Monsters of God, Eric Goode’s latest descent into obsession and ego rot, feels like the natural next mutation after Tiger King and Chimp Crazy, only colder, darker, and more quietly unhinged. Premiering at SXSW with its first two episodes, the HBO and A24-backed docuseries wastes no time letting you know this is not a quirky animal story. This is about power, fixation, and a black-market ecosystem so normalized that even the people enforcing the law seem confused about why any of it is wrong.
Read MoreMichael Madsen’s Final Lesson: Mr. Wonderful and the Weight of Legacy
Mr. Wonderful is the kind of indie drama that sneaks up on you. It looks modest on the surface, almost disarmingly casual, but beneath that low-key presentation is a bruised, profane, deeply human portrait of family, failure, and the quiet terror of getting older without having figured anything out. The film tracks three generations of men orbiting the same emotional black hole.
Read MoreClocked In and Losing It: Grind Turns Gig Work Into Horror
There is something immediately comforting about Grind opening inside a massive, soulless warehouse that looks like it could ship you a Fleshlight, a coffin, or a life-sized Bezos statue within two business days. It is a clever framing device for a horror anthology, grounding everything in a familiar capitalist nightmare before letting the film spiral into four very different stories that all feel like they crawled out of the same corporate hell. From the jump, Grind plays by its own rules.
Read MoreKill Me Walks the Line Between Murder and Misery and Nails It
Kill Me wastes absolutely no time. An intense cold open slams you into the movie, followed by a killer needle drop, “Trouble” by Cage the Elephant, and a slick, confident stylistic intro that basically dares you to keep up. It hooks you immediately and never really lets go. From the jump, this thing feels sad, funny, and heartfelt, dark in exactly the right ways.
Read MoreIndie Sleaze Lives: Mile End Kicks Is a Love Letter to Bad Decisions
Mile End Kicks had its US premiere on March 12th at SXSW, and even though the film is unapologetically Canadian and deeply rooted in one specific neighborhood of Montreal, something about it felt extremely Austin, Texas, which made it kind of perfect for the festival. This is a hangout movie about music, ego, longing, and being painfully unsure of who you are. SXSW crowds eat that up.
Read MoreTrucker Rolls In with Style, Stops Short of Greatness
Trucker is the kind of movie you’d pick up because the art looks badass, then discover the cover was working overtime. It is an earnest throwback revenge ride that clearly loves the classics like Duel, The Car, and I Know What You Did Last Summer, but loving something and matching it are two very different things. Breaking Glass Pictures has a reputation for oddball genre curiosities, and this one looks surprisingly solid for their usual output.
Read MoreA Chaotic and Clever POV Nightmare that Shows Christensen at His Boldest
Brandon Christensen has quietly become one of the most dependable voices in North American indie horror, and with Bodycam he leans into something far more chaotic and experimental than anything in Still/Born or Z. What begins as a routine domestic disturbance call for Officers Jackson and Bryce spirals into a relentless gauntlet of claustrophobic hallways, skittering rats, screaming victims and blood soaked basements. It is a film that starts grounded and familiar, almost comfortingly so, thanks to the natural banter between the two cops as they cruise through Jackson’s old neighborhood.
Read MoreJulie Pacino’s I Live Here Now Is a Fever Dream You Can’t Shake
I knew within the first minute that I Live Here Now wasn’t interested in easing me in. The title sequence alone set off that quiet, involuntary discomfort I get when a film manages to feel wrong in a very intentional way. The score was the key offender. Its bright, happy melodies were laced with darker signals, like someone humming cheerfully over the sound of something scratching under the floorboards.
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