2025 was another superb year for great genre films and though there’s a lack of festival coverage in this year’s Top 10, for the most part the offerings from local cinemas and big studios were of such a high calibre, it hasn’t left me short of films to rave about. 2025 was a rough year in the real world, politically, economically, you name it, and the films that made it onto our screen had the stark bite of reality, or were the sheer escapism we probably needed. It is no surprise to me that the biggest films of the year were family-friendly daydreams like The Minecraft Movie and Lilo & Stitch, whilst even the day-glo fantasy world of James Gunn’s Superman couldn’t avoid flack for seemingly talking about the Gaza invasion. That’s before we even start talking about the actual political thrillers. 2025 was unfortunately yet another year where media literacy seems a major issue and social media has become a dragging ground for any mainstream film which pops its head above the parapet. Movies, now, are apparently either utterly politically sterile or massive leftwing propaganda.
10.George A Romero’s Resident Evil
As a lifelong Resident Evil fan and a champion of Paul.W.S. Anderson’s batshit adaptations, Brandon Salisbury’s documentary about the aborted Romero adaptation was an easy entry to this list. Capcom, who made the games, was never shy about the inspiration of Romero’s seminal zombie films, and Romero was never shy about his interest in bringing the game to the big screen. With a plethora of interviews, historical contextualisation, and glimpses of concept art and ideas, Salisbury deep-dives into why one of the easiest no-brainer horror projects never saw the light of day, even though Romero completed a script and was ready to roll. Its a moody, passionate documentary which surgically disseminates the relationship between Romero and his legacy through the Capcom fiasco. Furthermore, it actually helps explain why the Anderson films were green-lit in a time where Romero still had massive influence.
9. The Fantastic 4: First Steps
The only comic book I ever consistently, near-religiously, collected was Fantastic Four. The idea of a family of superheroes, known to the public, who operate as a domestic unit with intergalactic responsibilities was, and is, fascinating. While the two 2000’s films were fun, they never quite captured the heart of the FF. Matt Shakman’s The Fantasctic Four: First Steps puts the fantastic four in a technologically advanced 60’s setting and aces every part of the comic I loved. Its a heartfelt, sincere, emotionally gripping, and thoughtful film about what makes the FF so endearing after all these years. Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach are The Fantastic Four and we’ll hopefully see a lot more of them in future. Ralph Ineson aces Galactus, a villain so comic booky he was reduced to an angry cloud in Rise of the Silver Surfer.
What makes this film so refreshing is its total commitment to the fact it’s a comic book adaptation; nothing is too silly, or unbelievable, to end up on screen. The contemporary urge to make superhero movies serious and grim and grey is the furthest thing from Shakman’s mind. That love of the source material and dedication to delivering a faithful adaptation makes it easy to love. The only thing missing, was Dr Doom, but that’s for 2026.
8. Frankenstein
Guillermo Del Toro’s take on Mary Shelley’s novel felt inevitable considering the director’s adoration of horror classics and consistent interest in the relationship between humanity and monstrosity. The result is an absolute delight. Its everything Del Toro fans could hope for and offers up a sledgehammer of Gothic mise en scene, grotesquerie, and heart. Elordi is perfection as the sympathetic monster, pushing past DeNiro, Karloff, and Lee to give a performance more entwined with Edith Scobe in Eyes Without a Face than it is with the heavier classic renditions of The Creature. Oscar Isaac is perhaps the most loathable version of Frankenstein put to screen, injecting the obsessive scientist with a rock n roll band-frontman energy and enough ego to ensure he’s the true villain of the film from early on. Del Toro summons the spirit of Hammer-era Gothic, fuses it with the soul of Old Hollywood melodrama, then lavishly piles on the decadent production design of his own OTT tastes to deliver a sumptuous trip through every Frankenstein adapt. It is simultaneously daft, serene, graphic, and utterly entrancing with a touch, no perhaps a breath, of camp glamour about it. A perfect fusion of Del Toro’s best and worst impulses, it fumbles the finale somewhat, but when there’s so much to love, it’s easy to forgive.
7. Predator Badlands
After the success of Prey, it was only a matter of time before Dan Trachtenberg was greenlit for another entry to the Predator franchise. His animaed entry Predator: KIller of KIllers was a blast and fair hinted that the next live action film was going to be something special. Badlands is a hoot, an explosive sci-fi action trip full of superb set-pieces, creative creature design, and expansive lore-digging, the likes of which Predator fans have never seen. Thev buddy-cop concept of a lost Weyland-Yutani droid teaming up with a merciless bounty hunter on the most dangerous planet in the universe is perfectly tuned to reveal the limits and possibilities of both characters. Moving the story into the world of the Predator was a great idea, and the franchise has never felt so fertile. In the same year Alien expanded its horizons with Alien Earth, it feels right that the Predator moved off-world into the hunting grounds of the universe. Trachtenberg has proved himself to be THE guy to take on this sometimes muddled series.
6. Man Finds Tape
Easily one of the most gripping and effective found footage films of 2025, Man Finds Tape is yet to get the attention it deserves from the mainstream. Presented as a documentary, Paul Gandersman and Peter S. Hall’s debut film follows an amateur filmmaker as she returns to her rural Texas hometown to investigate strange happenings that no one can remember. Between eerie discovered cassette tapes and bizarre CCTV footage, the film slowly unfurls into a conspiracy involving the whole town, its evangelical preacher, and a mysterious stranger who no one recognises. Its a film which thrives on holding its mystery close and giving nothing away for most of the runtime. Is it extraterrestrial? Is it monsters? A cabal of Satanic Cultists? Something to do with the church? The answer is better answered by the film, suffice to say the scope and depth of this, initially small, focused, film fuses with the disorientation of Mark Z Danielewski’s House of Leaves by way of Lovecraft for an entrancing trip. The real kicker, though, is just how well the whole thing is put together.
5. One Battle After Another
Paul Thomas Anderson’s take on the Trump-era ICE controversies is one of the shortest 2hr 45 minute films you’ll ever see. After laying a groundwork of grassroots protest and domestic relationships, the film explodes into a 2 hour chase film with the arrival of ICE in a small sanctuary town. DiCaprio shines as a raggedy paranoiac and cornered revolutionary falling from one mess into another whilst trying to reunite with his daughter (break-out performance from Chase Infiniti) who’s being hunted by a (career-best Sean Penn) psycho white supremacist. It’s hilarious, tear-jerking, enraging, and sometimes cathartic. Paul Thomas Anderson’s tight direction, and innovative camera work keep the whole thing pulsating with dangerous potential, whilst the soundtrack is one of the best of 2025. This path of chaos and candour is littered with great performances whilst bolstered by Anderson’s cutting cross-section of contemporary chaos in American migration, racial politics, activism, and unchecked power of military/governmental groups.
4. Weapons
Zack Kreeger’s Barbarian made him a new voice in horror and, though I wasn’t as mad for it is a lot of other folks were, the follow-up delivered by the spade-full. A whole class of kids disappear into the night, bar one, with no explanation, no trail, and no plausible reason. There’s a lot going on here and Kreeger easily ties his mysterious horror thriller into a plethora of contemporary issues making it a prudent piece of American Cinema. School shootings, domestic abuse, parental substance addiction, failing institutions, police violence, and good-old lack of neighbourly care float around Weapons making it feel like an angrier more pointed film than Barbarian was. Its a slow-burner that unfurls over 6 Acts, each act feeding a little more info into the main story line. It’s ambitious, stark in its violence, at times cruel in its plotting, sometimes incredibly sweet, but always intriguing as hell. Not to spoil anything but its one of the most interesting contemporary witch stories put to screen and Kreeger, for the most part, abandons the pulpy B-Movie vibes which made Barbarian work in favour of strong characters and scope. If he never made another film he’d be remembered for this and the exquisite nightmare that is Amy Madigan’s once-in a lifetime villain: Aunt Gladys. That’s not bad at all.
3. 28 Years Later
The stakes were always going to be high when Danny Boyle announced he was returning to film a sequel to 28 Days Later. Like Night of the Living Dead or The Blair Witch Project, Boyle’s 2002 vision of apocalyptic infection feels tied to its era via the way it was made and what it talked about. Yet, it worked perfectly. Bringing back cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle and working from a script by OG writer Alex Garland, Boyle managed to conjure up a post-apocalyptic world which felt like the real lived-in, natural continuation of a world he introduced 20 years ago. It’s a riveting, intriguing dissection of British mentality, paired with the survivalist panic of the first two films. That visual experimentation with mulit-iPhone rigs paired with Boyle’s natural tendency towards the gritty and gorgeous revives the documentary/surveillance feel abandoned by the sequel and makes this feel like a fresh slice of experimentation in an established world. The result is a telling, ideologically loaded, coming of age story loaded with criticisms of contemporary masculinity, British culture, and the modern world at large. Most of all though, its a masterwork in tension, with a more than a few aces up its sleeve to ensure its scary as fuck and not just a money grab or nostalgia trip for Boyle.
2. Keeper
Like Longlegs, Ozgood Perkins’ Keeper dropped with minimal information and maximum intrigue. Now, clearly a purveyor of eclectic genre treats, Perkins has made a name for himself by crafting thoughtful, stylish, surgically edited, demonically soundtracked, trips into rabbit holes of the macabre. Keeper is another modern classic. A perfectly cast Tatiana Maslany leads the way through a miasma of genre potentials; is it a ghost story, a tale of witches, folk fable, occult terror, or simply a serial killer thriller dressed up as something more? Perkins is a dab hand at misdirection but also incredibly attuned to what draws our eyes and mind. Keeper plays ball with the audience for two thirds of the run time and, even when it reveals itself, still has room to fuck with us some more. It is an unexpected, terrifying, and eventually cathartic (?) horror film that puts a great mystery, grotesque creatures, and nightmarish logic to the forefront of the relationship drama. Its also one of the more believable relationships in the past few years, an honest, sometimes uncomfortable song and dance between two people beginning to give away more of themselves at the one year-mark. That’s what makes the dread so much more dreadful and the twists that much better.
1. Sinners
It’s always interesting when a genre film hits the mainstream and explodes, especially if its not a franchise film. And boy did Sinners explode. Ryan Coogler’s latest just seemed to drop out of nowhere and hit the ground running. Its opening takings were a shocker and the fact it became such a well-received phenomenon is a point of note. For a film which switches tracks from black music melodrama/gangster flick to vampiric supernatural at the 45 minute mark, its encouraging that audiences were up for trip and spread the word quick. Coogler is a master of injecting crowd pleasers with polemical discourse so it shouldn’t be a surprise that this particular film lays the boards down slow and steady then unleashes a swarm of celebration and terror with a potent focus on black legacy and music. Its a riveting piece of cinema, throbbing with electrifying dance sequences, sweat-soaked sexiness, booze-tinged tenderness, and, eventually, carnage that leaves the party in disarray. It feels like Coogler watched Tarantino’s Django Unchained and wasn’t satisfied with pure, comic-book, catharsis, so he paired it with Rodriguez’s From Dusk til Dawn then dragged the whole thing back to the crux of racial issues in the US. This is a film indebted to black music, which poses vampirism as appropriation and domination.
Scott Clark
