3 great Hulu movies you need to stream this weekend (April 5-7)

The Orchard

April is here, and with it, an existential question lingers: What are you going to do with yourself? If gaming is your thing, Dragon’s Dogma 2 seems to be a good option for fans of the RPG genre. Or maybe you want to see two monsters destroy entire cities like in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire?

If staying at home is more your vibe, there’s always streaming. Hulu has some of the best films around, and the following three movies are worth a watch this weekend. One is a tense 2010s thriller, another is a teen tom-com from the ’90s, and the final recommended movie is a cheesy yet fun horror movie.

The Dinner (2017)

Four people toast their glasses in The Dinner. — The Orchard

Going out to dinner may not seem like the typical event to build a thriller around on, but that’s just what makes The Dinner so compelling to watch. On a snowy night in upstate New York, a couple, Paul (Steve Coogan) and Claire (Laura Linney), sits down for dinner with another couple, Stan (Richard Gere) and Katelyn (Rebecca Hall). There’s some shared history between them: Paul and Stan are brothers, and both have children who have gotten into trouble.

Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Even dull. Yet as the movie progresses, more information is revealed: the couples’ children are involved in the accidental (or is it?) death of a homeless woman, and Stan has political ambitions which jeopardize his relationship with his brother and his wife. Between consuming meals and downing drinks, flashbacks to the past gradually assemble a picture of upper-middle-class desperation that leads each member of this tense dinner to question their morality and how far they will go to protect the ones they love.

The Dinner is streaming on Hulu.

10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

Two people sit on swings in 10 Things I Hate About You. — Touchstone Pictures

Ready to feel old? Last week, 10 Things I Hate About You celebrated its 25th anniversary. The teen rom-com, a very loose update of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, wasn’t really that great when it was first released, and, truthfully, it isn’t much better now. But nostalgia is a funny thing — it can make even mediocre movies like this one seem better than they actually are.

You probably know the story: lovesick dweeb teen Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) hires hunky rebel Patrick (Heath Ledger) to romance Kat (Julia Stiles), the sister of his crush Bianca (Larisa Oleynik). Why? Well, you’ll have to rewatch the movie or read the play to find out. What’s important to note here is that the movie is breezy, paper-thin, and completely charming, and that’s due to Ledger, Levitt, and comedian Larry Miller as Kat and Bianca’s paranoid father. Look for a West Wing-era Allison Janney as the high school’s horny guidance counselor, who steals every scene she’s in.

10 Things I Hate About You is streaming on Hulu.

Haunting of the Queen Mary (2023)

A man holds an ax in The Haunting of Queen Mary. — Vertigo Films

Halloween may still be months away, but it’s always spooky season here at Tech Reader. And here’s a B-movie that’s sure to satisfy the urge for cheap scares. Gary Shore’s 2023 British horror film Haunting of Queen Mary spins two storylines: the first one involves a family’s strange and violent experiences aboard the vessel on Halloween 1938, and in the second, how they connect to another family aboard the ocean liner in the present day.

Haunting of Queen Mary isn’t The Exorcist, but it’s suitably scary and conjures a spooky atmosphere that’s sure to make you hesitate when booking that next Carnival cruise trip. Horror films on boats usually sink, sorry, stink, but this one is a rare example of sea-set horror done right.

Haunting of Queen Mary is streaming on Hulu.