Hulu is one of the few streamers that consistently adds movies throughout the month. No massive first-of-the-month title dumps for this streamer; instead, Hulu likes to spread the wealth around week to week.
This weekend, Watch With Us highlights some older movies that just made their Hulu debuts in May.
The first selection is an already forgotten 2025 horror movie that’s surprisingly good, while another pick is a Robert De Niro drama about Navy diving. (Yes, really.)
Last but not least, we recommend a biopic starring Jennifer Lawrence that earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in 2016.
‘The Damned’ (2024)Hollywood typically releases two kinds of movies in January: cheap horror films and action movies starring Jason Statham or Gerard Butler. The Damned belongs in the former category, a creepy shocker about a small village town driven to desperate measures due to a harsh winter that depletes their food supply. To make matters worse, a shipwreck brings more mouths to feed and rumors of undead creatures called draugr stalking the shore.
Is the village under a supernatural curse? Or is something more sinister at play? Eva (Odessa Young), the film’s main protagonist, needs to find out fast before everyone she loves dies from starvation or something much worse.
Like Lamb and The Lighthouse, The Damned conjures up a spooky atmosphere filled with foggy landscapes and dark corners. The film effectively invokes an existential dread that pays off in its spectacular ending, which is straight out of a M. Night Shyamalan film.
The Damned is streaming on Hulu.
‘Men of Honor’ (2000)All Carl Brashear (Cuba Gooding Jr.) wants to do is be a diver for the U.S. Navy. That goal may seem modest today but it was almost impossible in 1949, when Carl joined the maritime service branch. But because Carl is Black, he encounters resistance within the establishment, and his only ally is Master Chief Billy Sunday (Robert De Niro). Can Carl and Billy overcome the odds to realize Carl’s dreams of becoming the first Black American Navy diver?
Men of Honor is a solid drama that tells a story most people don’t know about. Carl’s journey from a poor sharecropper in Kentucky to a Navy diver is fascinating, and the film convincingly evokes the 1950s period in full detail. Gooding Jr. gives his best lead performance as Carl, and Charlize Theron has some nice moments as Billy’s ignored wife, Gwen.
Men of Honor is streaming on Hulu.
‘Joy’ (2015)
The world probably didn’t need a biopic about the inventor of the Miracle Mop, but it got one anyway in 2015 with David O. Russell’s Joy. Jennifer Lawrence stars as Joy Mangano, a struggling New Yorker with an unemployed ex-husband (Édgar Ramirez) who still lives in her basement and a family who doesn’t value her as much as she’d like. That soon changes when Joy invents the Miracle Mop, a self-cleaning mop that quickly becomes a bestseller in grocery stores. But family troubles, coupled with a shady manufacturer who wants to steal profits from her, complicate Joy’s life and her path to success.
The pleasure of Joy is in the details. Although the film’s rags-to-QVC-riches story isn’t all that compelling, Joy works better as a gentle dramedy of blue-collar life in 1990s America. Lawrence was nominated for an Oscar for her work here, and she fully deserved it for making Mangano a complicated, sometimes difficult hero to root for. Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro stand out among the film’s unconventional supporting cast, which includes Melissa Rivers playing her mother, Joan Rivers.
