent’s list is crossed out then he will be the final victim.
Non-Stop (2014)
56%
6.9/10On an overnight trip from New York to London, ex-cop turned Air Marshal Bill Marks (Liam Neeson) faces the longest flight of his life in director Jaume Collet-Serra’s action thriller Non-Stop. Shortly after the flight, Marks gets a text warning him that someone on the plane will be killed in 20 minutes unless a high ransom is paid.
Marks initially suspects the other Air Marshal on the flight, Jack Hammond (Anson Mount). But when the bodies start piling up, Marks realizes that he’s been framed for these crimes and he has no idea who his true enemy is.
In the Line of Fire (1993)
74%
7.2/10Clint Eastwood plays an aging Secret Service Agent, Frank Horrigan, in the classic thriller, In the Line of Fire. Three decades earlier, Horrigan failed to protect President John F. Kennedy from an assassin’s bullet. Now, a killer calling himself Booth (John Malkovich) sends Horrigan taunting messages about his intent to murder the current President (Jim Curley).
Horrigan manages to get himself back on the President’s security detail, and he finds a potential romance with a much younger agent, Lilly Raines (Rene Russo). However, Booth plans to humiliate and demoralize Horrigan before ultimately pursuing his target.
The Mule (2018)
58%
7.0/10Chances are good that The Mule may be one of Clint Eastwood’s final films, and it doesn’t start out as a thriller. Eastwood’s character, Earl Stone, is facing financial ruin until he receives an unexpected offer to be a drug mule for a cartel. And for a while, Earl’s life is charmed. He’s got all of the money he could ever want, and he’s a legend among the cartel.
The arrival of Gustavo (Clifton Collins Jr.), the new head of the cartel, is a wake-up call for Earl and that’s where the film becomes a thriller. Suddenly, Earl realizes that taking the cartel’s money has left him in an impossible situation, especially since DEA Agent Colin Bates (Bradley Cooper) is closing in on him. Now, there are no easy ways out for Earl and he stands to lose everything that matters to him.
Run Rabbit Run (2023)
51%
5.1/10Sarah Snook (Succession) headlines Run Rabbit Run, a thriller that takes some horrific turns. Sarah (Snook) is a single mother with a contentious relationship with her ex-husband, Peter (Damon Herriman). But Sarah’s real problem is with her daughter, Mia (Lily LaTorre). Inexplicably, Mia has taken on a new persona and declared that she is someone named Alice.
While Sarah doesn’t believe her daughter at first, the evidence mounts that Mia’s behavior somehow is tied to a dark episode in Sarah’s past. Something unnatural is happening with Mia, and Sarah may pay the price for keeping her secrets for so many years.
God's Crooked Lines (2022)
7.0/10You might want to watch God’s Crooked Lines with subtitles, otherwise, you may miss some critical details in this Spanish thriller. Bárbara Lennie stars as Alice Gould, a woman who has herself institutionalized by her husband, Heliodoro (David Selvas), in the late ‘70s and she finds herself under the care of Doctor Teodoro Ruipérez (Federico Aguado). However, Alice has her own hidden agenda as she tries to solve a murder while feigning mental illness.
Some of the creeps that Alice encounters, including the Gnome (Luis Sacristán), the Elephant Man (Francisco Javier Pastor), and the twins Romulo and Remo (both played by Samuel Soler). The scary part is that the staff at the institute pick apart Alice’s story and raise questions about whether she is an investigator or if she is simply paranoid and delusional.
Missing (2023)
66%
7.1/10Could 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.
The Pale Blue Eye (2022)
56%
6.6/10Given 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).
The Rental (2020)
62%
5.7/10A 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.
The Snowman (2017)
23%
5.1/10It’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.
Dragged Across Concrete (2018)
60%
6.9/10Written 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 (2019)
65%
6.8/10I 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.
47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019)
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.
All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)
I Came By (2022)
Circle (2015)
The Good Nurse (2022)
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.
Lou (2022)
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.
The Stranger (2022)
74%
6.6/10Inheritance (2020)
31%
5.5/10A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014)
57%
6.5/10Munich: The Edge of War (2022)
53%
6.8/10The Platform (2019)
73%
7/10Spiderhead (2022)
54%
5.4/10Interceptor (2022)
54%
4.4/10In 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.
Disappearance at Clifton Hill (2020)
61%Operation Mincemeat (2022)
65%
6.6/10Triple Frontier (2019)
61%
6.4/10Lost Bullet (2020)
78%
6.3/10The Devil All the Time (2020)
55%
7.1/10Windfall (2022)
52%
5.7/10The Weekend Away (2022)
51%
5.6/10Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019)
52%
NaN/10Stowaway (2021)
63%
5.6/10Fever Dream (2021)
75%
5.4/10Extraction (2020)
56%
6.7/10The Ice Road (2021)
42%
5.6/10Synchronic (2020)
64%
6.2/10Forgotten (2017)
7.4/10Coming Home in the Dark (2021)
64%Sentinelle (2021)
4.7/10Army of Thieves (2021)
49%
6.4/10The Guilty (2021)
63%
6.3/10In the Shadow of the Moon (2019)
48%
6.2/10Nocturnal Animals (2016)
67%
7.5/10Creep (2014)
74%
6.4/10Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)
47%
6.0/10The Vault (2021)
50%
6.4/10Hold the Dark (2018)
63%
5.6/10The Call (2020)
7.1/10Red Dot (2021)
I Care a Lot (2020)
66%
6.3/10Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)
61%
5.7/10Piercing (2018)
63%
5.5/10Calibre (2018)
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019)
72%
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