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Hulu doesn’t always get the recognition of competitors like Netflix and Max, but the streamer has an unfailingly reliable and rotating selection of theatrical films, as well as some impressive original releases. These are some of the best, buzziest, and/or most fun movies currently streaming on the service, across a variety of genres.
The Last Showgirl (2024)
Something of a companion piece to The Substance, in that both films star Hollywood icons and deal with women paying a price for daring to age, The Last Showgirl‘s wistful, more down-to-Earth tone provides a brilliant showcase for lead Pamela Anderson. She plays Shelly Gardner, a Las Vegas showgirl with a three-decade career who finds herself at loose ends when the revue in which she stars closes. It’s easily one of 2024’s best performances. Stream The Last Showgirl.
Summer of 69 (2025)
A surprisingly sweet coming-of-age comedy, given that it’s about a young woman who wants to learn how to 69 (a sex position you might have heard of). Sam Morelos stars as Abby Flores, a popular game streamer who’s shy in public and who hides her identity online. In her senior year of high school, she’s ready to come out of her shell and hopes to make a play for Max, the guy she’s had a crush on for years. With no sexual and little social experience, she visits a local strip club and makes friends with dancer Santa Monica (Chloe Fineman), whom she’ll pay to be her sex and confidence coach. Despite her outward demeanor, Santa Monica isn’t entirely feeling like a success herself; it turns out that the mismatched pals have a lot in common and a lot to teach each other. It’s a solid directorial debut from SNL writer Jillian Bell. Stream Summer of 69.
Anora (2024)
Writer/director Sean Baker (Tangerine, Red Rocket) has a long list of impressive film credits to his name, but comedy-drama Anora was the film that put him firmly into the mainstream, winning him a Best Director Oscar and the film a Best Picture prize. Mikey Madison (who also won Best Actress) plays the title’s Anora, an exotic dancer whose life changes when she falls in love with the son of a Russian oligarch. It’s all going very well until his parents show up to get their impromptu wedding annulled. Stream Anora.
The Amateur (2025)
Shades of Mr. Robot in this techno thriller, those comparisons made particularly apt by the presence of lead Rami Malek. He plays Charlie Heller, a desk-bound CIA analyst whose wife is killed by terrorists. He quickly comes to feel as though no one cares enough to actually do anything about it, and so decides to use his high-end computer skills to hunt down the killers for justice, or revenge. He’s joined by like-minded handler Robert Henderson (Laurence Fishburne), who convinces Heller that he’ll need to fight and shoot at least as well as he can type if he’s to succeed. Stream The Amateur.
The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat (2024)
One of those great Soul Food/Steel Magnolia-style tearjerkers, The Supremes stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Sanaa Lathan, and Uzo Aduba as three middle-aged friends who’ve been through the wringer together. Following the three virtually from birth, we find them facing a seemingly endless number of twists and turns (unplanned pregnancy, cancer, alcoholism, and more) with a lot of heart and plenty of humor. Stream The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat.
Thelma (2024)
This delightful indie comedy stars the brilliant nonagenarian June Squibb (Nebraska) as Thelma Post, a woman living alone in Los Angeles—she’s got a good relationship with her grandson, but finds his doting a bit much. Still, when a phone scammer cheats her our of $10,000 by claiming that Danny’s been arrested, she refuses to take it lying down. The police won’t do anything, so she gets hold of old friend Ben (the late Richard Roundtree) and a gun, the two set off on a scooter to track down the scammer and get a little revenge. It’s funny, but never gratuitously silly, and Squibb and Roundtree make for a fabulous cinematic pairing. Stream Thelma.
Longlegs (2024)
Oz Perkins, who more recently directed the Stephen King adaptation The Monkey, is the driving force behind this horror thriller starring Maika Monroe as a young FBI agent hunting the menacing serial killer known as Longlegs (Nicholas Cage). The murderer’s trail has gone cold, but Agent Harker’s seeming clairvoyance has put the two on a collision course, even though there’s no evidence the suspect was ever even present at the killings for which he’s apparently responsible. Stylish and nerve-jangling, with a predictably unhinged performance from Cage, it’s a real killer thriller. Stream Longlegs.
The Monkey (2025)
Speaking of The Monkey: Here’s another Oz Perkins movie, just as deranged as Longlegs, but much funnier—well, if a series of increasingly gory deaths is your idea of a hoot. Theo James plays twin brothers haunted by a series of tragedies that befell them as children: A wind-up toy monkey belonging to their father revealed itself to be both protective and mean, a wind of its key leading it to initiate elaborate, deadly, Final Destination-esque scenarios. They threw the monkey down a well as kids, but that monkey was absolutely not going to stay down the well. The movie is incredibly gory, but almost cartoonishly so, and hints of heart reveal themselves through The Monkey‘s very sick sense of humor. Stream The Monkey.
A Complete Unknown (2024)
Another multiple Oscar-nominee (though it didn’t take home any prizes), A Complete Unknown comes from director James Mangold, whose resume includes award-season faves like Ford v Ferrari, Wolverine and Indiana Jones franchise movies, and another Oscar-winning musical biopic, Walk the Line. In this one, Timothée Chalamet stars as Bob Dylan alongside Ed Norton as Pete Seeger, with the narrative rotating around the moment in 1965 when Dylan went electric, scandalizing the Newport Folk Festival and leading fans to question whether the voice of his generation had sold out. Stream A Complete Unknown.
Fire Island (2022)
Or maybe you prefer your gay flicks with more of a warm-weather vibe? A queer, contemporary take on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Fire Island also takes aim at the overabundance of fat/femme/Asian stereotypes in the gay community. Social commentary aside, it’s also a funny, smart romantic comedy with a great cast that includes Joel Kim Booster (in the Lizzy Bennett role—he also wrote the screenplay), Bowen Yang, Conrad Ricamora, and Margaret Cho as a group of friends who travel each summer to the titular island—but this summer proves more dramatic (and romantic) than most. Stream Fire Island.
Triangle of Sadness (2022)
One of the darkest (and funniest) satires of recent memory, Ruben Östlund’s wild film feels like at least three movies in one, with narratives that take sharp right turns at unexpected moments, taking potshots at greed and skewering capitalism all the way. A memorable central section onboard a luxury cruise ship divided between the haves (passengers) and have-nots (the crew) climaxes in literal explosions of vomit and shit. That’s before a satisfying role-reversal inspired by Lord of the Flies. Brilliant and hilarious, if you’ve got the stomach for it. Stream Triangle of Sadness.
Presence (2024)
Steven Soderbergh’s found-footage-esque psychological horror film doesn’t have a lot of big scares for most of its runtime, something that it’s helpful to know going in. Instead, this is largely a drama about a damaged family from the perspective of the title’s presence: The Payne family moves into a new home that’s already occupied, and everything that we see is from the spirit’s curious POV. Though its motives are unclear, the presence takes a special interest in daughter Chloe (Callina Liang), who’s suffered the deaths of multiple friends and might be open to malign influences both worlds and otherwise. It’s rather wonderfully chilling. Stream Presence.
Prey (2022)
Wild that the best Predator film since the first (and probably better still) was dropped as a streaming-only release on Hulu. Regardless of the movie deserving a theatrical release, Prey is a thrilling action movie that expands the Predator universe while also feeling deeply personal. Set in the Great Plains of 1719, Prey stars Amber Midthunder as Naru, a young Comanche warrior who winds up being the only person who can defend her tribe from the hunter from outer space. Stream Prey.
Predator: Killer of Killers (2025)
A surprise drop from director Dan Trachtenberg, who saved the Predator franchise with Prey, the lushly animated Killer of Killers tells three distinct stories across three different time periods, with a conclusion that brings them all together: moments when, we learn, Predators had visited the Earth. The first sees a Viking warrior and her son leading an army against a rival clan, the second sees a hunter standing between rival sons of a samurai warlord in 1609 Japan, while the third involves a WWII dogfight with an unexpected rival. It’s an appropriately and impressively lean and mean addition to the Predator mythos. Stream Killer of Killers.
The Promised Land (2023)
In 18th-century Denmark, down-on-his-luck war hero Capt. Ludvig Kahlen (Mads Mikkelsen) hopes to turn his meager retirement pension into some kind of life for himself by cultivating a portion of a vast wilderness that no one else has been able to make anything of. A covetous local magistrate quickly finds himself threatened by Kahlen’s reputation, with the intent of spoiling all his plans. The beautiful—but bleak and forbidding—Nordic drama plays out much like an old-school western. Stream The Promised Land.
The Woman King (2022)
Set in West Africa in 1823 and based on the real-life the Agojie (also known as the Dahomey Amazons), this historical action epic succeeds on multiple levels, but fun here is in watching the impressively swole Viola Davis lead a team of all-but-unstoppable African women warriors as they fight back against colonialist invaders. . Davis is General Nanisca, leader of the country’s army, forced to navigate complicated regional politics even though her skills, and the movie’s most exhilarating scenes, involve kicking slave-trader ass. Stream The Woman King.
Happiest Season (2020)
Never too early for the winter holidays! (Say many wonderful people who are definitely not me.) Hulu’s Happiest Season is, perhaps, not on anyone’s list of cinematic masterpieces. Very few (if any) films of the modern, Hallmark-style coming-home-for-Christmas genre would clear that kind of bar. Still, there’s a reason we love these things, and this one adds a bit of prestige to its charms in both cast (Kristen Stewart, Aubrey Plaza, Victor Garber, etc.) and directing (Clea DuVall). What’s more, the movie served as a high-profile torchbearer for queer representation in 2020, the year having kicked off a small but significant wave of LGBTQIA+ holiday films. Stream Happiest Season.
The Abyss (1989)
Oddly hard to watch for years, James Cameron’s underwater epic is finally available to stream, and it’s about time. For much of its runtime, The Abyss is a tensely claustrophobic thriller involving an underwater dive team trying to recover an American submarine in the deep ocean before the Soviets can get to it. They discover something entirely unexpected in those unexplored depths, the movie diving (ahem) into themes that will be recognizable to Cameron’s many fans. Stream The Abyss here.
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Deep Water (2022)
Adrian Lyne (9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction, and Indecent Proposal) returned to the director’s chair after an absence of two decades for this Hulu original. Ben Affleck is probably a rough equivalent in star power and sex appeal to the male leads of yore, and Ana de Armas is a good choice as a co-lead, even if the casting does remind us that age gaps in these movies will always favor the idea of an older man with a significantly younger woman. Here, Affleck’s Vic agrees to overlook his wife’s string of affairs in order to preserve his marriage, but then becomes the prime suspect when her lovers start turning up dead. It’s a solid setup (taken from a Patricia Highsmith novel) that doesn’t quite connect, but still serves as fun throwback to the golden age of sexy thrillers. Stream Deep Water.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023)
A non-fiction work adapted as an action-thriller, How to Blow Up a Pipeline follows eight individuals committed to bombing an oil pipeline in two separate locations. The movie, like the book on which it’s based, makes the case that property damage isn’t the worst thing in the face of environmental catastrophe, but that the level of commitment involved to carry out such an act takes a deeply personal toll. Stream How to Blow Up a Pipeline.
Sally (2025)
It might seem excessively woke to acknowledge, in the year of our lord 2025, that Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, an astronaut and physicist, was also a gay woman in a 27-year-old relationship. But here we are. Ride felt that her work and career would suffer if she came out, and only did so les than a year before her 2012 death. Tam O’Shaughnessy, Ride’s partner, provides the focus for this documentary that explores the trailblazer’s work while also examining the personal and professional sacrifices that came as a result of needing to conceal so much of herself. Stream Sally.
Late Night with the Devil (2023)
The damn-near flawless evocation of 1970s talk show vibes gives Late Night much of its sense of purpose in the early going, before it gives way to a ghostly horror free-for-all in the back half. David Dastmalchian stars as the host of Night Owls with Jack Delroy, who spends his off hours at The Grove, an exclusive California spot for powerful men, and a place full of dark secrets. During a special Halloween broadcast in 1977, some of Jack’s secrets are summoned into the open. Using found footage tricks—but not limited by them—it’s a uniquely clever supernatural thriller. Stream Late Night with the Devil.
Perfect Days (2023)
Directed by Wim Wenders, Perfect Days represents a long-awaited narrative return to form for the director—it’s easily a high point of his long film career, even with blessedly little plot to speak of. Kōji Yakusho plays Hirayama, a man in his 60s who follows the same routine every day: He wakes up in his modest apartment, grabs coffee from a vending machine, and sets out in his van to clean the public toilets of Tokyo. Perhaps it’s a Japanese sensibility at play, but it’s hard not to suspect that the American version of this film would come off as a melancholy tragedy; Hirayama’s story, though, is joyful. It’s a movie about appreciating the quiet beauty of everyday life, and the peace to be found in a beloved routing. It represents the first time that Japan ever submitted a film by a non-Japanese director for Oscar consideration. Stream Perfect Days.
Quiz Lady (2023)
Awkwafina and Sandra Oh star as two sisters is this wild road-trip comedy in the best tradition of ’90s gems like Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion. One is tightly wound, the other a complete mess. They’re forced to work together to cover their mother’s gambling debts, a problem complicated when the loan shark kidnaps a dog to hold hostage in exchange for the cash. Good thing Awkwafina’s character is a quiz-show savant who drowned her childhood sorrows in binge-watching a Jeopardy-esque game show with a big cash prize. Stream Quiz Lady.
A Real Pain (2024)
Jesse Eisenberg (who also wrote and directed) and Kieran Culkin (who won an Oscar for the role) play a couple of cousins who reunite for a Jewish heritage tour through Poland as a means of honoring their late grandmother, and have to confront a more immediate family legacy along the way. A tonally deft blend of comedy and drama with a couple of excellent lead performances. Stream A Real Pain.
Decision to Leave (2022)
Like most of writer/director Park Chan-wook’s films (which include Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, The Handmaiden), this one’s tough to classify by genre. It alternately feels like a romance, a thriller, and a mystery—or all three at once. Insomniac detective Jang Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) doesn’t miss a clue, until he starts to fall for (and then become obsessed with, Vertigo-style) a recently widowed woman (Tang Wei) who doesn’t seem all that upset about her husband’s seemingly accidental death. The mysterious and gorgeously directed film won Park Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival back in 2022. Stream Decision to Leave.
No One Will Save You (2023)
Kaitlyn Dever stars in this terrifying solo affair—she’s very nearly the only actor in the whole movie. Brynn is a seamstress with a secret, one that’s made her an outcast in her community and kept her living a solitary existence. Which both is and isn’t to her advantage when aliens invade her town and her home—and these particular extraterrestrials produce parasites that allow them to take control of human bodies, so Brynn is used to being on her own when fighting to defend herself. It’s a clever, largely dialogue-free thriller with a bit of Twilight Zone style. Stream No One Will Save You.
Alien: Romulus (2024)
An impressive return to xenomorph country from Fede Álvarez (Don’t Breathe), Alien: Romulus proves that there’s still a fair bit of life in this long-in-the-ovipositor franchise. An orphaned colonist on a relentlessly grim planet is, along with her friends, a virtual indentured servant to the ubiquitous Weyland-Yutani corporation—but there’s an abandoned space station containing cryostasis equipment that would allow them to survive a journey away from the hellhole where they live and work. You might have guessed by now that the space station isn’t entirely abandoned. Álvarez and company bring real horror back to the franchise, along with the evergreen reminder that major corporations are far eviler than hungry aliens. Stream Alien: Romulus.
The Contestant (2023)
In 1998, Tomoaki Hamatsu was cast on the new Japanese reality show Susunu! Denpa Shōnen: He was challenged to stay alone in his apartment, with no food or clothing, and survive only on what he could win from magazine contests. At various points, he would survive on uncooked rice (having no pots), or on dog food, or on soda. His only companion was a stuffed animal that he won. The show went on for a year, and became one of the most popular shows on the air, unbeknownst to Hamatsu. This documentary explores our reality fixation from both sides, as well as exploring the long and difficult transition back to normal life for someone who didn’t even know that he was a star. Stream The Contestant.
Oddity (2024)
A wonderfully atmospheric—and often genuinely scary—Irish horror import, the movie kicks off with a tense murder in a country house that raises a number of questions for the dead woman’s twin sister—like, is the formal mental patient believed to have committed the murder actually the guilty party? There are some great twists and turns here and it genuinely sticks the landing, not a given even among great thrillers. Stream Oddity.
