Vince Vaughn’s imposing restraint and brutally legible violence make S. Craig Zahler’s patient prison nightmare difficult to forget.
Alex Garland’s Annihilation is a visually audacious science-fiction nightmare whose ambiguity, mournful performances and sensory dread leave a haunting impression.
Deadpool 2 delivers charismatic performances and enlarged action, but its rebellious superhero comedy has hardened into a dependable formula.
Jordan Peele’s doppelgänger nightmare thrives on Lupita Nyong’o’s remarkable dual performance, controlled imagery and convincing family chemistry, even as its expanding mythology becomes less persuasive.
Rose Glass’s fiercely controlled debut traps us inside one woman’s search for absolute meaning, powered by Morfydd Clark’s unnerving performance.
Leigh Whannell turns invisibility into the perfect weapon for an abuser, while Elisabeth Moss and weaponized empty space make this reinvention terrifyingly personal.
Sam Esmail’s apocalypse thriller turns technological collapse and social mistrust into gripping, visually audacious dread. Its blunt messaging and emotionally remote payoff hold it back, but the formidable ensemble and controlled paranoia earn a strong recommendation.
Brandon Cronenberg’s resort nightmare combines fearless performances and tactile hallucinations with a class critique that loses focus as the degradation escalates.
Free Guy has charm, a clever agency fable and an excellent Jodie Comer, but its best ideas get buried beneath exposition, noise and corporate winks.
M. Night Shyamalan turns a tropical beach into an existential trap in Old, an uneven but memorable thriller whose images are stronger than its explanations.
Michael Mohan’s erotic thriller turns windows and lenses into instruments of seduction, but its elaborate plotting cannot sustain that initial tension.
George Miller’s apparent chaos is built on rigorous visual discipline, giving Fury Road extraordinary speed, clarity and personality.
A brutally effective grief nightmare, Bring Her Back turns an unsafe foster home into a pressure cooker of dread. Sally Hawkins, the young cast and stomach-churning practical effects carry it past some familiar plotting and murky mythology.
Neil Marshall’s fiercely controlled survival horror turns darkness, stone and shrinking space into an ordeal long before its creatures arrive.
Nicolas Cage brings volatility to Lorcan Finnegan’s sun-scorched psychological thriller, but repetition and late explanations weaken its menace.