We love crime, honestly, as long as it isn’t happening to us. Whether it’s a chilling drama based on real-life events, a clever mystery, or a tale of a heist gone wrong, watching criminals fail and the cops triumph, or vice versa, can be intensely satisfying. So grab some popcorn and your favorite handcuffs while you enjoy some of the best and twistiest crime drams streaming on Netflix.
Molly’s Game (2017)
Aaron Sorkin writes and directs—which is sometimes even a good thing—this true crime bio-drama based on the memoir of “Poker Princess” Molly Bloom. A one-time Olympic-class skier, Bloom ran one of the highest-stakes poker games in the world for ten years before running afoul of the Italian mafia, Russian mob, and then the FBI. It’s a wild rollercoaster ride of a story, with an impressive cast lead by Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, and Michael Cera.
The Clovehitch Killer (2018)
A small and quiet Kentucky is haunted by memories of a string of murders from a decade prior, committed by an unknown murderer known only as the Clovehitch Killer. 16-year-old Tyler Burnside (Charlie Plummer) thinks he’s got a pretty normal family and an upstanding dad, at least until some bizarre pictures turn up in dad’s truck that leads Tyler to believe that the missing killer might be very close to home. The movie is all the more chilling for being based on the story of the real-life BTK killer.
The Killer (2023)
Michael Fassbender plays the title’s hitman, a ruthless but fastidious hired killer suffering from the fallout of the first significant mistake of his career—accidentally shooting the wrong person. (Whoops!) His carefully managed life quickly begins crumbling and he finds himself very much on the other side of things: he’s now the one people are trying to kill. Very unlike his previous Netflix original, Mank, this is about as close as director David Fincher gets to a pure action thrill ride.
The Irishman (2019)
In 2019, Martin Scorsese took his latest crime drama to Netflix, earning 10 Academy Award nominations in the process. The premise here, involving real-life truck driver-turned-hitman Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro), hits some of the same beats as Scorsese’s earlier mob dramas, but this one feels more contemplative than those other movies, with the criminals feeling very much like stand-ins for an American society that’s become increasingly sociopathic in its willingness to tolerate crime and corruption.
The Pale Blue Eye (2022)
If you like your mysteries broody and also historical, you’ll enjoy this one, even if it plays fast and loose with history. Christian Bale plays a retired and deeply troubled detective teaming up with a young West Point cadet you might have heard of: his name’s Edgar Allen Poe, and he’s played here by Harry Melling, who’s great. A student on campus has turned up dead, and it’s unclear whether the occult imagery and symbolism surrounding the case are indications that dark forces are at play—or if they’re meant to throw our mismatched investigators off the trail. Impressively twisty.
Baby Driver (2017)
Setting aside, for a moment, the problematic leads (looking at you, Ansel Elgort and Kevin Spacey), Edgar Wright’s car-centric 2017 heist film is undeniably thrilling. Elgort plays the titular “Baby,” an expert getaway driver who can do anything behind the wheel provided his earbuds are supplying him with the right tunes. Aside from its fun and engaging plot, which follows Baby as he attempts to get out of the driving game and settle down with the woman he loves (Lily James), the film features a standout six-minute opening car chase featuring frankly unreal stunt driving—except it was all shot with real cars in real locations.
Luther: The Fallen Sun (2023)
Continuing, and possibly concluding, the British crime series starring Idris Elba, Fallen Sun benefits from a knowledge of what came before for the character, but doesn’t require it. Now disgraced and imprisoned, former Detective Chief Inspector John Luther finds himself taunted by a serial killer (Andy Serkis) who, he’s pretty sure, can only be stopped if Luther busts out of jail and hunts him down. Convenient, really, in that we don’t have to watch our guy sit around a jail cell for two hours. Elba’s been doing the morally gray detective thing better than anyone, maybe ever, as we’re reminded in Fallen Sun.
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019)
Picking up the story of Breaking Bad‘s Jesse Pinkman with new-western style, this one’s not really a standalone, so you’ll want to hold off if you haven’t watched the series that preceded it. Picking up in the immediate aftermath of the series’ conclusion, Jesse (a rather brilliant Aaron Paul) is on the run from the authorities. The movie follows him as he tries to make it to safety in Alaska in defiance of the cops, as well as some new enemies made along the way. Essential viewing if you’re a Breaking Bad fan.
The Good Nurse (2022)
Very much not related to the Good Doctor TV series (definitely don’t get the two mixed up), The Good Nurse stars Jessica Chastain as the real-life Amy Loughren, a woman in need of a heart transplant who desperately needs to keep her hospital job for the insurance. No matter: she makes friends with another nurse on the night shift, Charlie Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) and it seems like everything will be OK. Until a patient’s death leads to a coverup, and she’s forced to question whether or not her coworker is the stand-up guy he appears to be (hint: he’s really, really not).
Rust Creek (2018)
College senior Sawyer Scott (Hermione Corfield) doesn’t want to tell anyone that she’s headed off to DC for a job interview, fearing embarrassment if she doesn’t get it. Still, she probably should’ve let someone know where she’d be. Lost in the Appalachians, she stumbles upon a couple of brothers burying a body—and the brothers don’t intend to let her get very far. The survival drama is full of creepy backwoods atmosphere.
The Guilty (2021)
Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) directs a screenplay from True Detective‘s Nic Pizzolatto, a remake of a 2018 Danish film (which is a bit better, if we’re being honest, but that’s to be expected). Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Joe Baylor, an LAPD officer who’d been bumped down to 911 dispatcher for initially unspecified errors in judgment. He gets a call from a panicked woman that leads him to make some dramatic decisions, not all of them good. An exercise in pure suspense, the contained movie very much rests on Gyllenhaal’s shoulders, though a few famous names show up via voiceover.
City Hunter (2024)
A crime drama doesn’t have to be grim and gritty. This manga adaptation is a candy-colored, high-action, and kinda goofy take starring Ryohei Suzuki as lead detective Ryo Saeba and Misato Morita as the daughter of his murdered partner, with whom he teams up to avenge that death and to find a missing teenage runaway with deadly superpowers.
The Little Things (2021)
Set way way long ago (in the 1990s), Little Things stars Denzel Washington and Rami Malek as detectives investigating a string of murders in Los Angeles. As they start to suspect a weird loner (Jared Leto), the pair find that the case has ties to Washington’s character’s past. It’s a familiar piece of genre fare in many ways, but the moody atmosphere and performances from the three leads elevate the material significantly.
Mea Culpa (2024)
Tyler Perry’s very steamy legal thriller stars Kelly Rowland as Mea (get it?) a defense attorney who takes the case of an artist (Trevante Rhodes) accused of killing his girlfriend. Her husband Kal’s been cheating on her, and her brother-in-law is the prosecutor, and there seems to be some sort of larger political scheme at play. It’s all a bit of silly, sexy fun in an erotic thriller vein.
A Simple Favor (2018)
The darkly comedic tone makes this one bit lighter, on the surface, but ultimately it’s all the more twisted for it. Things kick off when mommy blogger Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) makes friends with, and unwisely confides in, Emily (Blake Lively), a PR director and mother of her son’s schoolmate. Then Emily disappears, Stephanie (with tremendously poor judgement) sleeps with Emily’s husband (Henry Golding), and the lurid secrets that Stephanie spilled start to come to light under shocking circumstances. It’s all lot of fun with a plethora of genuinely wild twists.
I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (2017)
When nursing assistant Ruth (Melanie Lynskey) comes home to find that she’s been burglarized, she sets out with her neighbor Tony (Elijah Wood) to get her stuff back, and get revenge. Sounds like the setup for a badass action movie, except that the two of them are about as competent as you or I might be in turning the tables on criminals. As a vigilante farce, it nearly reaches Coen brothers levels of absurdity, but it’s not all goofiness, alternately challenging and confirming our worst instincts about our fellow humans.
Missing (2023)
Screenlife, as a sub-genre, is a bit like found footage, except that all the action is shown from the point of view of a computer or mobile device. Which is kinda how we experience the world now anyway, so it doesn’t feel all that artificial. In this rather exceptional example of the form, Storm Reid plays June Allen, the daughter of single mother Grace (Nia Long). June is thrilled that her overprotective mom is heading off on vacation with her new boyfriend—until she doesn’t come back. June sets out to investigate Grace’s disappearance from afar, getting some help from gig worker Javier (Joaquim de Almeida). The suspense ratchets higher and higher with every click into darker corners of the internet.
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019)
The title here pretty much says it all: Zac Efron stars as serial killer Ted Bundy, following him from his law student days in Seattle of the late 1960s to (spoiler?) his 1989 execution. Efron is great, as is Lily Collins as Liz Kendall, the girlfriend who maintained Bundy’s innocence until that became impossible. The movie is directed by true crime documentarian Joe Berlinger, who directed the docuseries Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, also from 2019 and also on Netflix. In case you just can’t get enough Ted Bundy.
Hit Man (2024)
Glen Powell (who cowrote the film alongside director Richard Linklater) stars as Gary Johnson, a withdrawn New Orleans professor who’s roped into a side gig at which he’s surprisingly good: He impersonates hired assassins for the police. People looking to hire a killer come to Gary, believing that he’s a hit man, only to find that they’ve been entrapped. Things get complicated when he’s approached by Madison (Adria Arjona) to bump off her abusive husband, and he’s not so sure that they guy doesn’t need killin’.
Lost Girls (2020)
Based on the real-life Gilgo Beach serial killings, Lost Girls stars Amy Ryan as Mari Gilbert, who pressured Long Island police to dig deeper following what was initially seen as the accidental death of her daughter. The case remains unsolved, as we’re informed at the movie’s outset, but the focus here is on Gilbert herself, and on the reluctance on the part of the police to dig deeper, even when bodies begin to accumulate, on behalf of women who were sex workers. It’s an impressive dramatic feature debut for documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus.
