The Marvel Cinematic Universe got back to basics with the character-driven, CGI-light Thunderbolts*, and the unlikely heroes leap onto Disney Plus this weekend. Robert E. Howard’s sword-and-sorcery hero Red Sonja dons a chain-mail bikini and steps out of Conan the Barbarian’s shadow in a new blood-soaked film available to rent.
Get a last spooky taste of summer vacation as the slasher comedy Hell of a Summer cuts a bloody path onto Hulu and I Know What You Did Last Summer drives onto VOD. If you prefer a cozy mystery to lots of gore, join The Thursday Murder Club on Netflix.
Here’s a rundown of the most notable new releases on streaming and VOD, including the biggest, best, and most popular new movies you can watch at home right now.
New on Netflix
The Thursday Murder Club
- Genre: Crime comedy
- Run time: 1h 58m
- Director: Chris Columbus
- Cast: Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley
Waiting for the next season of Only Murders in the Building? Watch a different star-studded production about senior citizens obsessed with solving murders. Based on Richard Osman’s 2020 novel, The Thursday Murder Club follows a group of retirees, including a spy (Helen Mirren) and a psychiatrist (Ben Kingsley), who put their old skills to use by trading knitting needles and jigsaw puzzles for an evidence board.
New on Disney Plus
Thunderbolts*
- Genre: Superhero
- Run time: 2h 7m
- Director: Jake Schreier
- Cast: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell
A cast of misfits gathered from across the Marvel Cinematic Universe have to team up to save themselves and maybe become real heroes along the way in this refreshingly funny film. Don’t worry if you’re not caught up on the MCU – you’ll get briefed on each character’s backstory as they all get their own emotional arc.
From our review:
For the first time since Avengers: Endgame, Thunderbolts* feels like a starting point, something great that Disney can use to build toward the future. More important than all that, however, is the fact that Thunderbolts* is the first time in a long time that Marvel has actually made a good movie — one that cares about story and characters more than it cares about references and multiverses.
New on Hulu
Hell of a Summer
- Genre: Horror comedy
- Run time: 1h 25m
- Director: Billy Bryk and Finn Wolfhard
- Cast: Fred Hechinger, Abby Quinn, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai
Billy Bryk (Ghostbusters: Afterlife) and Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things) wrote, directed, and starred in this spoof of the summer-camp slasher film. After Camp Pineaway’s owners are murdered, a 24-year-old who’s probably outgrown the job (Fred Hechinger) winds up in charge of a group of teens and has to keep them from becoming the next victims of a masked killer.
New to rent
The Home
- Genre: Psychological horror
- Run time: 1h 35
- Director: James DeMonaco
- Cast: Pete Davidson, John Glover, Bruce Altman
The Purge creator James DeMonaco explores the horror of aging as graffiti artist Max (Pete Davidson) is ordered to do community service at a retirement home. While Max is told to stay away from the serious cases on the fourth floor, the death of one of the seniors he’s befriended leads him to investigate what’s really going on.
I Know What You Did Last Summer
- Genre: Slasher horror
- Run time: 1h 51m
- Director: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
- Cast: Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King
A group of friends cover up a car accident they were involved in, but their crime comes back to haunt them in the form of a hook-handed killer. They seek advice from the last group to face the wrath of a vengeful killer in the seaside town: Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt, reprising their roles from the 1998 version of I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Red Sonja
- Genre: Sword and sorcery
- Run time: 1h 50m
- Director: M. J. Bassett
- Cast: Matilda Lutz, Wallis Day, Robert Sheehan
Red Sonja (Matilda Lutz), the warrior from Robert E. Howard’s pulp stories and Roy Thomas’ comics, is captured and forced to fight exotic beasts in gladiatorial games for the amusement of Emperor Dragan (Robert Sheehan of The Umbrella Academy). She turns the games against him, leading a slave rebellion to protect the people and forest from his cruelty.
She Rides Shotgun
- Genre: Crime thriller
- Run time: 2h
- Director: Nick Rowland
- Cast: Taron Egerton, Ana Sophia Heger, Rob Yang
After being released from prison, Nate (Taron Egerton of Kingsman: The Secret Service) is hunted by a gang and corrupt cops, and forced to go on the run with his estranged 11-year-old daughter (Ana Sophia Heger). As they reconnect, Nate tries to figure out who he can trust while fighting to protect his child’s life and innocence.
Sketch
- Genre: Fantasy comedy
- Run time: 1h 32m
- Director: Seth Worley
- Cast: Tony Hale, D’Arcy Carden, Bianca Belle
Amber (Bianca Belle) draws monsters to cope with the grief and anger she feels after her mom’s death. But when she drops her sketchbook in a pond with magical properties, the creatures come to life and start terrorizing her town. Amber and her brother have to find a way to use her art to set things right in this sweet family film.
From our review:
The effects are believable enough, in fact, for Sketch to work as a horror-adjacent introduction to the genre; it even has a barely metaphorical treatment of grief, like so many “elevated” grown-up horror movies of recent years. Sketch’s mixture of grade-school-appropriate scares, humor that lands (young Kalen Cox is particularly funny as Bowman), and heartfelt performances lets it stand out among other family films in a summer full of diminished live-action remakes and uninspired animation.
Together
- Genre: Body horror
- Run time: 1h 42m
- Director: Michael Shanks
- Cast: Dave Franco, Alison Brie, Damon Herriman
Real-life spouses Dave Franco and Alison Brie play an isolated, codependent couple whose insecurities about intimacy and marriage manifest in a supernatural force binding them together. Filled with creepy dream sequences and examinations of trauma, Together is a daring film that uses comedy to amplify the dread.
From our review:
The metaphorical monster in this movie is just the idea of commitment. But that monster is also a visceral, messy Cronenbergian horror when Millie and Tim encounter a carefully foreshadowed force that wants to literally bind them together — not just as a couple, but to a grotesque, unnervingly physical degree hinted at in the trailer.
