The best thrillers to watch on Netflix this May
We’re in the dead middle of May and on the cusp of several huge releases to the usher in the summer season. If you’re looking for a trio of blood-chilling, adrenaline-pumping, and heart-racing thrillers to tide you over until this year’s summer blockbusters, you’ve come to the right place.
This month’s selections include Todd Haynes’ 2019 legal thriller based on real-life events, an explosive action thriller starring Scott Adkins, and a steamy neo-noir featuring a charismatic performance by a young Jeff Bridges.
Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins
Fans of Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, and director Todd Haynes all seemed to miss one of their finer works of the last few years: Dark Waters, a legal thriller that does for teflon pans what All the President’s Men did for presidents’ men.
Based on an equally riveting New York Times Magazine expose, and adapted by Matthew Michael Carnahan (The Kingdom), Dark Waters stars Ruffalo as Robert Billet, a real life corporate defense lawyer who is basically guilt tripped into investigating a string of unusual deaths in West Virginia. But as he begrudgingly pokes around, Billet finds that each death traces back to a chemical plant owned by DuPont, and what unravels is one of the great atrocities committed on American soil by a major corporation. Billet knows he can’t stay quiet, but doing so flips his career and life at home upside down.
It’s simple but riveting drama, conducted by Haynes in an usually buttoned up style (fans might expect the psychological delirium of Safe or May December). In different hands, without a sensitivity to the human plight and a curiosity for how cracking open a case like this actually works, Dark Waters would be fodder for Peacock docuseries shlock. But Ruffalo, haggard and relentless, and Hathaway, playing an almost throw away part as his supportive but drained wife, burrow so much deeper than what an hour of Law & Order could do. And yes, I tossed all my teflon pans
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