The best thrillers to watch on Netflix this January

Greetings, Polygon readers!

It’s an entire new 12 months, brimming with prospects and thrilling new releases on the close to horizon. Naturally, which means there’s additionally an entire new batch of thrillers to watch on Netflix this month. We’ve pored over the streamer’s library and hand-picked essentially the most chilling, thrilling, and seasonally acceptable motion pictures for you to watch whereas bundled up at residence.

This month’s picks embody a quasi-slasher action-thriller starring Denzel Washington, a Korean revenge-thriller traditional from Choice to Go away director Park Chan-wook, and an award-winning crime drama starring Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon. Right here’s our record of the best thrillers to watch on Netflix in January.

Editor’s decide: The Equalizer 3

Director: Antoine Fuqua
Solid: Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, David Denman

What if a revenge thriller, however filmed like a slasher?

That’s the essential promote for The Equalizer 3, the primary all-the-way-good film within the in any other case enjoyable Denzel Washington motion franchise. The film opens by strolling you thru a home plagued by our bodies, staged in a manner the place it looks as if Michael Myers got here via, solely to reveal a relaxed Robert McCall (Washington) ready on the opposite facet of the carnage.

This continues all through: Director Antoine Fuqua and legendary cinematographer Robert Richardson make nice use of sunshine and shadow to play up how terrifying McCall is (when you get on the fallacious facet of him). And Denzel, naturally, is greater than up for the duty, outclassing lots of his friends within the burgeoning “completely unstoppable badass” style by scaring absolutely the piss out of his foes.

The story’s compelling, too: McCall has settled in a quiet city in Italy, the place he’s been embraced by the group and has began to discover some semblance of peace. The Mafia has different concepts, nevertheless, and McCall has to step in to set issues straight for his newfound residence.

As a bonus, the film reunites Denzel together with his Man on Fireplace co-star Dakota Fanning. And if The Equalizer 3 will get you to watch that nice film once more (Man on Fireplace is streaming on Max), that’s only a two-for-one. —Pete Volk

Oldboy

Picture: NEON

Director: Park Chan-wook
Solid: Choi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jung

To say that Oldboy was a watershed second for Korean cinema’s world attain can be an understatement. The essential and industrial success of Park Chan-wook’s revenge thriller, which earned the Grand Prix award on the 2004 Cannes Movie Competition and earned over $15 million worldwide on the field workplace, paved the way in which for the worldwide success of flicks and reveals like Parasite and Squid Recreation. The movie was lately re-released in theaters with a 4K restoration in honor of its twentieth anniversary, and with its latest addition to Netflix’s library, now could be as good a time as any to expertise this trendy traditional.

An electrifying mix of Hitchcockian horror, Fincher-esque violence, and a devastating finale worthy of a Greek tragedy, Oldboy is among the most vital thrillers of the early 2000s. If you happen to by some means haven’t seen it already, you completely ought to. —Toussaint Egan

Mystic River

Picture: Warner Residence Video

Director: Clint Eastwood
Solid: Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon

In Clint Eastwood’s 2003 crime drama, tragedy begets tragedy. Mystic River follows the story of three males: Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon), a police officer whose pregnant spouse has mysteriously left him; James “Jimmy” Markum (Sean Penn), an ex-con and neighborhood retailer proprietor; and David Boyle (Tim Robbins), a blue-collar father haunted by his expertise of being kidnapped as a baby.

When James’ daughter is discovered useless, the investigation brings the lives of those three males collectively as secrets and techniques, lies, and unprocessed trauma come to a boiling level. Each Penn and Robbins received Oscars for his or her respective performances, however the fact is that just about everybody delivers a terrific efficiency in this movie. What stood out essentially the most to me throughout my newest rewatch is how unresolved grief metastasizes into misunderstanding, how an incapacity to talk creates boundaries inside a group that finally tear it other than the within. In different phrases: tragedy begetting tragedy. —TE