A new year is just around the corner, but one thing that will remain the same in 2025 is Netflix’s monthly purge of shows and movies. The list of departures is not especially long in January, but there are some major titles leaving the service throughout the month.
Personally, I’m most disappointed to see the hysterical 21 Jump Street reboot starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill leave Netflix (though I wouldn’t be surprised to see it back on the streamer in the coming weeks). Subscribers are also losing the modern horror classic The Babadook and the Mr. and Mrs. Smith movie that inspired the Prime Video series.
Best Netflix movies leaving in Jan. 2024
Selma (Jan. 15)
One of the most critically acclaimed movies currently streaming on Netflix, Selma is a historical drama directed by Ava Duvernay about the voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. David Oyelowo stars as Martin Luther King Jr. alongside Common, LaKeith Stanfield, Cuba Gooding Jr., Oprah Winfrey, Colman Domingo, Tessa Thompson, André Holland, Giovanni Ribisi, and Tom Wilkinson as President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The Babadook (Jan. 25)
In her feature directorial debut, Australian director Jennifer Kent struck gold with The Babadook. This 2014 psychological supernatural horror movie follows a single mother and her son as they face off against a humanoid monster in their home.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Jan. 26)
Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as a rich married couple who each discover that the other is an assassin working for a competing agency, is a perfectly respectable action comedy. But it will forever be a pop culture artifact due to the fact it kicked off “Brangelina” in real life. The two started dating during the film’s production.
21 Jump Street (Jan. 31)
Before they were known for The Lego Movie and their Spider-Verse trilogy, Phil Lord and Chris Miller teamed up with Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill to reboot the late ’80s cop show 21 Jump Street as an R-rated comedy. The chemistry between the two leads is undeniable, and although we got a sequel, it’s a shame they didn’t make more of these.
Zero Dark Thirty (Jan. 31)
Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty dramatizes “the greatest manhunt in history” for Osama bin Laden following the September 11 attacks. Jessica Chastain stars as fictional CIA intelligence analyst Maya, for which she a Golden Globe. In their review at the time, The Atlantic called it “a powerful, morally complicated work on an urgent subject.”
