30 best thriller movies on Netflix right now

"Uncut Gems," "Jaws," "Heat," and more!
By Oliver Whitney  on 
All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission.
"See You Yesterday," "I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore," "Uncut Gems," and "The Old Guard" are all great thrillers to watch on Netflix.
"See You Yesterday," "I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore," "Uncut Gems," and "The Old Guard" are all great thrillers to watch on Netflix. Credit: Composite: Mashable / Images: Netflix / A24

One could argue that thrillers are among the best movie genres. On one hand, it’s because there’s such a wide variety of methods a filmmaker can use to thrill an audience — from psychological spooks to the mounting suspense of crime movies, from the shocks of a horror thriller to real-world scenarios a movie can fictionalize to send anyone into a state of anxious frenzy. But it's also because thrillers are just so damn gripping and fun to devour.

We've let our heart rates suffer and anxiety levels skyrocket to curate a list of the very best thrillers you can find on Netflix, all of which offer a smorgasbord of exhilaration and intrigue. There's trashy thrills, high-stakes action, a badass revenge flick, crime capers, a gothic period piece, a comedic murder mystery, and even a plummet down the terrifying paths student debt will send you.

1. Missing

In Missing, the 18-year-old June (Storm Reid) tries to find her mother (Nia Long) after she goes missing while vacationing in Colombia with her new boyfriend (Ken Leung). What sets this apart from your typical thriller is that it takes place entirely on screens. Just as the 2019 film Searching from Aneesh Chaganty updated the found footage subgenre for the digital age, Missing (which was produced by Chaganty) uses everything from MacBook screens and FaceTime calls to Ring security cameras and SnapChat videos to tell a story entirely dependent on technology. That may seem like a cheap gimmick, but it works surprisingly well for a story about surveillance and identity in the modern day. 

Throughout Missing, June uses every imaginable piece of modern-day consumer tech to find her mom and solve the case. Apple location tracking, Google account history, a Citizen-style reporting app, TaskRabbit, WhatsApp, live tourist cams, and even the good old Notes app are all vital tools in June’s search. Missing is a fun, twist-laden ride that never sacrifices its emotional story for its clever visual techniques.

How to watch: Missing is now streaming on Netflix.

2. Uncut Gems

Adam Sandler in "Uncut Gems."
Credit: A24

The best way to describe Uncut Gems is as an 135-minute panic attack as you watch someone making one terrible decision after another. Adam Sandler, better than ever, plays Howard Ratner, a gambling addict and jeweler who’s in a bad bind — he owes his loan shark brother-in-law (Eric Bogosian!) a whopping $100,000. After getting his hands on a rare uncut opal, Howard temporarily lends the gem to basketball star Kevin Garnett (playing himself) for good luck in exchange for Garnett’s Championship ring, which Howard pawns to place a bet. If you can't already guess, things don't go well for Howard from there. Filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie, who are known for their incredibly tense, gritty, New York crime thrillers, outdo themselves with this dazzling descent into paranoia and panic. It's simultaneously one of the most stressful and most exciting movies you’ll ever watch.

How to watch: Uncut Gems is now streaming on Netflix.

3. Burning

Lee Chang-dong’s Burning is many things: a strange love story, a mystery about a missing woman, a study of violence and masculinity, and a portrait of class collision in South Korea. The slow-burn psychological thriller starts off with Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in), a working-class man and aspiring writer who becomes involved with Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), a woman from his childhood. Then a mysterious wealthy man named Ben (a chilling Steven Yeun) suddenly enters the picture, and Jong-su brews with jealousy over the handsome stranger. He’s suspicious of the guy, and grows concerned for Hae-mi’s safety. Where Burning goes from there is strange and haunting, laced with hypnotizing visuals and an atmosphere of unease. It’s the type of thriller that defies genre expectations, refuses to give easy answers, and remains mesmerizing throughout, both visually and narratively.

How to watch: Burning is now streaming on Netflix.

4. The Firm

In Sydney Pollack’s The Firm, Tom Cruise is Mitch McDeere, a budding lawyer who just graduated from Harvard Law at the top of his class. He’s quickly scooped up by a small Memphis law firm that woos him and his wife (Jeanne Tripplehorn) with a gorgeous new house, a brand-new Mercedes, and an eye-popping salary. After a couple of Mitch’s colleagues suddenly wind up dead and FBI agents begin snooping around, it turns out something nefarious is going on.

The Firm is an excellently paced thriller that takes its time getting to the first big reveal, then spends the remaining hour and half watching Tom Cruise do what he does best — freak out, run, and try to outsmart the bad guys. Filled out with a fantastic cast that includes Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, an absolutely standout Holly Hunter, Gary Busey, David Strathairn, and Hal Holbrook, The Firm may be long, but it’s gripping from start to finish.

How to watch: The Firm is now streaming on Netflix.

5. See You Yesterday

Eden Duncan-Smith and Danté Crichlow in "See You Yesterday."
Credit: Linda Kallerus / Netflix

See You Yesterday takes the suspense and high stakes of a time-travel premise and applies it to a story about anti-Black police violence. In Stefon Bristol’s film, which he co-wrote with Fredrica Bailey, Eden Duncan-Smith plays C.J., a high school science wiz who’s dedicated to building a time machine with her best friend Bash (Danté Crichlow). As the pair are hard at work fine-tuning their invention, C.J.’s older brother Calvin (Brian Bradley, aka Astro) is shot and killed by a police officer. C.J. decides, as anyone with a time machine rightfully would, that she’s going to go back in time and save him. Yet as every time travel movie warns us, toying with the past can be a messy affair that may only make things worse. 

Tying the levity and playfulness of a Back To the Future-esque story with something as grave and harrowing as police brutality might not sound like a natural tonal fit, but Bristol makes it work. See You Yesterday doesn’t use time travel as a genre gimmick, but more as a means to comment on the violence Black Americans continue to face at the hands of police. Ultimately, it’s an empowering and thought-provoking way into a story about doing anything to protect the people you love from those who violently wield power over you, no matter the cost.

How to watch: See You Yesterday is now streaming on Netflix.

6. Heat

It’s almost become a cliche to say so, but Michael Mann’s Heat is the epitome of the crime thriller done to near perfection, ranking up there as one of the all-time bests. In this dual character study, we follow the cop and the criminal in parallel across three major heists. There's Al Pacino’s LAPD Lieutenant Vincent Hanna, a married-to-the-job type guy whose actual marriage is on the rocks, and Robert De Niro’s Neil McCauley, a thief who lives by a code of emotional detachment to ensure a clean getaway. Mann’s film looks at these two as opposite sides of the same coin, two men bound by an obsession with and commitment to their job and the stain of loneliness it leaves on their lives. 

Really, Heat is a love story about two men who can’t quit their cat-and-mouse hunt for one another, and along the way, Mann gives us some of the most propulsive and thrilling action filmmaking the crime genre has seen. There’s also standout performances from Val Kilmer, Amy Brenneman, Dennis Haysbert, Danny Trejo, Ashley Judd, and a young Natalie Portman.

How to watch: Heat is now streaming on Netflix.

7. I Care a Lot

Rosamund Pike once again gets to play an icy and manipulative cool girl in J Blakeson’s black comedy thriller I Care a Lot. This time around, her character is so monstrous and nasty she makes Gone Girl’s Amy Dunne look saintly. 

Meet Marla Grayson, a vape-smoking con artist with a sharp blonde bob and a fierce gaze that will shrivel you upon glance. Marla’s get-rich scheme targets elderly folks — so evil! — by getting legal guardianship over them and forcing them into nursing homes. Then, she sells all their belongings and keeps the profit. The next victim of Marla and her girlfriend Fran’s (Eiza González) scam is a wealthy woman named Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest), but it turns out she’s not exactly who the couple think she is. Without spoiling the rest, just know it involves explosions and kidnappings and Peter Dinklage as a mob boss. 

How to watch: I Care a Lot is now streaming on Netflix.

8. Omar

In the first few minutes of Omar, we watch a man patiently stand beside a giant concrete wall, hoist his body up with a rope, dodge bullets from a sniper as he reaches the top, then frantically slide down the opposite side with bleeding, torn hands. After racing through back alleys and streets he finally arrives at his destination: his best friend’s home. Omar (Adam Bakri) is a Palestinian baker who lives in the occupied West Bank. 

The 2013 film from Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad blends suspense with drama and romance to tell a story distinctly from the perspective of a Palestinian person living under Israeli occupation. Over the course of the film, we follow Omar as he climbs the towering wall that separates him from his friends, exchanges sweet love letters with his girlfriend Nadia (Leem Lubany), is beaten in the street by Israeli Defense Forces soldiers, plans an attack of armed resistance, and then later, as he’s captured and tortured in prison by an Israeli police agent. 

Omar offers a rare depiction of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails who have reported over the years experiences of torture and abuse and of being held without trial or charges. Abu-Assad expertly grounds the tender hopefulness of a personal love story within a larger story that speaks to the horrors Palestinians report experiencing under violent occupation.

How to watch: Omar is now streaming on Netflix.

9. Obsessed

Beyoncé in "Obsessed."
Credit: Screen Gems / Kobal / Shutterstock

There’s a lot of ways you can spend an hour and 48 minutes, but there are few better than watching Beyoncé throw plates, kick Idris Elba out of her house, and say things mid-fight scene like, “I’m gonna wipe the floor with your skinny ass.”

In the wonderfully schlocky erotic thriller Obsessed, which is essentially a revamp of Fatal Attraction, a man named Derek (Elba) becomes the target of an obsessed woman (Ali Larter) who will do anything to get him. Larter’s Lisa is so fixated on her boss that she does everything she can to seduce him, from stripping down to her lingerie in his car to committing a number of other outrageous crimes I won’t spoil. Sharon (Beyoncé), Derek’s wife, is pissed and thinks he’s cheating, but eventually she realizes what’s going on and goes face-to-face with Lisa in an iconic, over-the-top fight scene that includes a chandelier. Obsessed is the chef’s kiss of outrageous thrillers.

How to watch: Obsessed is now streaming on Netflix.

10. The Call

It's 2019, and Seo-yeon (Park Shin-Hye) is traveling back to her childhood home after visiting her estranged, ill mother. Once she arrives there, she gets a strange call from a distressed woman named Young-sook (Jeon Jong-seo), who seems to have dialed the wrong number. But the woman calls again, and again, and eventually Seo-yeon realizes that she and Young-sook have something in common — they’re both living in the same exact house, but not at the same time. Young-sook is calling from 1999, 20 years in the past, and Seo-yeon soon learns that her fate is intertwined with that of her new mysterious friend. A psychological thriller with a simple but engaging premise, The Call is layered with one twist after another that will keep you on edge until the climactic finale.

How to watch: The Call is now streaming on Netflix.

11. Wind River

Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River uses the classic structure of police procedural to tell a story about an increasingly urgent real-life issue that’s all too often left out of popular media: missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. In the film, the body of an 18-year-old Native girl named Natalie has just been found frozen in the snow on Wyoming’s Wind River reservation by a Fish and Wildlife tracker named Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner). Elizabeth Olsen’s FBI agent Jane Banner arrives to help investigate the case alongside Cory, who’s plagued by the unsolved mystery of his own teenage daughter, a Native girl who went missing years before.

The film is a superb mystery that Sheridan laces with taut suspense and ominous dread. Though it does unfortunately tell this story through the eyes of two white leads rather than centering the perspectives of the Native characters, Wind River still offers strong storytelling as an entry point for audiences who may not be familiar with this ongoing crisis.

How to watch: Wind River is now streaming on Netflix.

12. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

The most impossible mission is picking one of the four Mission: Impossible films to tell you to watch (honestly, just watch them all). But when it comes down to it, nothing is more thrilling than watching Tom Cruise climb the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, with one hand.

In the fourth installment of the M:I franchise, Cruise’s IMF agent Ethan Hunt and his team set out to find a man wielding the codes to launch a nuclear weapon. Along the way Hunt has to break out of a Russian prison, infiltrate the Kremlin, then head to Dubai to do some sneaky face-swapping magic. That last part is what leads to Cruise’s scaling the outside of the 2,722-foot building (which the actor did himself, in real life, by the way). If you love adrenaline-pumping suspense, silly spy trickery, and lots of Tom Cruise running, then Ghost Protocol will more than scratch the itch.

How to watch: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is now streaming on Netflix.

13. I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore

Elijah Wood and Melanie Lynskey in "I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore."
Credit: Netflix

Some of the best thrillers aren’t about big heists or complex murder mysteries, but about normal people dealing with normal, everyday crap. In I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, that normal person is Melanie Lynskey’s Ruth, a depressed nursing assistant who’s having a terrible day. Her house has just been burglarized, and she just wants her goddamn laptop and grandma’s silverware back. With the help of her neighbor Tony (a kooky Elijah Wood sporiting a rattail), Ruth sets out on a mission of vigilantism to track down her things and right some wrongs, leading a series of violent shenanigans. This Macon Blair film is a satisfying revenge thriller that also gives Lynskey the badass, complex leading role she’s long deserved. If you enjoyed her in Yellowjackets and as the ruthless rebel leader in The Last of Us, you’ll absolutely love her here.

How to watch: I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore is now streaming on Netflix.

14. Jaws

Not only did Steven Spielberg’s 1975 classic lay the groundwork for the Hollywood blockbuster, but Jaws is also a film that remains just as terrifying and chilling to watch today, nearly five decades after it hit theaters. The story of a shark attack on a crowded summer day at the beach is enough to haunt anyone’s nightmares. However, it’s largely through Spielberg's direction, cinematographer Bill Butler’s camerawork, and John Williams’s iconic score that Jaws remains a masterclass in suspense. From the opening scene of the first attack, where a woman’s body is thrashed back and forth across the water, to the brilliant choice to use the shark’s POV rather than show it on screen — we never actually see the great white beast until three-quarters of the way through — Jaws manages to fling us from our seats directly into the water. What’s better and more riveting filmmaking than that?

How to watch: Jaws is now streaming on Netflix.

15. The Old Guard

Marwan Kenzari, Matthias Schoenaerts, Charlize Theron, Luca Marinelli, and KiKi Layne in "The Old Guard."
Credit: Aimee Spinks / Netflix

In The Old Guard, Charlize Theron leads a team of badass, immortal mercenaries — what’s not to love? Based on Greg Rucka’s comic book, the film from Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Woman King, Love & Basketball) follows Theron’s Andy and her team of centuries-old assassins who can pop bullets out of their bodies and heal from gnarly wounds in no time. The team includes an ancient gay couple, Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli), Matthias Schoenaerts as Booker, Chiwetel Ejiofor as their ex-CIA boss Copley, and the newest recruit, a young Marine named Nile (KiKi Layne, the film's MVP) who’s just discovering her regenerative abilities. After being sent on their latest mission, the team gets ambushed by a Big Pharma CEO (Harry Melling of Harry Potter fame) who wants to steal their abilities — for profit, of course. Full of thrilling action set pieces, slick fight choreography, and even some Medieval flashbacks, Prince-Bythewood’s film is a hugely entertaining blockbuster in every sense. The film sets up the rich world of Rucka’s comics, which we’ll surely see more of when the sequel (or perhaps sequels) eventually hits Netflix.

How to watch: The Old Guard is now streaming on Netflix.

16. Eye For an Eye

In the Spanish dramatic thriller Eye For an Eye, Mario (Luis Tosar) is the head nurse at an assisted living facility who gets assigned to an unlikely new patient: a retired, infamous drug lord. Antonio (Xan Cejudo) has just been released from prison due to his deteriorating physical health and prefers to live out his final days in a nursing home, rather than around his erratic sons who’ve taken over the cartel business. But as Mario begins to care for Antonio, sudden flashbacks to a past incident reveal that the nurse has a secret agenda for the drug lord. Led by strong performances, Eye For an Eye is a bleak-as-hell film that unflinchingly explores how far one may go for revenge.

How to watch: Eye for an Eye is now streaming on Netflix.

17. Good Time

If you’re the type of person who loves thrillers that feel like heart-rattling nightmares of unimaginable proportions, this is the movie for you. The 2017 crime thriller from brothers Josh and Benny Safdie wastes no time hurling the audience into the thick of chaos as Robert Pattinson’s Connie and his brother Nick (played by Benny Safdie) pull off a bank robbery. Things quickly go from bad to worse, and after running from the cops, Nick gets arrested and sent to Rikers Island while Connie escapes. Over the course of one terrible night, Connie attempts a variety of schemes to get his brother out of jail, including sneaking into a stranger’s house and something involving a bottle of LSD. Like much of the Safdies' work, from Uncut Gems to Heaven Knows What, Good Time is oozing with a ferocious energy that owes much to Scorsese’s early work. It may be a stressful film to sit through, but it’s impossible to look away from. 

How to watch: Good Time is now streaming on Netflix.

18. The Irishman

Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in "The Irishman."
Credit: Netflix

It’s Scorsese directing De Niro and Pacino, on screen together for the first time since 1995’s Heat! What more do you need to know? Perhaps some convincing is necessary, though, to get you to sit down for the gargantuan three and a half hours that is The Irishman. The truth is, Scorsese earns that runtime in this sprawling crime epic, which beautifully examines the psychological toll of being witness to and complicit in a life of crime. 

The decades-hopping film opens with an aging Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) as he recounts his life as a (younger, CGI de-aged) hitman involved with the mob, the corrupt Teamsters union, and union leader Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). The phenomenal cast also includes an excellent (as usual) Joe Pesci as Philadelphia mob boss Russell Bufalino, as well as Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Kathrine Narducci, Jesse Plemons, and Stephen Graham.

How to watch: The Irishman is now streaming on Netflix.

19. Non-Stop

Put Liam Neeson in a sticky predicament, usually one concerning the safety of civilians and set within some type of public transportation, and you’ve got yourself a thriller. Watching Neeson race against the clock to save the day with a pistol in hand is a subgenre all its own, and Non-Stop is no exception. 

In this film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, Neeson plays Bill Marks, a weary U.S. Air Marshal with a gloomy past. His current flight has just taken off and all seems well, until Bill gets a text on his private Air Marshal phone from an anonymous person onboard who’s threatening to kill a passenger. Even worse, that threat ramps up to killing one person every 15 minutes until Bill gets $150 million transferred to a bank account. There are twists, oh, so many twists, in this breakneck thriller that leads Bill to question everyone he knows once he finds out he’s the main target of the attack. Be prepared to radically rethink future plane trips after watching this.

How to watch: Non-Stop is now streaming on Netflix.

20. The Beguiled

Sometimes the mere presence of a man is enough to instigate ominous tension. In Sofia Coppola's gothic Civil War thriller The Beguiled — a remake of the 1971 Clint Eastwood film of the same name — Colin Farrell plays a wounded Union soldier who falls ill near a Confederate all-girls' school. Nicole Kidman's headmaster Miss Farnsworth allows him to stay until his health restores, but an atmosphere of sexual unease and jealousy begins to pervade the school as each girl vies for the handsome soldier's affection, especially Kirsten Dunst's Miss Edwina Morrow. The Beguiled soon crescendos into a frenetic thrill ride of violence, secrets, and one very unforgettable meal. Most memorably, Coppola gives us an all-timer line: a distraught Farrell screaming, "You vengeful bitches!"

How to watch: The Beguiled is now streaming on Netflix.

21. Emily the Criminal

Known best for her offbeat deadpan humor, Aubrey Plaza gets to fully immerse herself in a high-stress dramatic role in Emily the Criminal, and it's a real treat to watch. She plays Emily, an artist suffocated by her $70,000 of student debt and a criminal record preventing her from landing a reliable job. Everything is stacked against her until a coworker hooks her up with a side gig doing credit card fraud, sending her down a new path of danger and financial success.

Most crime thrillers put us in the shoes of long-time, professional swindlers, yet Emily the Criminal feels especially relatable as a story about the way anyone — especially those of us buried in debt — could consider illegal routes out of pure desperation. While the film could benefit from a keener analysis of the systems in place that directly lead to crime and inequities in the first place, it's really Plaza's performance that makes this film shine. She does a phenomenal job of channeling a young woman breaking under the pressure of financial instability, and also one who grows more daring and outspoken the deeper she gets.

How to watch: Emily the Criminal is now streaming on Netflix.

22. The Woman in the Window

A woman stares out the window, her face surrounded by curtains.
Credit: Netflix

If you like your thrillers absolutely over the top and oozing with melodrama, may I introduce you to Joe Wright's deliciously entertaining The Woman in the Window? Based on the A.J. Finn bestseller of the same name, this thriller finds Amy Adams camping it up as Anna Fox, a child psychologist with an extreme case of agoraphobia that prevents her from leaving her Manhattan brownstone. One evening, after guzzling wine and popping prescription medication, Anna believes she's witnessed a murder across the street. But as the detectives begin to question her sanity, Anna also starts to lose a grip on what's real.

Of course, you've seen this all before, and that's kinda the point. A mash-up of Rear Window meets Gaslight and filled with a dozen and a half other references to classic noir that Anna actually watches throughout the movie, The Woman in the Window is more of a cheesy love letter to a subgenre than a successful recreation of one. But boy, does that give way to some good, trashy fun.

How to watch: The Woman in the Window is now streaming on Netflix.

23. Prisoners

Any film about a child abduction is bound to be intense, but in Prisoners filmmaker Denis Villeneuve bottles up and captures an incredibly potent intensity that echos what any parent of a lost child would feel during an investigation. And it's hard not to feel that racing anxiety and pulsating terror throughout its two-and-a-half-hour runtime.

After two young girls go missing, Jake Gyllenhaal's Detective Loki arrests the first suspect (Paul Dano) but soon lets him go after failing to find evidence. A furiously explosive Hugh Jackman, who plays the father of one of the girls, decides to take the investigation into his own hands, kidnapping and violently interrogating Dano's Alex himself. From there, we're taken down a twisty path of multiple suspects and red herrings that culminates in a bone-chilling finale.

How to watch: Prisoners is now streaming on Netflix.

24. Triple Frontier

A man armed with a gun stands in an empty dining room.
Credit: Netflix

There's nothing like a good ensemble in a crime film, and Triple Frontier has one of the strongest in years. Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Pedro Pascal, Garrett Hedlund, and Charlie Hunnam play five former Special Forces military operators in this J.C. Chandor thriller. Feeling neglected by their government, the men decide to get in on a heist to steal $75 million from a drug cartel in a South American jungle. But as greed sets in and tensions rise, things start going off the rails.

Triple Frontier isn't the explosive action mayhem you'd expect from say, The Expendables, but instead Chandor brings a more restrained, taut suspense to his sequences, including a memorable tracking shot during the heist. The real glue that holds it all together though is the all-around excellent work from his stellar cast, especially Isaac and Pascal, a duo that one can only hope will team up again.

How to watch: Triple Frontier is now streaming on Netflix.

25. The Nice Guys

To be fair, The Nice Guys is technically more of a comedy than a thriller, but if you're craving some belly laughs alongside a sharply-crafted murder mystery, look no further. A delightful buddy cop comedy from Lethal Weapon's Shane Black follows the unlikely duo of a down-and-out P.I. (a hilarious Ryan Gosling) and the violent muscle-for-hire (a charming Russell Crowe) he's forced to team up with. Their task? To find out if a recently deceased porn actress is secretly still alive. The two stumble and fight their way down a kooky labyrinth of 1970s Los Angeles and a variety of characters. To top it all off, this funny neo-noir slash erotic thriller throwback even features an excellent turn by Kim Basinger.

How to watch: The Nice Guys is now streaming on Netflix.

26. The Guilty

A man stares at his own reflection in the mirror.
Credit: Glen Wilson / Netflix

Some of the sharpest tension arises from showing less on screen and leaving the most intense moments up to our imagination. That's the approach Antoine Fuqua takes in The Guilty, a remake of the Danish film of the same name; the narrative unfolds over the course of one day, in one location, with the majority of the action taking place offscreen. 

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Joe, an LAPD officer working as a 911 dispatch operator who receives a call from a woman who's been abducted. Over a series of phone calls where Joe tries to solve the crime, we watch the tension grow and burst through Gyllenhaal’s performance alone, forcing us to envision what's happening on the other end of the line. It's a gimmick that works, largely thanks to Gyllenhaal's ability to convincingly play a man becoming completely undone over the course of 90 minutes.

How to watch: The Guilty is now streaming on Netflix.

27 - 29. The Fear Street Trilogy

A person in a skeleton mask and black hood stares at the camera.
Credit: Netflix

Leigh Janiak deserves far more acclaim than she's gotten for her Fear Street movies. Her trilogy of throwback teen horror thrillers both pay homage to and cleverly reinvent the tropes of genre staples, most notably by having queer and female characters take the lead. The filmmaker's trio of interconnected films span three decades to tell a story about a town plagued by a curse, but each movie has its own distinct genre aesthetic with heavy doses of gore and shocking chills.

In Fear Street Part One: 1994, a love letter to slashers of the '90s, a masked killer wreaks havoc on the small town as a gang of friends attempt to stop the killings. In Fear Street Part Two: 1978, we hang out with a new set of teens at a summer camp, nodding at everything from Friday the 13th to Sleepaway Camp. And in Fear Street Part Three: 1666, a spooky ode to folk horror, the origins of the previous movies' mysteries are soon revealed. The Fear Street trilogy may be horror first, but Janiak laces all three movies with an exciting suspense that keeps you hooked until the very end.

How to watch: The Fear Street Trilogy is now streaming on Netflix.

30. Intrusion

In this home invasion thriller, Freida Pinto's therapist Meera and her architect husband Henry (Logan Marshall-Green) relocate from Boston to New Mexico to live in a newly built modern home in a majestic desert landscape. The two seem like the picturesque couple, but their sense of everyday safety is rocked when their house is broken into one night. More strange occurrences follow, and soon after it happens again when a group of masked invaders return.

While there's nothing especially new in Intrusion that you haven't seen done in other home invasion movies, there is a twist here. Things take a sharp turn when Meera begins to grow suspicious of the person she trusts most, and tension brews as she wonders if there are more clues tied to the intruders themselves.

How to watch: Intrusion is now streaming on Netflix.

Netflix logo
Credit: Netflix
Netflix
Sign up for Netflix

UPDATE: Nov. 20, 2023, 11:18 a.m. EST This article has been updated to reflect Netflix's current streaming selection.

Mashable Image
Oliver Whitney

Oliver Whitney is a freelance journalist and film critic. He has written for ScreenCrush, The A.V. Club, HuffPost, Vulture, Vanity Fair, and TV Guide.


Recommended For You
How to watch Japanese Netflix from anywhere in the world
Netflix on phone

How to watch the live-action 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' series
promo art for Netflix's 'Avatar: The Last Airbender'


'The Gentlemen' cast break down the show's biggest moments
 A collage of 'The Gentlemen' cast sat against a black backdrop featuring the film's title.


More in Entertainment


How to cancel your Amazon Prime membership
Illustration of a person signing for a package delivery

IRS Direct File program now open to more taxpayers
A woman holds paperwork with her computer open in front of her.

See the world for less with $50 off your $100+ roundtrip airfare at JetBlue
The tail of a JetBlue plane as it flies through the air

Trending on Mashable
NYT Connections today: See hints and answers for March 9
A phone displaying the New York Times game 'Connections.'

Wordle today: Here's the answer and hints for March 9
a phone displaying Wordle

NYT Connections today: See hints and answers for March 8
A phone displaying the New York Times game 'Connections.'

Wordle today: Here's the answer and hints for March 8
a phone displaying Wordle

NYT's The Mini crossword answers for March 8
Closeup view of crossword puzzle clues
The biggest stories of the day delivered to your inbox.
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
Thanks for signing up. See you at your inbox!