Hulu subscribers may not have realized it yet, but the streamer shed barely any movies in September, and there are only a handful leaving at the end of October. That means most of your favorite films are sticking around. Hulu also recently added a lot of great titles this month. Our top picks for October include Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Edward Scissorhands, Unbreakable, and High Fidelity, but that’s just the beginning of what you can find.
You can find the rest of the best movies on Hulu below, and there are more films coming throughout October.
Subscribe to a different platform? Not only do we have a guide to the best new movies to stream, but we’ve rounded up the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Netflix, and the best movies on Disney+.
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Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
This movie will always be remembered as the one that introduced Captain Jack Sparrow. Disney has had some hiccups when trying to make its theme park rides into movies, but Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl nailed it on the first try. The credit for that goes to director Gore Verbinski, the screenwriters, and a fantastic cast led by Johnny Depp as Sparrow.
Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) is an orphan of low birth who has loved Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) his entire life. When Elizabeth is taken by Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) and his cursed pirate crew, Will makes a deal with Jack to rescue the love of his life. As for Jack, he only wants to put a bullet in Barbossa as revenge for stealing his ship and his crew. Barbossa has a different goal in mind: freedom from his curse. And he’s more than willing to spill blood to make that happen.
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Leave it to Tim Burton to make Johnny Depp weird. Or weirder, if you prefer. But there’s a real charm to Depp’s disarming performance as the title character in Edward Scissorhands. Poor Edward may look like a teenager, but he’s more innocent and naive because he never lived among normal people until his creator (as played by screen legend Vincent Price) passed away.
The late inventor left Edward with giant scissors for hands, which makes him stand out even more. The Boggs family takes Edward in, and he falls for their daughter, Kim (Winona Ryder). But while the people of town initially accept Edward, Kim’s jealous boyfriend, Jim (Anthony Michael Hall), does everything he can to turn everyone against his rival.
Unbreakable (2000)
It’s unfortunate that M. Night Shyamalan’s best movies came early in his career because The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable are an impressive one-two punch. His twists usually come at the end, and Unbreakable has one of those as well. However, it’s the twist that comes during the film that elevates it to another level. We won’t spoil what it is, but it changes the film from a thriller into something more.
Bruce Willis has a great turn as David Dunn, a man emotionally adrift from his family and facing a potential divorce. When David survives what should have been a fatal train accident unharmed, his wife, Audrey (Robin Wright), sees it as a sign to give their marriage another chance. Yet, a stranger named Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) sees David’s survival as living proof of a theory he’s chased his entire life. Elijah contends that David is more than just human, and that will send him on a journey that will redefine his entire existence.
High Fidelity (2000)
John Cusack’s Rob Gordon knows a lot about music in the rom-com drama High Fidelity, but he’s not as well-versed with the opposite sex. Rob never seems to have problems finding girlfriends like Laura (Iben Hjejle), yet he’s never been able to form a relationship that lasts, as music is the real love of his life.
When Laura finally leaves him, Rob is forced to question why he can’t get his love life together. That’s why he seeks out his former lovers to get their insight. Getting Laura back is going to be a lot harder than revisiting the past, especially if Rob doesn’t want to repeat the same mistakes again.
Date Night (2010)
Steve Carell and Tina Fey play a married couple, Phil and Claire Foster, who have lost the spark in their relationship in Date Night. They’ve got kids and a house, but their love life is DOA. So to spice things up, they live a little dangerously on their date night by impersonating another couple, the Tripplehorns (James Franco and Mila Kunis), who had reservations at a restaurant.
That leads the couple into actual danger when it turns out that the Tripplehorns have blackmail information on very shady men, including some crooked cops. The only way for the Fosters to get out of this situation is to locate the real Tripplehorns and find someone they can trust with the blackmail intel who won’t try to kill them for it.
Sicario (2015)
The director of Dune, Denis Villeneuve, and the co-creator of Yellowstone, Taylor Sheridan, teamed up for Sicario, a dark action thriller featuring Emily Blunt as FBI Special Agent Kate Macer.
While attempting to raid a cartel safe house, Kate witnesses the brutal deaths of two police officers. CIA officer Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) gives Kate the chance to strike back by joining a joint task force that’s letting the old rulebook fall by the wayside. By the time that Kate realizes that the CIA’s task force is going too far, she’s already in the company of a CIA-trained assassin Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro). Gillick is a good ally to have, but if Kate crosses him, then she’ll be taking her own life in her hands.
Us (2019)
For his second feature film as a director, Jordan Peele introduced audiences to the Tethered in Us. In the past, young Adelaide Wilson meets her Tethered counterpart, and she narrowly survives a murder attempt by her exact duplicate, Red.
Decades later, Red (Lupita Nyong’o) emerges to menace Adelaide (Nyong’o) and her husband, Gabe Wilson (Wilson Duke), as well as their children, Zora (Shahadi Wright) and Jason (Evan Alex). Gabe and the kids also have their own Tethered counterparts. The Tethered have lived in exile underground for years. Now, Red is leading them to salvation by urging them to slaughter their normal duplicates on the surface.
The Mask of Zorro (1998)
There haven’t been many Zorro movies since pulp heroes fell out of style, but The Mask of Zorro really is something special. Even a quarter century after its release, this feels like a modern swashbuckling action flick. Anthony Hopkins plays the original Zorro, Don Diego de la Vega, who has one last adventure before his life crumbles beneath him.
Diego’s nemesis, Don Rafael Montero (Stuart Wilson), takes everything from Zorro and leaves him imprisoned while raising Diego’s daughter, Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones), as his own. Don Diego finally sees his chance for revenge when he meets a renegade outlaw, Alejandro Murrieta (Antonio Banderas). Alejandro already has a grudge against Don Rafael’s right-hand man, Captain Harrison Love (Matt Letscher), over the death of his brother. Once Alejandro aligns with Don Diego, he trains to become the new Zorro in order to defeat their mutual enemies and save California from Don Rafael’s nefarious plans.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)
The Planet of the Apes films have been around since 1968, but there’s still a lot of life left in the franchise in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. This story takes place 300 years after the life of Caesar, as one tribe of apes has taken to raising eagles as companions. Noa (Owen Teague) is the heir to Eagle Clan, until his people are brutally kidnapped and enslaved by the forces of Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand).
Proximus has perverted the teachings of Caesar and installed himself as a tyrant. He’s also after Mae (Freya Allan), a young human girl who may be able to lead him to hidden tech and weapons. Both Noa and Mae have reasons to oppose Proximus, but can they bring themselves to trust each other enough to bring him down?
Immaculate (2024)
If you’ve seen one movie this year about a young nun at the center of an evil plan, then you’ve either seen Immaculate or The First Omen. There are definitely a lot of overlapping themes between them. But so you can keep them straight, this is the one that stars Sydney Sweeny as Cecilia, a woman who can’t wait to take her vows and devote herself to God.
Unfortunately for Cecilia, there are shady things happening at her new home in the Italian countryside. Someone believes that Sister Cecilia is the perfect candidate to play an important role in the future of the world. Cecilia doesn’t get to choose what happens to her body, but she will have to decide how to react when the truth behind her immaculate pregnancy comes out.
Rachel Getting Married (2008)
The name of the movie may be Rachel Getting Married, but Anne Hathaway’s face is the one on the film’s poster. Hathaway plays Kym Buchman, an ex-model and recovering addict who has temporarily been released from rehab to attend the wedding of her sister, Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt), to a man named Sidney Williams (Twisters star Tunde Adebimpe).
One of the first things that Kym finds is that there’s not a lot of forgiveness waiting for her on Rachel’s big weekend. Lingering conflicts with her sister, and their parents, Paul (Bill Irwin) and Abby Buchman (Debra Winger), threaten to derail both the weekend and Kym’s sobriety. She’s the odd woman out, and Kym may never fully be accepted by her family again because of her past sins.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
Collectively, the Coen brothers have a very strong lineup of films, but O Brother, Where Art Thou? is one of their few feel-good movies. The story is an Americanized remix of The Odyssey, with George Clooney as Ulysses Everett McGill. Ulysses is a prisoner who has convinced two of his fellow inmates, Pete (John Turturro) and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson), to escape a chain gang with him to find a treasure before a local area is submerged. Somewhere along the way, they become music superstars who are known as the Soggy Bottom Boys.
Yet what Ulysses really wants is his wife and daughters back in his life. And it’s going to take an act of God for that to happen. The music in this film is incredible, even if bluegrass and country aren’t really your things. The songs lend the film an irreverent tone, and it’s just a lot of fun to watch things play out.
Ford v Ferrari (2019)
Only the most enthusiastic race fans knew much about the fabled rivalry between Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) and Ferrari founder Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone) before director James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari. But the film explains why Ford held such a grudge against Ferrari before turning the story over to Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and a volatile race car driver named Ken Miles (Christian Bale).
Shelby and Miles are a pair of mavericks who have been tasked with building and designing a car that can match Ferrari’s top models in competitive racing. However, Miles is, to put it mildly, very abrasive, even with his friends. His attitude also earns the duo some powerful enemies within Ford itself who would love to sabotage their efforts. It’s going to take a battle of wills for Miles and Shelby to bring their dream car to fruition and ride it to glory.
Courage Under Fire (1996)
Denzel Washington stars in Courage Under Fire as Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Serling, a Gulf War veteran who is struggling with the knowledge that he accidentally killed his friend in a friendly fire incident. After his mistake is covered up by the military, Serling is tasked with determining whether Captain Karen Emma Walden (Meg Ryan) deserves to be the first woman to posthumously win the Medal of Honor for her heroics during the war.
As Serling investigates the circumstances around Walden’s death, some conflicting details emerge. Staff Sergeant John Monfriez (Lou Diamond Phillips) claims credit for her deeds, and Specialist Andrew Ilario (Matt Damon) isn’t talking. In order to find some measure of redemption for himself, Serling refuses to stop looking into Walden’s case until he finds the truth.
The Cable Guy (1996)
Even among Jim Carrey’s wild stable of characters, The Cable Guy’s Ernie “Chip” Douglas is particularly unhinged. And Carrey absolutely throws himself into the role after a guy named Steven (Matthew Broderick) takes advice from his friend, Rick (Jack Black), to bribe the cable guy and get extra channels for free.
Chip takes that as an invitation to be Steven’s new best friend, and he goes far beyond stalking to get the latter back together with his ex-girlfriend, Robin (Leslie Mann). Yet Chip has no concept of boundaries, and as soon as Steven tries to establish some, his cable guy “friend” sets out to destroy his life.
The First Omen (2024)
Depending upon whether you consider the made-for-TV movie Omen IV: The Awakening as canon, the story of The Omen has been over since the third film hit theaters in 1981. And yet The First Omen reinvigorates the franchise with a prequel set in the early 1970s before the events of the original film.
The film follows Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), an American who has come to Rome to train for a life as a nun out of her religious devotion. Almost from the start, Margaret finds herself targeted by a conspiracy that she doesn’t understand. The forces of evil have decided that Margaret is the perfect woman to bring the antichrist into the world, whether she wants to or not.
Bullet Train (2022)
Brad Pitt was 58 years old when Bullet Train hit theaters in 2022, and yet you can’t tell his age by looking at him. As Pitt has grown older, he’s also gotten a lot funnier, and this movie makes his character, Ladybug, the butt of a lot of the jokes in the film. Ladybug is an assassin who is very unlucky, to the point where he wants to leave the life of a killer behind him. But he’s roped into filling in for an operative on a Japanese bullet train for a supposedly easy job.
All Ladybug has to do is retrieve a briefcase full of stolen money and slip out of the train before anyone realizes it’s missing. It’s easy to say, and almost impossible to do when multiple assassins get on the train, each with their own agendas. Ladybug may not have been looking for trouble, but it’s found him. And there’s an even more dangerous threat awaiting everyone at the end of the line.
Bad Boys for Life (2020)
To paraphrase the immortal words of Danny Glover from the Lethal Weapon movies, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are getting too old for this bleep in Bad Boys for Life. That can’t be avoided when the sequel comes out 17 years after the second film. This does work to the movie’s advantage, as Detective Lieutenants Mike Lowrey (Smith) and Miles Burnett (Lawrence) clash over whether they should retire from the force.
Before they can think about stepping away for good, they’ll have to contend with someone from Mike’s past, Isabel “La Bruja” Aretas (Kate del Castillo). Isabel is the widow of a drug kingpin, and she’s sent her son, Armando Aretas (Jacob Scipio), to Miami to wipe out their enemies and get her revenge on Mike. And when Armando strikes, he strikes hard.
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
The end of the reboot trilogy arrives in War for the Planet of the Apes, and Caesar (Luther: The Fallen Sun‘s Andy Serkis) is no longer the idealistic leader he used to be. This is understandable considering that humans killed his wife and oldest son. With the Colonel (Woody Harrelson) making a final push to defeat Caesar’s tribe, Caesar plots to lead his tribe to sanctuary and avoid the war.
While attempting to lead the Colonel’s forces away from his followers, Caesar and Maurice (Karin Konoval) encounter a young mute human girl they call Nova (Amiah Miller). And despite Caesar’s reluctance to feel anything for Nova, her friendship may prove to be critical in the struggle against the Colonel.
Poor Things (2023)
Emma Stone won her second Oscar for Best Actress for her performance as Bella Baxter in Poor Things. Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) falls for Bella before he learns that a mad scientist, Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), brought her back to life with a newborn’s brain. That doesn’t dissuade Max from wanting to marry Bella, but she has other ideas.
Bella runs away with a lawyer, Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), so she can experience everything that the world has to offer her. Much like Max, Duncan’s influence over Bella only goes so far before she starts setting the agenda for herself, and no one is prepared to accept that.
Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Anatomy of a Fall was a five-time nominee at the Oscars, and the winner for 2023’s Best Original Screenplay. The story revolves around the death of Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis) and the discovery of his body by his son, Daniel Maleski (Milo Machado-Graner). Did Samuel fall from the attic in his home, or was he pushed?
The police soon openly suspect that Samuel’s wife and Daniel’s mother, Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller), attacked Samuel and pushed him to his death. Even Daniel doesn’t quite know what to think when the truth about his parent’s strained marriage is brought out to the open. Affairs and resentment are only a small part of why Sandra and Samuel were estranged. But it looks damning when one of the leading characters in Sandra’s new novel contemplated killing her husband in a similar manner.
Suncoast (2024)
Laura Chinn’s Suncoast is largely based on true events that happened to her and her family, but the movie does take some dramatic license with the story. Nico Parker stars as Doris, a teenager who is overwhelmed by the brain cancer afflicting her brother, Max (Cree Kawa), and from her attempts to deal with their mother, Kristine (Laura Linney).
When Max enters hospice care, Doris befriends Paul (Woody Harrelson), an activist who is fighting to keep a woman named Terri Schiavo hooked up to life support despite her persistent vegetative state and the wishes of her husband. As for Doris, she has to face the very real possibility that her brother will never come home from hospice.
Uncharted (2022)
Fans of the Uncharted video games may have done a double take when the MCU’s Spider-Man, Tom Holland, was cast as a much younger version of adventurer Nathan “Nate” Drake. The Uncharted movie is an alternate take on Nate’s origin story and how he formed a partnership with Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg), a treasure hunter who claims to have been the partner of Nate’s missing brother, Sam Drake (Rudy Pankow).
In the way of Nate and Sully’s first expedition is Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas), a very wealthy man who hires Jo Braddock (Tati Gabrielle) and her mercenaries to take out anyone in their path. Nate and Sully only have Chloe Frazer (Sophia Ali) to call upon for help, but even she may be less than trustworthy.
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
If Quentin Tarantino is serious about making only one more movie, then his penultimate film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, will go down as one of his best pictures. In this alternate version of history, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a faded Hollywood star, and his best friend and bodyguard, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), is a dangerous man with a murky past. Rick is desperate for a comeback, and his opportunities are drying up.
Meanwhile, Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) is on the rise as a prominent actress, unaware that the Manson family’s violent ambitions may mean the death of her. Tarantino creates so much tension whenever the Mansons menace any of the three leads in this film that the inevitable violence is almost cathartic when it finally arrives.
Quiz Lady (2023)
Quiz Lady features a unique pairing of Awkwafina and Sandra Oh as sisters Annie and Jenny Yum, respectively. When their mother flees the country to avoid a gambling debt, the struggling Jenny moves back home with her younger sister. While Annie effortlessly answers the questions as she watches a TV game show, Jenny films it and later posts it online where it goes viral.
This attracts the wrong kind of attention to Annie’s talent, as a criminal kidnaps the family dog to blackmail Annie into going on the game show in order to cover her mother’s debt and get their pet back. What Annie doesn’t realize is that Jenny also has other ulterior motives to get her sister on TV.
A Haunting in Venice (2023)
Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot is accustomed to murder mysteries, but less so to ghosts in A Haunting in Venice. Just two years after World War II, Poirot is ready to put his life as a detective in the past. However, Poirot just can’t resist the opportunity to unmask a fraud when he is invited to attend a seance held by Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh).
It doesn’t take Poirot long to figure out how Joyce pulls off her supposedly supernatural tricks. But much to Poirot’s alarm, someone soon tries to murder him before Joyce’s body is discovered. Now, Poirot has to figure out if he is dealing with a conventional murderer, or something more sinister from beyond the grave.
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
The curse of Jumanji returns for a new generation of characters in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Now transformed into a video game, Jumanji entices four teenagers – Spencer Gilpin (Alex Wolff), Anthony “Fridge” Johnson (Ser’Darius Blain), Bethany Walker (Madison Iseman), and Martha Kaply (Morgan Turner) – into playing without fully understanding the consequences of their decision.
Suddenly, the group finds themselves physically transported into the game, with Spencer in the body of Dr. Xander “Smolder” Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), Fridge as Franklin “Mouse” Finbar (Kevin Hart), Bethany as Professor Sheldon “Shelly” Oberon (Jack Black), and Martha as Ruby Roundhouse (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3‘s Karen Gillan). Each of the kids has only three lives to escape from Jumanji. But first, they have to locate the fifth player in their group.
No One Will Save You (2023)
Kaitlyn Dever stars in the Hulu original movie No One Will Save You as Brynn, a young woman who lives a solitary existence in large part because she is a pariah in her small town. That’s one of the reasons why Brynn has no one to turn to when an alien invades her home. In the aftermath, Brynn finds no support from her fellow humans, and she discovers just how alone she really is.
No One Will Save You barely has any dialogue at all, but Dever’s expressive and earnest performance carries the entire film. It also goes a long way toward making little gray men scary again, especially when Brynn meets the more horrific aliens.
Flamin' Hot (2023)
What do you do when there’s a true story that may not be true? As was famously said in the 1962 Western classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” The story of Flamin’ Hot is truly inspirational regardless of whether these events actually played out this way in reality. The film is based on the memoir of Richard Montañez (Jesse Garcia), the man who claims that he created Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. And he didn’t do it alone.
With the support of his wife, Judy Montañez (Annie Gonzalez), and his co-worker, Clarence C. Baker (Dennis Haysbert), Richard rises from the rank of janitor and works up the nerve to pitch his Flamin’ Hot ideas to Frito-Lay executive Roger Enrico (Tony Shalhoub). From there, a snack food legend is born.
Something in the Dirt (2022)
An exciting example of the kind of narrative ingenuity that only a worldwide pandemic can foster, Something in the Dirt is the latest film from writer-director duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (The Endless, Synchronic), and is arguably the most primitively fascinating work of these two collaborators. Shot over the course of a year with a crew of just 12, our story follows Levi and John, apartment-dwelling neighbors who decide to make a documentary about a range of supernatural events occurring in their Los Angeles residence. But as the two men discover that these kinds of extraordinary happenings are taking place all over L.A., their findings lead them to a combative exchange of theories and calculations.
Ultrasound (2022)
In director Rob Schroeder’s Ultrasound, Mad Men alum Vincent Kartheiser stars as Glen, an unassuming everyman who just so happens to encounter some car trouble on a dark and stormy night. Seeking some help, he knocks on the door of a perfectly kind stranger named Arthur (Bob Stephenson), leading the former down an uncanny rabbit hole of deceit and mind control. Presenting a nail-biter of a story without diving into carnage and other typical screen grabs, Ultrasound does its best work as a quietly curious foray into a world that’s hard to pin down.
The Last Tourist (2021)
Hellraiser (2022)
It’s about time the world of Hellraiser received some much-needed reimagining. For years now, the franchise has seen sequel after sequel, and while Cenobite fans are always pleased to see Doug Bradley donning his Pinhead garb, the series has certainly run into its fair share of cinematic duds. But director David Bruckner has come along to get the saga on track once more. The 2022 remake stars Odessa A’zion as Riley, an on-the-mend drug addict who comes into the possession of a runic puzzle box — a mysterious device that summons an armada of hellish entities. Led by the Hell Priest (Jamie Clayton), Odessa is plunged into a fight for survival when the demonic visitors begin wreaking havoc in the real world. Bruckner’s Hellraiser reboot may not satisfy all of the saga’s diehards, but when you consider it as a gruesome yet polished homage to Clive Barker’s source novella and first batch of films, the 2022 version more than gets the job done.