GoKawiilSummer has arrived, which means its vacation season—and there are plenty of travel tips to be found amongst the best movies on streaming this May. A bloody ballet battle royale in Budapest in Prime Video’s Pretty Lethal, a visit to the picturesque (and definitely not haunted) Dutch forests in Shudder’s Heresy, or an action-packed trip to Japan courtesy of Netflix’s My Hero Academia: You’re Next, are just some of the locations sure to give you wanderlust this month.
If you fancy something a bit more tropical, then look no further than Send Help on Hulu—although director Sam Raimi’s twisty survival horror might have you thinking twice before turning on your out of office emails. And, if the rising temperatures are already too much, the Antarctic chill of John Carpenter’s classic The Thing, and its 1950s inspiration, The Thing from Another World, are both landing on Criterion.
Here are WIRED’s picks of the best movies to watch right now.
Bugonia
A remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet!, Bugonia sees paranoid conspiracy theorist Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons) and his autistic cousin Don (Aidan Delbis) kidnap prominent CEO Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), subjecting her to inventive, brutal forms of torture as he tries to force a confession that she’s in contact with invading aliens. Fuller’s company also happens to be responsible for a botched medical trial that left Gatz’s mother comatose. So is Gatz just a troubled man struggling with grief, out for vengeance against a corrupt businesswoman, or has he stumbled on the greatest threat to humanity? Director Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things, The Favourite) has tremendous fun teasing out the answer, while Stone has rarely been as captivating on screen than she is as Fuller, somehow seeming like an animal playing with their food, even at her shaven-headed, desperate lowest points.
My Hero Academia: You’re Next
As the fourth movie spin-off from the long-running anime series My Hero Academia, You’re Next might not seem like an obvious jumping on point for original manga creator Kōhei Horikoshi’s tale of trainee superheroes in a world where everyone has powers. Thankfully, this is largely standalone, allowing anyone who fancies a couple of hours of dynamic anime action to jump right in. All you need to know is that in the wake of a disaster, Izuku “Deku” Midoriya (Daiki Yamashita in Japanese, Justin Briner in English) and his classmates must face off against new villain Dark Might, a dark reflection of Japan’s once-greatest champion All Might—the hero who gave Izuku his powers in the first place. Throw in a mafia crime family, a cyborg butler, and a young girl with unpredictable new powers for Deku and his allies to test their mettle against, and only the stoniest of hearts won’t be entertained.
Pretty Lethal
Ask any trained dancer, and they’ll tell you ballet is one of the most grueling things you can put your body through, requiring incredible poise and strength to perform, and a killer competitive streak to make it in the field. All three of those qualities, and a host of teenage snark, take to the stage in this brilliantly schlocky action outing from director Vicky Jewson, which sees five American Ballerinas trapped in Budapest and having to adapt their skills to escape a violent war between two crime families—one led by deranged former ballerina Devora Kasimer (Uma Thurman, absolutely vamping every scene). Expect blood-soaked tutus, electrifying fight choreography, and one of the most creative uses of The Nutcracker suite on film.
Good Boy
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