The 10 best thrillers on Netflix (right now)

It’s nice to watch a relaxing film. A nice, easygoing film that takes our mind off whatever else is going on in our lives and gently soothes us into a calm, restful state of being. That is nice.

But what’s also sometimes nice is a film that wakes you up a bit – something actually fairly stressful that has you sitting forward on your sofa throughout and leaves you feeling a little bit more alive to the world afterwards. This is the thriller. And if you want to add a little (or big) jolt of energy to your day – or maybe to just be reminded that your life could actually be a whole lot worse, stress-wise – this is your guy.

Lucky for you, Netflix has ’em by the bucketload. But who wants to search through a bucketload to find the best ones? Not you, that’s for sure. Worry not. We’ve searched that bucket for you.

A House of Dynamite

My God, this film is stressful. A normal day in the White House’s Situation Room is thrown into pandemonium by the launch of what appears to be a nuclear missile towards the United States. The 20-ish minutes until the missile is scheduled to hit its target are then replayed from three different perspectives, as we see officials at various levels of the US defensive infrastructure trying to figure out just what it is they could or should do to prevent and/or respond to such an attack. What makes the stress truly existential is that the film portrays something that we all kind of have this looming sense that we could one day be subject to, and would have absolutely no power to prevent. That’s a stress with legs.

The Prestige

Way before he was taking on Probably The Most Famous Story of All Time, Christopher Nolan was adapting lesser-known ditties like Christopher Priest’s 1995 novel The Prestige, which follows two rival magicians whose bitter feud and desire to better each other pushes them to innovate to the point of serious self-endangerment. It’s got a stacked cast (Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, David Bowie for God’s sake), a silly-good twist, and it also somehow makes magic seem… cool? An impressive feat indeed.