The 11 Best, Most Suspenseful Thrillers on Netflix Right Now.

If you’re looking to watch some seriously gripping entertainment as we approach summer 2022, we’ve got you covered. Many of us go to the movies (or these days, watch from the couch) because we want to feel something. Few pictures get you to react quite like a suspenseful white-knuckler.

Netflix is host to a virtual library of first-rate suspense thrillers. We’ve rounded up the very best. On this list, we’ve included everything from suspenseful political yarns to thrilling action pics to thrillers with elements of horror.

Get ready for a heart-pounding experience. Here are our picks of the best, most suspenseful thriller films you can watch right now on Netflix.

This list is regularly updated as films come and go from Netflix’s library.

Best thrillers on Netflix right now.
1. Wild Things (1998)
One of the highest points of the 1990s erotic thriller boom stars Kevin Bacon, Matt Dillon, Denise Richards and Neve Campbell in an unpredictable, lurid crime yarn about a Florida guidance counselor accused of raping a student. Nothing is as it seems in the darkly comic Wild Things, whose infamous sex and nude scenes grabbed headlines and pushed the boundaries of the R rating.
2. Under the Shadow (2016)
An exquisitely crafted and thoroughly unnerving chiller, writer/director Babak Anvari‘s feature debut blurs the line between supernatural terror and the horrors of the real world like few films you’ll ever see. Set in 1980’s Tehran during The War of the Cities–the backdrop of Anvari’s own fear-ridden childhood Narges Rashidi stars as medical student Shideh who is barred from her studies because of her involvement in revolutionary politics. When her husband departs for the front, Shideh is tasked with protecting their young daughter Dorsa (Avin Manshadi) as the fighting and bombings escalate around them. It doesn’t look like things can get any bleaker, and that’s when Shideh and Dorsa are hpaunted by an evil genie.

The performances are powerful, and the filmmaking here is impeccable, evoking a war-torn Iran that is almost suffocating to watch. Anvari grew up in a culture where VCR’s and VHS tapes were illegal, and his debut is made with the kind of passion for film that you can’t put a price tag on. The supernatural scares work, but they’re never quite as frightening as Shideh’s reality, which seems to be Anvari’s point. Esteemed British film critic Mark Kermode named this small-scale powerhouse the best film of 2016, and it is not to be missed.
3. Cam (2018)
Directed by Daniel Goldhaber, this Netflix original is about an adult webcam performer who discovers a sinister presence has taken her place on the internet. Cam has some truly frightening moments, and it examines the subject matter of sex work with appropriate care and thought. Most notably, it showcases a head-turning lead performance by The Handmaid‘s Tale‘s Madeline Brewer, often playing multiple entities on-screen at the same time. Thanks to a perceptive script by real-life former cam girl Isa Mazzei, Cam is often an examination of fractured identity, something that’s definitely not limited to the world of adult entertainment. Cam stumbles a bit at the ending, but it’s full of provocative ideas, and Brewer just floors you.

4. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
A year after she, frankly, stunned us with her turn as a Scottish bad girl-turned country singer in Wild Rose, Jessie Buckley starred in Charlie Kaufman‘s darkly comic, psychological thriller. Based on a 2016 novel of the same name, I’m Thinking of Ending Things follows a young couple on a road trip, a seemingly unrelated The film is arguably a little too smart for its own good, but it’s an intriguing puzzle film that’s well worth a watch.
5. Gerald’s Game (2017)
A career-high performance from the always-good Carla Gugino is front-and-center in Mike Flanagan’s Netflix original, a Stephen King adaptation about a woman who ends up handcuffed to a bed in the middle of nowhere when her husband drops dead. This is pure, high-concept psychological terror, not spooky, but gripping and the ick factor is high.
6. Hush (2016)
A Netflix original film, Hush is a surprisingly suspenseful and effective slasher about a deaf author (Kate Siegel) who is terrorized by a masked home intruder (John Gallagher Jr.). Hush owes a great deal to John Carpenter‘s Halloween [so many of the best horror films these days do] and even more to the 1967 Audrey Hepburn-starrer Wait Until Dark, but Mike Flanagan‘s taut direction and knack for suspense are enough to make Hush stand on its own. It’s a nail-biting thriller that really delivers what you’re hoping for in a movie like this.

Following well-received mirror-themed horror flick Oculus and the way-better-than-anyone-expected Ouija: Origin of Evil, Flanagan gained attention as a force in popular horror.
7. His House (2020)
Remi Weekes’ acclaimed supernatural horror debut follows South Sudanese refugees adjusting to a perilous life in small-town Europe. Like The Babadook or Under the Shadow, this is horror as dramatic art rather than a series of things that jump out and go boo. The real-world subject matter is twisted and devastating, all strikingly performed by leads Wunmi Mosaku and Sope Dirisu.
8. Uncut Gems (2019)
Adam Sandler was, frankly, robbed of an Academy Award nomination for this. Hell, he should have won. The oft-critically-maligned megastar delivers his best performance to date in Ben Safdie and Josh Safdie‘s riveting crime caper about a jeweler who bets the farm on the gamble of a lifetime. Adele Da-no, wait, Idina Menzel delivers a killer supporting turn. Masterful Uncut Gems is so thrilling it might give you a little nervous breakdown. At its heart, this is a picture about an addiction.

9. Rust Creek (2020)
Hermione Corfield and Jay Paulson star in Jen McGowan‘s stripped-down thriller about a young student who finds herself stranded and hunted in meth country. It’s sort of Winter’s Bone lite (certainly not on the same level as that flat-out masterwork), but it’s a twisty, diverting 105-minute watch all the same. Paulson is by far the best thing about the film, bringing layers to a character who’d usually just be the short straw, a tragic unrounded background character.

10-11. The Conjuring (2013) and The Conjuring 2 (2016)
Before Annabelle and The Nun, there was James Wan’s hair-raising, superbly acted thriller about a witch who terrorizes a Rhode Island family in 1971. By summer 2013, horror had earned a bad rap. The torture films like Saw had dominated for a decade, and if there ever even was a point to those it had long fizzled out. The Conjuring was marketed as “based on the true case files of” Ed and Lorraine Warren, prominent paranormal investigators, played here by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga. This box office behemoth brought back the classy, high-production-values terror of thrillers like The Exorcist and Poltergeist. Its success spawned the first highly successful cinematic universe outside of the MCU.

Fun fact: Wan and producers were hoping for a more commercial PG-13 rating (The Conjuring is pretty much gore-free), but the MPAA slapped it with an R. Wan says the ratings board told him, “It’s just so scary. [There are] no specific scenes or tone you could take out to get it PG-13.” Enjoy!
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