It’s Halloween weekend! To celebrate, movie theaters across the country are hosting Scream’s 30th anniversary screenings and V for Vendetta, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary. If you’re planning on staying home, check out our Halloween Countdown, filled with spooky recommendations.
If you’re looking for newly available streaming titles on platforms and VOD, we’ve got you covered too. Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars is out on VOD, following Jacob Elordi in a post-apocalyptic landscape. There’s also Verity, Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway’s erotic thriller.
Other noteworthy inclusions are Forgotten Island, DreamWorks Animation’s most recent feature film, blending ‘90s nostalgia with Filipino mythology. There’s also Minions & Monsters, which premiered in theaters earlier this year and is finally out on Peacock.
Happy watching!
1
The Dog Stars
- Available on VOD
- Genre: Sci-fi
- Run time: 1h 58m
- Director: Ridley Scott
- Cast: Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley
Based on Peter Heller’s novel of the same name, The Dog Stars is set in a world that’s been devastated by a global pandemic. It follows a traumatized pilot (Jacob Elordi) who lost his pregnant wife to the disease and is living with his dog and a survivalist (Josh Brolin), apart from the rest of the surviving world. After a tragic turn, he decides to leave the compound behind to search for other survivors.
Per our Polygon review:
The best thing The Dog Stars has going for it is that it looks absolutely incredible. Scott teams up with cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt (best known for his David Fincher collaborations) to capture both the pristine beauty of the Rocky Mountains and the haunting beauty of the abandoned cities and towns that dot the landscape. A good chunk of the film involves watching Elordi pilot his tiny yellow plane through the skies, and it never gets old.
2
Verity
- Available on VOD
- Genre: Thriller
- Run time: 1h 57m
- Director: Michael Showalter
- Cast: Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway, Josh Harnett
Based on Colleen Hoover’s twistiest novel, Verity follows a struggling ghostwriter named Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), who receives an offer to complete Verity Crawford’s (Anne Hathaway) successful series of novels. She accepts, moving into Verity’s home and starting a flirtation with her husband (Hartnett), only to find that Verity is paralyzed and living in the same house.
Per our Polygon review:
Erotic thrillers require a willingness to feel trashy and look ridiculous. Hathaway easily gets there. When Lowen finds a secret manuscript in Verity’s office, showing Verity’s true and unvarnished self, we get to watch the character’s “true” life story play out onscreen. In these scenes, Hathaway has so much fun playing the role in a different register than the woman we met earlier in those polished interviews. In her manuscript, Verity documents the best moments in her life, like the start of her romance with Jeremy and her rise as an author. She also writes about the resentment she feels over becoming a mother, revealing that, once Jeremy leaves the house, she ignores her infants’ cries to catch up on sleep.
3
Forgotten Island
- Available on VOD
- Genre: Animation
- Run time: 1h 49m
- Director: Joel Crawford, Januel Mercado
- Cast: H.E.R., Dave Franco, Jenny Slate
The story is set in the Philippines in the ‘90s, trailing two inseparable best friends on their final night together, before one of them moves out of the country. Then, the two run into a mystical portal that takes them to a mystical and hidden realm, filled with all manner of spirits.
Per our Polygon review:
The way these pieces fall together is weird, clever, silly, and extremely colorful, built around surprisingly dynamic, seductive visuals. Just as Crawford and Mercado turned 2022’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, the sequel to a middling Shrek spin-off, into a startlingly mesmerizing, ambitious animation experiment, the writer-director duo pushes past the standard look of American CG kids’ movies here. They bridge the gap between Last Wish’s drama-driven, boldly neon 2D/3D hybrid style and K-Pop Demon Hunters-style anime touches, like flying emotive punctuation and rapid veering between visual styles for emphasis. There’s a lot of action, and it’s kinetic and hyperbolic, reflecting the big emotions at play as Jo and Raissa alternately cooperate and clash.
4
Bloody Tennis
- Available on Shudder
- Genre: Horror
- Run time: 1h 30m
- Director: Nikias Chryssos
- Cast: Sandra Guldberg Kampp, Elina Löwensohn, Tracy Gotoas,
Bloody Tennis follows the tried and true coming of age framing of a young sports prodigy who gets accepted into a mysterious school, only to find many dark and dangerous secrets. The sport of choice is tennis, with the film following Sophie (Sandra Guldberg Kampp), as she makes friends, enemies, and lovers in a reclusive academy located in Southern Europe.
5
Hanging on a Wire
- Available on Paramount Plus
- Genre: Documentary
- Run time: 1h 38m
- Director: Mohammed Ali Naqvi
- Cast: N/A
Hanging on a Wire is a documentary looking into the unbelievable true story of eight passengers trapped inside a cable car in Pakistan in 2023. The group found themselves suspended in the car, 900 feet in the air over the Himalayan mountains, and became the subject of news coverage and global concern.
6
Minions and Monsters
- Available on Peacock
- Genre: Animation
- Run time: 1h 30m
- Director: Pierre Coffin
- Cast: Allison Janney, Christoph Waltz, Jeff Bridges
Continuing the stories of the beloved Minions, Minions & Monsters is set years before the Minions ever met Gru, trailing their rise as stars in Hollywood’s silent era. Once sound is introduced, the Minions have to figure out what to do with their lives, deciding to make monster movies.
7
The Isolate Thief
- Available on MGM Plus
- Genre: Western
- Run time: 1h 35m
- Director: John Suits
- Cast: Sean Bean, Mackenzie Foy, Odeya Rush
The Isolate Thief is set in the Civil War, following a teenager (Mackenzie Foy) who, after her father’s death, is left as the only caretaker of a Union Army post. She discovers a stash of gold and has to keep it hidden from a gang of vicious outlaws.
8
Hunting Matthew Nichols
- Available on Shudder
- Genre: Horror
- Run time: 1h 29m
- Director: Markian Tarasiuk
- Cast: Miranda MacDougall, Markian Tarasiuk, Ryan Alexander McDonald,
The film is a horror mockumentary following Tara, a young woman who lost her brother and partners up with a documentary filmmaker to learn more about what happened to him. As the two begin to investigate and ask questions, they make some disturbing discoveries.
9
Never After Dark
- Available on VOD
- Genre: Horror
- Run time: 1h 45m
- Director: Dave Boyle
- Cast: Moeka Hoshi, Kurumi Inagaki, Kento Kaku.
Never After Dark follows a medium named Airi (Moeka Hoshi) who’s hired to exorcise the ghosts that linger in an abandoned home. Of course, things go horribly wrong while trying to put the ghost to rest.
10
Ali G: Who Iz I?
- Available on Prime Video
- Genre: Comedy
- Run time: 1h 29m
- Director: Sacha Baron Cohen
- Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen
Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest satire and directorial debut follows him as Ali G, a character he originally played in his late ‘90s show The 11 O’Clock Show. The film follows his character as he learns he’s becoming a father and features cameos from figures like Newt Gingrich and George Santos, who don’t know they’re being recorded for a movie.
