The world is ending this weekend — on streaming. Sam Rockwell plays a time traveler recruiting diner patrons to help him stop the AI apocalypse in Gore Verbinski’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. Packed with a whole Black Mirror season’s worth of dark technology stories, this wild film is now available to rent. Meanwhile, This Is Not a Test, Adam MacDonald’s adaptation of Courtney Summers’ young adult novel, follows a group of teens trying to survive the zombie apocalypse while holed up in their high school. The mash-up of Dawn of the Dead and The Breakfast Club is shambling onto VOD.
Zootopia 2 smashed box office records, and the blend of sharp social commentary and zany chase scenes is reporting for duty on Disney Plus this weekend. The Fifth Element and Léon: The Professional director Luc Besson has made a ridiculous version of Dracula, where a mopey vampire is searching for the reincarnation of his lost wife. The undead prince is ready to seduce you on VOD.
Here’s a rundown of the most notable new releases on streaming and VOD, including the biggest, best, and most popular new movies you can watch at home right now.
New movies on Disney Plus
Zootopia 2
- Genre: Buddy cop comedy
- Run time: 1h 48m
- Director: Jared Bush and Byron Howard
- Cast: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Ke Huy Quan
When Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan) crashes the Zootopia centennial celebration and steals a historic book, the mismatched Zootopia Police Department partners Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) work to chase him down. But the case puts them against powerful interests who want to ensure secrets about the city’s past stay buried.
From our review:
Discrimination still very much exists within the multi-species animal city of Zootopia, and the duo of Hopps and Wilde are still fighting it. But returning directors Jared Bush and Byron Howard once again blend the high-concept political messaging about embracing diversity with a blitz of visual gags, pop-culture references, and endearingly silly characters that ensure Zootopia 2 never feels too preachy. The film moves at a breakneck pace, driven by several major chase scenes and a flood of jokes that come so fast that even if one doesn’t land, there’s something else to laugh at a moment later.
New movies on Paramount Plus
Not Without Hope
- Genre: Survival thriller
- Run time: 2h 1m
- Director: Joe Carnahan
- Cast: Zachary Levi, Quentin Plair, Terrence Terrell
Based on a true story, Not Without Hope follows a group of friends whose fishing boat capsizes in a storm off the coast of Mexico. Stranded at sea, the brawny buddies struggle against hypothermia, hunger, and thirst while the Coast Guard tries to stage a rescue mission.
New movies on Shudder
Bodycam
- Genre: Horror
- Run time: 1h 15m
- Director: Brandon Christensen
- Cast: Jaime Callica, Sean Rogerson, Catherine Lough Haggquist
When a domestic disturbance call turns deadly, two officers seek to protect their reputation by covering up their overly aggressive response. But the found footage horror escalates as the cops learn they’re being watched by a vengeful supernatural force and their badges can’t save them from what’s coming.
New movies to rent
Dracula
- Genre: Romantic fantasy
- Run time: 2h 9m
- Director: Luc Besson
- Cast: Caleb Landry Jones, Christoph Waltz, Zoë Bleu
After his wife Elisabeta (Zoë Bleu) is killed while he’s fighting the Ottomans, Prince Vladislav (Caleb Landry Jones) renounces god and is transformed into the vampire Dracula. He spends centuries searching for the reincarnation of his lost love, who he believes he’s finally found in 1889 France. Christoph Waltz plays a priest trying to end Dracula’s threat and save those he’s turned.
From our review:
It’s fun to see a classic monster story that’s not especially elevated. Besson has no particularly coherent thoughts about the humanity of monsters or monstrousness of humanity. He’s just made a stupidly sincere Gothic love story with some delightfully daft touches — a reminder that these monsters don’t have to be year-end awards contenders.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die
- Genre: Science fiction comedy
- Run time: 2h 14m
- Director: Gore Verbinski
- Cast: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña
A time traveler (Sam Rockwell) recruits patrons of a Los Angeles diner for a dangerous mission to stop the AI apocalypse in Gore Verbinski’s zany film that fuses Black Mirror and Terminator. While they wonder if the raving man they’re following might just be crazy, the volunteers are still willing to risk their lives to stop technology from doing more harm.
From our review:
Verbinski leans into various genre tropes to give Good Luck an anthology feel. In one sequence, a throng of high school students chase their teachers through the school like a horde of zombies. Another becomes a heartbreaking romance, while the grimmest flashback takes on America’s school shooting epidemic with a dark sci-fi twist, before somehow delivering the film’s funniest moment. Each of these vignettes builds on what came before, slowly painting a picture of a tech-addicted world where smartphones and algorithms have already sapped us of our humanity even before artificial intelligence ever poses a physical threat.
Islands
- Genre: Thriller
- Run time: 2h 1m
- Director: Jan-Ole Gerster
- Cast: Sam Riley, Stacy Martin, Jack Farthing
Tom (Sam Riley) spends his days teaching tennis at a resort in the Canary Islands and his nights partying and drinking. When Anne (Stacy Martin) asks him to teach her son, Tom can’t help but think he’s met her before. Things get even weirder when Tom takes her family on a tour of the island, wakes up alone on the beach, and discovers Anne’s husband has gone missing.
Resurrection
- Genre: Science fiction
- Run time: 2h 36m
- Director: Bi Gan
- Cast: Jackson Yee, Shu Qi, Mark Chao
Bi Gan’s surreal film is set in a world where humanity gave up the ability to dream in exchange for immortality. A shapeshifting monster called the Deliriant (Jackson Yee) has found a way to dream by living inside movies, and his memories provide a tour of 100 years of cinema spread across four stories.
This Is Not a Test
- Genre: Zombie horror
- Run time: 1h 43m
- Director: Adam MacDonald
- Cast: Olivia Holt, Froy Gutierrez, Carson MacCormac
When the zombie apocalypse breaks out, a group of classmates takes shelter in their high school. Sloane (Olivia Holt), a suicidal, abused student, suddenly finds herself fighting for survival as an intruder drives her group out of their sanctuary and forces them to confront the horror outside.
From our review:
Unlike the running zombies now inhabiting her town, Sloane shambles through the movie without any sort of urgency or intensity. She gets no clear character growth. Nor does anyone else in the movie — her classmates are all generic types who barely stand out as individuals. And as much as I wish I could say the movie leans into incredible zombie action or effects instead, even those aspects of the movie are wholly underbaked.
