The 25 Best Movies on Hulu Right Now
Hulu doesn't always get the recognition of competitors like Netflix and Max, but the streamer has a 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, across a variety of genres.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)
Awkward title notwithstanding, this fourth entry in the modern-day Apes series retains the technical mastery of its predecessors, as well as their revolutionary spirit, while also serving as a soft reboot that doesn't demand an extensive knowledge of what came before. Generations after the death of Andy Serkis' Caesar, human civilization continues to decline; Owen Teague plays Not, a young chimp forced from home when a tyrannical rival ape faction destroys his village over twisted and conflicting interpretations of Caesar's teachings. It's an impressive continuation of our smartest and most consistent modern movie franchise. Hulu has an array of earlier Apes movies, as well.
All of Us Strangers (2023)
A ghost story, at least on the surface, All of Us Strangers follows lonely screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) as he starts a romantic relationship with his mysterious neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal), the two of them the only residents of an imposing new apartment building. The relationship draws Adam to return to his family home, where he finds his (long dead) parents acting very much alive and well. The movie goes to dark places from there, providing a strong reminder that loss is an inevitable part of life, yes, but also that the only real comfort is in forgetting and moving on. Emotionally raw (be prepared, honestly), but beautiful.
The First Omen (2024)
These legacy sequels have been hit or miss—though more the latter than the former. If you had told me that a prequel to this long-defunct franchise would be one of 2024's more effective horror movies, I'd have looked at you the way everybody looked at Gregory Peck when he tried to kill his satanic kid way back in the 1976 original. But here we are! First-time feature director Arkasha Stevenson brings a ton of '70s period style and an appropriately paranoid vibe to the story of future antichrist Damien's birth, blending (extremely timely!) themes of bodily autonomy with genuine horror—and one of the freakiest birth scenes in movie history.
The Sandlot (1993)
A shamelessly nostalgic coming-of-age movie that has, itself, become an object of nostalgia, this ‘60s-set summertime classic follows Scott Smalls (Tom Guiry), the friendless new kid in town who doesn’t know a single thing about baseball (relatable), but takes an opening on the local sandlot team, hoping to fake it until he makes it. It’s filled with quirky characters and hits all the expected story beats, and, despite having received a mixed reception back in 1993, it’s shown impressive staying power with the kids who watched it growing up. It's essential viewing if only to better understand why you might occasionally hear a middle-aged person arbitrarily yell "You're killing me, Smalls!"
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.
Split (2016)
M. Night Shyamalan is one of our most interesting, but inconsistent, filmmakers. Split, though, represents a high point. James McAvoy gives a masterly performance as man with dissociative identity disorder who kidnaps and imprisons three young women in an underground bunker. Depending on the dominant personality, McAvoy is sometimes the hero, sometimes the villain, but he's clearly having fun playing at least nine different characters. The movie's depiction of DID is fairly problematic, but it's quite a bit of fun, even still.
The Worst Person in the World (2021)
Renate Reinsve brilliantly plays Julie, a medical student—briefly—who has no idea what she wants to do with her life, and a complete fear of commitment to anything and anyone. She's that most frequently exhausting movie trope: a messy 20-something young woman, in ways that you've seen before in other, lesser movies. The Worst Person in the World, though, plays that for all it's worth, offering up all the joys of cinematic romantic dramas that we've seen before while feeling a bit more like real life. People are messy! It's all surprisingly sweet and life-affirming.
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.
Nomadland (2020)
After Frances McDormand's Fern loses her job at a gypsum plant, she sells everything and buys a van to live and travel in while she hunts for work (including at an Amazon warehouse—fun!). Attachments come and go during her travels, as writer/director Chloé Zhao's funny, elegiac film considers life within America's increasingly precarious capitalist system, while also exploring more general themes of permanence and impermanence.
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.
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.
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.
Deep Water (2022)
Adrian Lyne (91⁄2 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.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
The Coen brothers take on Homer's The Odyssey—even if it's not, strictly speaking, an entirely faithful adaptation. A trio of chain-gang laborers in 1937 Mississippi decide to make a run for it, lead by Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney). The crew of convicts encounter near-mythic obstacles on their way to freedom, as well as to a rumored fortune in buried treasure.
Akira (1988)
For many people who've only ever seen one anime movie, this is the one. Akira's wildly kinetic animation and its highly detailed cityscape set a new standard for the form—writer/director Katsuhiro Otomo and company gave birth to a new animated world with this movie, and we're still living in it. Set in a dystopian 2019 (well, differently dystopian than our own 2019), the cyberpunk classic finds biker Kaneda forced to face down his friend Tetsuo after the latter gains telekinetic abilities in an accident. Akira is more than just its action, and it's dense enough that it can be hard to follow for the uninitiated—but it's a movie that keeps going bigger with every scene.
Poor Things (2023)
A movie that found itself at the center of discourse about movies being too dirty for the delicate sensibilities of American viewers received a shocking 11 Academy Award nominations, including for Best Picture. Not bad. Emma Stone stars as Bella Baxter, a Frankenstein's monster-esque creation who strives to find her place in the Victorian world with the help of her thoroughly debauched lawyer friend, Duncan (Mark Ruffalo).
Infinity Pool (2023)
Writer/director Brandon Cronenberg (son of David) brings a palpable rage and an unmistakable sense of style to this blend of sci-fi and horror, even as it muddies those genre classifications like the best of his famed father's work. A couple vacationing in a strange country leave their resort and run afoul of the law, only to learn that, for a price, they can outsource the punishment to clones of themselves.
A Haunting in Venice (2023)
These Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot adaptations haven't been to every taste (I'm an old-school Agatha Christie fan, and I've enjoyed them all); regardless, this third one is almost certainly the best of the bunch. As atmospheric as they come, it's a thoroughly spooky tale of murder set in a crumbling Venetian palazzo on Halloween. Tina Fey joins the cast as Agatha Christie mainstay Ariadne Oliver, while recent Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh plays the medium who kicks things off.
13 Assassins (2010)
Near the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the utterly sadistic (not to mention corrupt) Lord Naritsugu is to be offered a seat on the Shogunate Council, a promotion that will not only see the cruel lord’s power increase, but will likely set off a civil war between his supporters and those who hate him. The Shogun’s justice minister decides that assassination is the only way, and so hires a dozen samurai in order to carry out the execution. The kinetic and violent film reminds us that director Takashi Miike made his name in several memorably visceral horror films.
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.
Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
A deeply, deeply stupid premise involving a divorced dad reconnecting with his family by dressing up as an elderly British nanny is elevated by the lead performances from Robin Williams and Sally Field. Williams is at his silly best, but both he and Field play the emotional beats for all they're worth.
Theater Camp (2023)
A tribute to summer camp and theater kids, more generally, wrapped in a Christopher Guest-style musical mockumentary, Theater Camp finds a bunch of budding thespians arranging a play in tribute to the struggling camp's comatose founder, played by Amy Sedaris. It's an awful lot of fun, especially for erstwhile drama kids.
Midnight Kiss (2019)
Technically an episode of Hulu's Into the Dark anthology series, the feature-length Midnight Kiss finds a bunch of gay friends (and their straight woman friend) heading out to a gorgeous place in the desert for an annual tradition: They'll each pick someone at random to kiss at midnight. Old resentments bubble to the surface, egged on (unbeknownst to most of them) by a serial killer. It's no spoiler to suggest that they won't all make it to New Year's Day.
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.
Bad Boys for Life (2020)
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are back together after almost 20 years and, shockingly, this third movie in the series doesn't just hold up—it surpasses its Michael Bay-helmed predecessors. The directing team of Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah know how to get the absolute most out of the chemistry between the movie's leads, while never letting up on the action. It breathed new life into a seemingly dead franchise, and gave rise to a pretty darn good sequel of its own.
Hulu offers a variety of entertainment options, including streaming some of the best movies in its library. One of these is the modern-day 'Apes' series with the title 'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes' (2024), which continues the franchise's revolutionary spirit and smart storytelling. Additionally, fans of suspenseful movies will enjoy 'Split' (2016), directed by M. Night Shyamalan, featuring James McAvoy's masterful portrayal of a character with dissociative identity disorder.
