Jon Bernthal & Taylor Sheridan’s Western Thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead On Netflix Is The Type Of Movie Hollywood Forgot About

Jon Bernthal & Taylor Sheridan’s 100-Minute Thriller Dominating Netflix Brings Back A Lost '90s Staple Image credit: Emerson Miller / © Warner Bros. / courtesy Everett Collection Published Sep 14, 2026, 1:20 PM EDT Sky Blanton is a Movie Contributor at ScreenRant with professional experience covering movies, television, and pop culture. Her published work spans news, interviews, features, and opinion pieces, with a focus on film, franchise storytelling, and the entertainment industry. She earned her bachelor's degree in Communications with a concentration in Professional Writing and a minor in Business Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. Hollywood used to know exactly what to do with a movie like Those Who Wish Me Dead. Give it a recognizable star, a dangerous premise, a few great villains and about 100 minutes to get the job done. The 2021 thriller didn't find much of an audience in theaters, but five years later, it has become one of Netflix's most-watched movies in the U.S, marking a major change in its overall fate. That makes its resurgence more interesting than a simple streaming comeback. Those Who Wish Me Dead belongs to a kind of adult thriller that was once a Hollywood staple but has become increasingly difficult to find on the big screen. There is no superhero, extensive lore, or existing franchise here, setting Those Who Wish Me Dead notably apart from much of the modern movie world with its own story and setup. It is just Angelina Jolie, Jon Bernthal and Taylor Sheridan putting a group of characters in serious trouble. Connor is a 12-year-old boy being hunted by two professional killers, with a wildfire rapidly cutting off his escape. His best chance of survival is a smoke jumper he barely knows, and a local sheriff tries to track him down before the assassins do. Taylor Sheridan's 2021 thriller stars Angelina Jolie, Jon Bernthal, Nicholas Hoult and Aidan Gillen. Jolie plays Hannah Faber, a smoke jumper who finds Connor (Finn Little) after his father is murdered, while Bernthal's Ethan Sawyer is the local sheriff and Connor's uncle who gets pulled into the hunt. Connor is not running through crowded city streets or hiding in some random safe house. He is trying to survive in the Montana Wilderness, where miles of forest have plenty of places to disappear, but also give the killers room to track him. Then the forest catches fire. The wildfire turns the overall setting into another threat. Hannah knows immediately how to survive it, Connor doesn't, and the assassins have to keep hunting while the surroundings become more dangerous by the minute. As such, the final stretch doesn't just focus on whether Connor can escape the men chasing him, as everyone involved also has to escape the fire. That is where Sheridan's neo-Western instincts really show. The basic setup could belong to an old Western film; a lawman trying to protect a vulnerable person while dangerous outsiders close in. Sheridan swaps the horses and frontier towns for helicopters, smoke jumpers, and a Montana wildfire. Like Sicario, Wind River, and Yellowstone, the movie puts its characters in a world where isolation can be just as dangerous as the people hunting them. At roughly 100 minutes, Those Who Wish Me Dead moves with the confidence of a movie that knows exactly what it is doing. Connor needs to survive, the assassins need to find him, and the fire is spreading. Quickly. Why Hollywood Stopped Making Big-Budget Thrillers For Grown-Ups In the 1990s, a movie did not need a superhero costume or a familiar logo to be considered a major studio event (via FilmSite). The Fugitive, The Firm, Enemy of the State and The Pelican Brief could put huge stars in dangerous situations and trust the premise to sell the movie. These were movies for adults, and Hollywood made a lot of them. That business became harder to sustain as television changed. HBO, FX, AMC and other networks turned crime dramas, thrillers and Westerns into prestige television, giving filmmakers and audiences room for stories that once would have been made as movies (via The Guardian). Instead of getting two hours with a character, viewers could spend an entire season with them. Then studios found a safer bet on intellectual property. Superheroes, sequels, remakes and established franchises came with something an original thriller could not offer, with that being an audience that already knew the characters (via Medium). When a studio is deciding where to put a $100 million-plus budget, The Avengers is a much easier sell than a completely new story starring a group of recognizable actors. Those Who Wish Me Dead landed in the middle of that transition. It had Angelina Jolie, Jon Bernthal, Taylor Sheridan and a premise involving assassins and a child on the run and a massive wildfire, but there was no existing franchise attached to it. Its 2021 theatrical release also arrived when moviegoing was still being reshaped by the pandemic, and the film ultimately made only around $23 million worldwide. Five years later, Netflix removes almost all of those barriers. There is no ticket to buy and no question of whether an unfamiliar movie deserves a trip to the theater. It is sitting alongside hundreds of other titles, and the combination of Jolie, Bernthal, Sheridan and a 100-minute survival thriller movie is enough to make it an easy choice. Hollywood may still be chasing billion-dollar franchises, but Those Who Wish Me Dead is proof that the old formula has not lost its appeal. Give audiences a recognizable star, a strong premise and a thriller that knows when to end, and they will still watch. Release Date May 14, 2021 Director Taylor Sheridan Writers Michael Koryta, Charles Leavitt, Taylor Sheridan