The Best Thrillers of 2025

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We’ve shared some of our top picks for the most unsettling games of the year, but not everything that caused us anxiety was outright terrifying. We also enjoyed some excellent thrillers! As many genre fans know, the line between horror and thriller can be blurry. For us, a true thriller stays realistic, building suspense from events that could happen in real life, rather than relying on supernatural elements to create scares.

The best thrillers of 2025 took readers on exciting journeys, exploring everything from murder and kidnapping to shocking secrets within families. Here are our top five picks for the year’s most gripping reads.

5
‘The Housemaid’

Despite a rocky start, numerous delays, and a lot of attention from the tabloids, interest in The Housemaid wasn’t very high by December. However, with the addition of a compelling story and a talented director, the film became one of the year’s most unexpected hits.

The movie The Housemaid, based on the Freida McFadden novel, is a fun, over-the-top thriller. The story of a live-in maid manipulated by her rich employer could have easily become ridiculous, but director Paul Feig’s skill at blending different moods and Amanda Seyfried’s energetic performance kept the movie engaging and surprising throughout.

4
‘Highest 2 Lowest’


A24 / Apple Original Films

It seemed likely that a remake directed by such talented people would be a hit, but Highest 2 Lowest surprisingly didn’t get much attention. However, those who did see it found it was exactly the kind of film moviegoers have been wanting for a long time.

The film Highest 2 Lowest centers on Washington’s desperate search for his kidnapped son. He navigates this challenge by sometimes following the kidnapper’s demands and other times forging his own way. The movie features strong acting from the whole cast and showcases the director’s distinctive visual style. Rather than trying to be overly original, the film offers a compelling adventure with realistic, but still exciting, stakes – it’s a story without fantastical elements or huge action sequences.

3
‘A House of Dynamite’


Netflix

This filmmaker has made political thrillers before, but A House of Dynamite was surprisingly impactful. The film unfolds in near real-time, presenting a chillingly realistic scenario: how US politicians would respond to an incoming nuclear warhead. While similar ideas have appeared in more explosive action movies, this film is more captivating because it focuses on the core conflict without unnecessary distractions.

Kathryn Bigelow expertly guided a strong cast of actors. A particularly notable and debated aspect of the film involved a repeating 20-minute sequence. As the impending impact of a warhead drew near, the movie would restart the countdown, shifting focus to different characters. While some viewers felt these resets diminished the suspense, many others found they actually heightened it. Knowing the constant threat and watching the timeline reset increased the anxiety with each cycle.

2
‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’


Netflix

Murder mysteries typically challenge viewers to solve the puzzle alongside the characters, but Rian Johnson’s Knives Out films have taken a different approach. While Knives Out and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery used humor to lessen the suspense, the newest installment, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, offers a more intriguing and less comedic experience.

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Subscribe to the newsletter for deeper coverage of the year’s standout thrillers — focused analysis, curated picks, and scene-level context that sharpen your take on everything from domestic suspense to political thrillers and whodunits.

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Detective Benoit Blanc has been central to these films, so when he didn’t appear until almost 45 minutes into Wake Up Dead Man, it signaled a shift in approach. The movie still featured a strong cast of well-known and rising stars, an intriguing murder, and plenty of humor. However, this sequel felt more suspenseful than the first, with the characters genuinely facing serious consequences for failing to solve the mystery.

1
‘Black Bag’


Focus Features

This year’s most captivating thrillers shared a common strength: a strong cast and a well-told, suspenseful story. No film exemplified this better than Black Bag. The director has consistently delivered films in this vein – think Out of Sight, The Limey, Traffic, Side Effects, Logan Lucky, and the Ocean’s 11 trilogy – but Black Bag still managed to surprise and impress, even with that strong track record.

Featuring compelling performances, Black Bag tells the story of a married couple—both intelligence officers—investigating a security breach. The mystery unfolds as they suspect each other, and even their closest friends, of being the source of the leak. Director Steven Soderbergh consistently subverted expectations, keeping the audience guessing. Despite a plot that could have easily become over-the-top, the series remained remarkably realistic and consistently suspenseful.

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2025-12-27 22:21