Horror has always used trauma as a foundation for some of the best of the genre. Films like TheChangeling or Don’t Look Now wouldn’t be what they are without the emotional trauma haunting their characters. However, these films also had outstanding scripts, a top-notch cast, and directors who knew how to bring it all together. How does Sleepwalker fare as a new entry into Trauma Horror? Unfortunately, like a bad dream.
Acclaimed artist Sarah (Hayden Panettiere of Scream4 & 6, TV’s Heroes) is still in the throes of grief after the loss of her daughter in a car accident. This same accident left her estranged and abusive husband, Michael (Justin Chatwin of War of the Worlds), in a coma. As Sarah’s grief begins to manifest itself in sleepwalking, her grip on reality begins to loosen, putting those around her at risk.
Director Brandon Auman attempts to craft a psychological tale that works equally well as a dark drama as it does as a horror film. Think Ari Aster’s Hereditary. However, Auman’s script lacks the nuance, depth, and frankly, the scares, of Aster’s film. The very real topics of PTSD, domestic abuse, and grief get skimmed over with broad strokes instead of being given the attention and finesse needed to be effective.
When Sleepwalker shifts into horror mode, it’s never really able to escape reliance on the dreaded jump scare and a score that telegraphs said jump scares a mile away. There’s a lack of visual flair during these scenes that robs the film of any kind of mood or atmosphere and ultimately hobbles Sleepwalker from the get-go.
Instead of being given a complex, nuanced character to play, Panettiere’s Sarah spends the entire film bouncing through a cornucopia of emotions. Her entire role boils down to “gaslit character”. Chatwin fares even worse. His Michael is a walking, talking (actually, yelling) stereotype. Having your two lead characters be such empty vessels keeps Sleepwalker from finding any kind of emotional traction.
There are lofty goals to be found within Sleepwalker, but unfortunately, the film is ultimately DOA due to a poor script, uninspired direction, and a complete lack of scares.
Damn fine year, 2025. Well, for movies it was. Magnificent original films, like Ryan Coogler’s breathtaking Sinners, as well as blistering new work from Park Chan-wook and Yorgos Lanthimos. Gorgeous literary adaptations, including Chloé Zhao’s heartbreaking Hamnet, Clint Bentley’s lonesome Train Dreams, and GDT’s wondrous Frankenstein. Breathtaking stage-to-screen visions from Paul Thomas Anderson and Thomas Kail. Incredible documentaries, the best superhero film in years, remarkable horror, unusual comedies—if you couldn’t find a movie to love this year, you were not looking. But, we had to narrow it down, so here are our 25 favorites.
One Battle After Another
Though the massive cast is characteristically littered with incredible talents crackling with the electricity of writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s script, Benicio del Toro stands out. He brings a laidback humor to the film that draws out Leonardo DiCaprio’s infectious silliness. While much of One Battle After Another is a nail-biting political thriller turned action flick, thanks to these two, it’s also one of Anderson’s funniest movies.
It may also be his most relevant. Certainly, the most of-the-moment. A master of the period piece, with this film Anderson reaches back to clarify present. By contrasting Bob’s paranoid, bumbling earnestness with the farcical evil of the Christmastime Adventurer’s Club, he satirizes exactly where we are today and why it looks so much like where we’ve been during every revolution.
But it is the filmmaker’s magical ability to populate each moment of his 2-hour-41-minute run time with authentic, understated, human detail that grounds the film in our lived-in reality and positions it as another masterpiece.
2. Sinners
Ryan Coogler reteams with longtime creative partner Michael B. Jordan to sing a song of a 1932 Mississippi juke joint. The Smoke Stack twins (Jordan) are back from Chicago, a truckload of ill-gotten liquor and a satchel full of cash along with them. They intend to open a club “for us, by us” and can hardly believe their eyes when three hillbillies come calling.
Jack O’Connell (an amazing actor in everything he’s done since Eden Lake) has a brogue and a banjo. He and his two friends would love to come on in, sing, dance, and spend some money, if only Smoke would invite them.
It’s scary. It’s sexy. The action slaps. It’s funny when it needs to be, sad just as often. It looks and sounds incredible. And there’s a cameo from Buddy F. Guy, in case you needed a little authenticity. When Ryan Coogler writes and directs a vampire movie, he gives you reason to believe there is yet new life for the old monster.
3. Train Dreams
Beautiful, lush, and quietly meditative, Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams is the kind of movie you just don’t ever get to see. It’s a wonderous, melancholy character study set against the rapidly changing America of the early 20th Century, and it is shouldered by the best performance of Joel Edgerton’s career.
Edgerton has yet to turn in a bad performance, nor even a mediocre one, but he seems custom built for this introspective figure, a witness, haunted but open and admirably vulnerable. Bentley surrounds him with so many marvelous performances, sometimes leaving an astonishing mark—on audience and protagonist alike—in only a single scene. Edgerton will no doubt be remembered this awards season, as should the film itself.
4. Hamnet
Chloé Zhao has crafted, aided by magnificent performances and hauntingly stunning cinematography from Lukasz Zal (The Zone of Interest, Cold War), a film that is shattering in its articulation that it is the depth of love that deepens and amplifies the pain of grief.
People make movies about grief all the time. We can expect one every Oscar season. But what Chloé Zhao does with Hamnet is ask us to experience that grief, not just witness it, and in experiencing it we understand the power and vital importance of art.
5. Frankenstein
Lush and gorgeous, even when it is running with blood, the world del Toro creates for his gods and monsters is breathtaking. The choices are fresh and odd, allowing for a rich image of creator and creation, the natural versus the magnificent.
Oscar Isaac is a marvel of angry arrogance made humble. As his creature, the long and limby Jacob Elordi offers a monster who’s more sensitive son than wounded manchild.
Mia Goth delivers the same uncanny grace that sets so many of her characters apart, and del Toro’s script allows Elizabeth an arc unlike any previous adaptation. You don’t wander into a Guillermo del Toro film expecting less anything than glorious excess—another reason why Frankenstein and he were meant for one another.
6. No Other Choice
Park Chan-wook’s crafted a seething satire on capitalism but manages to edge the biting farce with strange moments of deep empathy—just one example of the tonal tightrope Park doesn’t just walk, he prances across.
No Other Choice is complicated but never convoluted, constantly compelling and almost alarmingly funny. Between the intricate detail of the thriller and the gallows humor of the comedy, Park crafts a wondrously entertaining film.
7. It Was Just an Accident
This is the first film for Jafar Panahi (No Bears, Taxi, Closed Curtain) since Iran lifted his decade-long filmmaking and travel ban, and while he’s no longer filming himself in secret, Panahi’s storytelling still bursts with intimacy and courage. It Was Just an Accident is more proof that he is one of the true modern-day masters, with a clear and distinctive voice that demands attention.
8. Sentimental Value
Joachim Trier’s rich, quiet, masterfully performed film is about the places we keep our memories rather than dealing with them directly. It could be a house, like the one patriarch Gustav Borg (never-better Stellan Skarsgård) turns into a movie set. It could be the movies, or any art where the artist attempts to address conflicting emotion and memory without the interference of others’ interpretations or responses. But at the heart of these repositories is the family that fosters these memories. In this case, among others, Gustav’s daughters (Renate Reinsve, magnificent, and Inga Ibsdottter Lilleaas, also wonderful).
Sentimental Value is a gorgeously crafted family drama brimming with visual flourishes, comedic moments, heartbreak and honesty. It also boasts one of the finest ensembles of 2025.
9. Hamilton
(Released in theaters for the first time this year) The difference between seeing something live and feeling the energy exchange between cast and audience, as opposed to watching it on a screen where you’re removed from the human element of it, is often hard to overcome. (Remember Cats?) But Thomas Kail – who also directed the 2016 Broadway shows that were recorded for this film – has crafted a near perfect mix of spatial movement and character intimacy.
10. Bugonia
The script from Will Tracy and Jang Joon-hwan offers director Yorgos Lanthimos and his small but savvy (including Emma Stone and Jesse Plemmons, brazenly magnificent) cast fertile ground for the bleak absurdism the filmmaker does so well. Bugonia treads tonal shifts magnificently, slipping from comedy to thriller to horror and back with precision. Lanthimos’s control over audience emotion has never been tighter.
11. Superman
12. Pee-wee Herman as Himself
13. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
14. The Ugly Stepsister
15. Black Bag
16. Eddington
17. Hedda
18. Weapons
19. Zootopia 2
20. Friendship
21. Marty Supreme
22. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
23. A House of Dynamite
24. The Secret Agent
25. Baltimorons
Honorable mentions: Sirat, Nouvelle Vague, Warfare, Eephus
What writer/director Dalila Droege does really well with her pandemic thriller, No More Time, is capture the fear, paranoia, and rage that comes with a viral outbreak.
Hilarie (Jennifer Harlow) and her husband, Steve (Mark Reeb), flee Texas for Colorado in hopes of finding some kind of escape. They seek to disappear, leaving everyone they know behind and hiding in a vacation town in the mountains.
A radio announcer (voiced by Jim Beaver) embodies the rage that can breed from the conflicting information that comes with a viral pandemic. Beaver’s broadcaster falls into the trap of thinking that if information changes on daily basis, that makes it suspect. The vocal performance captures the blind anger that comes from a place of deep fear and distrust.
However, that doesn’t mean that, within this world, the radio is entirely wrong. There is something very disturbing about the virus.
Droege effectively captures the ways in which our society can easily fall apart when faced with an external, existential threat. The idea of mean-world syndrome permeates nearly every moment that Steve and Hilarie interact with the people around them.
To juxtapose the deep schisms growing among the human population, Droege peppers peaceful scenes of the ecosystem throughout. The environment glows in opposition to the violence brewing in the human world.
Droege’s instinct for dialog is not as strong. At times the lines are so heavy handed as to be unbelievable.
But the overall effect of the film is deeply unsettling and familiar. Though the virus at the heart of No More Time is vastly different than the one we endured, the emotions are the same. We can learn from past mistakes, or fall into the same fear, paranoia, and anger that crippled us in the past and permeates the world of No More Time.
Unsettling close-ups of eyes and haunting music opens director Yann Gozlan’s thriller, Visions.
Estelle (Diane Kruger) is a successful commercial pilot who lives a seemingly idyllic life with her husband, Guillaume (Mathieu Kassovitz). However, it’s clear early on that Estelle keeps herself under strict control. Small details show how tightly wound she is.
Her ordered life is upended when she is reunited with an old friend, Ana (Marta Nieto). As Estelle’s opposite, Ana’s disorder is a little too on the nose. In one scene, Estelle is as rigid in her stance as Ana is fluid. Because of how heavy-handed they’re presented as foils, the two characters feel hollow.
As many women coiled too tightly, Estelle unravels rapidly. Violent dreams leave marks on her body. She begins to see eyes peeping in on her in various situations. There are several tense moments between Estelle and her husband, as well as between Estelle and Ana.
Kruger is impeccable, carrying the bulk of the film’s emotional weight. It’s unfortunate that the story can’t match her intensity. The film is often frustratingly opaque, leaving the audience with little to try to unravel as Estelle’s visions haunt her. Too many pieces seem smashed together with little narrative cohesion.
The overall effect is tedious. It’s hard to care about characters that are never fully realized. Each person in Estelle’s orbit is mere shadow. And the mystery at the heart of Estelle’s “visions” is less interesting than certain extreme moments she spends in the cockpit of a plane.
The focus on eyes is one of the more compelling features of Visions, but on the whole, it doesn’t succeed in keeping our eyes glued to the screen.
Oscar winner and perennial contender Kate Winslet makes her directorial debut with the Christmastime family drama, Goodbye June. What drew the esteemed thespian behind the camera? A script by her son, Joe Anders.
The film tells the tale of June (Helen Mirren), whose cancer has returned just two weeks before Christmas. Her doting, anxiety riddled son, Connor (Johnny Flynn), and her husband (Timothy Spall) get her to the hospital and wait for the rest of the family to come in and, well, take over.
These are the sisters: Julia (Winslet), Molly (Andrea Riseborough), and Helen (Toni Collette).
Pause to marvel at this cast.
It would be hard to go wrong with any one of those humans, and indeed, Winslet’s ensemble—Riseborough and Spall, in particular—craft lived-in characters, each one’s behavior naturally amplified because of the situation. June is dying.
Winslet captures the chaos, simultaneously merry and discordant, in a big family brimming with little kids all cramped in a hospital room or running wild through its halls. The child actors are quite good, not to mention awfully cute.
Anders’s script doesn’t overexplain, mercifully. The details aren’t terribly necessary if you’ve ever been in or near a family. Molly kind of hates Julia. This hurts Julia, who is also mortified by Molly’s controlling, even bullying behavior with hospital staff. Everyone thinks Helen’s a flake. Likewise, everyone is fed up with Dad and filled with a mixture of tenderness and disappointment in Connor.
Credit Anders, as well, for avoiding the cliché of the sainted, dying mother in the hospital bed. A charmingly mischievous Mirren is unapologetic but loving, still getting in digs here and there that have no doubt worn down her children over the decades. Helen shouldn’t wear yellow. Julia needs to look after everyone, but not in that overbearing way she sometimes has.
The fine-tuned performances are nearly undone by the superficial plot, unfortunately. Goodbye June is saddled with obviousness bordering on the maudlin that Winslet and her inarguably talented cast can’t quite transcend. Winslet’s crafted a holiday tearjerker with a fine but conspicuous message.
For as many horror films as I watch, it’s rare for one to truly unnerve or scare me. The ones that do tend to hit a deeply held fear or anxiety. Director Pedro Martín-Calero’s film The Wailing hits one of those fears—the fear of not being believed.
Co-writing with Isabel Peña, Martín-Calero movie follows several women as they encounter a sinister presence. Each section of film follows a different woman, traveling backward and forward in time to show how each one is impacted by the violent entity in their lives.
The first is Andrea (Ester Expósito). While walking home one day, the music on her phone is interrupted by the ethereal wailing of one or more women.
The film’s tension picks up quickly. One especially frightening scene pairs the fear of not being believed with the anxiety of being ignored. As Andrea pleads and screams for help in a crowded room, onlookers simply stare at her, unmoving and unmoved.
It’s these moments, and several quieter ones, where the film excels. As the suspense and mystery grows, it’s clear the takeaway is that when women are ignored, everyone is the worse for it. While the women are the most negatively and directly impacted, the violence has a sinister spread with the potential to affect everyone in it orbit.
The only element the film struggles with is how to convey text conversation. The choice to overlay images with text messages is distracting and negates the rising tension.
Fortunately, this is only an issue during Andrea’s story. Then the film moves back in time to follow Camila (Malena Villa) as she interacts with Andrea’s mother, Marie (Mathilde Olliver).
The Wailing excels in following a reverse timeline to explore the extended metaphor of the long-term effects of not believing women. The film ends on what could be construed as a hopeful note, but the choice of how we move forward is left to the audience to decide. Believing women is the first step; what comes next is up to us.
Co-writers/directors Paul Grandersman and Peter S. Hall experiment with concept of found footage in an often unique and puzzling feature, Man Finds Tape.
While there are times that the film feels less than original—an influencer suggests he’s stumbled onto something supernatural only to be believed a fraud—the mystery itself is something I haven’t seen before.
Lynn (Kelsey Pribilski) and her brother Lucas (William Magnuson) are not close. She left their small Texas town shortly after their parents died, while Lucas knocked around the old house, falling slowly into depression, until he came across a MiniDV with his name on it. He shares the find online, creating a big conspiracy that screws up Lynn’s documentary career.
So, when he calls her up asking her to watch another video, she’s understandably, even angrily reluctant. But she’s worried about him, so she watches. And while the footage itself is genuinely intriguing, Lynn’s more unnerved by the affect the footage has when her brother watches it. Turns out, every person living in Larkin, Texas has the same reaction. Only Lynn is unaffected.
So, Lynn sets out to document what’s happening, which is how all the various formats of found footage are stitched together. This gives the film a Shelby Oaks or Strange Harvest vibe that leeches some originality from the concept.
But for a good while, it is an interesting concept. Both Pribilski and Magnuson convince as bickering siblings, and most of the ensemble—primarily playing townies happy to be interviewed for Lynn’s documentary—are a lot of fun. Meanwhile, Brian Villalobos approaches his role as “The Stranger” with a fascinating air of smug disgust.
Man Finds Tape delivers an often-engrossing metaphor about parasitic predation dressed as religion, and its particularly harmful effect on small, Southern towns. But Hall and Gandersman write themselves into a corner and the final solution to the mystery is unsatisfying. It’s too bad, because for a good while, they really had something.
Mockumentaries may not have enjoyed the same rise in popularity as found footage did – at least in the feature film world – but this subgenre still holds a special place in the hearts of many filmgoers. Comedy is where the mockumentary especially took hold. Films like Borat, This is Spinal Tap, What We Do in the Shadows, and the groundbreaking oeuvre of Christopher Guest not only rank as some of the best mockumentaries ever made, they are also seen as some of the best comedies ever made. While Time Travel is Dangerous doesn’t meet the level of these particular films, it is a quirky and fun addition to the genre.
Best friends Ruth and Megan run a relatively successful vintage shop in the London suburb of Muswell Hill. After finding a time machine near a dumpster, the two begin using it to travel into the past to find items to sell in their shop. Unaware of the “rules” of time travel, their journeys to the past begin to unravel space and time.
Time Travel is Dangerous isn’t the ornery variety of comedy, like Borat or What We Do in the Shadows. There’s a sweet silliness to the film that wraps you in a warm blanket but also doesn’t treat the audience like a group of blockheads. The science behind Time Travel is Dangerous isn’t the most important aspect of the film, but director Chris Reading isn’t interested in pushing it aside to make the film more digestible either. Unlike many time-travel-related films, viewers won’t need a diagram to follow along. I’m looking at you Primer.
Instead of falling headfirst into a complicated plot, Time Travel is Dangerous puts the characters front and center. Actors Ruth Syratt and Megan Stevenson bring the identically named characters to life with a world-weary familiarity. Their decision to use the time machine to travel into the past to collect merchandise for their store is exactly the dumb thing most people would do with such power. Ain’t no one going back to stop the assassination of JFK or see Dinosaurs.
Reading wisely doesn’t let the film get too “big” for its budget or the winky tone. The mix of practical effects and CGI keeps with the overall silliness of the film without just looking cheap. If you can’t do a great-looking flying DeLorean, then a modestly looking flying van will have to do.
Time Travel is Dangerous isn’t full of belly laughs or tear-inducing howls. What it does do, though, is keep a smile on your face for a full 99 minutes.
Socio-political allegory and science fiction storytelling go together like peanut butter and chocolate. One can enjoy their tastes separately, but when combined in the right portions, they taste even better together. The trick, of course, is in getting that mixture right. Making sure that the visuals, themes, world-building, and characters are all executed at a high level. When that’s done, we are handed gems like RoboCop, Children of Men, They Live, Nemesis, Gattaca, or any number of Twilight Zone episodes.
Writer/director Timo Vuorensola (Iron Sky) gets a lot right with Altered. This film posits a post-apocalyptic society that outwardly seems like a utopia but is anything but for anyone who is not deemed genetically perfect by its leaders and culture. Those “unblemished” by genetic “deficiencies” are referred to as the Genetics. They are the “pure” ruling class.
Anyone deemed imperfect – those who are disabled in any way – are called the “Specials”. They are allowed to contribute to society, but generally only through manual labor and menial jobs. Platitudes of equality and unity are dished out in public speeches by the Genetics, but inequality is the true atmosphere of this world. Something that the Specials would like to change.
The world-building is effective, and the themes are relevant. The execution? Not so much. One can see what the film’s core message is meant to be – that we are all important and have worth to society – but these themes are frequently muddled by character and storytelling choices that undercut them throughout. Brief bursts of sci-fi action involving a (pretty silly) plant-powered super suit help to paper this over in bits, but it’s never enough to offset the often undercooked writing.
New lower-budget sci-fi movies roll out by the dozens each and every year. Given that Altered is on the higher end of those in terms of production value and cast (Tom Felton, Elizaveta Bugulova, Richard Brake, etc.), hardcore sci-fi fans may still find a bit to enjoy here. Casual viewers will find far less within to hold their attention. It’s a film that does have at least something going on under the hood, but there’s not enough gas in the tank to get it across the finish line.
It’s generally a good bet that if Jared Harris is in your film, it will be worth watching.
This is certainly the case for writer/director Virginia Gilbert’s Reawakening, and the cast surrounding Harris help elevate the entire film.
On the tenth anniversary of their daughter Clare’s disappearance, John (Harris) and Mary (Juliet Stevenson) make a renewed plea to the public to help them in their search for their daughter. It’s made known through subtle pieces of conversation that Clare wasn’t kidnapped but ran away from home at the age of 14.
Brief flashbacks show pieces from the past that help to explain the events leading up to Clare’s departure, but these moments never overshadow the present narrative. We frequently see how her disappearance continues to affect her parents. Mary’s grief is overwhelming. John looks for his daughter in the faces of every young woman he passes. Both have continued with their lives, but it’s clear they will never move on from their loss.
This is a subtle thriller, as the twists and turns play second fiddle to a poignant character study. Harris takes center stage as first a grieving father, then a skeptical one as a woman claiming to be Clare (Erin Doherty) enters their lives. It’s not hard to understand why Mary and John have such divergent reactions to the return of their daughter. Their reactions underscore both blind hope and stunning disbelief.
The film’s subtlety sometimes works against it. There are small moments that are easy to miss even though they play an important role in the overall narrative.
But what works for this film is the veracity of this small family as they seek answers and struggle to reconnect. Harris, especially, sells his role as a father who just wants to know what really happened to his beloved daughter.
It’s a moving analysis of family trauma that resonates long after the credits roll.
