10 pulse-pounding thrillers you can stream right now
10 pulse-pounding thrillers you can stream right now
Randall ColburnFri, May 15, 2026 at 10:17 PM UTC
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'Lurker'; 'Snake Eyes'; 'The Vanishing'
Credit: Everett(3)
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 of excellent thrillers at your fingertips.
Streaming this month are testosterone-packed classics, under-appreciated gems, and disquieting character studies. Alex Russell's unnerving Lurker, for example, is now available on HBO Max after winning the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature.
Read on for 10 thrillers you can stream right now.
01 of 10
Den of Thieves (2018)
Gerard Butler in 'Den of Thieves'
Credit: STX
Den of Thieves was 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 no Heat, but its climactic heist sequence is plenty thrilling in its own right. And Gerard Butler is at his sleazy best as 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 watch Den of Thieves: Netflix
02 of 10
Face/Off (1997)
Nicolas Cage in 'Face/Off'
Credit: Everett Collection
When fans want Nicolas Cage to go crazy, they basically want him to do whatever the hell he's doing in Face/Off.
The Oscar winner stars in John 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 watch Face/Off: Paramount+
03 of 10
Infernal Affairs (2002)
Andy Lau and Tony Leung in 'Infernal Affairs'
Credit: Everett
The Hong Kong crime thriller Infernal Affairs is best-known Stateside as the inspiration for The Departed(2006), but it's worth a look, even for fans of Martin Scorsese's Oscar winner. In fact, Entertainment Weekly called it "every bit as good as Scorsese's homage, if not better."
Tony Leung and 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 makes Infernal Affairs one of the all-time great crime flicks is its whiplash twist ending," reads our review. "Even if you saw The Departed, you should still buckle up."
Directors: Andrew Lau and Alan Mak
Cast: Andy Lau, Tony Leung, Anthony Wong, Eric Tsang
Where to watch Infernal Affairs: HBO Max
04 of 10
Killer Joe (2011)
Matthew McConaughey in 'Killer Joe'
Killer Joe has quite the pedigree. It stars McConaissance-era Matthew McConaughey and a creative team that includes director William Friedkin and writer Tracy Letts, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2008 for his play August: 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 issue with 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 watch Killer Joe: Netflix
05 of 10
Lurker (2025)
Archie Madekwe in 'Lurker'
Credit: Everett
Alex Russell's skin-crawling psychological thriller won the Independent Spirit Award for 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 someone like Oliver. 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 watch Lurker: HBO Max
06 of 10
Memories of Murder (2003)
'Memories of Murder'
Credit: Neon/Courtesy Everett Collection
Sixteen years before his class satire Parasite won the Oscar for Best Picture, Bong Joon Ho thrilled audiences with Memories 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 watch Memories of Murder: Paramount+
07 of 10
Panic Room (2002)
Kristen Stewart and Jodie Foster in 'Panic Room'
Credit: Everett Collection
You won't find a lot of meat on the bones of Panic Room,David Fincher's follow-up to Fight 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 watch Panic Room: Hulu
08 of 10
Sicario (2015)
(Left to right) Daniel Kaluuya, Hank Rogerson, Victor Garber, and Emily Blunt in 'Sicario'
Credit: Richard Foreman/Lionsgate Films
Taylor Sheridan was still a few years out from creating Yellowstone when he penned the Oscar-nominated Sicario, which stars Emily Blunt and Benicio Del Toro in what EW's critic called a "white-knuckle descent into the dark depths of the U.S./Mexico drug war."
"Sicario is 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 watch Sicario: Hulu
09 of 10
Snake Eyes (1998)
Nicolas Cage in 'Snake Eyes'
Credit: Everett
This pulpy neo-noir from Brian De Palma frustrated many critics at the time and remains one of the director’s more divisive films. Still, even its biggest haters can't deny its bravura 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 Eyes isn'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 watch Snake Eyes: Paramount+
10 of 10
The Vanishing (1988)
Johanna Ter Steege in 'The Vanishing'
Credit: Everett Collection
The Vanishing is 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 Vanishing produces a terror that’s bone-white rather than blood-red," EW's critic wrote in a piece about existential horror.
Sluizier also directed the film's 1993 remake. Sure, it stars Jeff Bridges and Sandra 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 watch The Vanishing: Kanopy
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
