In other news, there’s a new Scary Movie out this weekend.

It stars Anna Faris, Regina Hall, and—for the first time since 2001—Marlon and Shawn Wayans. The latter two split screenwriting duties with their brother Keenen Ivory Wayans, nephew Craig Wayans, and frequent collaborator Rick Alvarez.

Back in 2000, the Wayans family wrote and starred in the original Scary Movie, a film primarily spoofing Scream, with a bit of Scream 2 and I Know What You Did Last Summer for good measure. The parody was highly successful, so much so that Scary Movie 2 was fast-tracked for release just one year later. The first Scary Movie has, to date, a higher box office gross than any Scream film.

The franchise continued despite contract disputes with the Wayans-less Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4, bringing in David Zucker to lend a bit of The Naked Gun-style PG-13 spoof humor. Anna Faris and Regina Hall starred in the first four installments before neither was asked to return for the abysmal Scary Movie 5.

Now, 13 years later, the core four have returned to their once-successful franchise for a sixth film titled, simply, Scary Movie. Unfortunately for them and us, Scary Movie (2026) is dead on arrival, with immediately outdated references and a self-proclaimed “we offend everybody!” approach that makes it seem, well, written by five men over 50.

The plot follows that of the 2022 fifth Scream film (titled Scream) closely, and to a fault. Olivia Rose Keegan delivers an uncanny imitation of a young Anna Faris as Cindy’s estranged daughter Sara. After the attempted murder of her sister, Tuesday (a reference to the Jenna Ortega-starring Wednesday), Sara returns to Woodsville, and the motions of a legacy sequel play out in earnest.

The near-devotional adherence to the structure of Scream (2022) results in some odd plot points, like the reunion of Dave Sheridan’s Doofy and Cheri Oteri’s Gail, whose chemistry doesn’t quite match that of David Arquette and Courteney Cox.

The jokes, too, often feel just as perfunctory. Take the inclusion of trans male teen Jess (played by Benny Zielke), whose treatment is neither bold enough to be progressive nor mean-spirited enough to be offensive. The result is something quite pointless, the Wayans becoming the latest in a series of comedians who felt they must have a “take” on trans people. The later references to “wokeness” and pronouns feel like boxes being checked.

When the film takes shots at other movies, the jokes seldom offer any commentary beyond simply recreating the scenes they’re referencing. Remember Smile? That was a movie. Remember M3GAN? What if she twerked? The imitations are generally well executed, with impressive production value and sets convincingly approximating those of the films they’re parodying (there’s an irony to the $30 million studio picture jabbing at low-budget breakouts like It Follows), but they offer nothing of substance.

A minor highlight is a cameo from Chris Elliott, whose Scary Movie 2 butler character has apparently become Longlegs, atrophied left hand and all, though I’d be hard-pressed to tell you what the lead into or out of the scene was.

Still other jokes, like an extended Kai Cenat cameo, I must concede I am simply not the target audience for.

Even a cameo from One Battle After Another Oscar loser Teyana Taylor (parodying the cold open of Scream VI) already feels both inside baseball and too late.

Scary Movie’s jabs at Scream (2022) are the most egregious, failing to offer more than the jokes that film already made. The new protagonists are all related to the original characters? I remember that. The boyfriend is always the killer? Yes, I remember that one too. When he and Val (Ruby Snowber, swinging for the fences in her best Mikey Madison impression) are revealed to be the killers, the only twist is... there is no twist. I was there when it happened the first time.

The first development with any bite or edge comes nearly 90 minutes in, when Wayans, Wayans, Faris, and Hall (breaking the fourth wall) reject the notion of being replaced by the younger cast members and burn them alive.

“Did we just kill our kids?” Faris asks as the quartet walks away, the backs of their costumes burned off to reveal their body doubles’ perky bottoms.

For a film so concerned with acknowledging other horror movies’ very existence, it’s the first joke that seriously reckons with this franchise’s own relevance.

Then, minutes later, it imagines a black Nosferatu named Brosferatu.

Rating: 1.5/5 ★

Listen to even more of my thoughts on Scary Movie on my podcast Cinephomaniacs:

We get into what worked about Scary Movie, what didn’t, plus side discussions about The Odyssey, Leviticus, and other summer releases.

In early 2025, some friends and I started a tradition of hosting movie marathons. Over the next year, it became an excuse for us to stay in touch, with everyone taking turns alternating hosting duties.

The hosting duties took a regular shape. Hosting your movie marathon means volunteering your home and setting out lots of pillows, blankets, blow-up mattresses, and the works. You create a comfortable environment for people to lay out and watch movies for a whole day, along with some food and drinks. Bonus points if the snacks are on theme.

Most important is the selection of the movies themselves. The story you tell with these four or five movies is up to you. You could introduce your friends to some new favorites, revisit classics, put a new spin on some misunderstood gem, or do whatever you want really.

Here are my four picks (and their food pairings).

Dinner in America

2020, Directed by Adam Rehmeier

I kicked off the marathon at noon with the most recent movie of the day, Dinner in America. One of the many films screwed by COVID, Dinner in America missed a theatrical release and lived in limbo for a while, ultimately finding an audience in 2024 through streaming and fan-led, one-off screenings. (I know a theater in Maitland that would be perfect for one of these screenings…)

Despite its recent popularity, it was, still, a blind spot for my friends. Several of us had recently seen Rehmeier’s latest film, Carolina Caroline, at the Florida Film Festival (which I wrote about here). So it was only natural to go back to his first cult classic to ease my guests into my marathon.

Dinner in America is an offbeat romcom set in the midwest, following Simon (Kyle Gallner), a punk singer with a compulsion to start trouble wherever he goes. When this brings Simon attention from the police, he hides with a socially awkward, mentally slow young woman, Patty (Emily Skeggs), who desperately wants to break free of her sheltered life.

From the first frame, Simon’s “fuck you” attitude shapes the film itself. It feels, at times, like you’re watching a moving anarchist zine. This makes it a deceptively heartwarming movie. You’re slowly charmed by the abrasive Simon, just like Patty is. It’s impossible not to crack a smile as Patty gains confidence through Simon’s support and finally finds her voice.

“Fuck the rest of them. Fuck ‘em all, fuck ‘em all but us.”

Dinner in America is a crowd pleaser that made for the perfect intro to my marathon.

All That Jazz

1979, Directed by Bob Fosse

With Dinner in America having eased everyone into my marathon, I moved on to the main event: a permanent fixture on my Letterboxd Mount Rushmore, Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz.

Roy Scheider stars as director Joe Gideon, a man quite a lot like Fosse, a womanizer and substance abuser who nonetheless turns everything he touches into gold. Whilst attempting to direct a movie and play at the same time (inspired by Fosse’s own experience with Lenny and Chicago), Gideon crumbles under the stress.

Hospitalized by a heart attack, Gideon reflects on his life in a way only Fosse could imagine, filled with elaborate song and dance numbers, flashbacks, montages, and flirtatious conversations with Death herself.

The movie tied for the Palme d’Or and nabbed perhaps the most deserved Film Editing Oscar ever. For my friends, who had not seen it, this was an opportunity to correct a massive blind spot for them, but also to show them a movie that had meant a great deal to me.

If I could only play one movie at this marathon, this would have been the one.

If I could only play two movies at this marathon, I would have played…

Video Diary of a Lost Girl

2012, Directed by Lindsay Denniberg

I was first exposed to Video Diary of a Lost Girl in 2024 through Freaky Fridays at the Enzian Theater, a midnight screening followed by a Q&A, on a night where the bathrooms were out of order and the food and drinks were cut off. The movie left an impression on me, so much so that I had hardly made it home when I ordered it from AGFA. Ever since, I’ve been itching for an opportunity to share it with someone else.

An experimental love story about a 100-year-old succubus, Video Diary is like nothing I’ve ever seen. The DIY aesthetic combines Caligari-esque sets, miniatures, and CG effects (often all at once), keeping your eye moving and your mind guessing.

Balancing heavy themes with an offbeat comedic sensibility, Video Diary defies categorization. Is it horror? Fantasy? Romcom? As Lindsay Denniberg put it, it’s “an alternate vampire story with menstrual blood and influenced by all shot-on-video horror things and 80s and 90s anime.”

The screening went over incredibly well, and I relished the chance to send a few more Letterboxd reviews its way.

Denniberg was kind enough to join me for an in-depth interview shortly after the screening. Speaking all the way up to the 40-minute Zoom limit, we dug into Video Diary of a Lost Girl, avant-garde filmmaking, and the ten-year journey to make her second feature, upcoming release of her newest film, Killer Makeover.

You can read my full conversation with Lindsay here.

Detention

2011, Directed by Joseph Kahn

Last but not least, Detention occupied the “now let’s do a silly one” pick.

The genre-bending sci-fi, horror romcom (are you sensing a theme for the day?) spins The Breakfast Club into a time-travel slasher. Directed by Joseph Kahn, one of the most successful music video directors out there, Detention is stuffed with self-referential, meta humor and cultural references that firmly date it but make it no less fun to watch.

Josh Hutcherson shines as the male love interest, like a 5’5” Jake Ryan who commands the screen in a way that makes me imagine an alternate timeline where he had Tom Holland’s career.

Detention flies by with a joke-a-minute, TikTok-brain-before-we-had-TikTok pace and you truly will not know where it’s going at any point. It was the perfect silly conclusion to the day.

Food Pairing: I don’t remember any food in Video Diary of a Lost Girl or Detention, but the vibe I was getting was gas station snacks and bowling alley pizza. So, I went with chips, dip, and, to class it up a bit, homemade personal pizzas.

(Note: this conversation includes references to sexual assault.)

The premise of Video Diary of a Lost Girl is as follows: Louise (Priscilla McEver) is a 100-year-old succubus who must have sex every 28 days to avoid bleeding to death, but any man she sleeps with will die. When she’s not working at an adult video store, Louise staves off her curse by turning the tables on predatory men she encounters on the street. That is until a reincarnated Charlie (Chris Shields), her first love—and victim—from the 1920s, reenters her life. Louis now faces an impossible choice: will she push away from the love of her life, or risk losing him a second time?

Lindsay was kind enough to join me for an interview via Zoom on June 12, in between fundraising efforts for Uncle Lou, a staple of the Orlando music scene recently taken by ICE.

We talked about Video Diary of a Lost Girl, Uncle Lou, her creative process, filmmakers that inspire her, and the upcoming release of her newest film, Killer Makeover, after more than 10 years in the making.

Read my full conversation with Lindsay below.

Lindsay Denniberg: I like your aurora borealis (Zoom background).

Andrew Franklin: Thank you. It feels a little on theme.

Lindsay Denniberg: It works. It makes your hair move.

Andrew Franklin: Oh, does it?

Lindsay Denniberg: Yeah, yeah. It’s all the illusion of cinema.

Andrew Franklin: How are you doing today?

Lindsay Denniberg: I’m doing good. I’m not sure if you’re connected with the music scene here, but Uncle Lou was taken by ICE.

Andrew Franklin: I’ve seen that. I’ve never met Uncle Lou, but I’ve seen the news going around on everyone’s page. That’s horrible.

Lindsay Denniberg: I’ve been just helping get punk music for (the benefit comp). We filmed a lot of movies back in the day at his place and he’s acted in my movies and stuff, so I’m plugging him now with all this going on. So that’s my day. How are you?

Andrew Franklin: I’m good. I’ve been looking forward to this interview. I first watched your movie in 2024 when they showed it at Freaky Fridays at the Enzian. I really enjoyed it. I went home and ordered it that night. I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to show it to some of my friends. So I finally had a movie marathon and showed it to some of them and I’m excited to get to talk to you a bit about it. How do you usually describe the movie to people who haven’t seen it?

Lindsay Denniberg: A love story about undead things. I don’t know. Everyone’s always like, “Oh, it’s neon drenched and it’s a fever dream and all that.” Those are fun and everything, but to me it’s more like an alternate vampire story with menstrual blood and influenced by all shot-on-video horror things and 80s and 90s anime. It’s like a soup of a bunch of different inspirations put together.

Andrew Franklin: I was gonna ask where the original idea for the movie came from.

Lindsay Denniberg: It was like when you have a bunch of different ideas and they start blending together. I would say, the closest thing was that I was at UCF and we had to do a project for Foundations of Story. It wasn’t even a filmmaking class. Like you could write something. And I started writing some graphic novel or something.

The only thing that it had in common with Video Diary was that having sex would cause you to be vampiric to someone. Wasn’t even menstrual blood related. So as I got older, that part of that story I kind of took and ran with it with other movie ideas I was working with. I wanted to do a romantic comedy, and try to take what I saw as serious material and have fun with that, but treated it genuinely.

Andrew Franklin: So how did you balance that? You’re dealing with some pretty heavy topics. I mean, Louise’s M.O. at the start of the movie is to rape the rapist, which kills them.

Lindsay Denniberg: Yeah.

Andrew Franklin: How do you balance that with it being a romcom, kind of a light hearted, comedy drama, horror?

Lindsay Denniberg: I feel like anything with the rape is almost shown through the lens of genre horror, “chasing down a dark alleyway, cut away here and cut away there,” just being kind of cartoony with it in a Troma way. I feel like that loosens up the content a little bit to experiment with it more without hurting people. As someone who has experienced that kind of thing, that’s not what it looks like, but that is what movies kind of sell it to us as.

So I wanted to take the scene where she’s getting chased the first time and make you think it’s going a certain way, and then all of a sudden cut to him tied up to the bed with monster masks everywhere and fog machines. It takes the trope on its head a little bit more.

Andrew Franklin: Oh, so you’re kind of playing into the tropes. It’s more like the Toxic Avenger version of a rape scene. It’s not Irreversible.

Lindsay Denniberg: No, no. Like, Irreversible is definitely hard for me to watch. I’ve seen it, and to me the representation of these things is very different than the actual things.

Because if I were to shoot it from a realistic point of view, if I were trying to go for a documentary style, and there was a time in the script where I was thinking of going in that way… I was thinking, “This would be much better if it was a date rape situation.”

Because that’s, practically, a lot simpler, as murdering someone would be concerned. But it wouldn’t play for the camera a certain way like it would in an 80s or 90s genre movie.

Andrew Franklin: It might be a hard one to come back from, tonally.

Lindsay Denniberg: Everything’s a risk. Even with the Charlie character, I feel like anytime I read people’s reviews, he gets the brunt of the criticism because he’s kind of like a nerdy bro, and he says inappropriate things and all that. And for me, that’s not his character. That’s just the front he’s putting on, like we’re all kind of doing

I don’t even realize these things until I talk about them, honestly. The characters are all kind of based off a version of myself or other friends. Louise is definitely the girl I want to be. But Charlie is who I actually am, a little embarrassing, and hiding behind a veil of Intellectualism. So I feel like we’re kind of looking at the difference between what we’re representing to the world and who we really are behind closed doors in my movie.

Andrew Franklin: With Charlie, how much of that was on the page and how much just came from Chris Shields?

Lindsay Denniberg: Well, I would say like all the cringey stuff definitely came from me. And Chris is the one who’s making it digestible.

Anything that Charlie is singing is all Chris. He has this kind of Pee Wee Herman character he plays called Mr. Transylvania. I use his music to find songs for his character like he’s the song and dance man.

So I would say anything that’s cool about Charlie is probably Chris. And anything that’s really cringey is me. And that’s where I feel like I relate to him the most because, like, he is an annoying character. And I feel like in my life I’m also an annoying character if I’m looking for someone to finally be endeared by my dumbassery. And I feel like Louise is a little bit like that too.

Andrew Franklin: So was “Cinema, Cinema, Fuck Me in the Ass” (the song Charlie performs to impress Louise) in the script?

Lindsay Denniberg: That was Chris’s original work. Yeah. “Cinema, Cinema. Fuck me in the ass. You got class.” Yes, and the one he does on the piano is his. I think he wrote that before he would even call himself Mr. Transylvania.

When it comes to Charlie, Chris and I would try out the dialogue kind of like role playing over the phone. We wrote it over the phone pretty much. And that’s how I could find the character. Because it reads one on the page, and then the person who you’re working with, who will make that character come to life, has their own creative DNA. So it’s like you just gotta throw caution in the wind and hope it works out.

Andrew Franklin: Tell me a little about the production process. Was this a student film?

Lindsay Denniberg: Originally it was my grad thesis film. I had gone to UCF for film school, got my BFA there. That’s where I met Chris and all my other creative friends.

Then I worked for Lloyd Kaufman for a few months at Troma. I was his assistant. From there I went to grad school, which is where I did Video Diary.

Working at Troma kind of led me to realizing, “Oh, I don’t want to work in the industry, but I still gotta make my damn movie at school.” So it was all leading to that.

I wasn’t even sure I was gonna do a film until I got there. I was working on the script with Chris and thought maybe I’d do art-y type stuff because I was going to art school. But I was just like, “No, I’m gonna do the feature I want to do and commit everything to that.” I tried to make all the classes work toward making that film, and I kind of did.

Andrew Franklin: Where was grad school?

Lindsay Denniberg: It was at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. SAIC.

Andrew Franklin: Did you all come up from UCF to that school?

Lindsay Denniberg: Chris moved to New York at the time, we were all kind of going our separate ways. But we always stay in contact, because we’re good friends. That’s when we would work on it over the phone. He was working at Dunkin Donuts back then, and I was writing the script while he was helping me. I’d pretty much call him after my classes late at night while he was on shift, and we’d write the movie over the phone.

The first scene we ever shot was the Lilith scene, the very first scene. That’s why it’s so visually different too, because that was me experimenting with all that during the first year of grad school. Then the second year, we shot the main principal production during the summer. Pretty much all my loans and money went into it that way.

From there I spent my second year editing it while making some other stuff too. I did some installations and little short things here and there for other classes, and things I was learning from those projects kind of fed into other techniques I would use for Video Diary and the editing.

Then from there I was the TA for someone named Lori Felker. She’s a great filmmaker, and she had seen me working on Video Diary on an off day when she didn’t really need me. She was the one who worked for (Chicago Underground FIlm Fest), so she was like, “Oh, let’s try to get this at CUFF.”

A lot of the movie coming out the way it did was because she had seen it, championed it, and pushed it toward CUFF. And yeah, that was kind of it from there.

Andrew Franklin: It kind of works that the beginning is in a different style, though. I feel it sets it apart as the intro. I’ve never really seen anything visually like this movie. There’s some shots in physical locations, others where this kind of uncanny valley green screen. Often it’s a mix of the two. I mean, what guided that? And also what was it like to shoot that?

Lindsay Denniberg: Anything I’m making is usually whatever I’m visually obsessed with at the time. So since I was just getting to SAIC, I had already known about and been obsessed with Tony Oursler. I had seen some of this stuff on Ubu (UbuWeb is an online library of avant-garde art) on my way to Chicago and was just fascinated by it.

Then I ended up working at the video data bank while I was there. So I got to see all of his stuff. And Cecelia Condit, who did Possibly in Michigan. The first time I had ever seen her stuff was during that time.

So I remember sending images of that to Chris, and he’s just like, “This is amazing.” Now it’s kind of had like a rebirth, I’ve noticed.

But yeah, pretty much all that video art, like going to the library, looking at video art, what you think a video might be and assume it might be, and then what it actually is.

Andrew Franklin: There are a lot of shots where the characters are like bathed in different color light or they’re maybe out of focus a little bit. I asked my partner in one scene, “Is this what it’s like to need glasses when you’re watching a movie?” She said yes.

Lindsay Denniberg: That’s just how it happened. So nothing’s perfect.

Andrew Franklin: With the different colors in scenes, how much of that was accomplished in-camera and how much was after the fact?

Lindsay Denniberg: For the non-green screen scenes, like anything in the living room or bedroom, some of it was actually very evenly lit, but it looked a little bland once I messed around with it. So to me, the only way to save the footage and make it more interesting while still feeling like part of a horror movie was to go to extremes with the color, like the Italian horror red-and-green contrasting colors and making everything really dramatic.

Then the green screen locations, like the adult cinema video store, would exist in their own color world. Every location almost has its own laws of physics, I guess. Light physics. It’s like a holodeck.

Andrew Franklin: So as you’re shooting the green screen scenes, do you have an idea of what it’s going to look like? Or do you sort of find that in the editing process?

Lindsay Denniberg: I would say it’s a little bit of both because this was the first time I’d ever really done green screen. I had played with green screen on VHS before, but never with a nice camera where you can actually key things out cleanly in After Effects. So I was learning that while we were shooting it.

I like to do things as cheaply and practically as possible, so if that means going straight-up all green screen, that’s what it means. And then I got better at it. But I think the fact that I’m also not that good at it really drives how the movie looks, because I’m trying to hide things I’d normally see as artifacts or flaws, while enhancing the imagery with more intense color. Your eyes kind of dance around an image depending on how you color it.

I don’t know. I’m trying to play tricks on everyone. So there’s a lot of color.

Andrew Franklin: Were there any happy accidents, where you didn’t even realize exactly something that was going to be interesting about the shot until you saw it after the fact?

Lindsay Denniberg: I feel like that kind of happens in almost every scene. There’s usually at least one shot like that.

Andrew Franklin: For me it’s the shots in the apartment. I think the colors are so effective. And as I’m watching it, I’m wondering, did you just put up like red lights during this scene or did you shoot it normally and come back and recolor it?

Lindsay Denniberg: Well, for the living room, it was the part where it was almost a little too evenly lit and then I went a little crazy with the colors. That’s why it looks a little more colorful than the bedroom because the bedroom is definitely purposely lit with a green light, a red light, like horror, Carpenter style. So it’s using the color correction part of the post-production to look really stark or colorful and intense. I’m just not sure exactly how colorful or stark and intense it is until it’s in the post production realm. It’s like gambling, because there are a lot of colors I don’t think I would have gone for unless I looked at it and thought, “Okay, this works for what we have, so I’m gonna roll with it.”

Andrew Franklin: I think it helps the apartment scenes a lot because it seems like a lot of the other scenes you have control over the environment you’re in or you’re in green screen so you can create it after the fact.

It’s difficult to make an apartment look interesting. So I think making these sort of extreme coloring decisions really helps even. And it helps keep the movie visually interesting in every scene, even when you’re in some of the less interesting locations, some of the more tangible locations. How much money and time did you spend shooting this all total?

Lindsay Denniberg: Well money is probably my entire loans I took out to go to grad school, because I went to use the equipment and use the facilities. And now that I’m making my second feature for so many years without all that stuff, looking back, it really did make a difference having those resources.

Because I’m taking like double the time to finish the movie now, with trying to find the resources on my own outside of going to grad school or film school.

Andrew Franklin: Where are things with your next film? I remember at Freaky Fridays, we saw a trailer for Killer Makeover.

Lindsay Denniberg: Yep, that’s the one. Still working on it. Our hard deadline is the end of July to start sending it to festivals because we only have so much access to sound rooms that give us free access, so I have to work around schedules and stuff.

It’s sadly ironic because I’m looking for all this punk music right now for Uncle Lou, while I’ve also spent the past few years looking for punk music to finish out the film. I like to use music from friends, and as long as they’re cool with it being free, it becomes kind of a promotional thing for them while I gain their powers of music.

So it’s weird because I’ve already been digging through all these bands, and now we need to send a bunch of songs from the Orlando music scene from 10 or 20 years ago for this fundraising compilation. It’s just weird timing, honestly, because I’ve been constantly listening to all these bands.

Andrew Franklin: It’s funny how things work out sometimes.

Lindsay Denniberg: Yeah. Just weird coincidences. It’s almost done. I’m pretty much picture locked, and we’ve been working on it since 2014.

Since then I did about 10 episodes of a show called Pandora’s Talk Box, which is kind of like Mystery Science Theater showcasing friends’ weird short films and band stuff. I originally did that because I got a grant from the Wretched Nobles. I think they were offering around $500 to do a short film, and I realized that $500 could go toward a camera I could use to finish Killer Makeover.

So it’s kind of been this process of using one film project to help finish this longer, bigger film project.

Andrew Franklin: Seems like indie film is not always so glamorous.

Lindsay Denniberg: Oh, it is not. I mean, the most glamorous part of indie filmmaking is just having fun with your friends. It kind of feels like you’re all in a Kurosawa movie together, fighting to make this thing, or like Bowfinger or Ed Wood. There’s a romanticism to being on a film set, and I think that part is very true.

But I’ve also been exhausted for the past decade.

I love this movie, though. It kind of takes Video Diary and explodes the universe tenfold because it has even more green screen and its own sort of Hawaiian tiki-bar vibe. It’s kind of like Video Diary’s bigger, stranger cousin.

Since I make these movies with friends and use music from my friends, and I’m still close with all these people and still working with them on it right now, it kind of feels like seeing our entire lives from the last decade, from before Trump got elected to now, and everything we’ve been working toward during that time.

I think that’s also why my artwork is very collage-based. It kind of hides the fact that it’s pulling from different times and places. You throw it all together and either no one notices, or they notice what’s actually important.

Andrew Franklin: We mentioned the uncanny valley earlier. It seems like when you’re purposely making something a little less realistic, you can get away with more.

Lindsay Denniberg: Exactly. Yeah.

Andrew Franklin: If you’re making a CGI building and you want it to be photorealistic and it’s not, it seems like people reject that more than a miniature or like more of a low grade CGI..

Lindsay Denniberg: Well, see, it’s interesting because, like, you see the miniature and you kind of see the humanity in it more, you know?

Andrew Franklin: Yeah.

Lindsay Denniberg: I feel like that’s part of what makes something like Nathan Schiff’s Weasels Rip My Flesh so charming. It has that papier-mâché horror aesthetic, and there’s something really endearing about movies that feel like they could’ve been filmed in somebody’s basement.

It creates this underdog artist feeling where you build camaraderie with it as a regular person, instead of someone in Hollywood with access to all the CGI they want.

Andrew Franklin: You have these two G.W. Pabst movies at the center of Video Diary: Pandora’s Box and Video Diary—no, Diary–

Lindsay Denniberg: “Regular” Diary of a Lost Girl.

Andrew Franklin: Right, Pandora’s Box and “Regular” Diary of a Lost Girl. So what was it about those two films that inspired you to include them and name your movie after them, name your production company after them?

Lindsay Denniberg: It’s always a bunch of different things coming together and congealing. I first saw Pandora’s Box during my first year of film school, and it really opened my mind creatively. I just became obsessed with that whole era. I was cutting my hair like Louise Brooks in college, and we were shooting a film called Chances at Uncle Lou’s. It was kind of like our Pee-wee Herman-meets-Daisies movie.

At the time, a lot of my friends were doing these performance-art punk projects at Uncle Lou’s and Stardust and places like that, and I was honestly kind of jealous. I wanted to do that too. So while we were making that film, I started wanting to create my own character and my own weird performance project.

Around then I got really into karaoke for the first time in my life and finally embraced the shittiness of my voice. I started making karaoke videos out of silent films. The first one used Pandora’s Box, where I turned the intertitles into lyrics for this song called “Jack the Ripper, Kill Yourself.” I kept making these uncanny little karaoke videos from silent films using found lyrics and cutting things together in bizarre ways while the movies played on giant CRT TVs or projectors.

Then a couple years later, when I started writing Video Diary, all of that kind of melded into the character. I love the idea of time travel and imagining what I would be into if I were living in another era. So with Louise, it became this idea of, “If she lived in the 1920s, what movies would she be obsessed with?”

Andrew Franklin: That’s interesting. It seems like making these movies over years, it’s almost a time capsule of where you are in your life at that time.

Lindsay Denniberg: Exactly. Even now with Video Diary, it’s hard for me to remember parts of making it because I still live with it every day. I have all the footage, all these behind-the-scenes vignette movies, and I read the Letterboxd reviews all the time, so it never really feels far away from me.

I almost feel like I need even more distance from it to experience that weird nostalgic magnetic pull again.

Andrew Franklin: I saw that Video Diary was included in the Trans Canon recently. What do you think it is about Video Diary that resonates with some members of the trans community?

Lindsay Denniberg: From what I’ve heard from friends in the trans community, especially trans women, I think some of it comes from that feeling of being uncomfortable in your own body and constantly feeling like you have to change something about yourself just to feel comfortable in your skin.

For me, I’ve dealt with hirsutism and things like that, so while that’s obviously not the same thing as being trans, I do understand the feeling of being hyper-aware of your body in that way.

I think that’s kind of how Louise is too. She’s uncomfortable in her body because she’s so many different things at once: a woman, a human, an undead vampire. A lot of the movie is about figuring out how to live with that and embrace it.

Andrew Franklin: Do you feel like there are some aspects of this movie that resonate more now in 2026 than they did when you first made it?

Lindsay Denniberg: Yeah, and I’m surprised, but happy. I feel like since AGFA released the Blu-ray, the movie has had this little comeback because it had kind of fallen into the background for a while. Some people had seen it, but I don’t think it was really ready to be released yet.

I think it was a timing thing. Honestly, I feel like it’s doing more good now than it would have back then.

Andrew Franklin: So I bought this movie through AGFA. If anyone wants to watch Video Diary of a Lost Girl in a way that gives you the most money, what’s the best way to see it?

Lindsay Denniberg: Buying the Blu-ray is probably the best way to support it. It’ll also be available on streaming soon, and that’ll be announced in July.

But I definitely recommend the Blu-ray because it includes a bunch of my other work, behind-the-scenes stuff, short films from other people who worked on the movie, and performance art pieces. You kind of get a deep dive into the little art scene we had going on around the film.

Andrew Franklin: That’s exciting that it’s hitting streaming. I’ll keep a lookout for that. If anyone wants to contact you or see any of your other work, what’s the best way to do that?

Lindsay Denniberg: My website is Pandora’s Talk Box, and you can also reach me on Instagram or Facebook. Those are probably the best places to contact me because I don’t check a lot of my other social media very often. There’s also a contact page through the website.

And yeah, shout out to raising money for Uncle Lou. Fuck ICE, etc. etc.

Andrew Franklin: I’ll be looking for Killer Makeover. I mean, 10 years in the making.

Lindsay Denniberg: I know. I hope people like it. So if not I’ll be very sad. So what’s your movie group that you guys do? You do movie marathons?

Andrew Franklin: We started this movie group on Discord pretty casually after someone on Reddit posted asking if anyone in Orlando wanted to meet up and watch movies. Over time more people joined, including me, and we all got really close. I’d always gone to movies constantly, but suddenly I had people to share that with.

Lindsay Denniberg: I have a group like that, too, from, like, all over the world. We had Bad Movie Mondays.

Andrew Franklin: Over time, we’ve gotten together on other projects too. We have a group called Horror-lando where we host a free horror screening every month, and now I’m working on a Substack and about to launch this podcast.

It’s exciting because I went to film school almost 10 years ago, and I finally feel like I’m doing more creative things around movies again.

Lindsay Denniberg: I feel like the art world, film world, and music world can all feel very cliquey. As I’ve gotten older, they’ve kind of blended together for me, but they still all have their own personalities and quirks. Sometimes it can be intolerable, and sometimes it’s amazing.

Andrew Franklin: It feels good to be doing something more creative lately, even if it is just writing reviews and recording podcasts. But hopefully one day I’ll get the courage to make my own Video Diary.

Lindsay Denniberg: Video Diary of a Lost Boy?

Andrew Franklin: If I use that title, do I have to pay you a royalty?

Lindsay Denniberg: No, no, but you have to have a character watching Louise, watching the Dreyer movie. Show that scene in the movie because I want to keep having a tunnel of movies.

Andrew Franklin: Just like an infinite loop of screens. All right, you’ve got a deal.

This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.

You can purchase “Say Uncle Lou: An Uncle Lou Benefit Comp” on Bandcamp. Every purchase also includes an exclusive early access digital download of Chances, Lindsay’s film shot in 2009 at Uncle Lou’s, starring Uncle Lou (as himself) and Chris Shields aka Mr. Transylvania.

Cinephomaniacs is a podcast by movie lovers and for movie lovers. With Peyton and I co-hosting, we’ll be discussing new releases, old favorites, industry news, and just talking about movies.

Here’s a short, two-minute episode introducing Cinephomaniacs:

We’ve already released episode one, reviewing Obsession, a horror movie that premieres this Friday. We got into Curry Barker’s background, Inde Navarette’s performance, the film’s ethical message, and why we think the movie will be a hit.

You can listen to the full episode here:

Cinephomaniacs is available on Instagram, Letterboxd, and wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow us on the platform of your choice.

We love movies and you’ll love us!

One shot seemed to reveal so much and so little at the same time. My mind filled in the blanks, imagining a hyperviolent, queasy horror film in the vein of the new French extremity trend.

Whose blood is this man wearing? What could he have witnessed (or done) to leave him so dead inside?

My girlfriend and collaborator, Peyton, and I waited patiently, eagerly consuming every new trailer, every new piece of information. When we decided to attend the Florida Film Festival in April, it was guided, in part, by the hunch that an early screening of Obsession would be part of the festival’s program. And when FFF confirmed that it was, Obsession immediately became our highest-priority “must-see” of the festival.

I was fortunate enough to attend both Obsession screenings in April, and it’s my highest rated film of the festival. I’ve taken no small joy in watching the film build a viral hype over the last few weeks, because I’ve seen it and can confirm it’s as good as they say.

The pitch for Obsession is as follows: a young man, Bear (Johnston), makes a wish that his crush, Nikki (Inde Naverette), loved him more than anyone in the world. He gets what he wished for in all the worst ways.

It’s directed by Curry Barker, a sketch comedian and filmmaker best known for his YouTube channel “that’s a bad idea” with his creative partner, Cooper Tomlinson. Barker’s first film, Milk & Serial, was a scrappy and low-budget yet surprisingly solid found footage flick shot by and starring Barker and Tomlinson. At the time, I praised Barker’s performance in the title role of a serial killer called Milk, as well as the film’s pacing and sound design. Milk & Serial went viral when Barker released it for free on his YouTube channel in 2024. In fact, you can watch it right here:

If Milk & Serial was Barker’s first feature film, then Obsession is his first theatrically released film. With the backing of Blumhouse and Universal’s Focus Features branch, the hype has been high. And while you still see some budgetary restrictions in Obsession, the production value overall gets a huge lift from Milk & Serial.

Barker and Obsession cinematographer Taylor Clemons (also on his first theatrically released film) give the film so much visual personality. The camera moves at just the right moment to sell a gag, or a scare, like the edges of the frame are a character in their own right.

Barker’s script cleverly combines unsettling scenarios with sharp observations about toxic relationships. It’s equally funny and scary when Bear timidly asks Nikki if he can go to boys’ night.

Johnston handles a difficult lead role with grace. Bear has no heroic tendencies, few redeeming qualities at all, and yet we’re sympathetic to him…to a point. He plays Bear like he’s the smallest, most pathetic man in the world. Barker, for his part, leaves no room for ambiguity on how repulsive we’re meant to find the character’s decisions. Still, they lead to one of the funniest smash cuts in the film.

Inde Navarette, it must be said, delivers a horror performance for the ages. The Superman & Lois star goes big as Freaky Nikki, relishing in every creepy monologue, every exaggerated facial expression. The writer/director may be the star behind the camera here, but Obsession only works if Nikki works.

Much has been written about the film’s most violent scene (I won’t give it away here, but you’ll know it when you see it), which brought the house down in both screenings I attended. The moment is shocking not for when it occurs, but for the extent to which the act is shown. (And, according to Barker, it went even longer in the TIFF cut.) In a film that’s more suspenseful than it is gory, Barker knows just the right moment to linger on his most disgusting shot.

Obsession is a crowd pleaser start to finish—tense, eerie, surprising, and funny—the first near-perfect horror film to get a wide release this year. Knowing now the context in which that shot, the one that started my obsession with this project, appears, it feels both unpredictable and exactly where this movie has been heading all along. I’ll be shocked if Obsession doesn’t make my top ten of the year.

If you want to see more Curry Barker after Milk & Serial and Obsession, you won’t have to wait long. Variety announced just last month he’d be helming the A24 “reimagining” of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In the meantime, his next film, Anything But Ghosts, has already finished shooting; Barker and Tomlinson star alongside Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard.

At this pace, it won’t be long before Clive Barker is the second biggest C. Barker in horror.

“Obsession” opens exclusively in theaters on May 15.

Rating: 4.5/5 ★

Listen to even more of my thoughts on Obsession on my podcast Cinephomaniacs:

We got into Curry Barker’s background, Inde Navarette’s performance, the film’s ethical message, and why we think the movie will be a hit.

Far from the globetrotting Indiana Jones ripoff, this film is primarily a demonic child possession movie set in one house. Lee Cronin was, seemingly, given the mandate to make whatever movie he wanted as long as the villain was a mummy, and he wrung every last drop out of that premise.

If you’ve seen Evil Dead Rise, you’ll know what to expect here. You’ve got flaying, disemboweling, defenestration, and more. With the number of extreme closeups and split diopter shots, there’s no shot which is boring. One staircase stunt in particular features one of the most inventive shots I’ve seen in a horror film in years. And the notion of the mummy’s wrappings being made of skin is a master stroke.

Cronin’s script is not full of jokes, but it finds the precise moments to release tension. Natalie Grace, who plays the mummy, Katie, is “introduced” here per the film’s credits, and boy is she, commanding the screen in her first major role. Also, Jack Reynor is pretty flat, the runtime is too long, and I’d bet that the final scene was added in reshoots to appease test audiences.

And sure it’s a Blumhouse-shaped peg in a Mummy-shaped hole, but Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is an exciting, gripping horror film that easily clears the bar of being the best Mummy film in ten years, and also the best Evil Dead film in at least three.

3.5/5 ★

Watching them all in close proximity (along with a narrative film, The Plan), an unspoken programming theme quickly took shape: one of resisting government overreach, fighting for our rights, and embracing the power of community and love.

Here are four documentaries to look out for in 2026.

1. The Dads

Directed by Luchina Fisher

5/5 ★

I became familiar with The Dads through the Emmy-winning 2023 short of the same name, which covered a fishing trip between six fathers with a shared experience. Five of the men were supportive fathers of trans children; the sixth was the father of Matthew Shepard, after whom the 2009 anti-hate crimes act was named.

The perspective of The Dads short documentary was an atypical lens through which to discuss anti-trans discrimination, highlighting the fear it instilled not just in trans children but also in their parents. Platformed by Netflix and Dwyane Wade, it offered a compassionate and accessible viewpoint for other parents to better understand the issues the trans community faces. At the time, I wrote that I loved the spirit of the documentary, but that at 11 minutes I wished it ran longer to go deeper into families’ stories.

Be careful what you wish for. Three years have passed, and I can now say that I’ve seen a feature length version of The Dads that was thorough, multi-faceted, and tore my heart to shreds.

While indeed The Dads delivers a deeper look into the lives of the families that I requested from the short, the difference three years makes is devastating. The transphobic political climate that was already present in the United States in 2023 has only worsened with each year. In a heartbreaking scene of dramatic irony, one of The Dads comments “Whatever happens, it can’t be worse than what we already have” in the days leading up to the 2024 election. In 2025 alone, 1,022 anti-trans bills were introduced throughout the country; 126 passed.

In a time where we’re bombarded with anti-trans rhetoric, The Dads cuts through the noise with a simple message of acceptance and love. You can support The Dads Foundation here.

2. First They Came for My College

Directed by Patrick Bresnan

3/5 ★

The liveliest screening I attended at the Florida Film Festival was that of First They Came for My College, which drew some 50 collaborators and New College alumni for its Florida premiere.

First They Came for My College documents the transformation of the New College of Florida by the DeSantis administration, from a thriving liberal arts college with a vibrant academic culture to a financially struggling conservative showcase.

Since 2023, New College has been a target of a right-wing culture war, first by replacing its leadership with DeSantis-friendly seat fillers. The face of the new board of trustees, hovering over the rest via Zoom like a podcasting Big Brother, is a Washington state-based conservative troll whom I won’t name here but who has been at the scene of the crime of several reactionary hoaxes including critical race theory, “grooming,” and immigrants eating cats.

The new conservative-controlled board quickly moved to censor free speech on campus, remove beloved traditions, and reshape numerous policies and branding icons against student and parent consensus. They began offering scholarships to handpicked out-of-state students who would help to give the campus a more Republican-friendly look, while pushing out returning students. Baseball players were courted to sign with a school that did not yet have an athletics program. One scene depicts the student athletes wandering around and making homophobic comments to a gay couple.

From the film’s very title, what’s being done to New College is an alarming sign of the times that is but one of many attacks on free speech and thought. Yet, the documentary is not an entirely hopeless one. We follow one of the aforementioned out-of-state students as he softens and transforms through the simple power of friendship. Another storyline follows an on-campus shadow-cast of Rocky Horror Picture Show, a symbol of queer community for more than 50 years.

At the heart of First They Came for My College is student-led activism for free speech and diversity on campus. Amplified mostly by queer, brown, and female voices, the small but mighty student body stands up to the board of trustees and DeSantis himself. The New College alumni who drove to Maitland for the screening cheered and jeered throughout, celebrating the documentary and the college they love.

You can support First They Came for My College here.

3. Drag Me to Church

Directed by Isabella Sullivan

3/5 ★

Programmed to play in front of The Dads, Drag Me to Church is a student short film from SCAD alumna Isabella Sullivan.

A quaint, sweet story, the film documents a community event organized by a church in Atlanta. During Pride Month, a gay pastor decides to commemorate the Stonewall riots by inviting local drag queens to perform Christian hymns. The response from the drag community exceeds his expectations, creating something heartful, charming, and special.

In a joint Q&A with The Dads, Sullivan spoke about her experience growing up as a queer woman in the South. Their shared sentiment underscored the importance of building queer communities even in hostile environments, with Sullivan noting that places like Savannah and Orlando only have such communities because people choose to stay and make a difference rather than leave for New York or California.

My girlfriend and collaborator, Peyton, gave me permission to share her reaction: “It was really special to see a church not only be accepting of the queer community but go out of their way to celebrate them and put that on. In a time when it feels like everything is getting worse, it’s always really powerful to see hope and community like that.”

4. Seized

Directed by Sharon Liese

3.5/5 ★

If The Dads was the best documentary I saw at the Florida Film Festival, Seized was likely the most fun.

In Marion, a small Kansas town with a population of 1,922, a corrupt sheriff’s vendetta against a local paper becomes international news.

The film’s clever structure reveals information almost in reverse, depicting the raid well before it digs into the raid’s motivations. The details that come out made me think of Eddington, from affairs to petty corruption and interdepartmental beefs. I was enthralled the whole time.

That the illegal seizure at the Marion County Record is a minor, localized incident representative of the large-scale crackdown on freedom of the press in the United States is sparsely acknowledged but never far from front of mind with Seized.

It’s a story that shouldn’t be this entertaining, yet Seized leans into its twists and personalities with a sharp sense of momentum, turning a troubling real-world event into a gripping, surprisingly entertaining ride.

Take a look back at the rest of my Florida Film Festival coverage with upcoming wide releases and under the radar indies.

This second part will focus on the under the radar indies to keep an eye out for distribution announcements later this year.

1. Junkie

Directed by William Means

4/5 ★

Junkie was the big winner of the festival, leaving with both the jury and audience awards for Best Narrative Feature. A drama about a rehab escapee trying to scrounge up enough cash to flee her small Southern town, Junkie is no typical addiction story.

Rocky Shay carries the film as Stevie, delivering action, humor, and heartfelt inner conflict, while Rett Keeter also stands out as her openly gay son.

The film punches above its weight in cinematography and production value, with a climax that fully delivers on the phrase “mud rave.” Meanwhile, a kitchen fight scene has a vision for choreography and editing that is missing from many Hollywood action movies.

Expect William Means to go big places from here.

2. Valentina

Directed by Tatti Ribeiro

4/5 ★

Keyla Monterroso Mejia (One of Them Days) stars as a young El Paso resident just making ends meet in a film that blends narrative and reality. Set in a town where residents cross between Mexico and the US for their daily commute, Valentina is a multicultural film with both English and Spanish subtitles.

Largely plotless, the magic in Valentina comes just in spending time with the title character in her world. Mejia shines amongst a cast of mostly non-actors in a film that the FFF jury gave a special award for “resolute filmmaking.”

3. Return from Tomorrow

Directed by Randy Moore

4/5 ★

I wrote for Horror-lando about Return from Tomorrow, the spiritual sequel to Escape from Tomorrow, a film shot at Disney World and Disneyland without Disney’s permission.

Return from Tomorrow is a massive upgrade from the first film, replacing black and white DSLRs for vibrant 35mm film and hidden corners at Disney for expansive Miami locations.

The batshit conspiracy thriller comedy is not one to be followed so much as felt, as it moves along quickly between settings, tones, and timeframes, often within the same scene.

4. If I Go Will They Miss Me

Directed by Walter Thompson-Hernández

3.5/5 ★

An expansion of Thompson-Hernández’s Sundance-winning 2022 short, If I Go Will They Miss Me follows a young family in a low-income neighborhood of Los Angeles. 12-year-old Lil Ant (Bodhi Dell) imagines his father as a Greek god, while Big Ant (an excellent J. Alphonse Nicholson) struggles with the expectation of fatherhood placed upon him. Oscar nominee Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple) rounds out the cast as the mother of the family trying to hold everything together.

Much like Valentina, the charm here is not in the slim plot but in the experience of inhabiting this world with characters who blur the lines between narrative and reality.

Metaphors abound in a movie that probably would have benefited from focusing on two or three. Unfortunately, it’s particularly hard not to notice that the central image looks all too similar to that of last year’s Weapons (though the short film preceded it).

5. The Plan

Directed by Jessica Barr

3/5 ★

The Plan follows a group of political activists in their final hour before setting off on a mission they can’t come back from. The group deals with cold feet, infighting, and romantic entanglements as the clock ticks toward their fate. When the details of the titular plan are fully laid out, it’s clear the film’s political landscape isn’t far off from our own.

Filmed in a single shot and sporting a buzzy young cast that includes Ryan Simpkins (Fear Street), Logan Miller (Escape Room), and Percy Hynes White (Wednesday), The Plan is one of the more exciting films to come out of the festival, even if it’s a little rough around the edges. Directed by Jessica Barr, whom I first knew as an actress in Sophie Jones, the film moves fluidly and with intent from line to line, room to room, and scene to scene, which makes the work of the actors all the more impressive as it was apparently largely improvised.

6. Ride or Die

Directed by Josalynn Smith

3.5/5 ★

A sapphic couple finds out how far they’ll go for love in Ride or Die, a road trip drama that has as much in common with Egghead & Twinkie as it does with Thelma & Louise.

Briana Middleton (Sharper) convincingly portrays the straight woman (no pun intended) of the duo, her composure unraveling as their compounding problems become too much to handle. However, it’s Stella Everett, in her first film role, who runs away with Ride or Die. It’s impossible to look away from Everett’s portrayal of the spirited, erratic Sloan, while she also capably conveys the character’s inner complexity.

Expanded from Smith’s 2019 short, Ride or Die has already secured Jamie Foxx as an executive producer, so keep an eye out for this one in the coming year.

7. Sylvania

Directed by Kyle Smith

3/5 ★

One of the more textbook “festival movies” of the program, Sylvania opens with a man convincing his family to live as though they were in the ‘90s for a year—no phones or internet—an experiment that has nearly destroyed his marriage.

The ‘90s plot point is abandoned almost as quickly as it’s introduced, and the rest of Sylvania instead functions as a road dramedy more in the vein of an early Duplass brothers movie. Like those films, your experience will largely hinge on your ability to tolerate the main character, as one Q&A participant tried to ask as politely as she could why the character had not grown by the film’s end.

Kerry Bishé (Halt and Catch Fire) and Morgan Beck are excellent as a couple looking for one last spark, in a story I found to be clever, quaint, and human.

8. Mermaid

Directed by Tyler Cornack

3.5/5 ★

A “love letter to Florida” from the director of Butt Boy, Mermaid plays like a perverse undine myth, with Johnny Pemberton (Fallout) as a lonely, perc-popping knight who could ensoul the mermaid if she just gave him a chance to get to know him.

Impressive creature effects and a performance from Avery Potemri portray a mermaid like you’ve never seen before, while Pemberton plays the protagonist with such a blank-minded innocence that you can almost believe his fantasy is possible. Equal parts funny, touching, and disgusting, the midnight movie was a big hit with the Orlando crowd.

Continue reading my conclusion of my Florida Film Festival coverage, discussing important documentaries.

After attending a handful of screenings the previous two years, I decided to fully embrace the experience in 2026, along with my girlfriend and collaborator, Peyton. We took off work, purchased Binge Passes and attended the festival all 10 days.

I’ll start my coverage off with 10 movies that FFF previewed ahead of their wide releases.

1. Carolina Caroline

Directed by Adam Rehmeier

4/5 ★

The festival kicked off with opening night film Carolina Caroline, followed by a Q&A with director Adam Rehmeier (Dinner in America, Snack Shack). This one was high on my watchlist after Dinner in America, and I’ve found Kyle Gallner to be a charismatic actor who picks great projects. Gallner’s streak continues here, finding incredible chemistry with co-lead Samara Weaving in a Bonnie & Clyde-for-the-aughts romantic crime film.

Wide release date: June 5, 2026

2. Obsession

Directed by Curry Barker

4.5/5 ★

Hands down our most anticipated movie of the Florida Film Festival, Obsession follows a young man who makes a wish that his crush liked him back and gets what he wished for in the worst way. The first studio film of Curry Barker (Milk & Serial), this horror black comedy from Focus Features and Blumhouse rocked the house in both screenings. Curry cements his place as the second greatest C. Barker in horror, while Inde Navarrette introduces herself with a bang as Freaky Nikki.

Wide release date: May 15, 2026

3. I Swear

Directed by Kirk Jones

3.5/5 ★

I Swear is a solid but fairly conventional biopic from Kirk Jones (Nanny McPhee) about John Davidson, a Scottish Tourette’s syndrome acceptance advocate. I Swear premieres April 24th in the States, but we were lucky enough to get an early peek.

The film was in the spotlight earlier this year when star Robert Aramayo (Rings of Power) won both the BAFTA Rising Star Award and BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, beating out Oscar nominees Michael B. Jordan, Timothée Chalamet, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Ethan Hawke in the latter category.

Aramayo’s wins, and the film, were unfortunately overshadowed by an unfortunate incident in which Davidson’s tics included an audible racial slur while Jordan and Delroy Lindo took the stage. The discourse that followed, alleging that Davidson’s tics were faked or otherwise reflected his secretly held beliefs, uncannily mirrored the discourse the film depicted.

4. Poetic License

Directed by Maude Apatow

3.5/5 ★

I wrote about Maude Apatow’s directorial debut on Letterboxd, noting the film’s Harold and Maude-like dynamic. While Poetic License isn’t fully baked, the performances of the three leads—Leslie Mann, Andrew Barth Feldman, and especially Cooper Hoffman—are particularly commendable.

5. I Want Your Sex

Directed by Gregg Araki

3/5 ★

I wrote on Letterboxd about Gregg Araki’s comeback feature film, a colorful BDSM murder mystery. Like a gender-reversed Secretary, I Want Your Sex follows Cooper Hoffman (the second in the Hoffman double feature) as an art assistant who goes through a sexual discovery led by his dominant boss (Olivia Wilde).

Co-written from the jaded POV of a one-time auteur who’s spent the last decade as a TV director for hire, I Want Your Sex is fast, funny, and surprisingly moving.

The film doesn’t have the stamina to sustain this pace through its climax, but until then, man, what a ride.

Wide release date: July 31, 2026

6. Tuner

Directed by Daniel Roher

3.5/5 ★

From Oscar-winning documentarian Daniel Roher (Navalny), this crime drama about a piano tuner-turned-safe cracker (Leo Woodall) plays like a humorless Baby Driver. While largely effective, Tuner stumbles due to some plot contrivances and a not-fully-explored Holocaust theme. With an impressive, immersive soundscape designed by Johnnie Burn (The Zone of Interest), don’t be surprised if this one makes the Best Sound Design shortlist later this year.

Wide release date: May 29, 2026

7. Sender

Directed by Russell Goldman

2/5 ★

Despite middling reception from SXSW, Sender piqued my interest due to its cast: Britt Lower, David Dastmalchian, Rhea Seehorn, and Jamie Lee Curtis.

A clever metaphor for addiction that falls apart the second any of it is taken literally, Sender is worth watching for its convention-defying cinematography and editing, even if it can’t form a coherent narrative.

8. Hokum

Directed by Damian McCarthy

3/5 ★

One of the four horror films we earmarked for coverage, Hokum had only one screening, at midnight on the last day of the festival.

Hokum is half a ghost story, half a murder mystery, anchored in the performance of Adam Scott as a misanthropic writer locked in a remote Irish hotel.

An underwhelming climax and copout resolution drag the movie down, but its creepy vibes will be more than enough for many horror fans. Jack the Jackass will enter the Halloween costume rotation for years to come.

Wide release date: May 1, 2026

9. One Spoon of Chocolate

Directed by RZA

1.5/5 ★

The Thursday midnight Secret Screening is an annual tradition at FFF, previously introducing films like The Greasy Strangler, The People’s Joker, Cuckoo, and, most recently, Good Boy and Fucktoys. This year, programmer Tim Anderson took the stage in a Wu-Tang Clan shirt to introduce, via Zoom, the director of this year’s surprise film: the RZA.

Featuring “Quentin Tarantino Presents” above the title, One Spoon of Chocolate is being self-distributed by RZA following middling reception at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Playing in the vein of a ‘70s grindhouse film, One Spoon of Chocolate follows a Black martial artist (Shameik Moore) who takes on a town of white supremacists, a concept that, frankly, sounds much more interesting than One Spoon of Chocolate ever actually is.

With much of its considerable (for a midnight screening) two-hour runtime taken up by perfunctory establishing scenes and a forced romance with Paris Jackson, the third act action is too little too late, and mostly cut up so as to remove any impact to boot.

The most entertaining part of the experience was when a man left the theater yelling about being “flashbanged” by the film.

Wide release date: May 1, 2026

10. The Last Viking

Directed by Anders Thomas Jensen

4/5 ★

The last film I watched for the festival, The Last Viking checks the box of “annual Mads Mikkelsen movie that forces Americans to watch a movie in Danish.” From the director of Riders of Justice, The Last Viking stars Nikolaj Lie Kaas as Anker, an ex-con searching for the money he entrusted his brother, Manfred (Mikkelsen), to bury before his incarceration. Suffering from dissociative identity disorder, Manfred believes himself to be the musician John Lennon, and reflexively makes (comedic) suicide attempts at the mention of his birth name.

With a ticking clock, Anker must play into Manfred’s reality to locate his stash in a black comedy about how when everyone is different, no one is. Kardo Razzazi damn near steals the show as a swarthy, golden-voiced DID patient who believes himself to be, among others, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, Björn Ulvaeus from ABBA, and Heinrich Himmler.

Read more of my thoughts on the Florida Film Festival at “Junkie, The Plan, and More Florida Film Festival Gems”, where I cover under the radar indies to keep an eye out for distribution announcements later this year.