Summer hit.
The air conditioning is running hot and you are trapped in a cube of drywall.
Escape plan?
Movies.
You don’t need to leave. You just need the right stream.
Maybe it is a bloody ballet battle in Budapest.
Maybe it is Dutch forests that smell like dread and history.
Or perhaps you want neon action in Japan.
Pick your poison.
Or just pick what’s on the screen.
Here are the ones worth the data cap this May.
The Twisty Bits
Bugonia
It started as a Korean film called Save the Green Planet! back in 2003. Now it is Yorgos Lanthimos showing off again.
Jesse Plemons plays Teddy. He is paranoid.
His cousin Don is autistic. They are kidnappers.
They snatch Michelle Fuller, played by Emma Stone.
She is a CEO. She is also the reason Teddy’s mother is in a coma thanks to a botched medical trial.
Teddy thinks she is working with aliens.
So they torture her.
It is inventive. It is brutal. It asks the question we all dread.
Is he a grieving man lashing out at corruption? Or is humanity actually doomed?
Stone steals the movie.
Shaven-headed and desperate she looks less like a person and more like an animal playing with its food.
Pretty Lethal
Ask a dancer about ballet. They will talk about pain. Poise. The grueling discipline of breaking your own body until it obeys.
Director Vicky Jewson takes those traits and dumps them into Budapest.
Five American ballerinas. Trapped.
A war between crime families is raging outside. One of those leaders? Devora Kasimer, played by Uma Thurman.
Thurman vamps every single frame. She is magnificent.
Expect tutus soaked in blood.
Expect the choreography of The Nutcracker repurposed as combat moves.
It is schlock. Brilliantly crafted, gory schlock.
Anxiety in A/C
Send Help
Sam Raimi, director of the Evil Dead, swaps zombies for office politics.
Or at least, that’s how it starts.
Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdAMS) crashes her private jet onto a desert island. Her boss Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) comes with her.
He has been terrible to her. For months. Years, maybe.
Now he is injured. He is immobile.
She is not.
She uses survivalist skills to live her best life while he suffers.
You want revenge? She delivers.
O’Brien plays the asshole boss so well you will want to throw the remote at the screen.
Raimi trades dark corridors for sunny tropics but keep a towel close.
One jump scare later you are questioning every life choice.
Heresy
Small frame. Big impact.
This Dutch folk horror, known locally as Witte Wieven, runs only 61 minutes. It doesn’t need longer.
It picks up festival awards because it works.
Frieda cannot conceive.
Her village says she is a witch. Her husband persecutes her alongside them.
Religious hysteria. Control. Fear.
Director Didier Konings uses the standard genre tropes—superstitious villagers, dark woods—but flips them.
It becomes an exploration of oppression specifically aimed at women’s bodies.
Chilling?
Yes.
Especially in the summer.
Superpowers & Shapeshifters
My Hero Academia: You’re Next
Think anime isn’t for you? Try this.
It is the fourth spin-off. It feels like a jump-in point anyway.
Izuku “Deku” Midoriya is still trying to be a hero. His class is in trouble.
New villain? Dark Might. He looks like a corrupted version of All Might, the mentor who gave Izuku powers in the first place.
Throw in a mafia. A cyborg butler. A kid with wild, unstable powers.
You need zero background knowledge.
You just need eyes.
The stoniest hearts might crack a smile at the sheer spectacle.
Tank Girl
The future is arid. There is no water.
CEO Kesslee, played by Malcolm McDowell, holds the last drops in a fist.
Lori Petty fights back as Tank Girl.
She has allies.
A repressed mechanic named Jet Girl (a young Naomi Watts, before anyone knew her name).
Kangaroos on motorcycles led by Ice-T. (Yes, that Ice-T.)
Weapons that should not exist in a budget film.
It was mocked in 1995. Cheap. Campy. Violent.
It aged like wine in the bottle labeled “cult classic.”
Grab a drink and let it wreck your brain. It is glorious trash.
Shadows in the Snow and Dark
The Thing / The Thing from Another World
The 80s were good to film. Criterion agrees.
They released a batch of remakes next to their original source material.
See Cat People (1942) alongside the 1982 version. Check Breathless next to its American cousin.
But listen to me here.
Focus on John Carpenter.
His 1982 The Thing pairs with the 1951 original.
The new one is tighter. The paranoia is visceral.
The body horror remains unmatched.
Both films started the trend of shapeshifting aliens. They defined a subgenre that everyone copied but few improved.
Watch them side-by-side.
Note how the tension ratchets up. Note the fear of your neighbor.
Winter never feels closer.
Good Boy
Todd moves to a run-down house in the middle of nowhere. His grandfather just died.
His dog Indy moves in too.
The house is haunted?
Maybe.
There are smells in the woods. Things emerging at night.
Todd is sick. He is going mad.
But Indy?
The dog is doing detective work. Guided by visions of Bandit, the granddad’s previous dog, he uncovers the evil.
Horror from the animal’s POV.
It is risky.
Hollywood says no kids. No animals. Ever.
Indy is the exception. The award-winning hound lifts this script above the rest. Ben Leonberg tells the tale tight and scary, but the star is on all fours.
What’s on your list tonight?
