The best new movies to watch at home this weekend, including Barbarian on HBO Max, Wendell & Wild on Netflix, and Pearl and Don’t Worry Darling on VOD.
This weekend, Pearl, the second installment in Ti West’s new slasher series starring Mia Goth, finally comes to VOD. If slasher films inspired by golden-age Hollywood classics like Mary Poppins and The Wizard of Oz aren’t to your liking, don’t worry, darling… Olivia Wilde’s Stepford Wives-esque thriller starring Florence Pugh and Harry Styles is also available to watch on VOD this weekend.
As far as what else is new to watch on streaming this week, there’s the much-talked-about horror film Barbarian available now on HBO Max and the stop-motion movie Wendell & Wild from The Nightmare Before Christmas director Henry Selick on Netflix, as well as the new horror thriller The Good Nurse starring Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne, the new horror anthology series Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, and a new adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front, also all available on Netflix.
Not to mention the Siegfried Sassoon biopic Benediction on Hulu, the horror thriller Run Sweetheart Run on Prime Video, the animated DC superhero film Green Lantern: Beware My Power on HBO Max, and much, much more. We’ve got the lowdown on everything you should be watching on VOD and streaming this weekend. Have a peek!
Where to watch: Available to rent for $19.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Florence Pugh stars in Olivia Wilde’s follow-up to 2019’s Booksmart as Alice, the doting wife to a workaholic husband (Harry Styles) in a 1950s-styled company town secluded in an unknown desert. When Alice begins to question the true nature of her idyllic existence and the supposedly benevolent intentions of her husband, she sets out on a search of answers that bring her face-to-face with a secret of immense, unspeakable horror. But don’t worry, darling, everything’s fine!
From our review:
Pugh’s performance is enough of a recommendation to see this shiny, smoothly finished movie-that-feels-like-a-movie. The production design, costuming, and cinematography are ravishing, and wielded with precision. Musically, it’s even richer and a little edgier, pitting crooning doo-wop and civilized jazz against John Powell’s unsettling, nervy score. In the space between these luxurious images and discordant sounds, you can feel a door opening to a thornier, more provocative film. But Wilde, anxious to make sure everyone gets the point, has nailed it shut.
Where to watch: Available to stream on HBO Max
Written and directed by Zach Cregger, co-founder of The Whitest Kids U’Know, this 2022 horror thriller stars Georgina Campbell (All My Friends Hate Me) as Tess, a young woman who shares an accidentally double-booked Airbnb with a polite (albeit odd) stranger (Bill Skarsgård). Things go about as well as you’d expect, though not exactly the way you’d think, as Tess finds herself caught in the grip of a nightmare that refuses to let her leave.
If Marcel the Shell With Shoes On is a feature-length Airbnb ad cosseted in the cozy shell of an emotional drama, consider Barbarian the antithesis of that.
From our review:
The horror movie Barbarian is best approached by an audience that knows as little as possible about it. The film’s trailer encourages this to a degree that may turn some viewers off: It divulges little beyond the film’s initial setup. Even in our spoiler-phobic times, keeping secrets makes sense for a horror movie — it’s simply scarier if viewers don’t know what’s coming. But the true test of a well-constructed movie comes when there are no surprises left. At the end of its 102-minute run time, with its secrets laid bare, Barbarian still has so much to offer. And part of that is something for viewers to be scared of beyond its initial ominous portrait of the quiet terror that can lurk inside a house when two strangers are forced together on a dark and stormy night.
Where to watch: Available to purchase for $19.
