The best thrillers on Amazon Prime Video right now

The Usual Suspects is one of the most unpredictable crime-thriller stories from the 1990s. Directed by Bryan Singer (Bohemian Rhapsody), The Usual Suspects depicts the aftermath of a massacre told through the interrogation of Roger Kint (Kevin Spacey), the heist’s only survivor. The rest of the narrative unravels into the complex web of events that lead them to that fateful event on a docked ship in Los Angeles.

The Usual Suspects garnered praise for its inventive storytelling approach. It combined flashbacks and character narrations to tell a nonlinear story without confusing audiences. This is, of course, all backed by a terrific ensemble performance and one of the best examples of “subverting expectations” in film.

Outright action-thrillers aren’t the box-office draws they once were, but movies like Atomic Blonde show they’ll always have a place in the medium. Directed by David Leitch (Deadpool 2, The Fall Guy), the movie follows elite MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) on a covert mission in Germany the night before the Berlin Wall’s fall. 

Broughton must retrieve a sensitive dossier of double-agents and dismantle a spy ring. Atomic Blonde’s story is rather straightforward, but it’s all it needs to be thanks to Theron’s dynamic performance. She sells the character’s cunning nature, and the stylistic action scenes evoke sequences from the John Wick franchise.

For fans craving an original sci-fi story, Looper is a must-watch romp. Directed by Rian Johnson (Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Knives Out), the plot is set in 2044 when contract killers dubbed “loopers” execute targets that have been sent back in time in order to dispose of their bodies. 

Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is making a healthy living as a hit man until his crime syndicate decides to tie loose ends by having him kill his future self (Bruce Willis). Looper earned critical praise for its creative premise and action sequences. Director Rian Johnson flexes his sci-fi muscles in this thriller, telling an exciting and sincerely clever story without relying on the weight of a franchise.

Joel and Ethan Coen, otherwise known as the Coen Brothers, are the most revered directing duos in Hollywood, and No Country for Old Men is among their finest works. The crime thriller follows a trio of characters, opening with Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin). The Vietnam veteran finds a massive sum of money that puts him in the crosshairs of ruthless hitman Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). 

Meanwhile, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) follows the trail of what becomes a bloody crime spree. No Country for Old Men was critically acclaimed for its take on the Western genre, subverting narrative tropes and using the modern setting to its advantage. Bardem’s role holds up as the standout performance, portraying one of the most unnerving movie villains to date.

Director Martin Scorsese is a legacy name in the industry, and Taxi Driver is one of his early highlights. This grim thriller revolves around Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), a Vietnam War veteran in a dangerously unstable mental state. 

Travis works nights as a taxi driver, but the more he sees his idea of moral degradation through the streets of New York City, the more emboldened he becomes to take violent action. Taxi Driver earned universal praise for how it blended the neo-noir genre with psychological thrillers. The movie’s intense POV-driven plot makes his deteriorating mental state feel unsettling and intimate, resulting in one of the best character studies in movie history.

In co-writer/director Nicholas Tomnay’s 2010 film The Perfect Host, viewers will be treated to one of the most unusual and unnerving dinner events of the century. Our story begins when on-the-run felon John Taylor (Clayne Crawford) crashes the dinner party of one Warwick Wilson (David Hyde Pierce). Pretending to have survived a robbery, John’s ruse only goes as far as the glass of red wine offered to him by the kind proprietor. It turns out the drink was drugged, and Mr. Wilson may have a few screws loose. Featuring a tour de force performance from Frasier star Hyde Pierce, The Perfect Host will keep you guessing from start to finish.

Based on Ian Reid’s 2018 novel of the same name, Foe stars Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal as Hen and Junior, a young couple experiencing marital troubles. Living in an alternate future in the country, it seems that rural living proves quite the challenge in 2065. One day, a man named Terrance (Aaron Pierre) arrives, informing Junior that he’s been preselected to journey to an interstellar settlement orbiting Earth. Led by powerhouse performances from Ronan and Mescal, the film explores the idea of leaving civilization as we know it and how it only propels the couple’s downward spiral.

What hells may wealth bring? This is the question posed and explored in writer-director Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn. Barry Keoghan stars as Oxford student Oliver Quick, who is unmoored and disillusioned in his studies. That is until he strikes up a friendship with devil-may-care aristocrat Felix Catton (Priscilla‘s Jacob Elordi). After accepting an invitation to spend the summer at Felix’s luxurious family estate, he becomes immersed in a whirlwind world of socialites. Keoghan delivers an excellent performance in Fennell’s kaleidoscopic follow-up to Promising Young Woman. 

When life has got you down, one should retreat to the wilderness, right? In the wake of tribulations, getting more outdoor-time is a great way to push your demons away, unless you’re one of the characters in writer-director Berkley Brady’s 2022 film Dark Nature. Starring Hannah Emily Anderson as Joy, a woman on the mend from an abusive relationship, Joy joins her pal Carmen (Madison Welsh) on a wellness retreat into the Canadian woodlands. Spearheaded by the enigmatic Dr. Carol Dunnley (Kyra Harper), the getaway is soon interrupted by a horrific creature. A fitting exploration of PTSD, Dark Nature may retread similar paths, but is ultimately pushed a notch above the rest by its strong female cast.

Directed by Vasilis Katsoupis from a script by Ben Hopkins, Inside stars Willem Dafoe as cunning art hief Nemo. After a heist goes south, Nemo is forced to hide out in the New York City penthouse he initially invaded do he could rob its out-of-town owner of his Egon Schiele paintings. When Nemo attempts to flee the premises, the high-rise’s security system traps him inside, subjecting the criminal to long days of starvation and hallucinations. Dafoe never delivers a faulty performance, and his egocentric portrayal of Nemo becomes all the more dizzying when the man’s psychosis starts to kick in.

Joaquin Phoenix is on point in Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here. The Oscar-winning actor plays Joe, a brutalizer-for-hire, with a specialty in rescuing trafficked girls. Suffering from suicidal thoughts and years of trauma from his childhood through his military career, Joe agrees to a new mission. It’s standard fare: Rescue a senator’s daughter and take down anyone that gets in the way. The only trouble is that those involved are part of a much deeper political conspiracy, and Joe lands right in the middle of the villains and their victims. You Were Never Really Here has teeth, and it bites — a lot. Those uneasy with gore may want to choose something else on this list. For those that can stomach Joe’s reign of hammer-blows, you’ll be rewarded with a brilliantly directed character study and a mesmerizing lead performance from our latest cinematic Joker.