The best movies on Netflix right now, including the best horror movies, comedies, action movies, thrillers, and new movies you can watch on Netflix.
What’s the best movie I can watch on Netflix? We’ve all asked ourselves this question, only to spend the next 15 minutes scrolling through the streaming service’s oddly specific genre menus and getting overwhelmed by the constantly shifting trend menus. Netflix’s huge catalog of movies continues to expand day by day, week by week, month by month. This makes the challenge of keeping up to date with best the service has to offer — let alone finding something the best of what to watch after a long day — a task that feels herculean at best and impossible at worst for someone not plugged into its inscrutable rhythms.
We’re here to help. For those suffering from choice paralysis in February, we’ve narrowed down your options to not only our favorite current movies on the platform, but the best movies Netflix has to offer.
If you’re looking for a specific genre, we’ve got the best action movies on Netflix, the best horror movies on Netflix, the best thrillers on Netflix, and the best comedy movies on Netflix ready for you. And for our readers across the pond, we have a list of the best movies on Netflix U.K.
We’ll be updating this list weekly as Netflix cycles movies in and out of its library, so be sure to check back next time you’re stuck in front of the app’s home screen. Our latest update added Train to Busan as our editor’s pick.This week’s editor’s pick: Train to Busan
Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Cast: Gong Yoo, Jung Yu-mi, Ma Dong-seok
As far as horror movie premises go, it’s hard to get more fundamentally terrifying than “zombie outbreak on a train.” Yeon Sang-ho took that basic idea and ran with it to create a gory, pulse-pounding survival thriller about perseverance in the face of the apocalypse.
Train to Busan stars Gong Yoo (Squid Game) as Seok-woo, a workaholic fund manager who, wracked with guilt, agrees to take his estranged daughter on a train ride to Busan to celebrate her birthday. Unfortunately for him and everyone else on that train, a zombie epidemic brought about by a mysterious chemical spill has engulfed the nation. Aside from the core emotional arc between Seok-woo and his daughter, nearly every other character feels unique and compelling, from Ma Dong-seok’s portrayal as a doting husband-turned-brawler to Choi Woo-shik and Sohee’s performances as a high school couple trying to survive amid the chaos. It’s a well-crafted, compelling drama that devotes ample time to fleshing out the humanity of its cast as they fight tooth and nail to overcome a nightmare that threatens to tear them life from limb. In short: It’s the perfect movie to usher in the weekend and get your blood pumping. —Toussaint Egan
How we pick the best movies on Netflix
Polygon’s staff consistently keeps up with new Netflix originals and titles added to the streaming platform, adding to this list with the best movies across both Netflix productions and library titles. We prioritize quality, unique artistic vision, and variety — different genres, different eras, different vibes, different filmmaking nations — to make sure every reader finds multiple options that interest them, as well as movies they may have never encountered before.
The best movies on NetflixAthena
Director: Romain Gavras
Cast: Dali Benssalah, Sami Slimane, Anthony Bajon
One of the very best movies of 2022, Athena is an intense action thriller about the uprising of a French banlieue after repeated police harassment and violence. Told through the eyes of three brothers with very different perspectives on the conflict and how it should be resolved, Athena is a powerful story. But where it really shines is in its technical acumen. Music video director Romain Gavras, making his feature debut, brings breathtaking tracking shots, intricately choreographed blocking, and an absolutely electric energy. I have qualms with the ending, but I’ll never forget the jaw-dropping experience of watching Gavras cook on this movie. Whatever he does next, I’m there. —Pete VolkAtlantics
Director: Mati Diop
Cast: Ibrahima Traoré, Mame Bineta Sane, Amadou Mbow
It’s hard to talk too much about Atlantics without giving away what makes the experience of watching it so special. It’s a beautiful, haunting love story with a tangibly beating heart, touching on romance as well as grief, class, labor, and the lingering effects of oppression. Shot gorgeously by director Mati Diop and cinematographer Claire Mathon, it was the first movie directed by a Black woman to be featured in competition in Cannes (it won the Grand Prix award, losing out on the Palme d’Or to Parasite), and is one of the most remarkable feature film debuts for a director in recent memory. —PVThe ’Burbs
Director: Joe Dante
Cast: Tom Hanks, Bruce Dern, Carrie Fisher
Suburban paranoia is as time-honored of an American tradition as baseball, apple pie, and redlining. In this 1989 horror comedy, Gremlins director Joe Dante taps into a wellspring of simmering communal tension and urban superstition and strikes gold. Tom Hanks stars as Ray Peterson, an overstressed homeowner trying to enjoy his weeklong vacation, if only everyone in the cul-de-sac of Mayfield Place would just leave him the hell alone. Unfortunately for him, the mysterious goings-on of his reclusive new neighbors have drawn the over imaginative ire of fellow suburbanites Art (Rick Ducommun) and Mark (Bruce Dern), who enlist Ray in a harebrained scheme to uncover what they’re absolutely certain is a murderous home-grown conspiracy.
Dana Olsen, the screenwriter for The ’Burbs, aptly summed up the film as “Ozzie and Harriet meet Charles Manson.” It’s a gleefully dark movie about a bunch of adults running around like grown-ass children, whipping themselves up into a frenzy with ever more outlandish theories while transforming into the very mirror image of their own tall tales. The script is fantastic, with memorable one-liners like “I’m gonna go do something productive; I’m gonna go watch television” delivered with an acerbic sense of wit by a cast of terrific actors who are all in on the joke. If you’re a fan of Joe Dante’s other films, like Small Soldiers, Innerspace, or, of course, Gremlins, you owe it to yourself to make the time to watch this bona fide cult classic. —TEBlackhat
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Tang Wei, Viola Davis
A sleek and sexy thriller that makes hacking look extremely cool, Michael Mann’s unfairly maligned Blackhat stands tall as a high mark in digital filmmaking. It is peak Mann — if you’re not a fan of the Heat director’s work, your mileage may vary. In the film, Chen Dawai (Wang Leehom), a captain in the PLA’s cyber warfare unit, is tasked with getting to the bottom of a computer attack that melts down a nuclear power plant in Hong Kong. While liaising with the FBI investigation, Chen insists on the aid of his old friend Nicholas Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth, who has never been hotter or cooler), an imprisoned genius hacker. When Hathaway and Chen’s sister (Tang Wei), a networking engineer also helping with the case, fall for each other, it adds an extra wrinkle to an already high stakes situation. Viola Davis and Holt McCallany feature as FBI agents who aren’t super happy to have to rely on a notorious criminal.
With sharp digital cinematography and unforgettable set pieces, Blackhat explores our changing global relationship to technology. Mann makes tangible the microscopic computer systems that run the world: an extreme close-up of internal wires leading to a motherboard like a vast interconnected highway; a computer fan that sounds like a jet engine. Events that in other films would be shown as a boring stroke of keys are instead depicted as hypnotic processes happening under the surface of the visible world. —PVThe Conversation
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Harrison Ford
Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation is a paranoia-inducing murder thriller starring Gene Hackman as Harry Caul, a surveillance expert — one who does actual spying! — whose professional integrity and personal morality are put in direct opposition when he suspects that he has eavesdropped on a couple who he believe are going to be murdered. Drawn into a plot of veiled conspirators and unsavory violence, Harry must search for the truth behind what he has witnessed while staying alive. Over the journey, Coppola creates an aura of paranoia with each passing scene, and David Shire’s piano score is a mood. —TEDevil in a Blue Dress
Director: Carl Franklin
Cast: Denzel Washington, Jennifer Beals, Don Cheadle
This scintillating neo-noir captures Denzel Washington as he was ascending the mountain of movie stardom, all in a brilliant story of postwar racial tensions in Los Angeles, featuring some of the best cinematography of the 1990s.
Denzel is Easy Rawlins, a vet in between jobs just looking to make enough money to keep paying his mortgage. When he’s recruited by a seedy PI for what seems to be a simple job, Easy gets pulled into a tangled web of lies and deception that proves to be very difficult to break out of. With incredible supporting performances by Don Cheadle, Tom Sizemore, and Jennifer Beals, Devil in a Blue Dress is a gem of a mystery thriller that does the excellent original novel justice. —PVDon’t Go Breaking My Heart
Directors: Johnnie To, Wai Ka-fai
Cast: Louis Koo, Daniel Wu, Gao Yuanyuan
Johnnie To is one of our great modern directors, equally adept in hard-boiled triad crime dramas and light-hearted romantic comedies alike.
