The best thrillers to watch on Netflix this December
You’re probably covered when it comes to holiday cheer. Everyone’s trying to do that. How about some holiday chills? Something to make you wrap that blanket around you tighter, or maybe spill a bit of eggnog?
Our picks this month are a slow-burn apocalypse from the creator of Mr. Robot and two modern classics that are both worth visiting or revisiting for zeitgeisty reasons.
Director: Sam Esmail
Cast: Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, Myha’la, Julia Roberts
Netflix’s latest big release is the isolated nail-biter Leave the World Behind, a story about what happens when a vacationing family finds themselves with unexpected visitors at the moment a cyberattack cuts them off from all communication.
Based on the novel by Rumaan Alam, Leave the World Behind is part eat-the-rich drama, part social critique, part apocalyptic sci-fi, all with a dash of writer-director Sam Esmail’s signature techno-paranoia. Its slow-burn script doles out unsettling moments that’ll hook you for the entirety of its 141-minute run time, and its small cast — which includes an exceptional performance from Mahershala Ali — is given plenty of room to process events and react with petty grievances and privileged ineptitude.
It’s less about how the world ends (those looking solely for answers will likely leave dissatisfied) than how we will know the world is ending — the steep, terrifying drop between having anything you could possibly want to know at your fingertips, and then nothing at all.
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel
Netflix’s other big release this month is May December, Todd Haynes’ buzzy new melodrama loosely based on the real-life story of convicted sex offender Mary Kay Letourneau starring Natalie
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