CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS: 10-31-25
- Nov 1
- 18 min read
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My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I'm ready to review five new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, October 31st, 2025.
Self-Help is one of those small, surprising little horror movies that sneaks up on you. It's not a franchise spin-off, not a studio-backed IP cash grab, not something made by committee.
It's a weird, moody, sometimes awkward, but ultimately compelling little movie that blends cult psychology, family dysfunction, and Halloween-season creepiness into something that actually feels alive... which is more than I can say for half the big horror releases this year.
Olivia (Landry Bender) is a college student with a messed-up family history. An opening sequence involving a birthday party gone catastrophically wrong sets that dynamic up right away. Years later, she's summoned by her estranged mom, Rebecca (Amy Hargreaves), to join a "self-actualization" retreat led by her new husband, Curtis (Jake Weber).
Curtis runs this cult-like group of sad, broken people searching for "radical autonomy," which, of course, means handing your autonomy directly over to this guy. Olivia's friend Sophie (Madison Lintz) tags along, and what begins as a mildly uncomfortable therapy getaway turns into something much darker.
There's manipulation, paranoia, masks, flashbacks, and something stalking around the camp that may or may not be supernatural. Think Red State meets Martha Marcy May Marlene with a side of Halloween-season unease.
Erik Bloomquist is a guy who wears every possible hat; he's a director, writer, actor, editor, producer, and probably crafted the craft services table himself. He's one of those hyper-ambitious indie creators who want to do everything and somehow almost pull it off.
There's real skill here. You can see he's stretching a limited budget, using clever camera work and atmosphere instead of cheap jump scares. He even appears in the movie himself (as Owen) and somehow doesn't ruin it.
Bloomquist and his brother Carson (who co-wrote and produced) have done a bunch of low-budget genre pieces before, which are usually more bloody and effects-driven. But Self-Help is different. It's slower, creepier, moodier. A psychological horror film more interested in the rot inside a family than in splattering blood across the walls.
Jake Weber is fantastic here; it's one of his best roles in years. He's got that calm, soft-spoken menace down perfectly. He's the kind of cult leader who could absolutely convince you that giving him your life savings is a good idea. He plays Curtis like a suburban messiah who reads Tony Robbins by day and bathes in evil energy by night.
Bender is excellent as Olivia; she's grounded, believable, carrying all the resentment of a daughter dragged into her mother's bad choices. And Madison Lintz as Sophie brings a likable, real quality to what could've been the typical horror sidekick.
The atmosphere is solid. Cinematographer Mike Magilnick shoots it beautifully (eerie woods, masked figures, flickering firelight), all of it dripping with that "something-is-off" vibe. The production design feels authentic and low-key, not over-stylized.
The score by Haim Mazar hums underneath everything like a low-grade panic attack. It's genuinely unsettling in spots, especially when the family drama collides with the cult madness.
There's some choppiness in the storytelling, the narrative structure jumps around a bit, and not all the threads tie up neatly. And yeah, we've seen variations of this "self-help-cult-gone-wrong" idea before.
It's not breaking new ground. But the execution is good enough that you don't really care. It's also got a slightly uneven tone (half satire, half serious), but Bloomquist mostly keeps it on track.
What bugs me is how something like Self-Help will barely get a blip of attention while overhyped stuff like Sinners or Weapons gets endless praise, glowing reviews, and somehow award buzz.
Those movies are slick, loud, and empty. This one? It's got personality. It's got creativity. It's got an actual pulse. Bloomquist and his team are doing what horror should do: unsettling you while saying something about how people lose themselves in systems of control.
And for a Halloween-season watch, you could do a hell of a lot worse. It's creepy, smart, well-acted, and occasionally disturbing. Sure, it's rough around the edges, but give me a scrappy, ambitious indie like this over another cynical, factory-made studio horror flick any day.
So yeah, Self-Help isn't perfect, but it's a damn admirable piece of low-budget filmmaking that deserves to be seen, especially if you're into cult stories, creepy retreats, and movies that actually try something.
Seek it out before it disappears into the streaming abyss. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Sometimes a movie doesn't need to reinvent the wheel. It just needs to roll over you in the right way. Violent Ends is one of those late-night, backwoods revenge thrillers that hits the spot. It's nothing fancy, nothing particularly deep, just gritty, bloody, southern-fried pulp done with enough conviction and energy to keep you hooked.
It's the kind of movie that would've played perfectly on Showtime at 2:30 in the morning in 1986... and I mean that as a compliment.
Set in the early '90s in the Ozarks, Violent Ends follows Lucas Frost (Billy Magnussen), a man trying desperately to carve out a normal life away from his crime-family past.
He's got a loving fiancée, Emma (Alexandra Shipp), a shot at peace, and just enough decency to want nothing to do with the family business. But, of course, you can't outrun blood, especially not in movies like this.
When his cousin Eli (Jared Bankens) botches a robbery and kills an innocent person, Lucas gets pulled back into the swamp of violence, meth trafficking, and family feuds that defined his upbringing.
What follows is a tale of vengeance, loyalty, and old-school justice, played out with shotguns, muscle cars, and enough Southern sweat to fill a Mason jar.
This is only the second feature from writer-director John-Michael Powell, and it's clear he's got a genuine affection for the genre.
You can feel the influence of Walking Tall, White Lightning, and those '70s rural revenge flicks that used to fill drive-ins back when movies weren't afraid to be down and dirty. Powell's film doesn't aim high, but it aims true. And on that level, it works.
There's a lot of texture here: the sticky summer atmosphere, the backroads, the old trucks, the sense of inherited sin that hangs over these people. It's also shot surprisingly well for a small movie.
The violence, when it hits, hits hard. There's a rawness to it that reminds you why these kinds of movies used to play so well to rowdy crowds.
Billy Magnussen is terrific as Lucas Frost. He's usually the smirking psycho or comic relief guy (Game Night, No Time to Die, The Survivor), but here he's soulful, bruised, and believable. It's the best work he's done so far. It's the kind of performance that could make bigger directors take notice.
Alexandra Shipp brings warmth and strength to Emma, even though the script doesn't give her much beyond the "loyal fiancée" role. James Badge Dale and Ray McKinnon show up and do solid, reliable work. You can always count on those guys to add authenticity.
And it's great to see Kate Burton again (yes, from Big Trouble in Little China and about a hundred other things). She adds a sense of gravitas as Darlene, the deputy mom, trying to keep her family from imploding.
And Nick Stahl... man, what a face. Every line of it tells a story. He plays Tuck, Lucas's half-brother, and he's exactly the kind of broken, twitchy presence you want in a movie like this. He's been in everything from Terminator 3 to Sin City, and here he reminds you why he's still one of those great, lived-in character actors.
Look, Violent Ends isn't original. At all. We've seen this story before: the guy trying to go straight who's pulled back in when family trouble erupts. You could outline it in your sleep. But that's not really the point. The point is that it's done well.
It's got a pulse, it's got some grit, and it's got actors who take it seriously. It's also admirably lean, and it doesn't waste time pretending to be profound. It just tells its story with conviction. And that's more than you can say for half the overproduced "prestige" thrillers that show up every award season.
There's something really satisfying about a film like this. It reminded me of those double or triple features I used to see as a kid (Jackson County Jail, Rolling Thunder, White Line Fever, stuff like that) where you'd watch a string of angry guys in pickup trucks settle scores while the audience cheered and popcorn flew.
Violent Ends taps into that energy. It feels like an echo of those B-movie revenge flicks that used to play in grindhouses and late-night TV slots.
Violent Ends is not a great film. It's not trying to be. It's a small, efficient, redneck revenge thriller that knows exactly what it is and delivers just enough to satisfy anyone who loves the genre.
It's shot with style, acted with commitment, and filled with the kind of energy that makes you nostalgic for the old days of grimy 1970s cinema.
It's the kind of movie you throw on when you can't sleep, when you want something pulpy and mean and a little bit old-fashioned. It's effective, it's bloody, and it scratches that grindhouse itch.
I'm recommending it, not because it's brilliant, but because it gets the job done. If you've ever found yourself up at 2:00 in the morning flipping through channels hoping for something that feels like White Lightning or Gator, this one's for you.
Violent Ends doesn't reinvent the genre. It just reminds you why it still works. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Well, here's another movie that has come along, that reminds us the spirit of 1980s and '90s action junk cinema is still alive, sweaty, and flexing. The Wrecker is dumb, loud, over-the-top, and borderline incoherent, and I kind of loved it for that.
This latest slab of macho mayhem comes from Art Camacho, who has quietly built a bizarre little career out of directing straight-to-video or straight-to-streaming nonsense like Half Past Dead 2, Recoil, and Confessions of a Pit Fighter.
These are the kinds of movies that used to show up on late-night cable between Renegade reruns and a commercial for Ginsu knives.
Camacho is a former stuntman turned filmmaker, which explains everything: story, character, logic, those come second. What matters most is explosions, screaming, slow-motion sweat, and men with no sleeves.
Our hero is Tony (played by Niko Foster, who also co-wrote and co-produced this thing, so clearly he's all in). Tony's a single dad trying to raise two daughters and run an auto shop with his trusty mechanic buddy Eduardo (played, of course, by Danny Trejo, because of course Danny Trejo's in this).
Everything's fine until Tony's coked-up brother Bobby (Chad Michael Collins) steals a Ferrari belonging to local crime boss Dante (Harvey Keitel). One joyride and fiery crash later, Tony finds himself in debt to Dante, who gives him an ultimatum: work for me or your brother dies.
Tony agrees, but there's a twist: he doesn't use guns. Nope, this dude's weapon of choice is a wrench. So we get scene after scene of Niko Foster storming into gang hideouts, armed with nothing but a giant wrench, beating the hell out of bad guys. It's absurd. It's kind of awesome.
Meanwhile, Tyrese Gibson is Detective Boswell, a cop trying to take down Dante and all his criminal operations, while Mena Suvari shows up as Sheryl, the diner waitress/love interest who believes in Tony even though his life is basically a demolition derby.
And somewhere along the way, there's a subplot involving a weaponized truck, a team of loyal grease monkeys, and the word "family" gets thrown around enough times to make Vin Diesel blush.
Let's just start with Harvey Keitel. Harvey Keitel (the man who's worked with Scorsese, Tarantino, Schrader, and Jane Campion) is here yelling "You don't mess with a man's family!" in a movie called The Wrecker. That alone is worth the price of admission.
He's clearly having a blast, chewing through the scenery like he's in Bad Lieutenant 3: Vegas Drift.
Tyrese plays it straight, trying to inject some gravity into the nonsense around him, but it's a losing battle. Mena Suvari, bless her, is charming as the waitress who inexplicably falls for a guy who beats people to death with tools.
Danny Trejo shows up because it's the law that Danny Trejo must appear in every third low-budget action movie ever made.
And Niko Foster… look, the man gives it everything he's got. He's got the muscles, the stubble, the scowl, and the sleeveless shirts. I don't think he owns a single T-shirt with sleeves. He's a one-man demolition derby of cliché.
Art Camacho doesn't make subtle movies. He makes movies where trucks explode, men grunt, and someone yells "We do this for family!" while a guitar solo blares in the background. The Wrecker fits perfectly in his catalog of unintentionally hilarious action flicks.
This is a movie built entirely out of clichés:
Training montage? Check.
Rock song montage? Check.
Revenge plot involving a kidnapped kid? Double check.
Hero gearing up with slow-motion shots of weapons? You bet.
Gratuitous slow-motion explosion walkaway? Oh, absolutely.
It rips off Road House, Stone Cold, and Fast & Furious all at once, somehow managing to make them all look like high art. The editing is frantic, the camera work is wild, and the soundtrack sounds like someone found a box of rejected '90s metal demos and hit shuffle.
Here's the thing: it's ridiculous, but it's not boring. The movie knows what it is: a throwback B-action flick for people who still think Jean-Claude Van Damme should be president. There's an energy to it. A kind of joyful stupidity that's actually infectious.
And say what you will about Art Camacho, but the guy can stage a fight. The stunt work is solid, the pacing never drags, and every punch lands with that wonderfully fake, over-amplified sound effect you only get in movies like this.
Plus, it's got some heart, it's the kind that's duct-taped on, sure, but it's there. Tony's whole "no guns, only wrenches" thing is a surprisingly entertaining gimmick. And Harvey Keitel's presence alone elevates the entire affair into a strange, hypnotic zone where highbrow and lowbrow collide.
The Wrecker is big, dumb, derivative fun. It's a muscle-headed Frankenstein's monster of every action cliché known to man. It's loud, sweaty, predictable, and sometimes jaw-droppingly stupid, but it's also kind of glorious.
It's not a good movie, not by a long shot. But it's the kind of thing that you throw on at 1:30 in the morning with a few beers, some friends, and the volume cranked.
You'll laugh, you'll cheer, and you'll wonder how Harvey Keitel ended up in a scene where a guy screams, "You don't mess with a man's family!" while holding a wrench.
Art Camacho is, and will always be, a stuntman-turned-director through and through. He's not subtle, he's not refined, but damn it, he's enthusiastic.
The Wrecker is a big, bloody, stupid, semi-joyful ode to that enthusiasm; it's a low-rent explosion-fueled fever dream that knows exactly what it is.
If you're looking for nuance, look elsewhere. If you're looking for noise, mayhem, and some unintentional laughs, The Wrecker delivers. It's bad. It's fun. It's bad fun.
And really, what more could you ask for at 2:00 in the morning? - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
So, here's a movie that feels so uncomfortably relevant, so eerily in tune with the times, that you almost want to look away, but you can't. Anniversary is certainly not subtle, and it slams like a sledgehammer, but it's also provocative, hypnotic, disturbing, and completely riveting from start to finish.
This is the first English-language film from Polish director Jan Komasa, the guy who made the Oscar-nominated Corpus Christi and the incredible war film Warsaw 44. He's been acclaimed across Europe for years. With Anniversary, he plants a flag firmly in American soil, both literally and metaphorically.
It's a story about the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S., but told through the implosion of one family. It's political, psychological, domestic, and dystopian all at once, kind of like The Handmaid's Tale crashed into The Ice Storm with a side of Succession.
The film opens with the Taylor family hosting a warm, gorgeous 25th wedding anniversary party at their Virginia home. They're well-off, liberal, and seemingly content.
Diane Lane plays Ellen, a Georgetown professor who likes to believe she's both open-minded and morally firm. Kyle Chandler is her husband, Paul, a chef and restaurant owner who's the definition of an "everything's fine" kind of guy.
Their four kids fill out the ensemble: the eldest, Anna (Madeline Brewer), is a queer, outspoken stand-up comic; Cynthia (Zoey Deutch) is a sharp, cynical lawyer married to another lawyer (Daryl McCormack); Josh (Dylan O'Brien) is the awkward writer son who never quite measures up; and Birdie (Mckenna Grace) is the youngest, a bright, curious teenager who still has faith in people.
Then comes Liz (Phoebe Dynevor), Josh's new girlfriend and Ellen's former student. And this is where the movie quietly, almost imperceptibly, begins to twist the knife.
Liz's ideas, which Ellen once dismissed as "antidemocratic," have now become something far bigger; they are a philosophy called The Change, part self-help movement, part political cult. Liz's charisma and icy calm start to seep into every corner of the family's life.
Over five years, Anniversary shows how this movement takes root, how Josh and Liz rise within it, and how the Taylors' once-idyllic home becomes a microcosm of a divided, paranoid America.
By the time the movie reaches its later acts (complete with surveillance drones, "enumerators" knocking on doors to root out dissent, and eerily cheerful propaganda videos), we've gone from an upscale backyard celebration to something out of 1984. It's terrifying because it feels so close to real.
Komasa directs the hell out of this thing. The man knows tension. Every scene feels like a pressure cooker that's seconds from exploding. He shoots tight close-ups of faces, watching conversations turn into arguments, arguments into accusations, and love into paranoia.
The editing is razor-sharp, the score pulsating, and there's a constant sense that something terrible is just about to happen... and it usually does.
What's even more impressive is that Anniversary never feels preachy, even as it's making massive political statements. It's about people, and what politics, ego, and ideology do to them when they start to believe their own slogans.
It's also nuts... in the best way possible. It swings wildly from family drama to Orwellian nightmare to dark satire. One scene feels like Scenes from a Marriage; the next feels like The Hunger Games. It shouldn't work, but it does.
The entire cast is phenomenal.
Diane Lane gives one of the best performances of her career. She is brittle, furious, terrified, and deeply human. Her Ellen is a woman who prides herself on intellect but can't see the emotional chaos right in front of her.
Kyle Chandler plays Paul as the last sane man in the room. He's the peacemaker who slowly breaks under the weight of everything falling apart.
There's a late scene involving Paul, a dog, and a deceptively simple monologue about naming that dog, and Chandler delivers it with so much heart and heartbreak that it's quietly devastating.
Zoey Deutch brings real wit and humor to her role as Cynthia, providing some much-needed levity early on and then delivering one of the film's most emotionally brutal scenes late in the story, which is an argument with her husband about loyalty and morality that ends with a gut-punch.
Madeline Brewer is terrific as Anna, the truth-telling daughter who becomes something of an exile for refusing to shut up. And Mckenna Grace (who, frankly, is good in everything) is the movie's conscience. She starts as a wide-eyed teen and ends as a rebel, part of a generation trying to resist what the adults have created.
But the two real standouts here are Dylan O'Brien and Phoebe Dynevor. O'Brien's Josh undergoes one of the most chilling transformations of the year, going from insecure, overlooked son to smug authoritarian monster. You can see the change in his body language, in the way his voice deepens, in his eyes. It's horrifying and magnetic.
Dynevor, meanwhile, plays Liz with terrifying restraint. She's calm, composed, almost robotic, like a smiling black hole that sucks the family's morality into itself. Together, they make for one of the most disturbing on-screen couples of recent memory.
Anniversary is about politics, sure, but it's really about family politics. About control, ideology, resentment, and the ways people rationalize evil when it benefits them.
The "Change" movement is an obvious allegory for creeping authoritarianism, but Komasa and screenwriter Lori Rosene-Gambino are smart enough not to make it partisan. You can project your own beliefs, fears, and anxieties onto it, and that's what makes it so effective.
And then there's the emotion. This thing hits you in the gut. The sibling rivalries, the heartbreak between parents and children, the slow corrosion of love, and it's all painfully real.
There's even a strangely beautiful recurring use of Crowded House's "Don't Dream It's Over" that becomes ironic, haunting, and perfect.
By the time the film gets to its final stretch (including a jaw-dropping scene with two eerie "census takers"), you're exhausted, angry, and completely mesmerized. You've been through the wringer.
And you realize Komasa has somehow made one of the most timely, infuriating, and emotionally intense movies of the year.
Anniversary is brilliant, unhinged, and absolutely unforgettable. It's a film that starts as a family drama and ends as a national nightmare. It's blatantly political without being preachy, wildly emotional without being sentimental, and uncontrolled without losing focus.
Komasa's direction is masterful... this guy shoots conversation scenes like car chases. The performances are uniformly outstanding. And while the movie sometimes veers off the rails, it's so compelling, so alive, so present, that you don't care.
It's also deeply uncomfortable, because it feels like it could happen tomorrow. That's what makes it terrifying. That's what makes it great.
This is one of the year's best films; it is provocative, relentless, and unforgettable. It's a political thriller, a family tragedy, and a mirror held up to the world right now. And it cements Jan Komasa as one of the most exciting filmmakers working today.
Anniversary is electrifying, infuriating, ridiculous, and essential. I loved every crazy, brilliant minute of it. A huge surprise. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
So Nia DaCosta is a really interesting filmmaker. She is a fascinating one, actually. She's one of those directors who's had a kind of all-over-the-place career so far, and I mean that in the best possible way.
Sometimes her work clicks, sometimes it really doesn't, but she's always trying to do something unique.
She's worked a lot in horror (Little Woods, Candyman), dipped her toes in the Marvel universe with The Marvels (a movie that everyone seemed to hate a lot more than I did), and now she's back doing something bold, weird, and theatrical with Hedda.
And this, finally, feels like her. It's messy, it's ambitious, it's stylish, and it's the most distinctive movie she's made so far. Not necessarily her best, but definitely her most interesting.
This is DaCosta's reimagining of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, which she's moved from 19th-century Norway to a stately English mansion in the 1950s.
Tessa Thompson plays Hedda, the bored and beautiful newlywed of an ambitious academic, George Tesman (Tom Bateman). She's the daughter of the late General Gabler, who left her his prized guns, which she keeps locked away, key around her neck like a holy relic.
She spends her days playing hostess, taunting her husband, and finding new ways to amuse herself, because God forbid she ever actually be content. Into her life comes her old lover, Eileen Lovborg (Nina Hoss), who's now sober, successful, and happily involved with Thea (Imogen Poots).
Hedda can't stand that. She's jealous, bitter, and determined to ruin it all... partly out of boredom, partly out of power hunger, and partly because she's Hedda Gabler, and that's just what she does.
DaCosta has made some big, gutsy changes here. She's turned the male Lovborg character into a woman, which turns the whole story into a queer psychological melodrama instead of a straight-up tragic morality play.
And honestly, that's a pretty smart move, because it adds fresh tension and gives Hedda's manipulations a palpable sexual energy.
She's also broken the play's traditional four-act structure into five "chapters," complete with title cards, because apparently every filmmaker in 2025 is contractually obligated to divide their movie into labeled parts.
I'm officially over that trend, by the way. It's like directors don't trust the audience to notice structure unless there's a giant on-screen graphic telling us "CHAPTER FOUR: THE DOWNFALL."
Still, DaCosta's choices are ambitious. She front-loads certain reveals that appear late in Ibsen's original version, reshuffling the emotional beats in ways that are sometimes jarring but undeniably bold.
The updated politics, the focus on sexuality, the racial and gender diversity of the cast, all of it feels intentional and of-the-moment. Not all of it works, but it's an admirable swing.
Let's talk about Tessa Thompson, because she is this movie. And she's flat-out mesmerizing. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Tessa Thompson is one of the most magnetic and endlessly watchable actors working right now.
Going back to Mississippi Damned, Dear White People, Creed, Sorry to Bother You, Annihilation, she's just one of those performers who commands the screen no matter what she's doing.
And here, she's playing Hedda in a way that no one ever has, as sly, elegant, sexy, manipulative, vulnerable, dangerous. She's the movie's center of gravity. Without her, the thing collapses.
The supporting cast is strong too: Imogen Poots does excellent work as Thea, the kind, trusting counterpoint to Hedda's venom. Nina Hoss brings authority and intelligence to Eileen, and Bateman's George is exactly the kind of affable bore Hedda would inevitably marry just to torment herself. Nicholas Pinnock's Judge Brack radiates quiet menace. The performances are all there.
Visually, it's a knockout. It is sleek, classy, with just enough gothic tension to keep it humming. It's beautifully shot, crisply edited, and has that air of upper-class rot that suits the material perfectly.
But the score… oof. It's a little much. There are way too many moments where the music swells and practically shouts at you, "Feel THIS emotion now!" It's manipulative in a way that undercuts some of the quieter psychological tension.
The whole thing is admirable... and flawed. It's DaCosta's most confident direction yet, but still not a great film. There's brilliance in flashes, and then long stretches that don't quite come together. You can feel her reaching for something new and meaningful, but it never entirely clicks.
Still, Hedda is the kind of risk-taking I want more of. It's flawed, yes. It's over-scored, structurally messy, and sometimes too self-aware for its own good. But it's also alive, sensual, funny, and provocative.
And it's got Tessa Thompson at the center, doing work so good it practically elevates the entire project by force of will.
So, yeah, I can't quite recommend it wholeheartedly. It's not a must-see. But if you're scrolling through Prime Video in a week or two and want something different, something a little offbeat, stylish, and smarter than most of what's clogging up your feed, it's worth a look.
Nia DaCosta remains an interesting filmmaker, not a consistently great one yet, but always one worth watching. Let's hope her next big project, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, gives her something to really sink her teeth into.
For now, Hedda is a fascinating misfire held together by one of the best actresses working today. - ⭐️⭐️1/2
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