4 dark Paramount+ thrillers to watch this week (October 12-18)
Derek Malcolm has been covering the worlds of tech and entertainment for more than two decades.
Before coming to How-To Geek in 2025, Derek was a contributing editor and writer for the A/V and Home Theater section at Digital Trends, where he wrangled and wrote everything from what to watch on Netflix to reviews, explainers, and guides on the latest Bluetooth speakers, turntables, projectors, and other A/V gear.
Based in Toronto, Derek graduated from Humber College's Journalism program in 1999, after which he started covering the worlds of music, movies, TV, and celebrity for publications such as TV Guide, Hello! magazine, and Inside Entertainment. He then got the bug for covering tech and gadgets in 2006, when he served as editor-in-chief of Canadian tech magazine Connected for more than a decade.
An avid skier, when all the snow's gone Derek can be found at home spinning vinyl with his daughter or cheering on his favorite F1 team, McLaren.
Things are starting to get spookier—the weather, the falling of the leaves, and creepy misty evenings—so the desire to hunker down in your living room with a good, nail-biting thriller is getting stronger. Luckily, Paramount+ has no shortage in that department, and this week there are some intense options for your movie nights.
First up, every time I opened Paramount+ this month, Ryan Phillippe was staring back at me from the top of the chart with two One Mile chapters. But as we get closer to Halloween, a clear new winner has emerged from his coffin to top the charts, and that's my top pick this week. Additionally, I've also pulled two Rotten Tomatoes darlings: one a cautionary tale about three desperate men who find a bag of cash in the wilderness (never good), and a life insurance scam involving a hitman.
4 One Mile
A college tour from hell, told in two parts
This two-part action-thriller, directed by the same guy who helmed Netflix's popular Harlan Coben thriller I Will Find You, has been perched at the top of the Paramount+ charts (according to FlixPatrol) for weeks, and I've finally gotten around to seeing it. If you like kick-ass movies like Liam Neeson's Taken or Bob Odenkirk's more recent franchise of Nobody movies, where a man with a repressed deadly skill set lets it loose to save his family, then One Mile: Chapter One and Chapter Two are for you.
When former Special Forces soldier Danny Beckett (Ryan Phillippe) takes time to reconnect with his teen daughter, Alex (Amélie Hoeferle), he takes her on a road trip to tour colleges, but they pass through an area where they're forced to camp for the night. What starts as a nice time reconnecting in nature turns deadly when a reclusive off-grid community led by Stanley Dixon (C. Thomas Howell) targets them and takes Alex—bad idea. Danny's training kicks in, and he goes all Jason Bourne on them. Released the same day, Chapter Two sees the group snatch Alex again to take their revenge on Danny.
One Mile: Chapter One
- Release Date
- February 20, 2026
- Runtime
- 86 minutes
- Director
- Adam Davidson
- Cast
- Ryan Phillippe, Amélie Hoeferle, C. Thomas Howell, Sara Canning, Anthony Timpano, Sage Linder, Andre Tricoteux, Kory Grim, Hugo Raymundo, Richard Harmon, Jimmy Clarke, Rubi Tupper
- Writers
- John Hlavin
- Producers
- Aaron Kaplan, Adam Davidson, Brian Morewitz, Chad Oakes, Jaiden Kaplan, Michael Frislev, Michael Lohmann
- Executive Producer(s)
- John Hlavin, Kevin Marco, Ryan Phillippe
3 Killer Joe
Matthew McConaughey is not alright, alright, alright
If you're familiar with the time in Matthew McConaughey's career known as the "McConaissance," in which the actor began breaking from the rom-coms and charming leading-man roles he'd been typecast in, then you also know that 2011's twisted thriller Killer Joe is one of the early films, along with The Lincoln Lawyer, in that period that finally broke him free.
The darkest of that period, with an NC-17 rating, Killer Joe follows Dallas drug dealer Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch), whose piece-of-work mother steals his cocaine stash, and the gangsters he works for want their money or his life. The solution? Chris and his stepdad, Ansel (Thomas Haden Church), hire hitman Joe Cooper (McConaughey) to kill her so they can collect the $50,000 insurance money. When Chris can't produce Joe's upfront fee, Joe demands Chris's sister, Dottie (Juno Temple), as a "retainer." Of course, nothing goes smoothly, as Ansel's scheming second wife, Sharla (Gina Gershon), has other plans, and the whole thing unravels.
Killer Joe
- Release Date
- September 10, 2011
- Runtime
- 102 Minutes
- Director
- William Friedkin
- Cast
- Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Thomas Haden Church, Gina Gershon
- Writers
- Tracy Letts
- Main Genre
- Crime
- Budget
- 10000000.0
- Studio(s)
- ANA Media, Picture Perfect (I), Worldview Entertainment, Voltage Pictures
- IMDb ID
- tt1726669
- TMDB User Rating
- 6 .527
2 A Simple Plan
Finding a bag of cash never ends well for anyone
If movies like No Country for Old Men, True Romance, and A Simple Plan have taught me anything over the decades, it's that stumbling upon bags of cash, drugs, or other crime-related commodities rarely bodes well for those who find them. Before Spider-Man, director Sam Raimi helmed this 1998 crime thriller that earned Billy Bob Thornton a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod and that still holds a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The premise isn't so simple, though. When small-town Minnesota accountant Hank Mitchell (Bill Paxton), his simple-minded brother, Jacob (Thornton), and Jacob's pal Lou (Brent Briscoe) come across the wreck of an airplane buried in snow in the woods, they find a dead pilot and more than $4 million in cash inside. The plan was to stash it until the spring thaw, and if no one came asking for it, it was finders keepers. But greed, suspicion, deceit, and some quiet scheming from Hank's pregnant wife, Sarah (Bridget Fonda), creep into the equation, and the plan curdles into paranoia and murder.
A Simple Plan
- Release Date
- December 11, 1998
- Runtime
- 121 Minutes
- Director
- Sam Raimi
- Cast
- Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Bridget Fonda, Brent Briscoe, Jack Walsh, Chelcie Ross, Becky Ann Baker, Gary Cole
- Writers
- Scott B. Smith
- Main Genre
- Thriller
1 Dracula
Luc Besson's bold stab at Bram Stoker's classic
My top pick this week is also the No. 1 movie on the Paramount+ charts right now, just in time for spooky season. Luc Besson, the enigmatic writer-director behind such hits and cult favorites as La Femme Nikita and The Fifth Element, has taken his own shot at Bram Stoker's horror classic, loosely basing his 2025 film, Dracula, on it and casting his DogMan star Caleb Landry Jones as the legendary vampire.
Besson borrows the romance that Francis Ford Coppola added onto the story in 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula—it's still a supernatural love story about Prince Vlad (Jones), who turns his back on God when his wife, Elisabeta (Zoë Bleu), is killed; he spends hundreds of years searching for her reincarnation, who comes in the form of Mina (also played by Bleu). But Besson's version swaps Victorian London for late 19th-century Paris, uses perfume instead of hypnosis to seduce his victims, and offers a sense of whimsy that only Besson can conjure. Dracula also features the excellent Christoph Waltz as the vampire-hunting "Priest."
Dracula
- Release Date
- February 6, 2026
- Runtime
- 129 minutes
- Director
- Luc Besson
- Cast
- Caleb Landry Jones, Christoph Waltz, Zoë Bleu Sidel, Matilda De Angelis, Ewens Abid, David Shields, Guillaume de Tonquédec, Bertrand-Xavier Corbi, Raphael Luce, Liviu Bora, Haymon Maria Buttinger, Jassem Mougari, Ivan Franěk, Egor Morozov, Salomon Passariello, Joonas Makkonen, Nikita Makkojev, Jaakko Hutchings, Janne Mattila, Nicolas de Lavergne, Noham Hedjem
- Writers
- Luc Besson, Bram Stoker
- Producers
- Virginie Besson-Silla, Luc Besson
- Main Genre
- Horror
- Executive Producer(s)
- Dorothy Canton, Mark Canton, Philippe Corrot, Ryan Winterstern
October is getting scarier and more thrilling by the day
Whichever of these thrillers claims your movie night, expect white knuckles and terrible decisions (theirs, not yours) as we continue running slowly towards all Hallow's Eve. And if you feel like taking a break for some comedy or just a non-nail-biting flick, How-To Geek’s streaming lists can point you in the right direction.
- Subscription with ads
- Yes, $8/month
- Simultaneous streams
- 3
- Live TV
- Select live sports (NFL on CBS & UEFA Champions League)
- Price
- Starting at $8/month or $60/year
