The best short-ass movies on Hulu for when you need a short and epic watch

Perhaps one day streaming platforms will quit studying our behaviors with their stalker-ish algorithms and give us what we actually need: a list of every damn short movie that’s streaming. Searching for a movie based on genre? An actor? A mood? I’m sorry, but that’s a luxury few can afford. Runtime is the first deciding factor, my friends.

Until then, at least I’m not out of a job to provide that list for you. If you’re on limited time, or you simply can’t find the energy to commit to a long-ass movie, you’ve come to the right place. Hulu has a great mix of movies that fit under the 100-minute mark. In that amount of time you can get a good laugh from some comedies, get scared out of your mind from a range of excellent horror movies, or cry over some touching documentaries.

1. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

In Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, Emma Thompson plays a retired school teacher and widow who’s never had an orgasm in her life. Actually, she’s never slept with anyone but her late husband, and the two didn’t explore much beyond basic missionary sex. On a whim she decides to hire a sex worker to help her explore the sex life she never got to have. Over the course of three hotel meetings, Thompson’s Nancy and the much younger, incredibly handsome Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack) split their time making their way through Nancy’s sex wish list (yes, she hilariously makes a list), and also talking. They have intimate conversations about Nancy’s dissatisfaction with her family and how she feels about her aging body, while Leo opens up about his family trauma. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande impressively manages to be very funny while juggling more emotional moments with its thoughtful examination of sex work.

How to watch: Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is streaming on Hulu.

2. Pig

Nicolas Cage Loses His Pet Pig sounds like the perfect offbeat set up for a classic addition to the Batshit Nic Cage Universe. But instead of the meltdown king going typically off the wall, Cage delivers one of his most gentle, subtle, and heartfelt performances as a reclusive mushroom hunter in the Oregon wilderness. After his truffle pig is kidnapped by some big business city folks, Cage’s Rob heads into the bustling Portland restaurant scene to find her, revealing his true identity and past wounds along the way. 

Michael Sarnoski’s Pig continually upends expectations, not only of the big and loud emotional eruptions we’ve come to anticipate from Cage, but also of the revenge genre. This could easily be a flashy vengeance thriller oozing with blood and menace, but instead Pig finds the value in quiet emotional exchanges and opts for human empathy over violence. It’s a slow film about love and grief, and one that honors the power of food and memory. If you’re the type of person who cries over episodes of Chef’s Table, this movie’s for you.

How to watch: Pig is now streaming on Hulu.

3. Fire of Love

Who would’ve thought that a movie about volcanoes could make you weep? That’s Fire of Love, a documentary about two volcanologists and their unstoppable love, both for each other and for exploring the mysteries of those giant, terrifying fissures in the earth. The Oscar-nominated National Geographic film tells the emotional story of Katia and Maurice Krafft, two of the most renowned and most scientifically important volcanologists who are to thank for much of what we know about volcanoes today. 

Katia and Maurice were a husband-and-wife couple who loved nothing more than descending into the depths of the most dangerous active volcanoes across the world with cameras in hand, all in hopes of learning more to help save lives before the next eruption. Much of Fire of Love is made up of the real footage the two captured themselves. Watching such close-up shots of hot flowing magma and gusts of ash is absolutely jaw-dropping. Fire of Love is ultimately a love story, one between a man, a woman, and those natural, fatal wonders of the earth.

How to watch: Fire of Love is streaming on Hulu.

4. Ready or Not

Shortly after Grace (Samara Weaving) marries Alex (Mark O’Brien), she’s invited to her new husband’s family mansion to play a board game. It’s their way of welcoming her into the family, they say. The Le Domas family is disgustingly rich from their game company, so it seems pretty normal when they all play a game of hide-and-seek. Harmless, right? That is, until Grace witnesses her sister-in-law shoot the maid in the face with a shotgun, thinking she was aiming at Grace. As it turns out, this little game night was just an excuse for the family to kill Grace, and now she has to play hide-and-seek to literally save her life as each relative hunts her down with weapons in hand.

Ready or Not is a fun horror comedy with just the right mix of grisly violence — there’s guns, crossbows, and even an axe — dark humor, and nail-biting suspense. Even better, our main villains are a bunch of obnoxious, entitled rich people. Who doesn’t love to root against them?

How to watch: Ready or Not is streaming on Hulu.

5. Burn After Reading

We won’t argue about the best Coen brothers comedies (or an even messier debate, the best Coen brothers films), but hopefully the sanest of us can agree that Burn After Reading ranks high up there. What’s not to love about a series of zany misadventures about a group of idiots and pricks who all think they’re enmeshed in a high-stakes crime thriller? If only someone could let them in on the joke.

When two gym trainers (a beautifully stupid Brad Pitt and a perfect Frances McDormand) discover a burned CD from an ex-CIA analyst (John Malkovich), they think they’ve landed on a gold mine of secret government info (they haven’t). Chaos and absurdity ensures, from sex to murder to Russian spies and more sex. It’s as dark as black comedy comes, and it’s a damn delight.

How to watch: Burn After Reading is now streaming on Hulu.

6. Changing the Game

If you’ve seen the wave of anti-trans laws in the news (and these heinous bans go far beyond the sports arena), you know trans and nonbinary youth are under attack more than ever in this country. Changing the Game is a GLAAD award-winning doc that beautifully personalizes the situation young trans athletes are facing. Michael Barnett’s film spotlights three high schoolers — wrestler Mack, track star Andraya, and skier Sarah — their love of their game, their activism to be able to play it on their proper teams, and the relentless harassment and discrimination they encounter. This doc isn’t just important for broader audiences to better understand the attacks on trans youth right now, but it’s an invitation into the personal lives of three young people who are fearlessly trying to live and are fighting to build a new path for the many kids that follow.

How to watch: Changing the Game is now streaming on Hulu.

7. Night of the Living Dead

It’s hard to overstate the importance of a film like Night of the Living Dead. Not only is it one hell of a great horror movie, but it also birthed the modern zombie subgenre, changed the game for independent filmmaking, and gave us the first horror movie with a Black lead. 

In George A. Romero’s 1968 classic, a group of people are forced to hide out in an old farmhouse when reanimated corpses suddenly begin crawling up from the earth. Duane Jones plays our hero Ben, the only Black man in the group of white folks fighting off the ghouls. Jones’ casting and character were incredibly controversial for the late ’60s, and have even made an impact on the film world today, notably influencing Jordan Peele for Get Out. Though made on a small budget with limited practical special effects (like chocolate syrup for blood), Night of the Living Dead is just as unsettling and haunting to watch today.

How to watch: Night of the Living Dead is streaming on Hulu.

8. Crush

The most refreshing thing about Hulu’s latest queer rom-com is that all the characters are super queer. This isn’t a coming-out story about the one queer girl at her high school, or the shy lesbian who’s secretly crushing on the cool unattainable straight girl — relatable, yes, but we’ve done it. In Crush, Rowan Blanchard’s very-out Paige strolls through her high school hallways as her best friends point out at least five potential date options. A fictional world full of multiple out and proud queer teens? What a concept!

Crush follows a playful (if predictable) love triangle in which Paige desperately tries to lock down her longtime crush Gabriella, the popular girl (guess what, she’s queer!), while drumming up a sweet connection with Gabi’s twin sister, an introverted bi skater girl type. The flirting is a little elementary at times, but the short-and-sweet Crush excels at showing young queer people being themselves and getting a sappy love story to call their own.

How to watch: Crush is now streaming on Hulu.

9. Minding the Gap

On the surface, Minding the Gap is a movie about a group of skaters. But what the Oscar–nominated and Sundance–winning doc really does is tell an emotional story about three young traumatized men who find release, and a love for one another, through skateboarding. 

For 12 years, Bing Liu recorded himself and his best friends Keire and Zack as they skated across their town of Rockford, Illinois. At one point he decided to turn that camcorder footage into a documentary to tell each of their stories. Through casual interviews with his friends, each of them open up about their hardships and share stories of abuse from parents, experiences with racism, and struggling with alcoholism. It’s an incredibly emotional journey, especially to get to witness three young men show such vulnerability in between grinding rails and goofing off around town.

How to watch: Minding the Gap is streaming on Hulu.

10. The Strangers

Few things are as terrifying as going on a romantic getaway to a cabin deep in the woods, suddenly hearing a loud knock at the door, and answering it to find a strange woman standing there. That’s just the beginning of the nightmare for Kristen (Liv Tyler) and James (Scott Speedman) in The Strangers. 

At first there’s just more knocks at the door from a woman and then a man, both asking for someone who doesn’t live there. Then Kristen notices a person wearing a creepy mask hovering in the driveway watching her. The Strangers is pretty much every terrible home invasion fear you’ve ever had realized, and the entire 85 minutes of it will have you anxious and swearing you’ll never stay in a remote cabin again.

How to watch: The Strangers is streaming on Hulu.

11. The Stroll

In The Stroll, directors Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker tell the stories of Black and Latina trans sex workers who worked New York City’s Meatpacking District from the 1970s up through the early 2000s. The area, known as The Stroll, was where many trans folks worked to survive, where they experienced constant violence and harassment from the NYPD, and where they forged lifelong bonds of sisterhood. The documentary mixes interviews, playful animated sequences, and some rarely seen archival footage of queer and trans folks in Manhattan in the ’70s and ’80s. A film like The Stroll is special not only for how it frames sex work and trans lives through the lens of people with those lived experiences, but also for how it documents and preserves a slice of history that would otherwise be misrepresented or left untold.

How to watch: The Stroll is streaming on Hulu.

12. Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion

Before social media, high school reunions were the one way to show off to all your old flames, bullies, and unrequited crushes just how cool, confident, and sexy you’ve become since your teenage years. That’s what best friends Romy (Mira Sorvino) and Michelle (Lisa Kudrow) do in what’s arguably one of the top comedies of the ’90s. The only thing is, it’s all a lie.

Romy and Michelle haven’t become the successful business women they once dreamed to be. When their 10-year reunion is approaching, they come up with a fake story to impress their old classmates: claiming that they invented Post-its (again, much more realistic before the days of Instagram and LinkedIn). Romy and Michelle remains such a beloved cult classic for how hilarious Sorvino and Kudrow are together, and for capturing just how traumatic high school can be.

How to watch: Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion is streaming on Hulu.

UPDATE: Dec. 13, 2024, 2:24 p.m. EST This list was first published on June 3, 2022. It has since been updated to reflect current streaming offerings.

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