After half a decade focusing on high-concept silliness, like the giant-fly tragicomedy Mandibles and the leather-jacket thriller Deerskin, Dupieux follows his more ridiculous impulses by letting the midnight horror anthology stay up until Saturday morning, blending gore and guffaws in an amiable, breezy comedy.

A lot of dreamlike logic floats through a freakish onslaught of dependably scary imagery strung together by what fits a moment versus the fluid nature of a more captivating survival scenario.

This time around, Murder Mystery 2 isn’t much of an actual murder mystery at all, less interested in the deductive skills of the Spitzes than in their indefatigable charm.

Thanks to Rye Lane’s specificity and care for its central relationship, Allen-Miller has made one of the best British comedies–certainly one of the best London-based films—of the last decade.

Though the film can at times feel long-winded—a common predicament when transitioning from shorts to features—it is a heady and hypnotic parable for the irreparable ecological harm humans have committed, while insisting that it’s not too late to connect and reconcile with the land that nurtures us.

The technical merits and performance strengths are beyond competent here, but that’s before the 90-minute mark washes everything in the dullest shades of unsustained tension.

As the film moves further and further from its inciting secret, watching Inez and her son age, it fades beneath their countless tone-shifting hardships—revealing a film stronger when its close-shot realism is echoed in the script.

Jeon truly shines. Her chameleon-like ability to turn from a concerned mom to a dangerous killer, without the viewer doubting either aspect of her persona, is riveting.

Is Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves a fun watch? Sure. The spectacle is impressive at times, with better CG than most peers in its class. It works best as a romp and a primer for kids with parents itching to open their minds to D&D play. In terms of its cinematic impact, though, there’s too much that’s too familiar, which makes it slight and forgettable.

As soon as you unearth a place’s past, it lives on in you—changes you. This is the heart of folk horror that Enys Men speaks to, but its dull, repetitive, padded delivery of images makes its genre findings (in words British enough to befit the film) weak tea.

Everything on screen is stupendous. This is what we want, to watch John Wick murder the whole world, forever and ever amen.

A Good Person winds up with the ambition of a novel, but little of the richness.

Leave tells a story about the monsters of humanity, but is shy about terrifying its audience—a tragic flaw that cuts the genre’s volume like unplugging an amplifier mid-performance.

With its team assembled, Joy Ride descends into a fearless and unpredictable romp packed to the brim with absurd and unapologetically raunchy humor.

Netflix’s adaptation of author Kate DiCamillo’s The Magician’s Elephant makes some fatal tone mistakes in trying to smoosh together comedy, tragedy, childhood wonder and animal exploitation—which clash pretty hard.

This fearless, authentic debut showcases immense command of a unique and inventive form of humor, while touching on a very real issue with heart and candor.

The beauty of National Anthem is that it effortlessly challenges all expectations and preconceived notions.

The first film to grace the beloved franchise in a decade, Evil Dead Rise is everything you could ask for from an Evil Dead flick: It’s disgusting enough to make you physically recoil, it’s funny as hell and, perhaps most importantly, it might just wield more blood than I’ve ever seen in a movie.

If you’re lucky enough to feel the presence built by this film, you’ll find one of the most rewarding and impressive genre films of the year so far, and proof that Geoghegan has plenty more to offer us as a horror storyteller.

Is it a tragedy of genre saturation, both movie-haltingly flashy and deeply unimpressive. Everything is constantly moving and you don’t feel a thing.

Tetris is repetitive, melodramatic and surprisingly uneventful.

Ruskin’s examination of the social and political elements that enabled the Strangler, and which held people like McLaughlin in contempt for attempting to serve the public good, is bold. In his next film, he should apply that same boldness toward an aesthetic purpose, too.

Thanks to a persistently effective sense of atmosphere and a great cast, these elements coalesce into a compelling, often unpredictable horror story, and announce Zarcilla as an exciting genre voice to watch.

As they often do, Tomlin and Fonda make their material look sharper than it really is.

Inside‘s concept holds creative possibility, yes, but without much, if any, applied, it’s just a guy stuck in an apartment for 105 minutes, going through various stages of disbelief, acceptance, mania, determination and setback as days, weeks and months go by, and desperation becomes more of a necessity than a last resort.

With the help of Sennott, who co-wrote the script, Seligman squeezes every ounce of humor out of each of the film’s thoughtfully-crafted scenarios—for better or worse.

Where Grabbers is a raucous gem, Unwelcome is subdued, more polished but sadder.

What Scream VI ultimately lacks, on the other hand, is a clear sense of what it’s trying to say beyond the literal plot unfolding on screen.

Beck and Woods seem to have an entirely misguided conception of what people love about B-movies in the first place and, like A Quiet Place, 65 flounders in this middle ground because it won’t commit to being a genre film.

A story about drug addiction, corrupt authorities, and environmental collapse sounds grim on paper and plays grim on screen, but Unicorn Wars is more than “grim.” It’s deranged.

All of A Little White Lie’s problems can be summarized by Alex Wurman’s score. At first promising, inviting and light to compliment the fundamental cheeriness of the genre, it becomes all-encompassing, bearing down on the viewer with a menacing edge.

Kurt Wimmer’s newfangled Children of the Corn is a rotten husk of a Stephen King adaptation.

The Civil Dead sounds like a buddy comedy on the surface, but Tatum and Thomas pull a bait-and-switch, with the film ending up much sadder than expected (while still quite funny) and even evoking elements of The Banshees of Inisherin.

Either Ritchie didn’t bring his typical slickness for the ride, or he’s chopped up Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre intentionally to take the piss out of the genre. The effect at least feels more like comfort than boredom.

Even when Creed III treads familiar ground, this series feels like the ideal outlet for the on-screen persona Jordan is building: a resilient man who needs to better understand the power he’s fought so hard for.

Warren’s craftsmanship keeps the audience from swallowing a breath. He’s a merciless filmmaker, deeply considerate of his choices in staging and casting.

Simón’s first feature film, Summer 1993, was praised for her seamless blending of real life and fiction, crafting a sense of earned authenticity. Alcarràs accomplishes something similar.

Nobody watched Luther for serious social commentary or a moral compass—you watched it because Idris Elba is a beautiful man with arguably the world’s best voice ,and you got to see him catch bad guys played by other good actors. On that level, Luther: The Fallen Sun delivers.

The 70-year-old Neeson lacks both the physical stamina and charisma to pull off the Marlowe character; his fight and action sequences are sluggish and incredulous, and there’s zero chemistry between Marlowe and Clare Cavendish (Diane Kruger), the beautiful blond who hires him to investigate the sudden disappearance of her former lover Nico Peterson.

We Have a Ghost may not stand toe-to-toe with the dual brilliance of Freaky and Happy Death Day, but it’s proof that Christopher Landon still feels like he’s just getting started.

I don’t love every storytelling element, but I do adore all that involves the star of the show, an aggro bear on obscene amounts of blow. You’ll get what you pay for, and can we ask much more from Cocaine Bear?

Antebi sets his own tone and masters it. The movie has the rush and the desperation of a fresh start.

While [West] gets credit for trying to pull off some unwieldy, contrived storylines with conviction, it’s in its final moments that Linoleum nearly buckles under its own weight. West is not content to let his film speak in pure abstractions, and is convinced that it’s better to give clear, explicit explanations for a story that would be better off trading solely in metaphor.

While China’s propaganda department made sure the film was imbued with a definitive moral, there’s a subtle pleasure in a spy story otherwise intoxicated with its own smokescreen.

In a case of cinematic superposition, a franchise built to go small, to ride on more personal stakes and the casual chemistry of Ruddian charm and likable group dynamics, must now also fully introduce not only an entire universe/microverse but the next Thanos-level threat much of the MCU will be centered around in the coming decade. Frankly, it’s a lot to ask of an insect-themed hero.

While the film’s ending feels a bit abrupt and cheesy, Of an Age boasts phenomenal performances and a salient (if somber) central truth.

Undoubtedly, filmmakers like O’Connor wish to honor their subjects instead of idly speculating. Emily performs that complicated maneuver with casual ease, proving that for the right kind of movies, actors make the best kind of directors.

The Outwaters’ chthonic calling card showcases a jack-of-all-trades horror artist, even when it’s more upsetting than scary, but its labyrinth can quickly feel like a straight line, skillfully obscured.

Though it does hint at the toxicity and conspiratorial nature of a powerful institution, it never finds root in overt observations. It handles too many threads—childhood tragedy, murder cover-ups, clandestine spiritual rites—without the dexterity to effectively weave them together.

More than anything, Your Place or Mine will probably just make you wish you’d watched an old Kutcher or Witherspoon flick this Valentine’s Day, instead.

The heist-adjacent film presents a mesmerizing vision of New York that relishes in the city’s more intimate details while painting an overarching picture of those who survive by scamming one feckless schmuck after another.

Thanks to its two young stars, At Midnight shines just bright enough to keep us watching, and sometimes that’s all we really want.

It’s not every day that you see a by-the-books rom-com squeezing in a semi-twist ending, and Franco does so in an admirably sneaky, cheeky, subtle way. Similarly, Somebody’s moments of genuine, heartfelt drama are bound to pull on your heartstrings.

It’s a shame. Jeff Ryan’s Mean Spirited voices relevant and vile concerns about social media soullessness, but its commentary is neutered by shaky execution.

For those looking for more razzle-dazzle with assless chaps, Magic Mike’s Last Dance may test your patience with its meandering middle. But Channing Tatum is so damn skilled as a dancer, comedian and romantic hero, he rewards the patient.

It’s a slow-burning gem, and a wonderful addition to an already robust 2023 horror slate.

Released a little under two years since Shyamalan’s previous film, Knock at the Cabin plays like an old dog who learned new tricks. It’s a sharper, more propulsive and formally exciting dramatic thriller that has far fewer disappointments in storytelling and visuals than 2021’s Old while revisiting and expanding upon familiar themes of family that Shyamalan has explored his entire career.

80 for Brady isn’t going to add to anyone’s long list of Oscar nominations, but it definitely moves the goalpost for the kind of movies audiences want to see. To mix up my sports metaphors, I hope the box office hits it out of the ballpark and we get more female-oriented, age-defying movies like this.

The Blind Man Who Did Not Want To See Titanic gives Poikolainen’s fiercely charismatic lead performance such a thrilling, empathetic home.

Stuffed with motormouths and throwaway gags, the chunky animation can be a little off-putting, but its momentary ugliness feeds into its delightfully dark villains, its underdog heroes and the strange story tying them all together.

A remarkable real-life, low-artifice spy thriller becomes unremarkable fiction.

Passages is this close, painful, sexy twisting of the screws at its best, as Sachs and his frequent co-writer Mauricio Zacharias observe the havoc wreaked by a bisexual brat’s latest dalliance.

Directed by Jacqueline Castel in her feature debut, My Animal’s moody dreams are in a territorial brawl with its small-town realism, which in turn barks and snaps at its soapy plot. Its fable eventually hunts down more than a trite analogy for perceived deviance, but its blend of visual and narrative tones favors the laconic over the lycanthropic.

If you assent, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is endlessly rewarding, a tactile sense-memory tapestry of all the things that matter.

It’s a piercing portrayal of culturally specific nerd rage in Tomine’s comics; on film, it’s a little talky, and could’ve used more Ghost World-style moments of caricature, like that savaging of Crazy Rich Asians at the opening. But while Shortcomings doesn’t turn Ben into a misanthropic hero or excuse his often-terrible behavior, it does stick to the ethos he espouses early in the picture: This is a movie full of people who are flawed, and real.

Rather than containing relatable multitudes in a compact story ready-made for online sharing, a bigger-screen Cat Person turns paper-thin.

You Hurt My Feelings, which confronts middle-aged neuroses and creative anxieties with all the subtlety of a bestselling author with a new Twitter account, still finds warmth amid its middling dramedy.

If you’re down for a light comedy with a very specific audience, pitched somewhere between Wet Hot American Summer and John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch, AdirondACTS welcomes you (and your prepared monologue—you did prepare a monologue, right?) with open arms.

Rich with subtext and warring cultural iconography, it’s got body horror, religious doubt and enough delicious flesh to leave gorehounds completely sated. Colorful and bold, it’s a beautifully scary affair.

Hilarious, scary, tragic and sometimes flat-out jaw-dropping, Kokomo City is a gripping and accessible dissection of modern life, told through a brutally specific point of view.

Scrapper isn’t funny or sweet enough to overcome some of its more cutesy leanings, and it’s not inventive enough to stand out from its peers covering the same kind of burgeoning parent-child relationship. But it hangs together, as brief and unsatisfying as its narrative may be, which proves Regan capable of pulling off a feature, even if we’ll need to wait for a second film to fully see her more off-the-wall ideas flourish.

The intimacy of the narrative reveals how the script influences Tremblay’s direction rather than the other way around.

The voiceover-heavy storytelling is exhausting and weightless, despite Keshavarz’s clear affection for and closeness to these women.

Half high-concept enlightenment satire, half exhausting family dramedy, Bad Behaviour is as tedious as its leads’ search for inner peace.

The film’s other performances aren’t as engaging as Seydoux and young Martins, which means One Fine Morning itself sometimes feels like it’s muddling through with Sandra’s same weariness, too faithfully reproducing the repetitions of real life.

Life Upside Down is a clunky, graceless movie, but it’s utterly engrossing as a stage for letting Odenkirk, Mitchell, Huston and the rest vent their own stir craziness. If you think of the film as more of an outlet than a functioning narrative, it gains value. But that reflective detail isn’t enough to hold our attention, no matter how likable and gifted its authors.

Playing in the stylish, piss-taking space of Gurinder Chadha and Edgar Wright, Manzoor’s feature debut attacks adolescent fears—failing to achieve your dreams, settling for less, fading from loved ones—with spin-kicks, fake mustaches and evil plots so absurdly sinister that even the most jaded, monosyllabic teens will have to crack a smile.

It’s a sullen, trauma-driven approach to horror that’s far less traditional and reliant on human monsters amidst magical mysteries—not a killshot. This prolonged approach lacks decadent suspense or encompassing dread.

Infinity Pool’s inspired critique of this crowd is fierce and funny, its hallucinations nimble and sticky, and its encompassing nightmare one you’ll remember without needing to break out the vacation slideshow.

While Mark Hammer’s script has a few zingers, it’s the stacked supporting cast that makes the movie pop.

The Lair is an abomination of bad accents (“Texan American” yee-haw, “Unintelligible Englishman,” Australian muddying both), excruciating action hero one-liners, and discouragingly archaic plot choices.

Not just an incredible waste of a spectacular performance, but a film more caught up in ogling tragedy than dealing with it.

Teen Wolf, the series, excelled at weaving long emotional threads together not just over many episodes, but multiple seasons; a single 2-hour movie just doesn’t leave room for that kind of slow burn. But the trouble here runs deeper, as even with Allison’s supernatural return in the mix, there’s just not enough on the screen to justify The Movie even trying to weave something new together for those two hours.

The visceral thrills and quiet abominations of the journey are enjoyable, and worth the watch for Hathaway’s circling of McKenzie like a shark smelling preemptively spilt blood in the water; that is, until she realizes she’s a little more dangerous than her usual prey.

[A] triumphant narrative feature debut.

Domont’s compellingly drawn portrait of entitlement, impotence and the amplified conservative values of the bros casting the bones of capitalism is a violent delight, filled with tough scenes. Yet, its unpredictable ending is such a triumphantly visceral showdown that the impossible is achieved: The excruciating intensity is completely worth powering through.

If ever there was a case made that being on the right side of history, in the right place and with the right story isn’t enough to make satisfying non-fiction, Kim’s Video is it.

Kids vs. Aliens is a harmless trifle. A filmmaker with this many years under their belt should have more to show for themselves than that.

It’s a movie about a toxic relationship that digs into the harrowing psychological details of mental and verbal abuse without exploiting it. It’s also a single-minded PSA picture — indie portraiture with hardly any identifying details filled in.

This exhaustively sanitized, overly saccharine take on the hero’s journey is certainly nothing new, but it remains rather uninteresting.

Jethica is impressive as a feat of economy—there’s a lot of movie packed into that 70 minutes—and miraculous as an act of empathy rolled up in a spooky, constitutionally American ghost fable, where the lost souls wandering the shoulder of far-flung highways may really be that, and where a simple traffic sign gains new meaning contextualized with Ohs’ thoughts on death: “Pass with care.”

By the end, the movie feels less like a canny reflection of true-crime fascination than a weak imitation of it — screen life, reduced to mere pixels.

Great slashers manage to construct a fragile sequence of interactions and objects that tumble down and exact a gory toll—Sick understands this better than most.

Anybody could direct this kind of story, and many already have. But There’s Something Wrong with the Children is right in Benjamin’s wheelhouse, and her skill with this familiar set-up is a major boon.

This is a daring, unsettling, inscrutable and at times deeply boring venture into the farthest boundaries of horror esotericism, utterly unlike anything that most viewers will have ever seen before.

Saint Omer views Kabou’s crime and the story unfolding in its wake through the lenses of motherhood and daughterhood, arguing that neither can be disentwined from the other.

By laying off the action-movie gas pedal, Plane makes Butler, performing in his native Scottish accent, more warmly likable than he’s been in years.

As with any ensemble piece, The Drop’s success relies on its characters, and for the most part, they are largely ineffective—much of which has to do with the central friend group coming across as an ill-fitted hodgepodge of eccentrics with little to nothing in common.