Every night in the darkest, most depressing depths of the pandemic, one TV show, which I watched over and over, helped get me through. Midnight Diner, a series on Netflix set in a Tokyo restaurant, became a healing balm and a reminder of the warmth of being around people.
The chef at this izakaya, referred to only as “Master,” cooks surrounded by a service counter on three sides, at which loyal regulars sit bathing in each others’ company. Perhaps thought of as a quirky cousin to the 1980s NBC sitcom Cheers, every episode tells a sweet, sad, or occasionally heartbreaking story. Master, a man of few words with a mysterious scar on his face, is like their conscience and a confidant, helping make sense of the world. Characters are kind, quirky, and loyal.
As a taxi glides dreamily through the Shinjuku neighborhood in the opening credits, Master gives a little voice-over: “When people finish their day and hurry home, my day starts … My diner is open from midnight to seven in the morning. They call it ‘Midnight Diner.’ Do I even have customers? More than you would expect.”
A little research confirmed that the izakaya in the show is wholly fictitious, yet I wanted to believe a place with that kind of food and that kind of feeling was real. On a recent trip to Tokyo, I set out to find one just like it.
“An Ideal in Your Heart”
I start seeing elements of what I hoped to find surprisingly quickly. I immediately find a postage-stamp-sized bar in my neighborhood where people are friendly and curious. At my first dinner out at an izakaya in the Nakano neighborhood, the food is surprisingly good for a casual spot: generous and unfussy sashimi, fish collar, smashed cucumbers with sesame, seared mushrooms, and an Asahi Super Dry or two. The busy, cheery waitstaff still takes the time to help me navigate the menu.
Barely 24 hours into my trip, I meet restaurant reviewer Mackey Makimoto at Toranomon Yokocho, a multi-restaurant project he has helped put together that’s like a food court in heaven. He’s sporting a short-brimmed fedora and is talking with a chef when I arrive with my fixer and translator, Mai Nomura. Over fried chicken, grilled sardines, fried oysters, and fried tofu, we bond over a love of Midnight Diner, but my first real question for him is whether a place like that exists.
Zack Snyder doesn’t seem to be all that worried about AI disrupting the filmmaking world, bringing scores of novices to the fold. At WIRED’s The Big Interview event in San Francisco on Tuesday, the director told managing editor Hemal Jhaveri that “every single person has a pretty good movie camera on their phone and yet we don’t have—right this second, anyway—millions of awesome movies being uploaded out of peoples’ pockets.”
That doesn’t mean he thinks Hollywood creatives can avoid AI altogether. “Educating yourself and understanding what it can and can’t do is important right now, especially where it exists in image-making and storytelling,” Snyder said. “You have to understand what it is and what it’s not capable of, and you have to be able to use it as a tool as opposed to standing on the sidelines with your hands on your hips.”
While Snyder says he still sometimes questions the “why” of AI filmmaking, asking what the point of using the technology would be if you just want to shoot footage of someone sitting in a chair in a living room, for instance, he also acknowledges the technology’s potential to make some shots more accessible. “AI doesn’t care if a house is on fire or if it’s on Mars or whether it’s underwater,” he told Jhaveri. “All the things that might cost a filmmaker a lot of money to shoot are, to the AI, no different.”
Snyder says he’s especially intrigued by the idea of an AI that could understand a movie or filmmaker’s aesthetic core, like if he was able to shoot an actor’s performance and then sync it up with a production designer-created world of sets in some sort of “aesthetic bank.” If an AI could understand what he truly wants—the “motes of dust,” a backlight, overall set design—rather than just convey its interpretation of what it thinks he’s asking, then, he thinks, “the concept is pretty awesome.”
As a director who’s made a number of movies, superhero and otherwise, with a massive range of VFX, Snyder says he’s no stranger to “a very virtual world when it comes to filmmaking.” Still, he says, he’s always seen artistic performance at the front of what we eventually see on screen. Everything that’s not an actor is just “context,” he says.
“My favorite movies are the ones where I can feel the director’s hand. I want that human point of view to be moving me in a narrative way through a story in a way I wouldn’t have thought of or couldn’t imagine what would happen next,” Snyder says. “As audiences, that’s what we pay for and that’s what we hunger for. How we get to that very human thing, though … well, that could change.”
How audiences see movies could also change, Snyder says, acknowledging that streamers like Netflix have become an absolute juggernaut in the cinematic world. Movies and shows he’s made for the platform have been seen by millions more eyes than might have seen them in the theater, he asserts, and even films classified as “blockbusters” have and will undoubtedly draw a bigger audience if they’re on a bigger streaming service than they would at the box office.
As a director, Snyder says, as long as he’s aware that he’s making something that’s exclusively for streaming, then he’s up for the challenge. “It feels rude to say that I’m not an artist if my movie isn’t in the theater,” he told Jhaveri. “If you’re the streamer, you’re paying for the movie, and if you say, ‘This is our format and 250 million people are going to look at it on their phones, probably’ at the very beginning of our conversation, then I have to know that’s the reality. And if that’s the case, then I should be fine with everything that happens afterwards.”
A lot has changed in the past few years when it comes to holiday traditions. Yet one thing hasn’t: gathering around the TV to watch new and classic movies with family and friends. The problem, if it can be called a problem, is that with each new streaming service comes a shift in which streamers offer what films. We’re here to help—and give you a quick and handy guide to a few holiday gems you may never have seen before. Below are 15 titles sure to get even the grinchiest of revelers into the holiday spirit.
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Hot Frosty
Yes, Hallmark Channel is the premiere destination for holiday rom-coms about people who in quaint towns who find love and drink from giant mugs at the holidays. Still, one should never discount Netflix’s ability to eke out a new niche in a market already saturated with cozy movies starring Lacey Chabert. That niche? A little something we like to call Too Horny for Hallmark. In Hot Frosty, Chabert plays a widow and diner owner who throws her scarf around a, uh, very well-sculpted snowman (Dustin Milligan), bringing him to life. Naturally, he falls in love with her and the film becomes a race to see whether she can return his affections before he melts (?) or gets apprehended by the local sheriff (Craig Robinson), who believes he’s responsible for some very small crimes around town. Think of it as a new way to Netflix and chill.
Carol
It’s hard to argue Todd Haynes’ heartbreaking 2015 film is strictly a Christmas movie—it’s about a young woman named Therese (Rooney Mara) who begins an intense relationship with Carol (Cate Blanchett), an elegant woman who shops at the store where she works—but it is set during one Christmas in the 1950s, and that’s good enough. Based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt, the film lays out what happens to Therese and Carol when they embark on a road trip and draw suspicion from the man Carol is attempting to divorce. Both lush and subdued, it’s wrenching right up to its gut-punch finale.
Home for the Holidays
If you’re feeling guilty that you won’t make it to your parents’ for Thanksgiving this year, this ode to dysfunctional family gatherings—directed by Jodie Foster—might serve as an all-too-realistic reminder of what it’s really like when your relatives reassemble under one roof. Holly Hunter plays a recently unemployed single mom who heads from Chicago to Baltimore to spend Thanksgiving with her family—only to immediately regret the decision. (Yes, we’ve all been there.) Hunter’s character might summarize the feeling best when she asks, “When you go home, do you look around and wonder: Who are these people? Where did I even come from?” A very pre–Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. costars.
Happiest Season
Given the increased output of original products that the major streaming networks like Netflix and Amazon Prime are releasing, it was only a matter of time before they all caught the Christmas bug. Last year, that honor went to Hulu, which assembled an impressive cast of actors you wouldn’t necessarily expect to see in a holiday rom-com (see: Kristen Stewart) for Happiest Season. When Harper (Halt and Catch Fire’s Mackenzie Davis) invites her girlfriend Abby (Stewart) home for Christmas, she neglects to tell her one thing: Harper has never told her ultra-conservative family that she’s gay. Though it’s a setup that sounds like it could easily reach Three’s Company levels of slapstick and double entendres, the earnestness with which it’s played by its stellar cast—which includes Dan Levy, Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, and Mary Steenburgen—pushes it neatly into that enjoyable space between farce and family drama.
The Best Man Holiday
Broadly speaking, the holidays are just the backdrop for Best Man Holiday, but when a movie features Taye Diggs, Terrence Howard, Harold Perrineau, and Morris Chestnut doing a New Edition dance and lip-sync number, does it matter? Nearly 15 years after they all gathered for Lance’s (Chestnut) wedding (and nearly 15 years after the release of The Best Man), a group of old friends gathers in New York to celebrate Christmas together. As with all friend reunions, everyone simultaneously remembers their closeness and long-simmering issues. No need to spoil it here, but suffice it to say the laughs are heartfelt and the drama—cancer diagnoses, pregnancies, marriages—is high. The perfect film for your Friendsgiving.
Miracle on 34th Street
Natalie Wood is the epitome of precocious as Susan Walker, the wise-beyond-her-years daughter of Doris Walker (Maureen O’Hara), a straight-shooting single mom executive at Macy’s who has always discouraged her daughter from buying into make-believe. But when a Santa Claus look-alike (legally) named Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) comes into their lives, he challenges their shared distaste for fairy tales—for the better.
The Preacher’s Wife
This remake of the 1947 film The Bishop’s Wife, directed by Penny Marshall, stars Denzel Washington as an angel named Dudley sent to help a pastor (Courtney B. Vance) who is struggling to keep his New York City church afloat. What happens, though, is that he ends up crushing on, yes, the preacher’s wife, a one-time nightclub singer turned choir star, played by Whitney Houston. Comedy and heartbreak and, ultimately, redemption ensue. If all that heartwarming content isn’t enough, it also features a fair bit of Houston’s forever impeccable voice.
The Nightmare Before Christmas
No, Tim Burton didn’t direct The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick did). But he did come up with the stories and characters and produced it, and his stop-motion-animation-loving fingerprints are all over this masterpiece, which works just as well as a Halloween movie as it does a Christmas film. When Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloweentown, accidentally discovers Christmastown—a place that’s less about scaring people and more about comfort and joy—he concocts a plan to kidnap Santa Claus and bring him back to Halloweentown so that his fellow townspeople can experience yuletide joy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the caper doesn’t pan out as Jack had hoped. Even today, nearly 30 years after its original release, The Nightmare Before Christmas remains a masterful work that shows the true magic of stop-motion animation.
Home Alone
By now, there are few people who don’t know the Home Alone story, but we’ll give you the rundown anyway: The night before the McCallister family is headed to France to spend the holidays in Paris, Kevin—annoyed that he has to share a room with his bed-wetting cousin, not to mention that someone ate his pizza—wishes his family would just disappear. While that’s not exactly what happens (they just sort of forget he’s sleeping up in the attic when they wake up late for their flight), it does mean that an 8-year-old is left to his own devices at Christmastime. Among the issues he’s forced to confront? A neighbor he believes might be a serial killer and two bumbling burglars who are set on ransacking his family’s home. Lucky for Kevin, he’s got a seriously sadistic side that allows him to come up with all sorts of inventive ways to nearly murder these intruders as he learns to appreciate his family a little bit more. (Same goes for them.)
If you want to see what happens when a family leaves their young son alone a second time, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York is also streaming on Disney+.
White Christmas
If contemporary stresses have you wishing for a kinder, gentler time, few movies (holiday-themed or otherwise) are as saccharine as White Christmas. That’s not a slight, just a very upfront warning that if you’re looking for even a drop of cynicism, you’d better look elsewhere. This holiday romp—which features Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen, and some of the fakest snow ever seen on camera—is shamelessly sentimental, which is part of its charm. What is it about? Two WWII buddies turned big-time showmen putting on a Christmas spectacular to help their former commanding officer, whose Vermont snow lodge is about to go under.
The Man Who Invented Christmas
In 2012, Dan Stevens ruined Christmas for millions of Downton Abbey fans when his beloved character, Matthew Crawley, met an untimely—and rather bloody—ending. Five years later, in what might have been an attempt to make up for that heartbreak, he became The Man Who Invented Christmas. In this meta-ish take on A Christmas Carol, Stevens plays Charles Dickens, who hasn’t had a hit book since Oliver Twist. With the Christmas season playing out all around him, inspiration strikes in the form of what will become A Christmas Carol, as the characters reveal themselves to Dickens, and real life and the fictional world merge into one.
The Muppet Christmas Carol
Speaking of A Christmas Carol: There have been dozens of adaptations of Dickens’ book over the years in virtually every medium. Among the best takes are the 1951 version starring Alastair Sim (which you can rent from Amazon Prime), Richard Donner’s Scrooged with Bill Murray (which you can also rent on Prime), and The Muppet Christmas Carol, directed by Jim Henson’s son Brian (in his directorial debut). While it’s as Muppet-y as you can imagine, with Gonzo taking on the role of Charles Dickens and Kermit as Bob Cratchit, the film also stars Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge and features some pretty complicated puppetry.
Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas
If you grew up with HBO in the ’80s, you no doubt have long considered Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas one of Jim Henson’s best movies. For anyone else, it’s only in recent years that the film has made its way back to the masses with sold-out theatrical screenings nationwide and a new Blu-ray edition in 2018. If you still haven’t seen it, or have never even heard of it, it’s time to rectify that horrible wrong. A Muppet-fied take on The Gift of the Magi, the story is about the widowed Ma Otter and her son Emmet, who are struggling to pay their bills but do what they can by picking up odd jobs. When they hear about a talent competition happening in a nearby town with a grand prize of $50, they each—unbeknownst to each other—make a major sacrifice in the hopes of being able to win and give each other a much-wanted gift for Christmas. Then the Riverbottom Nightmare Band shows up. Emmet Otter may be more than 40 years old, and sure, you can see the puppets’ strings, but that’s just part of its charm. And the soundtrack still slaps.
It’s a Wonderful Life
Frank Capra was a filmmaker who loved a Hollywood ending—and he delivered a big one in It’s a Wonderful Life. While the film’s final moments may be kind of sappy (even if they do make you tear up), the bulk of the movie’s running time is actually pretty dark. George Bailey (James Stewart) is a beloved member of the Bedford Falls community with a lovely home, an adoring wife (Donna Reed), and four beautiful children. But George is sick and tired of being “the dependable one” in his family. For years his own dream has been to see the world beyond his hometown, but each time he tries, a new tragedy seems to strike that keeps him there. But Christmas Eve proves to be the breaking point, and George, drunk and suicidal, wishes he had never been born. Sort of like A Christmas Carol, an angel named Clarence (Henry Travers) shows George what his life—and the lives of those he loves—would be like had he never existed. Cue the waterworks.
Elf
While a fresh crop of holiday movies seems to pop up every year, it takes a special kind of movie to become a true Christmas classic. Elf began spreading its Christmas cheer almost immediately after arriving in theaters, and it has only grown more popular in the nearly two decades since. Jon Favreau’s direction and David Berenbaum’s script deserve much of the credit. But it’s Will Ferrell who steals the show with his endearing performance as Buddy the Elf—a syrup-loving human who, after being raised in the North Pole among Santa and his elves, travels to New York to find his biological father (James Caan). Though Buddy and the Big Apple don’t get off on the right foot, his childlike charm eventually gets the best of those around. Well, most of them. Though audiences have been clamoring for a sequel, Ferrell has said no way.
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
Not everyone wants their holiday fare sugar-coated and sweet. For those people, there’s Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. Something strange is happening in the mountains of northern Finland, where kids are disappearing and reindeer are being murdered. Two young boys—Pietari (Onni Tommila) and Juuso (Ilmari Järvenpää)—think they know what’s going on: A group of local drillers has uncovered the tomb of Santa Claus. But the man they eventually capture hasn’t got a jolly bone in his body.
If you want more holiday horror, be sure to check out Bob Clark’s Black Christmas—the original, 1974 version only. Though it’s less well known than John Carpenter’s Halloween, it’s the movie that inspired it—and pretty much all slasher movies that followed. It also doesn’t hold back on its scares or gore, so it’s best for an adults-only evening. Fun fact: Nine years after Black Christmas, director Bob Clark made yet another holiday classic with 1983’s A Christmas Story. Talk about range!
This is the point where it becomes obvious how a VPN client makes life easier. There are really only two steps to follow. The first one is to select the server. On an iPhone using ExpressVPN, there’s a prompt for Current Location. I selected that and picked the United States, then Chicago. I then clicked the big red Connect button and watched it turn green. That means I was connected to the Chicago server and was ready to watch a Netflix show. Every VPN app works about the same: Select the country and city, then click the big connect button.
In my case, once I was connected to that Chicago server, I could then go to Netflix.com to watch Stranger Things without any problems. It also works with Netflix’s apps on your smartphone or your tablet, as long as your VPN app is also running on that device.
In case you are wondering, this is perfectly legal. As long as you are using your own paid account, a VPN merely allows you to access a streaming service from remote places.
Troubleshooting
A VPN client is not always perfect. There may be times when you select a server in another country and you still can’t connect or can’t watch a Netflix show.
I was in a slight panic once when I wanted to watch the season four finale of Stranger Things. No spoilers here, but let’s just say I knew there would be an epic battle. I used ExpressVPN while I was in that small town in Austria on vacation, and while it normally all worked fine, on a Sunday afternoon, the server I wanted to use in Chicago was just not cooperating. I chatted with the online support, which was available right within the iOS app on my iPhone, and the tech representative suggested using a server in New York City instead. That solved my problem.
What happens on occasion is that the server might be overloaded with too many connections, or it might be down for maintenance, but selecting a different server solves that issue. You can even do a quick Google search like “which VPN server works best in the United States for Netflix” and check Reddit forums and other sites for help. Apparently, a lot of people know you can connect to a VPN when you travel, and they might even be hooked on the same shows. Also, Netflix can detect when there are too many people using the service through one VPN server. You’ll find you have to select a different one in that case (e.g., Netflix has blocked the server).
Also, a few caveats: I used the full, ad-free, 4K version of Netflix. The ad-supported version might not work correctly over a VPN when you travel overseas. The VPN workaround may also not work if you’re trying to stream a live event on Netflix. There may also be restrictions on which VPN clients you can use in countries like Russia and China.
Netflix is also more likely to block VPN access when you use the mobile app. If you are using your phone or tablet, it’s better to use Netflix.com in your browser and make sure your browser is set to “desktop” mode. With desktop mode on, Netflix won’t detect that you’re on a mobile device and redirect you to the mobile app.
The good news is that a VPN app tends to work smoothly most of the time. I finally did watch that final epic battle in Stranger Things, and I kept up on BBC reports as well using the BBC One website. I never missed a show and, truth be told, that final battle was amazing.
In just a few short weeks, it’ll be nothing but Hallmark movies and Lindsay Lohan rom-coms, but right now it’s spooky season and if you’re looking to relax with a chainsaw-wielding serial killer, a telekinetic teen hellbent on revenge, or a homicidal merman, we’ve got you covered.
Just in time for Halloween, we’ve pulled together a list of dozens of the best horror movies you can stream right now, from tried-and-true classics that never get old to more recent scare-fests that you might not know exist. The only decision you have to make is which one to watch first, and whether you actually want to share that bag of fun-sized candy.
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Suspiria
If you’re not familiar with the work of Dario Argento, prepare for your eyes to be dazzled and your brain to melt. Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) is an American ballet student who hops a plane to Germany after being invited to study at the prestigious Tanz Akademie. From the moment she arrives, however, Suzy suspects that all is not what it seems. Especially when her fellow students start disappearing. Turns out Suzy was right to be suspicious, as the school is more of a front for a coven of powerful witches. While much of the script is admittedly nonsensical, it doesn’t even matter. With its breathtaking production design, innovative camerawork, and earworm of a theme song by Goblin, Suspiria is the kind of film that will never leave your head. (If you find yourself wanting more, Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 reimagining of the film, starring Dakota Johnson, will scratch that itch.)
The Babadook
Ten years ago, Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent turned the horror genre on its head with this gem of a “creepy kid” film. Amelia Vanek (Essie Davis) is a young widow and mother to six-year-old Sam (Noah Wiseman), who is acting out in increasingly violent ways. Sam blames his behavior on The Babadook, a monster he claims lives in his pop-up book. Slowly, as weird things continue to happen around the house, Amelia starts to believe that her son might be telling the truth. Now if only she could get someone else to believe her. In the hands of a less talented filmmaker, The Babadook could have been a one-note story. But Kent, Davis, and Wiseman manage to turn it into a compelling and moving psychological thriller, where the real villain turns out to be grief.
Barbarian
Between Uber and Airbnb, the collaborative consumption era has led us to regularly put our trust—and lives—in the hands of complete strangers. Zach Cregger’s Barbarian may convince you that such transactions require much more thought. Tess (Georgina Campbell) rents an Airbnb, only to discover that it’s been double-booked and there’s already a guest staying there. Fortunately for Tess, Keith (Bill Skarsgård)—the current occupant—seems like a kind enough guy who is happy to go out of his way to help accommodate her. Which should have been her first indication that something was amiss.
Late Night with the Devil
Siblings Colin and Cameron Cairnes co-wrote, directed, and edited this new(ish) found footage flick, where a late-night talk show host named Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) decides to boost his ratings by hosting an occult-themed episode for his Halloween night broadcast. Among the invited guests are a psychic (Fayssal Bazzi), a parapsychologist (Laura Gordon), and a teenage girl (Ingrid Torelli) who is purportedly possessed by a demon. When Jack accidentally unleashes the demon on his audience, he realizes that there’s nothing “purported” about it.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Leatherface may have just turned 50, but he’s still got the upper body strength to swing around his beloved chainsaw just as he did in the 1970s. There are now nine films in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, but not one of them can hold a candle—or a chainsaw—to the original. A group of teens take a road trip through Texas, in part so that siblings Sally (Marilyn Burns) and Franklin (Paul A. Partain) can visit the cemetery where their grandfather was laid to rest after reports of graverobbing in the area. Then, wouldn’t you know it, they run out of gas on their way home … then find themselves contending with a family of cannibals. Hey, it happens. The movie, which is partly based on the life of grave robber Ed Gein, remains as potent today as it did when it was originally released.
Halloween
Is it really Halloween without Halloween? While you have plenty of sequels, reimaginings, and reimagined sequels to choose from today, there’s a reason why horror fiends still make a point to watch the original—and utterly perfect—1978 original today. John Carpenter’s tale of a babysitter (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her friends being stalked by an escaped killer set the bar for every slasher film that has ever followed, and very few have managed to even come close to it. If you want to keep the Michael Myers theme going, there are now 13 films in the franchise—including Rob Zombie’s gritty reboot and its sequel (which are both streaming on Peacock) and David Gordon Green’s recent book-end trilogy, which kicked off with 2018’s Halloween (which you’ll find on Netflix).
The Exorcist
Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) may be the precocious 12-year-old daughter of a well-respected Hollywood actress (Ellen Burstyn), but that means nothing to Pazuzu, the hell demon who comes to inhabit this could-be nepo baby’s tween body. You’ll never want to eat pea soup again. After tinkering with Halloween, David Gordon Green took a stab at resurrecting The Exorcist with last year’s The Exorcist: Believer, which didn’t fare as well (it’s a “skip” for us, but is streaming on Amazon Prime Video if you want to give it a watch).
Hereditary
Ari Aster achieved instant icon status with Hereditary, his feature directorial debut, which makes a compelling argument against rolling down the windows on your car—ever. An artist (Toni Collette) and her shrink husband (Gabriel Byrne) seem to be living the American Dream with their two teenagers, Peter (Alex Wolff) and Charlie (Milly Shapiro). Until a series of tragedies turn the family’s life upside down and all hell breaks loose—seemingly literally.
Carrie
“Creepy” Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) is a teenage pariah who is brutally mocked by her high school classmates and doesn’t find much solace at home with her totally unhinged mom (Piper Laurie). Sometimes a girl’s just gotta let loose, and sometimes that means using telekinesis to burn your bullies down to the ground, along with the high school gym in which they’re dancing. Make sure to keep watching all the way to th end!
The Blair Witch Project
Nearly a quarter-century after Jaws became a masterclass in doing more with less, Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick did much the same with this found-footage flick that had many people believing the film’s own backstory: that a group of film students got lost in the woods while attempting to make a documentary about the Blair Witch, who supposedly trolls the area near Burkittsville, Maryland, looking for youngsters to murder. That people believed the story, and that the footage they were watching was indeed only later discovered, is a testament to just how effective the found-footage format can be when employed in just the right way, as well as the filmmakers’ brilliant marketing acumen.
Get Out
In what seemed like the blink of an eye, Jordan Peele went from being one half of the hilarious Key & Peele to a modern horror icon. And it all started with Get Out, Peele’s stunning directorial debut, in which a young couple have gotten serious enough that Rose (Allison Williams) invites new love Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) to leave the city for the suburbs to spend the weekend with her family. While Chris seems more concerned that he is Black and Rose is not, she assures him it doesn’t matter … until he realizes that’s kind of the point. Peele brilliantly blends elements of horror, comedy, and psychological drama with a pulsing commentary on racism, and won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for his efforts. The film also received nods for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Kaluuya—all massive achievements for a horror movie. Make it a twofer by pairing Get Out with Peele’s impressive follow-up, 2019’s Us, which is streaming on Hulu.
The Fly
David Cronenberg’s mind works in some truly demented ways, which is a blessing to horror movie fans. Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) is a scientist who is much cooler than he should be; Ronnie Quaife (Geena Davis) is a science journalist tasked with interviewing Brundle but quickly falling for him. If only he hadn’t decided to use himself as the subject in a teleportation experiment gone horribly wrong, these two kids could’ve maybe had something. Instead, Brundle slowly morphs into a housefly with some pretty putrid habits and a tendency to randomly lose body parts.
It Follows
For decades, young women in horror films who dared to be sexually active—and actually enjoy it (gasp!)—could usually be counted on to be the killer’s next victim. But in this smart indie from writer/director David Robert Mitchell, doing the deed is the conduit by which the supernatural spirit that’s haunting Jay (Maika Monroe) is able to move from one host to the next. Which is bad news, as she just slept with her new beau, who just happened to be infected and has now passed it on to her. While she could just fuck some guy and pass it on, Jay’s a much more complicated heroine.
The Witch
Puritanism in and of itself is pretty creepy. Add in the bizarre disappearance of a child and it gets even scarier. Robert Eggers, who went on to make The Lighthouse and The Northman, deftly balances what is essentially a period piece/supernatural horror film hybrid about a family that ends up living in the woods, secluded, after being banished by their Puritan community. This is when even creepier things start happening, all building up to an unforgettable climax (though it’s admittedly a bit of a slow burn).
The Shining
Stephen King just may be the only person who didn’t love Stanley Kubrick’s take on The Shining. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), a writer looking for some quietude so that he can finally finish writing the novel he’s been working on, agrees to take a gig hotel-sitting the Overlook, an enormous resort, while it’s closed down for the winter, bringing his wife (Shelley Duvall) and young son (Danny Lloyd) in tow. For Jack, the Overlook feels like home, and he quickly settles into a work routine; his wife and son aren’t as enthralled, especially when they begin to suspect that malevolent forces didn’t vacate for the winter along with the rest of the guests.
The Strangers
What’s more terrifying than a masked psychopath on the loose knocking off victims as revenge for a childhood trauma? How about a handful of masked sociopaths on the loose knocking off victims at random? James (Scott Speedman) and Kristen (Liv Tyler) are a couple who find themselves at an unexpected crossroads while spending the night at a secluded vacation home. (Is there any other kind?) But they don’t have much time to wallow in what the future of their relationship looks like, because there are people at the door. And in the house. And on the swing set. You get the picture. Creepy imagery abounds in this vastly underrated film, which saw its storyline continue this year with Renny Harlin’s The Strangers: Chapter 1.
Paranormal Activity
For better or worse, The Blair Witch Project kicked off a found-footage movie flood, which has really yet to end (though they’re definitely in much shorter supply these days). For all the mediocre efforts we had to suffer through, there was also Paranormal Activity, a beyond solid effort that was made on virtually no budget. Katie (Katie Featherston) and Micah (Micah Sloat) are a young couple in love, looking forward to spending their lives together. But when they move in together, so does the evil spirit that’s been trailing Katie for most of her life. Katie wants to rid the house of it once and for all; Micah wants to videotape it (which only seems to embolden the angry spirit).
Scream
The meta horror movie to end all other meta horror movies, the original Scream might have outgrown some of its more garish fashions (most of them worn by Courteney Cox’s Gayle Weathers), but the story is still solid. And the many nods and winks to modern horror tropes are still true. High schooler Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is a teen spiraling from the recent murder of her mom but who suddenly finds herself in the crosshairs of a new hatchet-wielding serial killer who keeps picking off her pals.
The Nightmare Before Christmas
OK, so maybe it’s not a straight-up “horror” movie. But if you’re looking for something kind of creepy that the whole family can get in on, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better choice than this stop-motion classic that works equally well as a Halloween film or a Christmas movie. Jack Skellington is the pumpkin king of Halloweentown, a place where it’s Halloween—hijinks and all—24/7. But when Jack accidentally discovers Christmas and its holly, jolly traditions, he decides to co-opt both holidays with the help of the hooligans of Halloweentown. (Kidnapping Santa is all part of the plan.)
An American Werewolf in London
Horror-comedy is not an easy genre to pull off—especially when a movie like John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London has been around for comparison for more than 40 years. American pals David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne) get slightly lost as they backpack their way through England and end up being attacked by a werewolf. While Jack is torn to bits, David survives but wakes up weeks later in a London hospital with little recollection of what happened. Fortunately, his old pal Jack—looking very much worse for the wear—shows up to warn David that a full moon is coming and if he doesn’t kill himself before it arrives, he too will transform into a flesh-craving canine. Landis expertly balances laugh-out-loud humor with genuinely terrifying frights—most of them courtesy of special effects makeup wizard Rick Baker, who won a much-deserved Oscar for his work on the film. (The werewolf transformation scene is iconic for a reason.) Throw in a killer soundtrack and one of cinema’s most satisfyingly efficient endings and you’ve got a horror-comedy for the ages.
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
When she reviewed it for WIRED, senior writer Kate Knibbs called this horror flick a “coming-of-age creepypasta.” It’s all that and more. Director Jane Schoenbrun’s debut feature is about a young girl named Casey (Anna Cobb) who becomes increasingly obsessed with an online role-playing game that asks players to do a series of rituals that over time summon a supernatural force that ultimately overtakes them. Less jump-scare-y than mind-bend-y, We Are All Going to the World’s Fair is the kind of horror that sits in the back of your brain, just waiting to scare you again long after the credits roll.
Jaws
Jaws is to horror movies what Star Wars is to sci-fi films. It’s just hard to believe there are people who haven’t seen it. Still, whether you’ve never seen it or have watched it 100 times (Steven Soderbergh claims to have seen Jaws28 times in theaters alone!), the story of a water-phobic police chief living on an island who sets off to sea in pursuit of a ginormous great white shark that’s killing his residents and scaring off the tourists never gets old. It’s also a masterclass in less-is-more filmmaking—even if that approach was more the result of a perpetually busted machine shark than anything else. While the film’s sequels in absolutely no way live up to the original—and get worse with each successive entry—all four Jaws movie (including the charmingly cheesy Jaws 3-D) are currently streaming on Netflix).
Bodies Bodies Bodies
Bodies Bodies Bodies is, bluntly, a slasher for the TikTok generation. Beginning with a very old-school premise—a group of friends goes to a secluded house for a fun getaway—it quickly surfaces the horrors of the very online: no cell service, toxic friends. But just because it’s full of hip actors—Pete Davidson! Amandla Stenberg!—and very-now dialogue doesn’t mean it won’t also freak you the hell out. And maybe even make you laugh.
Night of the Living Dead
Had George A. Romero only ever cowritten and directed this one movie, his feature directorial debut, he’d still go down in history as a horror pioneer. Because even though the word zombie is never uttered in Night of the Living Dead, it’s clear to the audience that that’s what his half-living monsters are. It all kicks off when siblings Barbra (Judith O’Dea) and Johnny (Russell Streiner) pay a visit to their father’s gravesite and are subsequently attacked by a strange man. Barbra, seeing a farmhouse nearby, runs there for help—only to discover the dead body of the home’s owner—and many slow-walking creatures coming her way. That’s when the ever-resourceful Ben (Duane Jones) shows up to help. Though many critics of the time attempted to declare Night of the Living Dead DOA because of its extreme gore, its reputation as a game-changer in the genre has given it continued life, with several sequels and even a couple of remakes, including Tom Savini’s 1990s redux, with Tony Todd in the role of Ben.
Nosferatu the Vampyre
Over the course of his near-60-year career, Werner Herzog has proven that there’s nothing he can’t or won’t at least try to do for the love of filmmaking (eating his own shoe included). Over the years, he has long maintained that F. W. Murnau’s original Nosferatu is the greatest film to ever come out of his native Germany. So on the very day that Bram Stoker’s Dracula entered the public domain, Herzog set about creating his own version of the film—one that, unlike the 1922 original, could legally use parts of Dracula without any legal headaches. What Herzog did, however, was create one of the most human versions of the legendary bloodsucker we’ve ever seen, as portrayed by Klaus Kinski. In Herzog’s mind, Dracula’s immortality and vampirism are burdens that make him a more sympathetic character. “He cannot choose and he cannot cease to be,” Herzog toldThe New York Times in 1978. If you want to expand your understanding of Dracula’s cinematic arc, pair this with a screening of Murnau’s original Nosferatu. Then take it one step further by adding to the mix with My Best Fiend, Herzog’s 1999 documentary about his tumultuous relationship with Kinski.
The Cabin in the Woods
Much like Scream before it, Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods takes a meta approach with its material, turning what could otherwise be a by-the-numbers horror movie into an immensely clever take on the “a group of attractive twentysomethings end up in a cabin in the middle of nowhere that just so happens to be surrounded by malevolent forces” sub-genre. All of the standard tropes are set up—the weird old townie who tries to warn the kids off, a creepy old basement filled with bizarre and ominous paraphernalia, etc.—though maybe they’re set up just a little too perfectly. The Cabin in the Woods is a loving wink to serious horror movie fiends and goes off in surprising directions that you’ll never see coming.
Fright Night
We’ve been through enough vampire crazes over the years that there are times when some moviegoers would happily agree to never see another bloodsucker in their lives. Then they remember Fright Night, Tom Holland’s iconic love letter to the golden age of horror movies and late-night television schlock jocks who entertained us with tales of blood and guts. Like Jerry Dandrige (Chris Sarandon)—the glowing-eyed vampire in serious need of a manicure living next door to teenager Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale)—Fright Night doesn’t really seem to age. It still stands out as a perfectly subtle horror-comedy with just the right balance of both genres to make it as seductive as Vampire Jerry on the dance floor. (Its 2011 update, starring Colin Farrell and Anton Yelchin, which is streaming on both Hulu and Peacock, is one of the few horror remakes that is worth your time.)
The House of the Devil
In 2002, Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever brought the horror genre back to its 1980s heyday. Ti West managed to successfully recapture that same spirit at the end of the decade with The House of the Devil, which sees a broke college student (Jocelin Donahue) in need of cash to pay her rent reluctantly agree to “babysit” an allegedly frail old lady for a few hours. You know something’s going to happen, but you’re not quite sure what: Is the house haunted? Is there someone outside stalking the babysitter? Is it all in your head? Is it all of the above? While you wait for the other shoe to inevitably drop, West takes advantage of his very clear time frame—the satanic-panic-ravaged ’80s—to showcase a treasure trove of horrifying cultural relics of the past, including one particularly high-waisted pair of jeans.
The Host
South Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho became a household name, and a force to be reckoned with, in 2020 when he stormed the Oscars with Parasite (which is streaming on Max, by the way). If that was your first introduction to his work, you should immediately seek out all of his previous films, including The Host. Like Parasite, it’s a horror movie with a social message. In this case, more of an eco-minded one where the pollution in Seoul’s Han River leads to the creation of a gigantic sea monster with a taste for humans.
Let the Right One In
Having a vampire as a BFF just might be the greatest thing a bullied kid could wish for. But the relationship that picked-on tween Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) builds with his neighbor Eli (Lina Leandersson)—who does just happen to crave human blood—is much deeper than a simple revenge fantasy in this Swedish slow burn. In fact, Eli being a vampire is really secondary to the story. Like Werner Herzog with Nosferatu, Tomas Alfredson puts character-building first and paints Eli with a kind of sadness, which is what connects her with Oskar. Sure, it’s bloody, but it’s also kind of sweet.
The House of Mouse is getting a renovation. In an earnings call on Wednesday, Disney CEO Bob Iger told investors that the company will begin a new password-sharing crackdown “in earnest” starting in September. Iger didn’t divulge how the company plans to limit password-sharing, but presumably this will mean the company will be on the lookout for logins outside of the subscriber’s home and prompt those suspected of sharing their accounts to pay a fee to do so. The announcement comes months before the company intends to increase monthly prices on Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+—and their respective bundles—in October.
What this means for most folks is higher bills and tougher decisions. As more and more streaming services enter the fray—and as many of those services also raise prices and/or introduce ad-supported tiers—people who love to watch things are increasingly left to figure out which two or three services they’re willing to pay 10 to 20 bucks a month for. Considering Disney has a pretty strong back catalog (Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars), as well as Hulu shows like The Bear and tons of sports on ESPN+, it’s likely many subscribers will shell out to keep the service—and cough up more to share their passwords.
“The password-sharing crackdown has worked favorably for other streamers,” says Sarah Henschel, a principal analyst at Omdia who watches the streaming market closely. “It is a strategy that works well to grow revenue. However, it drives a lot of consumer frustration with streaming.” Put another way, subscribers are likely to stick around and perhaps even pay the extra fees to share their accounts, but it may mean they ultimately don’t keep every service.
And hell, it worked for Netflix. Late last year, after a few shaky quarters and amid the streaming giant’s rollout of both ad-supported tiers and a paid sharing program, Netflix added 9 million new subscribers worldwide. It hasn’t really seen any major dents in subscriber numbers since. So far, it’s the only test case—Max seems poised to roll out its crackdown later this year or early next, and others have yet to test the waters—but it does indicate that paying to share a streaming account doesn’t always send people running for the hills. Or, at least, it hasn’t yet.
“The password crackdown for Netflix—combined with its ad tier—has been a massive boon to subscriber growth,” says Wade Payson-Denney, an analyst at streaming industry tracker Parrot Analytics. In the year before the streamer started cracking down, Netflix’s global subscriber base grew by 11.8 million; in the four quarters after, that base grew by 39.3 million, according to Parrot. It could lead to similar growth for Disney.
All Things Must Pass
This isn’t the first time Disney has warned of such a crackdown. Last year, Iger hinted that the company was looking into limiting the practice; in February, the company said it planned to begin a paid sharing program, but then launched it in only a few markets, in June.
Disney has been hustling to build up its subscriber base and turn a profit from streaming since it launched Disney+ in 2019. During the past three months, Disney+ netted only about 200,000 new subscribers, for a total of 153.8 million—small potatoes compared to the more than 270 million subscribers Netflix claims, but not bad, and a marked increase over last year. Meanwhile, Max is still looking to break 100 million.
As part of Wednesday’s earnings announcements, Disney revealed its combined streaming offerings made money for the first time ever during the last quarter, bringing in an operating profit of $47 million. This is a sharp upturn; Disney’s streaming business lost $512 million in the third quarter last year. The recent profits largely came thanks to ESPN+.
Almost every movie and TV show streaming app you use keeps track of what you’re watching. This is for convenience’s sake; by logging your activity, the app can let you pick up where you left off at another time or on another device, you can be notified of new content you might like, and the app can serve up more relevant recommendations.
You just wouldn’t get the same quality of experience if this tracking wasn’t happening. But there are also a couple of good reasons why you might want to dive into your viewing history and edit it, or wipe it completely.
First, there’s the privacy issue. If you share your account with someone else at home, or with the entire family, maybe you don’t want them knowing you skipped ahead in a show, or that you enjoy terrible action flicks quite as much as you do.
And second, there’s the recommendations served up by your apps. Everything you watch contributes to these recommendations, so removing movies and shows you didn’t like—or that your kids binge watched—will keep those recommendations relevant.
Netflix
On the Netflix website, hover the cursor over your profile picture (top right), then choose Account and Manage Profiles, and click on your profile. Select Viewing Activity to see everything you’ve watched lately.
Each item in the list has a Hide button on the right. When you tap Hide, that title will no longer affect your recommendations and won’t show up on Netflix as having been watched. If you hide one episode of a show, you’ll be asked if you want to hide the entire series. There’s also a Hide All button at the foot of the list.
You can’t access this list in full from inside the Netflix mobile apps, though you can hide titles you’ve watched recently. Tap My Netflix, then scroll down to the recently watched section. Tap the three dots on any thumbnail to find the Hide From Watch History option.
Apple TV+
In the TV app on macOS, open the TV menu and choose Settings: Under the Advanced tab, there’s a Clear Play History button. This resets the list of everything you’ve ever watched, and you can’t select individual titles.
What you can do with individual titles is remove them from the Up Next bar on the main screen. Click the three dots next to any thumbnail and you can choose Remove From Up Next and Remove From Recently Watched to hide the evidence that you’ve seen it. (The show will still be marked as watched if you search for it.)
The same options are shown if you tap the three dots next to a show or movie thumbnail in the TV app for iOS and iPadOS. To clear your viewing history on a mobile device, tap your profile picture (top right), then Clear Play History.
YouTube
When you’re signed into YouTube on the web, you can click History in the left-hand navigation panel to see what you’ve been watching recently, and click the X next to any video to remove it from your watch history.
From the same screen, you’ve got options to Clear all watch history and Pause watch history. You can also select Manage all history, which takes you to a full list of everything you’ve ever seen on YouTube. From here you can search for videos, browse by date, and delete some or all of the videos from your history.
When I pull up Netflix at the end of a long day, sometimes it takes me an hour just to decide what to watch. I think this makes me pretty lame. Though maybe I’m also hoping you’ll tell me that endless scrolling is a perfectly valid new form of entertainment? —Doom Looper
Dear Doom,
You may vaguely recall the “Surprise Me” option, which Netflix introduced during the pandemic. The feature, basically a glorified shuffle button, was designed precisely for users like yourself, Hamlets of the streaming age, tragically frozen by indecision. The fact that it was quietly removed last year, apparently due to “low use,” would seem to favor your theory about scrolling as a new form of entertainment. If people like you will not relinquish the burden of choice to an algorithm, then surely you’re all getting some kind of perverse pleasure from your indecision.
You could argue, I guess, that unrealized possibilities are the best form of entertainment there is. Just ask all the people who continue to browse Zillow even after they’ve purchased their “forever home,” or who secretly scroll through the apps once they’ve committed to a monogamous relationship. All the beautiful faces you left-swipe will remain perfect in their potentiality, unmarred by the grating voice, the weekend sweatpants—all the sad realities of embodied personhood. The home you never purchase will always be a Platonic ideal, without the headaches of incontinent gutters or unruly neighbors. The movie you scroll past, night after night, will never disappoint you with expositional dialog or a predictable ending.
I can already hear the dissenters rallying: Rewards require risks! Nothing ventured, nothing gained! I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but I don’t really think it applies to your problem. Like the “Surprise Me” feature, those truisms assume that chronic indecision stems from a surfeit of tantalizing choices—that there’s just too much good content out there, and that perfectly satisfying options are being ignored for the possibility that something better might be just around the corner. But let’s face it, we don’t exactly live in the golden age of cinema. If your catalog is anything like mine, it’s full of reboots and recycled IP and docuseries that are cravenly trying to capitalize on the success of the last hit show. I’m fairly certain that your binge-scrolling owes less to an excess of promising selections than a dearth of them—that it’s abetted by the depressing knowledge that you have endless options but few real choices.
We’re all complicit in this. Next time you find yourself unsatisfied with the narratives on offer, get off the couch and create something better.
I hate closed captions. My partner can’t watch TV without them. Help. (Not referring to foreign-language stuff here.) —Eyes Up
This one is a pretty easy, Eyes. Your partner is incapable of doing without closed captions. You’re merely annoyed by them. You lose.
Why is it so difficult to interact with screens in dreams? —Power Down
You appear to be among a minority of humans, Power, who have encountered a screen in their dreams. Browse any Reddit forum on the topic, and you’ll find endless conspiracies attempting to explain why these devices that we check hundreds of times a day are absent in the melodramas of our REM cycles. (A couple possibilities: Phones are karmically transparent; our unconscious, which knows we’re all in a simulation, regards all of reality as a screen, so representing devices could risk infinite regress.) When we do dream of digital technologies, they’re impossible to use. The phone is made of wood or stone. The laptop screen is full of nonsense numbers in tiny, unreadable fonts. None of the apps open. Text threads are reduced to endless green and blue bubbles full of gibberish. It’s like a retelling of Alice in Wonderland written by William Gibson.
The dreaming mind is fundamentally archaic. It’s a machine that is constantly rewinding the trajectory of human progress, haunting us with primitive fears and ancient archetypes (snakes entering the garden, rivers running with blood) that have been long-slumbering in the collective unconscious. Sleep is pretty much the only time your lizard brain, the amygdala, runs free without the interference of the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s tireless fact-checker, which represents the logical mind that knows how to process abstract ideas, log in to Instagram, and make a Venmo transaction. Many people find reading and writing to be nearly impossible in dreams, which makes sense given that literacy is (relatively speaking) a fairly new technology. Our history with screens is even slimmer—barely a blip on the timescale of human history.
“Netflix” was always a bit of a misnomer. In a well-worn piece of Silicon Valley lore, cofounder Reed Hastings once said “there’s a reason we didn’t call the company DVD-by-Mail.com,” noting that the service was always meant to evolve into a streaming platform. In choosing that moniker—rather than, say, Netshowz—the company positioned itself as a place for movies. Flicks, though, have never been its strongest suit.
Not to say that Netflix doesn’t have good movies—each year they pull out at least one or two Oscar contenders—but its series will always be what keeps its 260 million-plus subscribers coming back. Even when their shows get canceled after two seasons. Its first big hits were House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black and if there’s anything on the service making waves right now, it’s the Patricia Highsmith adaptation Ripley (as in the Talented Mr.) or (somewhat controversially) Baby Reindeer. This week, when WIRED went about compiling our list of movies to watch on the service, the pickin’s were slim.
It’s not just Netflix. Right now the best things to watch on almost any streaming service are shows. Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max, despite being the reincarnation of something once called Home Box Office and having a back catalog full of Warner Bros. films, has people frothing over its upcoming seasons of House of the Dragon and The Last of Us. Sure, it has the Dune films, but it’s possible people will keep coming back for its Bene Gesserit spinoff series, Dune: Prophecy.
Disney+ similarly has the entire back catalogs of Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars, but staked a claim when it launched by offering original series like Andor and Loki. This week, Disney CEO Bob Iger conceded the company “tried to tell too many stories” in the beginning, but that doesn’t mean X-Men ‘97 isn’t one of the most talked about things on the platform right now. Or, consider this, Disney+’s most-watched movie in 2023 was Moana, with nearly 12 billion minutes viewed, according to Nielsen. Bluey more than triples that total with 44 billion minutes viewed. Yes, Bluey is the number one show parents love to play on a loop, but The Mandalorian also beat Moana for minutes viewed.
Netflix, much like Amazon, started from a different place than Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney, because it didn’t, and doesn’t, have a decades-old vault of content. But if the last few years have demonstrated anything, it’s that streaming services want to replace television networks—or turn into them—and that means shows. If anything, streamers’ reimagined made-for-TV movies are a special treat, not the main course. Prime Video’s two-hour feature Road House is alright, but the eight-episode show Fallout is keeping the streamer in the conversation right now.
Nowhere has this been more evident than this week’s upfronts. An annual bonanza during which television networks convince advertisers their airtime is the best airtime (if you think it’s painful to watch Ryan Reynolds try to land a Deadpool joke in a room full of suits, it is), the entire dog-and-pony show has gone through a couple changes in recent years. Last year, as HBO Max was mutating into Max, the events got picketed by striking members of the Writers Guild of America. Netflix canceled its in-person event and went virtual. This year, Netflix, Amazon, and even YouTube showed up. Their arrival was so feared/lauded that The Hollywood Reporter ran a piece about how “an asteroid is about to hit upfronts.”
Said it before, will say it again: Streaming is just cable TV now. So much so that the services created to give cord-cutters the content they want have now resorted to reinventing the wheel. To wit: On Wednesday, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery announced a new partnership, one that will bundle Disney+, Hulu, and Max into one service. For those keeping track, it’ll theoretically put HBO, HGTV, Hulu, ABC, FX, CNN, Disney (so, Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, etc.), and the DC Extended Universe into one pile, just like the cable packages of yore.
The new service is set to launch in the summer. Specifics like pricing and whether or not it’ll be a stand-alone app with its own name (might we suggest DisneyMax±?) have yet to be announced, but there will be ad-free and ad-supported tiers. If it is a stand-alone, one can only imagine what wild color scheme it will have, but if it’s a combo of purple and that new sea-green that the Disney+/Hulu service has, I’ll scream.
In addition to making things difficult for those of us who make all those what-to-watch guides Jack Dorsey likes to tweet about, the new bundle also sets up a face-off between streaming’s old guard and new. In a weird reversal, the old guard in this case are services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, the ones who got everyone to cut the cord in the first place. The newcomers are the legacy media companies that created their own streamers to try to keep up. After a shaky start, Disney finally showed signs of turning a streaming profit in its quarterly earnings report this week. Max, meanwhile, has been making money for Warner Bros. Discovery for a while, even when it loses subscribers. (Ads, baby!)
Combined, the offerings of these two companies might be tough to beat, a catalog to rival Netflix’s, which could cause a bit of hand-wringing at the streaming behemoth. (Apple TV+ and Amazon might care, but they both have other ways of making money, like shipping you stuff and selling you new iPads.)
A recent Parrot Analytics report found that when the monthly cost of each streaming service is weighed against demand for its original shows and movies, Max and the Disney+/Hulu bundle are both in the bang-for-your-buck Top 3. Disney’s bundle is expensive, but it’s got a lot to offer; Max is $4 cheaper, but has less stuff. The other one? Netflix’s standard plan, which at $15.49 is 50 cents less than Max, but has more in-demand content. If the new DisneyMax± bundle (sorry, that’s its name now) is competitively priced, it could be a thorn in Netflix’s side, especially as the companies roll out the Star Wars series The Acolyte and new seasons of the hit shows House of the Dragon and The Bear.
One thing mysteriously missing from the Disney-WBD announcement, though, is whether this new streaming bundle will offer live sports. Considering the companies are teaming up (heh) with Fox Corp. to offer a streaming sports bundle, odds are it likely won’t. But as the consolidation of streaming continues, there’s no guarantee a similar service that includes sports won’t come later,
