All The Best Scary Thrillers To Watch On Netflix Right Now
Nothing hits quite like a spooky thriller.
Whether these border more on horror, provide massive action thrills, or have the chills of a crime drama, these are the best that Netflix has to offer right now. You might as well get some use out of your subscription!
The Platform 2 (2024)
The Platform 2 takes the premise of its predecessor, The Platform, and expands the themes of its world in an interesting way. Like the original, this sequel is set within a prison-like facility called The Pit in which prisoners are housed in small concrete rooms stacked on top of each other for hundreds of floors. Each day, a platform containing just enough food for everyone lowers through The Pit, but if the food isn’t rationed correctly, the people on the lower levels will starve. In this film, the society of The Pit has taken the form of a kind of theocracy, and Perempuán (Milena Smit), a new prisoner, must quickly learn to navigate the politics and loyalties of her fellow prisoners if she hopes to survive.
Godzilla Minus One (2023)
Godzilla Minus One is one of the best movies of 2023, and it is easily in the top-level of best Godzilla movies in the franchise. Set at and after the end of World War II, Godzilla Minus One follows a kamikaze pilot who deals with survivor’s guilt and the ramifications of his actions during the war. In the ensuing years, Godzilla arrives and wreaks havoc on Japan, forcing the pilot and other citizens still recovering from the war to band together in a fight for their collective survival.
Thanksgiving (2023)
In 2007, Eli Roth created a fake trailer for a ridiculous (and fictional) slasher movie titled Thanksgiving. Sixteen years later, a full-length version of Thanksgiving was released. The movie plays out like a somewhat modern remake of whatever the movie represented by the 2007 fake trailer would have been like. Meaning, while the trailer looked gory, mean, and ridiculous, but Thanksgiving (2023) is moderately gory, fun, and campy.
The Pope’s Exorcist (2023)
Russell Crowe stars in The Pope’s Exorcist as Father Gabriele Amorth, a real-life priest who claimed to have performed over 60,000 exorcisms. In this fictional story, Father Amorth, who is framed as a kind of rebel-priest, tries to help a boy who is demonically possessed. The overall movie is a very by-the-numbers possession film, but the campy nature of how it’s presented (without actually being a comedy) is what makes The Pope’s Exorcist so good.
The Conference (2023)
The Conference is a great slasher movie with good kills and just the right amount of comedy. In many ways it feels like a standard slasher in which a bunch of people in an isolated location are picked off one by one by a masked killer, and it executes the formula very well. The movie also takes a few interesting turns towards the end which helps make it feel unique.
Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead (2023)
Akira Tendo is overworked and underappreciated in a career that turned out to be nothing like he expected. But when a zombie apocalypse breaks out in Japan, Akira is finally free to live his life the way he wants. Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead is an entertaining zombie comedy that isn’t afraid to get extremely goofy with its premise.
Pearl (2022)
Pearl explores the background of its title character, Pearl, during a pivotal point in her life. Set in 1918 at the same Texas farm seen in X (which is set in 1979), Pearl is a young woman with darkness and longing inside her. Her mother has certain traditional expectations of her, but Pearl wants to be a star. She wants to be seen and loved. She believes she’s found a way to make her dream come true, and whenever her own expectations are dashed, she has a very violent way of dealing with her feelings.
Re/Member (2022)
Re/Member is a time loop movie that unfolds like a survival game mixed with Japanese supernatural horror. It is about a group of high-school students who are tasked with participating in a morbid scavenger hunt. At night, they must search their school to find the body parts of a murdered girl so they can piece the girl back together. They are stalked through the building by the “red person” who kills them in horrible ways, but when they die they wake up at home and are forced to relive the same day over and over until they complete the “body search.” Re/Member is a bit cheesy in a Japanese-teen-horror kind of way, but it’s also a lot of fun.
Incantation (2022)
Incantation is a found-footage movie about a mother who is cursed after taking part in the desecration of a religious ritual while she was pregnant. Six years later, the mother is plagued by supernatural events that threaten her daughter’s safety. The movie has been touted as one of the most terrifying movies to come out of Taiwan, and it is at least partially inspired by true events. It may also be the scariest movie currently streaming on Netflix.
Scream (2022)
The Scream franchise is currently spread throughout different SVOD streaming services (Max for the first four, Paramount+ for the latest two), but if you’re subscribed to Netflix you can at least watch one of the better sequels in the series, Scream (2022). Despite the future of the franchise moving away from the characters this movie introduced, Scream (2022) remains a satisfying attempt at extending the legacy of the story that began in 1996.
Fear Street (2021)
Fear Street is a trilogy of horror films that combine to tell one large story. The first movie is set in 1994 and feels like a teen slasher reminiscent of Scream (1996). The second film is largely told in flashbacks to 1978 and is made as an homage to campground slasher movies like Friday the 13th (1980). And finally, the final part of the trilogy flashes back to 1666 to tell a story of a witch hunt with a strong resemblance to The Crucible (1996).
Unhinged (2020)
This is Russell Crowe’s second appearance on this best-of-Netflix list, and for good reason. In contrast to his fun role as Father Gabriele Amorth in The Pope’s Exorcist, Crowe’s role in Unhinged is unsettling. He plays a man who begins the movie by murdering his ex-wife and burning her house down. Then shortly after that, a single mother, Rachel (Caren Pistorius), honks her car horn at him as he sits in his truck, blocking traffic. That sets him off, and Rachel becomes the target of a terrifying road rage incident that spirals completely out of control.
47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019)
47 Meters Down: Uncaged is a survival horror movie about a group of young women who become trapped in the submerged ruins of a Mayan city with ferocious sharks. The setting is interesting, the action is good, and for a shark-attack movie it has enough of a gimmicky twist to help it stand out from the rest.
Cam (2018)
Cam is a psychological thriller about a camgirl, Alice (Madeline Brewer), whose identity is stolen by a woman who looks and acts exactly like her. Is this an extremely convincing case of identity theft, or is there something else going on? Cam is tense and creepy, and it is a great first feature from director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei.
Verónica (2017)
Verónica is a Spanish film about a teenage girl who becomes possessed after using a Ouija board with two of her classmates. In the days after trying to contact her deceased father, Verónica (Sandra Escacena) is seemingly the focal point of an increasing amount of supernatural activity. Part haunted house movie and part demonic possession story, Verónica feels familiar in many ways, but it is still a highly effective horror movie. Verónica is so effective and scary that some people reported that they couldn’t even finish it.
The Babysitter (2017)
Cole, a shy 12-year-old boy who lacks self-confidence, has the best babysitter, Bee. Cole decides to see what Bee does whenever she’s babysitting him and he’s supposed to be asleep, but what he finds puts Cole in serious danger: Bee and her friends are part of a secret satanic cult. The Babysitter is a blast of a horror comedy that plays out like a cat-and-mouse chase as Cole tries to escape Bee and her friends, and people keep winding up dead.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)
Smart and insidious, The Autopsy of Jane Doe gets under your skin. The body of an unidentified woman found at the scene of a crime is taken to a small-town coroner for an urgent autopsy. So, late at night, the coroner and his son perform an autopsy to try to find the woman’s cause of death, but they end up uncovering a dark, occult mystery hidden within the woman’s body.
Under the Shadow (2016)
With her husband away during the Iran-Iraq War, Shideh (Narges Rahidi) and her young daughter are left behind in their apartment under the constant threat of attack. Shideh is determined to not let outside forces, both war and her country’s restrictive laws, keep her from living her life as she chooses. However, a dark presence inside her home threatens to break down what remains of Shideh’s will.
As Above, So Below (2014)
Scarlett Marlowe (Perdita Weeks) gathers a small team to search for a mystical artifact she believes is somewhere in the Catacombs of Paris. In the darkness below the City of Light, Scarlett becomes lost in a labyrinth of horrors in this superb found-footage movie.
Last chance to watch: Leaving Netflix December 31
Creep (2014)
Creep (2014) is a strange and darkly humorous found-footage movie about a man, Aaron (Patrick Brice), who answers an ad offering $1000 for a day of “filming services.” The ad was put out by Josef (Mark Duplass), a man who requests that Aaron spend the day recording him as a video diary for his unborn child. Josef claims he has a brain tumor that will kill him soon, but his strange and erratic behavior makes Aaron believe there is something else going on. Creep is a quirky horror film perfect for when you’re in the mood for something very, very different.
You’re Next (2011)
With its setup involving a family reunion at a large, secluded house, You’re Next is a great movie to watch during the holidays. A tense family dinner leads to bickering between siblings, but dinner is cut short when masked men start killing the family members one by one. You’re Next stands out as an exciting and violent home invasion/siege movie.
Last chance to watch: Leaving Netflix December 31
Psycho (1960)
Psycho is one of the most influential horror/thriller movies ever, so don’t miss your chance to see it as part of your Netflix subscription! If you’ve never seen it, you have to check it out. And if you have seen it, maybe it’s time to watch it again. Anthony Perkins’ performance as Norman Bates is one of the greatest in all of horror.