Netflix’s January 2026 lineup arrives with the usual mix of comfort food, prestige bait, and a few genuine wild cards the kind that remind you why scrolling sometimes turns into staying up too late. The headliner everyone will be talking about is Bridgerton, returning for its fourth season, but that’s only part of the story. January’s slate quietly reveals a service still juggling romance, danger, nostalgia, and risk, occasionally all in the same breath.
The Rip
At its core, The Rip is a familiar crime story sharpened by moral corrosion rather than plot novelty. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck play Miami narcotics cops who believe they understand the rules of the world they operate in until they stumble upon $20 million hidden inside what should have been a routine drug stash. From that moment on, the film isn’t really about the money; it’s about what happens when certainty evaporates.
You can almost feel the shift when the cash is revealed. The room changes temperature. Loyalty, procedure, even friendship start to feel negotiable. As outside forces close in armed, impatient, and violently uninterested in nuance the film leans into explosive action: gunfire tearing through cramped spaces, car chases streaking through humid streets, flames licking the edges of every bad choice. Yet what makes The Rip compelling isn’t just its kinetic violence. It’s watching two actors who’ve grown older, heavier with experience, inhabit characters who realize too late that knowing the law doesn’t mean you’re protected by it. The movie streams January 16, and it looks poised to be less about spectacle than about consequence.
‘Bridgerton’ season 4 part 1
Bridgerton is back season four lands at the end of the month and it’s hard not to feel the gravitational pull of a series that has become one of Netflix’s defining cultural exports. This time, the narrative spotlight shifts to Benedict Bridgerton, played by Luke Thompson, the second son of the famously fertile Bridgerton household. He’s always been the family’s dreamy observer, a man hovering just outside the rigid expectations of Regency society, and that makes him a fitting lead for a season about disguise, desire, and social performance. Benedict’s romantic fixation is a masked figure known as the Lady in Silver, a woman who glides through ballrooms like a whispered secret. Her real identity Sophie Baek, portrayed by Yerin Ha is hidden from him, though not from us, and the dramatic irony hums beneath every exchange.
Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials
For those who savor mystery, Seven Dials delivers a crisp, cerebral thrill. Mia McKenna-Bruce stars as Lady Eileen “Bundle” Brent, an aspiring detective thrust into the chaos of a country house death in 1925 England. But it’s the ensemble that gives this story texture: Helena Bonham Carter exudes caution and subtle menace as Lady Caterham, while Martin Freeman’s grounded presence offers a counterpoint to the intrigue. From Chris Chibnall, the mind behind Broadchurch, comes a narrative that balances suspense with character depth, making each clue and whispered warning feel charged with possibility. Stream from Jan. 15.
His and Hers
Meanwhile, His and Hers treads a more intimate line between personal and professional stakes. Tessa Thompson’s Anna is a recluse, having retreated from career, friends, and even her husband. But when a murder shakes her hometown of Dahlonega, she’s pulled back into the world she left behind. Jon Bernthal plays her estranged husband and detective, complicating every step with a mixture of suspicion and history. The tension is not just about the crime—it’s about the ways love, estrangement, and unresolved pasts can complicate even the most professional of investigations. Stream from Jan. 8.
People We Meet on Vacation
This romantic comedy wears its intentions openly, and that’s part of its charm. Adapted from Emily Henry’s beloved novel, People We Meet on Vacation follows Poppy and Alex, longtime best friends whose relationship is structured around an annual ritual: one shared vacation every summer, no matter how separate their lives become the rest of the year.
Poppy is restless, curious, always searching for something brighter. Alex is steadier, quieter, a man who believes in routines even when they hurt. The film’s tension doesn’t come from will-they-or-won’t-they suspense you already know the answer but from the emotional cost of naming what’s been carefully avoided. When Poppy realizes she’s fallen in love with her best friend, the question becomes painfully simple: is honesty worth risking the one relationship that has always felt safe?
The movie understands that love stories are often about timing more than passion. It lets silences stretch, lets small gestures carry weight, and leans into the melancholy that comes from realizing you might already be living inside the thing you’re afraid to ask for. Streaming January 9, it’s comfort cinema with a quietly aching heart.
Free Solo
Even years after its release, Free Solo still feels almost impossible to watch calmly. The documentary follows Alex Honnold, a climber whose ambition to scale Yosemite’s El Capitan without ropes feels less like a goal than a confrontation with mortality itself.
What makes the film unsettling isn’t just the sheer physical danger of a 3,000-foot climb without protection; it’s Honnold’s psychological stillness. The documentary spends as much time interrogating his inner world as it does capturing vertigo-inducing images of granite faces and open air. You watch friends and loved ones wrestle with fear, knowing that concern alone can’t dissuade him.
There’s no manufactured drama here. The suspense comes from watching preparation collide with inevitability, from knowing that one slip would mean death—and that the climber has accepted that risk fully. Arriving on Netflix January 1, Free Solo remains a haunting meditation on obsession, discipline, and what it means to pursue something purely, even when it terrifies everyone else.
Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart
This documentary tells a story many viewers remember, but it does so with a renewed intimacy that makes it harder to keep emotional distance. Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart revisits the 2002 abduction of the 14-year-old from her Salt Lake City home, focusing not just on the investigation but on the human cost of uncertainty and survival.
Through interviews with Smart herself and those closest to the case, the film reconstructs the nine months she was missing, examining how hope and fear coexisted in unbearable tension. What stands out is Smart’s voice measured, resilient, and unflinchingly honest. The documentary avoids sensationalism, instead emphasizing endurance: the slow, painful process of reclaiming agency after trauma.
Premiering January 21, the film is less about crime mechanics than about memory, recovery, and the quiet strength required to speak your own story after the world has tried to define it for you.
Cosmic Princess Kaguya!
This animated feature feels like a leap rather than a debut. Directed by Shingo Yamashita, Cosmic Princess Kaguya! reimagines the ancient Japanese folk tale The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter through a distinctly modern lens. Instead of emerging from bamboo, Kaguya appears inside a telephone pole. Instead of becoming a secluded princess, she grows into a musician and internet celebrity.
The film blends folklore with digital-age identity, asking what it means to belong in a world shaped by algorithms, attention, and spectacle. Yamashita’s visual style bold, kinetic, and emotionally expressive turns the screen into something fluid and alive, pairing original music with dynamic camera movement that feels closer to live performance than traditional animation.
There’s a quiet sadness beneath the film’s energy, a sense that fame and connection are not the same thing, and that being “sent from the Moon” can be a metaphor for feeling fundamentally out of place. Arriving January 22, Cosmic Princess Kaguya! promises not just visual innovation, but emotional resonance that sneaks up on you.
Free Bert (Netflix series)
At first glance, Free Bert feels like a sitcom fueled by chaos, but beneath the laughter is a surprisingly keen observation of family dynamics. Bert, gloriously messy and unapologetically himself, drags his equally unfiltered family into the unfamiliar terrain of a prestigious new school. It’s a clash of worlds: snobby parents, polished expectations, and one family determined to be themselves no matter the fallout. You can feel the humor in the awkward glances, the small victories, and the spectacular social misfires that make this show both absurd and oddly relatable. Stream January 1
Undercover Miss Hong (KR) (Netflix series)
Undercover Miss Hong thrives on tension, wit, and cultural specificity. Hong Geum-bo, an elite securities inspector, is thrust into a delicate charade, forced to pose as a 20-year-old junior employee at a suspicious investment firm. The stakes are never purely professional: as she navigates office politics, hidden agendas, and the absurdities of pretending to be someone she is not, the series explores identity, gender, and performance. You can feel the strain in every perfectly timed hesitation, the exhilaration in every small triumph. Stream January 1
Taken together, these films trace a wide emotional spectrum from explosive moral collapse to quiet romantic longing, from death-defying obsession to survival and reinvention. They’re different kinds of stories, but each one, in its own way, asks the same question: what happens when life pushes you past the point where comfort is possible?
I am a journalist with 10+ years of experience, specializing in family-friendly film reviews.