It’s a rather busy streaming lineup this week, headlined by the long-awaited second season of Severance, the streaming debut of Alien: Romulus, Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz’s Back in Action, the respective returns of The Night Agent and Castlevania: Nocturne, and much more!
SERIES
Castlevania: Nocturne S2
16 January 2025 – Netflix
Let this serve as a note to myself: I need to get around to watching the first season of Castlevania: Nocturne. Especially since the second season of this follow-up to Netflix’s incredible original animated video game adaptation is now here. Set centuries after the events of that first series during the height of the French Revolution, Nocturne follows Richter Belmont, a descendant of original protagonists Trevor Belmont and Sypher, as he has to battle against a deadly alliance between the French Aristocracy and a so-called Vampire Messiah. Seeing as I haven’t watched the first season yet, I’ll let the official blurb for season two do the rest of the talking: “Now joined by the legendary Alucard, Richter Belmont and his band of vampire hunters are in a desperate race against time. Erzsebet Báthory, the Vampire Messiah, who already seems invincible, seeks the full power of the goddess Sekhmet so she can plunge the world into endless darkness and terror.”
Severance S2
17 January 2025 – Apple TV+
It’s been just shy of three long years since we had our collective minds blown by creator Dan Erickson and director/producer Ben Stiller (yes, that Ben Stiller) with Severance. At this point, if you’ve seen the incredible first season already, then there’s zero need to sell this innovative sci-fi drama to you. You’re already foaming at the mouth to click play later today. For the newbies who missed out on this bit of entertainment genius, I am most definitely not going to spoil a damn thing. All I’ll give you is the official season synopsis and then tell you to watch this immediately: “In Severance, Mark Scout (Adam Scott) leads a team at Lumon Industries, whose employees have undergone a severance procedure, which surgically divides their memories between their work and personal lives. This daring experiment in “work-life balance” is called into question as Mark finds himself at the center of an unraveling mystery that will force him to confront the true nature of his work… and of himself.
Laid
17 January 2025 – Showmax
I will never forgive the Academy for snubbing Everything Everywhere All At Once’s Stephanie Hsu for her super-deserving Best Supporting Actress and instead giving it to her co-star Jamie Lee Curtis for a by-the-numbers performance. Luckily, Hsu has continued to do good work elsewhere, including landing the lead in Laid, a new “romcom with a fatal twist”. The show sees Hsu starring as Ruby, a woman who discovers her former lovers are dying in unusual ways. To figure out why and to stop it from happening again, she goes back through her sex timeline — with the help of her best friend — to confront her past.
Whiskey on the Rocks S1
22 January 2025 – Disney+
In October 1981, at the height of the Cold War, the Whiskey-class Soviet submarine U-137 accidentally hit a rock and ran aground in the Karlskrona archipelago, Sweden, just 10km from a Swedish Naval Base, whose fleet happened to be out conducting naval exercises. Seeing the appearance of the Russian sub as a breach of its sovereignty, Sweden sent officers to investigate, only for a series of miscommunications and technical difficulties to prompt a stern defensive response from Sweden’s Prime Minister Thorbjörn Fälldin. The result of this confluence of events was a dramatic month-long military standoff that brought the world as close to the brink of full-scale global conflict as it had ever come since WWII. So, of course, Hulu made a playful, tongue-in-cheek series detailing “what truly happened” in those crazy few weeks.
Prime Target S1
22 January 2025 – Apple TV+
If you’re looking for something less historic – but probably also not to be taken too seriously – then maybe Prime Target is more your speed? Feeling like it could have been a Dan Brown novel brought to life, the eight-episode series stars The White Lotus’ Leo Woodal as Edward Brooks, a young genius math postgraduate is on the verge of a major breakthrough. If his theory around prime numbers is true, not only would it change the understanding of mathematics succeeds, but he would hold the keys to cracking every digital security system in the world. And that puts him in the crosshairs of some very dangerous organizations.
The Night Agent S2
23 January 2025 – Netflix
I have a feeling that when The Night Agent first debuted on Netflix in March 2023, most people, like me, started watching it just because it popped up as a new release. There was no serious hype behind it, and barely any recognizable names attached other than showrunner Shawn Ryan, the creator of such previous shows like The Shield, Last Resort, and S.W.A.T. Probably the only people who had any idea about this conspiracy thriller, which followed a low-level FBI Agent tasked with manning the usually uneventful “night desk” in the basement of the White House, were those few who were familiar with Matthew Quirk’s original novel on which it was based. Whatever the cause for the lack of buzz when The Night Agent debuted, that soon changed very quickly as the show go onto become the sixth-most-viewed series in Netflix’s history, with a second season renewal following swiftly, and then a third season announcement coming before that second season even aired. Said airing officially starting from today, as Gabriel Basso’s FBI agent Peter Sutherland is back, diving further into the deep governmental conspiracy he was unwittingly pulled into when he answered the night desk telephone – the one that was supposed to never ring – and responded to a call for help from a cybersecurity expert.
High Potential S1
23 January 2025 – Disney+
If you’re looking for a new procedural in your life, High Potential may just scratch the comfy genre itch. An English adaptation of popular French series “Haut Potentiel Intellectuel (HPI),” show stars Kaitlin Olson as Morgan, a single mom working as a cleaner at the LAPD to help keep her and her three kids afloat. However, unknown to her employers, Morgan is gifted with an exceptional mind natural knack for solving puzzles. When she can’t help but correct a mistake in an ongoing murder investigation, it brings Morgan to the attention of the head of the LAPD’s Major Crimes Division, who sees Morgan’s potential. Offered a job as a consultant, Morgan is partnered up with a by-the-book seasoned detective (Daniel Sunjata) who is not a fan of her outside-the-box thinking but can’t deny how effective their collaboration is.
MOVIES
Alien: Romulus
16 January 2025 – Disney+
Thanks to original director Ridley Scott’s very divisive Prometheus films, the Alien franchise has not been in a good spot for years now. With Alien: Romulus though, acclaimed horror filmmaker Fede Alvarez looked to take the acclaimed sci-fi series back to its creepy, claustrophobic roots. And he did just that. Maybe a little too much though. As Tracy noted in her 7/10 review, with its foreboding atmosphere, intentional smaller scale, and return to practical effects, Alien: Romulus is a pretty good film – the best we’ve had in the franchise in ages – but it could have been a great film if Alvarez and co were just more willing to stand on their own instead of stuffing the movie with homages and callbacks to previous efforts. Even with those stumbles though, there’s still a lot to like here, in particular fantastic turns from Cailee Spaeny and David Johnson as smart and capable lead Rain and her defective android “brother” Andy, respectively. And now you don’t just have to take our word for it, as Alien: Romulus was surprise dropped on Disney+ yesterday.
Back in Action
17 January 2025 – Netflix
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Highly trained government covert operative decides to leave behind their life of death-defying missions to instead settle down for love and start a family. Many years later though, their new life of obscure suburban bliss is thrown into disarray when their identity is blown and old enemies resurface to settle past scores, putting the lives of their family – shocked to learn that their parent/loved one is actually an ass-kicking badass instead of just the boring husband/wife/dad/mom they appear to be – in mortal danger, and forcing them back into action.
We’ve seen this story or a version of it play out so many times on screen (most recently with Apple TV+’s The Family Plan) and now Netflix is giving us another one. This time around it’s the pairing of Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz who are the ex-spies-turned-homemakers-turned-back-to-spies, and this one looks… Well, to be honest, Netflix have recently had a trend of putting top-tier stars in mid-tier (at best) action movies, and I don’t have a lot of faith that this isn’t the same thing again. But I’m hoping to be pleasantly surprised, based purely on the fact that director Seth Gordon has given us solid hits before like Horrible Bosses and Baywatch.
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
23 January 2025 – Showmax
Up until it was featured in Showmax’s list of upcoming releases for January, I had never heard The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial before. This is particularly strange, not only because it stars Kiefer Sutherland and Jason Clarke, but this was the final movie directed by legendary Oscar-winning filmmaker William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection, Sorcerer) before his death in 2023. Adapted from Herman Wouk’s novel The Caine Mutiny by Friedkin himself, this courtroom thriller follows a US naval first officer who’s standing trial for orchestrating a mutiny after his captain shows signs of becoming unhinged and jeopardizes the lives of his crew.
VOD RENTALS/PURCHASES
The following movies have recently become available for digital purchase/rental:
Thelma
Purchase: Apple TV – R170 / Google Play Movies – R170
Rental: Apple TV – R45 / Google Play Movies – R35
Remember how in The Beekeeper, an older woman gets scammed out of a bunch of money, forcing Jason Statham to go on a path of violence tracking down the scammers and making them pay? Well, now imagine that older woman was a 93-year-old named Thelma Post who got duped by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson, and instead of some surly British guy with a certain set of skills, the woman herself sets out to reclaim what was taken from her. Oh, and her “path of violence” is a lot less violent… and also slower, seeing as she’s on a mobility scooter. Add all of that together and you would get the June Squibb-led action-comedy Thelma, which is now available for VOD rental.
The Beast Within
Purchase: Apple TV – R170 / Google Play Movies – R170
Rental: Apple TV – R45 / Google Play Movies – R35
Is it just me or are werewolves a thing at the moment? One of the two big theatrical releases today is Leigh Whanell’s reboot of Universal’s classic The Wolf Man franchise, and it is joining the Frank Grillo-led gonzo action-horror Werewolves that’s already in theatres. And last year also saw the release of The Beast Within starring Kit Harrington, which is now finally available to be seen locally on VOD rental. Also starring Ashleigh Cummings, James Cosmo, and Caoilinn Springall, this British horror is told from the POC of ten-year-old Willow who inadvertently discovers a shocking family secret when she follows her parents on one of their secret late-night treks to the heart of an ancient forest. After witnessing her father undergo a terrible transformation, she too becomes ensnared by the dark ancestry that they’ve so desperately tried to conceal.