It’s the most romantic month of the year — cold weather aside — so that means cinemas and streaming platforms are packed with the plenty of movies you don’t want to miss. At this time of year, those movies often tend to come with love in the air between Hollywood’s hottest heartthrobs.
This year, the main event in that respect is definitely Oscar-winner Emerald Fennell’s new take on Wuthering Heights, with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in the famous roles of Cathy and Heathcliff. There’s also an onslaught of the big winners from the recent Oscar nominations, including The Secret Agent and Spanish drama Sirât. That’s not to mention the newest slasher sequel Scream 7.
Let’s delve into the release calendar for February 2026 and highlight the best film picks in cinemas and on streaming platforms.
Send Help | 5 February (cinemas)
What would you do if you had your horrible boss’s life in your hands? That’s the premise behind Send Help, which is the latest movie from horror legend Sam Raimi. He hasn’t worked in the horror genre since 2009’s Drag Me to Hell, so it’s a proud return to thrills and chills from the man behind The Evil Dead. Rachel McAdams plays a mistreated employee who has to try to survive alongside her scumbag boss (Dylan O’Brien) when their plane crashes on an island.
The trailer sells Raimi’s trademark mish-mash of tones, from blood-soaked brutality to dark comedy, and that’s a tonal balance McAdams can definitely sell. This could be one of the best genre outings of the year.
The Chronology Of Water | 6 February (cinemas)
Since she rose to fame in the Twilight franchise and became the subject of a million online jibes about her perceived lack of talent, Kristen Stewart has spent an entire career proving people wrong. Not content with showing just how much acting range she has, Stewart is now throwing herself into the directing world with this tale of competitive swimming and personal issues, starring Imogen Poots as swimmer and writer Lidia Yuknavitch.
Read more: Kristen Stewart was shocked by the success of Twilight (BANG Showbiz, 2 min read)
Critics fell head over heels in love with the movie at its Cannes premiere in 2025 and, although it has been a long wait, UK audiences are finally going to get to see what all the fuss is about.
Looney Tunes: The Day The Earth Blew Up | 13 February (cinemas)
For a bit of Valentine’s Day counter-programming this year, there’s a brand new Looney Tunes movie in cinemas. The story pitches Daffy Duck and Porky Pig as the saviours of Earth against an alien scheme involving chewing gum. Initially set for HBO Max, the film was ultimately shopped to other distributors and got its US release last year.
Now, UK audiences who don’t fancy spending Valentine’s weekend having romantic meals can instead witness slapstick, silliness, and stupidity from the world of Looney Tunes. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
Wuthering Heights | 13 February (cinemas)
Having won an Oscar for Promising Young Woman and then got the world talking about licking bath water with Saltburn, Emerald Fennell almost certainly had her pick of projects. She has chosen to become the latest filmmaker to take on Emily Brontë’s famous Gothic romance novel Wuthering Heights — somewhat controversially casting Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as the young lovers.
Read more: Why Wuthering Heights has quote marks around its title has finally been explained (Digital Spy, 2 min read)
This looks set to be an enormous box office hit and the trailers are selling the sort of aesthetic that will be catnip for TikTok fan edits. That’s not to mention glimpses of some seriously steamy scenes. Some movies are just made for Valentine’s Day.
The Testament Of Ann Lee | 20 February (cinemas)
Amanda Seyfried was hotly tipped for an Oscar for her titular performance in this deeply unusual movie proposition. The film, directed by The Brutalist co-writer Mona Fastvold, casts Seyfried as the founder of the Christian sect known as the Shakers. In keeping with the use of music in Shaker services, the film is an all-out musical, as well as an epic historical drama.
Read more: Amanda Seyfried thinks Oscar win ‘isn’t necessary’ for career success (BANG Showbiz, 2 min read)
This might sound like a hard sell on paper, but the film benefits from Seyfried at the peak of her considerable acting powers. Lewis Pullman and Thomasin Mckenzie are in the supporting cast too, giving this ensemble real pedigree.
Wasteman | 20 February (cinemas)
Prison movies are ten a penny and have always been a big part of cinema, but this hard-edged British thriller brings plenty of new ideas to the table. It’s a complex, thoughtful dissection of how the violence and torment of these environments is often created and intensified by the performative masculinity of the men who are spending their lives behind bars.
David Jonsson, so terrific last year in The Long Walk, plays a quiet young inmate whose attempts to keep his head down are disrupted by the arrival of his swaggering, brash new cellmate — portrayed by Tom Blyth, last seen as the young President Snow in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. It’s a brutal movie with some immensely suspenseful set pieces, always driven by character and the potency of Jonsson’s lead performance.
The Secret Agent | 20 February (cinemas)
It’s not often that non-American movies have a real presence at the Oscars, but Brazilian drama The Secret Agent has certainly made itself known this year. The murky tale of a former university professor attempting to resist the authoritarian regime of the 1960s and 1970s is a strange, often quiet journey into a world of high-stakes secrecy.
Read more: Lula revived Brazilian cinema, says ‘The Secret Agent’ director (AFP, 3 min read)
Wagner Moura’s lead performance has drawn an enormous amount of plaudits, but the film itself is now the frontrunner for Best International Feature. Whether it can succeed outside of that category remains to be seen, but UK audiences should look out for it in their local cinemas.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You | 20 February (cinemas)
If the Oscars love one thing, it’s an intense character study led by an actor shedding all of their Hollywood glamour and vanity. This year’s entry into that canon is this drama, starring Rose Byrne as a mother unravelling as she attempts to care for her daughter, who suffers from a feeding disorder. She’s also forced to live in a motel due to an enormous, mouldy hole in the ceiling of her apartment.
This film is all about Byrne, with writer-director Mary Bronstein ensuring her star is in essentially every frame of the movie. It’s a psychological study of a woman increasingly ground down by the responsibilities of life, so it was no surprise to see Byrne secure an Oscar nod.
The Moment | 20 February (cinemas)
Charli XCX absolutely loves cinema. The musician’s Letterboxd account is an erudite diary of some of the most fascinating films of recent times, so it’s not a shock to see her wanting to get in on the act of actually making a movie. In new mockumentary The Moment, which is based on the star’s own original idea, she plays a fictionalised version of herself embarking on a world tour.
Read more: How Charli XCX became the world’s most surprising movie influencer (Yahoo Entertainment, 4 min read)
It’s a fascinating idea for a spin on the concert film genre and, although the reviews have been decidedly mixed, fans of the singer will likely get a lot out of this. Throw in a supporting cast led by Alexander Skarsgård and you have more than enough intrigue to get us into the multiplex.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die | 20 February (cinemas)
In the 2000s, director Gore Verbinski sat right at the heart of blockbuster cinema as the director of the first three movies in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. He hasn’t directed a film since 2016’s iffy pharmaceutical horror A Cure for Wellness, but he’s back on noisy blockbuster form with this — a riotous action-comedy in which Sam Rockwell plays a time traveller warning about the rise of AI.
Rockwell can do anarchy in his sleep and there’s a killer ensemble around him, from Hollywood stars like Michael Peña and Zazie Beetz through to British comedy stalwarts like Juno Temple and Asim Chaudhry. It seems unlikely to have much in the way of trenchant satire, but it looks like a tonne of fun.
Scream 7 | 27 February (cinemas)
Once a sure thing, the Scream franchise has had a turbulent few years. Neve Campbell walked away from Scream 6 due to a pay dispute and, in 2023, leading ladies Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega each stepped away from Scream 7 — followed by director Christopher Landon. But now, Campbell is back and franchise creator Kevin Williamson is occupying that vacant director’s chair, helming a movie for the first time since his 1999 debut Teaching Mrs Tingle.
Read more: The “Scream” movies in order: A complete guide to watching the meta-slasher series (Entertainment Weekly, 6 min read)
The plot brings Sidney Prescott back into the orbit of a new Ghostface killer, with her teenage daughter in the firing line this time. The trailer heavily teases the return of Matthew Lillard as fan-favourite killer Stu Macher, so it will be fascinating to see how horror’s slipperiest franchise has pulled that off.
Paul McCartney: Man on the Run | 27 February (Prime Video)
As he enters his ninth decade of life, Sir Paul McCartney stands as one of the music industry’s most legendary figures. This documentary explores McCartney’s work as the frontman of the band Wings, digging into more than 50 years of the group’s history. It’s all a tie-in with last year’s box set album of the band’s biggest hits, as well as the oral history book Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run.
This doc premiered at the Telluride Film Festival last year and, for Beatles fans, it’s a deep dive into a slightly less celebrated chapter of McCartney’s career. Music lovers should definitely delve into their Prime Video accounts to have another look at the work of a bona fide musical genius.
Sirât | 27 February (cinemas)
In a crowded field for the Best International Feature Oscar, nobody is giving a chance to Sirāt, but Spain’s entry for the award is one of the most surprising movies of the year. Its central premise takes a father and his young son into a community of ravers into the Moroccan desert, where the father believes his missing daughter might be. From there, the group experience a journey into pure chaos while, almost incidentally, World War Three seems to be happening elsewhere.
To say more about what happens as Sirāt unfolds would be a criminal disservice to some of its boldest, bravest swings, but this is a powerful and deeply strange film about human determination and, in many ways, futility. It’s a lot more entertaining than that sounds.
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