Ji-Young Yoo in Freaky Tales (2025), Lionsgate Even though the year may only be halfway over, thanks to the magical powers of AMC A-List (and local film festivals), I’ve been able to see more than 40 new original movies in theaters this year. A few of them have already rose in the ranks to become some of my favorites of the decade, if not of all time.
Picking the “best” is like picking a favorite child (or four movies for your four favorites on Letterboxd, which is to say, extremely painful and humiliating), so I’ve listed seven of my favorites below in no particular order.
Sinners — April 18th, 2025 dir. Ryan Coogler
Sinners (2025), Warner Bros. Pictures Any best-of lists of 2025 movies that does not include Coogler’s hit original vampire movie, Sinners , is not one worth listening to. It is by every measure an epic horror film, whether it be in terms of scale, emotional weight, or legacy.
There has been a recent trend of people seeking out “elevated horror,” or horror movies that are more psychological in nature and about “more” than just basic horror tropes. What I loved about Sinners is that it brought those extra layers of depth while still seeming proud to be a horror movie, loyal to genre conventions while still twisting them on their head.
Sinners follows twin brothers Smoke and Stack as they return to their hometown in 1932 with plans of establishing a juke joint. Coogler sucks every possible use of symbolism and imagery from the vampires, using them as stand-ins for cultural appropriation, white supremacy, historical trauma, and assimilation.
The cast is incredible with believable chemistry that makes their friendships (and relationships) feel lived-in. Wunmi Mosaku stands out with her reserved but never timid performance as Annie, and her relationship with Smoke is one of my favorite aspects of the film. Their love for each other shines through the darkness of the horrific night as a pure force driving the characters forward.
From a more technical perspective, the costuming is gorgeous, and the cinematography is lush — sometimes colorful, sometimes dark, and always purposeful and layered, telling stories of its own to complement the screenplay. One of the most underrated elements is the editing. Since the movie came out on digital, I’ve seen clips of deleted scenes online, but what was most surprising about this was how familiar they seemed; the final cut still contains so many of those emotional beats, flashes of these memories affecting and driving the characters even if the audience didn’t get the full scene. While it still always moves with purpose, even when the first hour leans heavily into drama over horror, but the pace never once challenges the palpable emotions — be it familiarity, grief, solidarity, love, anger, revenge — but instead rather seeps in them.
The story itself is so layered; on one level, it’s about cultural appropriation, where white characters try to take and commodify the deeply personal Black music and history created by and shared through Sammy (Myles Catan, in what is shockingly his first film). The main vampire being a character like Remmick (Jack O’Connell), an Irish man, introduces further complexities around assimilation and proximity to whiteness. Those are just two of many different lenses through which you can analyze the story.
Some stories have multiple meanings that end of feeling at odds with each other, but Sinners themes all work in harmony, deepening the story without once feeling overstuffed or leaving anything hanging.
The film drips with passion, like a story waiting to be told, and Coogler’s passion about the horror genre and the medium of film as a whole is abundantly clear with every word, every line of dialogue, and every twist of the camera.
If you’re looking for an excuse to watch it, it comes out on HBO Max on July 4th, so be sure to check it out if you somehow haven’t by now!
Presence — January 24th, 2025 dir. Steven Soderbergh
Presence (2025), Neon Presence was one of many more divisive movies of the year, but I absolutely adored it. It is definitely the scariest of the year so far for me, even if the sort of fear it brings about isn’t the most traditional.
Presence ’s central gimmick is that the whole film is shot from the first-person perspective of a ghost haunting a house, turning the supernatural subgenre of horror onto its head in a way similar to In A Violent Nature ’s twist on slashers.
However, where In A Violent Nature relied entirely on the gimmick to carry intrigue, Presence is extremely emotionally driven. We’re not told from the beginning of the movie who exactly the ghost is, but it is given real personality through its perspective and actions. It reminded me a lot of my favorite horror movie of all time, Lake Mungo , with both movies holding the same sort of emotional weight: the disembodied sense of loneliness, unspoken regret, and dread that you don’t feel until it consumes you.
The central ghost aches with regret, a hesitance to love and to touch, and you can literally feel it through the screen. It’s a magical experience that left me feeling the full emotional weight of the story during the climax; I saw the movie twice in theaters, and both times, my hands shook, and I spent the entire last fifteen minutes weeping. It is truly as sweet, affectionate, and loving as it is violent, horrific, and heavy with grief.
The film confronts an idea that has been very prevalent in our current culture, which is that, for many people, there are real things that are much scarier than a ghost in the closet or a monster under the bed could ever be. There are evils that are much more real and much closer to us than we would like to think. But ultimately, it is hopeful; for every person out there in the world who wants to hurt us, there is someone who would do anything to save us.
It feels so personal and intimate, like it could have only been written and made by someone who experienced something awful, and they wrote this as if to even temporarily live in a world where they could take it back, stop it somehow, do something to fix it. Even the ultimate moral of the story almost reads like a cautionary tale: listen to and value the people you love while they are here, do things for them, stand up for them, because you never know when you’ll no longer have the chance.
Presence is not without its flaws, and some of the acting performances aren’t the best, but the nightmarish feeling I had all throughout the third act is unparalleled to anything I’ve seen before aside from those final credits of Lake Mungo , and that is an impressive feat.
You can watch Presence on Hulu, streaming right now!
Freaky Tales — April 4th, 2025 dir. Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden
Freaky Tales (2025), Lionsgate Freaky Tales didn’t get much of a release when it came out in April, which is really disappointing because it is one of the most unique movies I’ve seen this year.
Freaky Tales is an anthology, action-comedy, crime, little-bit-of-everything movie. It’s set in Oakland, with the overarching theme essentially being underdog stories and killing Nazis.
While all the segments contribute to the larger narrative and feel tonally similar enough in their chaos and magic to fit together cohesively, they’re also totally unique and can stand on their own. There are goth kids, punks, rap battles, evil cops, hitmen, basketball games, mixtapes, katanas, spontaneous combustions, and basically anything else you can imagine; if that sounds like a lot, it is, but it’s “a lot” in the same way as a sugar rush or Christmas morning.
The energy is almost cartoonish in the best way, like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World or if Cartoon Network got into making live-action original movies like Disney Channel. It’s campy, hyper-stylized, shot on film, and revels in revenge. Each segment has its own visual language, with the aspect ratio even changing between some of them, but they still all connect in the end.
Like Sinners , Freaky Tales is also an ode to movies in general and has a lot of love for other genre films that came before it, overstuffed with references and cameos (including one that caused a bit of an uproar in my already off-the-walls theater) and callbacks. It’s ultimately just filled with a lot of love: for film, for the 80s, for Oakland, for turning ideas into reality.
Each performance is fully committed to its story and its segment, making it particularly entertaining when the characters cross paths, like when Pedro Pascal, in the depths of grief while starring in his own personal political crime drama, runs into Ji-Young Yoo and Jack Champion hanging out in a diner, burgeoning romance blooming as they plot to beat up some skinheads.
The editing is so fun and kinetic, and it has some incredible needle drops. It’s a movie that just makes you feel energetic and optimistic while watching it and a little better about the world when it’s done, and that’s something to be appreciated in the increasingly bleak outlook of movies these days.
All in all, if you want to have some fun for about an hour and forty five minutes and really need a adrenaline shot of hope for humanity, Freaky Tales will definitely scratch that itch, especially if you’re in a position where you’ll understand all the Oakland references that went over my head.
Freaky Tales is out on VOD right now!
The Life of Chuck — June 13th, 2025 dir. Mike Flanagan
The Life of Chuck (2025), Neon The Life of Chuck is the first movie I’ve ever seen where, after it ended, I got up from my fancy AMC chair, left, went to the AMC bathroom, and cried in one of the stalls there for a little while before heading back home.
One word that you’ll see in any review of this movie is that it is “life-affirming,” and that is undoubtedly true. It doesn’t ask for you to look and find the magic in the little things but rather puts it on display for you. In so many movies, the epic highs, exhilarating moments of joy, are world-saving things; what new threat are the Avengers going to inevitably defeat this time? The Life of Chuck has a different perspective on that: sometimes, there’s nothing you can do to stop the end of the world, the end of a life, the end of a happy time.
It boldly states that the best moments of life, the moments that make it all worth it, are simply moments where we connect with other people, where we’re brave, stepping out of our comfort zones to do the things we really want to do, whether it be performing in front of all the older kids at school or choosing to walk with a kind stranger rather than doing so alone.
It’s not necessarily optimistic — in fact, it’s deeply bittersweet — but it’s kind, its whole thesis essentially being: life sucks, but we find happiness in it anyway. It has the same perspective as my favorite essay, Camus’s “The Myth of Sisyphus” (which I’ve probably mentioned ad nauseum). Even if life is absurd, even if it’s meaningless and pointless, we still get to choose how we respond to that and find meaning in the doing , in the living .
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” but there’s no need to imagine Chuck happy; we see it. We know it to be true. “I am wonderful,” he states. “I deserve to be wonderful, and I contain multitudes.”
The film isn’t told chronologically which allows for an interesting sort of forward reflection. You get to experience the past through the lens of the future, which sort of turns the theme of the inevitability of death on its head; death is inevitable, yes, and we never know when it’s coming, but life is inevitable, too, and we are in it right now.
It has the whimsy and childlike wonder of a fable but somehow manages to stay grounded, its magic completely within reach. It’s intimate, warm, surreal, and deeply moving.
If you can, check out The Life of Chuck in theaters, but if not, it’s currently out on VOD.
The Ugly Stepsister — April 18th, 2025 dir. Emilie Kristine Blichfeldt
The Ugly Stepsister (2025), Scanbox Entertainment The Ugly Stepsister is a masterclass in body horror and the anti-fairytale, turning Cinderella ’s magical carriages and dresses and talking animals into tapeworms and vomit and acts of violence against the body, effects so impressive that I’m not sure how the crew even accomplished some of it.
The film follows Elvira (Lea Myren) as she lives in the shadow of her new stepsister, Agnes (later known as Cinderella). A long time fan of the prince’s poetry, when she gets the opportunity to impress him at a ball, she does whatever it takes to her make herself his perfect match: beautiful, talented, and skinny.
The most impressive piece of this film is the practical effects. I’ve seen hundreds of horror movies and very rarely do I gag and hide my eyes, repulsed, as much as I did in the theater for this one. The Substance comes to mind as an apt comparison, though it is much meaner; where the violence to Elisabeth’s body is done with humor under the guise of satire, eventually becoming so absurd there is almost no choice but to laugh, Blichfeldt laces each of Elvira’s actions with a certain desperation, a need to fit in, a need to be someone else, so that it’s impossible not to feel sympathetic for her, making all of the pain that she goes through hurt as if it’s your own body being brutalized.
Aside from the effects, Lea Myren’s wonderful lead performance also makes this film what it is. Her performance fills all of Elvira’s actions with an almost childlike naivete, which makes her descent into madness, her devaluation of herself and her mind and her body, all the more heartbreaking and tragic. Where Monstro Elisasue’s spectacular downfall in The Substance feels almost like catharsis, Elvira’s pain feels like just that: pain.
Going into this movie, I expected it to be more aligned to the Brothers’ Grimm version of Cinderella, but it’s not quite that, either. The gore in The Ugly Stepsister is derived more from the pain women inflict on themselves rather than the more fantastical violence of the original story, and it views Elvira and even her seemingly self-centered mother with a much more empathetic light than any Cinderella retelling I’ve ever seen.
A treatise on how beauty and pain should not by synonymous, The Ugly Stepsister is a must-see for anyone who enjoys body or period/historical horror.
It’s currently streaming on Shudder!
Until Dawn — April 25th, 2025 dir. David F. Sandberg
Until Dawn (2025), Sony Pictures Releasing I know that this probably isn’t a popular choice as many people disliked this movie, but I really loved it. Until Dawn knows exactly what it is and leans into it, employing tropes without overindulging in them and embracing the slasher genre while regarding its character with kindness.
Until Dawn centers around a grieving, depressed Clover as she and her close-knit group of friends retrace the steps of her missing sister, Melanie. While Clover clings to the hope of finding her alive, her friends just hope that Clover herself will be able to find peace. Their search leads them a strange building in a so-small-it’s-basically-nonexistent town where they become trapped in a time loop, forced to survive until dawn or die trying to a new threat each night.
As a passionate supporter of the trope, I thought that Until Dawn ’s use of the time loop was not only unique but also well-executed; it allowed the movie to indulge in some really fun, gory deaths while still giving the characters time to grow through their emotional arcs. It also executed the relatively common theme of the “time loop as a metaphor for depression” or dissatisfaction with life with more grace than the majority of other time loop movies I’ve seen.
The loop starts after Clover had attempted suicide two times prior to the story, and I really liked that none of the characters ever considered killing themselves to escape the loop; it was sometimes considered to pass from night to night, sure, but never as a permanent way out. So much of the movie centered on Clover’s evolving relationship with death, so I appreciated that embracing it never came up as a serious possibility for escape.
I was also a huge fan of the original game, and the amount of connections between it and the movie was perfect, in my opinion: enough that fans of the game could go in with a level of knowledge that allowed them to pick up on easter eggs without simply rehashing all of the existing events and stories. It captured the player experience of Until Dawn in a way that I didn’t think was possible, and the new characters evolved from the tropes that defined the original characters in a way that made sense and led to a better story within the allotted 90ish minutes.
While the pacing was occasionally messy, the movie’s commitment to homage and genre appreciation combined with the earnest emotional core of it made me more forgiving. The main friend group also had wonderful chemistry, making them feel genuinely close right off the bat and giving the movie a sense of stakes even within the context of the time loop.
Overall, this movie was a great exploration of depression in the context of a really fun slasher movie, and I’d recommend it if you’re in the mood for a lighter evening or something to laugh at with friends.
KPop Demon Hunters — June 20th, 2025 dir. Maggie Kang & Chris Appelhans
KPop Demon Hunters (2025), Netflix KPop Demon Hunters is charming and whimsical with memorable characters and a great soundtrack. With so many family movies coming out this year either being undermarketed or IP-driven/remakes, this film was a breath of fresh air, and I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that it didn’t get any sort of theatrical run.
It follows a K-pop girl group, Huntr/x, made of of Mira, Rumi, and Zoey, who perform in order to protect the world from demons. Rumi, however, has a secret to hide that may come to light when Huntr/x is pitted against a new boy-group, the Saja Boys, demons sent from their ruler Gwi-Ma to infiltrate the human world and steal the souls and energy of fans.
The film’s music is infectiously catchy — I keep humming the “fit check for my napalm era” part of “How It’s Done” as I go through my day — and it propels the viewer through the film at an energetic and fun pace. The visual aesthetics of the movie keep up with ease, with some really cartoonish imagery, facial expressions (with one bit with popcorn eyes sticking out in particular), and voice performances only building on the enjoyment, wholeheartedly embracing genre conventions and the culture of the music that inspired it.
While the plotline was simple and already struggling to be contained within the film’s 90 minutes, the message itself about not being ashamed of your flaws and not letting yourself be consumed by insecurity and failure is sweet and perfectly suited not only for the characters themselves — pressured to be perfect by their mentors and fans — but for the audience in this movie’s desired demographic.
I tend to not care for romantic subplots in movies like this, but KPop Demon Hunter’ s romance fit perfectly alongside its themes of self love, with the main character, Rumi, torn between the constant perfectionism pushed forward within Huntr/x and the wallowing in failure and and insecurity from Saja Boys.
It’s also just visually stunning, from the unapologetic use of bright colors, the electric choreography for both the fight scenes and the dancing, and the frequent visual gags. It is completely and totally worth a watch, whether you have a prior interest in the K-pop genre or not; I watched it purely because I love Ji-Young Yoo as an actress (clearly, since this is her third appearance on this list), and I had an even better time than I was expecting.
KPop Demon Hunters is streaming on Netflix now! I’m hoping a sequel is in the cards, so definitely go check it out to ensure we can get there.
This has been a wonderful year for movies so far, and there’s so many that I enjoyed that I simply couldn’t fit here (Black Bag, Bring Her Back, Bob Trevino Likes It, Dangerous Animals , etc.) and some that I sadly haven’t seen yet (28 Years Later, The Phoenician Scheme …I know, my bad).
I’ve put together a list on Letterboxd of everything discussed here , and feel free to check it out and leave recommendations for anything that I left out or may have overlooked.
![‘Until Dawn’ Proves Slashers Don’t Have to be Mean [Review]](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1358/0*oO8dWZ49UMsPDscW.jpg)
![‘Until Dawn’ and the Beauty of Failing Together [Analysis]](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1358/0*TQFHL5oZW4I9SENH.jpg)
![‘M3GAN 2.0’: Feminism by Men, for Men [Review]](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1358/0*ufcXN2U8G4q9Kmll.jpg)
