The 30 Best Movies on Hulu Right Now

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

Hulu doesn't always get the recognition of competitors like Netflix and Max, but the streamer has an unfailingly reliable and rotating selection of theatrical films, as well as some impressive original releases. These are some of the best, buzziest, and/or most fun movies currently streaming on the service, across a variety of genres.

Summer of 69 (2025)

A surprisingly sweet coming-of-age comedy, given that it's about a young woman who wants to learn how to 69 (a sex position you might have heard of). Sam Morelos stars as Abby Flores, a popular game streamer who's shy in public and who hides her identity online. In her senior year of high school, she's ready to come out of her shell and hopes to make a play for Max, the guy she's had a crush on for years. With no sexual and little social experience, she visits a local strip club and makes friends with dancer Santa Monica (Chloe Fineman), whom she'll pay to be her sex and confidence coach. Despite her outward demeanor, Santa Monica isn't entirely feeling like a success herself; it turns out that the mismatched pals have a lot in common and a lot to teach each other. It's a solid directorial debut from SNL writer Jillian Bell. You can stream Summer of 69 here.

The Last Breath (2024)

In his final film role, Julian Sands plays Levi, leading a bunch of largely hate-able Gen Z divers out to the legendary wreck of a ship that went down during World War II. Among them is finance bro Brett (Alexander Arnold), who's convinced the grizzled sea dog (by paying him large sums of money) to take hold off on reporting the discovery of the wreck while he and his friends explore the site. If you didn't catch the giant hungry shark on the poster, you might be surprised to discover that the wreck is positively lousy with 'em, but there are human dangers down there as well. It's all entirely ridiculous, but also entirely fun if you're in the mood for bloody underwater action. You can stream The Last Breath here.

Anora (2024)

Writer/director Sean Baker (Tangerine, Red Rocket) has a long list of impressive film credits to his name, but comedy-drama Anora was the film that put him firmly into the mainstream, winning him a Best Director Oscar and the film a Best Picture prize. Mikey Madison (who also won Best Actress) plays the title's Anora, an exotic dancer whose life changes when she falls in love with the son of a Russian oligarch. It's all going very well until his parents show up to get their impromptu wedding annulled. You can stream Anora here.

Mission: Impossible (1996)

After nearly three decades of spy action and death-defying stunts (with Tom Cruise pushing that envelope even into his 60s), The M:I series is coming to an end this summer—so it's not the worst time to see where it all began, even if the tone at the start is rather different from where it ended up. Brian De Palma's opener is a far colder, more cynical and paranoid affair, with Cruise's Ethan Hunt accused of killing his entire team and eventually uncovering a legitimately surprising traitor within the U.S. spy apparatus. That memorable wire-dangling scene remains a series highlight, but it's just one of several stylish sequences that stand the test of time. You can stream Mission: Impossible here.

Tombstone (1993)

This '90s cult classic is a pretty good and stylish take on the events surrounding the famous, and frequently dramatized, gunfight at the O.K. corral involving Wyatt Earp and company—so frequently dramatized, in fact, that a totally different movie about the same events (called Wyatt Earp) came out within six months of this one. Tombstone has something none of those others had, though: the late Val Kilmer as the hard-drinking, idiosyncratic Doc Holliday. It's almost certainly Kilmer's most indelible role, and remains cinema's most memorable take on the tubercular gunfighter. You can stream Tombstone here.

The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat (2024)

One of those great Soul Food/Steel Magnolia-style tearjerkers, The Supremes stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Sanaa Lathan, and Uzo Aduba as three middle-aged friends who've been through the wringer together. Following the three virtually from birth, we find them facing a seemingly endless number of twists and turns (unplanned pregnancy, cancer, alcoholism, and more) with a lot of heart and plenty of humor. You can stream The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat here.

Thelma (2024)

This delightful indie comedy stars the brilliant nonagenarian June Squibb (Nebraska) as Thelma Post, a woman living alone in Los Angeles—she's got a good relationship with her grandson, but finds his doting a bit much. Still, when a phone scammer cheats her our of $10,000 by claiming that Danny's been arrested, she refuses to take it lying down. The police won't do anything, so she gets hold of old friend Ben (the late Richard Roundtree) and a gun, the two set off on a scooter to track down the scammer and get a little revenge. It's funny, but never gratuitously silly, and Squibb and Roundtree make for a fabulous cinematic pairing. You can stream Thelma here.

Longlegs (2024)

Oz Perkins, who more recently directed the Stephen King adaptation The Monkey, is the driving force behind this horror thriller starring Maika Monroe as a young FBI agent hunting the menacing serial killer known as Longlegs (Nicholas Cage). The murderer's trail has gone cold, but Agent Harker's seeming clairvoyance has put the two on a collision course, even though there's no evidence the suspect was ever even present at the killings for which he's apparently responsible. Stylish and nerve-jangling, with a predictably unhinged performance from Cage, it's a real killer thriller. You can stream Longlegs here.

A Complete Unknown (2024)

Another multiple Oscar-nominee (though it didn't take home any prizes), A Complete Unknown comes from director James Mangold, whose resume includes award-season faves like Ford v Ferrari, Wolverine and Indiana Jones franchise movies, and another Oscar-winning musical biopic, Walk the Line. In this one, Timothée Chalamet stars as Bob Dylan alongside Ed Norton as Pete Seeger, with the narrative rotating around the moment in 1965 when Dylan went electric, scandalizing the Newport Folk Festival and leading fans to question whether the voice of his generation had sold out. You can stream A Complete Unknown here.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

Awkward title notwithstanding, this fourth entry in the modern-day Apes series retains the technical mastery of its predecessors, as well as their revolutionary spirit, while also serving as a soft reboot that doesn't demand an extensive knowledge of what came before. Generations after the death of Andy Serkis' Caesar, human civilization continues to decline; Owen Teague plays Not, a young chimp forced from home when a tyrannical rival ape faction destroys his village over twisted and conflicting interpretations of Caesar's teachings. It's an impressive continuation of our smartest and most consistent modern movie franchise. Hulu has an array of earlier Apes movies, as well. You can stream Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes here.

The First Omen (2024)

These legacy sequels have been hit or miss—though more the latter than the former. If you had told me that a prequel to this long-defunct franchise would be one of 2024's more effective horror movies, I'd have looked at you the way everybody looked at Gregory Peck when he tried to kill his satanic kid way back in the 1976 original. But here we are! First-time feature director Arkasha Stevenson brings a ton of '70s period style and an appropriately paranoid vibe to the story of future antichrist Damien's birth, blending (extremely timely!) themes of bodily autonomy with genuine horror—and one of the freakiest birth scenes in movie history. You can stream The First Omen here.

Fire Island (2022)

Or maybe you prefer your gay flicks with more of a warm-weather vibe? A queer, contemporary take on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Fire Island also takes aim at the overabundance of fat/femme/Asian stereotypes in the gay community. Social commentary aside, it's also a funny, smart romantic comedy with a great cast that includes Joel Kim Booster (in the Lizzy Bennett role—he also wrote the screenplay), Bowen Yang, Conrad Ricamora, and Margaret Cho as a group of friends who travel each summer to the titular island—but this summer proves more dramatic (and romantic) than most. You can stream Fire Island here.

Triangle of Sadness (2022)

One of the darkest (and funniest) satires of recent memory, Ruben Östlund's wild film feels like at least three movies in one, with narratives that take sharp right turns at unexpected moments, taking potshots at greed and skewering capitalism all the way. A memorable central section onboard a luxury cruise ship divided between the haves (passengers) and have-nots (the crew) climaxes in literal explosions of vomit and shit. That's before a satisfying role-reversal inspired by Lord of the Flies. Brilliant and hilarious, if you've got the stomach for it. You can stream Triangle of Sadness here.

The Worst Person in the World (2021)

Renate Reinsve brilliantly plays Julie, a medical student—briefly—who has no idea what she wants to do with her life, and a complete fear of commitment to anything and anyone. She's that most frequently exhausting movie trope: a messy 20-something young woman, in ways that you've seen before in other, lesser movies. The Worst Person in the World, though, plays that for all it's worth, offering up all the joys of cinematic romantic dramas that we've seen before while feeling a bit more like real life. People are messy! It's all surprisingly sweet and life-affirming. You can stream The Worst Person in the World here.

Prey (2022)

Wild that the best Predator film since the first (and probably better still) was dropped as a streaming-only release on Hulu. Regardless of the movie deserving a theatrical release, Prey is a thrilling action movie that expands the Predator universe while also feeling deeply personal. Set in the Great Plains of 1719, Prey stars Amber Midthunder as Naru, a young Comanche warrior who winds up being the only person who can defend her tribe from the hunter from outer space. You can stream Prey here.

The Promised Land (2023)

In 18th-century Denmark, down-on-his-luck war hero Capt. Ludvig Kahlen (Mads Mikkelsen) hopes to turn his meager retirement pension into some kind of life for himself by cultivating a portion of a vast wilderness that no one else has been able to make anything of. A covetous local magistrate quickly finds himself threatened by Kahlen's reputation, with the intent of spoiling all his plans. The beautiful—but bleak and forbidding—Nordic drama plays out much like an old-school western. You can stream The Promised Land here.

The Woman King (2022)

Set in West Africa in 1823 and based on the real-life the Agojie (also known as the Dahomey Amazons), this historical action epic succeeds on multiple levels, but fun here is in watching the impressively swole Viola Davis lead a team of all-but-unstoppable African women warriors as they fight back against colonialist invaders. . Davis is General Nanisca, leader of the country’s army, forced to navigate complicated regional politics even though her skills, and the movie’s most exhilarating scenes, involve kicking slave-trader ass. You can stream The Woman King here.

Happiest Season (2020)

Never too early for the winter holidays! (Say many wonderful people who are definitely not me.) Hulu’s Happiest Season is, perhaps, not on anyone’s list of cinematic masterpieces. Very few (if any) films of the modern, Hallmark-style coming-home-for-Christmas genre would clear that kind of bar. Still, there’s a reason we love these things, and this one adds a bit of prestige to its charms in both cast (Kristen Stewart, Aubrey Plaza, Victor Garber, etc.) and directing (Clea DuVall). What’s more, the movie served as a high-profile torchbearer for queer representation in 2020, the year having kicked off a small but significant wave of LGBTQIA+ holiday films. You can stream Happiest Season here.

Deep Water (2022)

Adrian Lyne (9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction, and Indecent Proposal) returned to the director’s chair after an absence of two decades for this Hulu original. Ben Affleck is probably a rough equivalent in star power and sex appeal to the male leads of yore, and Ana de Armas is a good choice as a co-lead, even if the casting does remind us that age gaps in these movies will always favor the idea of an older man with a significantly younger woman. Here, Affleck’s Vic agrees to overlook his wife’s string of affairs in order to preserve his marriage, but then becomes the prime suspect when her lovers start turning up dead. It’s a solid setup (taken from a Patricia Highsmith novel) that doesn’t quite connect, but still serves as fun throwback to the golden age of sexy thrillers. You can stream Deep Water here.

Infinity Pool (2023)

Writer/director Brandon Cronenberg (son of David) brings a palpable rage and an unmistakable sense of style to this blend of sci-fi and horror, even as it muddies those genre classifications like the best of his famed father's work. A couple vacationing in a strange country leave their resort and run afoul of the law, only to learn that, for a price, they can outsource the punishment to clones of themselves. You can stream Infinity Pool here.

The Equalizer (2014)

2014's The Equalizer was the first of two ongoing, largely unrelated takes on the original 1980s TV series—a new CBS show starring Queen Latifah premiered in 2021. Given the success-to-failure ratio of reboots, finding success with two of them is no small feat, and it doesn't hurt the film version reunites Denzel Washington with Training Day director Antoine Fuqua. The setup is straightforward—former marine and intelligence officer Robert McCall is drawn out of retirement when a young woman he meets at a diner turns out to be connected to a world of sex trafficking and Russian oligarchs—but the plot is secondary to watching Denzel getting violent, action-packed revenge. You can stream The Equalizer here.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023)

A non-fiction work adapted as an action-thriller, How to Blow Up a Pipeline follows eight individuals committed to bombing an oil pipeline in two separate locations. The movie, like the book on which it's based, makes the case that property damage isn’t the worst thing in the face of environmental catastrophe, but that the level of commitment involved to carry out such an act takes a deeply personal toll. You can stream How to Blow Up a Pipeline here.

Midnight Kiss (2019)

Technically an episode of Hulu's Into the Dark anthology series, the feature-length Midnight Kiss finds a bunch of gay friends (and their straight woman friend) heading out to a gorgeous place in the desert for an annual tradition: They'll each pick someone at random to kiss at midnight. Old resentments bubble to the surface, egged on (unbeknownst to most of them) by a serial killer. It's no spoiler to suggest that they won't all make it to New Year's Day. You can stream Midnight Kiss here.

Perfect Days (2023)

Directed by Wim Wenders, Perfect Days represents a long-awaited narrative return to form for the director—it's easily a high point of his long film career, even with blessedly little plot to speak of. Kōji Yakusho plays Hirayama, a man in his 60s who follows the same routine every day: He wakes up in his modest apartment, grabs coffee from a vending machine, and sets out in his van to clean the public toilets of Tokyo. Perhaps it's a Japanese sensibility at play, but it's hard not to suspect that the American version of this film would come off as a melancholy tragedy; Hirayama's story, though, is joyful. It's a movie about appreciating the quiet beauty of everyday life, and the peace to be found in a beloved routing. It represents the first time that Japan ever submitted a film by a non-Japanese director for Oscar consideration. You can stream Perfect Days here.

Quiz Lady (2023)

Awkwafina and Sandra Oh star as two sisters is this wild road-trip comedy in the best tradition of '90s gems like Romy & Michele's High School Reunion. One is tightly wound, the other a complete mess. They're forced to work together to cover their mother's gambling debts, a problem complicated when the loan shark kidnaps a dog to hold hostage in exchange for the cash. Good thing Awkwafina's character is a quiz-show savant who drowned her childhood sorrows in binge-watching a Jeopardy-esque game show with a big cash prize. You can stream Quiz Lady here.

A Real Pain (2024)

Jesse Eisenberg (who also wrote and directed) and Kieran Culkin (who won an Oscar for the role) play a couple of cousins who reunite for a Jewish heritage tour through Poland as a means of honoring their late grandmother, and have to confront a more immediate family legacy along the way. A tonally deft blend of comedy and drama with a couple of excellent lead performances. You can stream A Real Pain here.

Decision to Leave (2022)

Like most of writer/director Park Chan-wook's films (which include Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, The Handmaiden), this one's tough to classify by genre. It alternately feels like a romance, a thriller, and a mystery—or all three at once. Insomniac detective Jang Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) doesn't miss a clue, until he starts to fall for (and then become obsessed with, Vertigo-style) a recently widowed woman (Tang Wei) who doesn't seem all that upset about her husband's seemingly accidental death. The mysterious and gorgeously directed film won Park Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival back in 2022. You can stream Decision to Leave here.

William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996)

After the director's phenomenal Strictly Ballroom, Baz Luhrmann broke into the mainstream in a big way by going back to the Bard. His signature style blends operatic beauty with hyperactive camerawork and a deeply '90s MTV milieu, shining a new light on one of the best known works of literary tragedy ever—with some help from then-teen heartthrobs Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. You can stream Romeo + Juliet here.

No One Will Save You (2023)

Kaitlyn Dever stars in this terrifying solo affair—she's very nearly the only actor in the whole movie. Brynn is a seamstress with a secret, one that's made her an outcast in her community and kept her living a solitary existence. Which both is and isn't to her advantage when aliens invade her town and her home—and these particular extraterrestrials produce parasites that allow them to take control of human bodies, so Brynn is used to being on her own when fighting to defend herself. It's a clever, largely dialogue-free thriller with a bit of Twilight Zone style. You can stream No One Will Save You here.

Alien: Romulus (2024)

An impressive return to xenomorph country from Fede Álvarez (Don't Breathe), Alien: Romulus proves that there's still a fair bit of life in this long-in-the-ovipositor franchise. An orphaned colonist on a relentlessly grim planet is, along with her friends, a virtual indentured servant to the ubiquitous Weyland-Yutani corporation—but there's an abandoned space station containing cryostasis equipment that would allow them to survive a journey away from the hellhole where they live and work. You might have guessed by now that the space station isn't entirely abandoned. Álvarez and company bring real horror back to the franchise, along with the evergreen reminder that major corporations are far eviler than hungry aliens. You can stream Alien: Romulus here.