New movies to watch this weekend: See Zach Cregger's 'Resident Evil' in theaters, rent 'The End of Oak Street,' stream 'The Best of the Best' on Netflix

Welcome to Trust Me, I Watch Everything , a weekly guide to notable new movies opening or becoming available each Friday.

This week's buzziest release is Zach Cregger's reboot of the Resident Evil franchise, which takes things in an extremely different direction from the previous seven movies. Ethan Hawke's low-budget thriller The Weight is also worth seeking out.

If you'd rather stay home, you can now rent or buy The End of Oak Street, the dinosaurs-in-the-suburbs sci-fi flick starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, or catch a hangout vibe with Tony , the Anthony Bourdain biopic of sorts starring Dominic Sessa. Matthew McConaughey's transcendent The Rivals of Amziah King is another one worth the rental fee.

Want to stick to a streaming service you're likely already paying for? Netflix's Best of the Best is a charming coming-of-age comedy, and Shudder has a new original horror flick, Goody Goody.

Why you should see it in a theater: There have already been seven Resident Evil movies — six of them in a more action-oriented series starring Milla Jovovich, four of which were directed by her husband, Paul W.S. Anderson, plus an unrelated "reboot" in 2021 called Welcome to Raccoon City that went for more of a John Carpenter vibe and was more of an attempt to truly "adapt" the games. There's also a Netflix TV show version that ran for a single season in 2022. Countless other works in the horror genre have unofficially cribbed from the Resident Evil games over the years. It's an incredibly influential series.

And yet, Zach Cregger, hot off his Oscar-winning original horror film Weapons, is the first filmmaker to truly feel like he's adapting the experience of playing the games, arguably the scariest survival-horror ones ever made, rather than simply incorporating story and plot elements to explain the outbreak of infected people. In Cregger's hands, Resident Evil is pure crowd-pleasing popcorn cinema, best experienced in a packed movie theater with dozens of other people reacting loudly to the madness.

The premise couldn't be simpler — and the runtime a brisk 90 minutes — as we follow a medical courier named Bryan (Austin Abrams, proving himself to be the Bruce Campbell for a new generation) who unwittingly finds himself fighting for survival as one fateful, horrifying night collapses around him in a swirl of chaos. Fans of the video games will recognize various Easter eggs and nods to game mechanics, including the importance of conserving ammo and checking every last drawer for more of it.

But you don't need to be familiar with the games at all to enjoy the movie, which is an efficient horror set-piece machine that just keeps putting Abrams in increasingly concerning situations. I can't stress enough how much this is a one-man show anchored by Abrams, and he crushes it. He's in every scene, earning tons of laughs simply by reacting as a normal person would in this situation; he's a true audience-surrogate character, ushering us through the chaos. His comedic timing, paired with Cregger's assured camerawork and editing, is a match made in genre-movie heaven.

I didn't expect it to be so heavily inspired by genre classics like The Thing and Evil Dead. In fact, it's a better Evil Dead movie than the last several movies with " Evil Dead " in the title, nailing the horror-comedy tone that only Sam Raimi and a few others can pull off with aplomb. Cregger has a ton of fun with the various monstrous forms that the infected take here, from fusing multiple humans together to crafting his own horror take on a big, scary guy like Dune 's Baron Harkonnen. Resident Evil movies have thus far treated the zombies as pretty traditional movie zombies; Cregger's version gets at the attempt to create the next stage of human evolution.

Zach Cregger's Resident Evil may not feature characters that gaming fans recognize, but it's spiritually more in line with the games than any of the ones that do. Adaptation stuff aside, it's also just a heart-pounding, adrenaline-fueled roller-coaster ride of a movie that has no grander ambitions than getting a rise out of the audience over and over again. It's a blast, and this time, you can't pause it, put your controller down and walk away when things get too intense.

What other critics are saying: The previous seven installments were panned by critics every time; the opposite is true here, as Cregger's take sports a near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes. The Independent's Clarisse Loughrey writes, "It feels thoroughly like a film by Zach Cregger ... proving that subtle, psychological work isn't always the superior horror when you have a filmmaker who can deliver a jump scare shock with this much elegant panache." Jesse Hassenger at the Guardian writes, " Resident Evil has a streamlined single-mindedness, and as it barrels through its gamified plot, the tension and entertainment value never flag."

How to watch: Resident Evil is now playing in theaters nationwide.

Why I liked it: The 1953 movie The Wages of Fear, based on the 1950 novel by Georges Arnaud , was famously remade by William Friedkin in 1977 as Sorcerer , which, just as famously, bombed miserably at the box office due to its opening on the heels of a little-known sci-fi flick called Star Wars.

Sorcerer is an incredible movie that has, thankfully, become a cult classic. After decades of being hard to find, it's recently been restored in 4K and regularly plays at repertory cinemas. Friedkin considered it to be his finest work.

All of which is to say that The Weight is a Depression-era survival thriller heist Western that feels heavily inspired by Sorcerer, but made on a minuscule budget and under far less strenuous circumstances. It's tense, well-acted and a worthy take on the doomed men-on-a-mission movie. Imagine if Sorcerer took place during the Oregon Trail days.

When Samuel (Ethan Hawke) is torn from his daughter and sent to a brutal prison, Warden Clancy (Russell Crowe) offers him a high-stakes proposition: smuggle gold out of a remote mine with a dangerous crew of prisoners, and he'll win his freedom.

It's stripped-down as can be, but that doesn't stop it from being incredibly tense, with a particularly memorable scene unfolding on a sketchy drawbridge in what appears to be a direct nod to Sorcerer, albeit under very different circumstances. The Weight manages to convey its huge stakes despite its humble budget.

What other critics are saying: Reviews are very strong. The AP's Lindsay Bahr writes, "It is very much a 'dad movie,' which isn't, in this case, a bad or even limiting thing. More than a few people have compared it to something Clint Eastwood might have done at some point — just a solid, hearty, meat-and-potatoes kind of movie." David Fear at Rolling Stone says it's "not a perfect homage to 1970s tough-guy action flicks. But The Weight is close enough to give you that same thrill you get when, say, an old-timey James Coburn or Lee Marvin movie unexpectedly shows up on TCM."

How to watch: The Weight is now playing in select theaters.

Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom : The third feature-length film in this stop-motion animated series from Aardman Animations (the team behind Wallace & Gromit ) is a brisk Halloween-season delight that's highly recommended for all ages. On Halloween Eve at Mossy Bottom Farm, excitement turns to dismay when the clumsy Farmer ruins the pumpkin patch. Shaun tries fixing it with science experiments, but things go wrong when a wild beast appears in the woods. It has so many jokes and gags that you'll laugh a ton, and also be impressed by how well it works without a single line of dialogue. It's essentially a silent film for children. There are subtle visual gags throughout too, so keep your eyes peeled. Get tickets

The History of Concrete : John Wilson of HBO's beloved docuseries How To with John Wilson makes his feature debut with this hilarious, idiosyncratic and totally on-brand documentary that's ostensibly about, well, the history of concrete. But in the process, it's really about the human experience. It's not as pretentious and lofty as that sounds — in fact, it's as laugh-out-loud hysterical as it is insightful and purely fascinating. Wilson's fans are in for a treat, as it plays pretty much identically to his series, though it does gesture a bit toward some deeper and perhaps darker revelations about society. (You may find yourself wondering, "What do Chef Boyardee, or a guy who hands out free booze at liquor stores, have to do with the idea here?") But in a uniquely John Wilsonian fashion, it all feels quite revelatory and makes perfect sense by the end. It works great as an introduction to his sensibilities as a documentarian for newcomers and functions just as well as an expansion of his television work for those familiar. Get tickets

The buzziest release: The End of Oak Street

Why I liked it: J.J. Abrams already made his own feature-length approximation of a Steven Spielberg flick with Super 8 back in 2011, and now he's here producing another one 15 years later. Never change, J.J.!

David Robert Mitchell's The End of Oak Street plays like the most exciting Jurassic Park sequel never made: an old-fashioned Amblin-style, otherworldly adventure about a deteriorating family unit in the suburbs that reveals the cracks in the idyllic white-picket-fence American dream.

After a mysterious cosmic event rips Oak Street from suburbia and transports their neighborhood to an unknown place, the Platt family (headed by Anne Hathaway, continuing her very busy year, and Ewan McGregor) soon discovers that their very survival depends on sticking together as they navigate their now-unrecognizable surroundings.

On a formal level, the craft is often astonishing, decidedly showy yet still impressive, full of so many split-diopter shots that there's at one point a split-diopter shot reverse split-diopter shot. Mitchell, writer/director of the breakout horror hit It Follows, expertly mines the situation for maximum tension; the movie is essentially one dinosaur chase set piece after another. Sometimes it's a big one; other times it's the longest and biggest snake you've ever seen quietly slithering through a house, unbeknownst to its occupants. There's a lot of "dinosaurs lurking in the background that nobody notices," and it's effective damn near every time.

It's a satisfying blockbuster that just wants to entertain and deliver crowd-pleasing summer entertainment. There are, absolutely, bigger ideas at play here — a suburban street literally transported back in time carries a lot of thematic weight — but the movie isn't full of hokey messaging, despite arguably being "about" something. Is it a movie about the dangers of a society that's afraid to move forward and would rather go back to the way things once were? Maybe, but it's mostly just a vehicle for dinosaurs to violently kill a bunch of people in a highly populated, non-prehistoric setting. It's as if that one sequence from The Lost World were the whole movie, or like a Twilight Zone episode with a dino-sized budget. It's got a strange, uncanny quality to it that I associate with M. Night Shyamalan too.

The End of Oak Street may make some questionable narrative decisions in the final act, but none of that detracts from it being a terrifically good time at the movies. Mitchell's film ends up playing like a better 2026 Spielberg movie than the actual one . Ouch!

What other critics are saying : Reviews are leaning positive. Robbie Collin at the Telegraph writes that the film "isn't merely a running buffet of references; it's an honorable attempt to revive bygone blockbusting techniques for a contemporary crowd." But Kristy Puchko at Mashable wasn't into it, writing, "If you're looking for carefree summer fun, look elsewhere. The End of Oak Street is not fun. It's bleak, brutal and ultimately infuriating."

How to watch : The End of Oak Street is now available to rent or buy on Apple TV , Prime Video and other VOD platforms.

Why I liked it: Canadian filmmaker Matt Johnson ( Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie , BlackBerry) leaps into the mainstream with Tony, a melancholy yet always charming coming-of-age dramedy. It also happens to be a biopic about Anthony Bourdain, covering a very specific chapter of the late chef's early days, loosely adapted from his breakthrough book, Kitchen Confidential .

A 19-year-old Bourdain travels to Provincetown and stumbles into the chaotic world of a restaurant kitchen, setting off a summer that will shape the course of his life. The movie opens with a quote from the book: "I was — to be frank — a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, and badly in need of a good ass-kicking." In this movie, he gets that ass-kicking. But does it help?

Dominic Sessa, the breakout star of The Holdovers, is transcendent here, perfectly embodying Bourdain and the specific way he speaks, without ever feeling like he's doing a cheap imitation or impression. It's such a brooding portrayal and appropriately gloomy without ever crossing into discomfort, given that the audience is likely aware of how Bourdain's story ends.

Antonio Banderas nearly steals the show as the restaurant owner who takes young Bourdain in at his lowest point and helps him become the man we know he would become. Leo Woodall is another standout in the exact opposite role, the proverbial devil on his shoulder, a ladies' man with a drug addiction whose presence in the movie clearly means to show us another path Bourdain could've easily taken. Comedian Stavros Halkias, meanwhile, earns lots of laughs as a foul-mouthed line cook.

It's beautifully shot by Michael Bauman, the Oscar-nominated cinematographer of One Battle After Another , and the gorgeous '70s Cape Cod summer sights really pop, helping evoke an extremely cozy, low-stakes hangout vibe. The dreamy, delicate and sad score from frequent Johnson collaborator Jay McCarrol enhances that atmosphere perfectly.

The film manages to avoid lots of biopic clichés and pitfalls, though it also engages in a couple, including a fairly thankless role for Emilia Jones as Bourdain's love interest. (She is nevertheless very good.) It's a coming-of-age story that feels honest and true, deeply felt in its depiction of its lead as an unapologetic a**hole, but a well-meaning one who is young and just trying to find himself.

Tony is impressive on both a craft and story level, all the better for being content to be more of a hangout movie with an unbeatable vibe than a traditional life-to-death biopic. There's just a warmth to everything here, from the texture of the photography to its characters.

What other critics are saying: It's getting great reviews. Amy Nicholson at the Los Angeles Times writes, "The kitchen scenes are a combo platter of boot camp, frat house hazing ritual and kung fu movie. As Bourdain would later explain, he thrived in a setting where actions have instant consequences: a sore back, a sliced hand, a good meal." A.V. Club's Monica Castillo writes, "Beyond its dutiful biopic services, Tony reminds its audience of the sharp turns and unlikely encounters that can change the course of our lives and give us stories to share over the dinner table."

How to watch : Tony is now available to rent or buy on Apple TV , Prime Video and other VOD platforms.

Another option: The Rivals of Amziah King

Why I liked it: This genre-bending indie gem starring Matthew McConaughey (read our interview with him here ) is wholly unique, incredibly charming and has a few moments of genuine "movies don't get any better than this" transcendence. It's also incredibly hard to describe because of its singular nature, but I'll try my best. It plays like an adaptation of a great American novel that doesn't exist — and is easily the most I've ever been moved by a movie that features someone being unexpectedly and graphically scalped.

McConaughey plays the eponymous Amziah King, a beekeeper, musician and anchor of his community who reunites with former foster daughter Kateri (newcomer Angelina LookingGlass), after many years apart while fending off threats to his honey business.

The first hour of the movie contains pretty much all of the aforementioned transcendence, and while it struggles to follow up on that exciting, good-natured and infectious energy, it still manages to stick the landing. There are simple sequences here where Amziah and his buddies strike up a tune, and the power and importance of community shine through in a way that nearly moved me to tears. Amziah is the glue that holds this particular one together, and despite knowing nothing about him up top, you almost immediately get a sense of who he is as a person and local figurehead.

McConaughey is excellent — the best he's been in ages and maybe ever, channeling that relaxed, cool-guy persona that he so effortlessly does. LookingGlass is a breakout presence here, basically becoming the lead character as the movie stretches on. It's a hell of an introductory role.

The film plays a bit like a Western, then becomes a Southern-fried musical and a Coen Brothers-style crime flick before morphing into a moving drama about a father and a daughter, and, eventually, a revenge thriller. Somehow, it manages to feel lived-in and on course the entire time.

The Rivals of Amziah King is a joyful movie full of unexpected detours and digressions that ultimately feels like a celebration of connecting with those around you. There's not a cellphone in sight here, just people living in the moment. It's a message that feels increasingly important in our siloed, filter-bubbled times.

What other critics are saying: Most love it! Daily Beast's Nick Schager writes, "As subtly sharp as it is sweet, it's one of the year's most enlivening standouts." Mark Kennedy at the AP , however, dinged it for not feeling "authentic." I disagree!

How to watch : The Rivals of Amziah King is now available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Prime Video and other VOD platforms.

It Ends : I never connected with this surreal, minimalist, no-budget indie, an alleged thriller about a group of recent college graduates who get stuck on a road that simply won't end. The entire thing is meant to be taken as a metaphor for life itself — more specifically, about the existential dread people of that age might face nowadays amid the pandemic, AI and other developments that make the transition from childhood to adulthood fraught and the future uncertain. There may be enough meat on the bone for an episode of The Twilight Zone, but it bored me at feature length. Maybe if it engaged with the supernatural horrors on the periphery instead of going all in on its central metaphor, it would've been more fun. Your mileage may vary. Rent or buy

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma : Jane Schoenbrun's follow-up to the extremely personal I Saw the TV Glow is arguably even more personal, exploring an extremely specific feeling while saying so much about horror movies, sexuality, identity, shame, and the intersection of all these things that it doesn't matter if you don't personally connect to every single element. Unlike its predecessor, which is deeply moving but also fairly humorless, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is laugh-out-loud funny and joyful. It couldn't be further in tone from TV Glow despite exploring similar ideas. It's fun ! Read my full review here . Rent or buy.

Nimrods : Fans of the band Green Day may enjoy this Green Day-produced movie about Green Day that features Green Day, but it's not really for anybody else. Three friends journey from Kansas City to Los Angeles, mistakenly believing their band is opening for Green Day on New Year's Eve after a prank pulled by one of their brothers. The ingredients for a fun, raunchy road trip comedy are here, but it just isn't very funny or charming, and my interest in the band had long waned by the time I graduated high school. Again, their loyal fans will likely get a kick out of it. Rent or buy

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Why I liked it: I'd never heard of this movie or anybody in it, but that didn't matter in the slightest. I was quickly charmed by its two stars and the familiar but functional coming-of-age story told through a very culturally specific lens that you don't often see in teen and college movies like this.

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Priyanka Kedia star as childhood best friends, Maya and Anjali, who join their college's competitive Bollywood dance team only to discover that the road to winning the national championship is far more raucous and cutthroat than they ever imagined.

The plot itself is totally formulaic, but the characters are both so lived-in and real-feeling that it's easy to be charmed by them and care for their personal journeys. The specifics of the world here are unique and exciting; simply put, the impressive choreography, theatrics and spectacle of Bollywood dance are a lot of fun to watch, and the movie does a good job of presenting them.

Best of the Best plays as if the teen classic Bring It On or something like Step Up were about competitive Bollywood dancing instead of cheerleading and hip-hop dancing, respectively. If that sounds good to you, you will enjoy it, and it's got heart and laughs to boot. It's a real crowd-pleaser!

What other critics are saying : They agree with my take! William Bibbiani at TheWrap says, "The entire ensemble is fantastic, even if most of the actors are playing whimsical archetypes." IndieWire's Allison Foreman writes, "Even when it wraps things up a little too conveniently, Best of the Best leaves you wanting a movie more like a traditional three-hour Bollywood affair."

How to watch : Best of the Best is now streaming on Netflix .

Why I didn't like it: Horror movies are often predicated upon people making stupid decisions, and Goody Goody really pushes the limits of how much of that an audience can take.

It's a movie about a home birth gone horribly wrong, set in a remote cabin far from any hospitals during a blizzard — not an ideal combination for such an activity. The characters are the pregnant woman and her husband, his sister, a doula, and their midwife, who initially tries to keep the expectant mother calm and in the dark as the problems begin. Eventually, the husband disappears, and then the s*** really hits the fan.

There have been so many movies — especially as of late — about the horrors of pregnancy and childbirth and the general terrors of motherhood, including another recent Shudder movie called Nightborn , that it's now its own subgenre.

Despite bringing some potent ideas to the table, Goody Goody doesn't do much with them. Midwives and caretakers gaslighting someone into thinking everything is OK during a dangerous birth is a terrifying idea, and I wish the movie had stayed grounded in the more realistic human tragedy of it all, rather than the cosmic and/or supernatural places it goes. It's a badly paced bore in which you're waiting for characters to catch up with what the audience already knows.

Goody Goody does feature what has to be the nastiest and most upsetting birth sequence I've ever seen, which might be enough for the gorehounds, but the road there just isn't very compelling.

What other critics are saying : There aren't many reviews posted yet, but the field is split thus far. The Guardian's Phil Hoad writes, "Amid the mayhem, [director Raymond] Creamer still manages the odd visual flourish. … But if Goody Goody really had to take The Omen route, he needed to deliver the transition with far more delicacy." Cheryl Eddy at io9 was into it, writing, "The magic here comes more from Creamer's direction — lots of close-ups, careful framing and creative lighting — and his cast and crew."

How to watch : Goody Goody is now streaming on Shudder.

That's all for this week! We'll see you next Friday.

Looking for more recs? Find your next watch on the Yahoo 100 , our daily list of the most popular movies of the year.