The 14 best thrillers to watch on Netflix

polygon.com:

What is a thriller, anyway?

It’s a genre that lacks the typical signifiers that something like horror, comedy, or romance might, but you know it when you feel it. Thrillers are exciting — it’s right there in the name — whether they come from the world of crime, sci-fi, or something else entirely.

We’ve already put together a list of the best thrillers you can watch at home, but here’s the best of the best on Netflix. For more of the best movies on Netflix, check out our picks for the best horror movies, comedy movies, and action movies the platform has to offer.

This one leans more into the horror side of things than most of the thrillers on this list, but before The Raid director Gareth Evans goes full Grand Guignol in the film’s latter half, he builds up a mesmerizing period thriller about a man who’s in way over his head in a place where he doesn’t belong. Dan Stevens stars as Thomas, a traumatized and formerly institutionalized man who initially appears to be playing out a variation on Robin Hardy’s 1973 classic The Wicker Man. The year is 1905, and Thomas is trying to infiltrate a remote Welsh island run by an obscure cult, which appears to have kidnapped his sister. He doesn’t know much about their beliefs, but he has to pose as one of them and investigate the island while keeping his own considerable demons at bay just long enough to save his sister’s life. And the more he learns about the place where he’s landed, the darker and eerier the film gets. This one’s perfect Halloween-month viewing: bloody as hell and startling right up to the final shot. But it’s also a crackerjack investigative thriller, an unraveling grim mystery that probably would have been better left unsolved. —Tasha Robinson

It’s hard to think