Category: Psychological Drama
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It Ends Review: Alexander Ullom Turns Existential Dread Into Horror
Alexander Ullom’s “It Ends” turns existential dread into an unsettling portrait of post-pandemic Gen-Z anxiety. With four friends trapped on an endless road, this deceptively simple horror film asks the question that’s perhaps scarier than any monster: what happens when the panic wears off and you’re still not sure what comes next?
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Backrooms Review: Kane Pixels Brings the Internet’s Most Unsettling Universe to the Big Screen
At just 20 years old, Kane Parsons — known online as Kane Pixels — has delivered one of the most anticipated horror films of 2026, and A24’s biggest opening weekend in the studio’s history. Backrooms, the feature film adaptation of Parsons’ viral YouTube series, arrives with the weight of enormous expectation and an internet fandom…
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Blue Heron (2026) Review: Sophy Romvari’s Debut Is a Quietly Devastating Portrait of Family and Memory
In her feature debut, Blue Heron, director Sophy Romvari draws from her own childhood to craft an intimate, semi-autobiographical portrait of family, memory, and the quiet devastation of losing someone who was never fully yours to keep. Through a lived-in visual language, restrained performances, and a narrative that blurs the line between memory and reality,…
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Hokum Review: Adam Scott Anchors a Haunting Study of Guilt and Reality
Hokum blends Irish folklore with psychological horror, using guilt and grief to blur the line between reality and the supernatural. Led by Adam Scott, Damian McCarthy delivers a haunting and emotionally grounded genre piece.
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Parallel Tales: How “The Drama” and “Our Hero, Balthazar” Use Dark Comedy to Confront America’s Gun Violence Crisis
In the same season, two films independently chose America’s gun violence epidemic as their narrative catalyst — one a dark romantic comedy starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, the other a debut feature about performative activism and male loneliness. “The Drama” and “Our Hero, Balthazar” couldn’t be more different in tone and approach, yet together they…
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Heel Review: Jan Komasa’s Twisted Psychological Thriller Explores Control, Generational Chaos, and the Cost of Forced Rehabilitation
Formerly titled Good Boy, Heel sees director Jan Komasa crafting a psychologically unsettling examination of control, morality, and generational conflict. When a reckless 19-year-old influencer obsessed with online “clout” wakes up chained in the basement of a seemingly respectable family, what begins as a disturbing kidnapping evolves into something far more complex: a warped attempt…
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Send Help Review: Sam Raimi Turns Workplace Toxicity Into Savage Survival Horror
What begins as a familiar corporate nightmare quickly mutates into something far more vicious. In Send Help, Sam Raimi transforms workplace toxicity, inherited power, and gendered labor into a brutal survival horror, where hierarchy collapses the moment it can no longer be performed. With Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien locked in a razor-sharp power struggle,…
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Sound of Falling Review: Mascha Schilinski’s Haunting Portrait of Women, Memory, and Witnessing
Mascha Schilinski’s The Sound of Falling is a haunting, non-linear meditation on women, memory, and the quiet violence of witnessing. Spanning generations within the same farmhouse, the film examines curiosity, abuse, and identity through fragmented vignettes that echo across time. It’s a work that lingers—less something to solve than something to feel.
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Dead Man’s Wire Review: Gus Van Sant’s Tense True-Crime Reckoning With Capitalism
Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire revisits a bizarre 1970s hostage crisis to interrogate desperation, capitalism, and media spectacle. Anchored by a career-best performance from Bill Skarsgård, the film refuses easy moral answers, instead asking whether its central figure was insane—or simply pushed there by a system designed to break him.
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Top 30 Films of 2025: A Year Defined by Risk, Reckoning, and Reinvention
A personal ranking of the 30 films that defined my 2025 — shaped by risk-taking, reinvention, and moral reckoning. From intimate character studies to bold genre experiments, these are the films that lingered, challenged expectations, and revealed where cinema felt most alive this year.