Hulu is certainly including various seasonal titles in their lineup of titles joining the streaming platform, such as The Good Witch of Christmas, I’m Glad it’s Christmas, This Christmas, A Chance for Christmas, CMA Country Christmas, A Very Backstreet Holiday, and New Year’s Eve: Times Square Ball Drop 2022.

However, some of the most interesting movies coming to Hulu are not related to Christmas or the holidays (and the many new Hulu TV series certainly aren’t either). Hulu is debuting a few new original movies this year, alongside a handful of 2022 releases (like Mack + Rita, Collide, The Torch, and Last Looks) and a bevy of classic films, and these are the best.

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Final Destination (Dec. 1)

     New Line Cinema

While there wasn’t always a strong follow-through, the concept of Final Destination is pretty brilliant, allowing for endless variations. A group of people who should’ve died are essentially hunted down by fate, sent to their rightful death as accidents, mishaps, and coincidences are arranged by destiny to kill them.

While the Final Destination movies aren’t all good, they do often have wonderful disaster and premonition scenes. This, along with a seemingly infinite amount of character deaths in the horror franchise, makes it stand out from the usual horror film; the slasher here is fate itself. Five of the Final Destination films come to Hulu on Dec. 1st.

Darby and the Dead (Dec. 2)

     Hulu

There have been a variety of teen horror comedies this year, from Unhuman to My Best Friend’s Exorcism, and Hulu continues the trend this December with Darby and the Dead. Darby has the ability to see ghosts, but this is hardly The Sixth Sense; instead, Darby and the Dead is a kind of supernatural Mean Girls. Darby is shy and introverted, preferring her ghostly friends to living people.

When the most popular girl in school dies and finds Darby, they plan a party together. Yes, it sounds pretty silly, but it promises to have the same sweetness of supernatural comedies like Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Gone in the Night (Dec. 2)

     Vertical Entertainment

Gone in the Night is a dark, enigmatic film that is best not to spoil beyond a simple plot synopsis — a woman and her boyfriend go on vacation to a cabin, where they discover that a couple is already renting it; when her partner disappears, Kath seeks answers. More fascinating and bizarre than its slasher movie premise implies, Gone in the Night features a wonderful lead performance from Winona Ryder, and along with Stranger Things, should be considered another part of the ‘Winonassaince.’

It’s a Wonderful Binge (Dec. 9)

The Binge was a delightful hang-out movie, a fun, comedic, improv-heavy twist on The Purge in which drugs and alcohol are illegal except for one day of the year, when all hellish fun breaks loose. It’s a Wonderful Binge is a wicked holiday sequel to this concept with a phenomenal cast of comedy character actors and stars alike (Kaitlin Olson, Danny Trejo, Paul Scheer, Patty Guggenheim, Tim Meadows, Nick Swardson, Eduardo Franco, and more).

Retrograde (Dec. 11)

     National Geographic

Filmed over the nine months leading up to the withdrawal of troops from the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, Retrograde is a brilliant, deeply human portrait of war, politics, and resignation. Placing an Afghan general, Sami Sadat, at its center, the film is an emotionally painful look at Afghans as they prepare for the U.S. troops to evacuate, leaving them to fight off encroaching Taliban forces. Matthew Heineman’s documentary is apolitical, instead focusing on the chaos, danger, and death that political decisions from afar have on regular people.

Christopher Nolan Movies (Dec. 12)

     Warner Bros.

A variety of great Christopher Nolan movies are coming to Hulu on December 12th — Batman Begins, Dunkirk, Inception, Insomnia, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises. It’s a wonderful selection of his filmography that presents a portrait of a filmmaker who truly defines the word ’epic.’ From his hazy, tense remake Insomnia and his acclaimed Dark Knight trilogy, to the war epic Dunkirk and the intellectually stimulating, big-budget artistry of Inception, any one of these movies would make a great addition to your December queu.

I Love My Dad (Dec. 16)

     Magnolia Pictures

I Love My Dad is a unique comedy, based on a very uncomfortable true story of a delightfully cringeworthy catfishing. Patton Oswalt stars as a lonely father who wants to connect with his distant son, and so disguises himself online as an attractive young woman who’s interested in his son.

As the two ‘court’ each other over phones and laptops, they communicate in ways that the father never could, but the ruse gets complicated as the dad digs himself deeper into a hole. Witha wonderful supporting cast including Claudia Sulewski, Amy Landecker, Lil Rel Howery, and Rachel Dratch, I Love My Dad is a winner.

Sharp Stick (Dec. 23)

     Utopia

Writer/director Lena Dunham (of Girls fame) isn’t for everyone, but if you’re interested in a very sexual, unconventional coming of age comedy focused on a young woman, then Sharp Stick may be for you. The sex-positive, body-positive, but critic-negative film has been divisive for its radical portrait of sexuality, with even some feminists pushing back at Dunham’s portrait of a young babysitter who starts having sex with Jon Bernthal’s scumbag character.