Each week on Polygon, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.
This week, the Shyamalan family dominates the list with not one, but two new movies on streaming and VOD! Trap, the latest horror thriller from M. Night Shyamalan starring Josh Hartnett, is available to purchase digitally this week, while The Watchers, the directorial debut from Ishana Night Shyamalan and starring Dakota Fanning, comes to streaming on Max. There’s lots to choose from beyond that though, including Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness on Hulu, The Fall Guy on Peacock, A Quiet Place: Day One on Paramount Plus, and more!
Here’s everything new that’s available to watch this weekend!
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix
Image: Netflix
Genre: Supernatural horror
Run time: 1h 52m
Director: Lee Daniels
Cast: Andra Day, Glenn Close, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor
From Lee Daniels, the director of Precious and co-creator and co-executive producer of Empire, The Deliverance is about a family that begins to experience strange demonic occurrences. Soon, the whole community is convinced that this family’s home is covering up a portal to hell. The movie is inspired by the real life Ammons haunting case.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu and to purchase on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Photo: Atsushi Nishijima/Searchlight Pictures
Genre: Black comedy
Run time: 2h 44m
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast: Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe
Yorgos Lanthimos’ anthology film is made up of three separate but loosely connected stories which are all vaguely about someone with the initials R.M.F. (to varying degrees). The same set of actors play different characters across all three absurdist short films. The movie premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where Jesse Plemons won the award for Best Actor.
Even within the constraints of Lanthimos’ underplayed style, a movie like this is a treat for the actors, and Plemons’ transformation is particularly extraordinary: not just his bearing, but his whole body type seems to shift from piece to piece. You could call this movie The Plemons Variations. Stone’s agonizingly brittle performance as Emily dominates the third segment, although Dafoe and Chao are hilariously convincing as smug cult leaders. Lanthimos’ sensibility is an ideal match for the warped tranquility of a modern cult, and this third segment might be the most enjoyably weird window to peek into in Kinds of Kindness.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Max
Image: Warner Bros./Everett Collection
Genre: Folkloric fantasy
Run time: 1h 42m
Director: Ishana Night Shyamalan
Cast: Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Olwen Fouéré
M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter Inshana takes after her father’s legacy with this twisty supernatural horror movie. A young artist named Mina (Dakota Fanning) finds herself lost in a dark forest in Ireland. She ends up finding three mysterious strangers who warn her about nocturnal creatures who stalk the woods and kill people at night.
An important thing to know going into The Watchers, the feature directorial debut of Ishana Night Shyamalan, is that it isn’t a horror movie — it’s folkloric fantasy. That distinction will only matter to people who watched an initial trailer and walk in expecting a focus on scares and violence, instead of on unpacking the mystery and history around the movie’s titular Watchers. Anyone who goes in with the wrong expectations will probably just find The Watchers baffling. It has its share of creepy moments, rising tension, and sudden-blast-of-music jump scares, but as a suspense story, it fizzles out surprisingly early.
Napoleon: The Director’s Cut
Where to watch: Available to stream on Apple TV Plus
Image: Apple TV Plus
Genre: Historical drama
Run time: 3h 24m
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby, Tahar Rahim
Finally — The director’s cut of Ridley Scott’s historical epic chronicling the life of Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix) is finally available to stream on Apple TV Plus. If you didn’t happen to watch it when it was initially released last November, there’s no better time than now to catch up Scott’s latest epic, especially with Gladiator 2 right around the corner!
Napoleon doesn’t moralize, and it doesn’t lionize its subject. What it does do, at the very end, is tell the audience how many French soldiers died in Napoleon’s battles, throughout his journey to the top of the world and back. Some 3 million lives were lost in the Napoleonic Wars and subsequent conflicts. In tallying that cost, Napoleon reminds us of a time where the known world was plunged into violence by one man’s passions, and explores how easily one man’s insecurities can drown us all in blood.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Paramount Plus w/ Showtime subscription
Image: Bleecker Street
Genre: Fantasy
Run time: 1h 30m
Directors: Nathan Zellner, David Zellner
Cast: Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg, Christophe Zajac-Denek
An irreverent comedy from the Zellner brothers (Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter), Sasquatch Sunset follows a group of four sasquatches as they try and make it in a Northern California forest. Along the way, they have to deal with poisonous mushrooms, mountain lions, and relentless sasquatch horniness.
Is Sasquatch Sunset a good movie? A bad one? I will say I approve of it. I wanted to vomit three or four times before the credits rolled, but in an era where even indie films can feel like four-quadrant efforts on the cheap, what a relief that something so aggressively sick and sweet exists.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Paramount Plus
Photo: Gareth Gatrell/Paramount Pictures via Everett Collection
Genre: Horror
Run time: 1h 39m
Director: Michael Sarnoski
Cast: Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, Alex Wolff
Lupita Nyong’o stars in this prequel to 2018’s A Quiet Place as Samira, a cancer patient living in New York who witnesses first-hand the arrival of the sound-hunting extraterrestrial creatures who overtake the planet. With the help of Eric (Joseph Quinn), a law student, and Henri (Djimon Hounsou), a fellow survivor, Samira must find a way to escape the city alive.
A Quiet Place: Day One isn’t so much a spinoff and prequel of John Krasinski’s 2018 horror movie as it is a riveting drama that plays in the series’ sandbox. You can spot the odd bit of new world-building here or there, about just how and why there are so many damn echolocating aliens, but these tidbits are just background noise (shh, not so loud!) to a much more interesting human story. A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place Part II are rural sci-fi horror, but Day One — from Pig director Michael Sarnoski — moves the setting to New York City and crafts its story in the vein of large-scale disaster cinema. It’s likely the best Manhattan mayhem film since Cloverfield, and it’s also a downright excellent Hollywood blockbuster, if an entirely unexpected one.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Peacock
Image: Universal Pictures
Genre: Action comedy
Run time: 2h 6m
Director: David Leitch
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson
This Ryan Gosling/Emily Blunt action-comedy-romance, a big blockbuster adventure movie built around huge feels and even bigger practical stunts, did so poorly in its opening weekend at the box office that it spawned a wave of panicked “Are theatrical blockbusters dead?!?” think pieces. (Spoiler: Maybe? If so, that’s fine.)
But don’t let the hand-wringing about its flop put you off from watching it at home. It’s a pretty charming movie, much in the spirit of The Lost City, with big stars bantering, flirting, and fighting in between ’splosions and some really fun fight scenes.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Peacock
Image: Focus Pictures
Genre: Romantic drama
Run time: 2h 1m
Director: Baltasar Kormakur
Cast: Egill Ólafsson, Koki, Palmi Kormákur
Told through a non-linear narrative, this romantic drama follows a widower in Iceland who decides to search for his long-lost love — the daughter of the restaurant owner he had worked for back in his college days. Because of his failing memory, he doesn’t have a lot of time, but he’s determined to find the woman who he lost 50 years ago.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Mubi US
Image: MUBI
Genre: Drama
Run time: 1h 46m
Director: Levan Akin
Cast: Mzia Arabuli, Lucas Kankava, Deniz Dumanlı
This film follow Lia (Mzia Arabuli), a retired teacher who travels to Istanbul in search of her for her long-lost niece Tekla. After enlisting the aid of a young man as an interpreter (Lucas Kankava), Lia finds her first and best lead in the form of Evrim (Deniz Dumanlı), a lawyer who works on behalf of a trans right NGO.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Metrograph
Image: Mubi
Genre: Documentary
Run time: 1h 30m
Directors: Hsiu-Chiung Chiang, Pun-Leung Kwan
This 2009 documentary chronicles three years in the life of Mark Lee Ping-bing, a Taiwanese cinematographer renowned for his work with directors including Wong Kar Wai and Hirokazu Kore-eda. Following his itinerant lifestyle across multiple countries including his native home of Taiwan, Chiang and Kwan’s film offers a unique peek into the life and mind of a stunningly observant artist.
Where to watch: Available to stream on AMC Plus
Image: IFC Films
Genre: Drama
Run time: 1h 55m
Directors: Kelly O’Sullivan, Alex Thompson
Cast: Keith Kupferer, Dolly de Leon, Katherine May Kupferer
This new drama from writer-director duo Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson (Saint Frances) follows the story of Dan, a construction worker who finds an unexpected respite from his difficult home life and tiring profession by joining a local theater production of Romeo and Juliet. This newfound outlet for his emotions allows him to repair his relationship with his estranged daughter (Katherine May Kupferer), who begins to not only open up but also see him in a new light.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures
Genre: Horror thriller
Run time: 1h 45m
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan
M. Night Shyamalan is back with a new horror thriller, this time starring Josh Hartnett (Oppenheimer) as Cooper, a father bringing his teenage daughter to a concert for her favorite pop star, Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan). Isn’t that nice? Unfortunately, Cooper is also a serial killer and the entire concert is actually an elaborate trap to catch him. Oh no!
Within the Shyamalan pantheon, Trap skews closer to the superficial suspense of Old or the campy pleasures of The Happening than it does the raw, tension-filled ferocity of Split. It’s got a little too much on its plate and a little too much heart to be a sheer thrill ride, and it’s worth adjusting your expectations to that. Whatever else Trap may be, it is a Shyamalan movie through and through — ambitious in its initial concept, distracted in its thematic exploration, and delighted in its own twists.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Lionsgate Films
Genre: Sci-fi comedy
Run time: 1h 41m
Director: Eli Roth
Cast: Cate Blanchett. Kevin Hart, Jack Black
Excited for Borderlands 4? You should watch Borderlands, the Eli Roth-directed adaptation based on the popular ‘looter shooter’ franchise. The plot follows Lilith (Cate Blanchett), a bounty hunter hired by one of the most powerful and wealthy men in the universe to rescue his daughter Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) who has been kidnapped. A lot of other stuff happens too, but whatever let’s be honest: You don’t come to Borderlands for the story; You come for the action and the toilet humor. Question is, does Roth’s film deliver on either?
Borderlands isn’t a smart movie, but it isn’t meant to be. Roth and co-writer Joe Crombie are much more interested in moving snappily between necessary plot points and neat environments. The film never drags, and the sets — while noticeably enclosed, for a wasteland world — make for lively, engagingly staged action. There’s a palpable style to the movie’s version of Pandora, resting firmly on the immediately identifiable visuals of the Borderlands games.
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