9 Best Netflix Movies Of 2026 (So Far)

Netflix's plans to acquire Warner Bros. may have fallen through, but the streaming service is still in the business of making movies. And despite CEO Ted Sarandos' dismissal of movie theaters as a relic of the past, Netflix seems to be begrudgingly warming up to releasing its films on the big screen. After all, a success like "KPop Demon Hunters" is hard to ignore.

For most people, though, the term "Netflix movie" is still associated with the comfort of your own couch. And while Netflix has put out plenty of forgettable movies over the years, it also has its fair share of gems. Last year's "Wake Up Dead Man" was yet another highly entertaining entry in the chronicles of gentleman detective Benoit Blanc, and both "Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein" and "Train Dreams" scored Best Picture nominations at the Oscars.

We're still many months out from the next awards season, but here are the best Netflix movies of 2026 so far.

There are two kinds of streaming movies out there: The one you already know you want to watch, and the one you discover out of nowhere. It's hardly an insult to classify "Apex" in the latter category, and, in many ways, this is what makes it such a quintessential Netflix feature. The survival thriller from Baltasar Kormákur garnered generally positive reviews (including from /Film's own Chris Evangelista here) and boasts a level of star power we usually don't associate with the straight-to-streaming world. Charlize Theron stars as Sasha, a grieving thrill-seeker who meets her match in the Australian wilds when she crosses paths with the villainous sociopath Ben (Taron Edgerton).

That's the elevator pitch that makes it easy to see why the streaming giant would throw its muscle behind acquiring a movie like this. What sets "Apex" apart from the Digital Land of Endless Algorithms would be the simple, stripped-down efficiency on display throughout the story. This belongs in a worthy spot right alongside similar horror/thrillers like 2024's "Don't Move" or even the more recent "Send Help" — two movies that also understand the primal, animalistic urge to stay alive at all costs. "Apex" may be operating from a somewhat more conventional mode of storytelling, lightly touching on topical issues of male toxicity but otherwise staying in the shallow end of the thematic pool.

But considering just how exhausting, brutal, and desperate this film depicts its central fight for survival, underestimate "Apex" at your own peril. (Jeremy Mathai)

Time comes for us all, even for a man who casts a shadow as long as Tommy Shelby. Cillian Murphy has spent well over a decade bringing Birmingham's greatest folk hero/crime lord to life in "Peaky Blinders," defying rival gangsters and vengeful mob bosses and death itself more times than we could even count. The irony of seeing his epic journey reach its culmination in a spin-off film titled "The Immortal Man" isn't lost on anyone, least of all series creator and writer Steven Knight. But few could argue that one of the most popular antiheroes in recent memory didn't deserve the chance to go out on top with a big-budget, big-screen swan song.

That's what makes this Netflix film so fascinating. "Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man" could've easily coasted on neutral, playing the biggest hits of the series and simply providing the fan-service that so many legacy sequels these days obsess over. What Knight and director Tom Harper do instead is much more unexpected — and, arguably, far less accessible to the average fan. Where the BBC series got so much mileage out of adrenaline-pumping turf wars and Shakespearean tragedies and a tendency for Tommy to always wiggle himself out of any mess, "The Immortal Man" is a shockingly downbeat epilogue about legends passing into myth, past glories curdled by unforgivable failures, and the old world giving way to the new.

Through it all remains Tommy Shelby, defiant to the last. (Jeremy Mathai)

The first major adaptation of one of Emily Henry's best-selling romance novels also happens to be one of Netflix's best movies of the year. In "People We Meet on Vacation," based on Henry's 2021 book, we meet best friends Poppy (Emily Bader) and Alex ("The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" star Tom Blyth), who meet on a road trip from Boston College to their shared hometown of Linfield, Ohio. In the years that follow, Poppy and Alex always plan at least one annual vacation together. But they start drifting apart when Poppy, a travel writer, shows an unwillingness to stay in one place for too long, and Alex decides he wants to put down roots in Linfield.

It's clear that there's a spark between Poppy and Alex, though they always claim to be platonic. Across the years, Alex's girlfriend Sarah ("The White Lotus" Season 3 star Sarah Catherine Hook") and Poppy's boyfriend Trey ("Emily in Paris" supporting player Lucien Laviscount) certainly notice that there seems to be unfinished business between them. When it all comes to a head at Alex's brother's wedding, you'll end up rooting for these crazy kids as they try to figure out if it's even possible to bring their radically different lives together. Go ahead and read "People We Meet on Vacation," and then queue up this quirky, charming adaptation helmed by director Brett Haley. (Nina Starner)

An adaptation of Shelby Van Pelt's 2022 novel of the same name, "Remarkably Bright Creatures," could have easily spilled over into maudlin territory, and at times comes close. But it's saved from becoming overly sentimental slop by Sally Field's outstanding lead performance and a charming Lewis Pullman. Director Olivia Newman's previous effort, "Where the Crawdads Sing," actually did descend into a soapy snooze, but there's too much to like about "Remarkably Bright Creatures" for it to follow the same path.

The film radiates a hopeful, kind-hearted aura that even the biggest cynic would struggle to resist. Yes, there are plenty of unlikely moments in the movie (the narrator is an octopus, after all), and you'll probably see the ending coming long before it actually happens. But the film also deals with some serious subject matter, most notably grief and its unending reverberations. More importantly, it does so in a straight-ahead fashion, not dodging the real emotional impact of loss and thereby helping to balance out the more fanciful elements of the story. Again, Field's performance does a lot of the heavy lifting here.

Beyond that, the film's charming small-town setting is just a nice place to exist for a couple of hours. "Remarkably Bright Creatures" feels warm and comforting to watch even when its characters are suffering, and ultimately delivers a hopeful message that feels particularly important in 2026. (Joe Roberts)

Let's just say you know what you're getting out of Netflix movies. There's likely to be some attention-grabbing action beat in the first five minutes so you don't skip over to the next thing in your queue, an absolutely patronizing amount of bluntly-delivered exposition for all the second-screeners out there, and enough dim lighting to make you question whether your TV is on the fritz. Action junkie/director Joe Carnahan includes all of the above in "The Rip," the latest team-up between Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, but at least it's accompanied by enough high-wire tension and twist-a-minute thrills to keep viewers from the temptation of doom-scrolling on their phones instead.

The storytelling potential is clear to see. After a mysterious cop killing early on, we follow the grizzled Dane Dumars (Damon), the world-weary lieutenant of a specialized drug division of the Miami-Dade Police Department, who suspects a traitor in their midst. An anonymous tip pinpointing a suburban home as a cartel stash house provides the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: pull off the bust of the decade, while also putting each and every one of the potentially dirty cops on his team to the test. What follows from there is a (mostly) one-location thriller that's frequently entertaining, occasionally confusing, and clearly just a thinly-veiled excuse to watch our favorite Boston bros do what they do best: grunt, curse, and shoot their way through a nightmarish siege.

What you see is what you get [complimentary]. (Jeremy Mathai)

Who would have thought that Happy Madison, the longtime proprietor of low art Gen-X bro-oriented humor, would become a leader in women-directed Netflix comedies that speak authentically to the experiences of teen girls and young women? You can chalk that up to its founder, Adam Sandler, literally keeping things in the family by casting his real-life daughters in the winsome "You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah" and again with this year's perfectly enjoyable "Roommates."

As helmed by promising up and comer Chandler Levack, "Roommates" explores what happens when two polar opposites — unsure, buttoned-up Devon (Sadie Sandler) and assured, free spirited Celeste (Chloe East, pulling a remarkable 180 from the devout, naive characters she played in "The Fabelmans" and "Heretic") — impulsively become college roommates. Lots of typical Happy Madison-style absurd humor abounds, but it's offset by the emotional insights that the film offers on the challenges of suddenly being expected to act like a grown-ass woman and handle your problems responsibly ... something you're bound to mess up when starting out.

Mind you, "Roommates" comes at this from a very privileged perspective that, coupled with the more over-the-top jokes (like a Thanksgiving gathering that, of course, involves an exploding turkey), takes some adjusting to. What you're left with is a movie that plays like an episode of HBO's "Girls," but with more raunchy gags and bits thrown into the mix. Leave it to the Sandlers to make that mashup work unexpectedly well. (Sandy Schaefer)

The sheer volume of Netflix "content" means the streamer's original movies often come and go without making much of an impact. "Thrash" is the rare example of a Netflix movie you might actually remember for more than five minutes after watching. In fact, it's engrossing enough that a theatrical release would have been a damn good time at the movies — especially given the absolutely deranged final act, which involves sharks, a newborn baby, and the most high-stakes game of keepaway you're ever likely to witness.

The movie is about a South Carolina town that's devastated by a vicious hurricane which floods the city. Sharks soon take advantage of their newly enlarged habitat and venture into the town's submerged streets, picking off the survivors in ever more extreme ways. There's even one explosive kill that makes for the perfect Sam Raimi homage.

"Thrash" is exactly what you'd want from a Netflix disaster flick, and maybe even more. The streamer has indulged in shoddy CGI many a time, but — some dodgy shots aside — "Thrash" is surprisingly well done, presenting multiple action sequences that are well thought out, gripping, and realistic enough that they don't break the sense of immersion. A scene in which a pregnant woman becomes stranded in her car on a flooded street doesn't actually look like it was shot in a green screen hellscape. It not only makes for a far more tense scene but also serves as a testament to the effectiveness of real live-action filmmaking. (Joe Roberts)

Zoey Deutch helped to establish Netflix as one of the last bastions of the romantic comedy when she starred in 2018's "Set It Up." She's since returned to reclaim her crown as a Netflix comedy queen with "Voicemails for Isabelle," a movie that's, admittedly, far more dramatic by comparison. But there's no romance without heartbreak in this world, and writer/director/co-star Leah McKendrick (who previously found a way to make the complexities of female fertility funny with 2023's "Scrambled") is able to deftly entwine a tear-jerking tale about sisterly love with a modern-minded rom-com to exceptional effect here.

In a winsome opening sequence, "Voicemails for Isabelle" introduces us to Deutch's Jill, a delightful young San Francisco baker-in-training who maintains a close relationship with her equally enchanting sister Isabelle (Ciara Bravo), who's living back home in Texas. Unfortunately, Isabelle has cystic fibrosis, and the inevitable day comes when she dies all too soon. In her grief, Deutch continues to leave voicemails for her late sibling ... unaware that Isabelle's phone number has been reassigned to Wes (Nick Robinson), a chap who quickly becomes smitten with Jill. The film cycles through familiar rom-com tropes from there, but with enough self-awareness to keep the narrative emotionally grounded and never at the expense of Jill's search for closure. It's also lovely to see a Netflix movie that features actual on-location photography, and San Fran looks appropriately fabulous for the story that McKendrick is telling. (Sandy Schaefer)

If Netflix has serious ambitions about taking over the world, then more movies like "War Machine" are essential. While Patrick Hughes' sci-fi actioner is essentially a "Predator" knockoff with a giant robot instead of a Yautja, it sets up an interesting world with major franchise potential. Soldiers versus robots? That's a simple concept that can be milked for a while, and "War Machine" ends with the revelation that there is an even bigger problem to deal with. A sequel can't come soon enough.

That said, "War Machine" also works as a one-and-done affair. The concept is simple — a group of soldiers must defeat a colossal machine from beyond the stars, and the proverbial poop hits the fan. But this is also an Alan Ritchson movie, so you know this alien robot is in for the fight of its life.

"War Machine" is the best Netflix action movie since "The Night Comes for Us," which came out almost 10 years ago. Both films are very different, but they were designed to satiate the appetites of genre fans craving no-frills, action-packed entertainment, and that goes a long way. If you long for the halcyon days of militaristic '80s action cinema, "War Machine" is a spectacle worth watching, and it continue's Ritchson's ascent as a modern-day action maverick. (Kieran Fisher)