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Paramount+ might not have the biggest selection of original films, but it does have a massive back catalog of films produced by Paramount Pictures. This is its competitive edge, and probably the reason why it's been able to amass 43 million subscribers and has grown its revenue by a surprising 62% between 2020 and 2021.
There are countless Paramount films and CBS TV shows, so Paramount+ has the potential to contain a staggeringly huge and diverse catalog of streaming titles. October is a pretty good month for movies on the streaming platform — in addition to their excellent Halloween Collection of horror movies, the service will be adding a couple original films and a slew of great recent and older movies. These are the best movies coming to Paramount+ in October.
Monster High: The Movie
The Monster High movie is premiering on both Nickelodeon and Paramount+ on Oct. 6th ahead of a new CGI series on Nickelodeon later in the month, and fans are excited. Monster High is a surprisingly successful media franchise from Mattel, originating as a doll and a web series before expanding into all sorts of things, from clothing and comics to books and now a movie.
Monster High will be a live-action musical fantasy directed by Tom Holland, who has done such funny work on The Larry Sanders Show and Malcolm in the Middle. Following Clawdeen Wolf (Miia Harris), Frankie Stein (Ceci Balagot), and Draculaura (Nayah Damasen), the movie will follow the characters as they fight to save their titular high school, and should be a delight to all young girls who like horror more than Barbie.
Significant Other
Significant Other is the big horror film that Paramount+ has slated for October. With a wonderful cast including Maika Monroe (It Follows) and the great Jake Lacy (White Lotus, A Friend of the Family), the film follows newly engaged couple Ruth and Harry after they go on a road trip to the Pacific Northwest, where they decide to go backpacking through the remote woods. Supernatural events begin occurring, and Ruth seems to know more than she lets on, or is at least more attuned to the horror.
Annihilation
This intellectual sci-fi masterpiece from Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Men) has an incredible Natalie Portman performance as a biologist in the military whose team goes in to Area X, a zone plagued by bizarre phenomenon either alien or supernatural, after her husband was traumatized and changed by the place.
Portman's character leads a pack of scouts in an attempt to discover more about the zone, but things get complicated and more mysterious the deeper they get. An incredibly photographed, imaginatively grotesque film with a truly cerebral ending, Annihilation is a sci-fi lover's dream.
The Adams Family
With the new Tim Burton series Wednesday coming, why not take a trip down memory lane and look at the first great reboot of the classic '60s horror comedy show The Addams Family? For many people, Barry Sonnenfeld's 1991 film is the definitive portrait of the creepy and kooky horror family, and that all comes down to the superb casting.
From Anjelica Huston's Morticia and Raul Julia's Gomez, to Christina Ricci's Wednesday and Christopher Lloyd's perfect performance as Fester (not to mention the great Carel Struycken as Lurch), every actor in The Addams Family film is completely in sync with their character, making this the most enjoyable title in the whole franchise.
Catch Me if You Can
Steven Spielberg's film about fraudulence and manipulation, Catch Me if You Can is an immensely enjoyable, charming road trip of a movie. Following the exploits of the incredible charlatan Frank Abagnale (played by a charming Leonardo DiCaprio), Catch Me if You Can chronicles the many ways Abagnale conned others into believing he was something he wasn't.
Tom Hanks is wonderfully subtle as Carl Hanratty, the FBI agent tasked with hunting Frank down, and the entire cast (including Christopher Walken, Martin Sheen, and Amy Adams) works overtime to make this one of the most delightful films of the 2000s.
Patriot Games
With the recent success of the Jack Ryan TV show, now is a perfect time to look back at perhaps the most underrated film about the Jack Ryan character, Patriot Games. While The Hunt For Red October usually gets all the attention when it comes to Ryan, Patriot Games is brimming with its own excitement, and Harrison Ford is a unique but somehow wonderful choice to play Ryan. The film follows a game of revenge between Ryan and the brother of a terrorist he killed.
Vanilla Sky
Vanilla Sky was alternately praised and ridiculed when it first came out near the end of 2001, and while it was somewhat notorious for its sensuous nature at the time, it has subsequently been forgotten by most people. This is unfortunate, as it's a beautiful and surreal film from Cameron Crowe with not just one of the best Tom Cruise performances, but arguably the greatest Cameron Diaz performance. She's absolutely perfect here, simultaneously playing into and against her typecasting as the unstable lover of Cruise's character in this movie about plastic surgery, dreams, jealousy, and insanity.