Credit: Netflix

The psychological thriller is a funny breed, isn’t it? It has a nasty little habit of making ordinary situations feel completely wrong.

Someone says or does something, and all of a sudden, you are mentally replaying the film from the start to pick up the clues. Usually, it’s nothing, but your brain has already decided nobody in the story can be trusted. However, at times, trusting your gut gives you the satisfaction of cracking the mystery before everyone else, and that’s what we call vindication.

A good psychological thriller doesn’t need to chuck blood and guns at the screen just to keep you interested. Sometimes all it takes is one dodgy character making an even dodgier decision and, well, things take a turn and have you hooked in.

Netflix has plenty of that sort of malarkey lurking around. Fancy letting a film mess with your head for a bit? If so, these five unsettling psychological thrillers should do the job nicely.

Five unsettling psychological thrillers to watch right now:

Leave the World Behind (Sam Esmail, 2023)

Julia Roberts apparently wasn’t fussed about making Amanda particularly likeable, and it was a great call that worked in favour of the film. Leave the World Behind would be far less interesting if everyone were well-behaved. So our leading lady, Amanda, rents a posh Long Island house for the weekend with her family, only for the owners to turn up unexpectedly. That’d tick anyone off! Little do they know that the goings on in the outside world are taking a very strange turn, and with phones not working and not a clue about what’s actually happening, a relaxing weekend seems like a faraway dream.

Roberts is very good at making Amanda prickly, and it’s both fun and irritating, plus Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions is involved in the making, so you are in good company. And while some people loved the ending and others not so much, it’s worth diving into for an opinion of your own.

Murder by Numbers (Barbet Schroeder, 2002)

Ryan Gosling playing a smug, murderous schoolboy before becoming one of Hollywood’s favourite actors? Count us in. In Murder by Numbers, he and Michael Pitt play two wealthy teenagers who reckon they are clever enough to pull off the perfect murder and leave the police completely baffled. That’s some ambition. And then we have Sandra Bullock playing detective Cassie Mayweather, who is a sharp woman, quickly clocking that something is very wrong with the duo. Proving it, though, is a different matter entirely.

The film was loosely inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case from 1924, where two wealthy young men murdered a teenager, mostly because they believed their intelligence put them above other regular cases. That’s out and open tomfoolery. Bullock is much tougher here than people remember because, well, she had just done Miss Congeniality, and while she played a tough girl, it was much on the comic side. Murder by Numbers became one of the thrillers to be screened at Cannes in 2002, out of competition.

Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

Netflix has just brought Nightcrawler back, adding it on August 1st, and to be fair, it was a crucial addition to Netflix’s thrillers. If you have not yet witnessed Jake Gyllenhaal playing one of the creepiest little opportunists of his career, now is your chance. He plays Lou Bloom, a skint guy who discovers there is money in filming crashes and crime scenes and then flogging the footage to local news stations. Before long, he is tearing around Los Angeles at night looking for somebody else’s disaster before the competition gets there. What could possibly go wrong?

An interesting fact is that Gyllenhaal reportedly lost around 20 pounds because he wanted Lou to look hungry, almost coyote-like, and once you catch that, you can’t unsee it. Moreover, this is also Dan Gilroy making his directorial debut here. Lou keeps crossing lines, and the stations keep paying him for it, until the breaking point comes that requires him to make some tough choices. Don’t waste a second if you consider yourself a true devotee of psychological thrillers.

Gerald’s Game (Mike Flanagan, 2017)

After Leave the World Behind, we have another film that starts with weekend-getaway trouble. Gerald’s Game tells us the story of Jessie, who goes off with her husband, hoping to put a bit of spice back into the marriage. So far, so good? Wait until he drops dead while she is handcuffed to the bed, which leads her to being stuck with the key well out of reach and a dead body as a co-inhabitant. Worst of all, nobody is nearby, and she is stuck there completely on her own, and because it’s Stephen King, you know full well this is not the worst of it.

The book was called unfilmable for years, which is honestly asking Mike Flanagan to have a go, so he did. And Carla Gugino is nothing but phenomenal in the movie. She absolutely smashed it. This film is a total nightmare for those who like to get themselves into naughty situations at times, as everything that could go wrong, really does and more.

The Woman in Cabin 10 (Simon Stone, 2025)

How about we end the list with a touch of luxury, such as a yacht with posh guests? This movie starts with Keira Knightley as journalist Lo Blacklock, who is unexpectedly invited onto this yacht and at one point she sees, or so she thinks, a woman being thrown overboard. Fairly simple thing to report, you’d imagine, except every passenger is accounted for, and nobody believes a word she’s saying. Next thing you know, Lo is the one looking like she has lost the plot. Not ideal, is it, especially when you are stuck in the middle of the sea with absolutely nowhere to slope off to.

And somehow, filming it was nearly as stressful. Much of it was shot aboard the superyacht Savannah, reportedly worth around $150million, with the cast and crew warned to mind what they touched. Guy Pearce and Gugu Mbatha-Raw stand alongside Knightley on the sea-faring adventure, while Simon Stone directs, pushing it straight to number one globally on Netflix the week it was released. Clearly, people fancied a bit of posh-boat-murder malarkey.