Yea, October was a really wonky month overall. Outside of my last place pick every movie has at least a couple elements about it that I really liked, but even with my top picks there were consistently pretty big issues that dragged it down. Ind t's honestly kind of crazy how this year has given us really great "off" months like January and August, while the months you would expect to hit hard...October, May...just resulted in stuff that's all around decent but very few films that I'll actually be compelled to rewatch in the future. Skips for this month for me included Regretting You, Anniversary, and Springsteen which I might revisit if it gains serious Oscar buzz and just because I genuinely love Jeremy Allen White as a performer even if Bruce Springsteen is exactly the kind of middle of the road classic rock that makes my eyes glaze over. I very much wanted to catch Good Fortune but never found the time to get around to it.
10. Bone Lake
Hey kids...ya like cheating? Because that's about ALL you're going to get in this thing. Honestly...I was legitimately "Stuckmannized" into seeing this movie just because with Shelby Oaks I was really feeling that "support indie horror" spirit. I just didn't like this at all. PerGron and I both have issues with cheating being used as a plot device, and in this movie that's like THE plot device. I think in smarter hands with a better script and better actors this had the potential to be a solid little "social manipulation" movie in the same vain as something like Speak No Evil, but the thing has absolutely no backbone to it, is WAAAY too proud of its super predictable twist, has absolutely zero performances or characters that have remotely stuck with me, and was all around just an unpleasant watch pretty much from top to bottom.
9. After the Hunt
Fluke-a Guadanino continues. Jeesh, what a complete and utter massive step down from Challengers which might be in my top three movies of the first half of the decade. I didn't particularly care for Queer but at least that had obvious passion and ambition behind it. This just feels like Luca is sleep walking through the material. It's such a shame because I genuinely thought the trailer built up a crazy amount of tension and I thought the cast looked absolutely freaking top tier.
The performances here are definitely the highlight. It's easily the most meaty Julia Roberts role in a long time, Andrew Garfield builds on his villainous turn in The Eyes of Tammy Faye to come out with an even more smarmy villain character, and Michael Stuhlbarg shines and much like in Call Me By Your Name walks away with THE moment of the movie. Unfortunately Ayo Edebiri does NOT prove she can handle serious drama here, as she's easily the weak link and while I think she had some pretty great dramatic beats in this past season of The Bear her strength continues to be comedy.
The real problem here is the script. Good God, man. It's so dull, so pretentious, so "loves the smell of its own farts" for lack of better phrasing haha. The opening titles are stylized like a Woody Allen movie and not only is that a TERRIBLE omen and weird choice given the subject matter, but the end result is a film that has ALL of that man's worst qualities as a film maker with none of the stuff that ever made his material shine. I just can't get over how preachy, pretentious, and pseudo-intellectual this thing gets. I could see someone like Aaron Sorkin taking this material and making an absolute banger out of it, but that's just not what happened here. Andrew Garfield and Stuhlbarg have some stand out moments, but other than that it really is a film that's just spinning its own wheels and going nowhere.
8.Black Phone 2
As much as I did actively dislike this, it's very much a big step above Bone Lake at the very least. Easily Scott Derikson's weakest movie, it still has his signature "grainy realism" style with the dream sequences. There was a really good premise in here and with the cold open teasing an origin story for the Grabber I got really invested. I also loved the remote snowed in camp setting and the atmosphere was easily the strongest element here. That being said, MAN did absolutely none of the plot points, scares, or character development land for me. Mason Thaymes is EASILY the stand out of the cast here and has the one acting moment that genuinely got to me. He's absolutely got a bright future ahead of him. Unfortunately I really wish the whole film had centered around his character who was the only one close to having a well executed arc.
The Gwen character was a great stand out in the first movie. It took the "little kid with a colorful vocabulary" trope to a really cool place given that even though her colorful vocabulary worked as comedic relief you could still tell it was coming from a place of defensive pain and trauma. Unfortunately now that the actress and character are older the whole bit just feels played out. It very much has that sequel thing of taking an element of a fan favorite character from the first movie and making it THE focus. I just didn't get into her character at all here, and I also found the Christianity themes with her borderline propaganda coded (sorry, Priest
)
I don't even want to get into the Grabber. What a freaking waste. They watered down pretty much everything about him, as if the movie was actively trying to make us forget the true nature of his character and just turn him into the next Freddy in a very blatant way. I'm not saying you can't do cool dream stuff in a horror movie, but this was SOOO Nightmare on Elm Street coded and applied to a character who THRIVED on being realistically chilling in the first movie. I'm honestly kind of offended at just how much they fumbled the ball with him, and the ridiculous way he's defeated just sealed the deal on that.
As much as I love Jeremy Davies as an actor, the dad character here was SOOOO freaking Flanderized. Once again the movie is actively trying to make you forget that this dude was straight up physically abusive in the first movie and turning him into a lovable dork. Overall this film just took all the teeth and mean spirited realism out of the genuinely effective first film and turned it into franchise bait trash. It's not as much of a trainwreck as MeThreeGan 2.0, but it's up there for me as being one of the most disappointing sequels of the year. I obviously do have a lot to say about it though, probably more than most of the other movies this month, so at least it left an impression.
7. Good Boy
I absolutely expected PerGron to love this. I respect it a lot, but it just isn't my kind of movie. It's very Skinamarink in its approach but I just didn't get invested into the lore of the movie in the same way I view Skinamarink as a super compelling puzzle box of a story. I think my main issue here is that I pretty much caught on to what this movie was doing and what the "twist" was going to be really early on, so even though I do think the tension was well executed and it gives an all time great dog performance, I just kind of felt the whole thing was really predictable and repetitive. I honestly struggle with stuff to say about this one since the narrative is sooo straight forward. Again, pretty much the opposite of Skinamarink which thrives in its ambiguity. Shooting the movie from a 3rd person point of view of the dog was a really ambitious choice, but after a while it just kind of grates on me and becomes visually exhausting. A really solid directorial effort, it just wasn't a movie that was on my wavelength and very obviously completely on PerGron's.
6. A House of Dynamite
The first third of this movie had me Locked. Hell. In. My god, what an excellent exercise in building suspense. I actually think it might be THE best stuff Katherine Bigalow has ever put out in her entire career. If this was a short film that just ended there, it would be an all timer. Unfortunately the movie keeps going, and much like everyone else I'm genuinely kind of baffled at how little else the film has to offer in its other two acts. I respect the idea of seeing the events from different perspectives, I just don't think the movie did nearly enough with the gimmick.
Instead of feeling like were getting continually deeper insight into the situation, it just kind of feels like we keep on watching the same stuff from different angles. By the time we get to Idris Elba as the president I'm pretty much checked out. It's cool on paper that the sequencing builds the level of importance of the characters were following, but for something like this I think following the more ground level characters is just inherently way more compelling.The one exception I'll give is the Jared Harris character. His arc was an absolute stand out and the one time I thought the movie did something interesting with the different perspectives. The ending was SUPREMELY unsatisfying, and honestly if they would have just cut to black without the little 30 second coda at the end I think it would be more effective. The fact that it feels like were going to actually see some of the aftermath instead the movie is like "lol nope" and cuts to credits was just super frustrating.
5. Bugonia
Very, VERY mixed on this one. Some elements of it are absolute stand outs of the year...the score, the production design, the costumes and makeup, the performances. All of that stuff is completely top tier. I genuinely think this might be THE Jessie Plemmons performance. He completely transforms himself here. I truly think the first 15 minutes before the title drop is neck in neck with The Long Walk and I was genuinely holding my breath at the tension that was created there and locked in to see where the movie would go.
Unfortunately, I found the second act of this movie SUPER dull, which drags the whole thing down. I don't really know how to put it except I just got really bored with the back and forth between Plemmons and Emma Stone's character. It just felt really repetitive and like the movie was spinning its wheels. Once the cop shows up at the house the movie kicks back into high gear, I just think there's a serious pacing issue in the second act outside of a couple stand out sequences ("Basket Case" might be my INSTANT "Best Needle Drop" nomination) The ending is bonkers and the entire third act is thrilling, I just wish the middle chunk of the movie had more going on.
As much as I loved the actual performance, I found the conspiracy theory rambling of the Plemmons theory exhausting after a while and there's way too much of the run time devoted to it. I think I agree with Doug Walker that I wish more of the movie would have been devoted to Stone's character. I found her a lot more multi-layered even if it's an overall less flashy performance. This is the first movie of the month that absolutely has the potential to hit some Golden Tiki nominations with me, I just think the highlights of the film were greater than the movie as a whole.
4. TRON: Ares
I'll admit putting this over Bugonia is kind of ridiculous. It's objectively NOT a great movie. The storyline is both shallow as hell and all over the place, and frankly kind of takes a big dump all over the continuity established in the other two movies. That being said, I had SOOO much fun with this. It's a two hour Nine Inch Nails music video. I don't think the score itself was as good as Legacy, but I actually think it was an even more propulsive audio/visual experience specifically because it doesn't waste any time with the deep philosophical musings Legacy had to break up its run time. Instead it's just wall to wall dumb, stupid action executed to Hollywood perfection.
I actually really dig the visual design here. The red color pallet pops, the TRON stuff coming into the real world was genuinely well executed, and even the Member Berries of going back to the original Grid of the first movie was a really cool throwback as someone who was THAT kind of nerdy kid who viewed the original TRON movie the same way most people view Star Wars. The performances are nothing special, but Evan Peters is having a good time, Greta Lee puts in a serviceable if forgettable protagonist character, and even freaking Jared Leto oddly feels well cast in this movie where his whole character is all about an AI trying to be human. With all the weird nonsense surrounding Leto in real life, it's an oddly fitting role for him that even has some probably unintentional meta moments that almost seem to directly call out his real life problematic nature. You're a real boy, Jared!
3. Kiss of the Spider Woman
I really think this is going to be a forgotten little gem of a movie come Oscar season. I got really swept away in it. I definitely found the prison stuff way more compelling than the musical fantasy sequences, but the fantasy sequences at least looked amazing and the visual contrast between them and the prison stuff was super impressive. The two lead performances are outstanding, and provide a super compelling dual character arc. I think my only real major issue here is that as a musical I genuinely think this might border on Emelia Perez levels of bad. It's a far, FAR better story than that trainwreck and has an ACTUAL progressive queer message behind it, but MAN do the actual songs just do absolutely nothing for me. J-Lo's performance is also a really mixed bag and I just don't think she keeps up with the two leads. Overall though this is just a really solid little movie that I can totally see being completely buried in Oscar season only for it to become a cult classic in the future.
2. Shelby Oaks
I'm not even going to PRETEND I'm not totally biased here. If it weren't for the Stuckmann of it all there's no way this even makes the top five. That being said, it's impossible to not just be beaming with pride for what Chris was able to accomplish here. It's not great, and as PerGron mentioned it's not even close to being the best directorial debut for former YouTubers (Hi, "Talk To Me"!) The characters are about as paper thin as they come, and the story is basically just Blair Witch Project meets Rosemary's Baby with a dash of Hereditary. That being said, Chris never claimed this to be the most original thing in the world. It's an homage to his biggest horror influences, and I do think he does a great job taking these individually cliche elements and weaves it into an original narrative.
I'm glad PerGron agrees with me about the CreepyPasta comparison, because I really think that's where the true strength and creepiness of what this movie is trying to do shines. I love the found footage stuff here pretty much across the board, I love individual sequences, and I even loved the ending which I know is a super divisive take. Some pretty shoddy CGI (understandable for a budget) and an overall black hole when it comes to actual characters can't take away from the fact that Stuckmann really did accomplish pretty much everything he set out to with this thing, and I find it super inspirational. I sat all the way through the credits beaming with pride at this thing. It's so, SOOO understandable that it's not everyone's cup of tea and I really do think it's unfair that my bias is clouding my judgement on it, but on top of my personal investment the actual CreepyPasta-esque story at the center of it really did unnerve me.
1. Frankenstein
This is very much the Nosferatu of 2025, for better and worse. It's basically EXACTLY what you expect it to be from the pitch perfect pairing of director and material, in a way that almost makes the film feel a bit cold and clinical. I don't think the emotional elements in this thing land nearly as much as they should and I specifically think way too much emphasis was put on the Mia Goth. I genuinely kind of hate that the most major changes this makes from an otherwise super faithful adaption of the original novel comes in the form of giving the story a weird love triangle angle.
That being said, OH MY GOD. This might be THE most visually impressive Gullermo Del Toro movie yet. It's not as wildly imaginative as something like Pan's Labrynith or Hellboy 2, but the shot composition of the movie mixed with the absolutely sublime production design is just tear inducing in its cinematic perfection. It's an absolute crime that this didn't get a more widespread theatrical release and I definitely feel blessed that I was able to see it on the big screen. Much like Nosferatu, the adaptation was so faithful to the original source material that it was almost to its detriment. I had the same sort of cold "yep, that was definitely Frankenstein/Dracula" reaction walking away from this, and I can't emphasize enough how much the love triangle stuff just didn't work for me.
The two leads are absolutely killer here though, with Jacob Elordi being a particular highlight of the whole year as far as performances though. Del Toro's scripts have always kind of kept me at a distance as far as how much emotional investment he wants us to feel, and unfortunately I do think that holds true with this movie. In spite of that, it's easily one of his best and certainly the most ambitious film he's ever cracked out. I keep coming back to the Nosferatu comparison. It's not a film that knocked my socks off the way I was hoping it was and I definitely don't think it's going to be all that rewatchable, but it's still just objectively fantastic film making.
