12 Chilling Thrillers You Can (and Should) Stream Right Now

George Clooney plays Michael Clayton, a high-priced law firm “fixer.” He transforms fumbled law firms to their former selves. However, after a rocky divorce, a bad business venture and drowning in huge amounts of debt, Clayton isn’t in the best position to be making big decisions. His law firm takes on a high-stakes merger, but when one of his fellow “fixers” turns on the firm, Clayton finds himself in the center of a conspiracy spiraling out of control. Loyalty, morals, lies and deceptions will have you glued to the screen until the credits start rolling. 

Suffering from short-term memory would be a roadblock for pretty much anyone trying to solve a murder. But Leonard (Guy Pearce) refuses to let his short term memory impede his mission of finding the man who murdered his wife. To remedy his problem, Leonard leaves notes to himself through the tattoos on his body, and creates an intricate system of polaroids to help him track down the killer. 

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This neo-noir psychological thriller was written and directed by Christopher Nolan (Inception, The Dark Knight). It’s notable for its nonlinear narrative structure—an effect that juxtaposes nicely with Leonard’s memory loss. Memento is one of the most original thrillers of the 2000s. Whether or not you’ve seen it before, you’ll be enthralled. 

When the mysterious Kat Carter (Eliza Taylor) arrives in town, the fragile balance between the town’s gentrified middle-class and dark drug-dealing underbelly collapses. Kat befriends Beaver, a teenage boy who was lured into one of the town’s illicit gangs that is heavily involved with the transport of drugs in the surrounding area. Pablo Schreiber plays Wyatt Rivers, the local drug-dealer, and Lena Headey appears as a police handler trying to bring the drug suppliers down. This thriller shows both sides of the track with equal understanding.

Based on the 2002 novel by Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones tells the story of Susie Salmon, a 14-year-old girl who is lured into a secret underground bunker by her neighbor and brutally murdered. Susie (Saoirse Ronan) watches from the “in-between,” neither the afterworld nor the realm of the living, as her family and murderer slowly return to their daily lives, and as she learns to come to terms with her own death.

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The Lovely Bones takes the idea of the “in-between” to a new level. It’s enchanting and beautiful, but viewers never forget that no matter how lovely the place is, Susie's still dead, her family still mourns and her killer is still on the loose. Eerie and atmospheric, you’ll be left desperate for Susie’s loved ones to track down her killer.

Secret service agent Frank Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) is a man haunted by his past: specifically, by his failure to save President Kennedy from assassination. When he gets word that a former CIA agent, Mitch Leary, is stalking the current president as a precursor to assassination, he refuses to let another president die on his watch.

As Leary taunts Horrigan with vicious mind games that poke at Horrigan’s troublesome past, he draws closer and closer to the president. John Malkovich was nominated for an Oscar for his role as Leary. In the Line of Fire was an instant hit upon its release in 1994. Relive a classic when you stream it tonight.

When Kate Macer, a young FBI agent, is sent to the U.S.-Mexico border to eradicate the drug cartel who planted the bomb that killed members of her team, she expects a fairly simple job. But when she arrives in El Paso, she realizes that the others on her team each have their own, questionable reasons for wanting the cartel eliminated. Will Macer be so consumed by the thought of revenge that the rules no longer matter? This pulse-pounding crime thriller will keep you on the edge of your seat. And don’t worry if you’re left wanting more—a sequel is coming our way in the summer.

This teen thriller with a streak of pitch-black humor will keep you in stitches. If you befriended a psychotic high school serial killer whose next victim was utterly unpredictable, wouldn’t you be a little freaked? When Veronica (Winona Ryder) gets sick of her clique, made up of three girls named Heather, she quickly gets in over her head, thanks to new boy in town, J.D.

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J.D. is the perfect rebellious, sexy bad boy. But as Veronica realizes that his bad boy posturing is all-too-real, she has to choose: Will she join J.D. on the dark side and get her revenge? Or is Veronica too pure for her own good? When J.D. reveals his plan to demolish the school and everyone in it, it’s up to Veronica to stop him. 

Set high in the rural Ozark mountains, Winter’s Bone follows Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) as she hunts for the father who abandoned her family. But not for reasons you may expect. Ree’s father is a drug dealer who’s gone missing, and a local officer has just informed Ree that he put their family home up as his bond. She’s in a race against time to find her father and protect her mentally ill mother, 12-year-old brother and 6-year-old sister. 

The closer Ree gets to the truth, the harder everyone around her tries to stop the facts from coming out. Her uncle says her father is most likely dead, but Ree won’t be stopped. She pushes forward to uncover the dark truth of her father’s life and prevent her family from unraveling. 

Night crawling: where one person’s tragic misfortune can become another’s profit. Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is desperate for work. After a run-in with a group of freelance camera crews at a car accident, he’s sucked into the high-stakes world of filming crashes, fires, murders, and others. They collect footage to sell to local television stations. 

But the deeper Louis gets into crawling, the further the line between observer and participant blurs. You’ll find yourself fascinated by the terrifying anti-hero and the dark side of L.A.

Yes, The Machinist is that dark movie where Christian Bale looks like a skeleton. Trevor Reznik’s (Christian Bale) insomnia has gotten so severe it has taken a toll on his weight and mental health. Ever so slowly, he begins to spiral into paranoia... a paranoia responsible for an accident at work that causes a coworker to be horribly injured. Shortly after, Trevor is fired from his job. 

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He begins obsessively writing notes to himself to track his diminishing weight, and sticks them all over his apartment. When Trevor finds some that he never wrote mixed in with the others, and begins seeing shadowy figures, he becomes convinced someone is out to get him. He takes it upon himself to track down this person. Haunting and harrowing, The Machinist is a psychological thriller that taps into some of our deepest fears. Good luck falling asleep after watching this one. 

David Lynch has a very particular way of making his viewers feel uncomfortably close to his genuinely unhinged characters and their twisted stories. Jeffery (Kyle MacLachlan) has returned to his small home town of Lumberton to manage the family’s hardware store while his father is in the hospital after suffering a stroke. One day, while walking home in a field, he finds a severed human ear in the grass. 

Naturally curious, Jeffery soon finds himself sucked into a search for the ear’s owner. Jeffery’s hunt leads him to a mysterious nightclub, where he meets a beautiful female singer and a group of psychos. The gang is led by Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a raging madman you won’t be able to look away from. Jeffrey soon learns there is more to the story of this missing ear than he could have ever prepared for. 

In the late 1960s and early 70s, the Zodiac Killer terrorized the residents of Northern California. Two police officers (Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards) and two reporters (Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr.) combined their resources to try to catch the killer. 

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Like the case it portrays, the film is obsessive and detailed. You’ll tag along on a wild ride as the detectives and journalists try to solve the crimes, first on their own and then together. Cryptic messages and eerie phone calls lead them toward a killer who always seems to be one step ahead. Zodiac is based on the true story of one of the country’s most infamous unsolved cases.