Pandora Comes Home
James Cameron’s third trip to Pandora is finally watchable from the couch. Avatar: Fire and Ash, 2025’s biggest sci-fi box-office hit, is now available to rent at home, bringing its 3-hour-plus spectacle to your living room. The film finds Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) on the run again as the relentless Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) forges an uneasy alliance with the volcano-dwelling Na’vi led by Oona Chaplin. That volatile pact sparks a Na’vi-against-Na’vi conflict, with the kind of large-scale action Cameron’s built a career on.
From our review, the script aims higher than many expected, pushing the family’s moral lines while keeping the technical fireworks front and center.
An Avatar movie with lots of moving parts, fueled by overt technical prowess, could sound like “just more Avatar.” But Cameron, Jaffa, and Silver seem determined to make the script really count this time around. Neytiri and Jake each spend a good chunk of the movie debating whether to kill Spider to keep their family and other Na’vi safe, with Saldaña always on the verge of tears, and Worthington honestly giving a performance that would be Oscar-worthy in a year where Leonardo DiCaprio wasn’t also playing a sad dad.
If you missed the theatrical run or just want to pause on those molten vistas, this digital debut makes for a marquee home-viewing event.
Horror Heads the Subscription Lineup
Netflix’s biggest new arrival is Nia DaCosta’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (1h 49m), a lean, vicious follow-up that throws a human monster into the mix. Alfie Williams plays Spike, who’s forced into a zealot’s orbit under Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell). Their violent crusade collides with the guarded Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), and the fallout includes one of the wildest scenes you’ll see this year. DaCosta keeps the pace tight and the dread human-sized.
Our review singles out O’Connell’s unnerving turn as a true believer, even amid sprinting infected.
O’Connell plays his part to perfection, earnestly selling the conceit that his character believes Satan sent both the rage virus and Jimmy himself to rid the world of human immorality. In a franchise defined by violent, sprinting zombies, O’Connell manages to be the scariest figure onscreen, though his followers often feel like interchangeable background actors just waiting to get killed off.
Over on Max, Alien: Romulus (1h 59m) steers the series back to a stripped-down formula. Cailee Spaeny leads a scrappy crew who pry open a derelict station and unleash exactly the nightmare you’re imagining. Director Fede Álvarez leans hard into creeping corridors before punching up the action, and the split doesn’t always land evenly. Still, the craft is muscular, and the xenomorphs remain a reliable source of stress.
As our review puts it, the movie blends haunted-house chills with Aliens-style crowd-pleasing mayhem, even if it plays familiar.
Like the Romulus and Remus stations, which serve as the film’s setting, Alien: Romulus is made up of roughly two parts: a haunted-house story in outer space à la Alien, and a crowd-pleasing horror-action spectacle like Aliens. The former element is stronger than the latter in this case, and the imbalance is one of the reasons Alien: Romulus feels like a by-the-numbers retread of the franchise defining it, rather than the resuscitative breath it so desperately needs.
Need a lighter watch? Hulu’s Pizza Movie (1h 32m) strands college roommates Jack (Gaten Matarazzo) and Montgomery (Sean Giambrone) mid–bad trip after sampling a new drug, M.I.N.T.S. The antidote: a drone-delivered pizza waiting downstairs. Getting there is the joke—and the gauntlet—as the pair stumble through escalating, hallucination-fueled obstacles. It’s brisk, goofy, and tailor-made for late-night viewing.
Peacock keeps the animatronics whirring with Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (1h 44m). Director Emma Tammi adds the Marionette to the roster and ties the chaos to Abby (Piper Rubio), a kid who still believes the bots are friends. While there’s fan service and plenty of mechanical mayhem, the story can be tough to track if you’re not already deep into the lore.
Our review doesn’t mince words about the sequel’s stumbles.
Between the confusing plot elements, the middling horror, and the dodgy acting, Five Nights at Freddy's 2 is a step backward from the first movie. It’s a disappointment: While there are moments in the movie that fans may enjoy, and plenty of robots causing chaos, the story is a mess if you don't already know the ins and outs of the series. The first Five Nights at Freddy's movie felt like it was inviting all of us into its world. This one, on the other hand, could leave everyone but the franchise’s biggest diehards feeling like outsiders, simply trying to keep up.
More Fresh Picks Across Platforms
Prime Video drops the slick crime thriller Crime 101 (2h 20m) from Bart Layton. Chris Hemsworth plays Mike Davis, a meticulous jewel thief who treats U.S. Route 101 as his personal escape lane. Mark Ruffalo’s dogged LAPD detective closes in just as Mike teams with an insurance broker (Halle Berry) for a high-stakes watch heist. Expect cat-and-mouse feints, careful planning, and a few sharp reversals.
Shudder doubles down on genre with Deathstalker (1h 43m) and Somnium (1h 32m). Deathstalker, Steven Kostanski’s swords-and-sorcery romp, follows a fallen knight (Daniel Bernhardt) trying to ditch a cursed amulet as an ancient necromancer hunts him. It’s packed with creature work, choppy limbs, and original music from Slash. Somnium shifts gears to science-fiction horror: after a rough breakup, Gemma (Chloë Levine) takes a night job at an experimental sleep clinic, only to find its dreamwork leaking into something far darker.
On Starz, The Housemaid (2h 11m) pairs Sydney Sweeney with Amanda Seyfried for a psychological tug-of-war inside a wealthy home. Sweeney’s Millie, desperate to meet parole conditions, takes a live-in gig with the Winchesters, then gets caught between Nina’s volatility and Andrew’s control. It’s a glossy, icy slow-burn where every favor carries a cost.
New to Rent Beyond Pandora
Outside the Avatar behemoth, two rentals scratch the slasher itch. Dolly (1h 23m) strands a couple on a “romantic” hike that curdles into nightmare territory once a porcelain-masked abductor fixates on turning Macy (Fabianne Therese) into her child. It moves fast, wastes little time on preamble, and swings hard with its central villain.
Scream 7 (1h 54m) brings Neve Campbell back to face a new masked killer terrorizing Pine Grove, Indiana. Familiar survivors circle the wagons while fresh faces enter the fray; the thrills hinge on set-piece ingenuity and the series’ meta bite. Not everyone’s convinced by the creative recalibration, though.
The real problem with Scream 7 isn’t the absence of Tara and Sam, even if they did offer more intriguing story avenues than Sidney getting menaced for the sixth time. It’s Williamson’s inability to flip the movie’s weaknesses into evocative strengths. Tatum’s high school, and Pine Grove in general, seem weirdly underpopulated — the sparing use of extras makes it seem as if the town has a bustling population of about 30 people — and a big scene set downtown closely resembles a movie backlot, albeit one where the lighting rigs are broken.
Stacked weekend, right? If you only pick one, the Pandora-sized draw is obvious. But there’s a smart horror double feature waiting with 28 Years Later and Alien: Romulus, plus a breezy detour via Pizza Movie. Stream boldly now; the conversation around these releases will be loud by Monday.
