Before the summer movie season kicks into full gear, you may wish grab some recent releases that you missed in theaters.

For folks who like thrillers, here are three solid picks now available for streaming:

Dead of Winter – Having played theatrically in our area for exactly one week, this good-not-great drama is saved by a fiery finale and a solid lead performance from Emma Thompson.

Here, that venerable British actress plays against type as a Midwestern widow planning to deposit her late husband’s ashes in a remote and icy Minnesota lake. That’s where they had their first date — before a long and happy (but childless) marriage.

This last detail may explain why the woman gets right to work when she learns that an abducted girl is being held captive in a nearby cabin.

The reason behind the kidnapping could scarcely be more preposterous, and poor Judy Greer — a very fine actress — is barely able to keep things on the rails as one of the captors. But the climax is blood-curdling and suspenseful, with a nifty twist that reverses another apparent absurdity.

And Thompson is always fun to watch.

Cold Storage – Screenwriter David Koepp has a genuinely awesome resume: the first Mission: Impossible, the first Jurassic Park and the original Spider-Man — yes, the one that kicked off Marvel’s boffo box-office bonanza. But Koepp has penned only one novel — 2019’s Cold Storage, a dandy thriller that somehow combines an apocalyptic virus with nail-biting action and laugh-out-loud comedy.

I was thrilled to learn of a planned Liam Neeson version; but despite this promising pedigree, the February 2026 release got almost no publicity — and it sank without a trace.

Which is a danged shame.

With a terrific supporting cast including Leslie Manville, Joe Keery (Stranger Things) and the legendary Vanessa Redgrave, Cold Storage is riotously entertaining.

But also really gross.

The messy and explosive disease (actually a fungus from outer space) commandeers the central nervous system — and thereby governs acts and thoughts. So any stricken creature will deliberately work to infect others; and if that creature happens to be a white-tailed deer, then it might — oh, I don’t know … wander into an underground storage facility … and ring for the elevator.

Neeson is a retired special agent who heads to said facility when the fungus starts leaking; and he’s the man for the job — not only because he has a history on this organism, but also because he knows the whereabouts of a small but handy nuclear bomb.

Cold Storage is clever enough to play all this for laughs — but it’s also icky and scary; as one critic said, it’s a B-movie with a B soul.

Well — call it B-positive.

Send Help – Speaking of Spider-Man: Director Sam Raimi, who helmed that MCU entry, gave us this early 2026 thriller that proved to be one of the year’s most successful films — raking in nearly two and half times its modest $40 million budget.

Rachel McAdams has a field day as a nebbish-y office-worker who is overlooked for a promotion and dissed by her male-jerk boss — then mocked on an overseas business flight when co-workers find her audition reel for a Survivor-style TV show.

But Linda gets the last laugh after the plane crashes, leaving her and the injured CEO alone on a desert island.

Fast, funny, smart and scary, this film also boasts a bold, twisty plot — way too cool to spoil with details. Suffice it to say that McAdams proves herself one of our most adept and flexible stars as Linda goes for the jugular — and maybe for something else as well.

Despite his success with mainstream work, Raimi is perhaps best-loved for the Evil Dead films; so Send Help is sufficiently bloody for modern horror fans. And sufficiently slick for everybody else.

Now about the rest of 2026: Koepp scripted yet again for Spielberg — with the resulting Disclosure Day due in June. And Thompson has a small role in May’s Sheep Detectives, in which the titular flock actually works to solve their shepherd’s murder.

With that, plus Send Help and Nolan’s Odyssey — on top of the runaway success of Project Hail Mary — 2026 is looking more and more like a landmark year for off-franchise films.

Hear, hear.