There's no shortage of quality thriller movies on Netflix — especially if they
feature a revenge story or star Jake Gyllenhaal. These films are the best
of the best — and they've probably eluded your watchlist until now.
You might not expect a prequel to a zombie movie to be a lively comic thriller, but that's exactly
why you should check out "Army of Thieves." Much like its predecessor, "Army of the Dead," this
mish-mash of genres depicts a group of criminals using the zombie outbreak as a distraction to pull
off an epic heist — but this time, the spotlight is on the lovable German safecracker Sebastian.
After being pulled into an expert crew by jewel thief Gwendoline — and falling for her in the
process — Sebastian breaks into a series of soon-to-be-decommissioned safes across Europe.
Conflicts between teammates and the threat of Interpol keep things lively,
even if the characters don't actually interact with any zombies. If you loved "Army of the Dead,"
you'll probably love "Army of Thieves" — even though it wasn't also directed by Zack Snyder.
"I hope you too will get great enjoyment out of it… like I do."
"Bad Genius" is another inventive and wildly entertaining heist movie — but this time,
there's an academic twist. At first, Lynn — a bright high school student
from a poor family — gives away test answers to her friend Grace for free,
but she soon finds herself pulled into an underground cottage industry of cheating.
Getting caught reduces her chances for legitimate success — but despite her tumultuous conscience,
Lynn feels the need to up the stakes. With the help of ambivalent golden boy Bank,
Lynn embarks on an ambitious, globe-trotting plan to memorize and distribute the answers to
an internationally standardized exam. With a 100% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes,
this 2017 thriller from Thailand is guaranteed to satisfy even the pickiest of audiences.
A mistake leads to a crime, a crime leads to a cover-up, and a cover-up leads to a
conspiracy. That's what happens in "Calibre" when an ordinary hunting trip in Scotland turns tragic.
After 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 pressure is on as the pair are forced to weave a web of lies in the small
town. "Calibre" examines the tensions between rural people and the urban tourists they need
but loathe, making for a uniquely suspenseful and unforgettable experience. If you can handle the
intense subject matter, "Calibre" is definitely worth a watch next time you turn on Netflix.
The sins of the past return with a vengeance in "Coming Home in the Dark," the horrific
debut thriller from director James Ashcroft. This uniquely upsetting story starts with
a familiar premise as two armed robbers crash a family's picnic — but things are
about to go from bad to worse. Alan, the father, has a history with the criminals:
he worked at the group home where the pair endured extreme abuse during their childhoods,
and he did nothing to stop it from happening.
As the deep-seated grudge comes to the surface, Alan is forced to protect his family from the
monsters he apparently was complicit in creating. The well-crafted drama and suspense of "Coming
Home in the Dark" make it as thrilling as it is thoughtful and morally complex.
"There is a difference between doing something and letting it happen. There has to be."
A training session at a survivalist camp goes disastrously wrong in first-time director Patrice
Laliberté's 2020 film "The Decline." Camp director Alain is convinced that society could easily
collapse at any moment, and that everyone needs to know how to survive on their own. When one
of his students dies after a bomb accidentally explodes, Alain is determined to cover it up.
After all, 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 arrives in miniature as they all scramble to survive a high-stakes
conflict. This tightly paced thriller makes great use of its creative and entertaining premise.
Emily Benetto has mountains of student loan debt, and the few jobs she's able
to find — mostly gig work delivering food — barely keep her afloat. There's no way she
can 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 a life of crime is a
dangerous one that's bound to go wrong at some point. "Emily the Criminal" provides a sharp,
relevant look at the limited opportunities available in the contemporary economy,
and features some wonderful lead work from its star Aubrey Plaza.
"What do I have to do?" "Kill someone."
"Just kidding."
"Eye for an Eye" is a ruthless Spanish-language revenge thriller that goes to some dark places —
and it keeps the plot moving at a breathless pace. Aging drug lord Antonio Padin moves into a nursing
home, where he deals with his physical decline and the constant demands of his son and organization.
The old man forms a kind of friendship with head nurse Mario — but what he doesn't know is that he
irreparably damaged Mario's life a number of years ago. Now that Mario has the infamous Padin at his
mercy, he intends to exact his revenge. "Eye for an Eye" is a brutal and surprising meditation on
the dangerous allure of payback — one that you'll have a hard time looking away from.
"Forgotten" is an enthralling mystery with twist after agonizing twist. Jin-seok
witnesses his brother's kidnapping — and when his brother comes back,
Jin-seok can't shake the nagging sense that something is horribly wrong.
His 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 his theory to the police,
he's blindsided by another shocking revelation.
Repressed memories, elaborate deceptions,
and family drama all intertwine to create a film that will keep you guessing. Fans of
Korean thrillers like "Oldboy" and "Parasite" should definitely give "Forgotten" a shot.
A weekend at the lake goes off the rails when Jessie's husband, Gerald,
takes out a pair of handcuffs — just to add a little spice. Jessie doesn't want to play-act
this particular fantasy, but Gerald refuses to take no for an answer. A struggle ensues — and
ends with Gerald dead of a heart attack, with Jessie still handcuffed to their bed.
Helplessly stuck in the middle of nowhere and frantically trying to
think her way out of the problem, Jessie has to figure out how to escape both her
predicament — which includes a very hungry stray dog and a possible intruder — and her
own haunted past. "Gerald's Game" is agonizingly tense, and Carla
Gugino turns in a spectacular performance that's both vulnerable and charismatic.
Based on the Danish film of the same name, "The Guilty" is full of nail-biting suspense
despite its singular location. When a particularly distressing 911 call comes in, Joe the operator
finds himself swept up into a terrifying family tragedy. Craving distraction from his own worries,
Joe throws himself into finding Emily, the caller who claims to have been abducted.
But as Joe tries to save Emily through an endless series of phone calls and favors, he soon learns
that the scenario is far more complicated than he could have imagined. The real story may force
him to face some truths of his own. "The Guilty" features the creative use of a limited setting,
and it serves as a great showcase for Jake Gyllenhaal's considerable acting skills.
"I get scared of being alone too, you know. And you know what I do when I'm lonely? I
turn on the TV, then I have company. Why don't you, why don't you go do that?"
Intense, contemporary, and viscerally uncomfortable, the Polish thriller "The
Hater" provides an up-close-and-personal look at a young man who's made it his life's
mission to cultivate online viciousness. Tomasz has always been unscrupulous and
driven by obsessions — especially when it comes to Gabi, the girl he longs for.
His tendencies are amplified and refined once he starts his new job running online 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 in a shocking climax. If you're a fan of
2014's "Nightcrawler," you'll probably find something to enjoy in "The Hater."
In Jeremy Saulnier's "Hold the Dark," wolf expert Russell Core gets in over his head when he travels
to a remote part of Alaska. A woman named Medora Slone is claiming that wolves are responsible
for multiple missing children, but that doesn't align with what Core knows about wolf behavior.
What he finds after meeting Medora and her husband, Vernon, might not align with what
he knows about humans, either — especially once a search uncovers their son's body. "Hold the
Dark" is a transfixing, uncanny look at the depth — and strange draw — of darkness. Jeffrey Wright,
Riley Keough, and Alexander Skarsgård all provide fantastic performances.
The darkest of humor is at the heart of "I Care a Lot," the vicious thriller in which the amoral
Marla makes her living framing elderly people as incompetent and assuming control of their assets.
It's a cruel and nightmarish situation, but she's always able to make it at least technically legal.
Marla unexpectedly meets her match in Jennifer Peterson,
a wealthy woman who doesn't seem to have any connections — but turns out to have a powerful
criminal son who takes it very personally when his mother falls under Marla's control.
The characters in this thrilling comedy are brutally unlikable — but thanks to the acting
skills of Rosamund Pike and Peter Dinklage, that never makes it any less enjoyable.
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 eccentric neighbor, Tony, to try to get the job done themselves — and maybe
find some emotional catharsis along the way. Before solving the theft can bring
Ruth too much closure, however, she accidentally finds herself in deeper
than she can handle — and she's soon being forced into criminal activity of her own.
Give this one a watch if you're not sure whether you want to laugh or
cry — or if you just can't get enough Elijah Wood in your life.
"That's not me. Leaving a BM in your yard? That's not who I am."
It's never totally clear what's really going on in Charlie Kaufman's mind-bending feature
"I'm Thinking of Ending Things." As off-putting as it is frightening,
this engrossing psychological thriller plays with time loops, changing points of view,
and surrealism to tell the story of a nameless young woman and her boyfriend who visit the man's
desperately sad parents for dinner during a snowstorm. A stopover at an all-night ice
cream store and an encounter with a high school custodian suggest that some truly
bizarre things are at work in this reality. "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" is a movie as
complex as it is fascinating — so don't expect to fully understand it the first time around.
In "Level 16," Vivien has grown up in a strange, claustrophobic all-girls school.
The administration — especially the icy Miss Brixil — tells the girls many things:
they must be obedient at all times, the air outside the school is poisonous, and one day,
they'll all be adopted by high-society families.
But as Vivien enters the titular Level 16 — the final stage of her "education" — she
finds out that nothing at the school is as it seems. The "vitamins" the girls are given are
actually high-grade sedatives, and both Miss Brixil and the creepily affable Dr. Miro have
sinister plans for them. "Level 16" is a smart, creative thriller for fans of dystopian sci-fi.
Stories are buried within stories in Tom Ford's "Nocturnal Animals," in which a woman
becomes engrossed in her ex-husband's dark thriller manuscript. Years ago,
Susan left Edward to start a new life with the more driven and successful
Hutton — but it looks like she might now regret that decision.
Meanwhile, inside Edward's novel, 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,
with each adding emotional resonance and context to the other. Sophisticated, bleak,
and powerful, "Nocturnal Animals" is anchored by its unforgettable performances from Amy Adams and
Jake Gyllenhaal — and an Oscar-nominated supporting role from Michael Shannon.
"What are we gonna do?"
"It's a question of how serious you are about seeing justice done."
A love affair between two cellists — Charlotte,
who had to leave her training at a young age, and the successful Lizzie,
who still admires her — takes a dark turn in "The Perfection." Beautifully shot and
deliciously over-the-top, this unpredictable horror-thriller combines a jaw-dropping plot
with the two terrific lead performances of Allison Williams and Logan Browning.
The balance of power between Charlotte and Lizzie is constantly shifting,
and new revelations about the situation they're in continue to shock until the
very end. Who is playing whom — and what's really going on at this prestigious musical
academy? You'll just have to see "The Perfection" for yourself to find out.
The Swedish thriller "Red Dot" is all killer with no filler. Its simple plot and small cast
prove to be more than enough to hold viewers in suspense. On the eve of their first child's birth,
Nadja and David attempt to reconnect by going on a hiking trip in rural Scandinavia — and following
some bizarre interactions with the racist locals, the couple find themselves lost in the icy woods.
They don't just have the cold to worry about,
though — a mysterious and violent contingent is hunting them like prey. It's a desperate
quest for survival as Nadja and David's relationship is tested like never before.
"The Stranger" is a gripping thriller that looks at the psychological toll
that being undercover for a long time would take on a person. 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 trying to get a confession out of Teague by lulling
him into a false sense of security. How far will Frame go for a confession? That's the
question at the heart of this dense, layered film starring Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris.
In "Time Share," Pedro and Eva'sfamily vacation has gone unsettlingly awry.
Their resort, Everfields, has accidentally double-booked the bungalow they're staying in,
and they're stuck reluctantly sharing space with strangers they don't particularly trust.
That isn't the only troubling aspect of the resort, either: Everfields exudes a certain
kind of corporate greed that makes everything there seem slightly askew. Just ask Andres,
who works in the laundry and whose wife has thrown her heart and soul into selling Everfields' time
shares — he's had his own weird and tumultuous experiences with his long-time employer,
and things might be getting worse. Dark comedy, a sense of building pressure,
and striking cinematography help make "Time Share" an attention-grabbing thriller.
Found money brings bad luck — that's the central idea in the 2018 thriller "The Vanishing." Three
lighthouse keepers come across a washed-up corpse and his chest 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 themselves. A well-executed plot and
an intriguing, vivid setting combine to make "The Vanishing" a force to be reckoned with.
"We'll all have to pay for what we've done. All of us."
Ex-cop Matt Scudder takes a private case that leads him into pitch-black territory
in the gripping film "A Walk Among the Tombstones." Scudder's mission
is to find out who kidnapped, killed, and dismembered a drug dealer's wife.
It's a brutal crime that turns out to be part of a series — and hunting down the
cold-blooded men responsible leads Scudder to the fresh kidnapping of a different
drug trafficker's teenage daughter. It's all grim, violent material, which makes the funny
and tender friendship between Scudder and his homeless teenage assistant TJ a welcome ray of
light. Liam Neeson shines as the tough, yet kind unlicensed investigator in this gritty neo-noir.
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. Our hero is the sharp-eared Chanteraide,
a gifted sonar operator on a French sub who winds up at the center of complex
and deception-filled intrigue that could wind up triggering a nuclear war. Deciphering the
significance of the sounds he's hearing — and connecting them with new military
intelligence — is only the first step in resolving things and preventing millions of
deaths. The task at hand demands courage and the willingness to make sacrifices,
and Chanteraide will have to put his life on the line to finish it.