Each week on Polygon, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.
This week, two of the biggest releases of the year make their debuts for rent: Inside Out 2 and Longlegs. Those movies probably could not be more different, but surely there’s a household out there renting both this weekend. Also of note: John Woo’s remake of his classic hitman movie The Killer launches on Peacock, an exciting new anime movie drops on Netflix, and Kevin Costner’s Western odyssey Horizon: An America Saga — Chapter 1 premieres on Max.
Here’s everything new that’s available to watch this weekend!
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix
Image: Netflix
Genre: Comedy
Run time: 1h 31m
Directors: John Chernin, Dave Chernin
Cast: Mason Thames, Ramon Reed, Raphael Alejandro
A teen comedy about one wild night during the first week of high school, Incoming follows four incoming freshmen who crash a party … with unexpected results. It’s the feature directing debut of brothers John and Dave Chernin, who wrote on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia together and co-created The Mick.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix on Aug. 25
Image: Toei Animation/GKIDS
Genre: Sports drama
Run time: 2h 4m
Director: Takehiko Inoue
Cast: Shugo Nakamura, Jun Kasama, Shinichiro Kamio
Legendary mangaka Takehiko Inoue (Vagabond, Slam Dunk) steps up to direct his feature debut based on his critically acclaimed coming-of-age sports manga. Picking up directly after the conclusion of the 1993 anime, The First Slam Dunk follows the Shohoku High School basketball team as they prepare for their biggest challenge yet: facing off against Sannoh Kogyo High for the inter-high school basketball championship.
Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu
Genre: Comedy
Run time: 1h 35m
Director: Theda Hammel
Cast: John Early, Qaher Harhash, Elizabeth Dement
A bizarre and ridiculous comedy about a man named Terry (John Early) spending quarantine in his ex-husband’s home in Brooklyn, all while trying to deal with a parade of unwanted visitors.
The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat
Where to watch: Available to stream on Hulu
Genre: Comedy drama
Run time: 2h 4m
Director: Tina Mabry
Cast: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Sanaa Lathan, Uzo Aduba
Adapted from Edward Kelsey Moore’s 2013 novel, The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat follows three lifelong best friends who have gone through it all and now face some new challenges. The stacked cast boasts Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Sanaa Lathan, and Uzo Aduba as those three friends, as well as Mekhi Phifer, Julian McMahon, and Vondie Curtis-Hall.
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1
Where to watch: Available to stream on Max
Image: Warner Bros.
Genre: Western
Run time: 3h 1m
Director: Kevin Costner
Cast: Kevin Costner, Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington
Giddy up, partners — Kevin Costner is back in the saddle with the first entry in a planned four-part Western epic! Horizon: An American Saga follows the lives of a group of families, pioneers, and missionaries during 15 years spanning the pre- and post-Civil War expansion of the American west. It looks like the second film in the tetralogy might take a little longer than expected to release, so you’ve got plenty of time between now and then to catch up on Costner’s ambitious dream project!
Where to watch: Available to stream on Peacock
Image: Peacock
Genre: Action thriller
Run time: 2h 6m
Director: John Woo
Cast: Nathalie Emmanuel, Omar Sy, Sam Worthington
Legendary action director John Woo returns with an English-language reimagining of his 1989 action thriller The Killer, this time starring Nathalie Emmanuel (Game of Thrones) and Omar Sy (Lupin). Emmanuel portrays Zee, a notorious assassin known and feared in the Parisian underworld as the “Queen of the Dead.” After refusing to kill a witness who was blinded during her latest assignment, Zee becomes the target of her former employers. Her escapades draw the attention of Sey (Sy), a savvy police detective with whom she reluctantly allies with.
It’s certainly a departure from the original film starring Chow Yun-fat, but hey: If Olivier Assayas can successfully remake Irma Vep nearly 26 years after the fact, why shouldn’t Woo be capable of doing the same with his own work?
Where to watch: Available to stream on Shudder
Image: Shudder
Genre: Horror
Run time: 1h 32m
Directors: John Adams, Toby Poser
Cast: Olivera Perunicic, Bruno Veljanovski, John Adams
This new and extremely gross horror movies comes from the husband and wife directing duo behind the excellent Hellbender. The plot follows a fracking crew that discovers the frozen remains of a French soldier from the Napoleonic Wars, whose flesh just happens to be hosting some kind of mysterious parasitic monster. Once the monster breaks free of its original host, it wreaks all kinds of disgusting, fantastically gory havoc on everything in site.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Disney/Pixar
Genre: Coming-of-age fantasy
Run time: 1h 36m
Director: Kelsey Mann
Cast: Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman
Nearly ten years after Inside Out became one of the most beloved Pixar films ever made, the sequel broke box office records to become the highest-grossing Pixar movie ever and the highest-grossing movie of 2024 by some margin. Set two years after the original, Inside Out 2 follows Riley as a13-year-old with new challenges and new emotions.
Pixar purists are certainly justified in feeling some anxiety about the way the studio has been committing to sequels and franchises lately, and how many of its more recent originals have lacked the old emotional magic that gave the studio its reputation and produced a stream of indelible, memorable hits. But Inside Out 2 is a good sign that the company is moving back toward its core strengths. It’s a sequel to a movie that didn’t call for one, and an expansion of a setting that took a lot of its initial power from the simplicity of its setup: five emotions, locked in conflict over an unprecedented new challenge. But the new movie earns its place in the Pixar pantheon with its creativity, its craft, and its heartfelt writing. It’s almost enough to make Inside Out 3: The College Years seem like a promising pitch.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Neon/Everett Collection
Genre: Horror-thriller
Run time: 1h 46m
Director: Osgood “Oz” Perkins
Cast: Maika Monroe, Blair Underwood, Nicolas Cage
Longlegs’ ad campaign may have sold it on the back of how ridiculously terrifying it is, but the best surprise of this Nicolas Cage led horror film that it also happens to be incredibly funny. The movie follows Maika Monroe as an intrepid FBI agent tasked with solving a series of cold-cases from a serial killer who never seems to actually visit the families he kills. Monroe is excellent in her role, but of course it’s Cage’s performance as the bizarre and titular killer, Longlegs, that truly steals the show.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Sideshow and Janus Films
Genre: Drama
Run time: 1h 46m
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Cast: Hitoshi Omika, Ryo Nishikawa, Ryuji Kosaka
Ryusuke Hamaguchi returns with a follow-up to his Oscar-nominated 2021 drama Drive My Car. His latest film, Evil Does Not Exist, follows the story of a widower and his eight-year-old daughter living in a remote village whose way of life is threatened by the arrival of a company that plans to build a glamorous camping resort in the nearby area. Does evil exist, and if it does, in what ways does evil takes shape in our everyday life?
Evil Does Not Exist leans toward a folk-horror tradition, as Hamaguchi slowly pivots away from dispassionate naturalism, building to an impressionistic, opaque finale. The provocation of the film’s title echoes through the woods, which the film begins and ends by regarding from below. Maybe that’s what the title is getting at. Maybe it’s a whisper echoing through and from the ground itself, about how foolish it is to believe that the earth, even in its stillness and beauty, has any regard for our moral attitude toward it. Maybe we ought to tread more carefully, and be fearful in our taking. Maybe evil only matters because we’re here to think about it, and when we’re gone, it will be too.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Genre: Horror
Run time: 1h 38m
Director: Damian McCarthy
Cast: Carolyn Bracken, Johnny French, Steve Wall
Oddity follows Darcy (Carolyn Bracken), a blind clairvoyant medium who’s grieving the recent death of her sister (also Carolyn Bracken). Not quite happy with the official story behind the killing, Darcy heads back to the crime scene and uses a (very spooky looking) wooden mannequin to psychically determine what really happened on the night her twin sister died.
Where to watch: Available to rent on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu
Image: Metro Films/Astute Films
Genre: Drama
Run time: 2h 32m
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Cast: Jalal Altawil, Maja Ostaszewska, Tomasz Włosok
Polish director Agnieszka Holland’s film won the Special Jury Prize at the 80th Venice International Film Festival and received condemnation from Polish government figures. The movie’s bracing portrayal of the Belarusian border crisis, and its story of refugees trying to find a better life in Poland and the steps the government will go to in order to stop them, has left a mark.
