Category Archives: Thriller

It Was Just An Accident review — The lingering damage of authoritarianism

October 31, 2025 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Jafar Panahi | 105 min | ▲▲▲ An earlier version of this review appeared on FITI in September during the Atlantic International Film Festival 2025 The movie that wins the Palme d'Or comes weighted with expectations that sometimes end up being too heavy for the picture to carry — by no…Read More

After the Hunt review — Crimes and misdemeanors

October 19, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Luca Guadagnino | Written by Nora Garrett | 138 min | ▲▲▲ It's rare to see a big Hollywood feature tackle a culture war subject — whether it's Diversity, Equality and Inclusion or #MeToo — but After the Hunt touches on both. It's a bit messy, and bit of a melodrama, which is…Read More

A House of Dynamite review — Kathryn Bigelow’s terrifically tense nuclear thriller

October 14, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow | Written by Noah Oppenheim | 112 min | ▲▲▲1/2 | On Netflix It's been a long while since we've experienced a truly terrifying nuclear thriller. (Anyone remember the opening 10 minutes of Wargames?) Maybe because the threat of nuclear war feels weirdly abstract in the face of climate change, rising…Read More

The Woman in Cabin 10 review — Watery mystery quickly sinks

October 10, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Simon Stone | Written by Stone, Joe Shrapnel, and Anna Waterhouse, based on an adaptation by Emma Frost and a novel by Ruth Ware | 92 min | ▲1/2 | Netflix There's at least a couple of great Hollywood murder mysteries on the water — Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim's The Last of…Read More

The Long Walk review — Brutal, effective tale dares you to look away

October 5, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Francis Lawrence | Written by JT Mollner, from the Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) novel | 108 min | ▲▲▲▲ Does it make any sense that in October 2025, when the critical community is losing their collective mind over One Battle After Another and its portrait of an America at war with itself, this…Read More

Highest 2 Lowest review — Spike Lee’s hip-hop Kurosawa joint

September 28, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Spike Lee | Screenplay by Alan Fox, based on Akira Kurosawa's High And Low, written by Hideo Oguni, Ryûzô Kikushima, and Eijirô Hisaita, and the book King's Ransom by Evan Hunter | 133 min | ▲▲▲1/2 | Apple TV+ At the heart of this picture is a conundrum that Spike Lee and Alan…Read More

Dead Of Winter review — Emma Thompson thriller dead on arrival

September 26, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Brian Kirk | Written by Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb | ▲1/2 Let me start by saying that Emma Thompson is a friggin' queen. Going back to her movie debut in the Richard Curtis-penned comedy with Jeff Goldblum, The Tall Guy, I've been a big fan. As her adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense…Read More

One Battle After Another review — Rebels without a pause

September 26, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson | Written by Anderson, "inspired by" Thomas Pynchon's Vineland | 141 min | ▲▲▲▲ What we've got here is a new chaotic, action-packed epic from PTA. We haven't seen anything close to this from him since Inherent Vice. That tracks since Anderson's 2014 picture was also adapted from a Pynchon book,…Read More

Caught Stealing review — It’s just as simple as that

August 26, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Darren Aronofsky | Written by Charlie Huston, based on his book | 107 min | ▲▲▲▲ In the mid to late 1990s, a swath of crime thrillers were made in the wake of the broad success of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, and QT’s script for Tony Scott's True Romance. Many…Read More

Relay review — A cracking New York thriller

August 23, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by David MacKenzie | Written by Justin Piasecki | 112 min | ▲▲▲▲ A version of this review appeared during the coverage of #TIFF24 in September of last year. This picture is an achingly chilly, exceptionally well-crafted anti-tech tech thriller, one that may not quite be in Michael Clayton or The Parallax View's league,…Read More