Peacock might have an unassuming name compared to the beefy energy drink title that is HBO Max or the clear branding of Amazon, but the NBCUniversal streamer isn’t slouching with its offerings. The best Peacock movies in its vast library are by and large quite good (that’s what happens when a studio starts its own streaming service), with the added bonus that it has a free, ad-supported tier—which is even better than the likes of Hulu, which still charges a monthly fee in addition to running commercials. And its free TV isn’t bad either.
Hiding behind the paywall (or the week-long trial subscription, if you want to binge some movies) are collections including animated classics—like Chicken Run—and Alfred Hitchcock favorites—Rope, Psycho, Rear Window, Vertigo and more—but on the free side of things, the pickings certainly aren’t slim. Tons of well-loved filmmakers are represented, from Werner Herzog and David Cronenberg to Spike Lee and Steven Spielberg.
Whether it’s horror, drama, documentary, or westerns, Peacock has enough movies to keep you satisfied—and we’ll be updating this list every month to keep you apprised of the latest and greatest.
Here are the best movies on Peacock right now:
1. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Year: 2009
Director: Werner Herzog
Stars: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Jennifer Coolidge, Xzibit, Brad Dourif
Rating: R
Genre: Drama
Shot with wild-eyed lenses to truly capture the narcotic- and power-fueled cop at the heart of Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, this non-sequel is a staggering display of Nicolas Cage’s charisma in a workmanlike procedural. Initially, it seems like a bit of an odd bird: Herzog’s playfully dour direction and veteran TV writer William M. Finkelstein’s police drama script fizz and sparkle thanks to one of Cage’s best displays of mania, a few possibly-hallucinated iguanas and a pair of gators—one of which has already been turned into roadkill. But it all meshes together in a satisfyingly reptilian way, the cold-blooded and scaly id now physical and roaming the bayou. Cage smokes crack with Xzibit, busts the balls of Val Kilmer and watches football with a zonked-out Jennifer Coolidge. It’s a world of vice, as familiar yet inscrutable as the film’s bizarre title. The key players all make sense to your brain separately, but together, it’s a spiked cocktail and a bump in the bathroom—conflicting chemicals working in chaotic harmony. It can veer into stretches of unrefined silliness, but that’s part of the pitch-black fun. When you watch Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, you’re watching a cop drama with the saturation turned all the way up—where imagined lizards haunt coffee tables and souls breakdance until more bullets finally end the show. Maybe it’s no coincidence that Finkelstein co-created Cop Rock.—Jacob Oller
2. James White
Year: 2015
Director: Josh Mond
Stars: Christopher Abbott, Cynthia Nixon, Kid Cudi, Ron Livingston
Rating: R
Genre: Drama
Eventually while watching James White, you’ll decide you simply cannot get a bead on its main character. The sooner you do, the better: Like no movie in recent memory, the feature debut of writer-director Josh Mond is a small marvel of even-handed empathy. Played by Christopher Abbott, James White has a restless energy, a self-destructive streak, a bratty sense of entitlement, and a fierce devotion to those he loves. So, what does that make him, exactly? A cautionary tale? Utterly insufferable? A misunderstood romantic? James White never quite decides, which isn’t the same as not having strong opinions about its central figure. Mond has nothing but feelings for White, and they’re compellingly complicated. Loosely based on Mond’s own life, James White spans about five months, but the jaggedness of the telling makes the movie feel like the scenes are simply ripped-out patches in a much larger quilt of a life. There’s a looseness to the film that’s attuned to White’s own twitchy psyche, but Mond constructs his story with care, keeping an eye on its emotional through line. White’s life is in tumult when we first meet him, but we soon get the impression that his life is always fraying—it’s just that, this time, his distant father has died and now that’s become the central focus of his personal whirlwind. White isn’t so much grieving the loss—he hardly knew the man—but, rather, is concerned about his divorced mother Gail (a terrific Cynthia Nixon), who has stage 4 cancer and doesn’t need the additional emotional blow. The second half of James White is given over to Gail’s unalterable condition, and Abbott and Nixon hunker down as their characters travel down a road that only has one final destination. Even then, though, Mond refuses to give in to sentimentality or easy takeaways. To call James White a coming-of-age tale is simplistic—plus, it creates an expectation that its protagonist actually grows in some sort of quantifiable, conventional way. Maybe White will turn over a new leaf later after the credits roll, but it will take more than an 85-minute film for such a change to occur. —Tim Grierson
3. Freaky
Year: 2020
Director: Christopher Landon
Stars: Kathryn Newton, Vince Vaughn, Alan Ruck
Rating: R
Runtime: 102 minutes
On its face, the prospect of resurrecting two franchise IPs which have been endlessly re-made decade after decade teeters on the banal and unimaginative. Yet director Christopher Landon’s Freaky effortlessly weaves together the conventions of Freaky Friday and Friday the 13th, eschewing the confines of “remake,” instead creating a unique genre hybrid that’s slick and endlessly entertaining—all the while maintaining a clever self-awareness which enlivens the film’s jump-scares and punchlines without descending into the horror-comedy pitfall of self-referential metaness. What follows is a binary-bending comic exercise in sexual fluidity and gender expression which juxtaposes Vince Vaughn’s hefty stature with Kathryn Newton’s petite frame in order to prod at the horror genre’s previously held notion of who is perceived as weak, both in attitude and appearance. Vaughn and Newton give stellar performances, channeling the other’s mannerisms while poking fun at their own corporeal limitations and their immediate (dis)comfort within their new vessels. It’s heartening to see that the horror genre—still undeniably male-dominated—persists in its commitment to pushing boundaries. Whether those boundaries demarcate what we are able to stomach in terms of violence or what we are able to unpack within our own internal concepts of gender and sexuality, Freaky joins these tenets in order to craft a horror story rife with unexpected, imaginative kills all while subverting societal expectations of who we should really be afraid of—and why.–Natalia Keogan
4. Monkey Man
Release Date: March 11, 2024
Director: Dev Patel
Stars: Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley, Pitobash, Sobhita Dhulipala, Sikandar Kher, Vipin Sharma, Ashwini Kalsekar, Adithi Kalkunte, Makarand Deshpande
Rating: R
Runtime: 113 minutes
Despite the desires of the internet, Dev Patel clearly never wanted to be James Bond. He wanted to be Rorschach. Patel’s directorial debut, Monkey Man, fashions its Hanuman-based action hero after the big, brash mythologies of Indian epics and comic book vigilantes. Delicate moralities have their faces smashed against toilet bowl porcelain, and nuance has its bones cracked by a kitchen-sink adoration of grisly action styles. The result is an unwieldy flurry of blows, unleashed by a whirling dervish filmmaker battering us with his influences. It’s a familiar chaos, and one that threatens to get away from the person trying to contain it, but with the extra sauce of a passion project. From John Wick to Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee movies to the Ramayana, Patel poured his fascinations into his frenetic fable. Monkey Man finds itself in the final round, however, landing combo after bloody combo as it ascends towards actually reaching its wild-eyed ambitions. And those ambitions are shared by Kid (played by Patel), who we meet as a living, breathing Chumbawamba song. He gets knocked down and gets back up again, professionally. When not spitting blood as the fall guy in an underground MMA match (overseen by peacocking ring announcer Sharlto Copley), he’s scraping for stolen dollars with his network of impoverished peers. This is all in service of his ultimate goal: Revenge on the men who destroyed his idyllic rural life and family. Kid is a being of endless energy and rage, an underdog driven by a baked-in action-movie assurance: If he just beats the hell out of enough people, he’ll have fixed things. Grounded in Monkey Man’s fictional Indian city of Yatana, it’s a position of desperate anger, exacerbated by its setting, where injustice fills the air and inequality is at its most extreme. Hopping between slums, kitchen-dumpster alleys and black-tie brothels, polarized disparity is as much a target as the crooked powerbrokers the film stands up as its symbols. Monkey Man’s violent disillusion with the corrupt three-way handshake between religion, business and politics (not to mention men in general) coincides with India’s increasing turn to the right. The Bharatiya Janata Party and its highly conservative Hindutva haunt the action film broadly, but specific snippets of news footage interspersed make sure that nobody can miss its real-life ties. The dripping-wet violence and exertion of Monkey Man make you feel like you’re watching someone tear a film from their flesh. Patel establishes himself as a filmmaker with bountiful style and dedication, and as someone whose work transforms and personalizes his influences. But with that excruciating artistic surgical procedure comes mess. With first-time filmmakers, mess is a guarantee. But despite making a film that lives between worlds—walking its litter-strewn asphalt as easily as its lush hallucinated jungles—and that often feels at war with itself, Patel has earnestly straddled the highest myth and the grittiest realism to make a raw, exciting combination that feels all his own.–Jacob Oller
5. Body Bags
Year: 1993
Directors: John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Larry Sulkis
Stars: Stacy Keach, Mark Hamill, David Warner, Sheena Easton, Debbie Harry, Twiggy, Robert Carradine
Rating: R
Genre: Horror
Sometimes, even anthologies with less-than-stellar stories can get by on sheer charming commitment to gross-out delights, and that’s John Carpenter’s Body Bags for you. Originally conceived as a gorier, more grotesque spin on the Tales From the Crypt formula for Showtime, the series was cancelled after only a few potential episodes had been filmed. Not wanting to lose the material, Carpenter simply assembled his favorites into a feature film. Each segment isn’t particularly memorable, except for the closer, which features Mark Hamill as a baseball player who loses an eye and then gains the eye of a serial killer via a donation. You can guess where things go from there. What is memorable about Body Bags is the goofy wraparound segments, which feature Carpenter himself as a Crypt Keeper-esque mortician who gleefully hacks apart bodies and drinks formaldehyde, showing a much lighter hearted personality than you’d expect from the director of dour films like The Thing or Prince of Darkness. It’s fun to watch Body Bags today for the not-so-subtle genre references (“Another grisly murder in Haddonfield today…”) and the incredible array of character actors and cameos that were lined up, including the likes of Wes Craven as a leering perv, Stacy Keach as a guy receiving miracle hair transplants, Charles Napier as a baseball manager, Twiggy as a housewife (reuniting these two from The Blues Brothers), Roger Corman as a doctor, Tom Arnold as a mortician and Sam Raimi as a corpse.—Jim Vorel
6. Nosferatu the Vampyre
Year: 1979
Director: Werner Herzog
Stars: Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz, Roland Topor, Walter Ladengast
Rating: PG
Genre: Horror
Werner Herzog recreates the cornerstone of vampire cinema (and German expressionist filmmaking, for that matter) through an ever-mounting nightmare of unsettling, disjointed vignettes. Which isn’t anything new for the German director, but his methods and sensibility do lend themselves naturally to the language of phantasmagoria, as he tells a well-known story via one subconscious-upending image after another. As in any Herzog film, the story is never intended to hold together flawlessly—only barely logically—but to imprint indelibly upon the insides of the viewers’ eyelids the stark silhouette of evil borne absurdly from the primeval fear in all of us. That Klaus Kinski also plays Count Dracula means that madness bristles at the edge of every manicured line of chiaroscuro: Nosferatu revels in the beauty of horror. In fact, Roger Ebert said, “Here is a film that does honor to the seriousness of vampires. No, I don’t believe in them. But if they were real, here is how they must look.” —Dom Sinacola
7. Short Term 12
Year: 2013
Director: Destin Daniel Cretton
Stars: Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr., Kaitlyn Dever, Rami Malek, Alex Calloway, Lakeith Stanfield
Rating: R
Genre: Drama
As it progresses, Short Term 12 remains rigorously structured in terms of plot; yet it never feels calculated. In fact, the film serves as a fine example of how invisible screenwriting can be. By allowing his characters’ irrational emotions to influence events and instigate key turning points, Cretton capably masks the film’s finely calibrated story mechanics. And while everything seemingly comes to a head during a key crisis, it’s only fitting that the story ends with a denouement that bookends its opening. Cretton’s clear-eyed film is far too honest to try and convince us that there’s been any sort of profound change for Grace or anyone else. Instead, it’s content to serve as a potent reminder that tentative first steps can be every bit as narratively compelling as great leaps of faith. —Curtis Woloschuk
8. News of the World
Year: 2020
Director: Paul Greengrass
Starring: Tom Hanks, Helena Zengel, Bill Camp, Elizabeth Marvel
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 118 minutes
Paul Greengrass and screenwriting partner Luke Davies may have adapted Paulette Jiles’ 2016 Western novel News of the World at least in partial consideration of how far the United States hasn’t come as a nation–around the time of the book’s publication, such cursed phrases as “fake news” and “alternative facts” were inducted into popular language by fascists and crooks attempting to pull a fast one on the American people. Neither of these terms, nor their equally grotesque cousins, make their way into Greengrass’ film, but the spirit that conjured them into being four years ago is alive and well in his recreation of the American frontier. His hero is Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Hanks), a Confederate Civil War veteran who, having stood on the losing side of history, moseys across the Lone Star State and reads out-of-town papers to the locals at each stop on his journeys. The movie doesn’t exactly ask the viewer to overlook which side of the war Kidd stood on: In fact, the truth of his old allegiances becomes more unavoidable the less directly they’re spoken of. This is Texas. An erstwhile soldier in Texas could only have fought on one side of the aisle. News of the World damns Kidd without having to say a word. But as soon as the film judges him, it presents him with a chance at redemption in the form of a girl, Johanna (Helena Zengel). Zengel is a fresh spark in an otherwise old-fashioned production, but old-fashioned here is a compliment. News of the World has no interest in subverting or updating classic Western formulas: It is content with its function as a handsomely-made studio picture, built ostensibly around Hanks but with plenty of room for its young star to make her mark. What modernizes the movie has more to do with context than content. Anyone trapped in indentured servitude to social media—Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or worse, other people’s Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts—should appreciate this calming two-hour reprieve from the unavoidable din publishers and platforms make in our lives today. There’s such a thing as too much news, whether for better or worse, and News of the World only tries to give us the best. —Andy Crump
9. Nightbreed
Year: 1990
Director: Clive Barker
Stars: Craig Sheffer, Anne Bobby, David Cronenberg, Charlie Haid, Hugh Quarshie, Hugh Ross
Rating: R
Genre: Horror
Nightbreed is an odd duck of a movie, stranded somewhere between legitimate horror film and dark fantasy story. Clive Barker directs, only a few years after Hellraiser, but here his ambition perhaps got the best of him. It’s pretty clear that he wanted Nightbreed to be something akin to a horror epic, a movie with a profound message about identity, acceptance and community. In execution, though, it has a hard time picking what tone it’s supposed to be emanating. Sometimes it’s darkly humorous. Sometimes it’s legitimately spooky. Other times you’re not sure whether you’re supposed to be taking the action on screen seriously or not. One thing that is spectacular throughout is the art direction, sets, costuming and makeup. Some of the character designs may come off as “silly,” but just as many of them are likely to end up in your nightmares. Nightbreed is a mixed bag, a would-be inspiring story about monsters trying to build a safe community to peacefully live their lives, but lacking the iconic nature of Barker’s most famous creations. —Jim Vorel
10. Black Christmas
Year: 1974
Director: Bob Clark
Stars: Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, Keir Dullea, Andrea Martin, John Saxon
Rating: R
Genre: Horror
Fun fact—nine years before he directed holiday classic A Christmas Story, Bob Clark created the first true, unassailable “slasher movie” in Black Christmas. Yes, the same person who gave TBS its annual Christmas Eve marathon fodder was also responsible for the first major cinematic application of the phrase “The calls are coming from inside the house!” Black Christmas, which was insipidly remade in 2006, predates John Carpenter’s Halloween by four years and features many of the same elements, especially visually. Like Halloween, it lingers heavily on POV shots from the killer’s eyes as he prowls through a dimly lit sorority house and spies on his future victims. As the mentally deranged killer calls the house and engages in obscene phone calls with the female residents, one can’t help but also be reminded of the scene in Carpenter’s film where Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) calls her friend Lynda, only to hear her strangled with the telephone cord. Black Christmas is also instrumental, and practically archetypal, in solidifying the slasher legend of the so-called “final girl.” Jessica Bradford (Olivia Hussey) is actually among the better-realized of these final girls in the history of the genre, a remarkably strong and resourceful young woman who can take care of herself in both her relationships and deadly scenarios. It’s questionable how many subsequent slashers have been able to create protagonists who are such a believable combination of capable and realistic. —Jim Vorel
11. Prom Night
Year: 1980
Director: Paul Lynch
Stars: Jamie Lee Curtis, Leslie Nielsen, Casey Stevens, Anne-Marie Martin, Antoinette Bower
Rating: R
Genre: Horror
It is perhaps odd to think, in the post-Jason Voorhees era of slasher villains, that slasher killers of the early ’80s were often weirdly justified in their slayings. Sure, there are some “escaped maniacs on the loose,” but many are basically avenging angels, punishing groups of young people for a terrible crime they tried to sweep under the rug, with Prom Night standing as one of the classic examples. Starring Jamie Lee Curtis in her first slasher role after Halloween, Prom Night knows it’s trying to cash in on that earlier film’s success, but it also manages to stand on its own, inspiring imitations all the way to I Know What You Did Last Summer. Portions of the film are kind of rote, and even the best-looking versions you can find today have a soft, gauzy quality that makes the picture look a little strange, but when Prom Night is good, it’s great. Oddly, it’s not really Curtis who gets the best sequences, but actress Eddie Benton as Wendy, who participates in one half of what is maybe the best (and certainly most formative) chase sequence in the history of the horror genre. Stalked by an axe-wielding killer in a ski mask, the frenzied, eight-minute scene spools out for an eternity as Wendy is chased through the locked, echoing halls of the high school, illuminated in impressionistic, Argento-esque shafts of red light. Not all of Prom Night can live up to it (the disco dance sequences are dreadful), but the chase alone makes it a classic. —Jim Vorel
12. Sleepaway Camp
Year: 1983
Director: Robert Hiltzik
Stars: Felissa Rose, Jonathan Tiersten, Karen Fields, Christopher Collet, Mike Kellin
Rating: R
Genre: Horror
Of all the camp-based Friday the 13th rip-offs, Sleepaway Camp is probably the best one that isn’t The Burning. Our main character is Angela, a troubled girl who absolutely everyone picks on for no good reason. Seriously—it’s one of those ’80s era movies with a main character who is an “outsider” constantly harassed by dozens of people, but without any impetus or explanation—it’s just Angela’s lot in life. Everyone who meets her immediately hates her guts and subjects her to cruel taunting. But soon, the people at the camp who were mean to Angela start getting knocked off. The movie seems calculated to come off as a straight horror film, but the death scenes are often so outlandish that it veers pleasurably into horror comedy, as well. Highlights include the lecherous camp cook, who gets a giant vat of boiling water dumped on his face, or the kid who gets a beehive dropped into the outhouse with him. If you love classic slashers, it’s a must-see, especially for the ending. I won’t spoil anything, but Sleepaway Camp can proudly lay claim to one of the most shocking, WTF endings in slasher movie history. —Jim Vorel
13. Prince: Sign ‘o’ the Times
Year: 1987
Directors: Prince, Albert Magnoli
Stars: Prince
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Musical, Documentary
Prince’s 1987 concert documentary is one hour and 24 minutes of a generation’s greatest musical performer at the peak of his career (sorry, Boss). With his touring band that included Sheila E. on drums, Miko Weaver on guitar, Levi Seacer Jr. on bass, Eric Leeds on sax, Boni Boyer and Dr. Fink on keyboards, and Cat Glover dancing, the film pulls mostly from his 1987 double-album Sign O’ the Times, with hits like the title track, a piano interlude of “Little Red Corvette” and “U Got the Look.” It was filmed at two European shows, but much of the music was re-recorded later at Paisley Park. Still, it has an urgency that only Prince can deliver, in multiple outfits, of course. Released theatrically in the States, the film received more love after it left theaters. Now it’s one of the best ways to see what the big deal is about a Prince concert. —Josh Jackson
14. The Blair Witch Project
Year: 1999
Directors: Eduardo Sánchez, Daniel Myrick
Stars: Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, Joshua Leonard
Rating: R
Runtime: 81 minutes
Where Scream reinvented a genre by pulling the shades back to reveal the inner workings of horror, The Blair Witch Project went the opposite route by crafting a new style of presentation and especially promotion. Sure, people had already been doing found footage movies; just look at The Last Broadcast a year earlier. But this was the first to get a wide, theatrical release, and distributor Artisan Entertainment masterfully capitalized on the lack of information available on the film to execute a mysterious online advertising campaign in the blossoming days of the Internet age. Otherwise reasonable human beings seriously went into The Blair Witch Project believing that what they were seeing might be real, and the grainy, home movie aesthetic captured an innate terror of reality and “real people” that had not been seen in the horror genre before. It was also proof positive that a well-executed micro-budget indie film could become a massive box office success. So in that sense, The Blair Witch Project reinvented two different genres at the same time. —Jim Vorel
15. Putney Swope
Year: 1969
Director: Robert Downey Sr.
Stars: Arnold Johnson, Stan Gottlieb, Allen Garfield
Rating: R
Genre: Comedy
Supposedly inspired by director Robert Downey’s experiences in advertising, Putney Swope would be a bleakly cynical expectoration of the bile inherent to the machinations of capitalism—that is, were it not so funny. In Downey’s most popular film, life means nothing next to the rhythms of language and the poetry of farce, telling the story of an agency in thrall to a complete overhaul care of the new democratically chosen Chairman of the Board, token African American Putney Swope (Arnold Johnson, with Downey dubbing in his comical voice, adding an extra shade of cartoon chaos to an already surreal scenario). Swope purges the company of most of its “lilys,” replacing them with Black Panther acolytes and Five Percenters and assorted blue collar Black workers to resist the tide of empty corporatism taking over America. In turn, Swope takes on the personae of various revolutionaries—sometimes dressing in NOGE garb, sometimes suiting up like a Castro impersonator—navigating the many strains, violent and not, of anti-establishment thinking at the tail end of the ’60s, but ultimately unable to escape the lure of capitalist power. Swope is a bad leader, in other words, stealing ideas from his underlings and generally embracing every hypocritical behavior he can, but the genius of Downey’s vision is that his idea of corruption corrupts absolutely, no regards for race or inequality. A sort of pre-Zucker Brothers bounty of slapstick and absurdity, Putney Swope portrays people floundering through these many layers of power (and, therefore, oppression), unsure of how best to get what they want from society—unsure if that’s even possible. Replete with a series of offensive, uncomfortable and super-weird commercial spots seemingly tapped into America’s horrifying Id, Putney Swope has a lot to say, but doesn’t really seem all that concerned with being heard. —Dom Sinacola