Eternals, The Tragedy of Macbeth, and every new movie you can stream at home this weekend

Scream, the long-awaited fifth installment in the iconic slasher horror series, finally premieres in theaters this weekend. Reviews so far have been positive, including our own; with the latest entry in the Scream franchise taking stock of its own legacy in contemporary pop culture in a way not unlike 2021’s The Matrix Resurrections. Not interested in learning the identity of the latest Ghostface killer? Don’t worry, there are plenty of new films to watch from the comfort of home this weekend.

Eternals, Chloé Zhao’s cosmic MCU tentpole feature, finally lands on Disney Plus this week since it premiered back in November of last year. With Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth on Apple TV Plus, Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel on HBO Max, Netflix’s animated horror anthology The House, not several more releases on VOD, you’ve got wealth of options to choose from in terms of great entertainment.

To help you get a handle on what’s new and available, here are the new movies you can watch on streaming and VOD this weekend.

Eternals

Where to watch: Available to stream on Disney Plus

Image: Marvel Studios

Chloé Zhao follows the Oscar-winning momentum of her 2020 film Nomadland with Eternals, a Marvel Cinematic Universe installment following a group of ancient extraterrestrial warriors defending the Earth for centuries while hiding in plain sight.

With an ensemble casts featuring the likes of Angelina Jolie, Gemma Chan, and Richard Madden, a storyline spanning the rise of human civilization, and a finale hinting at major developments for the future of the MCU, Eternals has some sizable expectations to live up to along with some grandiose ambitions of its own. From our review,

Eternals considers where we are, where we’ve been, and how much it’s changed us, if at all. These are largely internal ideas that are not easily translated to superhuman brawls in dim environs, where the beauty of the natural world is just a blank canvas for lasers and punching. Every fight is like a tether pulling Eternals back to the ground when it would rather fly. Each scene expounding on the cosmology of the MCU does more for movies we haven’t seen yet than it does for the one we’re watching.

Movies can be big enough for ideas like this: difficult conversations of cosmic import with no clear answer, angry confrontations with an uncaring god, and whether or not our moral compass should shift as our perspective and reach grows. But a film must create a world where those questions matter, to its characters and to its audience. In a few short lines, Zhao did that with Nomadland. Eternals, however, just isn’t big enough. Or perhaps the Marvel Cinematic Universe is just too small.

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Where to watch: Available to stream on Apple TV Plus

Image: A24/Apple TV Plus

Director Joel Coen returns sans his brother-collaborator Ethan with dramatic retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth with Denzel Washington starring as the eponymous mad king. Convinced by a trio of witches that he will ascend the throne, Macbeth and his wife (Frances McDormand) plot to see this prophecy come to fruition. Even if you’re somehow unfamiliar with the play, you don’t have to look much further than the movie’s title to venture a guess as to how successfully that turns out.

The Last Duel

Where to watch: Available to stream on HBO Max

Photo: 20th Century Studios

Ridley Scott’s medieval epic, starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Adam Driver, and Killing Eve’s Jodie Cormer, pretty much bombed in theaters this fall, despite promising reviews. Our colleague Zosha Millman caught it after a few weeks in theaters, and walked out having had one of her best movie experiences of 2021, suggesting the movie’s themes on sexual violence and human strife were worth the challenge. “The absolute high of digesting such a complicated, thorny narrative in a theater all to myself is something I’ve been chasing ever since.”

The House

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Image: Netflix

Looking for some creepy stop-motion goodness à la Phil Tippett’s Mad God or The Brothers Quay’s Street of Crocodiles? Netflix’s new animated horror anthology The House will be right up your alley then. Composed of three separate stories, the film follows several individuals who find themselves drawn into the malevolent orbit of a mysterious house built by a deranged architect. If you like creepy crawlies, puppet body horror, and existential angst, you’ll love this one.

Brazen

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Photo: Sergei Bachlakov/Netflix

Alyssa Milano stars in the new Netflix thriller Brazen as Grace, a successful mystery author whose estranged sister is murdered under mysterious circumstances. Discovering her sister’s secret life as a webcam performer, Grace attempts to solve the case herself in defiance of Detective Ed Jenning’s (Sam Page) insistence and quickly finds her own life in jeopardy. It looks exactly like the type of movie that Netflix’s upcoming miniseries The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window is attempting to skewer, but if you’re looking for a suspenseful albeit unoriginal new thriller to watch this weekend, you could do worse than Brazen.

Photocopier

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Photo: Netflix

The Indonesian mystery drama Photocopier centers on the story of Suryani (Shenina Cinnamon), a young woman who finds herself at the heart of a terrible controversy after photos of her at a party are circulated online. Losing her scholarship, Suryani seeks out the aid of her childhood friend Amin (Chicco Kurniawan) to find out the truth of what happened the night she blacked out and clear her reputation. But is she truly ready to confront what she finds at the end of her search? The trailer looks tense and thoroughly unnerving, with claustrophobic close-ups, quick cuts, and eerie security footage.

Shattered

Where to watch: Available to rent for $6.99 on Amazon, Apple, and Vudu

Photo: Lionsgate

The action-thriller Shattered takes a page out of Rob Reiner’s Misery by way of Basic Instinct, telling the story of lonely tech millionaire Chris(Cameron Monaghan) who is charmed by the wiles of a beautiful woman named Sky (Lilly Krug). When Chris is unexpectedly injured by a carjacker, Sky quickly steps in to look after him … only to reveal that she has far more sinister intentions in mind than nursing him to health. John Malkovich (Red) and Frank Grillo (Boss Level) co-star as a nosey bystander who gets too close to learning Sky’s plot and her violent boyfriend and partner in crime. Don’t put this one on unless you’ve got the stomach to watch someone getting tortured with power tools.

And here’s what dropped last Friday:

The Tender Bar

Where to watch: Available to stream on Amazon Prime Video

Photo: Claire Folger/ Amazon Studios

Based on J. R. Moehringer’s best selling memoir, the 2021 coming-of-age drama The Tender Bar stars Tye Sheridan (Ready Player One) as a young man with aspirations of becoming a writer growing up in the ’70s and ’80s without a father. In his journey to adulthood, he looks to his uncle Charlie (Ben Affleck), his cantankerous grandfather (Christopher Lloyd), and a community of good-hearted locals at his uncle’s bar for guidance on how to live and carry himself in the world.

See For Me

Where to watch: Available to rent for $4.99 on Apple; $6.99 on Vudu

Image: IFC Midnight

The 2022 horror-thriller See For Me stars Skyler Davenport as Sophie, a blind former skier cat-sitting in a luxurious mansion secluded in the mountains. Ambushed by invaders intent on robbing the house, Sophie is forced to rely on the help of Kelly (Jessica Parker Kennedy), an army veteran working as an operator for a smartphone app in order outmaneuver and overcome her would-be killers. From our review,

Movies like Dancer in the Dark, Julia’s Eyes, The Eye, Blink, and In Darkness all use blindness to make already-vulnerable female leads even more vulnerable — not just to stalkers, predators, and supernatural threats, but to self-doubt, marginalization, and dismissal from the people who should be protecting them. More than any of these, though, the new thriller See For Me plays like a modern update of the 1967 classic Wait Until Dark, with Audrey Hepburn trying to outwit manipulative criminal Alan Arkin after he invades her home. See For Me updates the home-invasion formula with a couple of clever twists and a key relationship. But writers Adam Yorke and Tommy Gushue and director Randall Okita only push the formula so far before they run out of innovation.

Four to Dinner

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Image: Netflix

The Italian rom-com Four to Dinner follows several different alternate realities in which four single friends couple up in different combinations. The question at the heart of the film’s premise is this: is the concept of “soul mates” real and iron-clad, or is there more to a successful relationship than cosmic compatibility? Four to Dinner stars Matilde Gioli, Ilenia Pastorelli, Giuseppe Maggio, and Matteo Martari.

Superdeep

Where to watch: Available to stream on Shudder; available to rent for $4.99 on Amazon, Apple; $3.99 on Vudu

Image: Shudder/RLJE Films

The Russian horror film Superdeep (or The Superdeep) asks one simple question: what if there was like, a really deep hole with horrible nightmares inside of it? After numerous reports of unexplained screams and dozens of missing people, a small team of researchers and soldiers descend into the bowels of the Kola Superdeep Borehole in search of answers and survivors. What they find is a terrifying presence that threatens all of humanity.

American Siege

Where to watch: Available to rent for $12.99 on Apple and Vudu

Image: Vertical Entertainment

Once again, Bruce Willis stars in a direct-to-video action thriller, this time as Ben Watts, an ex-NYPD officer-turned-sheriff who is forced to defuse a volatile hostage situation by solving the disappearance of a young woman in a small rural town in Georgia. American Siege also stars Timothy V. Murphy as Charles Rutledge, a powerful local businessman who commands Watts, and Cullen G. Chambers as John Keats, a local doctor with close ties to Rutledge who finds himself held hostage by militant extremists.

The Wasteland

Where to watch: Available to stream on Netflix

Photo: Lander Larrañaga/Netflix

The Wasteland, originally titled El Páramo (“The Beast”), centers on the story of a small family isolated from society who suddenly find the tranquility of their quiet existence shattered by the arrival of horrific creatures that stalks their home. The trailer looks moody and evocative, calling into question whether this “creature” is real or a fabrication born out loneliness and a blanket fear of the unknown.