The 50 Best Movies on Peacock, Updated for October 2025

DIRECTORS: Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, Conrad Vernon
STARS: Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy
RATING: PG

Anyone who says a sequel can never be as good as the original is clearly forgetting Shrek 2. Heck, this one might even be better than the OG! It introduces Antonio Banderas’ Puss in Boots, supercharges all the cultural references (not to mention the adult humor), and takes us on an even wilder and more emotionally resonant journey. It’s this film that minted a true franchise.

Watch Shrek 2 on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Sean Baker
STARS: Mya Taylor, Kitana Kiki Rodriguez
RATING: R

Your “actually, [BLANK] is a Christmas movie” collection is incomplete without Sean Baker’s Tangerine. This riotous comedy about two trans sex workers making it through a Christmas Eve in Los Angeles originally gained notoriety because it was among the first features shot entirely on an iPhone. But it endures as a testament to how chosen families can see us through challenging times. What is that if not the holiday spirit?!

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DIRECTOR: Gore Verbinski
STARS: Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, Brian Cox
RATING: PG-13

If you watch the cursed videotape, you die within the week. Though The Ring comes from an outdated analog era, its thrills and chills still persist today. The first major Hollywood feature to adapt “J-horror” from Japan for an English-speaking audience set the bar high with emotional stakes that feel grounded but horror that feels otherworldly.

Watch The Ring on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Gerard Johnstone
STARS: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ronny Chieng
RATING: PG-13

To quote the great Wendy Williams: she’s an icon, she’s a legend, and she is the moment. M3GAN, the killer talking AI doll who slays (literally), will sashay her way right into your heart as she curdles your spine. This is a new camp classic that proves sinful fun as it makes some quite insightful commentary on parenting in an automated world.

Watch M3GAN on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Edgar Wright
STARS: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Timothy Dalton
RATING: R

The Scary Movie series and their ilk seem to have torpedoed the popularity of the movie spoof for now. If any intrepid producer wants to revive the genre, they should use Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz as a Rosetta Stone. This parody of bombastic action buddy comedies gleefully sends up recognizable tropes while outlandishly one-upping their antics. At the root of the hilarity is a truth more filmmakers should acknowledge, be they straight-laced or satirical: people who watch a lot of movies are prone to see themselves as starring in the movie of their own life.

Watch Hot Fuzz on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Sam Raimi
STARS: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver
RATING: PG-13

As far as genre mashups go, horror and comedy feel like they’d mix as well as oil and water. But somehow Sam Raimi makes it work in Drag Me to Hell, a supernatural scare-fest that follows the fallout from a loan officer who gets cursed by the gypsy whose mortgage extension she denies. Raimi renders her satanic torments with such unrelenting intensity that it’s entirely possible you won’t know whether to laugh or scream at any given moment.

Watch Drag Me to Hell on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Peter Berg
STARS: Billy Bob Thornton, Derek Luke, Lucas Black
RATING: PG-13

If you only know Friday Night Lights as the deeply felt small-town drama from television, you don’t know the half of it. Peter Berg’s 2004 film captures the grit and grime of Texas high school football in Odessa, a town known for little besides exporting oil and tossing pigskin. The movie captures the desperation behind the blood, sweat, and tears poured out on the field like few other football movies do. It’s fascinating to see the sport portrayed with so little romanticism, even as it occupies such a fabled position in the town.

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DIRECTOR: James Mangold
STARS: Christian Bale, Russell Crowe, Ben Foster
RATING: R

The face-off of Bale and Crowe, two of our most forceful living actors, should be enough to sell 3:10 to Yuma alone. But add on top of that James Mangold’s taut direction, and you’ve got yourself one heck of a Western as Bale’s desperately poor rancher tries to transport Crowe’s hardened criminal off to jail. Remarkably, the best performance does not come from either of the marquee names but rather from Ben Foster as Crowe’s right-hand man. He’s a powder keg always on the verge of explosion and impossible to take your eyes off of.

Watch 3:10 to Yuma on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Alfred Hitchcock
STARS: Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Jessica Tandy
RATING: PG-13

Of all Alfred Hitchcock’s visions of terror, the scariest just might be The Birds … which is really saying something! In a quiet northern California town, the avian creatures amass and then descend from the sky to wreak unexplainable havoc. The film sends shivers up the spine because it doesn’t feel overly metaphorical or cerebral. Hitch understands how frightening it is to be faced with a threat you didn’t cause that comes out of nowhere and seems unresponsive to your actions to stop it.

Watch The Birds on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Tina Gordon
STARS: Chloe Bailey, Anjelika Washington, Quavo
RATING: TV-14

Faith-based entertainment gets a bad rap for too often preaching to the choir (or the converted). But Praise This is a notable exception because it’s not necessarily trying to push a Christian agenda. It’s just a film that lets spiritually-inclined characters live their lives authentically, which involves being rooted in a church community. This might sound like a somber description, but it’s basically just Pitch Perfect for Jesus jams … and a lot of fun!

Watch Praise This on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Leigh Whannell
STARS: Elisabeth Moss, Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid
RATING: R

“Gaslighting” is a term that hit the cultural zeitgeist over the last few years in a major way. For those who still might not understand it, they can feel it in Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man. This update of the Universal classic monster finds a corollary to domestic abusers, both of which prove terrifying presences even if they can’t be seen. Elisabeth Moss, who plays the woman in the villain’s crosshairs, paints a harrowing portrait of paranoia and survivor’s anxiety.

Watch The Invisible Man on Peacock

<strong>DIRECTOR:</strong> Richard Kelly

<strong>STARS:</strong> Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore

<strong>RATING:</strong> R

Decades after its release, the deeply polarizing <em>Donnie Darko</em> still sparks passionate responses from admirers and detractors alike. This eccentric story about a disturbed teenage boy with visions of the world ending – provided by a soothsayer in a rabbit costume – is an eccentric and unique portrayal of adolescent malaise. No matter where you fall in assessing its merits, you’re bound to have a great conversation sorting through all of its oddities with someone else.

Watch Donnie Darko on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Kris Rey
STARS: Cobie Smulders, Anders Holm, Gail Bean
RATING: R

The concept of Kris Rey’s Unexpected seems like it would be a bad idea: an inner-city Chicago high school teacher (Cobie Smulders) and her bright student (Gail Bean) both have unplanned pregnancies at the same time. But it’s all in the execution here. Beyond the compassion bursting out of the frame, Rey’s film keeps an incisive edge throughout as the influence of class and racial dynamics exert themselves subtly but powerfully throughout.

Watch Unexpected on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Jonathan Levine
STARS: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick
RATING: R

A comedy about having cancer? While it might seem impossible, 50/50 finds humor amidst the heartbreak as 27-year-old Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) faces down a cancer diagnosis that shakes him psychologically as much as it does physically. The film charts the ups and downs with grace thanks to the screenplay of Will Reiser, who infuses the proceedings with an authenticity derived from his own experiences.

Watch 50/50 on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Judd Apatow
STARS: Pete Davidson, Marisa Tomei, Steve Buscemi
RATING: R

Pete Davidson might have risen to cultural prominence on the back of a snarky, sardonic persona on SNL. But he lets us see past the tattoos and into his soul in The King of Staten Island, a semi-autobiographical take on his own life rooted in the challenges of losing his firefighter dad in 9/11. There’s no one better than Judd Apatow, king of the prolonged adolescence coming-of-age, to help bring his raucous story to life.

Watch The King of Staten Island on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Joshua Oppenheim
RATING: TV-MA

The news gives you plenty of opportunity to observe atrocities being committed with seeming impunity. Joshua Oppenheim’s trailblazing documentary The Act of Killing takes an unconventional route to exploring how that’s possible. The director hands over the camera to the perpetrators of mass killings in Indonesia, asking them to visualize how their violence felt to them. The gangster story they concoct as a form of self-justification and glorification is chilling to the bone.

Watch The Act of Killing on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Aaron Morehead
STARS: Anthony Mackie, Jamie Dornan, Katie Aselton
RATING: R

It’s no wonder the Marvel machine snapped up the crack team of Aaron Morehead and Justin Benson. The filmmaking duo showed that, even with modest budgets, they could make a big impact. It didn’t get nearly enough love when it came out during the height of the pandemic (and its release was also colored by some controversy around a re-edit), but Synchronic is a seriously smart sci-fi flick. What starts as a tale of two police officers trying to bust up a drug ring turns into something altogether different, arriving at an interrogation of nostalgia and privilege you have to see to believe.

Watch Synchronic on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Bob Clark
STARS: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder
RATING: R

Who says all Christmas movies need to be cheerful? Black Christmas will have you seeing red for the holiday season – red for blood, that is. This slasher film following a sorority house stalked by a crazy killer during the Christmas season is exactly the kind of holiday counterprogramming you’re looking for. But ho ho ho-ld up before you unwrap this gift: the kills from this ‘70s horror flick are gruesome and disturbing even by today’s standards.

Watch Black Christmas on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Marc Forster
STARS: Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Emma Thompson
RATING: PG-13

Does your life feel like a tragedy on one day and a comedy the next? Try being Will Ferrell’s Harold Crick, a man who comes to realize he’s just a character being written in someone else’s story once he hears booming narration of his thoughts and actions. Stranger than Fiction takes high concept comedy to an entertaining extreme, and it delights with literary charms as Harold tries to solve the mystery of his life.

Watch Stranger than Fiction on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Tom McCarthy
STARS: Matt Damon, Camille Cottin, Abigail Breslin
RATING: R

For anyone who thinks that the movies can’t render salt-of-the-earth, red-state America fairly on-screen, I’d direct your attention to Tom McCarthy’s Stillwater. This dramatic thriller about an Oklahoma father trying to free his daughter from a French prison gives all the shadings of full humanity to a character who could easily become a simplistic vigilante in lesser hands. It’s one of Matt Damon’s finest performances, one stripped of vanity and devoted to capturing some incredibly specific regionalisms.

Watch Stillwater on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Chris Peckover
STARS: Olivia De Jonge, Levi Miller, Ed Oxenbould
RATING: R

‘Tis always the season for scares. Better Watch Out starts out like a typical holiday-themed home invasion flick, but let’s just say what Santa’s bringing this year isn’t the only surprise ahead. Chris Peckover’s clever, modest thriller turns many an expectation on its head to wildly entertaining effect.

​Watch Better Watch Out on Peacock Premium

DIRECTOR: Maria Schrader
STARS: Zoe Kazan, Carey Mulligan, Patricia Clarkson
RATING: R

It may feel “too soon” to give the #MeToo movement the biodoc treatment since we’re still sorting out what exactly this cultural moment means. But She Said does what its two fearless journalist subjects set out to do when they broke the story of Harvey Weinstein’s serial predation: report the facts. This is a solid first draft of history that also doubles as an incisive look at women in the workplace.

Watch She Said on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Jordan Peele
STARS: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun
RATING: R

Ever since he broke out with Get Out, inarguably one of the best first features ever made, Jordan Peele has not made it easy for audiences. His films have continued to play in the “social thriller” sandbox but have become increasingly cryptic and symbolic. Nope is, on its surface, a film about attempting to photograph an extraterrestrial presence. But peel back the layers to find a film that’s fascinated with the very nature of cinematic spectacle. It’s worth a rewatch to keep finding new meaning.

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DIRECTORS: Mark Osborne, John Stevenson
STARS: Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman
RATING: PG

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift,” says the wise master Oogway in Kung Fu Panda. “That is why it is called the present.” It’s spawned three sequels, but this DreamWorks Animated gem doesn’t get nearly the respect it deserves. It’s silly and sweet in equal measures, due in large part to the hearty helping of heart brought by Gen Alpha superstar Jack Black to voicing the titular Po.

Watch Kung Fu Panda on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Kelly Reichardt
STARS: Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Paul Dano
RATING: PG

You’ve seen Westerns, and you might have even seen revisionist Westerns. But you’ve probably never seen one quite like Kelly Reichardt’s take on the genre in Meek’s Cutoff. This feminist take on the Western genre examines the great American journey toward pioneering prosperity through the eyes of the women on the trail, most notably Michelle Williams. Reichardt’s sneaky filmmaking limits the audience’s perspective to the limited bits of information they can glean, either because of patriarchal power or because of their restrictive bonnets, and places us in their position of determining if their leader on the trail is a fraud.

Watch Meek’s Cutoff on Peacock

DIRECTOR: George A. Romero
STARS: Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea, Karl Hardman
RATING: Not Rated

Were you a fan of the “social thriller” as configured by Jordan Peele in Get Out? Thank George A. Romero, a pioneer of the subgenre in Night of the Living Dead. What this lo-fi zombie film might lack in scares after 50 years of advances in technology, it more than makes up for in subversive social commentary. It’s living proof that sometimes the most enduring political messages are smuggled through genre films, not blared out from a soapbox in self-important dramas.

Watch Night of the Living Dead on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Adamma Ebo
STARS: Regina Hall, Sterling K. Brown, Nicole Beharie
RATING: R

It is a good and joyful thing that Regina Hall is getting her flowers for One Battle After Another, but she’s been delivering work beyond Scary Movie and Girls Trip for a WHILE now. Hall was excellent as the anchor of Support the Girls, and she’s similarly stellar as the heart of Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. As the beleaguered wife of a cheating megachurch pastor, she masterfully demonstrates a reality that often eludes explanation: why women stay.

Watch Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Autumn De Wilde
STARS: Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, Mia Goth
RATING: PG

It’s pretty insane the cast that Autumn De Wilde rounded up for her Austen adaptation: Anya-Taylor Joy, Mia Goth, Johnny Flynn, Callum Turner, and Josh O’Connor. We may well look back on Emma. as something akin to The Outsiders as an early meeting point of top-tier talent. This film came out just on the cusp of COVID shutdowns and deserves attention for the way it manages to hold the classical and the contemporary elements of Austen’s comedy of manners. (If you get lost in the period language, just remember: it’s basically Clueless.)

Watch Emma. on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Nicholas Stoller
STARS: Billy Eichner, Luke Macfarlane, Guy Branum
RATING: R

Billy Eichner might take the responsibility of being the first studio-backed gay rom-com a little too seriously. Bros is a real artifact of the identity-obsessed era that produced it, given how it almost apologizes for centering the love story of two attractive white gay men. The film might be stuffed to the brim with representation, but that doesn’t distract from the sweetness of its central romance. When Eichner gets to do the Nora Ephron narrative so rarely afforded to queer characters on screen, it’s delightful.

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DIRECTOR: Ti West
STARS: Joe Swanberg, AJ Bowen, Kentucker Audley, Amy Seimetz
RATING: R

This side of Cloverfield, there are very few found footage horror films worth your time. There’s none of the now-standard hokey gimmickry in The Sacrament, which essentially reimagines the Jonestown Massacre if Vice-like journalists were there to capture it on camera. This is a chilling look at cults that’s rendered terrifyingly realistically, both by the chosen aesthetic device and the narrative one. The film’s emotional entry point is that one of the video guys is there to help rescue his sister, who has been fully brainwashed into Eden Parish.

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DIRECTOR: Luca Guadagnino
STARS: Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, Mark Rylance
RATING: R

How is it possible that “heteroflexible cannibal Timothée Chalamet” didn’t fill all the seats in American theaters when Bones and All was released in 2022? This scarily sweet tale of lovers on the run – who just happen to have an insatiable appetite for human flesh – is a deeply resonant tale of outsiders trying to find their place in an unforgiving American world. If you take Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name and smashed it together with the genre flair of his Suspiria remake, you might end up with something this wild. (Pun fully intended for all the Jonathan Demme heads out there.)

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DIRECTOR: James Gray
STARS: Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Banks Repeta
RATING: R

It might be easiest to think about James Gray’s memory piece as something like an illustrative parable for where America is today. Armageddon Time takes a story of his own childhood to vividly demonstrate how privilege reproduces itself in American society. That the Trump family makes organic appearances in ‘70s New York only adds to its chilling resonance.

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DIRECTOR: Eliza Hittman
STARS: Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder, Théodore Pellerin
RATING: PG-13

The debate over female bodily autonomy gets ripped from its hot-button political context (insofar as such a thing is possible) by Eliza Hittman in her extraordinary film Never Rarely Sometimes Always. With poetry and proceduralism alike, the director methodically walks an audience through the steps of a teenage girl forced to make a clandestine trip into New York City to terminate an unanticipated pregnancy. Each step along the way reveals a process designed to stigmatize and shame women trying to make the decision – and only strengthens the bond tying together two cousins who will support each other through anything.

Watch Never Rarely Sometimes Always on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Darren Aronofsky
STARS: Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans
RATING: R

A little unsolicited tip for parents: no anti-drug PSA will ever be as effective as Requiem for a Dream. Darren Aronofsky’s breakout feature is essentially “Scared Straight: The Movie” as it tracks the descent of four New Yorkers under the influence of addictive substances. There’s the more traditional junkie stuff, but nothing is scarier than Ellen Burstyn’s Sara Goldfarb getting hooked on weight loss pills that render her a husk of her former self. This may be the only movie that has ever made me scream. I’ll never watch it again, but I’ll also never forget my first time.

Watch Requiem for a Dream on Peacock

DIRECTOR: James DeMonaco
STARS: Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey
RATING: R

The Purge was supposed to be a dystopian horror fantasy, not … a destination our society should be heading toward. If you don’t feel like the concept of unleashing utter lawlessness for one night in the name of preserving social cohesion hits a little too close to home, then maybe it’s time to remind yourself that this was a movie before it came something like a meme. It’s a terrifying experience to watch one family try to survive and provocative to mull over the narrative’s expectations.

Watch The Purge on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Alfonso Cuarón
STARS: Daniel Radcliffe, Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Emma Thompson
RATING: PG

You can make an argument for just about any Harry Potter movie as the best, but it’s pretty hard to dispute that Prisoner of Azkaban is the most important of them all. Director Alfonso Cuarón’s infusion of dark ambiance and devilish humor helped the series graduate from kiddie literature into the stuff of serious adult drama. Rather than relegate it forever to the dustbin of fantasy, he grounded it in the realities of teenage anxieties and growing pangs. It’s got a wicked sense of style and fun that set the tone for all that was to come from the franchise on-screen.

Watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on Peacock Premium

DIRECTOR: Todd Field
STARS: Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss
RATING: R

Rearrange the letters in TÀR and you get ART, which is what Cate Blanchett is. There’s likely no other person on earth who could play a role that asks a performer to embody not only a character but an entire craft. Her committed conductor on the cusp of cancellation presents a dilemma for the 2020s that only someone like Blanchett would layer with such exquisitely wrought tension.

Watch TÁR on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Chris Miller
STARS: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Zach Galifianakis
RATING: PG

The Shrek franchise started to fall off around the third installment. The Puss in Boots spinoff series, however, was more than happy to pick up the slack. The feline sidekick always had main character energy, let’s be honest. This adventure to fight Jack and Jill for some Golden Eggs is an absolute riot, packed with all the irreverent cleverness we love from the DreamWorks animation behemoth.

Watch Puss in Boots on Peacock

DIRECTORS: Mary Harron
STARS: Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto
RATING: R

Don’t judge a movie by its worst fans. The most insane #grindset aspiring dude you know probably makes no secret about his love for American Psycho, but don’t let that be a reflection of Mary Harron’s work here. Sometimes a satire can be so sharp that its target mistakes ridicule for praise, and that’s the case for the world of Christian Bale’s ‘80s finance bro Patrick Bateman. Don’t take the film at face value, please.

Watch American Psycho on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Ivan Reitman
STARS: Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis
RATING: PG

Who you gonna call … for a good movie night? No amount of subpar remakes and spinoffs can ruin the dint of the original Ghostbusters. Long before blockbusters learned to shoehorn comedy into their style to broaden their appeal, Ivan Reitman cracked the code. This is a sci-fi spectacle of the highest order that never loses its footing in the humorous antics of a workplace comedy. It’s got Aykroyd, Murray, and Ramis at the top of their respective games – no supernatural menace stood a chance.

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DIRECTOR: Wes Anderson
STARS: Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera
RATING: PG-13

What’s up with Wes Anderson doing some of the best work of his career and seemingly no one caring? The Phoenician Scheme plays like a mellower spiritual sequel to his beloved The Royal Tenenbaums, examining the relationship between fathers and children from Anderson’s more mature vantage point. The filmmaker continues to poke holes in the neatness people associate with his aesthetic, revealing fascinating undercurrents for those willing to look past surface-level tweeness.

Watch The Phoenician Scheme on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Lynne Ramsay
STARS: Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller, John C. Reilly
RATING: R

A decade out, Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin only grows in relevance. Our society continues to struggle in reckoning with the “mother of a monster” figure given the plague of disaffected young men committing acts of unspeakable violence. Ramsay never gets preachy or didactic in her exploration of the nature vs. nurture debate, instead letting her propulsive visuals pull us deep into the tortured psyche of Tilda Swinton’s Eva Khatchadourian. Don’t expect easy answers from the film, but Ramsay’s challenges and provocations will undoubtedly deepen your emotional understanding of this new cultural archetype.

Watch We Need to Talk About Kevin on Peacock

DIRECTORS: Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam
STARS: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle
RATING: PG

The Knights Who Say Ni. The actual coconut shells to simulate the sound of horse tracks. Not being dead yet. The Trojan rabbit. Those wild subtitles! Everyone’s got to have a favorite bit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and these are only just scratching the surface. If you don’t have one yourself, it’s time for a rewatch … or, perhaps luckily for you, a first watch.

Watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Wes Craven
STARS: Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette
RATING: R

After decades of teen slasher movies started to grow stale, Wes Craven’s Scream flipped the script by going meta and calling the game it was playing. This revisionist horror film is the rare self-referential movie that manages to have it both ways, critiquing the thrills and chills of the genre while also providing them for an audience. Now, all these years later, it’s Scream itself that horror filmmakers are eager to rib and reference in their own works.

Watch Scream on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Denis Villeneuve
STARS: Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin
RATING: R

Denis Villeneuve has become a master of sci-fi worlds in his most recent directorial outings, but his best work may still be the grounded terrestrial tale along the U.S.-Mexico border in Sicario. This gripping thriller gets into the murky middle-ground where the drug trade meets law enforcement … where there is no division as clean as a dividing line. Our spiritual guide through this dangerous territory is Emily Blunt’s Kate Macer, an FBI agent trying to keep her moral compass straight. Watching Blunt’s minute facial expressions register the confusion and horror swirling around her is truly the essence of cinema.

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DIRECTORS: Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois
STARS: Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Christopher Mintz-Plasse
RATING: PG

How many animated films can claim they have Academy Award-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins (frequent DP for Denis Villeneuve and the Coen Brothers) as visual consultant? It’s clear to spot his influence in How to Train Your Dragon, which features soaring aerials that still dazzle even on the small screen. This story of a young Viking who seeks to help the very creatures his village seeks to hunt has a keen eye for action and a big, beating heart of compassion.

Watch How to Train Your Dragon on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan
STARS: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Ann Moss, Joe Pantoliano
RATING: R

“I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world’s still there,” says Memento protagonist Leonard Shelby. Although the quote feels like it could just as easily be attributable to Dom Cobb from Inception or Oppenheimer himself, just to name a few central figures from the work of Christopher Nolan. All the hallmarks of his work are here: the interlocking narratives, the manipulation of time, the fragile sense of self, the acute fear of setting off a chain reaction spelling doom for others. This film also has the heart and soul to back it up, too.

Watch Memento on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Alfred Hitchcock
STARS: Janet Leigh, Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles
RATING: R

Psycho is so much more than the notorious shower murder – you’ve had over 60 years and the scene is everywhere in culture, this is not a spoiler. There’s a whole two acts of movie after it occurs! Sit back and let the Master of Suspense himself take you on a ride to the Bates Motel. You’re in for a frightful treat.

Watch Psycho on Peacock

DIRECTOR: Edgar Wright
STARS: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost
RATING: R

Edgar Wright’s breakout action-comedy Shaun of the Dead remains a stunning display for a master already in full command of his style. The zippy, zesty adventure following two British schlubs fighting off a zombie invasion lovingly ribs the horror genre while cribbing its pleasures liberally. If nothing else, surely you’ll at least find something to love in the inspired comic pairing of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who make for a kind of jaded Gen X equivalent of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin.

Watch Shaun of the Dead on Peacock

DIRECTORS: Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson
STARS: Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, John Lithgow
RATING: PG

Nearly two decades after its release, Shrek remains as relevant and vital as ever – and if you need proof, scroll any social media service long enough to eventually see a meme featuring everyone’s favorite ogre. This family-friendly adventure works as both a witty send-up of fairy tale lore and a moving journey of self-acceptance. It’s got clever jokes for adults and juvenile ones for the kids, ensuring that everyone’s happy with this movie night pick.

Watch Shrek on Peacock