Need a thriller binge? Start with these 4 Netflix shows
Need a thriller binge? Start with these 4 Netflix shows
From the time-travel maze of ‘Dark’ to the pure stress of ‘Squid Game,’ these four thrillers make stopping after one episode nearly impossible.
Netflix is kind of built for this. I’m pretty easy when it comes to thrillers: hook me and I’m yours, and these four shows deliver. You’ve got one giant German time-travel mind-bend, people playing children’s games where losing is… deadly, a serial killer who thinks he’s the romantic lead, and a technology nightmare anthology basically opening a new door to hell every episode. There is a common theme though: all these shows are great binges, with multiple seasons and plenty of episodes. So, if you want a thriller that can eat up the next few weeks of your life, here are the best binge-worthy thriller shows on Netflix right now.
Best binge-worthy thriller shows streaming on Netflix
Best mind-bending binge: ‘Dark’
“Dark” is one of those shows where I’d genuinely recommend not taking too long between episodes because… good luck remembering any of this otherwise. A kid disappears in a little German town, and then suddenly you’re looking at family trees, caves, nuclear secrets, people at different ages, people at VERY different ages, time travel, and more time travel.
At some point you realize the show has quietly turned you into a detective with absolutely no training. And that’s the fun — trying to put the pieces together when each answer you get opens a bunch more questions. But hang in there because the three seasons are worth it. Just don’t fold laundry as you watch this show.
Dark
A missing child sets four families on a frantic hunt for answers as they unearth a mind-bending mystery that spans three generations.
Best edge-of-your-seat binge: ‘Squid Game’
“Squid Game” is still the most stressed I’ve ever been watching anything. The premise is ruthless: hundreds of financially desperate contestants compete in deadly versions of children’s games for a massive cash prize… and if they lose, they die. That sounds simple, almost stupidly simple, but once you care about these people, every new game becomes unbearable in the best way.
Nothing else, movie or TV, has hit me quite like this. The closest comparison I’ve got is seeing “Gravity” in a packed theater and realizing at some point that I’d been holding my breath. “Squid Game” does that over and over again. You finish one round completely wrung out, then immediately need to know what horrible playground activity they’re going to turn into a death trap next. Add in shifting alliances, betrayals, and the fact that basically nobody feels safe, and yeah… this thing is built to destroy your evening plans. I almost guarantee you won’t even notice the whole show is in Korean.
Squid Game
Hundreds of cash-strapped players accept a strange invitation to compete in children’s games. Inside, a tempting prize awaits — with deadly high stakes.
Best psychological binge: ‘You’
There’s something deeply wrong with “You” because you spend an absurd amount of time listening to a murderer explain why he’s actually being very reasonable. Penn Badgley plays Joe Goldberg, a New York bookstore manager who meets aspiring writer Guinevere Beck when she walks into his shop and almost immediately decides she’s the woman for him. Except Joe doesn’t ask her out like a normal person. He finds her online, tracks down where she lives, watches her through her apartment window, gets inside her phone, and starts quietly removing people he thinks are standing between them. Sometimes very permanently. And because we hear Joe’s internal narration the entire time, he somehow frames all of this as… romance? Protection? Being a good boyfriend? It’s insane.
Then the show keeps reinventing the same basic nightmare as Joe moves through new relationships, new cities, marriage, suburbia, London, and eventually back to New York. That’s the binge engine too. One lie requires another lie. Somebody gets suspicious. Joe decides the suspicious person is actually the problem. Now there’s a body. Now there’s a new problem. None of this can end well, and you can’t look away. Five seasons of one man catastrophically misunderstanding what love is… pretty great television.
You
A dangerously charming, obsessive man goes to extreme measures to insert himself into the lives of women who fascinate him.
Best anthology binge: ‘Black Mirror’
“Black Mirror” is harder to explain because there isn’t one story. Charlie Brooker’s anthology basically grabs some piece of technology or modern behavior, pushes it a few steps further than where we are now, and then asks: okay, how badly could humans screw this up? One episode might be about social media. Another could get into artificial intelligence, virtual reality, surveillance, dating, grief, politics… whatever particular nightmare the show feels like opening that week.
And that’s also what makes it such a weirdly great binge. Watch one. Watch five. Jump backward three seasons because somebody told you “White Christmas” is insane. Whatever. Every episode gives you a new cast, a new world, and usually a completely different genre, then resets. All you have to do is pick another nightmare and enjoy.
Black Mirror
Twisted tales run wild in this mind-bending anthology series that reveals humanity’s worst traits, greatest innovations and more.
More binge-worthy thriller TV shows on Netflix:
‘Ozark’
Ozark
A financial adviser drags his family from Chicago to the Missouri Ozarks, where he must launder $500 million in five years to appease a drug boss.
‘Mindhunter’
MINDHUNTER
An agent in the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit develops profiling techniques as he pursues notorious serial killers and rapists.
‘Money Heist’
Money Heist
To carry out the biggest heist in history, a mysterious man called The Professor recruits a band of eight robbers who have a single characteristic: none of them has anything to lose. Five months of seclusion - memorizing every step, every detail, every probability - culminate in eleven days locked up in the National Coinage and Stamp Factory of Spain, surrounded by police forces and with dozens of hostages in their power, to find out whether their suicide wager will lead to everything or nothing.
‘The Night Agent’
The Night Agent
Brought together by a midnight phone call, an FBI agent and a cybersecurity expert must unravel an ever-growing web of political conspiracies.