“Thriller” can come off like a lazy catch-all. Airport paperbacks, hotel-room movies, Jack Ryan knockoffs — anything played for cheap tension comes to mind. Sometimes that’s fine! But if you dig a little deeper through the bargain bins of streaming — and, let’s face it, every bin on streaming looks more and more like the bargain variety on the surface — you can find thrillers of a sharper tradition.
It’s December, and the comfort of the holidays could use a little counterprogramming. Here are three thriller masterpieces you can stream on Netflix right now. These picks are people who love dread. This winter, choose weaponized silence.
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Influencer
If you saw Influencers on our list of the best horror movies of 2025 list wondered, “Should I watch Influencer, the original, first?” the answer is a resounding YES. A Talented Mr. Ripley for the social-media age (and a perfect pairing for the criminally underseen Ingrid Goes West), Influencer follows Madison (Emily Tennant), a lonely influencer snapping co-branded selfies around Thailand who crosses paths with “CW” (Cassandra Naud), an eager rover who offers to play tour guide. Me telling you what happens next, and where Influencer goes, would be like spoiling Barbarian.
Director Kurtis David Harder is carving out a career of making a lot out of a little — the South Asian island backdrops are to die for, and the camerawork is pristine. But Influencer is a true indie (picked up by Shudder in 2023 and licensed to Netflix through AMC’s content deal) and not prone to studio notes that might suffocate or dumb down its clever ideas. Here’s a movie you will be thrilled has a sequel waiting for you to watch when the credits roll.
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The Hateful Eight
Quentin Tarantino is on the naughty list this year after dragging There Will Be Blood actor Paul Dano’s acting cred but… let’s not pretend he isn’t still the master of a certain strain of violent, voicey thriller. His least appreciated film — likely because it runs an endurance-testing two hours and 47 minutes — is also the best for the season: The Hateful Eight starts amidst a blizzard and only gets chillier as you meet its cavalcade of crude characters.
The Western throwback isn’t too different than Tarantino’s preferred podcast mode: it’s all beefin’. Like Django Unchained, the writer-director took to the Old West to cut deep on social politics and race, and rear mankind’s ugly head. Part Agatha Christie, part Sam Peckinpah, and bursting with profane language, the chamber piece sports some of the best scene-chewing performances from Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Tim Roth, all of whom made names for themselves by chewing scenery. Set a fire, grab a blanket, and cozy up for the least cozy log-cabin movie you’ll watch this season.
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Zero Dark Thirty
You could watch Kathryn Bigelow’s ticking-clock nuclear apocalypse thriller A House of Dynamite or you could ensure your night is well spent by (re)visiting her 2012 political action thriller. Bigelow jumped from the Oscar glory of The Hurt Locker to this even more blistering odyssey, which, thanks to journalist-turned-screenwriter Mark Boal, scratched at the scab of the 10-year manhunt for Osama bin Laden so hard that Congress ordered an investigation into the possible access to classified information.
The objective lens of Zero Dark Thirty put Bigelow and Boal in hot water, with conservatives suggesting it was propaganda to put President Obama back in office and liberals decrying its “endorsement” of torture. That steady hand — combined with composer Alexandre Desplat’s brooding percussion score — is also what makes it a masterpiece. As Jessica Chastain’s CIA operative Maya wades through information, she’s swallowed by the quicksand of spycraft procedure. When SEAL Team 6 finally breaks through al-Qaeda to take out bin Laden, she’s completely drained. Both action-packed and intensely psychological, Zero Dark Thirty still stands apart in a genre that has become the cash cow of folks like Taylor Sheridan and the Prime Video machine.
