Hulu’s October programming schedule is full of scary movies, but the streamer offers more than just straightforward scares this month.
Watch With Us has culled through Hulu’s library and selected three underrated movies for you to watch this weekend.
Action fans will love seeing Charlize Theron kick some KGB ass in Atomic Blonde, while they’ll also dig seeing Frank Grillo take on an army of vicious lycans in Werewolves.
Last but not least, good thrillers never go out of style, which is why you should watch the ‘90s suspense classic The Hand That Rocks the Cradle before the forthcoming remake ruins it.
‘Atomic Blonde’ (2017)
Sometimes, too much style is enough to compensate for little substance, and that’s certainly the case with Atomic Blonde. The 2017 action film is set in the late 1980s, before the Berlin Wall was torn down, and stars Charlize Theron as Lorraine Broughton, an expert MI6 agent who is sent to Germany to retrieve The List, a top-secret document that contains the real names of all the spies in Berlin. The KGB wants it for nefarious reasons, and Lorraine is the only agent smart and wily enough to stop them. But someone from within MI6 may be sabotaging her, and she’ll have to find out who it is before she’s removed from the mission — or worse.
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Atomic Blonde wants to be a smart, Cold War-era spy thriller like John Le Carre, but it plays more like a less frantic Michael Bay movie. That’s OK when you have a talented cast that consists of James McAvoy as Lorraine’s fellow MI6 agent and John Goodman as a CIA agent with hidden motives. Best of all is Theron, who is one of the few actresses working who can make a stock action heroine soulful and sexy at the same time.
Atomic Blonde is streaming on Hulu.
‘Werewolves’ (2024)
You wouldn’t know it, but Frank Grillo is the hardest-working man in show business. In addition to appearing as Rick Flagg Sr. in Superman and Peacemaker season 2, the New York native has headlined numerous low-budget genre films throughout his career, with no less than five in 2024 alone. One of them is Werewolves, a horror/action hybrid that is as basic — but effective — as it sounds. In the movie, the world has been taken over by werewolves thanks to a supermoon, and a select few humans race against time to find a cure.
Grillo stars as Wesley Marshall, a molecular biologist who can also kick some butt thanks to his military background. He’s developed a serum called “Moonscreen” that prevents the moonlight from turning ordinary humans into rampaging werewolves. Since the serum is untested, someone needs to be a human guinea pig to see if it works. Wesley’s willing to do it, but with precious hours left before the next supermoon hits, there may not be enough time left before he and the rest of humanity face extinction.
Werewolves is absurd and schlocky, but it’s also tremendous fun. The ridiculous premise is played straight by Grillo and the rest of the cast, and the action sequences are surprisingly well done with an obviously low budget. Werewolves is a pleasing throwback to mid-’80s genre pictures like The Hidden with Kyle MacLachlan, so if corny, bloody action is your thing, watch Werewolves.
Werewolves is streaming on Hulu starting on Oct. 4.
‘The Hand That Rocks the Cradle’ (1992)
Don’t mess with Peyton Flanders (Rebecca De Mornay). After she miscarries her baby due to a pending sexual harassment lawsuit against her husband that causes him to kill himself, she vows revenge on his accuser, Claire Bartel (Annabella Sciorra). She poses as a nanny and quickly insinuates herself into her family, gradually turning her little daughter, Emma (Madeline Zima), against her and even her husband, Michael (Matt McCoy). Claire eventually suspects Peyton is slowly taking over her family, but is there anything she can do about it before the evil nanny pushes her out of her own home — permanently?
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A big box office hit in 1992, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is about to be remade as a straight-to-streaming movie on Hulu. Nothing beats the original, though, or De Mornay’s fantastically wicked performance. As a Mary Poppins from hell, Peyton is one of the great ‘90s movie villains and gives even Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter a run for his money as an unredeemable baddie.
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is streaming on Hulu.
