As we slide right on in to October’s streaming season, its first weekend is on fire with multiple new releases. From the Josh Hartnett-led action flick Fight or Flight to the highly anticipated new season of Netflix hit anthology series Monster, these titles are guaranteed to be well worth your time. Besides, you know you’re curious. There’s even a Cillian Murphy movie in the mix.

Hunker down and watch these eight new shows and movies streaming across multiple platforms this weekend.

English Teacher (Hulu)

If you’re a fan of school-based sitcoms, and especially if you’re an educator, you must get into English Teacher. Its second season just landed on Hulu and, in my opinion, just made it one of the hit underdog series of the year.

Created by Brian Jordan Alvarez, who also stars as main character Evan Marquez, English Teacher is a witty, politically incorrect comedy created by politically correct people. It follows the personal, professional, and political aspects of working at an American high school that teachers face on a daily basis, through the eyes of Mr. Marquez.

Season Two has taken a giant leap up in writing and comedy, returning with its hilarious, nuanced ability to capture today’s teenagers in a high school setting while poking fun at the nu-woke without being pretentious or off-putting. It also features a great cast that includes Eric Colantoni (Veronica Mars) as the ever-frantic principal, Stephanie Koenig, of Lessons in Chemistry, as a history teacher desperate to be liked, stand-up comedian Sean Patton as the gym teacher, and the best-worst guidance counselor on the planet, Carmen Christopher (Friendship) as Rick.

English Teacher is currently streaming on Hulu.

Chad Powers (Hulu)

Glen Powell stars as disgraced quarterback Russ Holliday in Chad Powers, a new comedy series about college football, second chances, and facing the truth. Its premiere episodes dropped on September 30, and they’re surprisingly great.

As a bad boy college quarterback, Holliday makes a funny-after-the-fact, career-ending mistake in the championship game and, as a result, lives the next eight years of life defending that one moment, defined by it from head to toe. Things change, though, when he finds out the Georgia Catfish—it’s okay, you’re supposed to laugh—are holding open tryouts for a new quarterback. Being the son of an award-winning Hollywood make-up artist, Holliday disguises himself and walks onto the team as talented southern oddball Chad Powers, with the goal of making a comeback.

Chad Powers is an expansion of a 2022 sketch from Eli Manning’s ESPN+ show Eli’s Places, where Manning uses prosthetics and a wig, posing as Chad Powers, to try out for the Penn State football team as a prank. In addition to Powell, the Emmy Award-nominated Steve Zahn, of The White Lotus, stars as charismatic Catfish head coach Jake Hudson.

Chad Powers made its two-episode premiere on September 30 on Hulu. New episodes will be released weekly on Tuesdays until the season finale.

Fight or Flight (Paramount+)

Based on the trailer for Fight or Flight, I’d say that if you’re lookin’ for a good time, call Josh Hartnett, then get your candy and popcorn ready.

In this high-octane thriller from Transformers: Rise of the Beasts director James Madigan, Hartnett stars as Lucas Reyes, an exiled American agent and mercenary who accepts a job tracking a high-value asset. After following the target known only as The Ghost onto an international flight, Reyes realizes it’s full of assassins sent to kill them both, and he soon finds himself fighting to protect both himself and The Ghost instead of carrying out his mission.

Fans of the John Wick franchise will get a similar high-energy action fill, but you’ll have to wait and see about any takedowns with a hardback book to the face. Do expect an extreme amount of graphic violence, though, as well as some inventive action sequences. This is the movie that’ll inject some no-holds-barred fun into your weekend.

Fight or Flight is currently streaming on Paramount+.

Play Dirty (Prime Video)

An Amazon/MGM Studios Original film, Play Dirty is the latest comedy-action heist thriller from director Shane Black (The Nice Guys, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang). It is based on Donald E. Westlake’s series of Parker novels about a hardened career criminal and master thief, and it isn’t the first time a stab has been taken at adapting the character.

In this 90s throwback adaptation, Mark Wahlberg stars as Parker and The Changeling’sLaKeith Stanfield stars as Philly, both of whom are professional thieves. When they lead a heist at a racetrack count room and things go horribly wrong, they find themselves pitted against the New York mob—the absolute last place they want to be.

Play Dirty is an entertaining movie about the theft of already-stolen treasures in a plot to bring down a dictator. It features a solid cast, has its fair share of amusement, and boasts loads of imaginative violence. Starring alongside Wahlberg and Stanfield are Robert Downey Jr., Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Jane, Tony Shaloub, Upload’s Rosa Salazar, The Stand’s Nat Wolff, and Chukwudi Iwuji, of The Day of the Jackal.

Play Dirty is currently streaming on Prime Video.

Monster: The Ed Gein Story (Netflix)

Without a doubt, one of the most anticipated series with a new season arriving this year is Netflix’s Monster. Season three, The Ed Gein Story, is finally here.

Starring Charlie Hunnam, of Sons of Anarchy fame, as the titular grave-robbing Butcher of Plainfield, the series aims to be an authentic, tender, unflinching portrayal not just of who Gein was at the time but also, the actor told Netflix, “of who he was being at the center of it,” as opposed to the actions he was committing. Clearly, there’s psychosis there, and it stems from Gein’s bizarre, isolated, tortured upbringing by an alcoholic father and an abusive, religious zealot mother.

Monster: The Ed Gein Story won’t be an easy watch—his crimes were horrific. He was into necrophilia and dismemberment, and he even outfitted his house with furniture and flatware made from human remains, even making a bodysuit out of human skin. This will be a clear portrait of a deeply disturbed, mentally ill monster that chronicles his descent into madness while asking you to ponder whether true monsters are born or created. The new season will also head to Hollywood, where it will fold in Alfred Hitchcock (Tom Hollander, Pride and Prejudice), who was, at the time, working on Psycho. Emmy winner Laurie Metcalf, of Lady Bird, will star as Gein’s mother, Augusta.

Monster: The Ed Gein Story arrives Friday, October 3, 2025, on Netflix.

Steve (Netflix)

Right now, I’m pretty sure everyone will watch anything that has Cillian Murphy attached to it, and rightly so. He’s a master actor who’s capable of delivering any feeling and emotion through those baby blues, which have never glowed with the piercing intensity they did in the Peaky Blinders franchise, until now.

In Steve, Murphy plays a devoted head teacher at a reform school that serves as a last-chance sort of place for troubled teens. The problem for Steve is that, as he struggles to keep his unruly students in line, he’s also facing the pressure of trying to keep the school from closing while fighting his own mental health war.

Steve is set in the mid-’90s and centers on our titular character and a particular student named Shy (Jay Lycurgo, of Generation Z). The film’s narrative delicately intertwines Steve’s efforts with Shy’s internal conflicts and personal struggle to make sense of and relieve his vulnerability with self-destructive habits. If flawed, complex characters evoking raw empathy is what interests you, this is one gripping Cillian Murphy flick you don’t want to miss.

Steve makes its streaming premiere on Friday, October 3, 2025, on Netflix.

Bring Her Back (HBO Max)

‘Tis the season for all things horror, and HBO Max is a good place to start with that. This week, they’re adding the new movie from the Philippou Brothers, Bring Her Back. The divisive but harrowing film features a domestic nightmare scenario in a narrative that lodges itself under your skin and stays there.

Our story follows a visually impaired girl (Sora Wong) as she and her fiercely protective older brother find themselves under the care of a treacherous foster mother (Wonka‘s Sally Hawkins) after their father dies. They also find themselves in the middle of a horrifying occult ritual that’ll have you questioning how far you’d go for the chance to bring a loved one back from the dead.

Abandon the expectation of classic jump scares before venturing into this horror movie. As more of a dark, haunting tale of grief, the real monster here isn’t something tangible. It’s the loss that consumes us when something or someone we love is ripped from our lives.

Bring Her Back premieres Friday, October 3, 2025, on HBO Max.

The Lost Bus (Apple TV+)

Matthew McConaughey drives October’s lineup on Apple TV+ with new survival-thriller movie The Lost Bus, which takes audiences on a wild, white-knuckle ride through one of America’s deadliest wildfires.

Inspired by actual events, McConaughey stars as Kevin McKay, a wayward dad and bus driver who risks his life to rescue a teacher and her 22 students from a massive inferno surrounding their school. He was only supposed to take them a few miles to a rendezvous point, but due to worsening conditions, their trip became a five-hour odyssey to survive.

The Lost Bus is based on a San Francisco reporter’s account of the 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California, which was one of the state’s deadliest and most destructive fires. It destroyed the little town of Paradise. Starring alongside McConaughey as the teacher is America Ferrera (Superstore), and directing the film is Paul Greengrass, of the Jason Bourne movies.

The Lost Bus makes its streaming debut on Friday, October 3, 2025, on Apple TV+.

Whether you like to nerd out on true-crime adaptations, comedy series, or movies full of action, horror, and thrills, this first weekend of October covers the gamut of entertainment streaming-wise. Happy viewing, my voracious consumer friends!