30 Best Thrillers On Netflix

Few movies can suck us in as quickly and thoroughly as thrillers. And since all they need to offer is gripping suspense and a battle against the odds, they're tremendously flexible, crossing over with genres like horror and science fiction and alternating between gritty realism and gleeful implausibility. They can be grueling feats of endurance, so darkly dramatic that you can only watch them between your fingers, or they can be high-octane roller-coaster rides designed to make you scream with delight.

Whatever you want, there's a good chance Netflix has it. The service has assembled (and often created) a top-notch selection of thrillers from all across this exciting spectrum. The only downside of it all is that Netflix's huge catalog can make it hard to narrow down your choices, so we're determined to point out the absolute best. Any of these films should keep you glued to the screen.

Updated on April 3, 2023: From disturbing dramas to strange genre tales, these are the best thrillers that Netflix has to offer.

"Bad Genius" is an inventive and wildly entertaining heist movie with an academic twist. At first, Lynn — a bright high school student from a poorer family — gives away test answers for free, just to help out a struggling friend, but she soon winds up with a cottage industry of lucrative cheating. Getting caught reduces her chances for legitimate success, but despite her tumultuous conscience, Lynn has to up the stakes. With the help of ambivalent golden boy Bank, she embarks on an ambitious, globe-trotting plan to memorize and distribute the answers to an internationally standardized exam.

• Starring: Chutimon Chuengcharoen, Eisaya Hosuwan, Teeradon Supapunpinyo

• Director: Nattawut Poonpiriya

• Year: 2017

• Runtime: 130 minutes

• Rating: NR

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

A mistake leads to a crime, and a crime leads to a cover-up, and a cover-up leads to a conspiracy. That's the lesson in "Calibre," where an ordinary hunting trip in Scotland turns tragic. When inexperienced hunter Vaughn accidentally kills a boy instead of the deer he was aiming at, his friend, Marcus, kills the boy's vengeful father to protect them. Soon, the two of them are plunged into a dark cover-up where the complications keep multiplying. The movie looks at the tensions between rural people and the city tourists they need but loathe, using the isolated, close-knit nature of the area to heap the pressure on Vaughn and Marcus.

• Starring: Jack Lowden, Martin McCann, Tony Curran

• Director: Matt Palmer

• Year: 2018

• Runtime: 101 minutes

• Rating: TV-MA

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%

A training session at a survivalist camp goes disastrously wrong in "The Decline." Alain is convinced that society could easily collapse at any moment and that everyone needs to know how to survive on their own — up to and including killing their enemies with homemade pipe bombs. When one of his students dies during this training, Alain is determined to cover it up. The last thing he wants is the government's attention on his camp. The rest of the students don't necessarily agree, and soon, the collapsing society is here in miniature as they all scramble to survive this high-stakes conflict. This tightly paced thriller makes great use of its creative premise.

• Starring: Marc Beaupré, Réal Bossé, Marilyn Castonguay

• Director: Patrice Laliberté

• Year: 2020

• Runtime: 83 minutes

• Rating: TV-MA

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%

Emily Benetto has a huge amount of student loan debt, and the few jobs she's able to get — mostly gig work delivering food — barely keep her afloat. There's no way to put a dent in everything she owes ... until she falls in with a credit card fraud ring, which promises to net her $200 for an hour's work. Emily gradually embraces her newfound criminality (and her attraction to Youcef, who teaches her the ropes), but it's still a dangerous operation. "Emily the Criminal" provides a sharp, relevant look at the limited opportunities available in the contemporary economy and grounds its criticism in wonderful lead work by Aubrey Plaza.

• Starring: Aubrey Plaza, Theo Rossi, Megalyn Echikunwoke

• Director: John Patton Ford

• Year: 2022

• Runtime: 93 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

"Forgotten" is a complicated, layered mystery with twist after twist. Jin-seok witnesses his brother's kidnapping, and when his brother comes back, Jin-seok can't shake the nagging sense that something here is horribly wrong. The sense of disorientation goes deeper and deeper until he begins to doubt that his family is his family at all ... and when he tries to convey all this to the police, he's blindsided by another shocking revelation. Repressed memories, elaborate deceptions, guilt, and family all intertwine to create a thriller that will keep you guessing.

• Starring: Kang Ha-neul, Kim Mu-yeol, Moon Sung-keun

• Director: Jang Hang-jun

• Year: 2017

• Runtime: 108 minutes

• Rating: NR

• Rotten Tomatoes: 82% (Audience)

Benoit Blanc — the master detective from "Knives Out' — returns in the playful "Glass Onion," where he's invited to a murder mystery party thrown by shady tech billionaire Miles Bron. Unsure why he's there, Blanc watches the dynamics play out between Bron, his toadies (which includes the likes of a politician, a YouTube influencer, and an actress on the verge of getting canceled), and Andi Brand — Bron's former partner, who was betrayed and cut of their company. As the night plays on and things reach a boiling point, the murder mystery party turns into a true murder mystery. Good thing Blanc is there ... but again, why was he invited in the first place? With plenty of twists and turns, "Glass Onion," like its predecessor, boasts a stacked cast, a stunning setting, and a fiendishly clever mystery.

• Starring: Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe

• Director: Rian Johnson

• Year: 2022

• Runtime: 139 minutes

• Rating: PG-13

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

Intense, contemporary, and viscerally uncomfortable, the Polish thriller "The Hater" provides an up-close-and-personal look at a man who makes it his life's mission to cultivate online viciousness. Tomasz has always been unscrupulous and driven by obsessions — especially when it comes to Gabi Krasucka, the girl he longs for — but his tendencies are amplified and refined once he starts his new job: running smear campaigns, drumming up social unrest, and prodding people towards violence. When he narrows his sights to Gabi's family and the politician they're championing, the personal and the professional collide, and that's when the pot really starts to boil.

• Starring: Maciej Musiałowski, Vanessa Aleksander, Agata Kulesza

• Director: Jan Komasa

• Year: 2020

• Runtime: 135 minutes

• Rating: NR

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 83%

"Hush" is a home invasion thriller with a lot of twists. They serve to make the film more immersive, and that much more unsettling. Maddie is a deaf-mute writer who's moved into a well-appointed home in the woods, in the hopes of living life entirely on her own. Large parts of "Hush" are silent or near-silent, which means viewers are right there with Maddie when she finds herself running and hiding from a relentless and seemingly unkillable masked man. Soon enough, though, she stops hiding and starts fighting back.

• Starring: Kate Siegel, John Gallagher Jr., Michael Trucco

• Director: Mike Flanagan

• Year: 2016

• Runtime: 87 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

Equal parts funny and quietly sad, "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore" is the story of Ruth, a nursing assistant whose modest life is interrupted by a burglary that the police refuse to seriously investigate. Ruth teams up with her neighbor, Tony, to try to get the job done themselves. They're exhausted by the world and fed up with everything, and this might offer catharsis. Before solving the theft can bring Ruth too much closure, however, she accidentally gets herself embroiled in more than she can handle — and she's being forced into criminal activity of her own. It's all handled with intelligence and emotional complexity.

• Starring: Melanie Lynskey, Elijah Wood, David Yow

• Director: Macon Blair

• Year: 2017

• Runtime: 96 minutes

• Rating: TV-MA

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89%

A brainteasing plot twister of a movie, viewers of "Inception" can never be quite sure what they're seeing is really happening to the characters on the screen or if it's merely a dream ... or a dream inside of a dream. The elegant, reality-questioning Best Picture-nominated "Inception" is essentially a heist movie, where a mysterious businessman recruits master thief Dom Cobb to do what he does best, which is enter a target's subconscious. But instead of stealing memories, he'll have to do the impossible — plant a new one. Of course, the subconscious mind has a way of fighting back, which makes for a dangerous task through the mind of a stranger.

• Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Elliot Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
• Director: Christopher Nolan
• Year: 2010
• Runtime: 148 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

Stories are buried within stories in "Nocturnal Animals," where a woman becomes engrossed in her ex-husband's dark thriller novel. Years ago, Susan left Edward to start a new life with the more driven and successful Hutton, but now she might regret that decision. Meanwhile, we also see inside Edward's novel, where a man devotes himself to revenge after his family is destroyed by a random act of violence. The two stories support each other in curious ways, each adding emotional resonance to the other. Sophisticated, bleak, and powerful, this twists the genre in new ways and gets strong results.

• Starring: Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon

• Director: Tom Ford

• Year: 2016

• Runtime: 116 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 74%

Two families are put through a grueling moral test when their young daughters, Anna and Joy, go missing. Keller Dover and Franklin Birch believe they know who took these girls: Alex, a disabled man who was seen near the scene of the crime. When the police investigation seemingly clears Alex, Keller sets out to extract his daughter's location out of the man he still believes is guilty. Meanwhile, Detective Loki follows a different path. Together, they slowly unravel a dark, tangled history involving religion and revenge. This bleakness makes "Prisoners" rough viewing, but its exceptionally talented cast means you won't want to look away.

• Starring: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis

• Director: Denis Villeneuve

• Year: 2013

• Runtime: 153 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 81%

"The Stranger" is a gripping thriller that looks at the psychological toll of a prolonged undercover operation aimed at securing a confession. Henry Teague, the prime suspect in a notorious abduction case, finds himself drawn into a well-connected criminal empire — one that promises they can wipe any slate clean. What he doesn't know is that Mark Frame, his closest friend in the organization, is an undercover cop, one who hopes to get a confession out of Teague by lulling him into a false sense of security. That secret is just the tip of the iceberg in this dense, layered film.

• Starring: Joel Edgerton, Sean Harris, Jada Alberts

• Director: Thomas M. Wright

• Year: 2022

• Runtime: 117 minutes

• Rating: NR

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

This atmospheric thriller holds that found money brings bad luck. Three lighthouse keepers come across a washed-up corpse and his trunk full of gold bars, but the opportunity of a lifetime starts going wrong before they even get the trunk open. All too quickly, bodies and secrets start piling up. Soon, it's no longer a question of how they're going to get away with their opportunistic crime — it's a question of how they're going to live with what they've done. A classic, well-executed plot and an intriguing and vivid setting combine to make "The Vanishing" a force to be reckoned with.

• Starring: Gerard Butler, Peter Mullan, Connor Swindells

• Director: Kristoffer Nyholm

• Year: 2018

• Runtime: 107 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85%

When it comes to claustrophobic suspense, it's hard to beat a submarine movie, and "The Wolf's Call" is one of the great recent examples of the form. The film centers on the sharp-eared Chanteraide, a gifted sonar operator on a French sub. Chanteraide winds up at the center of complex and deception-filled intrigue that could wind up triggering a nuclear war, and deciphering the significance of the sounds he's hearing — and connecting them with new military intelligence — is only the first step in resolving things. The task demands courage and the willingness to make sacrifices, and Chanteraide will have to put himself on the line to finish it.

• Starring: François Civil, Omar Sy, Mathieu Kassovitz

• Director: Antonin Baudry

• Year: 2019

• Runtime: 115 minutes

• Rating: NR

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85%