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What is a thriller, anyway?
It’s a style that lacks the standard signifiers that one thing like horror, comedy, or romance would possibly, however you understand it whenever you really feel it. Thrillers are thrilling — it’s proper there within the identify — whether or not they come from the world of crime, sci-fi, or one thing else solely.
We’ve already put collectively an inventory of the finest thrillers you possibly can watch at residence, however right here’s the very best of the very best on Netflix. For extra of the finest motion pictures on Netflix, try our picks for the very best horror motion pictures, comedy motion pictures, and motion motion pictures the platform has to supply.
Apostle
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Image: Netflix
This one leans extra into the horror facet of issues than many of the thrillers on this checklist, however earlier than The Raid director Gareth Evans goes full Grand Guignol within the movie’s latter half, he builds up a mesmerizing interval thriller a few man who’s in means over his head in a spot the place he doesn’t belong. Dan Stevens stars as Thomas, a traumatized and previously institutionalized man who initially seems to be taking part in out a variation on Robin Hardy’s 1973 traditional The Wicker Man. The yr is 1905, and Thomas is attempting to infiltrate a distant Welsh island run by an obscure cult, which seems to have kidnapped his sister. He doesn’t know a lot about their beliefs, however he has to pose as one in all them and examine the island whereas holding his personal appreciable demons at bay simply lengthy sufficient to avoid wasting his sister’s life. And the extra he learns in regards to the place the place he’s landed, the darker and eerier the movie will get. This one’s excellent Halloween-month viewing: bloody as hell and startling proper as much as the ultimate shot. But it’s additionally a crackerjack investigative thriller, an unraveling grim thriller that in all probability would have been higher left unsolved. —Tasha Robinson
Athena
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Image: Netflix
It’s laborious to consider a scene extra singularly electrifying and unbelievable than the one which opens Athena. This film, a few police raid on a fictional French neighborhood, opens with a gaggle of teenagers raiding a police station, beginning a small riot, and stealing the cops’ weapons, and it solely grows larger and extra intense from there. Technically the scene is a oner, however somewhat than showy, the scene’s lack of seen cuts appears like a necessity, as if a single break from this one digital camera angle that’s deftly following the group’s chief would possibly trigger us to overlook one thing important. Almost as spectacular as this singe scene is the truth that Athena is ready to maintain this similar momentum and nervy, livid vitality all through your complete film because the police and the rebels conflict with the identical operatic depth as a Greek epic. —Austen Goslin
Casino Royale
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Image: Sony Pictures
Every James Bond film is a time capsule of when it was made. For Casino Royale (technically the third adaptation of Ian Fleming’s first James Bond guide, however the first severe one), additionally it is a glimpse again in the beginning of a brand new period for the long-lasting character.
Daniel Craig’s James Bond is in contrast to any of the others that got here earlier than him. He’s drained and worn down, cynical and bitter, however Craig’s distinctive display presence means the character by no means loses his signature allure. Perhaps an important ingredient of Craig as Bond is his physicality — he’s an underrated display fighter who did various of his personal stunts all through the franchise, and Bond as a fighter has by no means seemed fairly so good as in his motion pictures.
Craig is just not the one motive to love Casino Royale — Mads Mikkelsen was principally created in a lab to play a Bond villain, and Jeffrey Wright’s Felix Leiter has electrical buddy chemistry with Craig’s Bond. The film revitalized a stale franchise and was the primary of many stellar entries with Craig within the 007 moniker. —Pete Volk
Collateral
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Image: Paramount Pictures/DreamWorks Pictures
In some ways, Collateral is a slasher film, and Tom Cruise is at his absolute scariest in it.
In Collateral, Cruise is Vincent, a hitman with a sequence of murders to commit on one Los Angeles evening. Jamie Foxx is Max, a cab driver who drew the unfortunate straw of being Vincent’s unwitting confederate for the evening. Michael Mann’s digital camera evokes the sensation of LA at evening, full of cool tones towards the town lights. Foxx is pitch-perfect as a person caught in a state of affairs he doesn’t need to be in, and whose encounter with a person who could as nicely be the satan himself helps him notice he’s not residing the life he needs to. But it’s Cruise that turns this into the horrifying thriller it’s.
Cruise’s Vincent is chilly and calculating, but in addition effortlessly charming. He’s capable of put on totally different masks to fulfill the conditions of the evening, however by no means loses his ruthlessness. Mann’s talent with constructing stress each in his digital camera placement and music selections heightens this ambiance, resulting in a showstopping finale straight out of a extra classical slasher. —PV
Croupier
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Image: Channel Four Films
Clive Owen has made a complete movie profession out of being dapper, suave, smug, and only a wee bit condescending — principally being a James Bond sort with out ever truly attending to play Bond. But he’s by no means been all the above issues higher or extra intently than within the underseen 1998 gem Croupier, a criminal offense thriller that sees Owen overseeing a desk at a small on line casino, and mentally narrating his personal expertise as he coldly, politely judges everybody round him. That contains his fellow croupiers, who all appear to be on the take or on the make, breaking the on line casino’s guidelines and searching for an edge. Eventually, he’s drawn into an advanced heist scheme that proves he isn’t fairly as answerable for the world as he imagines, however a lot of Croupier isn’t in regards to the legal plot — it’s about all the trouble that goes into what looks as if easy cool. —TR
Den of Thieves
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Image: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
Do you want financial institution theft crime thrillers like Heat? Director Christan Gudegast’s characteristic debut is finest described as “dirtbag Heat.” If that appears like your jam you’re in for a good time.
Gerard Butler performs a Pepto Bismol-chugging soiled cop who’s chasing a crew of ex-military financial institution robbers, led by Pablo Schreiber and together with O’Shea Jackson Jr. and 50 Cent. The crew of extremely expert criminals are hoping to tug off their largest job but: robbing the Federal Reserve.
It’s obtained an ideal rating from former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Cliff Martinez (I usually use it for background music whereas I write and edit), terrifically sleazy performances from the ensemble forged, and electrifying motion sequences when the heists happen. —PV
Eyes Wide Shut
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Image: Warner Bros. Pictures
Stanley Kubrick’s final movie, and one in all his most exacting, exact, and claustrophobic. Eyes Wide Shut follows a younger physician named Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) who slowly drifts into the chaos of New York’s highest and most secretive society after fears that his spouse, performed by Nicole Kidman, is falling out of affection with him. But as Bill glimpses larger into the clouds of the actually highly effective individuals on the planet, he additionally slips farther from his spouse, as if realizing the key movers of the world and realizing the true depths of a single particular person’s coronary heart are each unimaginable desires. That the film was filmed amidst the fraying of Kidman and Cruise’s real-life marriage simply provides one other layer to Kubrick’s fascinating, dreamlike, and eerily stunning labyrinth of emotions and thriller. —AG
The Hateful Eight
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Photo: Andrew Cooper/The Weinstein Company
Quentin Tarantino’s shaggy Western bottle episode of a film has its notable flaws, which have been debated advert infinitum. It could come all the way down to a easy 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 solely authentic. (The similar individuals who don’t take pleasure in these issues don’t a lot take pleasure in Tarantino’s tone-deaf defenses of them, both.) But leaving apart how precisely a given viewer responds to Tarantino’s lifelong deliberate, acutely aware transgressiveness, it’s laborious to disclaim that The Hateful Eight is a startlingly lush and delightful film, full of indelible performances and large, room-filling stress. The contrivance that places eight violent individuals with secret connections right into a distant one-room cabin collectively in the midst of an impassible blizzard is rigorously staged, and so is the sequence of face-offs and showdowns that inevitably leaves blood on the ground. It’s a few of Tarantino’s most classic-Hollywood filmmaking, the profanity and gore apart: The characters’ personalities and passions shine by means of in each verbal sparring session, and the stress builds steadily as much as the blowout ending. The all-star forged — Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Bruce Dern — is an amazing overflow of expertise in a single tight, taut area, and Tarantino makes essentially the most of it. —TR
Hell or High Water
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Image: Lionsgate
In current years, Taylor Sheridan has made fairly the identify for himself within the tv Westerns, creating the extraordinarily common Yellowstone and its spinoff prequel 1883. But earlier than all that, he wrote the superb neo-Western crime thriller Hell or High Water.
Nominated for 4 Oscars (together with Best Picture and for Sheridan’s screenplay), the film follows two bank-robbing brothers and the Texas Rangers despatched to hunt them down. The brothers, performed with completely antagonistic sibling chemistry by Chris Pine and Ben Foster, are excellent foils for one another — Pine’s Toby is calm and picked up, whereas Foster’s Tanner is uncontrolled (an ideal match for Foster’s pure depth). Jeff Bridges (nominated for an Oscar for this) and the superb Gil Birmingham (who reunited with Sheridan on Yellowstone and was additionally lately one of many principal forged members in Under the Banner of Heaven) co-star because the growing older Texas Rangers. Keep your eyes peeled for a short look by future Prey star Amber Midthunder, too. —PV
Hunt for the Wilderpeople
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Image: Piki Films
Sorry, Thor: Ragnarok, Hunt for the Wilderpeople remains to be Taika Waititi’s finest and funniest movie. It sprawls throughout loads of genres — it’s arguably a household drama, a coming-of-age movie, or only a straight-up comedy. But the second act is pure thriller, as a assured orphan (Julian Dennison, who went on to be among the finest components of Deadpool 2) and his cranky foster father (Sam Neill) wind up on the run within the New Zealand bush. And the third act gins up some surprisingly explosive motion for a movie that begins out with such wry humor. This movie is likely one of the huge causes Waititi obtained the Marvel Cinematic Universe nod within the first place — it’s a bizarre, foolish, extremely particular character piece that mixes stress and battle with actual hilarity. (Note Waititi’s cameo as a preacher who fumbles badly over metaphors about life and the afterlife.) It’s the uncommon household movie that’s truly nice viewing for all ages, whether or not they’re in it for the heartwarming sincerity, the Tupac jokes, or simply to see Waititi’s longtime comedy associate (and Our Flag Means Death romantic associate) Rhys Darby stand up to some actually goofy shit. —TR
Lost Bullet
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Image: Netflix
This French crime thriller executes a easy premise to absolute perfection. Lino (former stunt man Alban Lenoir) is an skilled mechanic compelled to work for soiled cops. When he’s framed for a homicide he didn’t commit, he has to search out the one factor that may show his innocence: a misplaced bullet in a lacking automobile. With high-octane motion sequences and nice automobile stunts, this can be a 92-minute thrill journey by means of and thru. —PV
Mersal
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Image: Sri Thenandal Films
This one’s a revenge story in regards to the cruelties of for-profit well being care. It options an unforgettable efficiency from one of many world’s most charismatic main males in Vijay (taking part in a number of characters, and I’ll depart it at that), colourful dance sequences, and a searing (and all-too-relevant) political message. —PV
Monster
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Image: Media 8 Entertainment
When Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins made her big-screen debut with Monster in 2003, the cultural dialog revolved a lot round Charlize Theron’s transformation for the function (and her Best Actress Oscar win for it) that it nearly drowned out the facet chatter about how this can be a actually terrific film. Yes, it’s nonetheless by some means thought of “brave” for a reasonably woman to de-glam herself for a film and danger trying unattractive on display, however Monster actually isn’t about Theron daring to be unappealing. It’s far more in regards to the queasy locations self-justification can lead, particularly when a longtime sufferer finds a option to make different individuals the victims as a substitute. We’re in the midst of a bizarre, bizarre cultural place round serial killers proper now, with true-crime explorations of the world’s Jeffrey Dahmers and John Wayne Gacys cropping up throughout streaming companies, however whereas Monster finds the human facet of real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos, Jenkins doesn’t draw back from the methods she turns misogynistic violence into an excuse to justify a life-style of premeditated homicide. It’s a startling, graphically violent, deeply uncomfortable story, however it’s informed compellingly and in methods designed to get audiences arguing. And Theron earns that Oscar by means of complexity and verve, not simply by means of transformational make-up. —TR
The Night Comes for Us
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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 a wonderful showcase for why he’s exactly the precise man for the job. Brutal and visceral, the film options unforgettable characters (I’m nonetheless ready on a by-product centered on Julie Estelle’s The Operator), unbelievable martial arts (it doesn’t get higher than Iko Uwais vs. Joe Taslim), and a depraved humorousness. —PV
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