Five Movies to Watch on Netflix This Weekend

Not every movie needs a serial killer or supernatural monster to be a great watch during the Halloween season. Sometimes all it takes is some ominous vibes, a pervasive sense of isolation, or the creeping suspicion that something sinister is lurking beneath the surface.

If you want movies this weekend that fit the October mood without being typical Halloween fare, several options mix horror, gothic murder mystery, existential science fiction, and dark romance. Each scratches a different genre itch, but all five are dark, stylish films with a pervasive sense of dread. They are also great films worth watching regardless of the season.

Phantom Thread

On the surface, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread is a decadent period romance about Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis), a renowned dressmaker whose meticulous routines define the day-to-day operations of every person working in his London fashion house. Reynolds fancies himself completely in control of his art, his home, and the countless women who cycle through his life. That is until he meets Alma (Vicky Krieps), a young waitress who becomes his model, muse, and lover.

It all sounds quite romantic, but Phantom Thread is an unsettling gothic tale about a young woman entering the strange world of a brilliant, domineering man. With that comes a feeling of danger. Because Reynolds commands absolute control over his domain, the fashion house is filled with hushed conversations and dogmatic rituals that make the whole operation feel more like a cult than a creative enterprise. A persistent feeling pervades that something is subtly, profoundly wrong.

What initially appears to be another lopsided relationship between an artist and his muse gradually becomes something much more twisted. Alma refuses to remain another passive woman drifting through Reynolds’ perfectly ordered life, and their battle for control over each other evolves into a bizarre form of intimacy. The result is sinister, funny, and surprisingly unsettling.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Each of Rian Johnson’s Benoit Blanc movies exists in a distinct corner of the whodunnit genre. The first Knives Out is a cozy New England murder mystery defined by class resentment, while Glass Onion delivers a COVID-era caper that takes place during a sunny vacation for rich goons. Wake Up Dead Man sends Daniel Craig’s eccentric detective somewhere much darker: church.

Blanc is tasked with investigating a seemingly impossible murder at a small religious community in upstate New York, where the intense Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) lords over a dwindling but devout congregation. When Wicks is found dead, suspicion quickly falls on the monsignor’s new assistant, the young priest Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor). Father Jud’s gentler and more progressive approach to faith clashes with the monsignor’s rage-filled sermons even before the murder, so much of the community assumes Father Jud had something to do with it.

Johnson’s gothic mystery prominently features ornate graveyards, religious iconography, and hints of the miraculous, giving Wake Up Dead Man a distinct atmosphere that explores the nature of faith bordering on the supernatural. Beneath the playful and convoluted plotting, Wake Up Dead Man is also the most sincere, and perhaps best, Knives Out movie so far.

The Menu

A dozen wealthy diners travel to a private island for a meal prepared by the world-renowned chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes). Among them is Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), who attends as the date of the wealthy foodie Tyler Ledford (Nicholas Hoult). As the night unfolds, the meticulously planned tasting menu grows progressively more menacing.

Directed by Mark Mylod (Succession), The Menu pokes fun at foodie culture and artistic pretension while setting its sights on the assumed evils of the ultra-wealthy. The story gets less subtle over time as it descends into a full-on horror-comedy. Every dish is meant to provoke and cast judgment upon the insufferable privilege of the guests. Fiennes, as Slowik, is unnerving and compelling, playing a cult leader with a kitchen knife. Hoult, who often plays earnest do-gooders, plays against type. Tyler is a despicable rich man, a shameless and pedantic poser embodying every annoying elitist who uses money to perform good taste. Taylor-Joy is pitch-perfect as Margot, the only normal person in the cast positioned as the Final Girl who seems destined to survive merely because she is down-to-earth.

The immaculate kitchen and pristine culinary dishes give The Menu the look of a culinary documentary at times, but that is juxtaposed with the ugliness and violence simmering underneath the facade. The Menu is funny, nasty, and compact enough at just 107 minutes to make for an easy and delicious Halloween-season watch. It is also likely to make you want a cheeseburger after.

Nightcrawler

Los Angeles transforms into a totally different place after midnight. The empty highways, harsh streetlights, and sprawling neighborhoods become dangerous and alien in Nightcrawler, Dan Gilroy’s dark thriller about a man who discovers he can make a career out of exploiting the suffering of others.

An unhinged Jake Gyllenhaal plays Lou Bloom, a cheerful petty thief who stumbles into the world of freelance crime journalism. Prowling through the night with a camera and police scanner, Lou shoots footage he can sell to local news producer Nina Romina (Rene Russo). Success in this venture means getting closer to the violence. Because Lou is a psychopath who lacks empathy, he has no scruples about blurring the lines between recording a crime scene and manipulating one into a better story that makes more money.

Lou ultimately becomes one of the great movie monsters of the 21st century because there is nothing supernatural about him. He explains his absence of empathy by calling it ambition and speaks like he studied under a demon posing as a motivational speaker. Gyllenhaal performs Lou like an alien predator that only recently learned how to imitate a person. Like the violent crimes Lou bears witness to, Nightcrawler is difficult to look away from, even as it becomes increasingly monstrous.

Ad Astra

Astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) has a superpower. Even when faced with life-or-death circumstances, such as plummeting from the edge of space down toward Earth, his pulse barely rises. That allows him to remain cool under intense pressure and make rational decisions with ease. He gets showered with praise for all that emotional control, but Ad Astra quickly makes viewers wonder if this is a form of superhuman control or subhuman dissociation from the world.

When mysterious energy surges begin threatening life across the solar system, Roy is briefed about their possible connection to the Lima Project, an expedition led decades prior by his father, H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones). Though presumed dead for a long time, Clifford may still be alive near Neptune. Roy is sent across the solar system to find out, and that immense physical distance reflects the emotional distance between the two men. Compressing both makes for a psychologically taxing odyssey.

Director James Gray presents space as an endless, hostile void that is paradoxically claustrophobic. Even humanity’s expansion across the solar system feels bleak and miserable, with the moon featuring airport chains and territorial warfare while Martian outposts are entirely underground. Roy’s long journey is moody, atmospheric, and quiet. Infrequent bursts of action break up the long bouts of silence, but most of Ad Astra’s terror feels existential. It is a ghost story in which the entire solar system becomes a haunted house, and Roy has to travel billions of miles to confront the ghost of his father. Ad Astra’s ultimate question—are we alone in the universe?—takes on multiple meanings, and the answers might be the scariest thing of all.

Source: Polygon