A wide array of new movies have arrived on Hulu this month, including the 2022 hit film that announced “Resident Evil” director Zach Cregger as one of the horror genre’s most exciting new voices. The streamer’s other October additions include “Frankenstein” director Guillermo del Toro’s most underrated film and a body horror comedy starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley that already feels just two years after its release like a contemporary genre classic.
Here are the three best movies new to Hulu you can watch this week.
“Barbarian” (2022)
Writer-director Zach Cregger took the horror world by storm with “Barbarian.” The film, an alternately terrifying and gut-bustingly funny horror comedy, was obviously and lovingly made in the shadow of genre artists like Sam Raimi, and yet it stands on its own.
“Barbarian” follows a woman (Georgina Campbell) whose life takes an increasingly horrifying turn after she discovers the Airbnb she reserved was not only double-booked by a mysterious man (Bill Skarsgård) but also contains a strange and dangerous secret. To say much more would be to spoil the fun of a movie that, in the best way possible, takes you on the kind of rollercoaster ride the specifics of which you could never see coming.
“Nightmare Alley” (2021)
Four years after his 2017 film “The Shape of Water” won Best Picture and Best Director at the Oscars, writer-director Guillermo del Toro returned with “Nightmare Alley,” a black-hearted technicolor noir based on author William Lindsay Graham’s 1946 novel of the same name. Bradley Cooper leads the film as an ambitious carnival worker whose con-man ways slowly catch up to him after he begins selling himself as a honest-to-God clairvoyant.
An unwaveringly cynical, haunting drama about sin and the inescapability of identity, “Nightmare Alley” admirably commits to the corrosive darkness at the heart of its story. The result is a film that gets under your skin and stays there, and which ranks firmly as del Toro’s most underrated directorial effort.
“The Substance” (2024)
Speaking of movies that refuse to shy away from their most difficult elements, writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” is a wholly original, striking body horror comedy. Set in contemporary Los Angeles, the film follows an aging celebrity (Demi Moore) whose use of an experimental black market drug results first in the creation of a younger version of her (Margaret Qualley) and later in a vicious, self-destructive battle between the two of them.
Anchored by a career-best turn from Demi Moore and featuring one of the most unforgettably gonzo climaxes of any horror film in recent memory, “The Substance” takes its story as far as it possibly can. In doing so, Fargeat’s film manages to reach conclusions about the poison of ageism and our cultural obsession with youth that leave a lasting collective mark.
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