Violent Night, Netflix’s JUNG_E, and every other movie you can stream this weekend

Seasons greetings, Polygon readers! This week sees Violent Night, the “Santa Claus meets Die Hard” motion comedy starring David Harbour (Stranger Things) as a not-so-jolly Saint Nick, lastly arrive to streaming on Peacock. Talk about seasonal drift! If watching the anthropomorphic embodiment of Christmas cheer murdering a gaggle of mercenaries doesn’t fairly sound like your thought of leisure viewing, to not fear— there’s tons extra new motion pictures to stream and hire on VOD this weekend.

JUNG_E, the brand new sci-fi motion thriller from Train to Busan and Hellbound director Yeon Sang-ho, arriving this weekend on Netflix, Alex Garland’s freaky people horror movie Men on Showtime, the horror-thriller Old Man starring Stephen Lang (Avatar, Don’t Breathe) on AMC Plus, in addition to current releases on VOD like Aftersun, The Menu, and Till for a decreased value.

Here are the brand new motion pictures out there for you to observe at house this weekend.

New on Netflix

JUNG_E

Where to observe: Available to stream on Netflix

Image: Netflix

Genre: Sci-fi/motion
Run time: 1h 38m
Director: Yeon Sang-ho
Cast: Kim Hyun-joo, Kang Soo-yeon, Ryu Kyung-soo

Set within the distant future, this new sci-fi motion thriller from the director of Train to Busan and Hellbound follows a legendary soldier whose thoughts is preserved after demise by her daughter and introduced again to life as a military of cyborg drones. When the unique thoughts yearns for freedom, she’ll should battle herself and an unscrupulous navy scientist in an effort to win her freedom and presumably humanity’s future.

From our evaluate:

JUNG_E opens with [an] thrilling battle scene, and closes with a much bigger, higher motion sequence, with barely cartoony however efficient (and when wanted, appropriately weighty) visible results. Yet it’s not precisely an motion movie. In the lengthy stretch between situations of mayhem, it goes by a number of world-building, contemplative drama, and some plot twists that deliberately undermine each the characters’ and the viewers’s expectations about the place the story would possibly logically be headed.

New on Peacock

Violent Night

Where to observe: Available to stream on Peacock

Image: Universal Pictures

Genre: Action
Run time: 1h 52m
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Cast: David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Beverly D’Angelo

David Harbour stars as Santa Claus in this motion movie from 87North Productions, the legendary Hollywood motion studio that introduced you lots of your favourite components of John Wick and other current motion classics.

From our evaluate:

Violent Night works greatest when it captures the warped sensibilities of early-’90s Chris Columbus motion pictures, notably Home Alone. It’s been identified so typically that it barely must be mentioned that the occasions of that movie are literally horrifically traumatizing and violent, and that Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister is a pint-size sociopath. Little Trudy Lightstone has a sadistic streak in her, too, and the movie’s most demented scenes are performed with an outsized sense of cheer that successfully creates a way of giggly discomfort. The distinction right here is that these moments are being engineered on function. The movie has enjoyable lobbing snarky one-liners and outrageous bloodshed on the viewers, however on the entire, Violent Night’s huge crimson bag of self-aware tips is overstuffed.

New on Showtime

Men

Where to observe: Available to stream on Showtime

Photo: Kevin Baker/A24

Genre: Folk horror
Run time: 1h 40m
Director: Alex Garland
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Rory Kinnear, Paapa Essiedu

Alex Garland’s 2022 people horror thriller stars Jessie Buckley (I’m Thinking of Ending Things) as a lately widowed girl who travels to a rural village within the English countryside to recuperate. Little does she know, nevertheless, the unusually all-male denizens of this quaint little city (all portrayed by Rory Kinnear of Black Mirror fame) are about to convey her face-to-face together with her biggest nightmare.

From our evaluate:

Men carries some echoes of other current horror movies, notably those constructed round small, telling aggressions that characterize bigger splits in society. It resembles Jordan Peele’s Get Out in some structural methods: Just as Get Out’s Black protagonist Chris clings to his cellphone contact together with his Black buddy Rod (Lil Rel Howery) as a lifeline when he’s out of his factor in a white nation enclave, Harper will get her solely assist through cellphone from her buddy Riley (Gayle Rankin), the one other vital girl within the movie. (Other notable similarities can’t be mentioned with out spoilers.) And the plush environs, gender rigidity, the concentrate on grief and methods to precise it, the boiling anger beneath the floor, and the resultant primal screaming all recall Ari Aster’s Midsommar, one other movie soaked in dread and a way of inevitability.

New on AMC Plus

Old Man

Where to observe: Available to stream on AMC Plus

Image: RLJE Films

Genre: Horror/thriller
Run time: 1h 37m
Director: Lucky McKee
Cast: Stephen Lang, Marc Senter, Liana Wright-Mark

Not to be confused with the 2022 drama thriller collection starring Jeff Bridges, this 2022 horror thriller follows the story of Joe (Marc Senter), a misplaced traveler who occurs upon the distant cabin of an aged man dwelling alone within the woods. Joe will get greater than he bargained for, because the outdated man has one thing way more sinister in thoughts than being a easy good samaritan.

New on VOD

Aftersun (decreased value)

Where to observe: Available to hire for $5.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: A24

Genre: Drama
Run time: 1h 42m
Director: Charlotte Wells
Cast: Frankie Corio, Paul Mescal, Celia Rowlson-Hall

Polygon’s No. 8 greatest movie of the yr, a powerful characteristic debut from filmmaker Charlotte Wells, is lastly out there to observe at house. I’ll let our blurb for Aftersun communicate for itself.

The human reminiscence is, famously, unreliable — defective to the purpose of being thrown out even when it’s your sworn testimony. Childhood reminiscences are maybe the very best instance of this: Even a small, remoted reminiscence can utterly change tone later when seen with the total spectrum of maturity, filtered by the prism of concern and care that comes with it. It’s a troublesome idea to wrap your mind round at occasions. And so Aftersun seems like a small miracle within the methods it not solely captures that scope however manages to border the entire idea with grace.

Young father Calum (Paul Mescal) and his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) are on a uncommon resort trip, a fading second captured by her on a clunky camcorder (not less than partially; you know what it’s like at hand a child a video digicam). While that plot is straightforward in building, the execution of it’s way more profound, capturing the wistful vantage factors of each Calum’s and Sophie’s experiences on vacation with equal, vivid readability. In Aftersun’s arms, reminiscence is simply as slippery because it’s all the time been. Sometimes conversations wash over Sophie and threaten to drown Calum; rising up is seeing the total image of their journey, and Aftersun is quietly devastating in its potential to seize that. It’s a testomony to the performances on the middle of it (Mescal’s compassionate weariness most of all) that the movie manages to recommend a lot with out overstating its level. After all, reminiscence could also be unreliable, however typically reminiscence — echoed in a grainy camcorder or the recollection of a heat embrace — is all now we have.

Blaze

Where to observe: Available to hire for $6.99 on Apple and Vudu

Image: Causeway Films/Bonsai Films

Genre: Crime/fantasy drama
Run time: 1h 41m
Director: Del Kathryn Barton
Cast: Julia Savage, Simon Baker, Yael Stone

This drama follows the eponymous Blaze (Julia Savage), an imaginative 12-year-old lady, who’s traumatized after inadvertently witnessing a lady being assaulted in an alley in her neighborhood. Cared for by her father (Simon Baker), she retreats into the safety of her personal fantasies as she makes an attempt to grapple with the horrors of what she witnessed and the better cruelties of the world at massive.

Kids vs. Aliens

Where to observe: Available to hire for $6.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: RLJE Films/Shudder

Genre: Sci-fi/horror
Run time: 1h 15m
Director: Jason Eisener
Cast: Dominic Mariche, Phoebe Rex, Calem MacDonald

Looking for some extra ’80s throwback sci-fi horror with a requisite synthwave rating à la Stranger Things? Well, take a gander on the new movie from Hobo With a Shotgun director Jason Eisener a few group of children whose raucous slumber occasion takes a flip for the more serious when bloodthirsty aliens descend on their quiet little suburb in a plot to take over Earth.

The Menu

Where to observe: Available to hire for $5.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu (additionally streaming on HBO Max)

Photo: Eric Zachanowich/Searchlight Pictures

Genre: Dark comedy/horror
Run time: 1h 47m
Director: Mark Mylod
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult

Anya Taylor-Joy (The Northman) stars reverse Nicholas Hoult (Mad Max: Fury Road) as Margot, a younger girl who’s invited on a “date” with a rich meals snob named Tyler (Hoult) to eat at Hawthorne, an unique restaurant owned by reclusive world-renowned chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes). It’s not lengthy, although, earlier than they notice that Slowik has one thing else in thoughts for them in addition to overpriced oysters and beef bourguignon.

From our evaluate:

The Menu typically reads like an expansive model of a single-set play, the place a gaggle of individuals compelled into shut proximity progressively crack underneath strain and reveal new issues about themselves. Plenty of what retains it going isn’t that stagey power, however the staging itself. manufacturing designer Ethan Tobman was impressed by all the pieces from Luis Buñuel’s devastating 1962 movie The Exterminating Angel (one other movie about smug elites who can’t escape every other) to German expressionist structure. He and cinematographer Peter Deming give the movie a harsh, punishing chilliness that emphasizes each the dearth of consolation or heat in haute delicacies and the state of Chef Slowik’s thoughts. It’s an appropriately luxurious and sense-driven movie, with one thing putting to have a look at in every body.

Till

Where to observe: Available to hire for $5.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Image: United Artists Releasing

Genre: Biographical drama
Run time: 2h 10m
Director: Chinonye Chukwu
Cast: Danielle Deadwyler, Jalyn Hall, Frankie Faison

Danielle Deadwyler stars in Chinonye Chukwu’s biopic drama of Mamie Till, the girl who campaigned for justice after the violent lynching of her son, Emmett Till, whereas visiting household in Mississippi.