100 Best Thriller Movies To Watch Right Now

100 Best Thriller Movies To Watch Right Now

November 20, 2024

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From action to horror to dystopia to romance, a good, hair-raising thriller can overlap with many different genres. It could follow an obsessed detective or an even more obsessed lover, and it could be about the end of the world just as much as it could be about the breakdown of any one person. Whatever its premise, the main thing about a thriller is that it should grip you from start to end, never letting your mind wander until you reach the jaw-dropping conclusion. 

In this list, we’ve gathered our favorite thrillers you can stream on your preferred platform right now. These movies span backgrounds, genres, and plot lines, but you can be sure that they are the best of the best: highly rated by critics and viewers alike. 

61. Run Lola Run (1998)

best

8.1

Country

Germany

Director

Tom Tykwer

Actors

Armin Rohde, Beate Finckh, Franka Potente, Hans Paetsch

Moods

Action-packed, Mind-blowing, Suspenseful

An offbeat film with a more than decent amount of suspense. To that it adds really good music and unexpected animation, to make for a very audacious, interesting and mostly fun film. It uses all this to show how life can change in a twist and how it can be influenced by weird connections of otherwise unrelated events.

62. Ne le Dis à Personne (Tell No One) (2006)

best

8.1

Country

France, United Kingdom

Director

Guillaume Canet

Actors

Alexandra Mercouroff, André Dussollier, Anne Marivin, Brigitte Catillon

Moods

Intense, Smart, Thrilling

Francois Cluzet, who you may remember from The Intouchable, plays a man whose wife is killed and is accused of murdering her. To make matters even more confusing, signs that his wife is actually still alive surface. This well thought out thriller is at all times the furthest thing from boring and has, among other great components, well crafted chase scenes as the protagonist looks for 8 years of unanswered questions.

63. Blue Ruin (2013)

best

8.1

Country

France, United States of America

Director

Jeremy Saulnier

Actors

Abigail Horton, Amy Hargreaves, Bonnie Johnson, Brent Werzner

Moods

Mind-blowing, Suspenseful, Thrilling

Blue Ruin is a superbly acted, visually striking drama about a man’s poignant and brutally violent journey for revenge when the culprit responsible for the murder of his father is released from prison. While it might seem like any other revenge tale, it is so well-told and smart that any other similarities with its crowded genre gently fade away.

The first 15-20 minutes are pretty slow, but the pay-off is hot fire.

64. Serenity (2005)

best

8.1

Country

United States of America

Director

Joss Whedon

Actors

Adam Baldwin, Alan Tudyk, Amy Wieczorek, Brian O'Hare

Moods

Action-packed, Smart

Serenity is a futuristic sci-fi film that serves as a feature-length continuation of the story-line from the TV program Firefly (2002-2003). The story revolves around the captain (Nathan Fillion) and crew of the titular space vessel that operate as space outlaws, running cargo and smuggling missions throughout the galaxy. They take on a mysterious young psychic girl and her brother, the girl carrying secrets detrimental to the intergalactic government, and soon find themselves being hunted by a nefarious assassin (Chiwetel Ejiofor). The first feature-length film from Joss Whedon (The Avengers), Serenity is a lively and enjoyable adventure, replete with large-scale action sequences, strong characterizations and just the right touch of wry humor. An enjoyable viewing experience that stands alone without demanding that you have familiarity with the original program beforehand.

65. Good Time (2017)

best

8.1

Country

United States of America

Director

Ben Safdie, Benny Safdie

Actors

Barkhad Abdi, Ben Safdie, Benny Safdie, Buddy Duress

Moods

A-list actors, Intense, Mind-blowing

A fast-paced thriller, and “actually dangerous” movie as envisioned by its directors, Good Time is about a bank robbery gone wrong and one brother trying to get his other brother out of jail in its aftermath. It’s a deep and fast dive into New York’s criminal underworld that will not give you the time to catch a single full breath. The rhythm here is, without exaggeration, unlike anything I’ve seen before. It’s anxiety-inducing and very… primal. Incredible work featuring a career-pivoting performance from Robert Pattinson as the loose criminal that will do literally anything in the pursuit of seeing his brother free.

66. True Romance (1993)

best

8.1

Country

France, United States of America

Director

Tony Scott

Actors

Anna Levine, Anna Levine Thomson, Anna Thomson, April Freeman

Moods

Funny, Thrilling

True Romance is a wildly entertaining and twistedly enjoyable crime film, directed by Tony Scott (Top Gun) and written by a young Quentin Tarantino. It stars Christian Slater as a young nebbish comic book store employee named Clarence who falls in love with a prostitute named Alabama (Patricia Arquette), and sets his mind to rid her of her indebtedness to a volatile pimp named Drexel (Gary Oldman). The story eventually finds them absconding to California with a suitcase full of cocaine, with the intention of selling off their illicit cache to a Hollywood bigwig in order to pursue their dreams of freedom and opportunity. Replete with a remarkable cast of famous names and familiar faces (including Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken and even Val Kilmer as the ghost of Elvis), True Romance is a true 90’s-era classic. It showcases Tarantino’s trademark witty dialogue throughout, enmeshed with the savage humor and jarring violence that he has become so well known for. It’s very much an homage to Hollywood classics such as Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands (including a rousing score by Hans Zimmer inspired by George Tipton’s score for Badlands), and ultimately serves as one of Tarantino’s most underrated career accomplishments.

67. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)

best

8.1

Country

India, UK, United Kingdom

Director

Aaron Sorkin

Actors

Alan Metoskie, Alex Henderson, Alex Sharp, Alice Kremelberg

From Aaron Sorkin, the creator of every liberal’s favorite 2000s political drama, The West Wing, The Social Network, and the master of the “walk and talk”, comes the dramatization of a sadly true American story from the mid-last century. In 1968, different groups from all over the country travelled to Chicago to protest the Vietnam War at the Democratic National Convention. The Chicago police greeted them in full riot gear, purposely attacking the peaceful protesters. Five months later, eight of them (charges against Black Panther leader Bobby Seale were dismissed) were arrested for inciting riot. As the title suggests, the film details the trials that followed, which highlight the still ongoing battles within American society and politics: racism, ineptness, corruption, complacency, you name it. On a lighter note, while you wouldn’t necessarily call this an ensemble cast, the number of unlikely familiar faces in this film is off the charts: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Sascha Baron Cohen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Eddie Redmayne. It also features some of the greatest supporting actors in American TV history like John Carrol Lynch, Frank Langella, and the amazing John Doman aka Bill Rawls from The Wire.

68. Lady Vengeance (2005)

best

8.1

Country

South Korea

Director

Chan-wook Park, Park Chan-wook

Actors

Anne Cordiner, Bu-seon Kim, Byeong-ok Kim, Cha Soon-bae

Moods

Action-packed, Intense, Mind-blowing

This Park Chan-Wook classic is the third part of a trilogy of films around the theme of revenge, following Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy. While ultimately unique, Lady Vengeance is a thriller set in a prison, in the vein of films such as the Japanese action drama Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion. After being framed and wrongly convicted for murder, our protagonist seeks out the true perpetrator of the crime –– but more than anything else, she seeks vengeance. 

This film’s run time is 115 minutes and every second is essential. There is often gratuitous violence perpetrated by men against women in film, however Lady Vengeance takes back control and for that reason it remains one of my favorite revenge films.

69. Decision to Leave (2022)

best

8.1

Country

South Korea

Director

Park Chan-wook

Actors

Ahn Seong-bong, Cha Seo-won, Choi Dae-hoon, Choi Sun-ja

Moods

Gripping, Thought-provoking, Weird

A twitchy, uncomfortable noir film for the digital age, Decision to Leave blends the trappings of a restless police procedural with an obsessive forbidden romance. Here, director Park Chan-wook flips every interrogation and piece of evidence on its head, pulling us away from the whodunit and towards the inherently invasive nature of a criminal investigation. It’s a movie that remains achingly romantic even if everything about the central relationship is wrong. For detective Hae-jun and suspect Seo-rae (played masterfully by Park Hae-il and Tang Wei, respectively), the attraction between them is built entirely on distrust and suspicion—illustrating the danger of falling for the idea of someone rather than the person themself.

70. Fresh (1994)

best

8.1

Country

France, United States of America

Director

Boaz Yakin

Actors

Afi Bijou, Ali A. Wahhab, Anthony Ruiz, Anthony Thomas

Moods

Character-driven, Gripping, Raw

Filmed with a perfect blend of realism and embellished style, Fresh is a coming-of-age story set in the poverty of the New York City projects, wherein the protagonist “grows up” only by learning to become dangerous and losing his sense of self. There’s no satisfaction in watching 12-year-old Michael (or “Fresh,” as he’s called) use his supposed innocence as a tool to manipulate his way to a safer position. The system continues to reign supreme and Fresh only buries himself into a deeper hole. Boaz Yakin’s direction is direct and expressive, the city stirring to vibrant life in every scene, and the tremendous performances from Giancarlo Esposito and a then-teenage Sean Nelson drive home the tragedy with full force.

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