The best way to start a new year is by celebrating the old! 2025 saw me watch less new films than usual but as per usual, I stuck up for the weirdos.
In alphabetical order, these are the movies that stuck with me, kept me thinking and guessing and analyzing for months:
BIRDEATER dir. Jack Clark & Jim Weir
BUGONIA dir. Yorgos Lanthimos
THE LUCKIEST MAN IN AMERICA dir. Samir Oliveros
SINNERS dir. Ryan Coogler
WOLF MAN dir. Leigh Whanell
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Today marks the last episode of Year 4 of The Movies. As such and as part of a yearly tradition, I take the last episode of each year to reflect on the good, bad and generally insane aspects of the show. I thank everybody who came on the show and anyone who helped me keep this thing rolling. Finally, I lay out some goals for 2026 to help grow and strengthen The Movies for another 12 months.
2025 ended up being my most prolific year to date but I'm just getting started, friends. Buckle in.
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Credit Song: "Blue" - Moving Mountains
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ONIBABA is one of Willem Dafoe's favorite movies, as his visit to the Criterion Closet confirms. In finally watching Kaneto Shindo's moody 1964 drama, I found it to have a spiritual cousin in one of Dafoe's films, THE LIGHTHOUSE.
Both movies center on a couple isolated from most of the world, whose work provides the sole respite for their otherwise stress-addled minds. In the latter, it's two American lighthouse keeper from the early 20th Century. In ONIBABA, a mother and her daughter-in-law survive impoverishment during medieval Japanese wartime by killing wayward samurai and escaped soldiers, stripping them of all possessions and chucking their corpses into a deep, dark hole.
This bizarre yet practiced routine is interrupted when a neighbor, who knew the women's son/husband, returns, looking to rebuild his life. His arrogance and oafishness begins to complicated the women's relationship, slowly deteriorating over time.
Shindo's movie is minimalist at heart, employing straightforward blocking and camera movements to get the story across, but it's not simple-minded. It plays like a Buddhist fable, allowing the spiritual and metaphorical to permeate through an otherwise grounded drama about human psychology and the fear of leaving one's familiar, if destitute, life behind for the uncertain future. It has a Gothic streak in its intense black-and-white cinematography, eerie dreaminess and frank sense of sexuality.
ONIBABA is slow to start but where it ends left me satisfied, ready to uncover more of Shindo's filmography.
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Guillermo del Toro has yet to find any boundaries when it comes to intimacy within a story or the scope of its telling. He uses genre like a stained palette, leaving residue of fusions and clear-cut influences.
So it makes sense that his debut, CRONOS, is no different. Del Toro reinvents the vampire using alchemy, entomology, Gothic principles, the mixture of Medevial and Renaissance periods. But anchoring this smattering of ideas is the simplest one: the unconditional love between a grandfather and granddaughter.
Jesus Gris (Federico Luppi) is a Mexican antique shop owner raising his granddaughter Aurora (Tamara Xanath). One day, they discover a golden egg-shaped device hidden in one of the shop's archangel statues. After fumbling with the device's dial, Jesus is wounded when the Cronos machine pops out sharp, insect-like legs and latches itself into his hand, Facehugger-style.
What starts as mere accident lingers in Jesus' mind as he finds himself not only drawn to the device but also its method of doling out pain. The more Jesus uses the Cronos device, the more vivacious and young he feels. But this newfound rejuvenation comes with an aching appetite for flesh, for blood.
CRONOS introduces many of the subjects found throughout Del Toro's 30+ year career: death, fatherhood, the clash between an archaic past and promising future, Ron Perlman. It sometimes feels as though the movie is incapable of holding all the thought that went into its world's development but that's part of what I enjoy about Del Toro. His movies are never complete after first viewing. In a way, they're the amuse bouche to the boundless mind that hides beneath, a mere foyer to a curious mansion.
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It's time to talk about the black sheep of the HALLOWEEN franchise: SEASON OF THE WITCH.
This 1982 paranoid sci-fi thriller infamously did not center around Michael Myers but instead on Silver Shamrock, a company whose trendy Halloween masks become the subject of scrutiny after an elderly shop owner is murdered by a mysterious assailant in the hospital. The old man had arrived the night before clutching one of the masks, whispering to Dr. Daniel Challis (Tom Atkins) that "they're gonna kill us all."
Challis and the man's daughter Ellie (Stacey Nelkin) retrace the shop owner's steps to Santa Mira, California, a sleepy small town and the home of Silver Shamrock. And as they feel the town's collective eyes fix on them, garnering the attention of Silver Shamrock owner Conal Cochran (Dan O'Herlihy), they learn of what dark, ancient secrets lurk behind the factory doors.
If you're a fan of movies like INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and DEAD AND BURIED, this stylish, bonkers thriller, rightfully distrustful of corporate America and its voracious gaping maw, is a must-watch. It's equal parts prescient and entertaining.
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When writing the watchlist for this year's 31 Days of Halloween, I put on Coralie Fargeat's REVENGE because I adore THE SUBSTANCE and wanted to see more of her work. I listed BYSTANDERS because I'd been following director Mary Beth McAndrews, then editor of Dread Central, for years and wanted to see what her debut would have to offer.
But it wasn't until I began to research BYSTANDERS that I realized what serendipity had casually placed in front of me: REVENGE was not only a massive influence on McAndrews for her movie but also her entire Master's thesis on women-helmed rape-revenge cinema. It's one of her all-time favorite movies, a film she has represented under her skin with a - fucking stellar - tattoo.
And while I find both movies to approach the rape-revenge subgenre in wildly different manners (I liken REVENGE to a sledgehammer whereas BYSTANDERS comes across like the slightly rusted aluminum bat lying in the corner of the room that you don't even register until it's swung upside your temple), both films register as entries in a new school of the subgenre, one informed and represented by the female gaze. Less exploitation, more examination.
So today's installment deviates from the beaten path to talk to McAndrews about the impact REVENGE has had on her life and rape-revenge cinema, including its influence on BYSTANDERS. We talk patriarchy. We talk about ugly frat sweaters. We talk about the intricacies of killing peopl- I mean, boys, on film. It's a wild fuckin' ride and Mary Beth is a total mensch.
Both BYSTANDERS and REVENGE are currently available to stream on Tubi.
Follow Mary Beth McAndrews on Instagram and her website
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REVENGE is the feature directorial debut of Coralie Fargeat, Oscar-nominated for directing last year's total fucking banger THE SUBSTANCE.
THE SUBSTANCE had a budget of $17 million. REVENGE had $3 million. And in comparing both movies, it gives me great joy to see that Fargeat's penchant for the surreal and gnarly diminishes not with a lowered budget. Her ideas remain just as ferocious and maximalist, like a sledgehammer to the face.
REVENGE refers to the second part of the "rape-revenge" couplet as a woman named Jen (Matilda Lutz) exacts hers against three married men: one who raped her and the two friends who did nothing to stop nor punish it.
These men (one of whom is her now ex-boyfriend) are armed with rifles, riding on ATVs and Range Rovers. Jen has on a T-shirt and shorts. She had heels at one point but sacrificed them to the desert. So, yeah. The odds aren't great.
But spite is a hell of a drug. Some would say it's even better than peyote. Fire and brimstone ensues in a whirlwind of viscera and chipped nail polish.
REVENGE is now available to stream on Tubi.
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MOTEL HELL arrived only months after FRIDAY THE 13TH, poised to be regarded as merely another slasher imitator looking to cash a quick buck. However, Kevin Connor's horror-comedy, penned by brothers Robert & Steven-Charles Jaffe, deceptively avoided the pitfalls of its contemporaries. This movie, about a farmer and motel owner (Rory Calhoun) killing wayward travelers to grind into the blend for his famous smoked meats, dives into psychedelia, satire, even thoughtful discussions regarding social fears of the time.
If the world is overpopulated, isn't Farmer Vincent doing the greater good by eliminating the riff raff? The sex workers, the weed-smoking rock and roll ruffians, the degenerate swingers, the health inspectors working as pawns for a meddling bureaucracy? Vincent's crusade might even be a calling from the Almighty.
But nobody's perfect and when Vincent takes a liking to his newest would-be victim, a beautiful blonde named Terry (Nina Axelrod), the threads of this backwoods operation begin to unravel.
Cue chainsaws, hypnosis, pig masks, mass hysteria and a stellar country song. Can you really ask for anything better?
MOTEL HELL is available to watch on Tubi.
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*Apologies for the audio: I tried recording in the car & tweaked the sound as best as possible.*
POSSESSION is simply a feel-bad movie. Andrzej Zulawski's chaotic magnum opus of divorce, abuse and horny tentacled fucks has to be seen to be believed. For those who grew up with Sam Neill as the heroic Dr. Alan Grant in JURASSIC PARK, prepare to have your childhood chewed up, spit out and bombed. This is a movie I don't often understand but within its swirling camera movements, frenetic performances and sickening score I relish. It's a movie made to be discussed for hours after every viewing, a communal experience built out of our human need to try and explain what in the flying fuck we just witnessed was.
If you're into the two mighty Davids, Cronenberg & Lynch, this movie's gonna be your new freak flag to fly. Let's talk about it.
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THE MONSTER SQUAD brings the Universal Monsters of yore into the '80s with a healthy dose of sugar-blasted cereal and unmedicated ADHD.
Directed by Fred Dekker (NIGHT OF THE CREEPS) & written by both Dekker and Shane Black (THE NICE GUYS, LETHAL WEAPON, KISS KISS BANG BANG, most of your favorite movies ever), this combined family drama, top-notch makeup effects and preteen comedy with unapologetic horror.
Dracula calls a 5-year-old girl a bitch, because of course, he would? As was done to Freddy Kreuger in this decade, the Universal Monsters were sanitized into cereal mascots and plushies but Dekker and Black's script remind us not to be fooled. These are still vampires and werewolves, after all, ready to carve into flesh and crush whatever magic amulet threatens to lock them into Hell for good.
So, who do you call to handle these beasts of death? A bunch of kids, obviously. The motherfuckin' Monster Squad.
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SCARY MOVIE is a staple of my childhood, an entryway into horror movies during a time where I wasn't allowed to watch most of them.
It's a time capsule, for better and worse, of the late '90s/early '00s sense of humor & general fatigue regarding the slew of teen slashers riding SCREAM's coattails.
This was my intro to the Wayans Bros, Regina Hall, Marlon Wayans, Shannon Elizabeth during their own first Hollywood at-bats, before Hall would act for Paul Thomas Anderson & Wayans would do his best J.K. Simmons in HIM.
Sophomoric? Absolutely. Problematic? You bet your ass. But the Wayans carried the parody torch into the millennium, better than their contemporaries. WAZZUP?!
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WE ARE STILL HERE occupies a crossroads in the horror genre: that of the '70s & '80s-inspired supernatural chillers, the gorefests from guys like Lucio Fulci and the patient character studies of grief popularized in the '10s (anything A24 would touch).
These elements shouldn't work so well together but I guess when you got a horror nerd like Ted Geoghegan writing and directing, it simply does.
Paul and Anne Sacchetti (Andrew Sensenig & Barbara Crampton) have just suffered the death of their college-aged son, Bobby. In an attempt to lessen the pain, they pack up everything and move to a remote New England house with a strange 100-year-old history.
The rest moves as you'd expect: Anne hears noises, sees things shuffling about on their own. She's convinced Bobby is somehow in the house trying to connect with his parents. Her husbands drowns the pain with whisky and denial. Once the supernatural grows too obvious to ignore, Anne calls their friends, Jacob and May Lewis (Larry Fessenden & Lisa Marie) to give the house a once-over and provide some much needed friendship.
If you're equally a fan of movies like THE CHANGELING, DEAD & BURIED and CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, you'll find the threads tying these elements together. It's patient enough with its characters to allow them the space to grieve while also brisk enough to satisfy any genre thrill-seekers. It's a unique balance that leaves me talking about every individual piece for hours after it's over. WE ARE STILL HERE is a pizza-and-beer-and-shoot-the-shit-forum of a flick and isn't that what we want from a proper Halloween watch?
WE ARE STILL HERE's 10th anniversary Blu-ray is available to buy now from Dark Sky Films.
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We're 10 days into the 31 Days of Halloween and I feel like we need a palate cleanser. Recently, we've been talking about reanimating dead bodies, torturous twins, eating warm pizza off of cold corpses. I think it's time we take the holiday back to a more innocent, nostalgic time, where we only concern ourselves with what costume we're gonna wear and how much candy we can score.
IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN is a 1966 TV special directed by José Cuauhtémoc "Bill" Melendez starring Charles M. Schulz' gallery of PEANUTS characters: Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Sally, Snoopy, the works.
Linus, in lieu of trick-or-treating, elects to spend his Halloween night sitting in the pumpkin patch, waiting for The Great Pumpkin to arrive and give him a pile of presents. It's a reward for sincerity.
Most of the others think Linus is crazy for believing in a C-grade Santa, but there's something admirable in Linus' valuing honesty of one's motives rather than the transactional element of trading "goodness" for material wealth.
The movie operates more like a hodge-podge of PEANUTS strips and gags than as its own singular narrative but much like the ways in which memory flashes through our heads, the mosaic of musings about Halloween and the fall season leads to a highly emotional, nostalgic appreciation for the good times.
Though if anyone were to ever give my kid a rock instead of candy, I'd slingshot that fucker through their teeth.
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GOODNIGHT MOMMY is the feature debut of aunt-nephew duo Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala (THE LODGE, THE DEVIL'S BATH). Patient, tense and psychologically disturbed, this movie drew me in and kept me guessing all the way to the end.
Twin brothers Lukas and Elias (Lukas & Elias Schwarz) live in pastoral Germany, spending their summer days exploring pitch-black tunnels, bouncing on trampolines during rainstorms, harboring any stray cat or gigantic cockroach who happens to cross their path - typical 9-year-old shit.
This idyllic season grinds to a halt when their mother (Susanne Wuest) returns from the hospital, head covered in bandages post-cosmetic surgery. She asks them to keep the house's blinds drawn, leave any newly discovered animals outside wherever the fuck they've found them, and for the love of God, just play quietly.
Reasonable demands at first but the mother starts to grow impatient with the boys. She'll split them up, instruct one not to talk to the other, increasingly losing her temper. It also doesn't help that she mostly keeps herself cooped up in her room, not addressing or barely acknowledging the boys unless they trigger her ire. This isn't how a mother behaves. Is this lady even their mother? No. She must not be. Who is this intruder and what does she want with the twins?
GOODNIGHT MOMMY excels in drawing me into the boys' points of view, almost like a perverted Amblin film. These kids have no qualms regarding taking responsibility into their own hands, investigating, interrogating their "mom." The entire movie is constructed like an elaborate tightrope walk, throwing in the right red herrings and turns in order to keep me on my toes, never comfortable affirming any conclusions to which I've arrived.
And this finale? This last 20, 30 minutes? Some of the most disturbing visuals since I last watched Miike's AUDITION. It's different when kids are involved; what can I say?
GOODNIGHT MOMMY is available to watch on Tubi.
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In Karyn Kusama's THE INVITATION, Will (Logan Marshall-Green) is invited to his ex-wife Eden's (Tammy Blanchard) dinner party in the Hollywood Hills after two years of radio silence following the accidental death of their 5-year-old son.
Returning to his old home and stepping back into his son's room conjures the guilt and pain Will's tried to bury for two years. Eden, however, not only seems to be unbothered by this but never acknowledges the awkwardness or sorrow of the situation.
The dinner party clashes on these fronts as Will hyperfocuses on every change to the house and odd behavior while Eden, along with her new partner, David (Michiel Huisman), deflect any concerns.
But wait a minute. Why - are - there bars on the windows? Why does David lock the front door from the inside so no one can leave without a key? If this is supposed to be a reunion of old friends, who are these random people David invited from his and Eden's retreat to Mexico? Why are they talking about this commune of wellness gurus with evangelical fervor? What pills are in that unmarked bag in Eden's nightstand? Why does it not...feel safe to be at this dinner?
There's a reason this made it to the 31 Days of Halloween, friends.
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After a long week of watching Halloween movies, it's good to grab some friends, get cozy in your pajamas, munch on a pizza, sip some beer, smoke some weed and settle into a slumber party. If you're lucky, it might even be a slumber party MASSACRE!
1982's THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE, directed by Amy Holden Jones, is one of my all-time favorites: a clever satire on slasher flicks through the female gaze.
When a slumber party hosted by a group of teen girls is crashed by a drill-wielding maniac on the loose, they've got to band together to stay alive and fend this fucker off, assisted by two sisters from across the street.
Perspective is the name of the game here, as Jones' lens eschews most of the slasher subgenre's conventions. FRIDAY THE 13TH blew the doors wide open in 1980. The next year, its gang of imitators hacked on through, giving audiences a crash course in the cinematic language of masked men, their gruesome kills and POV shots. Jones grounds her killer, often using these conventions as red herrings, to contrast the blunt and rather matter-of-fact approach of the killer. Women constantly need to keep their head on a swivel because, as Jones reminds us throughout the film, the difference between life and death can last only seconds, occur in broad daylight and be perpetrated by your everyday Joe.
It doesn't take much for you to become the pizza boy lying face-up in someone's living room with drill holes where your eyes used to be.
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Just cause I've wrapped up the Universal Monsters series doesn't mean I'm quite yet done with the classics! Frank Henenlotter takes his goofy and gaudy turn with the FRANKENSTEIN story in his 1990 opus FRANKENHOOKER.
This movie sees Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz) as certifiably cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs after the accidental death of his girlfriend, Elizabeth Shelley (Patty Mullen). Obsessed with using his self-taught medical and surgical knowledge to revive her, Jeffrey decides to harvest body parts from the sex workers of New York City, reinventing his girlfriend in his own sexually fantasized image.
Henenlotter is a master of exploitation, crafting disturbed yet humorous stages from which I can't look away nor stifle the naughtiest giggle. However, unlike Elizabeth (and Jeffrey, post a few drill sessions into the back of his skull), this movie is not brainless. Slipped in-between some nasty bouts with explosive super-crack and a tunnel of lady legs lie some sharp commentaries about the exploitation of women's bodies in a patriarchal image and an advocacy for legalizing sex work in this country.
All this while a re-animated Elizabeth goes on a hooking spree, accidentally coursing hundreds of thousands of watts of lightning through each trick she finds. God, it's rarely felt this fun to engage in such bad taste.
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Today, we're wrapping up the Universal Monsters with CREATURE OF THE BLACK LAGOON!
The Monsterverse jumps into the Atomic Age of the '50s as a group of scientists/archeologists venture on a fossil-finding expedition in the Amazon. What are they looking for? An evolutionary missing link between animals of the sea and land, teased by a webbed long-fingered claw found in a cliff face.
But this undisturbed lagoon holds on to its ecological history much longer than expected. The Gill-Man breathes the past into modern day, a survivor of history. And he's not too pleased with a bunch of whites fucking with his home.
I love this movie. We're no longer chained to the folklore of yore but rather using their examples to look forward to the promise of the future, the what-ifs of space travel and colonization. By examining the Gill-men and other sea creatures (about which we know woefully little), we can potentially grab clues as to how to adapt ourselves to strange new worlds. But lest we forget, all discovery comes with responsibility. It's only new to us. It's old hat to the Gill-man. Be a good guest.
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