Best new movies and TV series on Netflix Australia: October 2022

Each month, loads of new films and TV shows are added to Netflix Australia‘s library. Critic Craig Mathieson presents his picks for titles worth watching. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down. Also, check out Craig’s top 50 movies on Netflix list.

Top Picks: TV

Derry Girls: Season 3 (October 7)

Peace is coming to Derry, in the final season of this careening teen comedy set in 1990s Northern Ireland, but I’m not so sure if the girls (and boy) of Our Lady Immaculate College will get any rest. Richly textured and full of daft adolescent mishaps, Lisa McGee’s sitcom about the students of a Catholic high school during the Troubles has been a Netflix highlight with each season.

The show’s success means one of Ireland’s most famous actors guests in the first episode, but the chemistry of the cast and McGee’s knack with madcap memoir are all we need.

The Midnight Club (October 7)

Mike Flanagan is single-handedly raising the bar for horror works at Netflix. Since arriving at the streaming service the American filmmaker has conjured up a succession of unsettling, trauma-laced scenarios, often adapted from classic horror texts, that simmer over a single season.

The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass are now joined The Midnight Club, the story of a group of terminally ill young adults who share spooky tales for fun but make a pact that whoever passes first will send back word from the afterlife. It’s not hard to imagine what happens next, but with Flanagan in control it should be decidedly chilling.

From Scratch (October 21)

Zoe Saldana has been crucial to so many otherworldly blockbuster franchises—Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Trek, and Avatar no less!—but in this limited series she comes down to Earth and headlines the story of a Texan woman who finds love and new horizons in Italy, but must struggle to make it all work with her community and family back home.

Adapted from actor Tembi Locke’s 2019 memoir of the same name, with Locke and her author sister Attica as the creators, this fictionalised account stars Saldana as aspiring artist Amy and Eugenio Mastrandrea as Sicilian chef Lino. Less special effects, but a whole lot of tears.

Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities: Season 1 (October 25)

Guillermo del Toro is to horror filmmaking’s rich history as Martin Scorsese is to world cinema: an enthusiast, an archivist, and a celebratory voice. So it’s not a surprise but nonetheless welcome that the Mexican filmmaker has curated this anthology series as a collection of “eight unique horror stories”.

The roll call of talent shows del Toro’s commitment, with the first episode, The Murmuring, written and directed by Jennifer Kent (The Babadook) from a del Toro story, with Essie Davis and Andrew Lincoln starring. Other directors featured included Panos Cosmatos (Mandy) and Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight).

Top Picks: Movies + Specials

Mr Harrigan’s Phone (October 5)

Plainly Netflix sees October—which culminates in Halloween—as their prime month for horror titles. As well as the series above they have this Stephen King adaptation from writer/director John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, The Founder).

Originally a story in the 2020 collection If It Bleeds, the movie stars Jaeden Martell (It) as a young boy who befriends Donald Sutherland’s titular senior citizen. After the old man passes, his mobile phone becomes a tool of supernatural revenge—bad things start to happen to whoever’s name is spoken on the line.

The Stranger (October 19)

With The Stranger, Australian filmmaker Thomas M Wright does to the crime thriller what his debut feature, 2018’s Acute Misfortune, did to the biopic. Lean and lacerating, it strips away the extraneous storytelling, replaces exposition with uneasy imagery, and hones in on the psychological transactions that define troubled relationships.

Joel Edgerton (The Underground Railroad) plays an undercover police officer seeking to get close to a murder suspect played by Sean Harris (Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation), a process that is a mix of procedural deception and trauma-laden endurance. It’s a deeply gripping movie.

The Good Nurse (October 26)

Based on the shocking 2013 true crime book of the same name, this crime-drama stars Jessica Chastain as a barely coping single mother and ICU nurse who begins to suspect that her colleague and friend (Eddie Redmayne) may be involved in the mysterious death of several patients.

The behind-the-camera talent is equally impressive: screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns wrote 1917 for Sam Mendes, while Danish director Tobias Lindholm has a telling eye for the way individuals navigate crises that was honed in the series Borgen and the features A Hijacking and A War. Perhaps leave this one until after your next hospital visit.

All titles arriving on Netflix Australia in October

October 1

Forever Queens: Season 1
Friday the 13th
Annabelle: Creation
Darkness Falls
Exorcist: The Beginning
Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones
Paranormal Activity 3
Wolf Creek
The Fog

October 3

Chip and Potato: Season 4

October 4

Hasan Minhaj: The King’s Jester

October 5

The Fight for Justice: Paolo Guerrero
Bling Empire: Season 3
Nailed It!: Season 7
High Water
Togo
Jumping from High Places
Mr Harrigan’s Phone
The Trapped 13: How We Survived the Thai Cave

October 6

Aftershock: Everest and the Nepal Earthquake
The Joys and Sorrows of Young Yuguo

October 7

Derry Girls: Season 3
Glitch
The Midnight Club
The Mole
Man on Pause
Old People
Luckiest Girl Alive
Doll House
Kev Adams: The Real Me
Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes
The Redeem Team
Oddballs

October 10

Spirit Rangers

October 11

The Cage
Someone Borrowed
Iliza Shlesinger: Hot Forever
DEAW#13 Udom Taephanich Stand Up Comedy Show
Island of the Sea Wolves

October 12

Belascoarán, PI
Easy-Bake Battle
The Nutty Boy

October 13

Sue Perkins: Perfectly Legal
The Playlist
Dead End: Paranormal Park: Season 2
Exception

October 14

Everything Calls for Salvation
Holy Family
Mismatched: Season 2
The Curse of Bridge Hollow
Black Butterflies
Take 1

October 15

Under the Queen’s Umbrella

October 17

Waffles + Mochi’s Restaurant

October 18

Somebody Feed Phil: Season 6
Unsolved Mysteries: Volume 3
Gabriel Iglesias: Stadium Fluffy
LiSA Another Great Day

October 19

Love is Blind: Season 3
Notre-Dame
The Green Glove Gang
The Stranger
The School for Good and Evil

October 21

28 Days Haunted
Barbarians II
From Scratch: Limited Series
Descendant
ONI: Thunder God’s Tale

October 23

Franco Escamilla: Eavesdropping

October 24

The Chalk Line

October 25

Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities
Fortune Feimster: Good Fortune

October 26

Hellhole
The Good Nurse
Robbing Mussolini
Fugitive: The Curious Case of Carlos Ghosn

October 27

Dubai Bling
Cici
Earthstorm
Family Reunion: Part 5
Daniel Spellbound
Romantic Killer
Penguin Bloom

October 28

The Bastard Son and the Devil Himself
Big Mouth: Season 6
If Only
Drink Masters
Wendell & Wild
All Quiet on the Western Front
Wild is the Wind
My Encounter with Evil
I AM A STALKER