Credit: Lucas Gouveia/How-To GeekThe most-watched movie on Netflix in the U.S. right now is about a family that’s locked inside their house—which is either a stroke of marketing genius or a commentary on how a lot of Americans have spent August (or maybe a hint to get outside while the weather lasts).
But if you are going to be inside for a relaxing movie this week, it doesn’t have to be about being cooped up. This week’s roundup includes two recent arrivals (one with Adam Sandler’s daughter and one with Liam Neeson) and three from the August 1 haul, including a baseball classic, a horror classic, and my top pick, a dark Jake Gyllenhaal thriller that isn’t Donnie Darko.
5
Don’t Say Good Luck
Sunny Sandler’s showstopper about a family in freefall
I’ve loved Melanie Lynskey since 1994’s incredible Heavenly Creatures (which you should totally see), and it’s great to see her still killing it in this near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes Netflix original from Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison imprint. But Lynskey isn’t alone in this one. Sunny Sandler (Adam’s youngest daughter) carries Don’t Say Good Luck as Sophie Birenbaum, a high school student who lands the lead role in her school’s musical as her mom Elizabeth’s (Lynskey) cancer returns.
Sandler’s performance is nothing short of remarkable, as we see her sweet demeanor struck by the shards of her family’s lives coming apart while also going through all the coming-of-age motions of normal teenage life. It’s a beautiful movie you’ll need tissues for.
Don’t Say Good Luck
Release Date
August 14, 2026
WHERE TO WATCH
Cast
Sunny Sandler, Melanie Lynskey, Jon Lovitz, Scarlett Estevez, Elyse Bell, Emma McNulty, Ethan Costanilla, Max Greenfield, Stephanie Beatriz, Bebe Neuwirth, Steve Buscemi, Jack Champion
Director
Julia Hart
Writers
Jordan Horowitz
Producers
Adam Sandler, Jackie Sandler, Fred Berger, Michael Roiff
Main Genre
Drama
Executive Producer(s)
Barry Weissler, Michael Roiff
4
In the Land of Saints & Sinners
Liam Neeson trades Taken for a Donegal Western
As nice as it was to see Liam Neeson ham it up as Frank Drebin Jr. in The Naked Gun reboot, there’s nothing quite like the brooding Taken actor when he’s using his very particular set of skills. Set in Donegal, Ireland, in 1974, in In the Land of Saints & Sinners, Neeson embodies the role of Finbar Murphy, who retires from his life of killing for local racketeer Robert McQue (Colm Meaney) and works in a quiet bookstore.
Quiz
New Netflix movies and shows in August 2026
Trivia challenge
From thrillers to docuseries — how much do you know about what’s hitting
Netflix in August 2026?
DramaComedyDocumentaryThrillerSeries
Thriller
The Whisper Man is a Netflix thriller based on a bestselling novel by which author?
psychological thriller of the same name. The novel became an international bestseller, blending a
haunting mystery with deeply emotional storytelling about grief and fatherhood.
Man was a major bestseller that blended psychological suspense with an emotional father-son story,
making it a compelling choice for a Netflix adaptation.
Documentary
Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing focuses on controversies surrounding which aircraft
model at the center of fatal crashes?
catastrophic crashes in 2018 and 2019 killed 346 people. Freefall examines the corporate decisions,
regulatory failures, and human cost behind one of aviation’s most devastating scandals.
scandal. Two fatal crashes within five months of each other led to a global grounding of the jet and
intense scrutiny of Boeing’s safety culture and its relationship with regulators.
Series
My Life With the Walter Boys returns for its third season on Netflix. Where is the
series primarily set?
where city girl Jackie Howard moves in with a large, boisterous family after a personal tragedy. The
stunning Rocky Mountain scenery has become one of the show’s signature visual elements.
New York City to a sprawling Colorado ranch forms the backdrop of the series, which is based on Ali
Novak’s popular Wattpad novel of the same name.
Comedy
Ricky Gervais: Alley Cats marks which milestone for Gervais as a Netflix stand-up
special?
continuing his long and successful partnership with the platform. Previous specials include SuperNature,
SuperMassive, and Humanity, all of which sparked significant cultural conversation.
has built an extensive library of comedy content on Netflix, with specials that have consistently
generated both laughs and controversy in equal measure.
Series
Outer Banks: Season 5 follows the cast in their ongoing adventures. What is the name
of the central friend group the show follows?
heart of Outer Banks, named after the poorer side of the fictional OBX island they call home. Their
rivalry with the wealthy Kooks has driven much of the show’s dramatic tension across all five seasons.
social status on the island, as the working-class residents are nicknamed Pogues while the wealthy class
are called Kooks. This class divide is a central theme of the entire series.
Documentary
Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy examines the rise of which fast food chain that
became a cultural phenomenon?
chicken restaurant; it is instead an examination of the broader global fried chicken industry.
industry as its host eats nothing but fried chicken for 28 days.
Drama
The Last House, arriving on Netflix in August 2026, falls into which primary genre?
through atmosphere and character rather than relying purely on shock-value horror. The genre has proven
hugely popular on Netflix, with audiences gravitating toward suspenseful, character-driven storytelling.
invested heavily in the genre given its strong performance with subscribers, and The Last House follows
in the tradition of slow-burn, tension-filled narratives the platform has successfully championed.
Sports
The Netflix documentary Mourinho profiles one of football’s most controversial
managers. Which club did José Mourinho famously describe himself as a ‘Special One’ upon joining?
first Chelsea press conference in 2004, after arriving from Porto where he had just won the UEFA
Champions League. The phrase instantly became one of football’s most memorable quotes and defined his
larger-than-life persona.
arrived at Chelsea in 2004. He had just led Porto to Champions League glory and arrived in the Premier
League with supreme confidence, a quote that would follow him throughout his entire career.
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Of course, though, Murphy sees red when a cell of IRA terrorists uses his sleepy town to hide out after a bombing gone wrong, and worse, one of them is abusing a village child. Neeson is brilliantly Neeson in this 83% fresh film, but stay for the performance of Game of Thrones’ Jack Gleeson, who’s incredibly non-Joffrey as Murphy’s soft-spoken replacement, Kevin.
Cast
Liam Neeson, Kerry Condon, Ciarán Hinds, Jack Gleeson, Colm Meaney, Sarah Greene, Desmond Eastwood, Conor MacNeill, Seamus O’Hara, Niamh Cusack, Mark O’Regan, Anne Brogan, Conor Hamill, Laura Hughes, Michelle Gleeson, Bernadette Carty, Joe Gallagher, Tim Landers, James Sadat
Runtime
106 minutes
Director
Robert Lorenz
Writers
Terry Loane, Mark Michael McNally
Producers
Bonnie Timmermann, Geraldine Hughes, Philip Lee, Terry Loane, Markus Barmettler, Hubert Toint
Main Genre
Thriller
Studio(s)
Facing East, RagBag Pictures, Prodigal Films Limited
Distributor(s)
Netflix
Where To Stream
Executive Producer(s)
Danny Dimbort, Ehud Bleiberg, Victor Hadida, Kieran Corrigan
3
Field of Dreams
Kevin Costner’s baseball classic emerges from the cornfield
If you watched Netflix’s recent live stream of the MLB Field of Dreams game, filmed on a new ballpark just a few hundred meters from the movie’s original diamond in Dyersville, Iowa, the timing on this one is hard to beat. The second of Kevin Costner’s back-to-back baseball movies—Bull Durham came just a year earlier—Field of Dreams is a bucket-list watch for any movie fan. Adapted from W.P. Kinsella’s novel Shoeless Joe, Costner stars as Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella, who hears a voice in his cornfield and gambles the family farm to plow a ballpark into the middle of it.
Once it’s finished, the banished ghosts of the 1919 Black Sox scandal walk out of the stalks, disgraced White Sox outfielder Joseph “Shoeless Joe” Jackson (Ray Liotta) among them. Following where the voice leads, Ray discovers that the players’ unfinished business may be a cover for his own.
2
Cult of Chucky
The killer doll’s smartest and strangest installment yet
“Hi, I’m Chucky! Wanna play?!” That defining line from the 1988 original Child’s Play killer doll extravaganza still rings in my ears, even as the franchise reached its seventh and best-reviewed installment (at 81%), 2017’s Cult of Chucky. Horror fans know just how fun and over-the-top this franchise is, and this one delivers more than most. Fiona Dourif returns as Nica Pierce (fun fact: her father, Brad, has done the voice of the killer doll since the beginning), who’s been locked in a psych ward for four years, where her corrupt therapist, Dr. Foley (Michael Therriault), has her convinced that she invented Chucky to cope with the fact that she killed her whole family.
In a deluded attempt to help Nica confront her fears, Foley brings in a Good Guy doll as a therapy tool. You can imagine what happens next. All but the original Child’s Play movie are currently streaming on Netflix in the U.S.
Cast
Alex Vincent, Fiona Dourif, Brad Dourif, Jennifer Tilly
Runtime
91 minutes
Director
Don Mancini
Writers
Don Mancini
Prequel(s)
Curse of Chucky, Child’s Play 2, Child’s Play 3, Seed of Chucky, Bride of Chucky
Franchise(s)
Child’s Play
Budget
$5 million
Studio(s)
Universal Pictures
Distributor(s)
Universal Pictures
1
Nightcrawler
Jake Gyllenhaal’s most unnerving performance since Donnie Darko
My top pick for this week is also one of my favorite Jake Gyllenhaal movies of all time: writer-director Dan Gilroy’s (who also directed Jake in Velvet Buzzsaw) psychological thriller, Nightcrawler. If you thought Donnie Darko was a twisted character, Gyllenhaal transformed himself mentally and physically (losing roughly 30 pounds) for the role of Lou Bloom, an unemployed drifter and sociopath who roams around Los Angeles chasing crime scenes and crash sites at night so he can sell the grisly footage to Nina (Rene Russo), a morning news director at KWLA 6.
Gyllenhaal is haunting as Lou spirals and slowly devolves into manic territory, following his motto: “If you want to win the lottery, you have to make the money to buy a ticket.” And making that money increasingly starts to involve moving bodies around at car crash sites, even causing one himself, and worse.
Cast
Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed, Bill Paxton, Kevin Rahm, Michael Hyatt, Price Carson, Ann Cusack, Kent Shocknek, Sharon Tay, Carolyn Gilroy, Marco Rodríguez, Michael Papajohn, Jonny Coyne, Rick Chambers, Pat Harvey, Rick Garcia, James Huang, Leah Fredkin, Bill Seward, Holly Hannula, Nick Chacon, Kevin Dunigan, Alex Ortiz, Eric Lange
Runtime
118 minutes
Director
Dan Gilroy
Writers
Dan Gilroy
Producers
David Lancaster, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jennifer Fox, Tony Gilroy, Michel Litvak
Budget
$8.5 Million
Studio(s)
Bold Films
Distributor(s)
Open Road Films
Main Genre
Crime
Executive Producer(s)
Gary Michael Walters, Betsy Danbury
Now the hard part: choosing
Movie nights are sacred—carve out a couple of hours, put your phone in the other room, and let one of these five titles take you away. And when you’re done, make sure to come back to How-To Geek’s streaming section for more ideas for what to watch, whether you’re into documentaries, thrillers, comedies, or whatever.
Subscription with ads
Yes, $8/month
Simultaneous streams
Two or four
Live TV
No
Price
Starting at $8/month
