The best original movies on Hulu

With rom-coms (Palm Springs), documentaries (Minding The Gap), and more, the best original movies on Hulu cover all the bases.

By The A.V. Club | February 3, 2026 | 2:00am

Photo: Hulu

Film Lists Hulu

Hulu, like all streaming services, adds and loses titles every month. If you see something that you want to stream, you can’t assume that it will still be there two weeks or two months later when you get around to it. That movie may hop over to another streaming service like Netflix or Amazon Prime for a few months, or it may disappear from streaming altogether for an indeterminate amount of time. The lesson here? Stream ‘em while they’re hot and, when in doubt, rely on the originals that aren’t going anywhere. Our list of the best original movies on Hulu is a bit more complex than some of the other mainstream streamers, because now that Hulu is fully owned by Disney, its corporate brethren beef up its offerings and help add some stability to the ever-rotating collection of films.

Deep Water

Deep Water comes 20 years after Adrian Lyne’s previous work, the soapy, acclaimed Unfaithful, and it shepherds a sadly ailing cinematic tradition forward with the same luminous style, a welcome sensuality, and in an era in which pornography is more widely available than ever before, an astute bit of camp. An adaptation of the 1957 novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith, Lyne’s latest revisits some of the erotic highlights from his earlier works (Flashdance, 9 ½ Weeks, and Fatal Attraction) and updates them in a more appropriate (and egalitarian) context. Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, both terrific, play the couple around whom the film’s meditation on modern sexual relationships revolves, while Lyne proves not only that he can film hot scenes unlike almost anyone in the business, but inject them with a psychological sophistication that complicates their (and our) post-coital bliss. [Todd Gilchrist]

Good Luck To You, Leo Grande

From the moment we meet Nancy Stokes, anxiously pacing around a tastefully anonymous hotel room, knocking back a minibar vodka and posing in the mirror to no great personal satisfaction, we can tell she’s a nervous wreck. And why shouldn’t she be? Nancy is a 55-year-old widow awaiting the arrival of a sex worker who’ll hopefully give her the first orgasm of her entire life. The male escort assigned to this monumental task is the “aesthetically perfect” young Leo (Daryl McCormack) and, as he’ll learn over the course of their four meetings, giving Nancy a chance to premiere her O-face means breaking down her well-established defenses. If that sounds like the premise for a comedy or even a tragedy, it’s actually neither. Good Luck To You, Leo Grande is a tender and richly satisfying charmer whose themes of self-acceptance and body positivity are delivered with a light and carefully crafted touch. Emma Thompson is at her prickly, vulnerable, fiercely intelligent best as Nancy, a stand-in for every woman who’s suppressed her sexuality out of shame, feelings of inadequacy or a need to please others. Unfolding almost entirely in one room, the film is a two-character study of sexual awakening and a heartfelt, yearning dispatch from the farthest corner of the age divide. It’s a sexually frank and intimate story told in a pleasingly mainstream manner that avoids greeting card clichés and empty “girl power” posturing. [Mark Keizer]

The Hand That Rocks The Cradle

Mexican filmmaker Michelle Garza Cervera’s take on The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, originally directed by Curtis Hanson from a screenplay by Amanda Silver, makes some much-needed amendments for our current cultural climate, but the core of the successful domestic thriller remains intact. While working at a tenants’ rights event, “ready to pop” expectant mother Caitlyn (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) briefly encounters Polly (Maika Monroe), a young woman worried about an imminent rent hike being enforced by her landlord. Polly drops a hint about needing work; as fate would have it, Caitlyn needs a nanny. So Polly enters the family home, immediately forming a connection with the precocious yet fickle Emma. The film’s ensuing tension stems from truly unexpected adversity, with organic parental missteps as well as calculated sabotage from a third party. The remake features riveting tension, assured performances, and hallmarks of an exciting new director’s narrative fascinations, all while the politics of its central dynamic continue to cry out for examination. [Natalia Keogan]

Minding The Gap

From the house that fronted Hoop Dreams comes another absorbing, heartbreaking documentary about coming of age on the economic fringe of the American Midwest. It’s boards, not basketball, that the young subjects of Minding The Gap looked to as an escape hatch, back when they were teenagers delivering themselves, an afternoon at a time, from the shared trauma of their home lives. Bing Liu, the director, was one of them, a budding filmmaker shooting skating videos with his friends. Returning to his old stomping grounds of Rockford, Illinois, he catches up with these childhood companions, still haunted by the abuse they experienced as kids, which has shaped their adulthoods in ways both obvious and not. As usual, the Kartemquin long-term filming model pays enormous dramatic dividends. But Liu is just as interested in where these real lives have been as where they’re headed, because the two are intimately related—just one profound takeaway from his multifaceted portrait of boys growing into men, trying to outpace their demons along the way. [A.A. Dowd]

Nomadland

Unless the political landscape changes significantly over the next few years, the number of Americans facing an old age like the one profiled in Nomadland will only continue to grow. A longtime resident of Empire, Nevada, Fern (Frances McDormand) watched her town shrivel up and die after the gypsum mine that employed the majority of the community shut down in January 2011. A dandelion seed left to float on the fickle winds of capitalism, Fern now lives in a custom van she calls “Vanguard,” traveling in search of temporary employment and a safe place to park overnight. In the winter, she packs boxes at an Amazon warehouse; in the summer, she fries burgers and cleans toilets at tourist attractions. Her pleasures are simple, her struggles immense. Her hair is short, her shoes sensible. She keeps moving so she doesn’t dwell on the past for long. In different hands, Fern’s story might be tragic. But while Nomadland director (and writer and editor and co-producer) Chloé Zhao is interested in the material realities of a sixtysomething widow living an itinerant lifestyle, she also brings a dignity to the film that verges on sublime. [A.A. Dowd]

Palm Springs

Andy Samberg stars as Nyles, a slacker doofus stuck at a destination wedding in Southern California, which he’s attending as the date of a bridesmaid. Blithely wandering the reception in a loud and very informal short-sleeve shirt, Nyles clearly doesn’t have any fucks to give. But he also seems to have a suspiciously premonitory sense of how the night will play out. And before long, Palm Springs reveals the reason for both: He’s stuck in a time warp, waking up every morning to find himself still in Palm Springs on the morning of the wedding. The film employs its magical conceit as a multi-purpose metaphor for a long-term relationship. The flip side, of course, is that monogamy can leave you feeling as stuck as the characters, living the same day over and over again, with only your significant other for company. But Palm Springs wears all that baggage lightly. It’s a sadly rare thing: a sweet, madly inventive, totally mainstream romantic comedy, buoyed by inspired jolts of comic violence (some of them provided by J.K. Simmons as another wedding guest with a very big bone to pick with Nyles). [A.A. Dowd]

Predator: Killer Of Killers

Told across three vignettes set in different time periods, Predator: Killer Of Killers embraces the franchise’s renewed form as a historical fiction anthology, pitting a trio of warriors, assassins, and stalwart survivors from across the expanse of human history against a cadre of Yautja vying for the ultimate title of “Killer of Killers.” Each vignette, clocking in at a little over 20 minutes, excels at establishing the emotional and narrative stakes of its respective protagonists while following through on the promise of seeing their wits, brawn, and guile locked in mortal combat with otherworldly adversaries from beyond the stars. There’s little to no fat to be found in this film; it’s a lean, mean action-thriller that threads the needle between speculative storytelling and brutal sci-fi carnage. Many of the action sequences inspire comparisons to 2023’s Blue Eye Samurai for their frenetic violence and novel cinematography, and the film’s climax leaves little doubt that the reins of the franchise are well-placed in Dan Trachtenberg’s capable hands. [Toussaint Egan]

Prey

A prequel to Predator, Prey is set in 1719, following Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young Comanche warrior who wants to break the gender traditions of her tribe and become a hunter. Already a skilled tracker and healer, Naru’s strength is put to the test when an unseen adversary endangers her tribe. Within this new setting, [Dan] Trachtenberg strips the Predator franchise back down to its core elements—the ruthlessness of this alien species and the ingenuity of humanity when confronted with nearly impossible odds. In concentrating on character and location, he backs off of the world-changing repercussions of the franchise’s immediate predecessors, creating an involving and tense character-driven experience whose strengths rely on narrative simplicity and a compelling lead in Midthunder. [Richard Newby]

Rye Lane

Written by Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia, this seemingly simple story of two people romantically coming together during an adventure through South London is elevated by direction and performances that capture the absurdity of lost loves and first dates. When Dom (David Jonsson) becomes overwhelmed by the emotional toll of his recently ended long-term relationship, he ducks out of his friend’s art show to hide in a unisex bathroom stall and cry. When Yas (Vivian Oparah) enters the bathroom to pee, she can’t help but notice the boy with pink shoes unsuccessfully hiding his sobs behind the sounds of her flushing. Later, Yas finds Dom back in the gallery and decides to tag along with him as he runs an errand to the Rye Lane neighborhood, their conversations unearthing the tragedy of Dom’s broken heart. Jonsson and Oparah have a natural chemistry, so not only does it never get old spending time with them, but they feel like people who should get together because they bring out the best in each other. Rye Lane never tips over fully into cartoonish exaggeration, but the playful presentation of ids and egos through the dreamlike perspectives of its leads goes a long way toward making the film stand out as more than just a showcase for freewheeling chemistry. [Leigh Monson]

Summer Of Soul

Everyone has heard of Woodstock. The people who were there have made sure of that. So has the 1970 concert film Woodstock, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and was added to the National Film Registry in 1996. But there was another musical event in the summer of 1969 that both reflected and shaped the cultural revolution blossoming around it. This event, the Harlem Cultural Festival, was also captured on film, and attracted some of the biggest names in music at the time. But until archival footage was dug up and recut into Summer Of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised), the Harlem Cultural Festival mostly lived on in the minds of those who were there. The reason for this, as Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s documentary makes clear, is that the Harlem Cultural Festival was created by and for Black people. Making his directorial debut, the Roots drummer and frontman approaches this condensed narrative with a musician’s sense of timing, expertly assembling rhythmic montages with editor Joshua Pearson that transcend flashy music-video devices to relay a sense of conversation, of voices reaching across the decades to be heard. There’s a resignation in the film towards the fact that this footage wasn’t picked up for broadcast back in 1969, but that’s not the dominant feeling that comes across on screen. Instead, we’re immersed in celebration: of a moment, of music, of a people. [Katie Rife]

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