What To Watch This Week: Oct 20-26, 2025

Amarkala Deepavali (mewatch, Mediacorp Entertainment on Youtube, Vasantham, Oct 19, from 10pm)

Celebrater the Festival of Lights with this two-hour countdown variety special featuring performances by Alawdwin Ali, Karthikeyan Somasundaram, Maahes Chandiras, Puravalan Narayanasamy, Shamini G, and Udaya Soundari, and more. For more Deepavali-related content, viewers can head to mediacorp.sg/deepavali and catch all your favourite Deepavali programmes on demand for free via mewatch.

The Gift of Time (mewatch & Channel 8, Oct 23, 9pm)

Boomers, rejoice! After a two-decade hiatus, Xie Shaoguang returns to acting in this 20-part drama as a cancer-stricken tycoon who unexpectedly bonds with a former nemesis (Chen Hanwei) during treatment. Rich or poor, the Big C doesn’t discriminate.

Makan on Wheels 2 (mewatch & Channel 8, Oct 22)

Jaspers Lai, Bryan Wong and Herman Keh hit the road in their food truck for another culinary adventure across Malaysia. Their first stop: Pengerang, Johor, for some Teochew Orh Luak.

The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (Disney+, Oct 22)

A remake of the 1992 Rebecca DeMornay thriller, this update stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead as a suburban mum whose new nanny (Longlegs’ Maika Monroe) might have — how shall I delicately put this? — embellished her credentials.

Photo: Hulu

Top Guns: The Next Generation (Disney+, Oct 22)

This six-part Nat Geo docu-series follows a class of US Navy and Marine Corps student pilots through the intense final phase of their elite strike fighter training.  And no, none of them have egos writing checks their bodies can’t cash — this is the real deal.  Take us out to the ‘Danger Zone’, Kenny Loggins!

Photo: National Geographic 

The Elixir (Netflix, Oct 23)

Indonesian horror auteur Kimo Stamboel (Dancing Village: The Curse Begins) returns with a blood-soaked thriller about a fractured family (led by Grisse’s Marthino Lio) fighting to escape a zombie outbreak triggered by a traditional Javanese herbal elixir. (And seriously, when is Singapore going to make a proper Z-flick? No offence, Zombiepura doesn’t count.)

Photo: Netflix 

Host (Prime Video, Oct 23)

More Asian horror — this time from Thailand. Per press notes, Host is the “first-ever cinematic retelling” of the Mae Sue myth, a guardian spirit said to protect children from birth until age 12. Baipor-Thitiya Jirapornsilp (Love Stuck) stars as a young woman sent to a reform school on a remote island, where strange occurrences make her question everything: is she the victim… or the source of the haunting?

Photo: Prime Video

Weapons (HBO Max, Oct 24)

One of the year’s best movies — and scariest — is finally streaming. And that's all we'll say. The less you know, the better.

A House of Dynamite (Netflix, Oct 24)

We’re not done with horror just yet. What can be scarier than zombies and ghosts? In The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow’s latest, it’s a nuclear war. When a missile is launched at the US, the clock starts ticking to find out who’s behind it — and how to respond to it. The stacked cast includes Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, Jason Clarke, Greta Lee, Anthony Ramos, Moses Ingram, and Jonah Hauer-King.

Photos: Eros Hoagland/Netflix