Best new movies and series arriving on NOW in October 2022

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

Top Picks: TV

A Friend of the Family: Series 1 (October 7)

If you were stunned into sickened silence by the Netflix documentary Abducted In Plain Sight, this dramatisation could help explain the horrors of those events with the perhaps necessary emotional detachment of actors and a script. Colin Hanks and Anna Paquin star as the devoutly religious parents of young Jan (Mckenna Grace), but their faith will blind them to a wildly inappropriate, predatory relationship between their daughter and “friend of the family” Robert Berchtold. His manipulation would know no bounds, which is plenty disturbing enough when he kidnaps Jan, but the question on every viewer’s minds is this: just how, and why, did Jan’s parents allow this to happen…twice?

Gangs of London: Season 2 (October 20)

More bone-crunching, city-splintering TV from action director Gareth Edwards. The wicked Wallace family is still at the centre of all the action, with Sean (Joe Cole) gradually, violently earning the respect of all neighbouring gangs: the Pakistani cartel, Welsh travellers, Kurdish freedom frighters, and the Albanian Mafia first fingered for Sean’s dad’s death. But things ended on a pretty, uh, bloody note for him last season—who will rise to fill that vacuum of power, and how deep in is undercover cop Elliot (Sope Dirisu), now seemingly bankrolled by a group of mysterious investors?

The White Lotus: Season 2 (October 30)

Following a clueless batch of tourists at a Hawaii resort, the first season of The White Lotus was the most awarded series of the recent Emmy Awards. Creator Mike White wasn’t planning on making another season, but since he is, Jennifer Coolidge’s iconic Tanya simply had to return, alongside a new killer ensemble of oblivious white visitors. F. Murray Abraham, Michael Imperioli, Aubrey Plaza, Tom Hollander, and Theo James should expect to catch some sun and class anxiety.

Top Picks: Movies

She Will (October 1)

Emblazoned with the title card “Dario Argento presents”, this morbid, melancholic trip to a Scottish highlands wellness retreat has the support of a serious horror legend. Can it live up, with Alice Krige as a self-loathing elderly actress and Rupert Everett in camp baddie mode as the resort’s louche leader? In her review, Lillian Crawford accused the horror debut of a lack of clarity, but loved its witchy imagery: “It is from the witches that many of the more horrifying visual tricks of the film emerge, caked in blood in rapid oneiric montages that rip through the film’s eerie status quo.” Age is just a number, but it’s also a cruel, supernatural mistress here.

Clean (October 2)

Adrien Brody writes, produces, and stars in this vigilante crime thriller, that might remind of a certain Keanu Reeves “man-with-a-shadowy-violent-past” action franchise. There’s been a slew of these things over the past five years or so, with countless not-very-intimidating stars taking the opportunity to show us how gritty and buff they can get. Brody is a good candidate, though, playing a garbage man with a big bloody secret of which he might never be…clean (also the character’s name). Leader of the Wu Tang Clan RZA will show up too, as the pawn shop owner to whom Clean can sell his cobbled-together, repaired appliances.

Umma (October 21)

Generational trauma and second-generation migrant anxiety are horribly woven together in this haunted horror, inflected with creepy Korean influences. TV legend Sandra Oh stars as a technophobic woman leading an isolated, disconnected life that is then thrown into discord when her mum’s remains are shipped over from Korea. Far from grieving the loss, she’s instead returned to her traumatic memories of her mum’s abuse, and with Sam Raimi producing the whole affair you can bet we’ll be made to experience just how terrifying the situation is for Oh’s character. Hasn’t received great reviews, but the cast and troubling themes should make it a worthwhile fright.