New Movies Streaming This Weekend on Prime Video, Paramount, and Peacock

It is Halloween weekend. Movie theaters across the country are hosting Scream’s 30th anniversary screenings along with V for Vendetta, which celebrates its 20th anniversary. Fans staying home can check out the Halloween Countdown for spooky recommendations.

Viewers looking for newly available streaming titles and video on demand have plenty of options. Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars is out on VOD, following Jacob Elordi through a post-apocalyptic landscape. Dakota Johnson and Anne Hathaway also star in the erotic thriller Verity.

Other noteworthy additions include Forgotten Island, DreamWorks Animation’s latest feature film blending nineties nostalgia with Filipino mythology. Additionally, Minions & Monsters premiered in theaters earlier this year and is now streaming on Peacock.

Happy watching.

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 devastated by a global pandemic. It follows a traumatized pilot, played by Jacob Elordi, who lost his pregnant wife to the disease. He lives with his dog and a survivalist, played by Josh Brolin, apart from the rest of the surviving world. After a tragic turn, he leaves the compound behind to search for other survivors.

According to the 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.

Verity

• Available on VOD
• Genre: Thriller
• Run time: 1h 57m
• Director: Michael Showalter
• Cast: Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway, Josh Hartnett

Based on Colleen Hoover’s twistiest novel, Verity follows a struggling ghostwriter named Lowen Ashleigh, played by Dakota Johnson. She receives an offer to complete Verity Crawford’s successful series of novels. Lowen accepts the job, moves into Verity’s home, and starts a flirtation with Verity’s husband, played by Josh Hartnett, only to discover that Verity is paralyzed and living in the same house.

According to the 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.

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 nineties, following two inseparable best friends on their final night together before one of them moves out of the country. The pair run into a mystical portal that transports them to a hidden realm filled with all manner of spirits.

According to the 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.

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 coming-of-age framing of a young sports prodigy who gets accepted into a mysterious school, only to uncover dark and dangerous secrets. The sport of choice is tennis. The film tracks Sophie, played by Sandra Guldberg Kampp, as she makes friends, enemies, and lovers at a reclusive academy located in Southern Europe.

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 examining 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, sparking intense news coverage and global concern.

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. It traces their rise as stars in Hollywood’s silent era. Once sound is introduced, the Minions must figure out what to do next, ultimately deciding to make monster movies.

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 during the Civil War. It follows a teenager, played by Mackenzie Foy, who is left as the sole caretaker of a Union Army post following her father’s death. She discovers a stash of gold and must keep it hidden from a gang of vicious outlaws.

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. She partners with a documentary filmmaker to learn more about what happened to him. As the two begin to investigate and ask questions, they make disturbing discoveries.

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, played by Moeka Hoshi, who is hired to exorcise ghosts lingering in an abandoned home. Unsurprisingly, things go horribly wrong while trying to put the spirits to rest.

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 features him returning to his character Ali G, whom he originally played on his late nineties show The 11 O’Clock Show. The film follows Ali G as he learns he is becoming a father and features cameos from public figures like Newt Gingrich and George Santos, who did not know they were being recorded for a movie.

Source: Polygon