Here’s a list of must-watch movies in May on Showmax and M-NET.
THE BIKERIDERS
After a chance encounter, headstrong Kathy is drawn to Benny, a member of Midwestern motorcycle club the Vandals. As the club transforms into a dangerous underworld of violence, Benny must choose between Kathy and his loyalty to what has become a gang.
Oscar nominees Austin Butler and Tom Hardy play Benny and Johnny, with Emmy winner Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) as Kathy. Also look out for Oscar nominee Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals, Take Shelter), and BAFTA nominees Mike Faist (Challengers, West Side Story) and Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead).
Inspired by Danny Lyon’s 1967 photo book of the same name, The Bikeriders is the passion project of Cannes winner Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter), who wrote and directed. The crime drama has an 80% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes after ending at #2 on Indiewire’s Critics’ Poll of the Best Films Opening in 2024.
GLADIATOR II
Years after witnessing the death of the revered hero Maximus at the hands of his uncle, Lucius is forced to enter the Colosseum after his home is conquered by the tyrannical emperors who now lead Rome with an iron fist. With rage in his heart and the future of the Empire at stake, Lucius must look to his past to find strength and honour to return the glory of Rome to its people.
The #12 biggest box office hit of 2024, Gladiator II sees director Ridley Scott continue his epic saga of power, intrigue, and vengeance set in Ancient Rome. The sequel’s already been nominated at this year’s Oscars, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, and Critics Choice Awards.
As Lucius, Paul Mescal (Normal People) was nominated for Best Lead Actor at this year’s Irish Film and Television Awards, while Oscar winner Denzel Washington was up for Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globes as Macrinus. Also look out for Emmy nominees Pedro Pascal and Connie Nielsen.
Showmax is also streaming the original Gladiator, which won five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Russell Crowe), and is still #33 on IMDb‘s list of the top-rated films of all time.
NEVER LET GO
Oscar winner Halle Berry stars in the psychological thriller Never Let Go, from award-winning director Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes, Crawl).
As an evil takes over the world beyond their front doorstep, the only protection for a mother and her twin sons is their house and their family’s protective bond. Needing to stay connected at all times – even tethering themselves with ropes – they cling to one another, urging each other to never let go. But when one of the boys questions if the evil is real, the ties that bind them together are severed, triggering a terrifying fight for survival.
Child actors Anthony B Jenkins and Percy Daggs IV (Paradise) co-star, with Daggs IV nominated for a 2025 Image Award for Outstanding Performance by a Youth in a Motion Picture.
Bloody Disgusting calls Never Let Go “a vicious little bedtime story with sharp teeth,” while Variety says its themes of “grief, sanity, rebellion and redemption are intrinsically intertwined to harrowing, claustrophobic effect, heightening the hallucinatory horrors and dread-soaked atmospheric pull.”
A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE
Rotten Tomatoes’ second best-reviewed horror movie of 2025, A Quiet Place: Day One stars Kenyan Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o (Us, Black Panther) as Sam, a terminally ill cancer patient who finds herself trapped in New York City during the early stages of an invasion by alien creatures with ultra-sensitive hearing.
The prequel is the third instalment in the A Quiet Place film series, and has already racked up a Best Horror Film nomination at the 2025 Saturn Awards, voted by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, where Nyong’o was also up for Best Actress.
A Quiet Place: Day One has an 86% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The Guardian’s 4/5-star review says Day One is “a bleak, bruising but also curiously life-affirming account of the start of the end of the world.”
Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things’ Eddie Munson) co-stars alongside multi-award winner Alex Wolff (Hereditary). Also look out for Benin’s Oscar nominee Djimon Hounsou, Zimbabwean child actor Takunda Khumalo, and award-winning Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire.
LONGLEGS
Longlegs follows FBI agent Lee Harker, whose pursuit of a serial killer uncovers a series of occult clues she must solve to end his terrifying killing spree.
Scream queen Maika Monroe (It Follows) stars as Lee, with Oscar winner Nicolas Cage as the villain.
The highest-grossing independent movie of 2024, Longlegs has an 86% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, where it was named the #5 Best Horror Movie of 2024.
At the 2025 Saturn Awards from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, writer-director Osgood Perkins won Best Screenwriting, with Longlegs also nominated for Best Horror Film and Best Supporting Actor (Cage).
AV Club says, “Longlegs will have you squirming – a triumph of tension and tone and pure nightmare fuel.”
BRIDGET JONES: MAD ABOUT THE BOY
Twenty-three years after her Oscar nomination for Bridget Jones’s Diary, Renée Zellweger is back in the fourth instalment of the beloved romcom series based on Helen Fielding’s bestselling books.
Now in her 50s and single again after the untimely death of her husband, Bridget finds herself grappling with solo parenting and the challenges of re-entering the dating world.
Hugh Grant returns as Daniel Cleaver, with Leo Woodall (Jack in The White Lotus S2) as Bridget’s much younger love interest and Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor as her son’s teacher.
Released just before Valentine’s Day, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy had the best box office opening ever for a romantic comedy in the UK and Ireland, according to Universal. It’s currently the eighth biggest box office hit of 2025 globally.
The romcom has an 86% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with Independent (UK) calling it “vulnerable, honest and very funny” in their four-star review.
You can also binge the three previous Bridget Jones movies on Showmax.
DIE TRAGIESE SAAK VAN PAMINA VERMAAK
Based on Annie Klopper’s novel of the same name, Die Tragiese Saak van Pamina Vermaak centres on a young journalist who finds herself jobless, potentially homeless, near-penniless and completely plan-less.
Fleeing to her mother’s house in the West Coast town where she grew up, Pamina crosses paths with one-hit-wonder rocker Wolf de Jager (Christiaan Schoombie from Troukoors), who’s battling a creative slump after his engagement fell apart.
The feature film directorial debut of TV and radio presenter Kabous Meiring, Die Tragiese Saak van Pamina Vermaak premiered at Silwerskerm in 2023, where it won Best Actress for Carla Smith, Best Script for Bibi Slippers and Elanie Rupping, Best Cinematography (Johannes Pieter Nel, who directed Koek) and Best Editing (Eva du Preez, who directed Wyfie).
Calling Pamina Vermaak a “romcom with a leather jacket,” local culture journal Klyntji praises the film’s direction and editing as “superbly done,” and says, “Carla Smith makes Pamina a convincing, scatterbrained character you can’t help but relate to and fall in love with.”
APARTMENT 7A
A prequel to the Oscar-winning 1968 horror classic Rosemary’s Baby, Apartment 7A stars three-time Emmy winner Julia Garner (Ozark) as an ambitious young dancer. After her dreams of fame and fortune in New York City are cut short by a devastating injury, a wealthy older couple welcome her into their home in a luxury apartment building – but something evil is living not only in Apartment 7A, but in the Bramford itself.
Oscar winner Dianne Wiest (Bullets Over Broadway) and Kevin McNally (Gibbs in the Pirates of the Caribbean films) co-star as Minnie and Roman Castevet. Also look out for Teen Choice nominee Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe, Cloud Atlas), BAFTA Scotland winner Marli Siu (Everything I Know About Love), Ghanaian Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (Wonka), and SAFTA-nominated South African actor Patrick Lyster.
From the producers of A Quiet Place, Apartment 7A was nominated for a 2025 Saturn Award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films for Best TV Presentation.
WICKED LITTLE LETTERS
Based on a true story, Wicked Little Letters co-stars Oscar winner Olivia Colman and Oscar nominee Jessie Buckley as two neighbours in a 1920s English seaside town: conservative Edith and rowdy Irish migrant Rose.
When Edith and fellow residents begin to receive wicked letters full of unintentionally hilarious profanities, foul-mouthed Rose is charged with the crime, after a national uproar.
The stacked cast also includes 2024 BAFTA winner Timothy Spall (The Sixth Commandment) and nominee Anjana Vasan (Black Mirror), 2025 Critics Choice nominee Alisha Weir (Abigail), BAFTA winners Malachi Kirby, Gemma Jones, and Joanna Scanlan, and Emmy winner Eileen Atkins.
Wicked Little Letters has an 80% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with Deadline hailing it as “the British comedy of the year.”
GUNNER
Liam Hemsworth (Westworld) stars in Gunner as war veteran Colonel Lee Gunner, who takes his two sons on a camping trip with their uncle Jon to reconnect with them after being at the battle front for so long. The trip goes awry when they cross paths with a gang of violent bikers in the middle of a massive drug operation.
Oscar winner Morgan Freeman plays drug kingpin Kendric Ryker, with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s son Joseph Baena as Deputy Wally Harper.
Gunner has won nine awards on the independent movie festival circuit, including seven for action director and producer Dimitri Logothetis.
TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN
With hits like The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns, John Green is a master at transforming raw teenage emotions into cinematic gold.
Based on his bestselling novel of the same name, Turtles All the Way Down stars Isabela Merced – one of IMDb’s Top Stars to Watch in 2025 for The Last of Us S2 – as Aza Holmes, a teenager navigating complex emotions, who reconnects with her childhood crush (Felix Mallard from Ginny & Georgia and Locke & Key).
Emmy nominee J Smith-Cameron (Succession), Judy Reyes (Scrubs, Devious Maids), and Poorna Jagannathan (Never Have I Ever) co-star.
Turtles All the Way Down has an 86% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert calls it a “charming, delightful YA romance” that will “find the youth identifying and everyone else remembering.”
MAGPIE
Magpie follows married couple Anette and Ben, whose lives begin to fracture when their daughter is cast alongside a glamorous movie star, Alicia. As Anette’s suspicions about Ben’s infatuation with Alicia intensify, their secrets and lies threaten to destroy them all.
MTV Movie Award winner Daisy Ridley (aka Star Wars’ Rey) stars opposite Shazad Latif (Star Trek: Discovery), with Fright Meter Award nominee Matilda Lutz as Alicia.
Adapted by Ridley’s husband Tom Bateman from her story, Magpie has an 83% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with Collider hailing the stylish neo-noir thriller as, “Completely and utterly terrific… Daisy Ridley at her best.”
WILD WILD SPACE
You’ve heard about the billionaire space race. This isn’t that documentary.
Wild Wild Space follows the quests of Astra Space, Planet Labs and Rocket Lab as they compete to blast satellite-carrying rockets into low Earth orbit.
From exhilarating triumphs to gut-wrenching setbacks, we’re witnessing the fierce competition for humanity’s next great frontier. But beneath the shiny veneer of progress is the dark side of capitalism’s insatiable appetite for profit and the far-reaching reverberations of a world controlled from the skies.
Inspired by the bestselling book When the Heavens Went on Sale by South African-born journalist and Emmy nominee Ashlee Vance, Wild Wild Space is directed by Oscar- and Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Ross Kaufmann (Born into Brothels).
The HBO Original Documentary has an 88% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the Wall Street Journal hailing it as “a documentary that has the right stuff and asks the right questions.”
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MAGICAL NEGROES
The American Society of Magical Negroes centres on Aren, a young man who is recruited into a secret society of magical Black people who dedicate their lives to a cause of utmost importance: making white people’s lives easier.
Black Reel nominee Justice Smith (Pokémon: Detective Pikachu) stars as Aren, opposite Critics Choice nominees David Alan Grier (They Cloned Tyrone, The Colour Purple) and Drew Tarver (The Other Two), Emmy nominees Nicole Byer (Nailed It!) and Rupert Friend (Homeland, Obi-Wan Kenobi), and South African actress Nozipho Mclean (Westworld).
Following its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, the satire won the 2024 Directors to Watch award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival for actor Kobi Libii (Madam Secretary, Transparent), who makes his feature debut as a writer-director here.
TWISTERS
From the producers of the Jurassic, Bourne and Indiana Jones franchises comes Twisters, a current-day chapter of the 1996 blockbuster Twister.
Directed by Oscar nominee Lee Isaac Chung (Minari), Twisters stars Golden Globe nominee Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People, Where the Crawdads Sing) and Glen Powell (Anyone But You, Hitman, Top Gun: Maverick) as opposing forces who come together to try to predict, and possibly tame, the immense power of tornadoes.
The 19th biggest box office hit of 2024 globally, Twisters was nominated for a Golden Globe for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, as well a Grammy award for its soundtrack.
Twisters was the fifth highest-rated Action & Adventure Movie of 2024 on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics’ consensus says: “Summoning a storm of spectacle and carried along by the gale force winds of Glen Powell’s charisma, Twisters‘ forecast is splendid with a high chance of thrills.”
