The best thriller movies on Stan

In the mood for a good thrill? There’s plenty of them on Stan. Critic Eliza Janssen has combed the archives and picked the top 25 thrillers currently available on the streaming platform.

See also
* Best new movies & TV series on Stan
* All new streaming movies & series

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)

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The only movie on this list to feature a Nic Cage versus iguana staring competition? Unfortunately yes, but fortunately for all of us, this gonzo Werner Herzog film has everything you could want in a nutty corrupt cop saga. Jennifer Coolidge, Xzibit, Brad Dourif and more bring the criminal proceedings to a new height of madness.

Basic Instinct (1992)

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Perhaps the greatest existing example of an erotic thriller, Paul Verhoeven’s hyper-sleazy murder mystery does not do subtle. What it achieves instead is a libidinal neo-noir plot that keeps you constantly guessing. Sharon Stone’s best-known femme fatale role sees her accused of her husband’s murder—done in exactly the same manner as a slaying in one of her best-selling crime novels.

Bound (1996)

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This iconic queer neo-noir recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, but it’s always been ahead of its time. Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly keep us on our toes as a sensuous pair of lovers, caught up in Tilly’s BF Joe Pantoliano’s mob dealings. The Wachowskis’ direction is hyper-stylised, wringing every drop of blood and sweat from a relatively simple set-up.

Bug (2007)

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The director of The Exorcist traps us in another claustrophobic, almost documentary-style tale of possession. But this time, all the supernatural elements could very well be in our oddball couple’s heads: Ashley Judd, as a woman escaping an abusive relationship, and Michael Shannon, as the unhinged drifter with whom she falls in love. Well, love or folie à deux, as their paranoid delusions of “bugs” infiltrating their aluminium-foil-clad room begin to take over.

Chinatown (1974)

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One of the finest film scripts in the medium’s history, acted out by some of the 1970s greatest actors. LA noir doesn’t get better than this, with an unforgettable plot turn taking place when Jack Nicholson slaps the truth out of Faye Dunaway. Disgraced director Polanski even makes a cameo, as one of the thugs who slices Jake’s nose.

Chopper (2000)

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Eric Bana packed on pounds and lost some body parts as Aussie crook Chopper Read, in controversial director Andrew Dominik’s debut feature. The film is surprisingly experimental, with a sick streak of black comedy making the entire biopic an uncomfortable experience for even the most true-crime-loving viewers.

Collateral (2004)

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Boy this would’ve been a different film if Russell Crowe and Adam Sandler went ahead as its leads instead of a slickly sociopathic Tom Cruise and reluctant cab driver Jamie Foxx. Michael Mann keeps things feeling dangerous with unvarnished digital cinematography, and the LA car chase scenes maintain a pulse-pounding momentum as the story unravels.

The Gift (2015)

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Joel Edgerton has played plenty of grizzled types: Jason Bateman has not. Directing and starring in this bleak psychological thriller, Edgerton made the most of both men’s screen personae, throwing in Rebecca Hall’s talents too as a wife wondering why her husband is so suspicious of his old schoolmate, who’s resurfaced and wants to get creepily close to Bateman’s family.

It Comes At Night (2017)

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A sparse zombie-apocalypse movie where the horrors are far more social than they are supernatural. It all kicks off when parents Joel Edgerton and Carmen Ejogo reluctantly welcome a family of strangers, Christopher Abbott and Riley Keough, into their routine-driven fortress of an old house. The homeowner’s son, played by Kelvin Harrison Jr, is our eyes and ears in this fragile and devastating environment: no good or generous deed goes unpunished here.

Killing Them Softly (2012)

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More Andrew Dominik, this time with a film that got a much poorer reception than Chopper. But Killing Them Softly has just as much to say about the hollow quality of criminal life, with a beleaguered James Gandolfini and a hilariously unhinged Ben Mendelsohn standing out as two of the great supporting characters giving Brad Pitt’s assassin extra grief.

Logan Lucky (2017)

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And here’s Craig again, in a more minor part alongside Channing Tatum and Adam Driver as bumbling NASCAR-robbing brothers. Steven Soderbergh brings a low-key and deeply Southern atmosphere to their bungled heist, which of course goes wrong in the most chaotic and entertaining of ways.

Mystery Road (2013)

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Director Ivan Sen is a jack of all trades, and so is his greatest character Jay Swan. Sen writes, directs, scripts, and often composes the music for entries in his meat pie western series, whereas Swan (a gimlet-eyed Aaron Pedersen) has the challenge of working between his native First Nations culture and the long arm of the law. A rightly celebrated modern Australian classic.

Nightcrawler (2014)

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“My motto is if you want to win the lottery you’ve got to make money to buy a ticket.” That’s the advice of paparazzo freak Lou Bloom, who’s not typically a solid source of good guidance. As played by an electrifying Jake Gyllenhaal, the character’s a wonderfully chaotic anti-hero in this LA underworld odyssey.

Primal Fear (1996)

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Dissociative Identity Disorder has been misunderstood and exploited by plenty of crime thrillers, but Edward Norton’s split turn in this legal drama is one of the better ones, at least. Richard Gere plays the defence attorney trying to reconcile Norton’s meek altar boy Aaron with “Roy”, the malevolent personality within him who apparently killed an abusive archbishop.

Sicario (2015)

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An anti-tourism campaign for Mexico. Emily Blunt’s virtuous agent makes the journey down south to the dangers of cartel-run Tijuana in Taylor Sheridan’s most celebrated thriller, which shows the violence of authorities and corrupt gangs with equal heft and savagery. I still can’t forget the discovery of plastic-wrapped bodies within walls.

Snowtown (2011)

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Still, your corpse could end up somewhere even worse: like the barrels of South Australian’s serial killers. Based on a sickening true story of psychopathy and the vulnerable young people caught in its lure, this dramatisation of the Snowtown killings is certainly not for the faint of heart.

The Talented Mr Ripley (1999)

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Tom Ripley can mimic anybody, meaning he’s really nobody—so the depths of his ambition and cruelty are unknown. A star-studded cast brings that sociopathic blankness to life with glamorous flair. Matt Damon is uncharacteristically creepy as Patricia Highsmith’s most chilling character, while Jude Law and Gwen Paltrow play the pretty objects of his envy.

Training Day (2001)

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We love a thriller that contains all of its chaos and violence to the structure of a single day. Especially when that day begins with Denzel Washington’s bad cop forcing newbie Ethan Hawke to smoke weed laced with PCP. Antoine Fuqua had actual LA gang members and former cops help out behind the scenes to make this tale of corruption as real as possible.

The Untouchables (1987)

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David Mamet writes and Brian De Palma directs this fictionalised dramatisation of the hunt for Al Capone, played by none other than screen mob legend Robert De Niro. Kevin Costner’s prohibition agent gets swept up in a Chicago-wide crime racket, leading to a tremendous action sequence inspired by Battleship Potemkin’s iconic stair scene.

The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)

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I’ll stay silent on whether or not this small-town creepfest actually features a supernatural werewolf baddie or not: that question is somewhat secondary to the movie’s hefty themes of toxic masculinity and repressed rage. It’s directed by indie wunderkind Jim Cummings, who also stars as the somewhat useless young sheriff of a town plagued by a mysterious furry killer. Better yet, the late, great Robert Forster plays his gruff dad.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

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Since Kathryn Bigelow’s stern drama about the hunt for Bin Laden premiered, critics and viewers have been in constant disagreement about whether the film’s pro-torture US propaganda, or a striking critique of the lengths nations will go to in defending their pride. Everyone can agree that the film is expertly crafted, and that Jessica Chastain is a strikingly emotive lead.


Titles are added and removed from his page to reflect changes to Stan’s catalogue. The reviews no longer available on this page can be read here.