Tag: Thriller

Apex (2026) | REVIEW

Trailer title card — PHOTO: Netflix (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Baltasar Kormákur (Everest; Beast) — Screenplay by Jeremy Robbins.

Baltasar Kormákur’s Apex is a straight-to-streaming Netflix survival thriller that follows Sasha (played by Charlize Theron), a rock climber who lost her partner, Tommy (played by Eric Bana), in a rock-climbing accident. Some time later, Sasha finds herself in the wilderness of Australia, where she encounters Ben (played by Taron Egerton), a stranger who knows the surroundings like the back of his hand. After he intervenes and helps Sasha from a possible confrontation with two strange hunters, Ben gives Sasha two routes to her desired location, and she chooses the harder one. After kayaking, she sleeps in the wilderness and awakes to see that some of her things have been stolen. She makes her way to Ben’s camp, eventually, and he gives her the supplies she needs. But here she learns that his intentions aren’t good. He takes out a crossbow and gives her a chance to run for her escape, as he now intends to hunt her.

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Serenity (2019) | REVIEW

Matthew McConaughey in Steven Knight’s Serenity — PHOTO: Aviron Pictures (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Steven Knight — Screenplay by Steven Knight.

Steven Knight’s Serenity follows Baker Dill (played by Matthew McConaughey), a fishing boat captain living on the relatively secluded Plymouth Island. Dill is obsessed with catching a tuna that he nicknames ‘Justice,’ and when he isn’t smoking, fishing, or drinking, he spends time with Diane Lane’s character, ‘Constance.’ One day, Dill’s ex-wife Karen (played by Anne Hathaway) shows up and begs him to take her new husband, Frank (played by Jason Clarke), out on the water and have him killed for abusing her and Dill and Karen’s son. As Dill contemplates whether or not he should do it, he starts to question the nature of his own reality. Since this isn’t a new release, and since I’d like to address the craziness of this film directly, this is going to be more of a spoiler review, best read after you’ve seen the film.

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No Other Choice (2025) | REVIEW

Lee Byung-hun, as Man-su, considering dropping a potted plant of red peppers onto a competitor on the job market in NO OTHER CHOICE — PHOTO: NEON / CJ Entertainment (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Park Chan-wook — Screenplay by Park Chan-wook, Lee Kyoung-mi, Don McKellar, and Lee Ja-hye.

Whenever a new film from South Korean master filmmaker Park Chan-wook comes out, it flies right to the top of my watchlist. Every film of his that I have seen thus far, like his iconic, violent, and shocking Vengeance Trilogy or his phenomenal erotic historical thriller The Handmaiden, has wowed me. Just a few years ago, he released yet another masterpiece with the incredibly rewatchable crime-romance thriller Decision to Leave, whose style showcased Park at his very best and cemented him as one of the world’s best visual storytellers. His latest film, No Other Choice, an adaptation of Donald Westlake’s novel The Ax (which was previously adapted in the mid-2000s by Costa-Gavras, to whom Park’s film is dedicated), is yet another fantastic example of Park’s strengths.

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The Rip (2026) | REVIEW

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in THE RIP — PHOTO: NETFLIX (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Joe Carnahan — Screenplay by Joe Carnahan.

We’re only a few weeks into the new year, and we already have a freshly made and relatively high-profile action thriller to feast on. That high-profile feature is Netflix’s The Rip, which brings together famous friends Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in a film built around drug money, dirty cops, and snitches. The Rip, from The Grey-filmmaker Joe Carnahan (who, in recent years, has been making plenty of B-movie action films), is the first 2026 film that I am reviewing, and it also happens to be the first 2026 film that I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s not high art, but it is exactly the kind of straight-to-streaming action thriller star-vehicle that you would want to chew on in January. 

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Bugonia (2025) | REVIEW

Emma Stone in Yorgos Lanthimos’ BUGONIA — PHOTO: Focus Features (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things; Kinds of Kindness) — Screenplay by Will Tracy (The Menu).

Bugonia marks the 4th collaboration between multiple Oscar-winning actress Emma Stone and the most famous filmmaker of the so-called ‘Greek Weird Wave’ (and in a row, no less). Their latest film together is an English-language remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s black comedy titled Save the Green Planet!, a South Korean film released in 2003. Though initially conceived as an opportunity for Jang, the original filmmaker, to direct the English-language remake of his own film for an international audience (not unlike what Ole Bornedal did with his English-language Nightwatch remake in the 1990s), it is now, instead, a fascinating instance in which a European auteur is adapting an Asian original story though in a North American setting. In a way, that almost intercontinental approach is fitting for a film about people who may or may not come from different worlds in more ways than one. It’s also, frankly, a really effective film.

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Eenie Meanie (2025) | REVIEW

Karl Glusman and Samara Weaving in EENIE MEANIE — PHOTO: 20th Century Studios.

Directed by Shawn Simmons — Screenplay by Shawn Simmons.

Shawn Simmons’ Eenie Meanie is a crime comedy-thriller that follows Edie (played by Samara Weaving), who has a past as a getaway driver. Edie has just found out that she is pregnant, and so she decides to seek out the child’s ne’er-do-well father, John (played by Karl Glusman), whom she hasn’t been with in months. When she shows up at his apartment, however, she becomes entangled in a web of crime to which her former lover is stuck. To save the father of her child, Edie will have to put some of her old skills to good use to do a job.

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Weapons (2025) | REVIEW

One of the vanishing kids running down the street in Zach Cregger’s Weapons — PHOTO: Warner Bros. Pictures (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Zach Cregger — Screenplay by Zach Cregger.

Whenever an up-and-coming new filmmaker, whose previous film had the makings of a bona fide genre classic, is about to turn in his latest film, you pay attention. You especially pay attention when the filmmaker’s script for his new picture was so highly regarded in the American film industry that it not only launched a bidding war but also, reportedly, got a modern horror master to fire his manager over their failed attempt at securing the distribution rights to it. Such is the case with Barbarian writer-director Zach Cregger and his latest film, Weapons, a multi-perspective horror-thriller with drama and comedy elements that had a memorable and fantastic marketing campaign built around it, and which also, thankfully, turns out to be exactly the kind of must-see thriller epic that I’ve been craving.

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Holland (2025) | REVIEW

NICOLE KIDMAN stars in HOLLAND — PHOTO: JACLYN MARTINEZ / PRIME.

Directed by Mimi Cave — Screenplay by Andrew Sodorski

In 2022, Mimi Cave’s debut feature FRESH, a thriller about dating with a wicked twist, was one of the, ahem, freshest surprises of the year. Naturally, this always makes you curious about the director’s next step. For her sophomore effort, Mimi Cave dropped her first film’s very modern narrative and feel in favor of an early 2000s narrative set in a quirky Michigan suburbia. Cave’s Holland is a psychological drama with thriller elements that is set in Holland, Michigan (hence the title), which is a town settled by Dutch-Americans and which prominently displays its Dutch cultural identity with tulip fields and windmills. The film follows Nancy Vandergroot (played by Nicole Kidman), a teacher who is starting to suspect that her husband, Fred (played by Matthew Macfadyen, is living a double life on his many work trips. To figure out what is going on, she teams up with a colleague, shop teacher Dave Delgado (played by Gael García Bernal), to spy on her husband and investigate his optometrist office. However, in that process, Nancy may have bitten off more than she can chew, as her husband’s secrets aren’t exactly what she expected, while, at the same time, she starts having an affair with Dave.

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The Gorge (2025) | REVIEW

Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy in “The Gorge,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

Directed by Scott Derrickson — Screenplay by Zach Dean.

Scott Derrickson’s The Gorge follows two elite snipers, an American man named Levi Kane (played by Miles Teller) and a Lithuanian woman named Drasa (played by Anya Taylor-Joy), as they are both independently recruited for a top-secret mission in the middle of nowhere. At some unknown place in the world, there are two watchtowers standing across from each other, one representing the Western Bloc and another representing the Eastern Bloc. Each watchtower is guarded by mechanized turrets and bombs, and between the two watchtowers is a giant long hole in the ground — hence the title. Levi and Drasa have been hired to do maintenance on the weaponry and, at the same time, defend the world from what is hidden inside the mysterious valley. As they are the only two people in the vicinity, Drasa and Levi establish a connection, but when one of them accidentally falls down into the valley, everything changes and top secrets are revealed.

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‘La Chimera,’ ‘Dogtooth,’ ‘Trap,’ and ‘Look Back’ | Bite-Sized Reviews

Top Row (L-R): ‘La Chimera (01 Distribution);’ ‘Dogtooth (Feelgood Entertainment).’
Bottom Row (L-R): ‘Trap (Warner Bros. Pictures),’ ‘Look Back (Avex Pictures).’

In this edition of Bite-Sized Reviews, I give you my thoughts on last year’s M. Night Shyamalan release, a Greek Yorgos Lanthimos flick, an animated film that blew me away, and an Alice Rohrwacher film that I can’t stop thinking about.

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