The 7 best thriller movies to stream this week
The 7 best thriller movies to stream this week
‘The Whisper Man,’ ‘Promising Young Woman,’ and a darker cut of ‘The X-Files’ lead this week’s thriller picks.
I don’t really care what kind of thriller it is as long as it gets its hooks in. That’s probably the easiest way to explain this list because these seven movies have almost nothing in common besides making you want to keep watching. One’s about a serial killer. One’s basically a zombie movie that feels sadder than any I’ve seen before. There’s David Fincher making San Francisco feel haunted, Carey Mulligan quietly terrifying awful men, and “The X-Files” getting dragged back after all these years. Some are new, some are old, but all deliver on the promise of a thriller: thrills. Here are the best thriller movies to stream at home right now.
Top 7 thriller movies on streaming right now
No. 7: ‘The Whisper Man’ (2026) | Netflix
Okay, so Tara pretty much called the major twist in “The Whisper Man” about halfway through the movie… and we both enjoyed it anyway. My point is this one isn’t going to reinvent the serial-killer thriller genre, but the performances from Adam Scott, Robert De Niro, Michelle Monaghan and Michael Keaton are worth giving it a shot.
Scott plays the father of a son who gets abducted by “The Whisper Man” — a serial killer copycat of an original killer that Scott’s father (De Niro) caught and put in jail. With the help of Monaghan’s detective, the three of them come together to try and save the kid. There’s plenty of atmosphere and story here to keep you engaged, and if you go into it knowing what to expect, I think you’ll enjoy the movie a lot more. A new murderer. An old case. A retired cop pulled back in. And great performances to boot.
The Whisper Man
When his young son vanishes, a widower enlists help from his estranged father, a retired detective who put away the serial killer now linked to the case.
No. 6: ‘The X-Files: I Want to Believe - Vrach Frankenshteyn’ (2026) | Hulu
“The X-Files” was one of those shows I somehow got away with watching as a kid, even though it scared the crap out of me. I loved that feeling. Mulder and Scully would walk into some dark room with one flashlight between them, and I’d already be regretting my decision, but obviously I wasn’t turning it off. So the new 2026 “Vrach Frankenshteyn” cut of “The X-Files: I Want to Believe” feels weirdly made for me.
Chris Carter went back to the 2008 movie, cut down some of the romantic stuff, put back more of the nasty body-horror material, and basically nudged the whole thing toward the version of “The X-Files” I remember most. Creepy. Cold. Gross in spots. A disgraced priest having psychic visions, people disappearing, Mulder believing something awful is going on while Scully is trying to stay grounded… that’s the recipe I remember. The original movie never totally landed for me, but seeing it reworked into something darker this many years later is such a strange little gift for anyone who grew up loving the show.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe
Mulder and Scully are called back to duty by the FBI when a former priest claims to be receiving psychic visions pertaining to a kidnapped agent.
No. 5: ‘Zodiac’ (2007) | Apple TV
If you haven’t looked at the Apple TV movie library in a while, go poke around because they just dumped in a bunch of licensed movies, and somehow “Zodiac” is sitting in there now. Which is dangerous cause it’s a long movie, but a good one. Here, David Fincher makes paperwork feel sinister. Handwriting. Phone calls. Old police files. Guys sitting around getting progressively more obsessed with a killer they can’t catch. And it’s terrifying.
Robert Downey Jr. is unraveling, Mark Ruffalo looks permanently exhausted, Gyllenhaal keeps going when any reasonable person would’ve walked away years earlier, and the whole thing just gets under your skin without doing much of what a normal thriller is supposed to do. There’s no clean answer waiting for you. No big release of tension. Just this awful case hanging over everybody until it starts swallowing parts of their lives. I love movies like this. Slow, weirdly procedural, a little suffocating. “Zodiac” is still one of the best.
Zodiac
Police conduct a manhunt for the Zodiac Killer, a serial killer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s and early 1970s, taunting police with letters, bloodstained clothing, and ciphers mailed to newspapers.
No. 4: ‘The Last House’ (2026) | Netflix
“The Last House” has one of those premises where I’m basically annoyed I didn’t think of it first. A family wakes up and realizes they physically cannot leave their house. Doors won’t open. Windows won’t open. Outside, it’s raining, and something is very clearly wrong, except nobody has any idea what. That’s “The Last House,” and honestly the first stretch of this movie is the part I like most because it lets that idea just sit there and get uncomfortable.
Greta Lee and Wagner Moura play the parents, and instead of everybody immediately turning into complete idiots because the plot needs them to, the family actually tries to figure this thing out together. Food. Water. What’s outside. Why they’re trapped. Then the movie starts getting much bigger and stranger than the original setup, and this is where people seem to split on it pretty hard. I get that. But the hook is so good, and there’s something deeply wrong-feeling about being trapped inside the one place that’s supposed to make you feel safe. That part got me.
The Last House
A family suddenly sealed inside their home must work together to survive against dwindling resources and the ominous threat keeping them trapped.
No. 3: ‘We Bury the Dead’ (2024) | Hulu
“We Bury the Dead” is technically a zombie movie, except calling it that makes it sound like Daisy Ridley is running around Tasmania blowing heads off for two hours. Not really. She plays Ava, an American searching for her husband after some catastrophic military disaster leaves huge numbers of people dead, except… some of them start moving again. Bad development. What I like about this one is that the dead still feel like dead people. Somebody knew them. Somebody is looking for them. Somebody has to identify them. The whole thing has this sad, eerie weight that most zombie movies don’t even bother with because they’re too busy counting ammunition.
Ridley barely has to push the performance. She just looks increasingly wrecked as Ava moves through these empty roads and gorgeous, awful landscapes trying to find out what happened to her husband. There are scary moments, obviously, but the movie keeps drifting back toward grief and that horrible need to know. Even when the answer might destroy you. Weirdly beautiful zombie movie. Didn’t expect to type that.
We Bury the Dead
After a catastrophic military disaster reanimates the dead, Ava searches for her missing husband amidst an increasingly hostile world.
No. 2: ‘Promising Young Woman’ (2020) | Peacock
Tara and I loved “Promising Young Woman” when it first dropped. Carey Mulligan plays Cassie, who goes to bars pretending to be way more drunk than she actually is, waits for some supposedly decent guy to offer to “help” her home, then watches what happens when he thinks she can’t say no. And then she sits up… sober. Surprise! That setup alone could’ve been an entire revenge movie, but Emerald Fennell keeps twisting it into something sadder and uglier because Cassie isn’t doing this for fun. She’s stuck. Her best friend is gone, her own life basically stopped with hers, and all the candy colors and pop songs and rom-com-looking stuff around Cassie start feeling more and more deranged the longer you watch.
That’s probably my favorite thing about it. The movie looks like it should have a makeover montage somewhere, and instead it keeps walking you toward something much darker. Mulligan is incredible because she never turns Cassie into some cool movie vigilante either. She’s angry. She’s funny. She’s damaged. Sometimes she’s frightening. Sometimes you just want her to go home. And the movie knows exactly how uncomfortable all of that is.
Promising Young Woman
A young woman, traumatized by a tragic event in her past, seeks out vengeance against those who crossed her path.
No. 1: ‘Obsession’ (2026) | Peacock
Better late than never, I guess. Tara and I completely missed “Obsession” when it was in theaters, even with all the noise around it, and then it showed up on Peacock, and we finally watched it. Yeah. This movie rips. The setup is so simple it almost feels stupid until you realize how much trouble it can cause. A guy is too scared to tell his friend he loves her, gets his hands on this weird “One-Wish Willow,” and wishes she’ll love him more than anyone else in the world. Great idea, man. Nothing could possibly go wrong there. Of course the wish works, and then keeps working, and then really keeps working.
The thing I kept thinking about afterward was how much movie is actually here for such a small budget. This thing cost around $750,000 and never really feels limited by it. Curry Barker just keeps making smart choices. Inde Navarrette disappearing into near-total darkness. Shots holding a beat longer than you expect. Little movements in the frame that suddenly make you nervous. Barker has talked about basically cutting the movie in his head before shooting it, and you can feel that because almost nothing seems accidental. There’s no fat. No giant effects sequence trying to prove the movie has money it doesn’t have. Just a really good idea, strong performances, and a director who knows exactly where to put the camera. That’s the stuff I love. Give me that over another $100 million CGI movie any day.
Obsession
After breaking the mysterious “One Wish Willow” to win his crush’s heart, a hopeless romantic finds himself getting exactly what he asked for but soon discovers that some desires come at a dark, sinister price.