A curated list of the best new movies streaming in August 2025, including Pedro Pascal’s «Freaky Tales» and «The Monkey.»
There’s one surefire way to beat the heat: staying inside. And what better way to pass the time than with a great new movie? August has a number of new features hitting streaming, and we’ve put together a curated list of some of the best films on Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, Max, Disney+ and beyond. They range from recently released horror films (“Final Destination: Bloodlines”) to brand new comedies (“The Pickup”) to hidden gems destined to take off on streaming (“Freaky Tales”).
Check out our list of the top new movies streaming right now below.
Netflix – Aug. 1
“My Oxford Year” is a brand-new Netflix original film, written by Allison Burnett and Melissa Osborne and directed by Iain Morris. It’s based on the novel of the same name by Julia Whelan and stars Sofia Carson and Corey Mylchreest. Here’s Netflix’s official synopsis: “When Anna (Carson), an ambitious young American woman, sets out for the UK and the University of Oxford to fulfill a childhood dream, she’s got her life completely on track. That is, until she meets a charming and clever local Jamie (Mylchreest) who profoundly alters both of their lives.”
HBO Max – Aug. 1
It’s rare for a horror franchise to feel so fresh – so vital – six movies in. But that is the case with “Final Destination Bloodlines,” arguably the best entry in the franchise since the original. This time around, instead of a teen narrowly avoiding some catastrophe, the focus is on, as the title would suggest, a single family – one that goes back to the very beginning (in this case a disaster that happened back in the late 1960’s). Our young hero (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) isn’t just fighting for survival, but making sure that her family tree isn’t maliciously pruned. Directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, working from an idea by recent “Spider-Man” director Jon Watts, smartly stage the suspense set pieces, giving them levity and surprise, along with the required buckets of blood. And this is arguably the most emotionally resonant entry in the franchise; you care about these characters and their relationships to one another in a way that feels deeper and more nuanced than in any other movie. In short, “Final Destination Bloodlines” is one of the great surprises of the year. (It was also a surprise smash, making nearly $300 million worldwide.) Ready to cheat death?
HBO Max – Aug. 1
While Ridley Scott’s return to the “Alien” franchise with “Prometheus” was perhaps more exciting and is certainly a better movie, the filmmaker’s 2017 sequel “Alien: Covenant” is a delicious, wonderfully strange chapter in the storied sci-fi series. Michael Fassbender takes center stage this time around as his synthetic android David – and another droid named Walter – as he’s set up shop on a different planet and is certainly up to something. The human characters, led by Katherine Waterston and Danny McBride, are the crew of a spaceship carrying thousands of colonists and embryos that stumble upon David’s planet, and the horrors within. This one has teeth.
Prime Video – Aug. 1
What better way to prepare for a new Paul Thomas Anderson movie than to revisit his last feature film? 2021’s “Licorice Pizza” continues the “hangout” vibe from PTA’s “Inherent Vice,” this time as a coming-of-age story between a high schooler (Cooper Hoffman) and a 25-year-old photographer’s assistant (Alana Haim). The 1973-set film boasts a terrific supporting cast that includes Sean Penn, Benny Safdie and a scene-stealing Bradley Cooper as producer Jon Peters, and it’s an extremely fun “vibes” movie.
HBO Max – Aug. 1
The aptly named “You Hurt My Feelings” is built on a very relatable premise. Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays a successful memoirist who has just written her first novel, and Tobias Menzies is her supportive therapist husband. But one day, she overhears her husband revealing what he really thinks about her book to a friend – that it’s not good. Nicole Holofcener’s warm comedy is about the white lies we tell our loved ones, and what happens when they find out the truth.
Paramount+ – Aug. 1
A little-seen film from 2020, “Love and Monsters” is a charming post-apocalyptic tale with a YA bent. Dylan O’Brien plays a young man living with a group of survivors underground seven years after all cold-blooded animals on earth mutated into giant monsters and killed off much of the population. But the thing is, he’s still in love with his high school girlfriend, so one day he steels his nerves to brave the outside world to see if she might still be in love with him too. Also there’s an adorable dog who (spoiler alert) does not die.
Paramount+ – Aug. 1
A gem of a coming-of-age movie, 2009’s “Adventureland” holds up. Set in 1987 Pittsburgh, the film stars Jesse Eisenberg as a college student whose plans for summer vacation are canceled when he crashes the family car and is forced to pick up a job at a local amusement park to pay it off. There he finds a kindred spirit in Kristen Stewart, whose own complicated love life throws Eisenberg’s character for a loop when he begins to fall in love with her. Ryan Reynolds has a great supporting role, and Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig are a hoot as the park’s owners.
Paramount+ – Aug. 1
Inarguably a masterpiece, David Fincher’s 2007 film “Zodiac” is ostensibly about the hunt for the Zodiac Killer in the Bay Area in the 1960s/70s, but it’s actually a movie about obsession. Jake Gyllenhaal plays cartoonist Robert Graysmith who closely follows the Zodiac case and becomes convinced he can crack it. Fincher keeps a master’s handle on tone and pacing as the film has some truly terrifying moments and delivers on the “hunt for a serial killer” aspect while also serving up a thematic meal.
