First Steps, Ballerina, and every movie on streaming this week

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland reunited for 28 Years Later, revolutionizing the zombie horror genre once again by combining it with a British family drama. The infected rush onto Netflix this weekend, and you’ll want to be sure to catch the film before 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple releases next year. For fans of a sillier form of horror, M3GAN 2.0 dances onto Peacock with the killer robot getting some upgrades to fight an even more dangerous AI.

The Fantastic Four jump from Earth 828 to VOD, offering another chance to catch up on the buildup for Avengers: Doomsday. The John Wick spinoff Ballerina makes its spectacular bloody debut on Starz.

Here’s a rundown of the most notable new releases on streaming and VOD, including the biggest, best, and most popular new movies you can watch at home right now.

New on Netflix

28 Years Later

• Genre: Post-apocalyptic horror
• Run time: 1h 55m
• Director: Danny Boyle
• Cast: Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jack O’Connell

28 years after the Rage Virus spread across Britain, survivors have eked out a community on an island only connected to the mainland during low tide. Worried about a mysterious illness afflicting his mother (Jodie Comer), 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) makes the dangerous journey to look for help in a beautiful and very scary world.

From our review:

28 Days Later’s successors like I Am Legend, The Girl with All the Gifts and The Last of Us have also focused on the ways the initial infection evolves, but 28 Years Later stands apart by never searching for a larger cure or answers. Like the original, the film is firmly rooted in deeply personal drama, focusing on the questions of how to remember the dead and what human endeavors will stand the test of time. One of the many evocative and uncommented on shots of the film features a church spraypainted with an apocalyptic message, tagged with the name of a man who presumably came long after. 28 Years Later argues that the world is always ending for someone – what matters is how you handle the end and whatever comes next.

New on Apple TV Plus

All of You

• Genre: Science fiction romance
• Run time: 1h 38m
• Director: William Bridges
• Cast: Brett Goldstein, Imogen Poots, Zawe Ashton

Black Mirror writer William Bridges co-wrote and directed the very Black Mirror-like All of You, which is set in a world where people can take a test to find their soulmate. Simon (Ted Lasso star Brett Goldstein) and Laura (Imogen Poots) have been best friends since college, but they put aside their feelings for each other and drift apart when Laura’s test matches her with another man.

New on Hulu

The Man in My Basement

• Genre: Thriller
• Run time: 1h 55m
• Director: Nadia Latif
• Cast: Corey Hawkins, Willem Dafoe, Anna Diop

Charles Blakely (Corey Hawkins) is about to lose his family home when the mysterious Anniston Bennet (Willem Dafoe) shows up on his doorstep offering to pay Charles a surprising amount to rent his basement. The solution to Charles’ financial troubles turns into a racially charged power struggle between the two men.

The Surfer

• Genre: Psychological thriller
• Run time: 1h 39m
• Director: Lorcan Finnegan
• Cast: Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Finn Little

Yet another film where Nicolas Cage portrays a character whose grasp on sanity is tenuous at best, The Surfer sees the Face/Off and Longlegs star playing a man who returns to his childhood home in Australia and finds his simple desire to go surfing with his son stymied by a group of locals who consider him an interloper. Unwilling to accept defeat, the surfer refuses to leave and loses almost everything.

Valiant One

• Genre: Action thriller
• Run time: 1h 26m
• Director: Steve Barnett
• Cast: Chase Stokes, Lana Condor, Desmin Borges

What was supposed to be a routine mission in the demilitarized zone goes awry, leading to a U.S. Army helicopter crew crashing in North Korea. Unable to get support and facing the constant threat of capture, a young sergeant must find a way to get his unit and a civilian tech specialist back across the border.

​​​​​​​New on Peacock

M3GAN 2.0

• Genre: Science fiction action
• Run time: 2h
• Director: Gerard Johnstone
• Cast: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ivanna Sakhno

Gerard Johnstone channels AI anxieties again in the sequel to 2023’s horror comedy M3GAN, swapping domestic horror for action. When the tech meant to create the perfect friend to a lonely tween is used in a military robot that tries to take over the world, the rogue robotic doll M3GAN (Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis) gets the chance to redeem herself by stopping the threat.

New on Shudder

House on Eden

• Genre: Horror
• Run time: 1h 18m
• Director: Kris Collins
• Cast: Kris Collins, Celina Myers, Jason-Christopher Mayer

TikTok star Kris Collins writes, directs, and leads this low-budget found footage film about a team of ghost hunting vloggers who get more scares than they wanted from their latest outing. Kris, who plays a version of herself, redirects the team from the cemetery they were planning on filming at to an abandoned house in the hopes of spiking her follower count with unscripted content.

​​​​​​​New on Starz

Ballerina

• Genre: Action thriller
• Run time: 2h 5m
• Director: Len Wiseman
• Cast: Ana de Armas, Anjelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne

Set between the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and John Wick: Chapter 4, Ballerina follows Eve (Ana de Armas), a ballerina/assassin/bodyguard on a quest for vengeance. Her mission puts her at odds with Wick (Keanu Reeves) himself as she kills her way through the franchise’s glamorous world battling cultists with style.

From our review:

While Ballerina’s wafer-thin plot leaves a thousand open questions about how this world could possibly work (honestly, another Wickiverse trademark), and several of the plot beats make no sense (like Winston casually breaking the rules of his vaunted, beloved assassin-safehouse hotel The Continental), in the end, most audiences are only really going to care about, and remember, Ballerina’s fight sequences. And while they aren’t all stunning — particularly in the draggy first act, as Eve learns to fight — the movie builds up to some sequences that stand out among the franchise’s most ambitious, wild efforts.

​​​​​​​New to rent

All the Devils Are Here

• Genre: Thriller
• Run time: 1h 30m
• Director: Barnaby Roper
• Cast: Eddie Marsan, Sam Claflin, Burn Gorman

A group of four thieves have just pulled a heist and are laying low in a rural home. But with too much time on their hands to indulge their vices and consider doublecrossing each other and their boss, tensions start rising as each of the criminals tries to figure out who they can actually trust.

​​​​​​​The Cut

• Genre: Psychological thriller
• Run time: 1h 36m
• Director: Sean Ellis
• Cast: Orlando Bloom, Caitríona Balfe, John Turturro

A boxer (Orlando Bloom) is given a chance to restart his career with a championship fight, but he has just six days to lose enough weight to be in fighting shape. With a brutal and dangerous regiment designed by his coach (John Turturro) he puts his health and sanity on the line for a chance at redemption.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps

• Genre: Superhero
• Run time: 1h 54m
• Director: Matt Shakman
• Cast: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach

Four astronauts were exposed to cosmic rays and returned to a retro-futuristic version of Earth with incredible abilities, using them to establish world peace as the Fantastic Four. But when an alien visitor (Julia Garner) declares that their world will be devoured by the ancient being Galactus (Ralph Ineson) the team desperately tries to protect their family and the planet.

From our review:

Apocalyptic stakes are nothing new for the MCU, though this film can at least milk some tension from the fact that since its setting is an alternate Earth, it doesn’t actually need to survive for the franchise to continue. The bigger problem is the tonal disconnect of inserting a galaxy-spanning threat into a movie that’s at its best as an intimate story about family bonds.

Went Up the Hill

• Genre: Psychological drama
• Run time: 1h 40m
• Director: Samuel Van Grinsven
• Cast: Dacre Montgomery, Vicky Krieps

A young man (Dacre Montgomery) returns home to New Zealand for the funeral of his estranged mother and meets her grieving widow (Vicky Krieps). When he agrees to stay with her, the dead woman possesses the two of them as a way to communicate, forcing them to grapple with their loss while fighting to survive.