Dui Shaw, courtesy of Bangladeshi writer-director Nuhash Humayun – who made history as the first filmmaker from Bangladesh to cop an Oscar nomination for the post-apocalyptic short film Moshari (2022), executive produced by horror master Jordan Peele and Sound of Metal star Riz Ahmed – locates grimy, cyclic folklores in …
Every Heavy Thing, the latest feature from prolific indie auteur Mickey Reece which just had its world premiere at Fantasia 2025, is a pulsing technothriller propelled by daring Lynchian experimentations. Essentially, it feels like a standalone Black Mirror episode reckoning with the threat of Big Tech in American suburbs. Mounted …
Chicago-based filmmaker Alex Phillips continues to entrench himself in underground and transgressive cinema with his sophomore feature, Anything That Moves. After 2022’s All Jacked Up and Full of Worms, about people eating and getting high on these slithery creatures, he sought another potentially polarizing idea in the vein of a …
My kids never experienced a school shooting, but one year, there was a credible threat of a weapon at their high school. My youngest caught wind of the danger and left before the school went on lockdown, walking a couple of miles home because they had no intention of dying …
Japanese director Takashi Miike is one of the most prolific directors alive. In 2025, he released three films: Shin Abarenbo Shogun, Sham, and Blazing Fists. He is known for his signature in his work, which usually merges genres. In Blazing Fists, Miike crafts a martial arts film that combines fighting, …
Brock Bodell’s feature directorial debut, Hellcat, which made its world premiere at the 2025 Fantasia International Film Festival, is a chamber survival horror-thriller that manages to be effectively tense and visceral despite a premise that we’ve come across a few too many times before. Produced and shot entirely in Nashville, …
Lurker is the debut feature by Alex Russell. He is an Emmy winner for his work as a supervising producer in Netflix’s miniseries, Beef. Besides the show with Ali Wong and Steve Yeun, the young screenwriter penned episodes of FX’s Dave and The Bear. In 2017, Russell wrote a feature …
Based on the novel of the same name by Jordan Harper, She Rides Shotgun follows Nate McClusky (Taron Egerton, Rocketman), an ex-convict who is forced to kidnap his 11-year-old daughter, Polly (Ana Sophia Heger), to protect her from a hit order issued by a neo-Nazi gang after Nate killed their …
In the new psychological horror film Saint Clare, actress Joy Rovaris takes on a role that strikes a deeply personal chord. While audiences may recognize her from portraying Bobbi Kristina opposite Vivica A. Fox, her latest project places her alongside Bella Thorne, Ryan Phillippe, and Rebecca De Mornay in a chilling …
After the laugh-a-minute riot that was Booksmart, Olivia Wilde turns her attention away from comedy to attempt a pulpy, adult thriller in the form of Don’t Worry Darling, a film that embodies the notion of sophomore slump as it wears its message on misogyny loudly, proudly and with a nuanced …
Final Destination was never a franchise that interested me as a viewer. The bloody and gratuitous violence proved an immediate turn-off. The concept of the series alone was enough to make it something that I simply never found interesting. That is what made Final Destination Bloodlines a mystery. Released back …
The duo of directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani is known for their approach to genre cinema, especially the giallo, an Italian sub-genre of slasher films marked by its distinctive visual style. They are back with their latest film, Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Reflet dans un diamant mort), a …
When Squid Game, the South Korean survival drama series created by Hwang Dong-hyuk, debuted in 2021, it took the world by storm, topping Netflix’s most-watched list barely two weeks in, and at one point becoming “the most in-demand show in the world, with 79 times as much audience interest as …
Single-location mystery thrillers are one of the tried and true genres of stage and film. When executed well, they can be an edge-of-your-seat experience and a satisfying watch. Writer/Director Christopher Landon has a history of taking high-concept versions of setups like this and delivering a good time at the movies; …
Following up on a surprisingly entertaining origin story, The Old Guard 2 attempts to expand the universe created by Greg Rucka (writer of the original The Old Guard comic and film) and once again directed for the screen – this time under the hand of Victoria Mahoney (Yelling to the …
German master crafter of epic-scope action films, Wolfgang Petersen, famous for his Academy-Award nominated 1982 World War II Das Boot, later in his life became a name in Hollywood for when you needed an author to sculpt a large-scale action film. Petersen ranges from the classic heartbreaking family movie The …
Based on the novella of the same title and featured in the anthology Dark Forces by Stephen King, The Mist narrates the story of Bridgton, Maine. A city that suffered a thunderstorm and its citizens were affected by it, having their houses destroyed, energy cut, and no cellphone signal available. …
In their debut feature film, Esta Isla (This Island), Lorraine Jones Molina and Christian Carretero narrate a story about love and crime. Bebo (Zion Ortiz) is a working-class young man who lives on an island in Puerto Rico. He fishes in the sea with his brother Charlie (Xavier Morales). They …
Ever since I watched Ilya Naishuller’s sophomore flick, Nobody (2021), starring Bob Odenkirk – a visceral action flick laced with dry, stylized humor – his name stuck in my memory. Even so, I have to admit my expectations for Heads of State were quite low. The premise sounded over-the-top even …
Everyone got really excited when Netflix announced that stars such as Saif Ali Khan and Jaideep Ahlawat would be coming together for a heist movie, Jewel Thief: The Heist Begins, and they were hoping to see a good Indian movie based on that theme. Heist is one of the genres that …