Netflix’s huge movie selection is one of the best reasons to subscribe to the service, but you might find it hard to keep up with new releases, or track down films you haven’t gotten around to yet.
Here at Newsweek, we’ve done our best to make sure that doesn’t happen by curating a list of what’s available right now on Netflix streaming and updating weekly. This week’s roundup leans on true crime and the dark side of internet fame, with a prestige biopic rounding out the slate.
Selections here are guided by Netflix’s public Top 10, as well as audience ratings on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, and other context from the broader culture and industry — and Nielsen’s occasional bit of Sophia Petrillo-like “picture it” math in its streaming rankings — to provide a sense for what is currently holding everyone’s attention within the dots of decode-on-demand entertainment (meaning no sports or news programs). In short: crowd heat with quality and cultural resonance.
This Week’s Standout Documentary on Netflix
“Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story” is the documentary everyone’s talking about. Directed by Skye Borgman — whose feel for human-centered true crime has made “Abducted in Plain Sight” and “Girl in the Picture” fixtures on Netflix — this feature looks at a YouTube-aligned “coaching” empire and the abuse that lay hidden in plain sight. It’s a chilling, brisk watch that unwinds parasocial trust and brand-safe language to unmask the ways manipulation finds purchase online. Rated TV-MA, it has a 6.1/10 on IMDb right now, but more importantly, that can’t-look-away quality that makes for high completion rates and post-watch arguments.
If you’d like to remain within Borgman’s wheelhouse, put on Unknown Number: The High School Catfish. It’s also TV-MA and with a 6.7/10 rating on IMDb, it begins with a young woman being harassed over text before escalating into a web of identity theft and digital footprints — more than 350,000 messages come into play in the investigation. Borgman’s editing rhythm, synthesizing thoughtful victim perspective and precise sourcing, translates routine cyberbullying into a narrative shockwave without milking the real people at its center.
Thrillers About Online Identity to Stream on Netflix This Week
Influencer (R) craftily exaggerates the fears that inform these docs. Emily Tennant is Madison, a travel vlogger packaging happiness and hiding her burnout on a sponsored trip to Thailand. An accidental encounter with the magnetic CW (Cassandra Naud) launches a tight identity-swap thriller that weaponizes geo-tagging, manicured feeds and “she’ll be right back” captions. At a svelte running time and with an IMDb rating hovering at around 6.2, it’s the rare streaming thriller that doesn’t coast for one minute on chuffa, and it hits harder because it knows how clout works and, more important, recognizes that digital selves are fragile things.
And beyond its twists, the film is strongest at location-driven storytelling: postcard aesthetics of beach bars and island caves that serve as metonym for how the algorithm hides peril within beautiful frames. It’s a perfect companion to Evil Influencer if your book club is craving both sides of the same cultural coin — fact contaminated by fiction in conversation.
A Resonant Biopic for Your Queue on Netflix This Week
Helmed by Sofia Coppola, Priscilla (R) is a character study in the guise of a horny road movie — one that refocuses a mythical American romance on the woman who lived it. She maps Priscilla Beaulieu Presley’s interior life in tiny, exacting particulars, and Jacob Elordi’s Elvis is equal parts hypnotic and suffocating. Instead of reheating iconography, Coppola probes it, wondering what it must have cost to orbit a superstar and how identity can shred in a gilded cage. It serves as a necessary counterbalance to louder music biopics and a solid choice for anyone who wants style without sacrificing substance.
Why These Picks Are Trending on Netflix Now
True crime and influencer-adjacent stories have tended to overperform on Netflix, as they are predictable in a way: They’re real-time relevant to the world while having high casual discussion value — people watch, then text their friends right away about that crazy shit they just saw. That social loop helps titles find a way out of the carousel. In the meantime, name-brand auteurs such as Coppola draw critics and fans alike around the same watercooler, and that has a way of lifting completion and recommendation rates. Netflix’s new weekly Top 10 rankings and trending rows are a way to reflect those feedback loops, almost in real time.
Our curation is a balance of speed and quality. We cross-reference this with common wisdom among film critics (also documented above), audience impressions from major review sites and how well the movie matches what Netflix itself recommends for you on your home screen. The mix of metrics the streamers rely on internally is the same: popularity signals to surface candidates, taste and craft to distinguish a buzzy watch from one you’re likely to forget.
The Queue Plan for Your Netflix Movie Night
Start with the shock-to-system doc Evil Influencer, follow it up with Influencer to see those ideas refracted through genre and taper with Priscilla for an elegant comedown that still has teeth. If you stick with that run, you’ll find three variations of the same cultural conversation — how attention, power and image shape private lives — without spending a night scrolling past thousands of options.
