The best Disney Plus movies for adults

Alien: Romulus received a positive reaction from cinema-goers, primarily because it cuts most of the sequel detritus that has accrued over the years and gets back to the spirit of Ridley Scott’s 1979 original. This is that very film: a lean, moody, cynical horror movie that steadily builds a sense of dread and anxiety before cutting loose with the gruesome corridor-stalking action. Commercial spacetug Nostromo answers a mysterious signal and encounters an implacable alien threat, which sets about bumping the crew off one by one.

Before Alien: Romulus went back to the sci-fi horror series’s roots and rediscovered its mojo, Prey showed the way with its own Predator prequel. Just like the original Arnie vehicle, it concerns a group of hardened warriors coming up against an elusive alien hunter. However, it transplants the action to the Northern Great Plains of 1719, and finds fresh mileage with a less assured but no less capable or determined hero. Here Amber Midthunder’s young Comanche woman must outwit and ultimately vanquish her technologically advanced foe.

With Deadpool & Wolverine proving a big hit in cinemas right now, Disney Plus is offering you the chance to catch up with both previous entries. We’ve gone with the second and most recent, if only because it ramps everything up from the plucky original, with more poor taste quips, more surprising cameos, and more wink-at-the-camera references. Ryan Reynolds plays the titular ‘merc with a mouth’, a super-powered clown with the freakish ability to heal from even the most grievous injury inflicted on his scarred body.

Years before Deadpool & Wolverine came this very different adults-only superhero movie featuring Hugh Jackman’s gruff mutant. Logan specialises in brutal drama over X-rated gags, but is just as accomplished in its own way. Here our ageing hero is one of the last of his kind, scratching (or should that be clawing?) out a meagre existence whilst caring for Patrick Stewart’s unstable Professor Xavier. With his powers on the fritz and a dangerous mercenary on his trail, it’s hardly the best time to take on a young feral mutant with a familiar set of abilities.

William Friedkin’s seminal 1971 thriller may be best known for its stunning car chase, but it’s no Fast & Furious. It won five Oscars, for one thing, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. It’s a deeply gritty thriller set in the seedy underworld of New York City. Gene Hackman’s cynical detective “Popeye” Doyle is a deeply unlikable, morally dubious protagonist who treats due process with utter disdain as he tracks down an international heroin deal taking place within his grubby city.

Watching Fight Club back today, it feels very late ’90s with its overt edginess and its pre-millennial angst. But it also retains its ability to shock and thrill, as Edward Norton’s numbed up office drone teams up with Brad Pitts anarchic Tyler Durden to throw off the shackles of modern life. As per Chuck Palahniuk’s transgressive original novel, that involves starting up an underground combat competition to help establish their manhood. It might be obnoxious, snarky, and achingly postmodern, but Fight Club remains gleefully watchable all the same.

This deeply daft comedy follows a team of misfits entering a Las Vegas dodgeball competition in a last gasp bid to win the $50,000 that might save Vince Vaughn’s gym. All of which sounds like decidedly Disney-friendly, gently empowering fare until you factor in the outrageously near the knuckle script. It’s epitomised by Rip Torn’s obscenity-spewing coach Patches O’Houlihan, while Ben Stiller puts in one of his best ‘ridiculous jerk’ performances as the leader of a rival gym. It’s all very silly, very funny, and very rude.

With Danny Boyle all set to return to the world of his original British zombie thriller, 28 Days Later, it’s a great time to revisit the often overlooked middle entry from Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. In 28 Weeks Later, the shattered England of the original has been restored to some fragile form of order, leaving its traumatised citizens to deal with the emotional backwash. Infection remains a very real threat, however, and it doesn’t take much to set a savage domino effect in motion.

In The Revenant’s most infamous scene, a giant bear graphically mauls Leonardo Di Caprio’s fur trapper Hugh Glass. This particular Baloo clearly hasn’t been getting enough of the bare necessities of life. The rest of the film is a similarly pummelling assault on the senses, as our badly injured hero crawls his way back to civilisation, hot on the trail of the man who killed his son and left him for dead. The scenery is as beautiful as the set pieces are brutal in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s epic western.

Emma Stone won her second Best Actress Oscar for her bold depiction of Bella Baxter, a Victorian woman with the transplanted mind of a foetus. Yorgos Lanthimos’s strange, highly stylised film deals with female desire in a way that’s both original and decidedly not suitable for young eyes, though it never feels exploitative. Also worthy of praise is Mark Ruffalo’s against-type performance as Duncan Wedderburn, a debauched lawyer who bites off more than he can chew when he runs off with the insatiable Bella.

As the action movie that launched a thousand dadcore revenge flicks and one particularly famous monologue, Taken has an awful lot to answer for. It’s worth revisiting the film to remind yourself what an effectively lean and mean slice of violent B-movie carnage it is. Liam Neeson’s middle-aged-man with a very particular set of skills takes on the Albanian people traffickers that kidnapped his daughter – with famously grisly results. Neeson would repeat the formula many times to diminishing returns, but the original Taken remains an enjoyable slice of eurotrash.

The phrase ‘psychological horror from Darren Aronofsky’ should be enough to have you shuffling any minors out of the living room. Are they gone? Good. Then press play on Black Swan, and prepare to be dazzled, impressed, and left more than a little queasy. Natalie Portman plays a young dancer with the New York City Ballet, who forces herself to increasingly extreme heights of physical and mental anguish in order to play the dual role at the heart of a production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

This gruesome yet clever send up of the modern dating scene sees Daisy Edgar-Jones’s Noa and Sebastian Stan’s Steve hitting it off on a first date, only for events to take a turn for the horrific when they spend the night at Steve’s swanky home ahead of a weekend break. While the first part of the movie could very well pass for a romcom, the reset of the film is pure horror, ladling on the gore and the mutilation. It really is quite something to behold.

Melancholia forms part two of the so-called Depression Trilogy from controversial director Lars von Trier, and while it’s nowhere near as shocking as either Antichrist or Nymphomaniac, it remains a decidedly grown up film about adult concerns. Kirsten Dunst plays Justine, a young newlywed whose increasing depression appears to coincide with the discovery of a rogue planet – tellingly called Melancholia – which is on a collision course with Earth. The contrast between Justine’s reaction to impending doom and that of her well-adjusted sister makes for a fascinatingly unsettling film.

This Kingsman spin-off might swap to a pre-World Ward I setting, but don’t think this makes it any more genteel. There’s just as much outrageous hyper-violence, while the film’s depiction of Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin – played by Rhys Ifans – more than lives up to the historical figure’s infamous reputation. The manner in which the film revels in its bad taste, not to mention the way it plays fast and loose with history, means that this is one film to keep out of reach of children.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s second most famous creation after Ali G forms the basis of an outrageously entertaining mockumentary, in which our fictional Kazakhstani journalist encounters a series of unwitting Americans. Much hilarity – and no little cringing – ensues as our hero’s knowingly backwards and offensive proclamations run head on into the peculiarities and biases inherent to American culture. It’s less than 20 years old, but watching Borat from the (dis)comfort of 2024 will have you wondering how on Earth such a film came to be made.

Andrew Haigh’s dark fantasy drama sees a lonely screenwriter, played by Andrew Scott, starting a relationship with a seemingly carefree neighbour (Paul Mescal) in between visits to his old family home. Are his young parents real or a product of his imaginative writing process? Whatever the case, assorted home truths are aired, while accusations and family taboos are confronted. All the while, the most shattering truths may just be hidden out of sight. It’s an emotionally devastating, thoroughly grown up piece of work from all involved.

Disney has become the home of super hero movies, but Unbreakable is no family-friendly Marvel adventure. It imagines what a world of superhumanly gifted people might look like in a more grounded reality, with taciturn security guard (played to perfection by Bruce Willis) using his vaguely defined abilities to take down murderers and rapists. While it’s all tastefully handled, with no explicitly R-rated material, Unbreakable has the kind of dark tone and harsh sting in its tail that might just give younger fans of Spider-Man and co. second thoughts.

This effective slice of sci-fi horror has clearly been made in the wake of the success of A Quiet Place, with a plucky hero (played by the brilliant Kaitlyn Dever) all but wordlessly fending off an alien invasion in small town America. No One Will Save You goes even further than A Quiet Place, with only five words of dialogue in the entire film. There are ample nods to Spielberg’s sci-fi work, but don’t let that fool you – this one is likely to give the little ones nightmares.

Woody Harrelson’s former college basketball player and Wesley Snipes’s streetballer team up to hustle the great and the good of LA’s urban neighbourhoods. Their on-court chemistry would give them a clear edge, if only they’d stop bickering and stabbing each other in the back. White Men Can’t Jump is a unique mash up of profanity-laced odd couple comedy and classic sports movie tropes, and it’s a formula that many have struggled to replicate ever since – not least in the form of an ill-judged 2023 Netflix remake.