3 exciting Netflix thrillers to watch this week (June 22-28)

What’s new on Netflix? Last weekend, Voicemails for Isabelle, a new rom-com with Zoey Deutch and Nick Robinson, went to No. 1. The same might happen this upcoming weekend with Little Brother, a buddy comedy starring John Cena and Eric André.

For those searching for thrillers on Netflix in the U.S., look no further than this article. Our top selection features a wild sci-fi thriller with a two-time Academy Award-winning actress. Our second film debuted earlier this year, and it stars two best friends turned A-list actors. Finally, the seventh adventure movie in a landmark franchise cracks the top three.

3

Jurassic World Rebirth

Returning to the world where humans don’t belong

I have to say, humanity is very stubborn in the Jurassic Park franchise. After three Jurassic Parks and four Jurassic Worlds, people seem not to understand that humans should not play God and create dinosaurs. Someone comes along and thinks they can control the dinosaurs and profit from them. The answer is always a resounding no. However, we wouldn’t get any entertainment if humanity backed down, so keep at it, mankind!

After a three-year break, Universal brought back its dinosaur adventure with the new movie, Jurassic World Rebirth. Scarlett Johansson stars as Zora Bennett, a highly trained military operative recruited by pharmaceutical representative Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) to lead a team to the former island research facility for the original Jurassic Park. Along with Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) and Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), Zora’s mission is to extract DNA samples from three dinosaurs. These samples can revolutionize cardiovascular disease treatment. Unsurprisingly, things go awry, especially when Zora and her team must save a family in peril.

If you like Jurassic Park movies, then you’re going to like the thrills and action sequences in Jurassic World Rebirth. Book fans will be happy to know that the raft sequence made the final cut. The movie has some story issues — some of the beats feel like Jurassic Park karaoke. However, director Gareth Edwards understands the visuals, and Rebirth is the best-looking film since The Lost World.

2

The Rip

Matt and Ben reunite for an action thriller

If you have a movie with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, I’m going to watch it. That’s a rule I’ve made for myself. Boston’s favorite sons are a dynamic duo who have each carved out paths to the top of Hollywood. To some, they’ll always be the guys who wrote and starred in Good Will Hunting. Surprisingly, Damon and Affleck have not starred in many movies since 1997, so when it happens, we have to embrace it.

Earlier this year, the Oscar winners starred in The Rip, Joe Carnahan’s action thriller that plays more like a psychological whodunnit. In the Miami-Dade Police Department, a beloved captain is murdered, and many think it came at the hands of corrupt cops. Dane Dumars (Matt Damon) and his team, which includes J.D. Byrne (Affleck), investigate a tip about a house fostering illicit money. During the raid, the group discover more money than expected, and nefarious forces inside the department might move in on the stash.

The Rip channels the spirit of a B-grade movie and elevates the gritty material with an A-list cast and big budget. It’s exactly the type of movie that audiences love — an action and crime movie with recognizable stars where you can’t tell the good guys from the bad ones. I commend Damon and Affleck for making a film like this, one that generally does not attract this type of star power. It’s only June, but The Rip is one of the best streaming original movies of 2026.

1

Bugonia

Emma Stone’s wildest role to date

I’ll be honest, I went into Bugonia knowing as little as possible. I didn’t even know it was an adaptation of a South Korean movie, Save the Green Planet! From only watching the trailer, it played like an alien conspiracy movie featuring Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone, who has a shaved head. Yorgos Lanthimos directed Bugonia, so I knew there would be some weird and unconventional elements.

Then, I saw Bugonia, and my word, this movie was wild. Teddy Gatz (Plemons) is a conspiracy theorist who believes Michelle Fuller, the CEO of a pharmaceutical company, is an alien who wants to destroy Earth. Teddy blames Michelle’s company for leaving his mother comatose. With the help of his cousin, Teddy kidnaps Michelle and holds her hostage, demanding that she take the boys to meet her alien emperor.

I think I undersold the wildness of Bugonia. After reading that description, you probably think it’s a wacky movie. It definitely is wacky, but in an unbelievable way. Stone is a fearless actress — not many of her peers would take on this role that required her to shave her head and embrace an alien-conspiracy storyline. Plemons is just as good as Stone, playing a complex character who toes the line between villain and victim. If you still haven’t seen it, follow my advice and go in as little as possible. You’ll be rewarded with something you don’t expect.

Looking for more movies? You’ve come to the right spot

HTG’s streaming team is always providing recommendations for the latest movies to watch. Avatar: Fire and Ash, Undertone, and Little Brother are some of the new movies on streaming this week. If you want to travel back in time to experience some classic movies, then give L.A. Confidential and To Live and Die in L.A. a shot.

Subscription with ads: Yes, $8/month
Simultaneous streams: Two or four

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Stephan Dorsey

Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.

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Recent Reviews

You’re waiting for a Blu-ray release that may never come—2026 is the format’s official downfall

I am a recent convert to physical media — yet even as someone getting back into buying discs in 2026, I haven’t been buying Blu-rays. Like many Americans, I still pick up DVDs instead. These aren’t great times for the Blu-ray format, and don’t expect a turnaround in 2026.

Fewer new releases make their way to Blu-ray

More media is now released exclusively for streaming

Blu-ray has been around for two decades, but it never managed to fully replace, or even overtake, the DVD format it was designed to supersede. We still can’t take for granted that our favorite movies, let alone TV shows, will eventually see a Blu-ray release.

The movies most likely to come to Blu-ray are the ones that hit theaters, but a growing amount of cinema is designed exclusively with streaming platforms in mind. I recently rewatched Mississippi Masala, which led me to check in on what work Sarita Choudhury has done over the decades since. A film called Evil Eye released in 2020 caught my eye. Unfortunately, it’s only available via Prime Video. There’s no Blu-ray or even a DVD. In contrast, it’s easy to watch Michael B. Jordan in Sinners on Blu-ray, since that movie came to theaters last year.

You could say that it makes sense that a movie with a 4.8/10 rating on IMDb doesn’t see a physical release, but in the heyday of physical video, store shelves were stacked not only with just the big-budget bangers but plenty of straight-to-DVD movies as well. Now those films exist to pad out streaming catalogs instead.

Fewer big box stores stock their shelves with physical discs

Blu-ray discs have disappeared from some stores entirely

The format’s demise is striking. I frequent my local Best Buy quite often and don’t see any movies on display. That’s because the retailer stopped selling movies in stores several years ago. Walmart still sells them, but the selection is a fraction of what you could find ten or twenty years ago. The audience has been reduced down to the shrinking number of people whose internet at home can’t handle streaming and those who might think of themselves as collectors.

If you venture onto Reddit and visit r/Blu-ray, you will find more threads about thrift store hauls and older collections than excitement over the latest new release. Don’t get me wrong — I, too, am very excited about seeing what gems I can snag for only a couple bucks, but this shows the challenge retailers face. Increasingly, only enthusiasts are prepared to drop over $20 on a disc.

I’m not buying discs to stick them in a player

Phone on a stand playing a Netflix video

The simple truth is that most people don’t want to buy physical media. Discs don’t fit in phones, and the drives are no longer available in most laptops. Even desktop PCs lack a place to put a disk. I recently built a PC for the first time in part to digitize my media library, and I rely on an external DVD drive connected via USB. Yes, DVD, not Blu-ray. A smaller file size combined with upscaling is easier on my hard drive.

Retro nostalgia hasn’t helped Blu-ray in the same way it has aided vinyl. This is in part because most people simply don’t care all that much about video quality. Most are streaming video on Netflix and YouTube at middling settings on small screens, and many of us are acclimated to mid-range phone speakers, compared to which even the subpar built-in speakers on modern TVs sound like a huge step-up. It’s hard to convince large numbers of people to purchase an expensive version of a movie in a format that requires thousands of dollars of home media equipment to truly appreciate.

4K Ultra HD is in an even worse position

It’s been a decade, yet few people own these discs

The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray format is an enhancement, rather than a replacement, of the Blu-ray discs that first appeared in 2006. Debuting in 2016, the 4K Ultra HD format supports the max resolution of a 4K TV.

4K TVs were still somewhat of a novelty ten years ago, but they’re cheap and commonplace today. Still, people aren’t demanding 4K-quality Blu-ray movies as a result. These discs are still less common than 1080p ones, which are themselves still outnumbered by DVDs.

This isn’t merely a matter of consumers preferring the cheaper option. Often, 4K simply isn’t a choice, or it’s one that arrives significantly later, like the Switch port of a PC title. Some recent films, like Exit 8, are slated to see a physical release over the summer yet will still be in 1080p when they do. Adoption of the newest format has been that slow.

The industry isn’t helping itself, either. 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs come with DRM and aren’t easy to play on a modern PC, further limiting potential growth. They do not want anyone pirating these super high-quality versions. When you consider that some of these 4K Blu-rays have an AI upscaling problem, you’re paying more for what may not even be the best version.

Blu-ray is seeing fewer releases, is available in fewer places, and is less accessible in the ways many of us want to watch TV shows and movies in 2026. With our portable devices getting better and internet speeds getting faster, it’s hard to see physical video staging a turnaround, even if we’re still a long way off from it going away entirely.

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Stephan Dorsey

Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.