11 best new movies to check out on Hulu this August

The Craft stars Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell, Robin Tunney, and Rachel True as a coven of teen witches at a Los Angeles Catholic school who discover that the energy they put out into the world—whether positive or negative—comes back times three. The supernatural thriller developed a cult following over the years, sparked an interest in Wicca, and even spawned an inferior sequel, The Craft: Legacy, in 2020. The original movie, directed by Andrew Fleming, will still resonate with young outsiders, rebels, and goth-adjacent types who are trying to figure out who they are and how they fit in (or don’t).

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People missing the low-budget, found-footage thrills of movies such as The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity will want to investigate the 2022 Canadian horror film Skinamarink, written and directed by Kyle Edward Ball. The grainy movie with a $15,000 budget follows two children who awake in the middle of the night, cannot find their father, and discover that doors, windows, and other objects in their home have disappeared. The A.V.Club has already anointed Skinamarink a top contender for the year’s most frightening film. Read our review here.

If you’re crushed that a sequel to 1996’s Twister is still a year away from release, check out Supercell starring Skeet Ulrich, Alec Baldwin, and the late Anne Heche. The plot should sound familiar: a young man runs away and wants to be a storm chaser like his dad, which means the teen is going to need to be rescued by his family and friends when a supercell pummels the area. The disaster film is directed and cowritten by Herbert James Winterstern. With that last name, he had to direct a weather-related flick, right?

If you can’t get enough of horror movies about creepy white people who live in remote areas with plenty of rocky cliffs (such as The Wicker Man and Midsommar), add Enys Men to your watch list. Set in 1973 and filmed to look like it, Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men follows a wildlife volunteer (Mary Woodvine) studying a rare flower on an uninhabited island off the Cornish coast. Her educational expedition turns into a terrifying metaphysical one as she is confronted by ghosts of her past. What the heck is in that pollen?

The romantic drama Beautiful Disaster is based on Jamie McGuire’s 2011 romance novel of the same name. The movie stars Dylan Sprouse as the bad boy that college freshman Abby Abernathy (Virginia Gardner) desperately wants to avoid ... but you know she’s not going to. This movie, directed by Cruel Intensions’ Roger Kumble, knows it’s trashy, so you should be in that kind of mood before you sit down for 1 hour and 45 minutes of R-rated cinematic junk food.

In The Intruder, Michael Ealy and Meagan Good play a couple who buy a gorgeous house on several acres of land from a man (Dennis Quaid) who just can’t seem to emotionally detach himself from the property. The A.V. Club’s Katie Rife described The Intruder as a “giggle-inducing home-invasion thriller” in which Quaid plays a “yuppie from Hell.” It’s Quaid’s over-the-top performance as a mentally unstable male “Karen” that’s the real draw here as he rants about the lawn “getting out of control” and goes full psycho by the movie’s end.

Former Next Big Deal Shailene Woodley stars as a troubled Baltimore cop recruited by the FBI to help track down a disturbed individual who is terrorizing the city on New Year’s Eve in To Catch A Killer. Director Damián David Szifron’s derivative crime drama is no The Silence Of The Lambs and Divergent actress Woodley is no Jodie Foster, but this moody thriller may appeal to fans of both anyway.

David O. Russell directed the mystery-comedy-thriller Amsterdam starring Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldaña, Mike Myers, Michael Shannon, Timothy Olyphant, Rami Malek, Taylor Swift, and Robert De Niro ... to name just a few. Set in the 1930s, Amsterdam is about three friends who witness the murder of a retired U.S. general and are framed for it, only to subsequently uncover a notorious political conspiracy known as the Business Plot. The movie’s plot is as packed as its ensemble cast, so watch this one free from distractions to catch all of the details.

In director Daniel Goldhaber’s acclaimed crime thriller How To Blow Up A Pipeline, a group of young Texas activists plot to blow up an oil pipeline in two different areas. The A.V. Club’s Murtada Elfadl wrote, “this is a story—urgent and of this moment in time—about the climate crisis, the personal toll it takes on a few people, and the drastic measures they employ to try and make a meaningful impact. [How To Blow Up A Pipeline’s] strength lies in making a topical issue palatable and highly watchable. It offers no judgment and no easy answers yet it firmly engenders empathy for its characters’ actions. This is a climate crisis story told in a matter-of-fact way that would be dispiriting if it wasn’t for its ever-present hopeful tone.”

If you recently watched Avatar: The Way Of Water with a young person who asked you what other movies has Sam Worthington been in, you can tell them all about Transfusion. In the action-crime drama, Worthington plays a former Special Forces operative who recently lost his wife and is thrown into the criminal underground to keep his only son from being taken from him as well. The movie is surprisingly thoughtful although there’s also plenty of action, too. For those who don’t know their Sam Worthington from their Jake Sully, take a look at Transfusion.

James Wan, the director of Insidious and The Conjuring, is also at the helm for Malignant, one of the most daring and devilish horror movies released during the pandemic. It would spoil the fun to reveal why Madison (Annabelle Wallis) is having terrifying visions that are actually happening, but many fans’ jaws are still on the floor after the answer was revealed on-screen. The A.V. Club’s A.A. Dowd wrote, “Malignant is a zany psychodramatic creepfest that, here and there, veers into gory action hilarity.”