Dave Bautista's Underrated 2025 Thriller Streaming On Netflix Is Perfect For Action Fans

Dave Bautista has a fascinating filmography, including an action thriller currently streaming on Netflix that you should check out.

Dave Bautista's Underrated 2025 Thriller Streaming On Netflix Is Perfect For Action Fans

By Joe Roberts

March 1, 2026 1:45 pm EST

[Dave Bautista's Ray Seale is seen in closeup as he sits in a diner in Trap House]

Aura Entertainment

It's not all that easy to find good action flicks amid the movie miasma of the streaming sphere. But if you are in the mood for a solid action thriller, Dave Bautista's "Trap House" is a surprisingly decent, if ridiculous, choice. Lucky for you, it's available on Netflix.

Over the last decade or so, Bautista has demonstrated some impressive acting chops, establishing himself as arguably the best wrestler-turned-actor yet to make that increasingly common transition. Having worked with directors such as Denis Villeneuve, Sam Mendes, and Rian Johnson, Bautista has built an impressive filmography that, given his background and general physicality, could have easily been solely populated by direct-to-streaming action flicks. Instead, he's consciously branched out from the easy B-movie action roles. But that doesn't mean he's above such roles. Far from it. Bautista long ago proved his action bonafides and every now and then he likes to remind us of them, such as with 2025's "Trap House.

In recent years, there seems to have been an uptick in dodgy drug-raid-gone-wrong entertainment, from "Dope Thief," which was one of the best Apple TV shows of 2025, to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's grim 2026 Netflix reunion, "The Rip." "Trap House" isn't quite as dour as either of those two examples. In fact, it's all a bit silly but in a highly entertaining way. The action thriller is directed by Michael Dowse, who previously oversaw Bautista's 2019 action comedy "Stuber," a film that was only watchable thanks to Bautista and Kumail Nanjiani's screwball dynamic. With "Trap House," Dowse dropped the comedy but retained the action. That, and Bautista, who this time plays an undercover DEA agent whose latest case sees him hunting down his own teenage son.

Trap House pits Dave Bautista against his teenage son

[Dave Bautista's Ray Seale stands opposite Jack Champion's Cody Seale in Trap House]

Aura Entertainment

When it was first announced, "Trap House" sounded like an absolute blast. And it is, if you can get past the absurdity of the premise. The film stars Dave Bautista as undercover DEA agent Ray Seale, who loses one of his colleagues during a drug raid. This leaves that colleague's son orphaned, which prompts Ray's own son, Cody (Jack Champion), to do what any teenager would: convince his classmates (Sophia Lillis, Whitney Peak, and Zaire Adams) to steal their DEA agent parents' equipment and intel to start raiding drug houses.

The idea is to steal cartel drug money to help raise funds for their orphaned friend. Unfortunately for the teens involved, this means they immediately become the target of both Ray and his partner Andre (Bobby Cannavale), who are initially perplexed as to who might have the guts or the lack of basic nous to steal from drug gangs. This results in a cat-and-mouse game between the two DEA agents and the kids in what sounds like the basis of yet another action comedy, but is actually the basis for a film that has its tongue firmly out of its cheek.

"Trap House" was released in the United States in November 2025, but it didn't make any notable impact. According to Box Office Mojo, only Russia and the United Arab Emirates contributed to the film's box office gross. In other words, there's no way you saw this movie when it first came out, which is why now is the ideal time to see how its play-it-straight approach to that premise works for you by streaming "Trap House" on Netflix.

Trap House is better than its absurd premise suggests

[Dave Bautista's Ray Seale stands outside illuminated by police lights in Trap House]

Aura Entertainment

As Dave Bautista told GQ, before he departed from wrestling, he got some advice from a legend. "Before I left WWE," he recalled, "Stone Cold Steve Austin pulled me aside and said, 'You're going to get offers for horrible scripts. The money will be tempting. Don't get caught in that trap.'" For the most part, he's tried to follow that advice, though his filmography is peppered with B-movie actioners, including a couple of films in the strange DTV franchise that grew out of Sylvester Stallone's prison break movie "Escape Plan." Now "Trap House" can be added to that list. But whereas his team-ups with Sly have been met with absolutely dismal reviews, this latest effort is one of the greatest action movies ever made in comparison.

The film currently enjoys a 52% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes (as opposed to the 7% for 2018's "Escape Plan 2: Hades"). Glenn Kenny of RogerEbert.com liked "Trap House" quite a bit, even as he pondered the way in which Bautista's character seemingly had no qualms about socializing with his other undercover agents and letting their kids do the same. "The narrative moves along at a spanking pace," wrote Kenny, "and the action is staged and shot at a pretty high level."

Frank Scheck at The Hollywood Reporter was less forgiving, marveling at how much of the film's absurd plot isn't played for laughs, "except of the unintentional variety." Still, even Scheck had to hand it to the star, writing, "It's a credit to Bautista's big-lug charisma that the film goes down as easily as it does," though I'm not sure that "big-lug charisma" is actually a compliment. Either way, there's clearly something to Bautista's actioner, which is available to stream on Netflix now.

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