Glen Powell is fleeing from trained killers as part of a depraved game show in Edgar Wright’s The Running Man, which rushed onto Paramount Plus this week. Meanwhile, Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage shows just how funny he can be in the title role of The Toxic Avenger, which is available on Hulu.
Horror fans can catch Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s absurd slasher flick Bone Lake on Netflix, or The Black Phone 2, which is much scarier than the original, on Peacock.
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 on Netflix
Bone Lake
- Genre: Erotic thriller
- Run time: 1h 34m
- Director: Mercedes Bryce Morgan
- Cast: Maddie Hasson, Alex Roe, Andra Nechita
Director Mercedes Bryce Morgan wanted to be sure no one took Bone Lake seriously. The campy, gory film follows a couple whose romantic weekend is crashed by another duo who put their relationship to the test by encouraging infidelity. But the stakes aren’t just erotic — the mysterious interlopers are also serial killers.
One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things Season 5
- Genre: Documentary
- Run time: 2h 2m
- Director: Martina Radwan
Learn how the final season of Stranger Things was made with behind-the-scenes footage of its biggest fight scenes, the construction of its massive sets, Jamie Campbell Bower getting into his Vecna costume, and the writers room debating how to end things. The documentary features some surprising stories and lots of tears.
The Rip
- Genre: Action thriller
- Run time: 2h 13m
- Director: Joe Carnahan
- Cast: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Steven Yeun
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck star as a pair of corrupt Miami cops who plan to steal millions of dollars they find in a stash house in this thriller based on real events. But their big payday gets the attention of people outside their crew, making them worry if there’s a snitch in their midst.
New on Hulu
Toxic Avenger
- Genre: Superhero comedy
- Run time: 1h 43m
- Director: Macon Blair
- Cast: Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay, Taylour Paige
Macon Blair’s remake of the 1984 Troma film took almost two years to get a wider release after its 2023 Fantastic Fest premiere. It was worth the wait to see Peter Dinklage’s mutated heroic janitor battle a corrupt pharmaceutical exec (Kevin Bacon), with plenty of humor and over-the-top deaths.
New on Paramount Plus
The Running Man
- Genre: Dystopian science fiction
- Run time: 2h 13m
- Director: Edgar Wright
- Cast: Glen Powell, William H. Macy, Lee Pace
Desperate for money for medicine for his daughter, Ben Richards (Glen Powell) enters a reality competition where he’ll win $1 billion dollars if he can survive being hunted by both trained killers and regular people for 30 days. But the game is rigged, and Ben has to take the fight to the Network.
From our review:
The film never fully gels, either as a righteous piece of eat-the-rich pop-culture escapism, or as sharper cultural commentary. The action beats are familiar and predictable. The small touches of futuristic world-building (like the Network’s hovering camera/gun drones) are minimal, understated, and generic, never used cleverly or to a larger point. Powell turns in a winning, sympathetic, and certainly game performance as Richards, a man pushed to the brink by his limited options and the need to protect his family. But while the early going does a convincing job of painting him as both dangerously angry and dangerously kind, prone to helping other people in ways that consistently get him into trouble, he becomes more and more anonymous and standard-issue-action-hero as the story goes on.
New on Peacock
Black Phone 2
- Genre: Supernatural horror
- Run time: 1h 54m
- Director: Scott Derrickson
- Cast: Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Ethan Hawke
Writer-director team Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill get much more ambitious with their sequel to the 2021 low-budget horror hit The Black Phone. Four years after he was abducted by a masked serial killer (Ethan Hawke), Finn (Mason Thames) and his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) are grappling with their psychic abilities and what they owe to the dead people who keep calling.
New on Shudder
Beast of War
- Genre: Thriller
- Run time: 1h 27m
- Director: Kiah Roache-Turner
- Cast: Mark Coles Smith, Joel Nankervis, Sam Delich
When their ship sinks while crossing the Timor Sea, a group of Australian World War II soldiers are left struggling to survive on a life raft. As they hope for rescue, try to avoid detection by enemy troops, and fight amongst themselves, they also find themselves stalked by a hungry great white shark.
Killer Whale
- Genre: Thriller
- Run time: 1h 29m
- Director: Jo-Anne Brechin
- Cast: Virginia Gardner, Mel Jarnson, Mitchell Hope
A luxury vacation to Thailand turns into a nightmare for best friends Maddie (Virginia Gardner) and Trish (Mel Jarnson). Looking to relax in a secluded lagoon, they find themselves trapped by an abused killer whale who has escaped captivity and is out for blood.
New to rent
Dust Bunny
- Genre: Horror
- Run time: 1h 46m
- Director: Bryan Fuller
- Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Sophie Sloan, Sheila Atim
Hannibal and Pushing Daisies showrunner Bryan Fuller makes his directorial debut by reuniting with Mads Mikkelsen for a dark fairy tale about an 8-year-old girl (Sophia Sloan) who hires her hitman neighbor (Mikkelsen) to kill the monster under her bed. The two form an unlikely bond that makes the film both sweet and disturbing.
From our review:
While Dust Bunny scales down the gore and guts one might expect from Fuller, who used so much fake blood on Hannibal that mold started to grow on the set, Fuller hasn’t softened his razor-sharp edges, either. He likes to twist audience expectations, and while his script very much leans into kid horror, Dust Bunny makes an incredibly mundane thing — a literal dust bunny under Aurora’s bed — feel like a loaded gun.
