What To Watch This Weekend: 'Moana,' 'Evil Dead Burn,' 'Little House On The Prairie,' 'The Five Star Weekend'

HOLLYWOOD, CA — This weekend’s picks jump from open seas to burning forests to prairie trials and coastal reckonings, a lineup built on pressure, courage and messy truths.

Leading the charge is “Moana,” a live‑action remake that launches a fresh ocean quest with a renewed call to adventure.

Craving a horror movie? “Evil Dead Burn” drops its characters into a wildfire‑scarred trap, where confinement and chaos feed off each other.

“Little House on the Prairie” brings frontier life into sharper focus, following a family as they confront the risks and realities of homesteading on the Kansas plains.

And “The Five Star Weekend” gathers the people who’ve shaped a life across decades, turning a Nantucket getaway into a study of friendship, memory and midlife recalibration.

Ready to dive in? Scroll down for the full lineup, with deeper explorations below that unpack performances, themes and craft in greater detail.

Related:

• Other Titles To Watch: 'Minions & Monsters,' 'Young Washington,' 'Enola Holmes 3,' 'Silo,' 'X-Men '97'

• Other Titles To Watch: 'Toy Story 5,' 'The Death Of Robin Hood,' 'Rose Of Nevada,' And 'Sugar' Season 2
• Other Titles To Watch: 'Supergirl,' 'The Invite,' 'Jackass,' New 'The Bear' And 'House of the Dragon'

What To Watch This Weekend

“Moana”

Catherine Laga‘aia, Dwayne Johnson; directed by Thomas Kail

Disney’s 2026 live‑action “Moana” revisits its 2016 animated landmark with a devotion that becomes both compass and constraint — a remake intent on honoring a modern classic while translating its mythic sweep into flesh, landscape and physical texture. The film reaches for cultural fidelity and visual authenticity, grounding its oceanic world in real locations, real performers and a tactile Polynesian sensibility meant to deepen Moana’s journey beyond the stylized vibrancy of animation.

Catherine Laga‘aia brings a steady, grounded presence to Moana, while Dwayne Johnson returns to Maui with familiar charisma, anchoring the film’s emotional continuity. The production’s sincerity is unmistakable, and its reverence for the original’s cultural impact gives the early stretch a clarity and purpose that feel newly energized.

Yet that clarity wavers as the film leans more toward replication than reinvention. In its effort to recreate rather than reimagine, the remake often loses sight of the emotional buoyancy and narrative spark that once made Moana’s voyage so resonant. The result is a chapter rich in intention and cultural grounding, but one whose imagination is too frequently asked to retrace its steps rather than chart new waters.

(Read our full review of “Moana.”)

“Evil Dead Burn”

Souheila Yacoub, Tandi Wright, Hunter Doohan; directed by Sébastien Vaniček

Sébastien Vaniček’s “Evil Dead Burn” narrows the franchise back into a single, volatile space, shaping its horror around the emotional and physical confinement of a family gathering gone violently wrong.

The setup is intimate: Alice (Souheila Yacoub), grieving her husband’s death, retreats to his family’s isolated lakehouse, only for the reunion to fracture when a newly unearthed Book of the Dead ignites a wave of Deadite possession.

Vaniček leans into the claustrophobia of the setting, letting the film’s tension rise from proximity, grief and the instability of a household collapsing under supernatural pressure.

Yacoub anchors the film with a steady, wounded presence, while Tandi Wright and Hunter Doohan add texture to the ensemble as the Deadite threat escalates.

The production’s grounded brutality and emphasis on practical‑effects give the film a tactile immediacy, echoing Raimi’s lineage without mimicking its manic elasticity.

The film’s momentum occasionally flattens as it cycles through familiar franchise beats, but Vaniček’s command of atmosphere and his commitment to emotional volatility give “Evil Dead Burn” a distinct identity. It’s a ferocious, tightly contained chapter — one that understands how the series’ chaos sharpens when the world shrinks and the danger presses in from every corner of the room.

“Little House on the Prairie — Season 1”

Luke Bracey, Crosby Fitzgerald, Alice Halsey; created by Rebecca Sonnenshine

Netflix’s revival of “Little House on the Prairie” reframes the Ingalls family’s frontier life with a contemporary dramatic sensibility, grounding its world in the environmental volatility and social fragility of 1870s Kansas.

Rebecca Sonnenshine guides the adaptation with an emphasis on landscape and emotional realism, letting the season’s tension rise from the daily pressures of homesteading — illness, scarcity, community formation and the uneasy coexistence of settlers and Indigenous nations.

The series’ visual palette, shaped by its Alberta and Manitoba locations, gives the prairie a wide, unsettled presence that mirrors the instability of the Ingalls’ new life.

Luke Bracey’s Charles carries the narrative with a steady, quietly burdened weight, while Crosby Fitzgerald and Alice Halsey anchor the younger cast with performances that understand the coming‑of‑age stakes embedded in the show’s open horizons.

The season’s episodic structure — from fever outbreaks to winter isolation — builds a sense of lived‑in expansion.

One major distinction from the 1974 series is the revival’s commitment to historical texture over sentiment; where the original softened frontier hardship, this version foregrounds its unpredictability. It’s a frontier drama defined by resilience rather than nostalgia, and by the fragile hope required to build a life at the edge of the unknown.

“The Five Star Weekend — Season 1”

Jennifer Garner, Gemma Chan, Regina Hall; created by Bekah Brunstetter

Peacock’s adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s novel “The Five Star Weekend” approaches midlife reinvention with a coastal, sun‑washed intimacy, framing its drama around Hollis Shaw (Jennifer Garner), a food influencer whose carefully curated life fractures after her husband’s sudden death.

Bekah Brunstetter shapes the series with a steady, emotionally observant hand, letting the narrative unfold across a Nantucket weekend designed to gather four women from different eras of Hollis’s life. The premise is deceptively simple — a reunion, a retreat, a chance to reset — but the show leans into the tensions that surface when nostalgia, ambition and unresolved grief collide under one roof.

Garner anchors the ensemble with a performance that understands the contradictions of public vulnerability, while Gemma Chan, Regina Hall and Chloë Sevigny add tonal range as the weekend’s shifting alliances expose buried resentments and unexpected loyalties.

The coastal setting becomes a quiet counterweight to the emotional volatility inside the house, its calm surfaces reflecting the curated perfection Hollis has spent years maintaining.

Structured as an eight‑episode arc, the season moves between confession, confrontation and the slow recalibration of friendship.