Netflix‘s subscribers have been treated to a solid couple of months of movies, with some top-shelf titles gracing its Top 10 and beyond, including Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, all the James Bond movies (which are leaving soon), and some fun creature horrors like Anaconda and the newly-released Thrash.

But there’s obviously a ton more to sink into on Netflix in the U.S. in April. This week, why not check out a brilliantly cute Wes Anderson adventure, the second part of what is sure to be a zombie trilogy for the ages, and a touching documentary of one of the ’90s spiciest bands.

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Moonrise Kingdom

Young, quirky-cool love, Wes Anderson style

Before the film’s release in 2012, writer-director Wes Anderson told the New York Times that with creating Moonrise Kingdom, it was “the only time I’ve been consciously trying to capture a sensation, which is that emotion of when you’re a 12-year-old and you fall in love … I remember that being such a powerful feeling, it was almost like going into a fantasy world.”

It’s the love story within its fantasy world that makes Moonrise Kingdom so endearing. It’s 1965, and the story follows Sam (Jared Gilman) and Suzy (Kara Hayward), two lonely young pen-pals, alienated from their families, who fall in love and decide to run away together, albeit on the remote 12-mile-long New England island where they live. Sam’s a seasoned Khaki Scout, and the couple navigates their way to their perfect retreat. But with a hurricane on its way, the entire town mobilizes to find them—including Sam’s bickering lawyer parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand), his entire Scout troop and Scout Leader (Edward Norton), and sad-sack local cop (Bruce Willis).

Moonrise Kingdom is full of the brilliant whimsy and quirkiness that Anderson is known for and feels very much like the same universe as The Darjeeling Limited, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Asteroid City. But, if you want to see this masterpiece on Netflix, do it soon—it leaves the streaming service on April 30.

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28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

Part two of Alex Garland’s zombie-horror sequel trilogy

In 2002, British filmmaker Danny Boyle took Alex Garland’s freaky zombie screenplay 28 Days Later and turned it into a movie that redefined the zombie horror genre with its infected, berserking undead. It also launched a franchise. Now, its fourth installment, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, is streaming on Netflix, and it might be the best one yet.

With director Nia DaCosta (Candyman, The Marvels) at the helm, and Alex Garland penning the entire “28 Years Later” trilogy (The Bone Temple is number two), The Bone Temple picks up where 28 Years Later left off—after teenager Spike (Alfie Williams) is captured by The Jimmys, a vicious tracksuit-wearing, blond-haired cult/gang led by the insane Sir Jimmy Crystal ) Jack O’Connell).

Meanwhile, hidden away in his temple of bones, Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes, Harry Potter’s Voldemort) may be onto a discovery about the Rage Virus as he tries to communicate and even tame a hulking infected “Alpha” zombie.

What I’ve always loved about this franchise of zombie movies is that its walking dead aren’t slow and stumbling, um, stereotypical zombies—they’re fast, stealthy, and utterly horrifying, making for an excellently thrilling watch. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple has a 92% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

Release Date

January 16, 2026

Runtime

109 Minutes

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  Jack O’Connell

  Jimmy Crystal

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  Ralph Fiennes

  Dr. Ian Kelson

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  Aaron Taylor-Johnson

  Jamie

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The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel

The beautiful and tragic origin story of the iconic ’90s band

As a Gen-Xer and a kid of the ’90s, I must admit that I was never the biggest fan of the music of the Red Hot Chili Peppers—I preferred the fuzzier guitars and guttural vocals of bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden. But I do love a great origin story, and after watching the Netflix documentary The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel, I was left with a better understanding of the group and a renewed interest in their music.

Our Brother, Hillel tells the story of the famed Los Angeles band before they took over the scene in 1991 with their album, Blood Sugar Sex Magik. More than a decade before that, three shy, loner weirdos at L.A.’s Fairfax High School became inseparable best friends, brothers, and eventually bandmates, planting the seeds for one of the biggest bands on the planet. The 95-minute documentary is an emotional telling of how Anthony Kiedis, Michael Peter Balzar (Flea), and Hillel Slovak, while on their individual creative journeys to find themselves while growing up in the vibrant L.A. music and art scene, haphazardly came together as RHCP, changing everything.

The band’s creative force, however, was the charismatic Slovak, a gifted guitarist and songwriter. And as the group’s early popularity and success was on the rise, the relentless touring and partying lifestyle took its toll, eventually leading to Slovak’s death from a heroin overdose in 1988, before the band would hit the big time.

Using rare archival footage, energetic early performance clips, and emotional interviews with Kiedis, Flea, and those closest to Hillel, the documentary puts a spotlight on what was and might have been in the journey of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Every week, we dig into all the new shows and movies coming and going from Netflix in the U.S.—from the best documentaries to Oscar-winning movies on the service to some great weekend shows to binge.

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