Netflix’s streaming service is a content library filled with blockbusters and indie darlings, but a good amount of those come courtesy of the streaming giant itself. Netflix’s original films are stacked with sci-fi action epics and sports comedies, and Oscar-winning aueteur entries. So, to whittle down the smorgasbord of choices, we’ve rounded up the best Netflix feature-length creations that deserve to be added to your queue.
You can see the full list of the best Netflix original movies below:
Last updated on July 2, 2024.
30: TIE. Trigger Warning
Year: 2024
Cast: Jessica Alba, Anthony Michael Hall
Genre: Crime, Action
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 106 minutes
Director: Mouly Surya
Trailer: Watch here
Jessica Alba heads up her first film in five years with this action-packed crime drama that pulls inspo from some nostalgic tropes from the best 80s knuckle-bruisers. Alba plays Parker, a commando who returns home to investigate the circumstances surrounding her father’s untimely demise. While there, she uncovers an arms-running ring that puts the town and those she loves at risk so, naturally, she has to kick a bunch of ass to set things right. Alba’s terrific stuntwork, and the choreography from the geniuses behind John Wick, make this solid B-movie worth a watch.
30: TIE. A Family Affair
Year: 2024
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, Joey King
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 111 minutes
Director: Richard LaGravenese
Trailer: Watch here
Let Zac Efron do more comedy! We know the guy’s physique gets a bulk of the internet’s thinkpieces, but he’s more than just a pretty, very chiseled face. He’s got timing, people. And he proves it here playing an out-of-touch actor who hooks up with his assistant’s mom. The cringe is real, as is the chemistry between Kidman and Efron (who’ve been here before).
29. Spaceman
Year: 2024
Cast: Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 108 minutes
Director: Johan Renck
Trailer: Watch here
Adam Sandler’s Netflix partnership keeps taking new turns, even if we still haven’t seen a Hubie Halloween 2. The humanity! However, this film takes Sandler back into dramatic mode as an astronaut who is attempting to fix his marriage from the depths of the solar system, and somehow, a creature hiding inside his ship decides to help him. Wait, what? The story is based upon Spaceman of Bohemia, the novel by Jaroslav Kalfař. Additionally, Carey Mulligan portrays Sandler’s movie wife, and Paul Dano voices the creature. Yes, it’s bizarre, but that’s part of why this film works.
28. Leave The World Behind
Year: 2023
Cast: Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 138 minutes
Director: Sam Esmail
Trailer: Watch here
Directed by Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail and starring everyone from Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali to Ethan Hawke and Kevin Bacon, this mind-bending sci-fi flick — adapted from a best-selling novel of the same name — poses an eerily realistic what-if scenario that follows two families reckoning with a societal collapse. A white couple from New York City (Roberts and Hawke) rent a gorgeous home on Long Island only for their vacation to be interrupted by their Air BnB’s Black owners, who arrive just as strange events begin to wreak havoc on their idyllic paradise.
27. Eurovision Song Contest: A Song of Ice and Fire
Year: 2020
Cast: Rachel McAdams, Will Ferrell, Dan Stevens
Genre: Comedy, Musical
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 123 minutes
Director: David Dobkin
Trailer: Watch here
Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams take on the planet’s most-watched singing competition with this campy comedy about an Icelandic duo named Fire Saga, who are set on achieving glory on the world’s biggest stage. Ferrell and McAdams play Lars Erickssong and Sigrit Ericksdottir, artists chosen to represent their nation in the Eurovision Song Contest, a real competition that features musicians from all over the world, who are often performing in wild get-ups. Dan Stevens almost steals the show while Pierce Brosnan and Demi Lovato make appearances. We’re calling it now: “Volcano Man” is going to be a bop for the ages.
26. Good Grief
Year: 2023
Cast: Dan Levy, Ruth Negga, Himesh Patel
Genre: Drama, Romance
Rating: R
Runtime: 100 minutes
Director: Dan Levy
Trailer: Watch here
Schitt’s Creek creator Dan Levy writes, directs, and stars in this melancholoy drama of love lost that’s as far removed from his cult Canadian comedy as you can get. Here, Levy plays Marc, an artist whose author-husband (Luke Evans) unexpectedly dies, forcing Marc to confront some harsh hidden truths about their relationship. It will either make you want to cry, or make you want to go to Paris. Probably both.
25. The Old Guard
Year: 2020
Cast: Charlize Theron, Kiki Layne, Marwan Kenzari
Genre: Action, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 125 minutes
Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Trailer: Watch here
Charlize Theron heads up this inventive action flick based on a best-selling graphic novel. Theron plays Andy, the leader of a covert group of immortal mercenaries who’ve lived centuries in the shadows, fighting off the worst of humankind. When they’re group is exposed, and their abilities come to light, Theron and her team face a new threat, one hoping to weaponize their powers for their own gain. In case you needed any more proof that Theron is one of the best action stars of a generation, her fairly wild fight scenes here should leave you convinced.
24. Damsel
Year: 2024
Cast: Millie Bobby Brown
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 109 minutes
Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Trailer: Watch here
Another Netflix fave, Millie Bobby Brown, kicks some dragon (and royalty) ass after discovering that she’s marrying a prince whose family decides to sacrifice her to a dragon as part of an enormously screwed-up ritual. This twisted fairy tale arrives in conjunction with Evelyn Skye’s novel (based on the film), and both prioritize world building, even if being slightly predictable while doing so.
23. Do Revenge
Year: 2022
Cast: Maya Hawke, Camila Mendes, Austin Abrams
Genre: Comedy
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 118 minutes
Director: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Trailer: Watch here
Maya Hawke and Camila Mendes star in this teen comedy filled with cheeky winks to the genre’s early aughts classics. Mendes plays Drea, a popular student at an elite private school whose reputation is trashed after her boyfriend (Euphoria’s Austin Abrams) leaks an intimate video of her. She seeks revenge and enlists the help of the school’s new girl Eleanor (Hawke) who undergoes a makeover to infiltrate the popular clique Drea once belonged to and destroy them from the inside. Come for the “Glenn-ergy” of it all, stay for the plot twist near the film’s end.
22. May December
Year: 2023
Cast: Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 117 minutes
Director: Todd Haynes
Trailer: Watch here
Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore tensely circle each other for nearly two hours in this drama based on the real-life scandal of a teacher who abused, then married, her underaged student. Moore plays the educator, now wife to Charles Melton’s emotionally stunted Joe while Portman plays an actress, visiting the couple in order to better understand her character — who is modeled after Moore’s. It’s all very meta with some bizarrely timed musical interludes, but it’s a fascinating watch all the same.
21. Pain Hustlers
Year: 2023
Cast: Emily Blunt, Chris Evans, Andy Garcia, Catherine O’Hara
Genre: Crime, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 143 minutes
Director: David Yates
Trailer: Watch here
Between Hulu’s Dopesick and Netflix’s Painkillers, audiences are well-versed in the beginnings of the opioid epidemic — at least, on screen. But this account, based on another true story of a pharma company gone corrupt boasts a spectacular performance by Emily Blunt that excuses its predictable ending. Blunt plays a struggling single mom who’s offered a drug rep job by Evans’ smarmy pharmaceutical exec. The two are so good at peddling their bullsh*t, that they’re able to convince doctors to write enough prescriptions for a new fast-acting opioid that ends up saving the company and making them rich. But when people start dying and her bosses start cutting corners, Blunt’s Liza Drake becomes so disillusioned with the get-rich-quick scheme, that she decides to burn it down from the inside.
20. The Good Nurse
Year: 2022
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Eddie Redmayne
Genre:Drama, Crime
Rating: R
Runtime: 121 minutes
Director: Tobias Lindholm
Trailer: Watch here
This unnerving drama, based on the true story of a serial killing nurse, will leave you wary of ever stepping foot inside a hospital, but the trade-off is some fantastic performances from Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne. Chastain plays a single mom with a heart condition trying to hide her illness while on the clock. Redmayne plays her fellow nurse, a shy, soft-spoken man with a shady past who looks out for her, even as he’s murdering perfectly health patients in their sleep.
19. Windfall
Year: 2022
Cast: Jesse Plemons, Jason Segel, Lily Collins
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 92 minutes
Director: Charlie McDowell
Trailer: Watch here
Jason Segel plays a bumbling burglar in this twisty thriller starring Lily Collins and Jesse Plemons. Plemons plays a wealthy tech CEO, Collins his unhappy wife. The two make a last-minute trip to their vacation home where they encounter Segel’s character who’s in the process of robbing it. He decides to hold them for ransom and, while waiting for the money to be delivered, extracts harsh truths from both. It’s a ridiculous, tense ride that hinges on Plemons being totally unlikable (he is here) and Collins being the unexpected MVP of the story.
18. The Platform
Year: 2019
Cast: Ivan Massagué, Zorion Eguileor, Antonia San Juan
Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 94 minutes
Director: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
Trailer: Watch here
This Spanish-language sci-fi flick is all kinds of f*cked up, but in the best way. The film is set in a large, tower-style “Vertical Self-Management Center” where the residents, who are periodically switched at random between floors, are fed by a platform, initially filled with food, that gradually descends through the levels. Conflicts arise when inmates at the top begin eating all the food, leaving the people lower down to fight for survival.
17. Gerald’s Game
Year: 2017
Cast: Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood
Genre: Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 103 minutes
Director: Mike Flanagan
Trailer: Watch here
Stephen King’s 1992 novel transpires mostly in one isolated lake house’s bedroom where its protagonist, Jessie, lies bound to a bed after her husband dies in the midst of a sex game. That makes it a tough story to film, which may explain why it took 25 years to get turned into a movie. But the wait was worth it: director Mike Flanagan delivers a resourceful, disturbing adaptation anchored by a great Carla Gugino performance (with some fine supporting work from Bruce Greenwood). Forced to find a way out of her situation, while confronting her own past, Gugino’s Jessie is made to go to extremes, which leads to, among other things, one of the squirmiest scenes in recent memory.
16. The Devil All The Time
Year: 2020
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Sebastian Stan,
Genre: Crime, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 138 minutes
Director: Antonio Campos
Trailer: Watch here
This time-hopping drama set in the backwoods of West Virginia is basically an excuse for director Antonio Campos to assemble his own Avengers-style squad of Hollywood A-listers. Seriously, everyone’s in this movie: Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Bill Skarsgård, Eliza Scanlen, Sebastian Stan, Mia Wasikowska, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Haley Bennett, that kid who played Dudley in the Harry Potter franchise. The whole gang’s living in shacks and picking up hitchhikers, only to murder them later and speaking in tongues and falling victim to generational trauma. It’s a heavy watch, and there’s not really a happy ending, but boy does Pattinson deliver a batsh*t crazy turn as a perverted preacher.
15. The Killer
Year: 2023
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton
Genre: Thriller, Crime
Rating: R
Runtime: 118 minutes
Director: David Fincher
Trailer: Watch here
David Fincher directs this understated crime drama which sees a stoic Michael Fassbender playing a professional hitman off his game. Fassbender’s killer is methodical when it comes to his job, obsessive about his routines and clean with his executions but a near-miss throws his carefully-cultivated existence into chaos, forcing him to battle his shadowy bosses in order to stay alive.
14. Hunger
Year: 2023
Cast: Nopachai Chaiyanam, Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying, Gunn Svasti Na Ayudhya
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 146 minutes
Director: Sitisiri Mongkolsiri
Trailer: Watch here
Thai filmmaker Sitisiri Mongkolsiri gives us his version of The Menu with this deliciously tense, inexplicably-eerie restaurant thriller. Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying plays Ayo, a young woman working at her family’s noodle shop who dreams of more. She gets it after scoring a job with a dictator-like food auteur in Nopachai Chaiyanam’s Chef Paul. Paul is uncompromising and abusive and Ayo subjects herself to that abuse in order to climb an imaginary ladder but, once she reaches the top, the view looks grim.
13. Okja
Year: 2017
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Paul Dano, Jake Gyllenhaal
Genre: Adventure, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 120 minutes
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Trailer: Watch here
Bong Joon-Ho’s send-up of corporate farming and environmental abuses isn’t subtle. Tilda Swinton goes all-out as the CEO of an evil corporation only to be outdone by Jake Gyllenhaal’s broad turn as an unstable TV host. But its tale of an endearing, genetically modified “super pig” and the girl who loves him is effective and contains both some terrific action set pieces and the most affecting child/strange beast relationship this side of E.T.
12. Hustle
Year: 2022
Cast: Adam Sandler, Queen Latifah, Ben Foster, Juancho Hernangómez
Genre: Sports, Comedy
Rating: R
Runtime: 117 minutes
Director: Jeremiah Zagar
Trailer: Watch here
Adam Sandler has plenty of comedy favorites housed on Netflix, but we’re highlighting this one because Sandler gets to channel his everyman charm in a sports story that lets his comedic sensibilities control the game. He plays Stanley Sugerman, an aging 76ers scout, who discovers a potential NBA star during a pick-up game in Spain. Stanley risks his career and his family’s future to back the unknown player, eventually squaring off against his old boss and confronting his own troubled past to help someone else achieve their dreams on the court.
11. Hit Man
Year: 2024
Cast: Glen Powell, Adria Arjona
Genre: Crime, Comedy
Rating: R
Runtime: 115 minutes
Director: Richard Linklater
Trailer: Watch here
Glen Powell is firmly in his movie-star era with this criminally good rom-com he wrote with collaborator/friend Richard Linklater. Based on the true story of a fake hit man, Powell plays Gary Johnson, a philosophy professor moonlighting as an undercover assassin-for-hire who catches the bad guys before the act. When one of his marks turns out to be a beautiful woman (Arjona) trying to escape her abusive husband, Gary is forced to question the theories he’s developed while on the job and his approach to his own life.
10. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
Year: 2020
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, David Thewlis, Toni Collette
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 134 minutes
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Trailer: Watch here
Charlie Kaufman’s latest film is based on a book of the same name and stars Chernobyl’s Jessie Buckley as a young woman meeting her boyfriend’s parents for the first time — which normally would be a happy event except she’s secretly been planning to break up the with the guy. That guy is Jesse Plemons, who seems to be in everything these days, and along with Toni Collette and David Thewlis who play his parents, they make for hellish dinner mates. There’s a sinister vibe permeating everything about this straightforward plot so if you think you know how this ends, let us be the first to tell you: You don’t have a clue.
9. Bo Burnham: Inside
Year: 2021
Cast: Bo Burnham
Genre: Comedy, Music
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 86 minutes
Director: Bo Burnham
Trailer: Watch here
Bo Burnham distills our collective quarantined experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, writing, directing, starring in, composing, and editing this bleak-yet-hilarious bit of performance art that might be the most exciting, inventive thing we’ve seen yet. Is it a movie, a stand-up routine, or a comedy special? We really don’t know, but it’s damn funny so we’re putting it on this list. The self-deprecating humor and catchy tunes are here of course, but Burnham goes darker, crafting complete bangers about everything from the white savior complex to cancel culture, toxic masculinity, depression, and global economic inequality.
8. Triple Frontier
Year: 2019
Cast: Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Pedro Pascal, Charlie Hunnam
Genre: Action, Crime
Rating: R
Runtime: 125 minutes
Director: J.C. Chandor
Trailer: Watch here
This Netflix original heist thriller stars a whos-who of Hollywood hunks. Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, and Pedro Pascal play a group of former special ops bros who reunite to take down an infamous cartel kingpin and steal his profits in the process. Isaac and Affleck look to be the leaders of the team, two men fed up with risking their necks for a country that doesn’t look after them once they’re back on home soil, and Isaac’s A Most Violent Year director J.C. Chandor is at the helm, which means a couple of plot twists and some high stakes action are in store.
7. Society of the Snow
Year: 2023
Cast: Enzo Vogrincic, Agustín Pardella, Esteban Bigliardi
Genre: Drama, Biography
Rating: R
Runtime: 144 minutes
Director: J.A. Bayona
Trailer: Watch here
This Oscar-nominated survival drama tells the true story of a Uruguayan rugby football team on their way to a match in Chile before their flight crash-landed in the Andes mountains. The group, cut off from civilization with no hope of rescue, fights to survive the arctic conditions of the winter months — a seemingly impossible tasks that pushes each player to the limits of their own humanity.
6. Da 5 Bloods
Year: 2020
Cast: Delroy Lindo, Chadwick Boseman, Jonathan Majors
Genre: War, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 154 minutes
Director: Spike Lee
Trailer: Watch here
Any Spike Lee joint is worth a watch, but this genre-bending thriller about a group of black Vietnam War vets returning to the battlefield decades later feels especially timely. That’s because Lee manages to shed light on a little-known part of our shared history: the way our country treated Black soldiers returning from the war, but he also raises the stakes with a subplot that includes a buried treasure hunt and a heartwrenching mission to retrieve the remains of a fallen comrade. The cast, which includes Black Panther’s Chadwick Boseman in one of his final roles, is brilliant, the story is gripping, and the direction is top notch.
5. Extraction 2
Year: 2023
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Adam Bessa, Golshifteh Farahani
Genre: Action, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 122 minutes
Director: Sam Hargrave
Trailer: Watch here
Chris Hemsworth returns as retired mercenary Tyler Rake in this sequel that ramps up the action to unbelievable — and frankly, dangerous — new levels. After barely surviving his last mission, Rake is tasked with extracting the sister of his ex-wife, along with her two children, from a high-security prison. Things go awry, naturally, leading to violent mob showdowns and explosions and helicopters landing on top of high-speed trains. It’s nerve-frying stuff and it all proves that Hemsworth really is the best action hero of his generation.
4. Roma
Year: 2018
Cast: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Diego Cortina Autrey
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 135 minutes
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Trailer: Watch here
Academy Award-winning writer/director Alfonso Cuaron delivers what may be his most personal film to date. The stunningly-shot black-and-white film is an ode to Cuaron’s childhood and a love letter to the women who raised him. Following the journey of a domestic worker in 1970s Mexico City named Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), the movie interweaves tales of personal tragedy and triumph amidst a backdrop of political upheaval and unrest.
3. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Year: 2022
Cast: Daniel Craig, Kathryn Hahn, Janelle Monae, Dave Bautista, Edward Norton
Genre: Comedy, Mystery, Crime
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 140 minutes
Director: Rian Johnson
Trailer: Watch here
Rian Johnson delivers a deliriously fun follow-up to his breakout 2019 murder mystery with Daniel Craig returning to play famed detective Benoit Blanc. This time around, Blanc, equipped with a colorful new wardrobe and his same slow, Southern drawl, heads to Greece to investigate a murder amongst a group of friends reuniting for an island holiday. Most of the culprits are out-of-touch elites — to the nth degree — with stars like Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Kathryn Hahn, and Edward Norton playing supermodels, Twitch streamers, politicians, and tech moguls who are as ridiculous as they are corrupt.
2. The Irishman
Year: 2019
Cast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci
Genre: Biography, Crime
Rating: R
Runtime: 209 minutes
Director: Martin Scorsese
Trailer: Watch here
Martin Scorsese delivers another cinematic triumph, this time for Netflix and with the help of some familiar faces. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino team up (again) for this crime drama mostly based on a true story. De Niro plays Frank Sheeran a World War II vet who finds work as a hitman for the mob. Pacino plays notorious Teamster Jimmy Hoffa, a man who frequently found himself on the wrong side of the law and the criminals he worked with. The film charts the pair’s partnership over the years while injecting some historical milestones for context. It’s heavy and impressively cast and everything you’d expect a Scorsese passion project to be, with some interesting de-aging CGI that does its best to show the scope of Scorsese’s storytelling.
1. All Quiet on the Western Front
Year: 2022
Cast: Daniel Brühl, Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch
Genre: War, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 148 minutes
Director: Edward Berger
Trailer: Watch here
Sometimes the best argument against war is to show it fully, in all its brutality and heartbreak, and inevitable devastation. That’s what this film does well, following the story of a young, idealistic German boy who enlists to serve his country during World War I — and its nine Oscar nominations are proof of that. Instead of finding glory and honor on the battlefield, he and his friends witness unimaginable horrors while struggling to survive in a wasteland created by man’s greed and insatiable appetite for violence.
