The best new movies to stream this weekend (January 2)

Streaming ain’t easy. Sure, if you’re a cinephile, practically every movie you could ever want to watch is at your fingertips. But therein lies the problem: knowing what’s out there, and where to find it, can become overwhelming. Here, we’re doing the hard work for you, by cutting through the clutter and getting straight to the best new movies available to watch right now. Here are the five must-watch movies hitting streaming services this weekend. 

Recommended:

🏆 The best movies of 2025
🆕 What’s new on Netflix in January 2026

1. A Desert (Shudder)

Music video director Joshua Erkman makes an unnerving feature debut with this mysterious, sinister horror noir. After a photographer goes missing in the California desert, his wife and a private investigator — the latter played by Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow — get sucked into the same vortex of sex, violence and creepy motels that claimed him. Full of beautiful images of ugly landscapes, it’s a movie that seems spat directly from Hell itself.

Watch A Desert Now on Shudder

2. Ash (Hulu)

Visionary electronic music producer Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, moves into the filmmaking space with a sci-fi thriller worthy of his futuristic beatscapes. An astronaut (Eiza González) wakes up alone on an unknown planet and finds the rest of her crew dead. Suffering from amnesia, she encounters a man (Aaron Paul) who claims to have come to rescue her. Can she trust him? A standard-issue story, sure, but Ellison invests the film with great style, from the impressive visuals to, naturally, the thumping score.

Watch Ash now on Hulu

3. Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story (Netflix)

An evil influencer? Is there any other kind? Seriously, though, the story of Jodi Hildebrandt, a Utah life coach who ingratiated her way into the life of mommy vlogger Ruby Franke, is truly disturbing. Director Skye Borgman has already made a few viral true-crime docs, including Abducted in Plain Sight and last year’s Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, and this incident has the elements to join them – although this one gets particularly ugly.

Watch Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story now on Netflix