Paramount+ may not have the largest selection of original movies, but it does have a huge back catalog of movies produced by Paramount Pictures. This is its competitive advantage, and probably why it has been able to amass 43 million subscribers and has its turnover with a surprising 62% between 2020 and 2021.
There are countless Paramount movies and CBS TV shows, so Paramount+ has the potential to hold a staggeringly large and diverse catalog of streaming titles. October is a pretty good month for movies on the streaming platform – in addition to their excellent Halloween collection of horror movies, the service will be adding a few original movies and a slew of great recent and older movies. Here are the best movies coming to Paramount+ in October.
Monster High: the movie
The Monster High movie will premiere on both Nickelodeon and Paramount+ on October 6, ahead of a new CGI series on Nickelodeon later in the month, and fans are raving. Monster High is a surprisingly successful media franchise from Mattel, which originated as a pop and web series before expanding into everything from clothing and comics to books and now a movie.
Monster High will be a live-action musical fantasy directed by Tom Holland, who did such a funny job on The Larry Sanders Show and Malcolm in the middle. Following the lead of Clawdeen Wolf (Miia Harris), Frankie Stein (Ceci Balagot), and Draculaura (Nayah Damasen), the film follows the characters as they fight to save their titular high school, and should be a delight for all the young girls who love horror more than Barbie.
other half
other half is the big horror film that Paramount+ has planned for October. With a great cast including Maika Monroe (It follows) and the great Jake Lacy (White lotus, a family friend), the film follows newly engaged couple Ruth and Harry as they go on a road trip to the Pacific Northwest, where they decide to go backpacking through the remote forests. Supernatural events begin to occur, and Ruth seems to know more than she lets on, or at least be more attuned to the horror.
Destruction
This intellectual sci-fi masterpiece by Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Men) has an incredible Natalie Portman performance as an army biologist whose team heads to Area X, a zone plagued by bizarre phenomena, alien or supernatural, after her husband was traumatized and altered by the place.
Portman’s character leads a group of scouts in an attempt to discover more about the zone, but things get more complicated and mysterious the deeper they go. An incredibly shot, imaginative grotesque film with a truly cerebral ending, Destruction is a sci-fi enthusiast’s dream.
The Adams family
With the new Tim Burton series Wednesday coming up, why not take a trip down memory lane and watch the first great reboot of the classic 60s horror comedy show The Addams family? For many people, Barry Sonnenfeld’s 1991 film is the definitive portrait of the creepy and wacky horror family, and it all comes down to the excellent casting.
From Anjelica Huston’s Morticia and Raul Julia’s Gomez to Christina Ricci’s Wednesday and Christopher Lloyd’s perfect portrayal as Fester (not to mention the great Carel Struycken as Lurch), The Addams family movie is completely in keeping with their character, making this the most enjoyable title in the entire franchise.
catch me if you can
Steven Spielberg’s film about fraud and manipulation, catch me if you can is a hugely enjoyable, charming road trip from a movie. After the exploits of the incredible charlatan Frank Abagnale (played by a charming Leonardo DiCaprio), catch me if you can describes the many ways in which Abagnale made others believe that he was something he was not.
Tom Hanks is wonderfully subtle as Carl Hanratty, the FBI agent assigned to hunt Frank, and the entire cast (including Christopher Walken, Martin Sheen, and Amy Adams) works overtime to make this one of the greatest movies of the 2000s.
Patriot games
With the recent success of the Jack Ryan TV show, now is a perfect time to look back at perhaps the most underrated movie about the Jack Ryan character, Patriot games. While The hunt for the red October usually gets all the attention when it comes to Ryan, Patriot games is packed with its own excitement, and Harrison Ford is a unique but somehow wonderful choice to play Ryan. The film follows a revenge game between Ryan and the brother of a terrorist he killed.
Vanilla air
Vanilla air was variously praised and ridiculed when it first came out towards the end of 2001, and while it was somewhat infamous for its sensuous nature at the time, it has subsequently been forgotten by most people. This is a shame because it is a beautiful and surreal film by Cameron Crowe with not only one of the best Tom Cruise performances, but arguably the best Cameron Diaz performance. She’s absolutely perfect here, simultaneously playing in and against her typecasting as the unstable lover of Cruise’s character in this film about plastic surgery, dreams, jealousy and madness.