- Netflix offers a variety of spine-tingling thriller TV shows, including Ripley, The Chestnut Man, Lord of the Flies, and I Will Find You.
- Ripley is an Emmy-winning limited series starring Andrew Scott as a sinister version of Tom Ripley, shot entirely in black and white, with an 86% Rotten Tomatoes rating.
- The Chestnut Man is a Danish crime drama with a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating, following detectives investigating grisly murders involving small chestnut and matchstick figurines left behind.
There’s still some heat left in this summer, and while an icy glass of lemonade is a great way to cool down, for a more thorough, deep chill that sends shivers into your bones, there’s nothing better than a spine-tingling thriller TV show. Luckily, Netflix has these in spades.
The four below have all ranked on the Netflix charts and have solid Rotten Tomatoes scores (some even have Emmy credentials), but every one offers a story told specifically to chill you. From sun-soaked obsession and Nordic murders to children gone feral and others gone missing, each of these thriller shows on Netflix can be binged in just a night or two.
Ripley
Andrew Scott’s Tom Ripley is cold
This isn’t your father’s Talented Mr. Ripley, with charming Matt Damon soaking up the sweet sun of the Italian coast. And that’s a good thing, as Andrew Scott instead brings a more sinister, deadened thrill to Patricia Highsmith’s iconic Tom Ripley in this Emmy-winning eight-episode Netflix limited series.
It also helps that Ripley—adapted and directed by Schindler’s List screenplay writer Steven Zaillian—is shot entirely in black and white. Scott plays the titular character, a small-time New York grifter who’s sent to Italy to bring back Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), the playboy son of a shipping magnate, who is living it up in Italy with his girlfriend Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning). But once Tom tastes the good life, he disposes of Dickie and takes his place. Scott and Fanning both earned Emmy nods for their performances, and the series has an 86% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The Chestnut Man
Grisly murders and the creepiest little figurines left behind
If you like Danish or Nordic-noir series and movies, then the mind of writer Søren Sveistrup is definitely a place you might want to go—or steer clear of, depending on the faintness of your heart. The writer behind the original Danish series The Killing (later remade for AMC and later picked up by Netflix for season two), Sveistrup’s The Chestnut Man is a 100%-rated six-part crime drama about a killer terrorizing Copenhagen, murdering mothers and leaving small figures made of chestnuts and matchsticks next to them.
Detectives Naia Thulin (Danica Curcic) and Mark Hess (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard) are on the case, which twists and turns back to the missing and presumed-dead daughter of a Danish politician. Scenes are often cold and colorless, befitting the chilling mood, but the ticking clock between murders makes for thrilling TV. A second six-part series, Hide and Seek, hit Netflix this past May.
Lord of the Flies
William Golding’s lost boys get twisted in this Emmy hopeful
Who better to tackle William Golding’s iconic 1954 tale of boys gone feral than Jack Thorne, the co-creator of another chilling story of corrupted youth, Netflix’s Emmy-winning Adolescence. The four-part limited series Lord of the Flies, however, is on a whole other level. Filmed on location on a real jungle island in Malaysia, it tells the intense story of a group of young British kids in the 1950s who are left stranded on a tropical island after their plane crashes, killing all the adults on board.
The psychological thriller gets more and more unsettling as the boys devolve from a pseudo-civilized democracy—with the clever Piggy (David McKenna) and righteous Ralph (Winston Sawyers) leading things—into a cult of barbaric hunters led by the increasingly unhinged Jack (Lox Pratt). Once the conch loses its authority, all hell breaks loose, making for some compelling TV. Lord of the Flies is up for two Emmy Awards this month, and it currently sits at 91% on Rotten Tomatoes. It also proves that TV adaptations can sometimes do the books justice.
I Will Find You
Harlan Coben has a beeline to your spine in this thriller
Thriller writer <a href="https://www.howtogeek.com/harlan-coben-netflix-shows-streaming-right-now/?utm_source=syndication” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>Harlan Coben’s novels have made a cozy home for themselves on Netflix—Run Away, Missing You, and Fool Me Once are among those that have been adapted—but the latest to climb the charts of the Big Red N is this year’s eight-episode series I Will Find You,which was on the streamer’s Top 10 for weeks after its release in June.
The crime thriller follows David Burroughs (Avatar’sSam Worthington), a man serving a life sentence for the murder of his young son Matthew that he swears he didn’t commit. But when David’s former sister-in-law, Rachel (Severance‘s excellent Britt Lower), sends him a photo of what looks like his Matthew, still alive, David breaks out of prison to find him and get to the bottom of a conspiracy that runs deep. Worthington and Lower drive all the action in this nail-biter, with a tour de force performance from none other than This Is Us star Milo Ventimiglia.
Beat the heat with an ice-cold thriller
I personally can’t wait for the cooler climes of the fall and winter (ski season, baby!), but until I can cool down outside, at least I can bundle up in my living room with the thrill of a good chiller. Or, wait, the chill of a good thriller? Whatever. Any of these four will do the trick, and they won’t cost you more than a night or two to get through. When you’re done, though, check How-To Geek’s streaming section, as we sort everything worth watching so you don’t have to.
