Best Thriller Movies to Watch on Amazon Prime

Oscar-winner Emerald Fennell got a lot of free reign with her debut, Promising Young Woman, which was a slightly modest ordeal even with a lead of Carrey Mulligan’s calibre. But now, with her sophomore film, she go to have some fun. Assembling a devout cast of particularly skilled actors—Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, and […]

Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag has almost everything you’d expect from a spy movie: explosions, betrayal, sexual tension, and beautiful actors. The plot, too, which involves a software program that could trigger nuclear war, is nothing new. But what makes Black Bag an enjoyable treat is less content and more delivery. Black Bag is swift and […]

It’s always refreshing to see people in esteemed positions let their guard down, not to mention smoke a vape or gossip feverishly, as we mere mortals do. But Conclave is more than just a candid look at what goes down in a process as elaborate as a papal election. It’s a portrait of man’s innate […]

Celebrated Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s latest movie is about Rahim, a man who is in jail because he was unable to repay a debt. He gets a temporary release from prison, and with a big smile on his face, he leaves his confinement with a plan not to come back. His secret girlfriend hands him […]

On September 5, 1972, at the Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, Palestinian terrorists held members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage in exchange for imprisoned countrymen. The ABC Sports team, led by Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) and Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro), despite their lack of preparation, decided to fully pivot from covering sports to news. […]

He may be out of office, but films about Donald Trump’s racist and xenophobic immigration policies will continue to feel urgent for the ripple effect they’ve left on so many immigrants—and these films aren’t just coming from within the United States either. A Spanish production, Upon Entry boils down a presidential term’s worth of discrimination […]

The humor, oh the humor! It’s a breath of fresh air to be laughing with a Woody Allen film and not at it. He is so good at capturing the cheekiness in meet-cutes, secrecies, and lies, all powdered with exaggerated Frenchness. Forgive my surprised tone, but Coup de Chance surpasses all expectations in the way […]

It seems unfair to call Neeyat India’s (and Amazon Prime’s) answer to the Knives Out series of films, but it often feels that way. It’s a murder mystery that sides with the poor and satirizes the rich, and it mostly takes place in a grand manor that forces its colorful cast of characters to interact […]

More psychological drama than bloody horror, The Passenger focuses on its two leads, Randy (Johnny Berchtold) and Benson (Kyle Gallner), and the odd bond they form while on the run. Randy is held hostage by the violent Benson, but Benson only asks that Randy confront his trauma and realize his potential. They’re not quite friends, […]

When he’s accepted into the prestigious Islamic university Al-Azhar, fisherman’s son Adam (Tawfeek Barhom) gets an eye-opening education — but not the kind he expected. A place associated with notions of purity is imagined as a hotbed of hypocrisy and corruption here, as naive young Adam finds himself unwittingly embroiled in a state plot to […]

The atmosphere communicated within the title Hurricane Season comes off incredibly clearly on screen: this is a film that just feels humid and full of foreboding for a coming storm, with people feeling all manner of guilt while secluded in their own homes. Cinematographer María Secco’s gorgeous colors and brown tones fill the 4:3 aspect […]

Though it borrows from some of the oldest genre tropes—stoic but kind-hearted hero finding a heart in a community that needs his help—Jigen Daisuke still manages to carve out a visual identity that has one foot rooted in its Lupin III manga origins, and another in noir fiction. The world of the film is beautifully […]

Thirteen Lives is a taut, no-nonsense film that smartly forgoes dramatizing an already well-known case and, instead, hones in on the excruciating but impressive ordeal that is rescue diving. The divers are played by Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell, both of whom are convincing in their expertise and heroism. But this isn’t to say this […]

The filmmakers behind this direct sequel to the Indigenous action thriller Sayen clearly learned from the mistakes of that first film: all the emotion that was missing then finds a new home here, as the titular protagonist finally gets to grieve what she’s lost, in a way that’s touchingly close to her cultural beliefs. Desert […]

Before you press play on this movie, we highly recommend you take a few very deep breaths. This 2018 thriller is wound so tight, you will need the extra oxygen to get through it without fainting. In his directorial debut, Swedish-danish filmmaker Gustav Möller uses very little in terms of resources to create this breath-taking […]

Sayen is the kind of film that ultimately feels like it was written by a focus group: ample representation for a worthy cause funneled into the sort of escapism that should theoretically hit the widest demographic possible. But even with its solid production values and a determined performance by Rallen Montenegro, the film lacks the […]

You’ll probably never find a film like The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See Titanic. The camera is blurry, with lead Petri Poikolainen’s face the only image we see clearly. The audio sometimes goes in and out. There’s even a section that turns completely dark. While this would usually mean that something is […]

Despite being based on a 19th-century serial novel, Lost Illusions feels remarkably close to contemporary concerns about fake news and the devaluing of art for profit. But as the story is also, obviously, set in the 19th century, all this bribery and these backdoor dealings are done entirely through the written word and by sending […]

Escape from Mogadishu follows diplomats from the North and South Korean embassies as they put aside their differences and work together to escape from an outbreak of civil war in Mogadishu, Somalia. Director Ryoo Seung-wan provides thrilling, high-budget action, especially intense car chases and suspenseful escape scenes that pump you with adrenaline and leave you […]

The 2016 outing of South-Korean auteur director Park Chan-wook (maker of Oldboy and Stoker) once again shifts attention to the dark side of what makes us human: betrayal, violence, and transgression. Based on the 2002 novel Fingersmith by British author Sarah Waters, The Handmaiden revolves around the love of two women and the greedy men […]

A woman loses her phone on her way back to her countryside childhood home. Once there, she connects an old landline in hopes of finding her lost mobile, only to start receiving weird calls that seem to be from 20 years ago. On the other side of the receiver is a girl who seems to […]

Echoing Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesmen, Oscar-winning writer-director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation, About Elly) tells the story of a loving middle-class couple who live in Tehran, Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti), who are forced to move out of their apartment. After arriving at their new place, violence erupts, upending their life and […]

Adam Driver, Annette Bening, and Jon Hamm are among the many recognizable faces of this star-packed political drama. Driver, pictured above in his ‘I’m goofy but I will save the world’ signature stare ????, plays Daniel J. Jones, an investigator working with the Senate. He is assigned to write a report (“the” report) about the […]

It comes as no surprise that former Bond villain Mads Mikkelsen won Best Actor in Cannes for delivering on this challenging role. In this merciless thriller by Danish director Thomas Vinterberg, the ice-eyed actor plays Lucas, an out-of-luck high school teacher struggling to start a new life. After a bitter divorce, he returns to the […]

Memento is a right of passage movie – the kind of movie 19 year olds watch and decide, “holy hell, cinema is cool.” Call it the most cinematic mainstream film or the most mainstream serious film of the last 20 years, Memento also marks the beginning of the reign of Christopher Nolan. A deep and gripping […]

When asked about this film, Quentin Tarantino goes so far as to say, “If there’s any movie that’s been made since I’ve been making movies that I wish I had made, it’s that one.” Kinji Fukasaku’s cult classic follows an alternative reality set in Japan, where a random high school class is forced onto a […]

The bare bones of The Limey’s story — vengeful Cockney ex-con Wilson (Terence Stamp) flies to LA to investigate the suspicious death of his daughter Jenny — are gripping enough, but what Steven Soderbergh does with them elevates this neo-noir thriller into something utterly singular and stacked with layers upon layers of meaning. An icon […]

The original Swedish mystery thriller that was later remade by David Fincher. It’s the same story of a wealthy man hiring a journalist and scrappy hacker to solver a murder, but told better. This version is slower, has more attention to detail and pace. In casting, authenticity triumphs over good looks. In staging, aesthetics are […]

There are far too many things that are worse in life than being on a journey with Danish super talent Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal, The Hunt). And that is what this 98-minute movie is: an almost one-actor movie set in the arctic. Mikkelsen plays a man trying to survive a plane crash, which at some point […]

The performance of a pot-bellied Joaquin Phoenix is nothing short of perfection. He brilliantly portrays a hitman down on his luck who happens to rescue a kidnapped teenage girl. It’s a tight movie, running a short 89 minutes. It makes a point that sticks. Pure entertainment, pure acting, and amazing directing by Lynne Ramsay (who […]

Bryan Cranston, best known for his role as Walter White in the Breaking Bad series, stars as Robert Mazur, a federal agent, who goes undercover to infiltrate the trafficking network of Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. With the film based on Mazur’s memoir, Bryan Cranston gives an impressive lead performance that captures the intense distress […]

Based on a true story, The Whistleblower is the biography of a once Nebraskan police officer who volunteers for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in post-war Bosnia. Once there, she uncovers a human trafficking scandal involving peacekeeping officials, and finds herself alone against a hostile system in a devastated country. Rachel Weisz plays the whistleblower in a powerful lead role, but […]

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 […]

Admittedly, The Man from Nowhere can feel a bit derivative. A quiet and mysterious stranger befriending a child, and ending up enacting his revenge when the child gets kidnapped… It feels like writer-director Lee Jeong-beom took two certain film plots and stitched it together into one. But where the film lacks in original story, The […]

We take it for granted now, but Michael Mann’s feature debut Thief was one of the first crime thrillers that took style and substance very seriously—so much so that its neon-lit, rain-soaked, slightly tilted shots continue to be markers of the genre. Thief is visually and sonically stunning, but the titular criminal, Frank, is most […]

The Western had its heyday in the 60s, but the decades have proven that there’s still stories from the deserts that we haven’t heard yet, and gems that twist the genre on its head. The Proposition is a unique Western, being from the East, in Australia where the Brits have started to form colonies. As […]

What would you do if your parents were Nazis? Based on the second novella of Rachel Seiffert’s The Dark Room, Lore tells the story of a Nazi officer’s children travelling together after the Allied victory. It’s a harrowing journey, of course, given the end of the war. But writer-director Cate Shortland takes that journey even […]

Clive Owen stars as a struggling writer who reluctantly accepts a lucrative offer to work as a croupier at a London casino. His characteristic aloofness, hatred of gambling, and sharp observational skills allow him to remain uncompromised and able to catch any attempt at cheating within his field of vision. But when a savvy professional […]

In a few seconds, a mistake can change your life forever. Insomnia is centered on a Swedish detective trying to solve a murder while trying desperately to cover a mistake made from the difficult mix of the fog and human exhaustion, but in doing so, his guilt, shame, and suspicion that no one would believe […]

The Negotiator isn’t reinventing the wheel on cop thrillers, and so the first few minutes of this film by Gary Gray (The Italian Job, Straight Outta Compton) pass by predictably. Jackson’s Danny Roman is a superstar of an officer, then quickly falls from grace once he gets wind of a corrupt scheme within the hallowed […]

With an acrobat in a sanitarium, elephant trunks spouting blood, and a religious cult whose patron saint is a rape victim, Santa Sangre isn’t going to be an easy watch, especially with the avant-garde direction of the iconic Alejandro Jodorowsky. It’s tough to watch the explicit scenes, both of Fenix’s childhood circus reality and his […]

Despite being colorful and full of music like many Bollywood films, there’s a noirish sensibility to Talaash that makes it stand out. The plot takes on a familiar investigation. The protagonist, portrayed by Aamir Khan, is broody and jaded due to grief. And of course, there’s a femme fatale portrayed by Kareena Kapoor Khan, who […]

Starring Clive Owen in a post apocalyptic nightmare, Children of Men is definitely not for everyone. An insightful, moving and action-packed film where women can no longer have children, and all hope lies on one man to guide the world’s last fertile woman to safety. Directed by Alfonso Cuarón, this film is a moving portrait of the […]

With plenty of old men having extramarital affairs, taking advantage of younger women and leaving them forlorn in love, it can feel deceptively easy to take sides in the first forty minutes of He Loves Me… He Loves Me Not. Who wouldn’t side with Angélique, especially with the innocent, childlike face of Audrey Tautou? And […]

Never has evil been so darn fun to watch. Bridget (Linda Fiorentino) is such a captivating villainess, you’ll actually find yourself rooting for her at times in this noirish take on…, I don’t know what, but it involves drug money, double-crosses, lots of witty repartee and cat-and-mouse manipulation that will make your stomach hurt. The […]

Coherence is a film that captivates you to the point of questioning the reality that surrounds you. It’s a Quantum physics based sci-fi thriller that keeps your eyes sealed to the screen – not with unrealistically beautiful actors or special effects, but with an original screenplay and unexpected twists. Very refreshing.

Without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most gripping thrillers in recent years. It starts in a morgue where a corpse of a deceased femme fatale goes missing. Her husband is the first person to be suspected as evidence starts pointing to him for killing his wife and hiding the body. He is called by […]

A fantastic return to form for disgraced actor Mel Gibson, Get the Gringo is proof that you can have all the controversy you want off-screen, and come back to make a great piece of film. Fast, entertaining and crazy, Get the Gringo is a wild tale of a crime gone bad and eventually, becomes a […]

Can you imagine Steve Martin in a serious role? If not, you seriously need to watch this movie! More plot twists than an Agatha Christie novel, so many that my son had to watch it again the minute it was over. Not a lot of special effects, but this is a seriously complex mystery drama […]

Despite a name that sounds like a cheap horror flick from the 80’s, Chopper is in fact an ‘autobiographical’ account of Australian robber, kidnapper and all round crazy bastard Mark ‘Chopper’ Read. But don’t think this will be some bog-standard, by-the-numbers, ‘crime doesn’t pay’ movie of the week, instead this film revels in gleeful pitch-black […]