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.
The National Geographic documentary Jaws @ 50, which shows how the first summer blockbuster was made and explores its legacy, swims onto Disney Plus this weekend. You can also just embrace the silliness of the genre Jaws established with Hot Spring Shark Attack, where an ancient shark attacks a new tourist attraction. Cobra Kai may have wrapped, but you can still see Ralph Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso alongside Jackie Chan in Karate Kid: Legends. David Cronenberg fans can find the horror legend’s latest film, The Shrouds, on The Criterion Channel, while Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme is available to rent.
Here’s everything new that’s available to watch on streaming this weekend!
Genre: Thriller
Run time: 1h 40m
Director: Philip Koch
Cast: Matthias Schweighöfer, Ruby O. Fee, Frederick Lau
A couple is about to call it quits when they discover that their apartment building has been surrounded by a seemingly impenetrable brick wall. Working with the building’s other residents, they try to figure out why their lives have turned into a twisted escape room and how they can get out alive.
Genre: Horror
Run time: 1h 36m
Director: Kulp Kaljareuk
Cast: Mark Prin, Nychaa Nuttanicha, Vayla Wanvayla
A criminal enforcer and Muay Thai fighter plans to quit his job to pursue a safer line of work. But when the hospital where his girlfriend works as a doctor becomes the center of a zombie outbreak, he’ll have to kick his way through police and the walking dead to save her.
New on The Criterion Channel
Genre: Horror
Run time: 2h
Director: David Cronenberg
Cast: Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce
The latest conspiracy film from body-horror master David Cronenberg follows an entrepreneur and widower (Vincent Cassel) who has invented a device called a shroud, which allows mourners to watch their loved ones decay in their graves. Vandalism and strange growths on his wife’s corpse lead him to investigate who might be trying to get their hands on his technology.
Genre: Documentary
Run time: 1h 28m
Director: Laurent Bouzereau
The release of Jaws in 1975 transformed the movie industry and perceptions of sharks. This documentary combines archival footage and interviews with Steven Spielberg and other top filmmakers, including James Cameron, Guillermo del Toro, and George Lucas to reveal the story of how the first summer blockbuster was made, and explore its lasting impact.
Zombies 4: Dawn of the Vampires
Genre: Musical
Run time: 1h 29m
Director: Paul Hoen
Cast: Milo Manheim, Meg Donnelly, Kylee Russell
Humans and all sorts of monsters live in peace in the town of Seabrook. But when car trouble strands alien Addison (Meg Donnelly) and zombie Zed (Milo Manheim) during their summer road trip, they wind up in the middle of a war between Daywalkers and vampires. They’ll have to try to bring the two groups together before the dance-offs get out of hand.
Genre: Thriller
Run time: 1h 44
Director: Mark Anthony Green
Cast: Ayo Edebiri, John Malkovich, Juliette Lewis
Former GQ editor Mark Anthony Green explores the cult of celebrity in this A24 film, where an enigmatic pop star (John Malkovich) invites a small group of journalists and influencers to hear his new album at his Utah compound. A young writer (Ayo Edebiri of Big Mouth and Inside Out 2) tries to figure out what’s going on with the musician’s strange followers even as everyone else falls under his sway.
Opus, though it has some gory images and sudden reversals, is not a surprising film in the least; it’s deeply, but also satisfyingly, predictable. Its similarities to Midsommar, Blink Twice, and The Menu are not necessarily a sign of debut writer-director Mark Anthony Green borrowing too heavily from specific peers. To me, they’re a sign of this social-satire subgenre of horror — the one sometimes referred to, with either inverted snobbery or just plain snobbery, as “elevated horror” — settling into its own formulaic groove.
Genre: Dark comedy
Run time: 1h 43m
Director: Dito Montiel
Cast: Jennifer Coolidge, Ed Harris, Gabrielle Union
Vincent (Ed Harris), a former criminal, is spending the holidays with his wife and family in a remote cabin, when more family than he was planning for shows up. His estranged son is on the run from gangsters (Bill Murray and Pete Davidson) and have come seeking safety, along with Vincent’s ex-wife (Jennifer Coolidge).
Genre: Thriller
Run time: 1h 35
Director: Christopher Landon
Cast: Meghann Fahy, Brandon Sklenar, Violett Beane
First dates are always stressful, but things get terrifying for Violet (Meghann Fahy of The White Lotus) when hers is interrupted by a series of increasingly threatening phone messages. Someone is watching her every move, and is willing to break into her home and kill her son to get Violet to murder her date.
Genre: Horror thriller
Run time: 1h 29m
Director: David Charbonier and Justin Douglas Powell
Cast: Alicia Sanz, Raúl Castillo
The directors of The Boy Behind the Door combine the horrors of a home invasion and childbirth in Push, where a pregnant realtor is attacked at a showing for a possibly cursed house she’s trying to sell. When the assault sends her into labor, she’ll need to figure out how to escape a twisted killer before giving birth.
Genre: Action thriller
Run time: 1h 28m
Director: Wych Kaosayananda
Cast: Jack Kesy, Tristin Mays, Marie Broenner
A notorious hitman has a literal change of heart after his life is saved by a transplant. He wants to make the most of his second chance, but will have to use all his skills and plenty of heavy weaponry to fight for redemption by killing his former gang, who probably should have just let him quietly retire.
Everything’s Going to Be Great
Genre: Drama
Run time: 1h 35m
Director: Jon S. Baird
Cast: Allison Janney, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Bryan Cranston
Buddy Smart (Bryan Cranston) is a dreamer who risks everything to move his family across the country to take over a regional theater. Tensions mount between him and his more pragmatic wife (Allison Janney) when the audiences they need fail to manifest, forcing them to move in with her family.
Genre: Horror comedy
Run time: 1h 10m
Director: Morihito Inoue
Cast: Takuya Fujimura, Daniel Aguilar, Shôichirô Akaboshi
In a particularly absurd spin on Jaws, the residents of a small town in Japan have to band together to fight an ancient shark that’s preying on visitors to the local hot spring ahead of the opening of a new spa meant to bring in tourists. The shark’s ability to fit into tight spaces means no one is safe.
Genre: Family drama
Run time: 1h 34
Director: Jonathan Entwistle
Cast: Jackie Chan, Ben Wang, Joshua Jackson
A continuation of the Karate Kid franchise and Cobra Kai, this movie features Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) and Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) teaming up to train a new martial arts prodigy to become a karate champion. Han’s niece (Ming-Na Wen) moves her family to New York and makes her son (Ben Wang) give up kung fu after his brother is killed, but he can’t resist fighting bullies.
Genre: Black comedy
Run time: 1h 45m
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera
Set in the 1950s, Wes Anderson’s latest star-studded quirky comedy stars Benicio del Toro as an arms dealer whose latest brush with death leads him to try to reconnect with his nun daughter (Mia Threapleton). He teams up with her and an entomologist tutor (Michael Cera) to try to swindle his own investors (including Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, and Jeffrey Wright) in the hopes that God (Bill Murray) will judge him kindly.
Genre: Crime thriller
Run time: 1h 40
Director: Christian Swegal
Cast: Nick Offerman, Jacob Tremblay, Dennis Quaid
Inspired by real events, Sovereign follows Jerry Kane (Nick Offerman), who travels around the country with his son (Joe Kane) teaching people who feel they’ve been left behind by institutions about the Sovereign Citizen movement. As his anti-government rhetoric gets increasingly violent, Jerry ends up in a standoff with police and a manhunt led by Dennis Quaid.
Genre: Western
Run time: 1h 33
Director: Richard Gray
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Daly
Henry Broadway (Brandon Lessard) travels to Trinity, Montana after his father is executed and winds up caught between the town’s sheriff (Pierce Brosnan) and a charismatic outlaw (Samuel L. Jackson) looking for the gold he helped Henry’s dad steal. Henry will have to decide which side he’s on through a series of shootouts that threaten to tear the Trinity apart.
Genre: Science fiction
Run time: 1h 55m
Director: Victor Danell
Cast: Inez Dahl Torhaug, Jesper Barkselius, Sara Shirpey
After her UFO-obsessed father disappears, a teenager goes on a quest for answers with the help of her father’s friends, trying to figure out if he was abducted by aliens or disappeared by a government conspiracy. Shot in Swedish, Watch the Skies is the first feature film to use AI to match the actors’ lip moments to the English dialogue.
