14 heart-pounding thrillers to watch on Netflix

What is a thriller, anyway?

It’s a genre that lacks the typical signifiers that something like horror, comedy, or romance might, but you know it when you feel it. Thrillers are exciting — it’s right there in the name — whether they come from the world of crime, sci-fi, or something else entirely.

We’ve already put together a list of the best thrillers you can watch at home, but here’s the best of the best on Netflix. For more of the best movies on Netflix, check out our picks for the best horror movies, comedy movies, and action movies the platform has to offer.

Apostle

Image: Netflix

This one leans more into the horror side of things than most of the thrillers on this list, but before The Raid director Gareth Evans goes full Grand Guignol in the film’s latter half, he builds up a mesmerizing period thriller about a man who’s in way over his head in a place where he doesn’t belong. Dan Stevens stars as Thomas, a traumatized and formerly institutionalized man who initially appears to be playing out a variation on Robin Hardy’s 1973 classic The Wicker Man. The year is 1905, and Thomas is trying to infiltrate a remote Welsh island run by an obscure cult, which appears to have kidnapped his sister. He doesn’t know much about their beliefs, but he has to pose as one of them and investigate the island while keeping his own considerable demons at bay just long enough to save his sister’s life. And the more he learns about the place where he’s landed, the darker and eerier the film gets. This one’s perfect Halloween-month viewing: bloody as hell and startling right up to the final shot. But it’s also a crackerjack investigative thriller, an unraveling grim mystery that probably would have been better left unsolved. —Tasha Robinson

Athena

Image: Netflix

It’s hard to think of a scene more singularly electrifying and incredible than the one that opens Athena. This movie, about a police raid on a fictional French neighborhood, opens with a group of teens raiding a police station, starting a small riot, and stealing the cops’ guns, and it only grows bigger and more intense from there. Technically the scene is a oner, but rather than showy, the scene’s lack of visible cuts feels like a necessity, as if a single break from this one camera angle that’s deftly following the group’s leader might cause us to miss something critical. Almost as impressive as this singe scene is the fact that Athena is able to sustain this same momentum and nervy, furious energy throughout the entire movie as the police and the rebels clash with the same operatic intensity as a Greek epic. —Austen Goslin

Croupier

Image: Channel Four Films

Clive Owen has made an entire film career out of being dapper, suave, smug, and just a wee bit condescending — basically being a James Bond type without ever actually getting to play Bond. But he’s never been all of the above things better or more intently than in the underseen 1998 gem Croupier, a crime thriller that sees Owen overseeing a table at a small casino, and mentally narrating his own experience as he coldly, politely judges everyone around him. That includes his fellow croupiers, who all seem to be on the take or on the make, breaking the casino’s rules and looking for an edge. Eventually, he’s drawn into a complicated heist scheme that proves he isn’t quite as in control of the world as he imagines, but much of Croupier isn’t about the criminal plot — it’s about all the effort that goes into what seems like effortless cool. —TR

Den of Thieves

Image: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment

Do you like bank robbery crime thrillers like Heat? Director Christan Gudegast’s feature debut is best described as “dirtbag Heat.” If that sounds like your jam you’re in for a great time.

Gerard Butler plays a Pepto Bismol-chugging dirty cop who is chasing a team of ex-military bank robbers, led by Pablo Schreiber and including O’Shea Jackson Jr. and 50 Cent. The team of highly skilled criminals are hoping to pull off their biggest job yet: robbing the Federal Reserve.

It’s got a great score from former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Cliff Martinez (I often use it for background music while I write and edit), terrifically sleazy performances from the ensemble cast, and electrifying action sequences when the heists take place. —PV

The Hateful Eight

Photo: Andrew Cooper/The Weinstein Company

Quentin Tarantino’s shaggy Western bottle episode of a movie has its notable flaws, which have been debated ad infinitum. It may come down to a simple case of “Tarantino is not for all tastes, particularly for people who don’t enjoy gleeful pile-on violence against women, or watching a white director stage provocative, deliberately button-pushing racial conflict.” All of which is entirely legitimate. (The same people who don’t enjoy those things don’t much enjoy Tarantino’s tone-deaf defenses of them, either.) But leaving aside how exactly a given viewer responds to Tarantino’s lifelong deliberate, conscious transgressiveness, it’s hard to deny that The Hateful Eight is a startlingly lush and beautiful movie, packed with indelible performances and big, room-filling tension. The contrivance that puts eight violent people with secret connections into a remote one-room cabin together in the middle of an impassible blizzard is carefully staged, and so is the series of face-offs and showdowns that inevitably leaves blood on the floor. It’s some of Tarantino’s most classic-Hollywood filmmaking, the profanity and gore aside: The characters’ personalities and passions shine through in every verbal sparring session, and the tension builds steadily up to the blowout ending. The all-star cast — Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Bruce Dern — is a tremendous overflow of talent in one tight, taut space, and Tarantino makes the most of it. —TR

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Image: Piki Films

Sorry, Thor: Ragnarok, Hunt for the Wilderpeople is still Taika Waititi’s best and funniest film. It sprawls across a lot of genres — it’s arguably a family drama, a coming-of-age film, or just a straight-up comedy. But the second act is pure thriller, as a confident orphan (Julian Dennison, who went on to be one of the best parts of Deadpool 2) and his cranky foster father (Sam Neill) wind up on the run in the New Zealand bush. And the third act gins up some surprisingly explosive action for a film that starts out with such wry humor. This film is one of the big reasons Waititi got the Marvel Cinematic Universe nod in the first place — it’s a weird, silly, highly specific character piece that mixes tension and conflict with real hilarity. (Note Waititi’s cameo as a preacher who fumbles badly over metaphors about life and the afterlife.) It’s the rare family film that’s actually great viewing for all ages, whether they’re in it for the heartwarming sincerity, the Tupac jokes, or just to see Waititi’s longtime comedy partner (and Our Flag Means Death romantic partner) Rhys Darby get up to some really goofy shit. —TR

Lost Bullet

Image: Netflix

This French crime thriller executes a simple premise to absolute perfection. Lino (former stunt man Alban Lenoir) is an expert mechanic forced to work for dirty cops. When he’s framed for a murder he did not commit, he has to find the one thing that can prove his innocence: a lost bullet in a missing car. With high-octane action sequences and great car stunts, this is a 92-minute thrill ride through and through. —PV

Mersal

Image: Sri Thenandal Films

This one’s a revenge story about the cruelties of for-profit health care. It features an unforgettable performance from one of the world’s most charismatic leading men in Vijay (playing multiple characters, and I’ll leave it at that), colorful dance sequences, and a searing (and all-too-relevant) political message. —PV

The Night Comes for Us

Photo: Eriekn Juragan/Netflix

Timo Tjahjanto is tasked with the upcoming remake of the smash zombie hit Train to Busan, and his gnarly martial arts crime thriller The Night Comes for Us is an excellent showcase for why he is precisely the right man for the job. Brutal and visceral, the movie features unforgettable characters (I’m still waiting on a spinoff focused on Julie Estelle’s The Operator), incredible martial arts (it doesn’t get better than Iko Uwais vs. Joe Taslim), and a wicked sense of humor. —PV