Thrill-seekers can't always be scaling peaks, surfing waves, and standing on the edge of skyscrapers. Sometimes, a movie is all someone needs to spike that heart rate, and there are plenty ofexcellent thrillersat your fingertips.
Streaming this month are testosterone-packed classics, under-appreciated gems, and disquieting character studies. Alex Russell's unnervingLurker, for example, is now available on HBO Max afterwinning the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature.
Read on for 10 thrillers you can stream right now.
Den of Thieves (2018)
Den of Thieveswas met with a shrug upon its 2018 release, but Christian Gudegast's macho heist thriller has amassed a healthy fanbase in the years since, with German arthouse darling Christian Petzold (Phoenix, Afire) among its most prominent defenders. It even got a 2025 sequel,Den of Thieves 2: Pantera.
Sure, it's noHeat, but its climactic heist sequence is plenty thrilling in its own right. And Gerard Butler is at hissleazy bestas Big Nick, a hard-drinking detective with a chip on his shoulder and a love for Everlast's "What It's Like."
Director:Christian Gudegast
Cast:Gerard Butler, Pablo Schreiber, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Dawn Olivieri, Mo McRae
Where to watchDen of Thieves: Netflix
Face/Off (1997)
When fans wantNicolas Cageto go crazy, they basically want him to do whatever the hell he's doing inFace/Off.
The Oscar winner stars inJohn Woo's operatic action-thriller as terrorist Castor Troy, who, while in a coma, has his face surgically grafted onto FBI agent Sean Archer (John Travolta), who's trying to discover where he planted a bomb. When a faceless Troy wakes up, he decides to see how Sean's face fits. The pair infiltrate each other's lives and families, resulting in some of the most stylish (and ridiculous) action sequences of the era.
If the premise alone doesn't grab you, know that Cage claims to have"left [his] body"while filming. "I got scared, am I acting or is this real? I can see it if I look at the movie, that one moment, it's in my eyes," he recalled in 2021.
Director:John Woo
Cast:Nicolas Cage, John Travolta, Joan Allen, Gina Gershon, Alessandro Nivola
Where to watchFace/Off: Paramount+
Infernal Affairs (2002)
The Hong Kong crime thrillerInfernal Affairsis best-known Stateside as the inspiration forThe Departed(2006), but it's worth a look, even for fans ofMartin Scorsese's Oscar winner. In fact,Entertainment Weeklycalled it"every bit as good as Scorsese's homage, if not better."
Tony Leungand Andy Lau lead the cast, with Leung playing a cop working undercover to infiltrate a Triad drug-smuggling ring. Lau, meanwhile, is a Triad mole who’s managed to embed himself within the police force. It’s only a matter of time before one — or both — of them gets caught.
"What makesInfernal Affairsone of the all-time great crime flicks is its whiplash twist ending," reads our review. "Even if you sawThe Departed, you should still buckle up."
Directors:Andrew Lau and Alan Mak
Cast:Andy Lau, Tony Leung, Anthony Wong, Eric Tsang
Where to watchInfernal Affairs: HBO Max
Killer Joe (2011)
Killer Joehas quite the pedigree. It stars McConaissance-eraMatthew McConaugheyand a creative team that includes directorWilliam Friedkinand writerTracy Letts, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2008 for his playAugust: Osage County.
McConaughey plays the eponymous killer, who’s hired by a family of ne'er-do-wells to murder a woman as part of a life insurance scheme. What comes after isn't for the fainthearted. At the time,EW's critic took issuewith how Friedkin's film "[rubs] viewers’ faces in close-up scenes of brutality that reasonable people ought not to be able to watch."
That said, they nevertheless praised the effectiveness of those scenes, noting that the movie is "its own kind of mean." For some, that's a warning. For others, it's an invitation.
Director:William Friedkin
Cast:Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Gina Gershon, Juno Temple, Thomas Haden Church
Where to watchKiller Joe: Netflix
Lurker (2025)
Alex Russell's skin-crawling psychological thriller won theIndependent Spirit Awardfor Best First Feature. It's easy to see why.
This story of an aimless retail employee, Theodore (a chilling Théodore Pellerin), who worms his way into the inner circle of rising pop star Oliver (Archie Madekwe) is a queasy dissection of both the digital attention economy and the kinds of parasitic fandom baked into it.
As the film unfolds, it becomes clear that Theodore isn't taken with Oliver so much as he is being in proximity to someonelikeOliver. It's all about clout.
Director:Alex Russell
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Cast:Théodore Pellerin, Archie Madekwe, Zack Fox, Havana Rose Liu, Wale Onayemi, Daniel Zolghadri, Sunny Suljic
Where to watchLurker: HBO Max
Memories of Murder (2003)
Sixteen years before his class satireParasitewon the Oscar for Best Picture,Bong Joon Hothrilled audiences withMemories of Murder, an offbeat thriller inspired by the real-life story of South Korea's first widely documented serial killer case.
Song Kang-ho and Kim Sang-kyung star as detectives investigating a rash of rapes and murders in the city of Hwaseong.Looking back on the film in 2020, EW praised the movie's "turn-on-a-dime tonal shifts," "precisely calibrated blocking and staging," and "exquisite command of tension."
Director:Bong Joon Ho
Cast:Song Kang-ho, Kim Sang-kyung
Where to watchMemories of Murder: Paramount+
Panic Room (2002)
You won't find a lot of meat on the bones ofPanic Room,David Fincher's follow-up toFight Club,but the cat-and-mouse thriller has an appealing cast and style for days. (Anyone else get nostalgic for that brief period where Dwight Yoakam kept getting cast as psychopaths?)
The first act, in particular, is striking. "With the camera swooping and scaling the man-made landscape of tall buildings at vertiginous angles (and with Howard Shore’s score invoking the musical language of Bernard Herrmann), we're immediately trapped in a state of Hitchcockian high anxiety," our critic wrote at the time.
Director:David Fincher
Cast:Jodie Foster, Kristen Stewart, Forrest Whitaker, Jared Leto, Dwight Yoakam
Where to watchPanic Room: Hulu
Sicario (2015)
Taylor Sheridanwas still a few years out from creatingYellowstonewhen he penned the Oscar-nominatedSicario, which starsEmily BluntandBenicio Del Toroin what EW's critic called a "white-knuckle descent into the dark depths of the U.S./Mexico drug war."
"Sicariois a brilliant action thriller with the smarts of a message movie," reads our review. "And the message is this: Are we willing to bend the rules and sell our souls to fight a war that will probably never be won? Before you answer that question, see this film."
Director:Denis Villeneuve
Cast:Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin
Where to watchSicario: Hulu
Snake Eyes (1998)
This pulpy neo-noir fromBrian De Palmafrustrated many critics at the time and remains one of the director’s more divisive films. Still, even its biggest haters can't deny itsbravura opening sequence, a continuous glide through a crowded arena that’s intricately staged and brimming with subtle detail.
Nicolas Cage goes gonzo mode as Rick Santoro, a dirty detective who witnesses an assassination at a high-profile boxing match and tumbles into a dizzying conspiracy packed with colorful characters.
"Conspiracy" is the key word here.Snake Eyesisn't a whodunnit, but a meditation on perspective and myth-making as they relate to public assassinations. The ghosts of JFK and RFK haunt the periphery of every shot.
Director:Brian De Palma
Cast:Nicolas Cage, Carla Gugino, Gary Sinise, John Heard, Kevin Dunn
Where to watchSnake Eyes: Paramount+
The Vanishing (1988)
The Vanishingis considered by many (including Stanley Kubrick) to be one of the most horrific movies ever made.
George Sluizier's French/Dutch thriller tells the story of a man whose girlfriend disappears during a vacation in France. She walks into a rest stop and never comes out. Three years later, he finally meets the man who abducted her. You'll never forget the film's final minutes.
"Despite a distinct lack of anything supernatural (or even a single onscreen death),The Vanishingproduces a terror that’s bone-white rather than blood-red," EW's critic wrote in a piece aboutexistential horror.
Sluizier also directed the film's 1993 remake. Sure, it starsJeff BridgesandSandra Bullock, but it doesn't hold a candle to the original.
Director:George Sluizier
Cast:Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, Gene Bervoets, and Johanna ter Steege
Where to watchThe Vanishing: Kanopy
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Thrill-seekers can't always be scaling peaks, surfing waves, and standing on the edge of skyscrapers. Sometimes, a movie is all som...
