The leaves are turning, the days are getting shorter, and there’s no better time to immerse yourself in a nail-biting story from the safety of your own couch. If you’re looking for thrillers that are so twisty, unnerving and gripping that you may never sleep again, Paramount+ has tons of them.
The trick, as always, is knowing what’s actually worth losing sleep over. So I’ve done the digging and pulled out three thriller movies on Paramount+ that definitely earn their reputation: a hunt for a real-life serial killer, a near-silent survival story where a single sound means death, and a claustrophobic bunker mystery where you’re never sure who to trust.
Just be sure to watch with a buddy (or a squishy) so you can calm down when you’re white-knuckling your seat from all the excitement.
‘Zodiac’ (2007)
The scariest thing about “Zodiac” is that it’s a true story without an ending. David Fincher’s high-stakes thriller follows the decade-long hunt for the Zodiac killer, the still-unidentified murderer who terrorized Northern California in the late ’60s and ’70s.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays a San Francisco cartoonist who becomes obsessed with cracking the case, alongside a crime reporter (Robert Downey Jr.) and a detective (Mark Ruffalo). Soon, however, the pursuit swallows his life. There’s less slasher-centric gore and horror here; it’s more of a procedural filled with dread. If you’re into that sort of thing, you’ll find a lot to like.
‘A Quiet Place’ (2018)
John Krasinski directed this tense, horror-leaning flick and stars alongside Emily Blunt as parents raising their children in a world overrun by blind creatures that hunt by sound. In other words, a single dropped object or spoken word means instant death.
The family survives by living in near-total silence, communicating in sign language and tiptoeing through their days, until the mother’s pregnancy starts a terrifying clock ticking, because there’s no quiet way to give birth. And you’ll be in stunned silence yourself when you see how the movie handles this and other noise-related catastrophes, holding your breath as long as the family does.
’10 Cloverfield Lane’ (2016)
Mary Elizabeth Winstead wakes up after a car crash to find herself locked in an underground bunker, where a survivalist named Howard (a never-scarier John Goodman) insists he’s saved her from a catastrophic attack that’s poisoned the air outside.
The trouble is she has no way to know if he’s telling the truth, or whether the real threat is the strange man holding the only key. Goodman is at his best here, serving up believable fatherly warmth and psychotic killer energy, so that you never feel safe. The movie keeps you guessing right up to an ending that comes completely out of left field. And it’s all the better for it.
