8 great thrillers to watch on Netflix right now

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

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

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

Carry-On

It’s the holiday season, and for many people that means time with the family and an endless hunt for a movie everyone can agree on. Thankfully, this year, Netflix has made the choice easy with its new Christmas-tinged release: Carry-On. It’s an old-school action thriller that’s exactly good enough to get the whole family on board, no matter what their tastes are like. The plot follows Taron Egerton as a TSA agent who gets threatened by a terrorist into letting a dangerous bag through security. Fortunately, he doesn’t take that threat lying down, kicking off a cat-and-mouse game of airport intrigue that’s tense, silly, and extremely entertaining. —AG

Lost Bullet

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 — and the sequel rules, as well. —Pete Volk

Mersal

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

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

Unhinged

Unhinged is a tremendously fun and tremendously mean movie. This car-based thriller follows a young woman (Caren Pistorius) who is having a terrible day. She woke up late and now her whole schedule is behind, including dropping her son (Gabriel Bateman) off at school and trying to get to her job on time. In her harried rush to work, she honks at the driver of a massive pickup truck. Unfortunately for her, the driver of his truck happens to be a very dangerous man (Russell Crowe) who just finished murdering his wife, and he decides he needs to teach her a lesson next. It’s an absolutely terrifying ride that might make you think twice before you honk at a red light. —AG

Whiplash

Whiplash follows a gifted jazz drummer, Andrew (Miles Teller), who gets into the college jazz band of his dreams, only to find out that the man running the program demands absolute commitment and perfection from his musicians and is willing to do almost anything to get it. This is one of the best movies ever made about the obsessive drive for greatness. The fine line that J.K. Simmons’ Terence walks between molding Andrew into a truly great musician and destroying him completely is hypnotizing to watch, and gives the film one of the best finales of any movie of the last 10 years. —AG