10 Thrillers Worth Watching If ‘The Runner’ On Amazon Prime Video Has Your Interest
Gal Gadot’s new Amazon Prime Video film has audiences bracing for a breathless single day of danger. The Runner is scheduled to be released on Amazon Prime Video on September 2, 2026, following a shoot that began in London in April 2025. Directed by Kevin Macdonald from a script by Mark Gibson, the film follows a successful London based attorney who is thrust into a dangerous chase across the city after her son is abducted, forced to obey a series of cryptic commands from a mysterious Caller as she races against time to save him.
That premise, a lone protagonist pushed through a city while a stranger dictates every move by phone, has powered some of the genre’s most memorable thrillers. Below are ten films built around the same kind of relentless, real time tension that fans of this race against time thriller are likely to enjoy.
‘Cellular’
Cellular is a 2004 action thriller directed by David R. Ellis, starring Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, Jason Statham, and William H. Macy. The film opens with Jessica Martin, a high school biology teacher, being kidnapped from her home after dropping her son off at the bus, and forced into an attic where the gang’s leader smashes the only available phone to keep her from calling for help. Jessica manages to rig the broken phone into a single working connection and reaches a college student on the other end, who has to race across the city to save her family before the line goes dead.
The film was based on a story by Larry Cohen, the same writer behind Phone Booth, and follows Ryan as he holds up phone stores and steals cars to stay connected to Jessica while the kidnappers move on her husband and son. It currently holds a mixed but affectionate reputation among viewers who describe it as fast paced and gimmicky but entertaining.
‘Phone Booth’
Phone Booth is a 2002 psychological thriller directed by Joel Schumacher, starring Colin Farrell as a publicist who answers a ringing phone booth and is told by a sniper voiced by Kiefer Sutherland that he will be killed if he hangs up. The entire ordeal unfolds in real time, trapping Stu Shepard on a single New York City block while police, led by a captain played by Forest Whitaker, surround him believing he is the dangerous one.
The film uses only four main locations for its entire 81 minute runtime, relying on dialogue and a ticking psychological clock rather than action set pieces to build dread. Critics have praised how the film builds nearly 90 minutes of suspense from a single trapped man and a controlled, menacing voice on the other end of the line.
‘Non-Stop’
Non-Stop stars Liam Neeson as Bill Marks, a federal air marshal and former NYPD officer, alongside Julianne Moore, Michelle Dockery, and Lupita Nyong’o. During a transatlantic flight from New York to London, Marks receives a series of cryptic text messages demanding that he transfer 150 million dollars into an offshore account, with a passenger set to die every 20 minutes until he complies.
Not knowing who to trust on the flight, Marks finds himself in a dangerous cat and mouse game as the clock ticks and he becomes the prime suspect in the very plot he is trying to stop. It shares The Runner’s structure of a protagonist forced to comply with an unseen adversary’s demands under a strict deadline, just relocated to 40,000 feet in the air.
‘The Call’
The Call is a 2013 thriller directed by Brad Anderson starring Halle Berry as Jordan Turner, a veteran 911 operator, and Abigail Breslin as Casey Welson, a teenager kidnapped by a serial killer. Still shaken by an earlier botched call that cost a different girl her life, Jordan takes charge when Casey manages to call 911 from inside the trunk of her abductor’s car, using her experience and quick thinking to try to keep the teenager alive.
The bulk of the film unfolds as an extended chase, with Jordan guiding Casey through a series of increasingly tense instructions to escape the vehicle and evade her captor. Like The Runner, the drama hinges entirely on a voice on the phone trying to steer a victim to safety before time runs out.
‘Taken’
Taken stars Liam Neeson as Bryan Mills, a retired CIA officer who sets out to track down his teenage daughter Kim after she and her friend are kidnapped by Albanian human traffickers while vacationing in Paris. With only 96 hours before his daughter disappears for good, Mills uses his old field skills to work his way through the criminal network holding her.
The film was released in France in February 2008, received mixed reviews, and went on to gross 226 million dollars against a 25 million dollar budget. Where The Runner follows a mother obeying a stranger’s demands, Taken flips the formula into a father who refuses to follow anyone’s rules, but both share the same desperate parental clock.
‘Kate’
Kate stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead as an elite assassin who blows an assignment targeting a member of the yakuza in Tokyo and discovers she has been poisoned, leaving her less than 24 hours to find out who did it and exact revenge. As her body deteriorates, Kate ends up relying on the teenage daughter of one of her past victims for help navigating the city while she hunts down the people responsible.
Directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, the film leans into a hard countdown structure, with its main character spending her final hours in furious motion across Tokyo rather than accepting her fate quietly. The literal ticking clock inside Kate’s own body gives it an urgency that echoes the physical toll of The Runner’s constant sprinting.
‘The Guilty’
The Guilty is a 2021 remake directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by Nic Pizzolatto, starring Jake Gyllenhaal as Joe Baylor, a demoted LAPD officer working the night shift at a 911 call center while awaiting a hearing. Baylor answers a call from a woman named Emily who says she has been abducted, and is forced to hang up before she can give many details, leaving him to work the case almost entirely through the phone.
The entire film plays out in something close to real time, following Baylor as he scrambles to identify Emily’s vehicle and location while wildfires strain the region’s emergency resources. Its confined, single location setup makes it one of the tensest phone based thrillers on this list, even without The Runner’s city wide chase.
‘Run All Night’
Run All Night follows an ex Irish mob hitman who goes on the run with his estranged adult son after being forced to kill the son of a mobster boss, starring Liam Neeson, Joel Kinnaman, and Ed Harris. Known as the Gravedigger, Jimmy Conlon has just one night to decide where his loyalties lie, with his estranged son whose life is in danger or with the mob boss who was once his closest friend.
Released in March 2015, the film grossed 71.6 million dollars worldwide and marked the third collaboration between Neeson and director Jaume Collet Serra. The single night, no time to rest structure gives it the same compressed urgency that defines The Runner’s dash across London.
‘Missing’
Missing is a 2023 screenlife thriller directed by Will Merrick and Nick Johnson, following a teenager named June Allen who tries to find her missing mother after she disappears while on vacation in Colombia with her new boyfriend. Stuck thousands of miles away in Los Angeles, June creatively uses every piece of technology available to her to track her mother down before it is too late.
A standalone entry in the same universe as 2018’s Searching, the film grossed 48.8 million dollars against a 7 million dollar budget. Instead of a phone line dictating the action, Missing swaps in browser tabs and messaging apps, but the same sense of a race being lost to the clock carries through.
‘The Commuter’
The Commuter is a 2018 thriller directed by Jaume Collet Serra starring Liam Neeson as Michael MacCauley, a man who is unwittingly recruited into a murder conspiracy after meeting a mysterious woman while on his daily train commute. After losing his job, Michael is approached by a stranger who tells him he must locate a specific passenger on the train before it reaches its final stop, or someone he loves will pay the price.
Reviewers noted that the film echoes Neeson and Collet Serra’s earlier Non-Stop, with the character receiving instructions via phone that threaten the safety of everyone around him in a tightening race against time. That same dynamic, a protagonist bound to a stranger’s orders with a hidden threat hanging over the people he loves, sits close to the emotional core of The Runner.
Between a lawyer sprinting through London and a decade of phone booths, trains, planes, and 911 lines turned into pressure cookers, this corner of the thriller genre keeps finding new ways to trap ordinary people in impossible countdowns. Which of these forced you to hold your breath the longest, and does Gal Gadot’s London sprint measure up once you’ve seen it for yourself?
