Best new movies and series arriving on NOW in July 2022

Every month, a new slate of titles is added to NOW’s library of films and TV shows—and critic Clarisse Loughrey picks the very best among them to watch. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down.

Top Picks: TV

The Baby (July 7)

It may seem a little odd to describe a comedy-horror series about a demonic baby as crushingly relevant, but I guess that’s where we’re at these days—and there’s a surprising amount that Sky’s latest original show has to say about reproductive rights in the wake of Roe vs Wade being overturned in the US. Natasha (Michelle de Swarte) isn’t dealing with an unexpected pregnancy here, but with an unexpected baby. It literally falls out of the sky and into her arms, and there’s nothing she can seemingly do to get rid of it, even as it becomes the connecting link between a series of gruesome deaths.

Breeders: Season 3 (July 13)

The rose-tinted sitcom family gets a rude awakening in Breeders, which casts Martin Freeman and Daisy Haggard as two parents stretched so thin you could probably shine a light through them. Freeman, who co-created the series with Chris Addison and Simon Blackwell, partially based the show on his own experiences as a father. And, honestly, it takes guts to be this honest.

The latest batch of episodes sees the family deal with the immediate aftermath of Luke (Alex Eastwood) punching Paul (Freeman) in the face, after the anxiety around him is pushed to an explosive extreme. We also see how Ally (Haggard) grows increasingly isolated within the silence that’s now gutted her family.

SurrealEstate (July 30)

Here’s the real bummer when it comes to living in a haunted house—and it’s not being woken up at 3am by the sound of scratching behind the walls, or having a plate thrown at your head every time you try to make a pot noodle. It’s the fact that cohabiting with the dead can make it extra tough when it comes time to sell up and move on.

Thankfully, Luke Roman (Tim Rozon) and his fully-stocked real estate agency are here to save the day—he’s got both a priest (Adam Korson) and an office manager (Savannah Basley). And he’ll flush your place of demons and then sell the place for higher than its asking price. What a deal!

Top Picks: Movies

Sundown (July 2)

Often compared to cinema’s great miserablist Michael Haneke, Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco returns with yet another controversial take on class, social isolation, and family. Tim Roth plays Neil Bennett, who’s on vacation with his sister Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her two children when they get the call that their mother has died.

Neil says he left his passport back at the hotel and that they should all go on ahead without him—he’ll catch up. Except the passport’s still in his bag. And when he gets in a cab, he tells the driver to head to any old hotel. He doesn’t care. Franco’s story grows only harsher and crueller from there.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (July 15)

Welcome to Marvel’s multiverse, where Spider-Men new and old—Tom Holland, Tobey Maguire, and Andrew Garfield—all collide in a sequel perfectly designed to melt the hearts of lifelong comic book fans everywhere. It begins exactly at the point where Far From Home ends, with the now-deceased Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) having broadcast Spider-Man’s civilian identity, Peter Parker, to the entire world.

Now branded a menace to society, Peter calls on Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) for help. But a spell that promises to make the world forget he was ever Spider-Man backfires horribly. All of a sudden, the villainous Doc Ock (Alfred Molina) is rampaging through New York City’s streets. Where exactly did he come from?

Scream (July 29)

Scream, the fifth instalment in the franchise, never tries to fix what isn’t broken. It’s all metatext meets guts and gore, as a killer (or killers?) dons the hood and ghoul mask to become a new Ghostface for a new generation, taking out the residents of Woodsboro with gleeful abandon. But Gen-Z are a little harder to impress—they’re all into “elevated horror” now, and take their cues from The Babadook and Hereditary.

They treat the in-universe equivalent of the Scream movies, called Stab, as something of a dated curio. Thankfully, the franchise itself is as sharp as ever, reserving nostalgia only for the return of its central trio—Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott, Courteney Cox’s Gale Weathers, and David Arquette’s Dewey Riley.