The best thrillers to watch on Netflix this January
Greetings, Polygon readers!
It’s a whole new year, brimming with possibilities and exciting new releases on the near horizon. Naturally, that means there’s also a whole new batch of thrillers to watch on Netflix this month. We’ve pored over the streamer’s library and hand-picked the most chilling, thrilling, and seasonally appropriate movies for you to watch while bundled up at home.
This month’s picks include a quasi-slasher action-thriller starring Denzel Washington, a Korean revenge-thriller classic from Decision to Leave director Park Chan-wook, and an award-winning crime drama starring Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon. Here’s our list of the best thrillers to watch on Netflix in January.
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, David Denman
What if a revenge thriller, but filmed like a slasher?
That’s the basic sell for The Equalizer 3, the first all-the-way-good movie in the otherwise fun Denzel Washington action franchise. The movie opens by walking you through a house littered with bodies, staged in a way where it seems like Michael Myers came through, only to reveal a calm Robert McCall (Washington) waiting on the other side of the carnage.
This continues throughout: Director Antoine Fuqua and legendary cinematographer Robert Richardson make great use of light and shadow to play up how terrifying McCall is (if you get on the wrong side of him). And Denzel, naturally, is more than up for the task, outclassing many of his peers in the burgeoning “completely unstoppable badass” genre by scaring the absolute piss out of his foes.
The story’s compelling, too: McCall has settled in a quiet town in Italy, where he’s been embraced by the community and has started to find some semblance of peace. The
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