October 2026 brings a fresh wave of streaming highlights to Australia, from a star-studded adaptation of John Steinbeck's East of Eden to a comedy-horror about killer garden gnomes and a record-breaking horror film.
Netflix leads with East of Eden and Animals
Zoe Kazan, granddaughter of Elia Kazan who directed the 1955 film starring James Dean, has created and written Netflix's new seven-part series East of Eden. Florence Pugh stars as the famously complex Cathy Ames in the multigenerational story set in California's Salinas Valley, which reworks the biblical tale of Cain and Abel through the Trask family's tangled bonds.
Ben Affleck directs and co-writes Animals, out 8 October, playing Mark Kimball, a politician running for mayor of LA whose son is kidnapped. Gillian Anderson appears as a "mysterious fixer" with lines like, "Power creates leverage, and leverage dictates outcomes." Affleck has described the film as essentially about marriage: "What it means to attach yourself to someone, the bargains and exchanges."
Adam Elliot's claymation feature Memoir of a Snail, out 15 October, follows Grace (voiced by Charlotte Belsey and Sarah Snook), an orphaned girl separated from her twin brother who grows into a lonely, snail-obsessed woman. The film was the reviewer's favourite Australian film of 2024, with a tone of melancholic whimsy and adorably lo-fi animation.
Stan and SBS offer horror and cult classics
Stan's Gnomes, out 8 October, is a comedy-horror series set in a small town disrupted by an ancient evil force that results in a horde of evil garden gnomes attacking. Written by comedian Tegan Higginbotham and broadcaster Paul F Verhoeven, the tone has been pitched as "Gremlins meets Hot Fuzz." The Butterfly Effect, out 6 October, stars Ashton Kutcher as a man who uses his personal journals to traverse the temporal continuum, each attempt to correct a traumatic event producing another, often more terrible consequence.
SBS on Demand launches 70 Up on 3 October, the final instalment of the groundbreaking series that began in 1964. The Guardian's Lucy Mangan describes it as having "a more reflective and elegiac tone than in previous years," with subjects commenting on the series and film-maker Michael Apted's approach. Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1973 cult classic The Holy Mountain, out 15 October, features the director as a black-clad spiritual guru leading a pilgrimage, earning its reputation as "one of cinema's wildest rides." Dead End Drive-In, out 14 October, is Brian Trenchard-Smith's Ozploitation classic set in a dystopian drive-in cinema that has become a concentration camp and microcosm of society.
ABC, HBO Max, Prime Video and more
ABC iView's Dustfall, out 10 October, is a six-part crime drama billed as "tropic noir," starring Anna Torv as a detective returning to her home town to investigate a shocking sexual assault case, discovering a pattern of crimes and misogyny. Every episode was directed by Emma Freeman.
HBO Max presents Leviticus, out 30 October, the feature debut of director Adrian Chiarella, in which two gay teenagers in a small, conservative town confront homophobia and an evil supernatural force that takes the form of each other. Obsession, out 22 October, is Curry Barker's horror film produced for around US$1m and grossing more than half a billion dollars globally, following a timid protagonist whose wish for a girl to love him more than anyone else becomes a nightmare.
Prime Video's Carrie, out 7 October, is Mike Flanagan's miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's novel, with Summer H Howell as the telekinetic teenager. Flanagan has said there's "no reason whatsoever to try to follow in those footsteps" of Brian De Palma's film, preferring to "build something new."
Disney+ offers VisionQuest on 14 October, the narrative successor to WandaVision with Paul Bettany returning as Vision and James Spader as Ultron. Apple TV's Tenzing, out 16 October, is Jennifer Peedom's narrative feature debut about Tenzing Norgay, who alongside Edmund Hillary was one of the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Binge presents Serpico, the 1973 Sidney Lumet classic with Al Pacino as an undercover cop who refuses to take money from businesses, criminals and other vested interests.
