Redbox, known best for its quick-and-easy rentals of new and classic movies, has also launched its own free streaming platform: Redbox Free On Demand. Following the strategy of its rental offerings (the best of which you can find here), the commercial-driven streamer has plenty on offer—spanning everything from indie fare to the kind of horror and action films that’ll please hardcore genre devotees. Now that the service has launched desktop support (it was mobile-only at launch), it’ll be even easier to check out.
Supplementing our larger free and On Demand lists, the former of which collects plenty of other AVOD (ad-based video on demand) services, this Redbox streaming list highlights the best of what the streamer has to offer if sitting through a few advertisements is more worth it to you than paying a rental fee. And it couldn’t be easier to start watching, with no account sign-up necessary. You can access Redbox Free On Demand on Roku, iOS, Android mobile and TVs, and Vizio devices—with LG, Xbox, Samsung, and Google Chromecast support on the way.
In addition to Redbox Free On Demand content, you can also check out our guides to the best movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Hulu, Disney+, Showtime, and Cinemax. Or visit all our Paste Movie Guides.
Here are the 15 best movies on Redbox Free On Demand:
1. The Void
Year: 2016
Directors: Steven Kostanski, Jeremy Gillespie
Stars: Aaron Poole, Kenneth Welsh, Daniel Fathers, Kathleen Munroe, Ellen Wong
Rating: NR
Watch on Redbox Free On Demand
Viewers should grade writer-directors Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie’s The Void on a curve: While the low-budget Canadian production earns an “A” for ambition, its mélange of The Thing-inspired body horror, ‘80s nostalgia and Lovecraftian cosmic terror doesn’t quite cohere into a satisfying whole by the time its chief antagonist peels away his skin to reveal a bodysuit that looks like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers’ Lord Zedd. The first half of the film demonstrates much more restraint, building tension as triangle-branded cultists isolate a mismatched group of (mostly) innocent people—led by Aaron Poole as an out-of-his-depth small-town cop—in a (mostly) vacant hospital. Kotanski and Gillespie build in too many potentially conflicting twists—who, exactly, is impregnated with what?—but the grotesque practical effects and descent-into-Hell structure at times pass for a solid Silent Hill adaptation. Some of horror’s most recent, popularly memorable features (say: It Follows, The Babadook) have wisely employed relatively narrow scopes. Instead, The Void attempts to push audiences into another dimension, but manages at least a few successful frights along the way. —Steve Foxe
2. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Year: 2009
Director: Werner Herzog
Stars: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Jennifer Coolidge, Xzibit, Brad Dourif
Rating: R
Runtime: 122 minutes
Watch on Redbox Free On Demand
Shot with wild-eyed lenses to truly capture the narcotic- and power-fueled cop at the heart of Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, this non-sequel is a staggering display of Nicolas Cage’s charisma in a workmanlike procedural. Initially, it seems like a bit of an odd bird: Herzog’s playfully dour direction and veteran TV writer William M. Finkelstein’s police drama script fizz and sparkle thanks to one of Cage’s best displays of mania, a few possibly-hallucinated iguanas and a pair of gators—one of which has already been turned into roadkill. But it all meshes together in a satisfyingly reptilian way, the cold-blooded and scaly id now physical and roaming the bayou. Cage smokes crack with Xzibit, busts the balls of Val Kilmer and watches football with a zonked-out Jennifer Coolidge. It’s a world of vice, as familiar yet inscrutable as the film’s bizarre title. The key players all make sense to your brain separately, but together, it’s a spiked cocktail and a bump in the bathroom—conflicting chemicals working in chaotic harmony. It can veer into stretches of unrefined silliness, but that’s part of the pitch-black fun. When you watch Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, you’re watching a cop drama with the saturation turned all the way up—where imagined lizards haunt coffee tables and souls breakdance until more bullets finally end the show. Maybe it’s no coincidence that Finkelstein co-created Cop Rock.—Jacob Oller
3. Ghost World
Year: 2001
Director: Terry Zwigoff
Stars: Bob Balaban, Brad Renfro, Illeana Douglas, Scarlett Johannson, Steve Buscemi, Thora Birch
Rating: R
Runtime: 111 minutes
Watch on Redbox Free On Demand
Terry Zwigoff’s appropriately somber, stylish, brutally honest yet surprisingly tender Ghost World, adapted by Daniel Clowes and Zwigoff from Clowes’ comic, intimately captures the post-high school struggles of Enid (Thora Birch in perhaps the best performance of her career), a too-cool-for-school type who puts on a seemingly impenetrable exterior of ironic detachment as an attempt to hide her ever-growing insecurities regarding the adult life that’s rearing its ugly head more and more each passing day. She’s so “cool,” that she’d call Ellen Page’s Juno a poser who sold out to a corrupted mainstream ideal of teen rebellion. When Enid and her equally non-chalant BFF Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) see a missed connections ad in the classifieds (remember those, printed on actual paper?), they decide to pull a prank by setting up a date with the poster. What shows up is a shell of a man, a middle-aged dork named Seymour (Steve Buscemi) whose inherent sadness immediately attracts Enid. At first, she becomes friends with Seymour because of a hint of guilt, but eventually comes around to realize that she might have feelings for him. This scares her more than anything, since it also implies that maybe, just maybe, the perfect Ms. Enid, who’s above everyone else, might not be that different from this lovable weirdo who’s into collecting old Americana and blues records. Zwigoff and Clowes, together toeing the comic’s fine line between exaggerated cartoon characterizations and grounded regular people as protagonists, occupy Ghost World with eccentric people, to be sure, but people we all know well. Some of us even are those people. —Oktay Ege Kozak
4. Ginger Snaps
Year: 2000
Director: John Fawcett
Watch on Redbox Free On Demand
Ginger Snaps is a high school werewolf story, but before you go making any Twilight comparisons, let me state for the record: Where Twilight is maudlin, Ginger Snaps is vicious. A pair of death-obsessed, outsider sisters, Ginger and Brigitte, are faced with issues of maturation and sexual awakening when Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) is bitten by a werewolf. As she begins to become bolder and more animalistic in her desires, the second, meeker sister (Emily Perkins) searches for a way to reverse the damages before Ginger carves a path of destruction through their community. Reflecting the influence of Cronenberg-style body horror and especially John Landis’s American Werewolf in London, Ginger Snaps is a surprisingly effective horror movie and mix of drama/black comedy that brought the werewolf mythos into suburbia in the same sort of way Fright Night managed to do so with vampires. It also made a genre star of Isabelle, who has since appeared in several sequels and above average horror flicks such as American Mary. Even if the condition of lycanthropism is an obvious parallel to the struggles of adolescence and puberty, Ginger Snaps is the one film that has taken that rich vein of source material and imbued it with the same kind of punk spirit as Heathers. – —Jim Vorel
5. Black Christmas
Year: 1974
Director: Bob Clark
Stars: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, John Saxon, Art Hindle, Andrea Martin, Marian Waldman
Rating: R
Runtime: 98 minutes
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Fun fact: Nine years before he directed holiday classic A Christmas Story, Bob Clark created the first true, unassailable “slasher movie” in Black Christmas. Yes, the same person who gave TBS its annual Christmas Eve marathon fodder was also responsible for the first major cinematic application of the phrase “The calls are coming from inside the house!” Black Christmas, which was insipidly remade in 2006, predates John Carpenter’s Halloween by four years and features many of the same elements, especially visually. Like Halloween, it lingers heavily on POV shots from the killer’s eyes as he prowls through a dimly lit sorority house and spies on his future victims. As the mentally deranged killer calls the house and engages in obscene phone calls with the female residents, one can’t help but also be reminded of the scene in Carpenter’s film where Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) calls her friend Lynda, only to hear her strangled with the telephone cord. Black Christmas is also instrumental, and practically archetypal, in solidifying the slasher trope of the so-called “final girl.” Jessica Bradford (Olivia Hussey) is actually among the better-realized of these final girls in the history of the genre, a remarkably strong and resourceful young woman who can take care of herself in both her relationships and deadly scenarios. It’s questionable how many subsequent slashers have been able to create protagonists who are such a believable combination of capable and realistic. —Jim Vorel
6. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Year: 2016
Director: Taika Waititi
Stars: Sam Neill, Julian Dennison, Rima Te Wiata, Rachel House, Oscar Kightley, Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne, Rhys Darby
Rating: NR
Runtime: 101 minutes
Watch on Redbox Free On Demand
Bella’s (Rima Te Wiata) first encounter with Ricky (Julian Dennison), the new foster child she’s agreed to take on, doesn’t inspire confidence, especially with her clumsy jokes at the expense of his weight. In turn, with child-services representative Paula (Rachel House) painting Ricky as an unruly wild child, one dreads the prospect of seeing the kid walk all over this possibly in-over-her-head mother. But Bella wears him down with kindness. And Ricky ends up less of a tough cookie than he—with his fondness for gangsta rap and all that implies—initially tried to project. An adaptation of Barry Crump’s novel Wild Pork and Watercress, Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople thrives on upending preconceived notions. The director shows sympathy for Ricky’s innocence, which is reflected in the film’s grand-adventure style. Cinematographer Lachlan Milne’s sweeping, colorful panoramas and a chapter-based narrative structure gives Hunt for the Wilderpeople the feel of a storybook fable, but thanks to the warm-hearted dynamic between Ricky and Hec (Sam Neill), even the film’s most whimsical moments carry a sense of real underlying pain: Both of these characters are outsiders ultimately looking for a home to call their own. —Kenji Fujishima
7. The Proposition
Year: 2005
Director: John Hillcoat
Stars: Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, Emily Watson, John Hurt
Rating: R
Runtime: 104 minutes
Watch on Redbox Free On Demand
If you’ve ever sat and wondered what Hell might look like, check out John Hillcoat’s The Proposition, in which Hell happens to look an awful lot like the Australian outback. You may not anticipate that shifting locales from one arid and unforgiving ecosystem to another would lend that much impact to a film’s visual texture, but The Proposition feels like a distinctly Aussie production even before you hear the accents. Nationality isn’t what makes the picture feel so utterly accursed, though; it’s the sheer unrelenting brutality. There’s a thematic nugget at The Proposition’s core that links it to John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a movie about lawful men trying against all good sense to tame wild lands and civilize lawless men. But Ford’s film never even tries to ascend the peaks of barbarity that The Proposition comes to rest upon through its final moments, where blood is answered with more blood and violent action can only be stopped by a violent response. —Andy Crump
8. One Shot
Year: 2021
Director: James Nunn
Watch on Redbox Free On Demand
Filmmaker James Nunn reunites with Scott Adkins once again for a gimmicky and often unpleasant tour around a militarized island newly under siege, all made to look like it’s one 90-minute shot. For some of that runtime, you wish they would learn about cutting so you didn’t have to watch someone walk across a field or down a base hallway in real time—especially as the walk-and-talk dialogue is filled with a silly terrorist plot and grating characters that’d make a Call of Duty writer note the lack of nuance. But for the stuff that matters, the gunfights and the knifefights and the fistfights, you’ll be glad Nunn and his team trusted in the process. Adkins is still an exceptional workhorse, not just as a combatant but as a dramatic performer. With the handheld camera mostly following him tight throughout, he’s a compelling presence even when he’s not breaking arms or cutting throats. He’s even magnetic when he’s reloading. Gamers will note the visual language of third-person shooters (or those of an FPS, extrapolated outward), as camera angles around cover or over shoulders replicate their visceral placement. There’s a lot to appreciate in the technical planning and execution here. Sure, it’s a terrible script and nobody really gets anything to do (though Adkins’ SEAL squadmates all acquit themselves well), but a brutal last 20-minute blitz will make all but the deepest sticks in the mud scoot to the edges of their seats.—Jacob Oller
9. The Love Witch
Year: 2016
Director: Anna Biller
Watch on Redbox Free On Demand
If you watch The Love Witch with no knowledge of its production or point of origin, you might assume it’s a lost gem of 1960s or 1970s supernatural filmmaking that’s only recently been recovered, restored and released to the public for niche consumption. This isn’t the case, of course, but nobody would fault your logic. Biller’s style is set in the bygone days of B-movie camp, though unlike similar faux-retro productions, à la 2012’s disingenuously nostalgic The Ghastly Love of Johnny X, there’s unabashed joy to her mimicry that reminds us how much fun the flicks The Love Witch emulates can be in spite of, or maybe because of, their badness. The film’s cheese factor is its single most obvious element next to Biller’s enthusiasm for kitsch and her emphasis on superb production design. Samantha Robinson’s ravishing (but equally deluded) witch in search of “true love” never stops to consider whether she has any idea of what those words truly mean, or what personal freedoms are okay to trample in the process. Unsurprisingly, there’s a horror element present in giving so much magical power to a person with such an infantile grasp of right and wrong–like the little boy in The Twilight Zone’s “It’s a Good Life,” you’d be wise not to upset her. —Andy Crump
10. V/H/S
Year: 2012
Directors: Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, Radio Silence
Watch on Redbox Free On Demand
We already mentioned that horror anthologies are, by nature, almost always uneven in terms of quality, but if there’s one constant, it’s usually that fewer stories is better than MANY stories. That’s one of the factors that helps V/H/S work better than, say, the unrestrained insanity of The ABCs of Death, along with a more coherent framing narrative. It features segments by some of the best young directors in horror such as Adam Wingard and Ti West, but it’s ultimately David Bruckner, who also directed the genre-bending 2007 horror flick The Signal, who steals the show with his segment, “Amateur Night.” That story, about a group of douchey guys who bring home a strange girl from the bar and get much more than they bargained for when she turns out to be a literal monster, is now getting the full-on feature film treatment under the title of Siren. As for which of the first two V/H/S entries is strongest, though, it’s a bit of a toss-up. Both of them have highlight segments and a few downers. The one thing there’s no doubt about is that both of them are fun, and MUCH better than the abortive 2014 second sequel, V/H/S: Viral. —Jim Vorel
11. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Year: 2016
Director: Taika Waititi
Stars: Sam Neill, Julian Dennison, Rima Te Wiata, Rachel House, Oscar Kightley, Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne, Rhys Darby
Rating: NR
Runtime: 101 minutes
Watch on Redbox Free On Demand
Bella’s (Rima Te Wiata) first encounter with Ricky (Julian Dennison), the new foster child she’s agreed to take on, doesn’t inspire confidence, especially with her clumsy jokes at the expense of his weight. In turn, with child-services representative Paula (Rachel House) painting Ricky as an unruly wild child, one dreads the prospect of seeing the kid walk all over this possibly in-over-her-head mother. But Bella wears him down with kindness. And Ricky ends up less of a tough cookie than he—with his fondness for gangsta rap and all that implies—initially tried to project. An adaptation of Barry Crump’s novel Wild Pork and Watercress, Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople thrives on upending preconceived notions. The director shows sympathy for Ricky’s innocence, which is reflected in the film’s grand-adventure style. Cinematographer Lachlan Milne’s sweeping, colorful panoramas and a chapter-based narrative structure gives Hunt for the Wilderpeople the feel of a storybook fable, but thanks to the warm-hearted dynamic between Ricky and Hec (Sam Neill), even the film’s most whimsical moments carry a sense of real underlying pain: Both of these characters are outsiders ultimately looking for a home to call their own. —Kenji Fujishima
12. Showgirls
Year: 1995
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Stars: Elizabeth Berkley, Kyle MacLachlan, Gina Gershon, Glenn Plummer, Robert Davi
Rating: R
Watch on Redbox Free On Demand
Showgirls: Serious satire worthy of critical re-evaluation, or one of the worst movies ever made? Perhaps this is the most black-and-white discourse surrounding one of Paul Verhoeven’s films, but look deeper beneath the glittering mirage (and the infamous NC-17 rating) and you’ll find so much more to be examined. Love it or hate it, it’s difficult to deny the impact that the Showgirls cult classic revival has had on “the culture.” (Move over Euphoria girls, Nomi did it all first!) Upon release, Showgirls was known as one of MGM’s biggest failures, but thanks to ironic, cool trendsetters (read: homosexuals), the film has become one of the highest-grossing MGM rentals. No one, not Showgirls haters or lovers or those in between, not even director Paul Verhoeven or screenwriter Joe Eszterhas, can quite agree on what Showgirls is, or What It Means. Verhoeven attempted to elaborate on the film with the (limited release) book Showgirls: Portrait of a Film, accepting the film’s status as “so bad it’s good,” but still maintains that wasn’t the original intention; Eszterhas asserts the humor was always an integral part of the plan. More than any other Verhoeven film, Showgirls’ glistening force shapeshifts into something wildly different after each watch. Anchored by Elizabeth Berkley’s show-stopping performance as the ruthless Nomi Malone, Showgirls is one-of-a-kind because it’s the only modern big-budget exploitation film that goes deep on the transactional bimbofication of women under capitalist institutions—and its violent repercussions.—Katarina Docalovich
Year: 2021
Director: Jordan Graham
Starring: Michael Daniel, Rachel Johnson, Aurora Lowe, Gabriel Nicholson, June Peterson
Rating: NR
Runtime: 86 minutes
Watch on Redbox Free On Demand
There’s something in the forest. But at the same time, there’s nothing much at all. A man, a cabin and maybe—maybe–something more. Sator, a mumblecore horror somewhere between a modern-day The Witch, The Blair Witch Project and Lovecraft, is a striking second feature from Jordan Graham. It’s the kind of horror that trades jump scares for negative space, one that opens with imagery your typical A24 beast saves for its finale. Sator’s dedication to its own nuanced premise, location and tense pace make it the rare horror that’s so aesthetically well-realized you feel like you could crawl inside and live there–if it wasn’t so goddamn scary. Sator is a name, an evocation, an entity. He’s first described, by Nani (the late June Peterson, excellent), as a guardian. Nani’s known Sator (whatever he may be) for a long time. The film represents shifts in time, and the physical transportation to places soaked in memories, with an aspect ratio change and a black-and-white palette. Nani’s lovely longhand script is practiced well from a lifetime of automatic writing, with the words–including some of the opening company credits, which is a great little joke–pouring from her pen and claiming a headwater not of this world. That same paranormal river flows to her grandson Adam (Gabriel Nicholson), that aforementioned man in the woods, whose relationship with the voices in his head is a bit less comfortable. It’s a stark, bold, even compassionate film–which offers imperfectly planted details of a battered and bruised family at its core–with plenty to comprehend (or at least theorize about) for those brave enough to venture back into the forest for a rewatch. As scary as it is, Sator is an experience with enough layers and craftsmanship that its alluring call will rattle in your head long after you’ve turned it off.–Jacob Oller
14. Day Of The Dead
Year: 1985
Director: George A. Romero
Stars: Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joseph Pilato
Rating: R
Runtime: 96 minutes
Watch on Redbox Free On Demand
It’s not really necessary to delve into how influential George Romero’s first zombie film has been to the genre and horror itself—it’s one of the most important horror movies ever made, and one of the most important independent films as well. The question is more accurately, “how does it hold up today?”, and the answer is “okay.” Unlike, say Dawn of the Dead (not on Shudder), Night is pretty placid most of the time. The story conventions are classic and the black-and-white cinematography still looks excellent, but some of the performances are downright irritating, particularly that of Judith O’Dea as Barbara. Duane Jones more than makes up for that as the heroic Ben, however, in a story that is very self-sufficient and provincial—just one small group of people in a house, with no real thought to the wider world. It’s a horror film that is a MUST SEE for every student of the genre, which is easy, considering that the film actually remains in the public domain. But in terms of entertainment value, Romero would perfect the genre in his next few efforts. Also recommended: The 1990 remake of this film by Tom Savini, which is unfairly derided just for being faithful to its source. —Jim Vorel
15. Sleepaway Camp
Year: 1983
Director: Robert Hiltzik
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Of all the camp-based Friday the 13th rip-offs, Sleepaway Camp is probably the best one that isn’t The Burning. Our main character is Angela, a troubled girl who absolutely everyone picks on for no good reason. Seriously—it’s one of those ’80s era movies with a main character who is an “outsider” constantly harassed by dozens of people, but without any impetus or explanation—it’s just Angela’s lot in life. Everyone who meets her immediately hates her guts and subjects her to cruel taunting. But soon, the people at the camp who were mean to Angela start getting knocked off. The movie seems calculated to come off as a straight horror film, but the death scenes are often so outlandish that it veers pleasurably into horror comedy, as well. Highlights include the lecherous camp cook, who gets a giant vat of boiling water dumped on his face, or the kid who gets a beehive dropped into the outhouse with him. If you love classic slashers, it’s a must-see, especially for the ending. I won’t spoil anything, but Sleepaway Camp can proudly lay claim to one of the most shocking, WTF endings in slasher movie history. —Jim Vorel
