Autumn is well and truly here, which means it’s time to get a little cozier, add more movies on your watch list and, most importantly, not spend a fortune doing it. We’ve got a fresh batch of films on the best free streaming services landing over the next few days.
This week’s free streaming picks are a solid mix. Some services are already rolling out spooky titles as October arrives later this week, so we’ve included a few scary options (including some big name horror franchises if you’re in the mood for a movie marathon). But you’ll also find a sci-fi classic, a pitch black political satire and a twisty neo-noir mystery.
Here are five of the best free movies to watch right now on Tubi, Plex, Pluto TV, and more this week.
1) Robocop (Kanopy, Roku)
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Release date: 1987
Rotten Tomatoes score: 92%
Length: 102 minutes
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Main cast: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Daniel O’Herlihy, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer
Robocop is a sci-fi action movie and, like a lot of classics from the 80s, it still packs a punch nearly four decades after it was first released. As you’ll probably already know, or can glean from the title, this dystopian blockbuster follows the story of a cop reborn as a cyborg. But as well as being ultra-violent and packed with futuristic-looking action, it’s also a sharp critique of corporate power and capitalism.
From the brain of director Paul Verhoeven (also known for Starship Troopers and Total Recall), the violence in Robocop is cartoonish and shocking at times (think twice before showing this one to small kids) and the villains are memorable. But there’s also an emotional story here about a man trying to keep hold of his identity after being literally rebuilt by a corporation. It’s tragic, it’s funny and it’s brutal. The kind of movie we’d class as both a switch-your-brain-off popcorn flick, while also warranting a more thoughtful rewatch too if you haven’t seen it in a while. Because, like all of the best sci-fi stories, it’s still eerily relevant.
2) Saw (Tubi)
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Release date: 2004
Rotten Tomatoes score: 50%
Length: 103 minutes
Director: James Wan
Main cast: Cary Elwes, Danny Glover, Monica Potter, Michael Emerson, Ken Leung, Tobin Bell, Leigh Whannell
The first Saw film is more raw, grimy and smaller scale than the sequels that followed. But that’s exactly why it still works – despite what that Rotten Tomatoes score might suggest. What’s so smart about this film is most of the action is confined to a single claustrophobic bathroom. Which makes it feel more like a psychological thriller than a blood-soaked horror – even though there is a lot of blood. Instead, the tension comes from the moral choices and mind games rather than the traps themselves, which is what the later films seem overly concerned with.
If you came to the series later, then it is well worth going right back to the beginning. It’ll feel like more of a scrappy film that shows how the very simple idea – two strangers waking up in a locked room – can spiral into a huge cultural phenomenon. And the good news is that if you get really into it, then Tubi is adding the entire Saw franchise throughout October. So whether you want to stop at the original or watch the saga of Jigsaw get bigger, gorier and stranger with every instalment, you’ve got your Halloween horror binge sorted.
3) Paranormal Activity (Hoopla, Pluto TV)
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Release date: 2007
Rotten Tomatoes score: 83%
Length: 86 minutes
Director: Oren Peli
Main cast: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat
Shot on an extremely low budget, Paranormal Activity turned a load of shaky camcorder footage of long, silent nights into one of the scariest films of the 2000s. The story is simple, a couple set up cameras around their home to record evidence of the strange noises and disturbances they keep hearing at night. But what they capture instead is the unravelling of their sanity.
What makes Paranormal Activity work isn’t jump scares or gore but the eerie tension of, well, waiting around. A door moves just a little, a shadow lingers a little too long. And you’re left leaning into every frame, dreading what might happen next. The good news is that, once you’re hooked, Pluto TV makes it very easy to keep going as the entire Paranormal Activity franchise is available to stream this October. So, whether you want to stick with the slow burn brilliance of the first film or watch how the whole mythology expand, it’s one of the best horror marathons to start the spooky season with.
4) The Death of Stalin (Kanopy, Pluto TV, Plex)
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Release date: 2018
Rotten Tomatoes score: 94%
Length: 107 minutes
Director: Armando Iannucci
Main cast: Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine, Rupert Friend, Jason Isaacs, Michael Palin, Andrea Riseborough, Jeffrey Tambor
Armando Iannucci has made a career out of finding dark comedy in power struggles and The Death of Stalin might be his darkest, funniest and sharpest work yet. It’s set in the time immediately after the Soviet dictator’s sudden death and the film follows the people around him as they all scramble to outwit and out-maneuver each other in the race to find out who’ll be in power next.
But don’t worry, what could easily have been a dry history lesson is turned into an absurd, deeply compelling farce. It also does such a good job at showing how the ridiculous and the terrifying can often coexist, as ministers bumble through slapstick arguments even as regular people risk execution. There’s an incredibly impressive cast here, including Steve Buscemi, Jason Isaacs and Simon Russell Beale, who all do a fantastic job at leaning into both the comedy and the menace of the movie.
5) Memento (Roku, Kanopy, Hoopla, Pluto, Plex)
Release date: 2000
Rotten Tomatoes score: 94%
Length: 116 minutes
Director: Christopher Nolan
Main cast: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano
Before Christopher Nolan blew our minds with huge movies, like Inception and Oppenheimer, he made a name for himself with the smaller, twisting noir movie Memento. It follows the story of Leonard Shelby (played by Guy Pearce), a man with short-term memory loss who’s trying to piece together the mystery of his wife’s murder. The catch is that the whole story is told backwards with each scene confusingly undermining or reframing the one before it.
It’s a storytelling structure that demands a lot of attention. But it isn’t just a gimmicky film. It’s quite a dark movie about how fragile our memories are and whether any of us can truly ever really know the truth. It was released more than two decades ago, but it’s still a very gripping and innovative piece of film-making.
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