Lin at the Cinema - September 2026
It’s that time when the most interesting movies of the year start to hit theaters: awards contenders, the latest from respected auteurs, and big hits from film festivals earlier in the year. These are the films I look forward to the most in the year, as they tend to provide the unique and challenging experiences I’m after when I go to the cinema. And as an avid connoisseur of horror films, autumn of course tends to churn out ghastly treats on a weekly basis.
Before getting into the new releases I saw in September, though, I wanted to give a brief shoutout to a couple films from previous years I watched at home and deserve some more attention. First is a Danish film from 2024 called The Girl With the Needle. It received a nomination for Best International Feature at the Oscars, but largely seems to have gone under the radar, which is a shame given how absolutely spectacular it is. It’s an absolute nightmare of a film, a truly disturbing experience that’s not for the faint of heart. But I can’t really say in what way it’s disturbing without revealing more of the plot than you should know going in. Watch the trailer and if it seems like something you could handle, I highly, highly, highly recommend it. 9/10
I also watched Andrey Zvyagintsev’s 2014 film Leviathan and it was amazing. It’s a slow, meticulously put together, depressing as hell Russian drama about a guy getting fucked by the system. For a long, slow character drama I found it super compelling throughout. It’s the kind of movie that forces you to pay attention, but rewards you with a wealth of richness to dwell on after it’s over. I was already eagerly anticipating Zvyagintsev’s newest film Minotaur, but now I’m even more excited for it. 10/10
Now, let’s talk new releases!
Hope
We’re starting off with one of those aforementioned film festival hits with Na Hong-jin’s first feature in 10 years, Hope. This bizarre creature feature-action epic premiered in competition at Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, where it was met with pretty polarizing reviews that had me quite intrigued.
Na Hong-jin’s previous film The Wailing is, for my money, a modern horror masterpiece. It’s a brilliantly constructed, disturbing, and thematically rich experience that’s stuck with me since my first watch. Naturally, I was going to see anything he did next. While Hope has his stylistic signature all over it, this is a completely different beast than The Wailing, and an experience I can only describe as unforgettable.
The first hour is monster movie perfection. Hong-jin is clearly having a blast teasing the audience by showing us only the carnage wrought by the as-yet-unseen creature, at one point even having characters shouting at the protagonist that “the monster is right behind you!” By the time he looks, it’s already moved on and we don’t get to see it. Countless destroyed buildings and corpses later, we finally get our first look at what’s been causing all this mayhem and… hoo boy.
There are no two ways around it; the creature design and computer animation are rough. And unfortunately, as the film goes on, we start to see a whole lot more of it. In broad daylight. In close-up. It just looks incredibly hinky. It’s one of two elephants in the room as far as questionable creative decisions go - the other is the narrative, which leads to a bizarre final ten minutes that to me felt like a failed attempt at making the audience feel… some sort of significance? It’s a real head-scratcher of an ending, confusing not so much in a logistical sense as a creative one. It's difficult to talk about without outright spoiling it, but suffice it to say it’s a dialogue-driven sequence of what comes across to the audience as utter gibberish. Some have even interpreted it as setup for a potential sequel, but I’m not even sure that’s the case. I simply do not understand why Na Hong-jin decided to end this movie in the way he does.
And yet, Hope is still something I’d consider a must-see. Not only for the bizarre nature of the story and design elements in a “can you believe they thought this was a good idea?” way, but because despite its glaring faults, the filmmaking here is just next level. Exhilarating action abounds in the first hour and the last, and while it misses the mark in some important ways, there is simply too much style, personality, and bonkers fun here to write it off entirely.
Sadly (though unsurprisingly), Hope doesn’t seem to have done too well in its U.S. theatrical run and is already out of theaters in most places. If it’s still playing near you, it is well worth a watch.
7/10
The Love That Remains
Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason is one of the most talented filmmakers working today. His 2022 film Godland is possibly the most beautiful movie I have ever seen; a photographer before venturing into the realm of cinema, he is simply a master of creating breathtaking images and every frame contained in one of his films is a work of art to be savored. It also helps that his films take place against the backdrop of Iceland’s otherworldly landscapes, which populate nearly every frame of Godland, a patient yet absorbing and spiritually resonant tale of a Danish priest traveling to Iceland to build a church in the late 19th century.
His newest film is The Love That Remains, a significant departure in tone and setting, though no less visually stunning. Set in modern day, this film is something of a comedy chronicling a year in the life of a family as the husband and wife separate. I say “something of a comedy” because it comes across more in the generally light tone and awkward interactions than hitting you with joke after joke or a ridiculous sequence of events. It’s a distinctly Nordic sense of humor that’s a lot drier than something like The Invite which I discussed last month. There are a couple scenes that did having me laughing out loud, one an excruciating dinner scene and the other I won’t give away since it’s near the end and easily the biggest laugh of the film involving a hard cut to the victim of an unfortunate injury. This latter scene also culminates in one of the most touching moments of the film.
This isn’t the kind of movie you watch on the edge of your seat, waiting for the next plot development. It’s a collection of vignettes, memories, dreams in which to languor. Vibe movies like this can be some of my favorites, especially when they are this packed with beautiful, textured images. It’s certainly not for everyone, but I could look at shots of breathtaking Icelandic scenery for hours on end.
Did I mention how goddamn beautiful this movie looks?
8/10
Late Fame
Up next is a quaint little character study starring my very favorite actor, the incomparable Willem Dafoe. Late Fame is directed by Kent Jones, none of whose previous films I’ve seen, but who is probably most known for the documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut. Samy Burch, whose writing credits include the spectacular May December and the currently in theaters Coyote Vs. Acme adapts the screenplay from a novel by Arthur Schnitzler about an aging poet named Ed Saxburger, who published a poetry collection in the 70s and never found much of an audience, and when we meet him at the beginning of the film he’s been a postal worker for nearly 40 years. As it turns out, a small and extremely pretentious group of young posers with rich parents led by Edmund Donovan’s Meyers - The Enthusiasm Society (yes, I rolled my eyes too) - read his book, and they think he’s a genius. He starts attending their meetings and is equally bemused and delighted by the sudden interest in his work.
The best word I can use to describe this movie is “nice.” It’s a very watchable, low-stakes story centering a character that’s easy to care about. It’s not a film of flashy visuals, though I will make note of the sensible lighting choices that envelop the film in a dim, warm glow that adds a lot to the overall sense of calm and comfort. I saw this on a Saturday morning in a small theater and it really was the right environment for it. There’s some lovely music in transitionary sequences, low-key like the visual style and it all made for a very pleasant way to start the weekend.
Where the film is at its most gregarious is in the performances. Willem Dafoe is actually a lot more subdued than the rest of the actors; The Enthusiasm Society is comprised entirely of the kind of people who would use a Q&A session as an opportunity to monologue about their own philosophy while the rest of the room prays for them to get on with it and just ask the damn question. Though I’m not doing a great job of hiding my disdain for these characters - shades of whom I’ve certainly met during my time in music academia (and shades of whom I’ve been myself at points in my life) - there is also an endearing quality to their, well, enthusiasm.
The script is quite good overall, but I do feel it could have gone deeper into themes it hints at, most notably in an early scene where Saxburger visits the home of Meyers, which is lavishly decorated and immediately puts lie to his posturing as a bohemian poet; he’s just another rich kid who can only spend so much time meeting with his little collective to glaze each other’s work and wax poetic about the philosophy of art because he doesn’t have to do anything else. Each member of the Enthusiasm Society is desperately trying to downplay the generational wealth that allows them to do what they do, but once you see the environment they go home to every night, the costume falls away.
Burch could have cut deeper into this paradox, but hints at enough that I was left with something to chew on after leaving the theater. Late Fame probably isn’t going to be seen by a lot of people, it will probably go under the radar during awards season, and I doubt it will crack my list of the year’s best, but it was a nice little gem I would recommend to virtually anyone. When it eventually pops up on streaming, wait for a sleepy Sunday afternoon, curl up on the couch with a hot tea and put this on and bask in its glow.
7/10
Primetime
Now this I was looking forward to. A fictionalized retelling of events surrounding notorious NBC program To Catch a Predator starring Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen? Yes please.
As anticipated, Primetime has arrived with a hearty helping of controversy. Chris Hansen himself has had a lot to say about the project, very little of it positive. I’d highly recommend David Osit’s fantastic 2025 documentary Predators for a more faithful, critical look at the show and its legacy, especially to see just how much Hansen’s fans venerate him. He’s an avenging angel to these people, on a mission from God to rid the world of the worst kind of criminal. And when you believe in something so fervently, you’re likely to become suspicious of anyone who offers any criticism.
Unfortunately, the conspiracist side of the internet has latched on to the idea that once Chris Hansen started catching powerful people (I hope alarm bells are already ringing) and Rabbis (alarm bells intensify), the pedophile cabal that runs the world had to put a stop to To Catch a Predator and now Hollywood has hired a Jewish director to make a hit-piece against Hansen… 20 years later, for some reason. Obviously, this is conspiracist nonsense, but I’m alarmed by the seeming crossover between rabid Hansen fans and neo-Nazi conspiracy theorists.
It’s very strange to me, though, that Hansen and the conspiracist contingent seem to be under the impression that director Lance Oppenheim’s intent was to present an accurate version of events when this movie is so clearly heightened and operatic.
It feels weird to say this about a movie with such disturbing subject matter, but Primetime is an absolute hoot to watch. I absolutely love the tone of this movie which is so over-the-top and goofy, both translating and mocking the self-seriousness of its primary subject. Pattinson’s portrayal of Hansen is unhinged in the best way. At one point he tells the decoy, superbly played by Skyler Gisondo, that what they are doing is “cleansing the world of an ancient evil,” and the tone of the film reflects this mindset almost parodically. Events that in real life took place in broad daylight are presented here on a dark and stormy night, with even a visual depiction of that aforementioned ancient evil appearing at a few points.
Inarguably, the primary motivation for making this film was entertainment - just like To Catch a Predator. Personally, I even found myself wishing the film had dug deeper into the subject matter. Whatever complex feelings I have about its ethics, To Catch a Predator is undeniably compelling. The meteoric rise of the show as presented in the film reveals a psychological itch that it scratches psychologically. The immediate gratification of watching someone intending to do something so evil have the tables turned on them, humiliated and brought to their knees, is intoxicating. But it can become an addiction. Primetime posits that Hansen is addicted to this rush, the inversion of predator and prey, the hunter becoming the hunted. Whether that’s the reality, I can’t say, but I imagine Hansen wouldn’t accept that. It sure does make for a compelling protagonist, though.
Primetime is an incredibly well made film. Pattinson absolutely nails it. The voice is astoundingly accurate to the point where even though you’re looking at Robert Pattinson, you’re seeing Chris Hansen. The rest of the performances are also excellent, though, and Skyler Gisondo as Decoy Dan Plumb (the film’s fictionalization of real-life decoy Dan Schrack) is really the emotional heart of the movie. Schrack was interviewed in Predators, and his testimony is one of the most alarming things to learn about the production of the show. The decoys were not properly prepared for what they were to be a part of, and while Plumb’s experience is as dramatized as everything else in the film, the core of it comes from a place of truth.
It’s also top-notch from a production sense; there’s a ton of attention to detail in making the film authentically feel like 2006, from set design to props to background details and other television shows Predator was competing with at the time. There are so many creative choices that give the film a memorable look and feel, and a couple moments where I even caught myself nodding in approval of a camera movement or framing choice. The music by Ari Balouzian is both whimsical and intense at points, with some very memorable cues that added a lot to the unique tone of the film.
I had an absolute blast watching Primetime, but it is the kind of thing I feel general audiences might find a little too weird, and fans of Hansen are certainly not going to appreciate his depiction in the film. Still, despite the melodramatic presentation I did feel there was a kernel of truth here.
8/10
Resident Evil
And finally to transition nicely into the Halloween season, we have Zach Cregger’s ridiculously entertaining Resident Evil, the 8th film adaptation of the beloved survival horror video game series and, by all accounts, the only good film in the franchise.
I’ve not played the games (beyond a tiny bit of… the 7th one? I think?) but I did very much enjoy Zach Cregger’s previous two films, Barbarian from 2022, and Weapons, last year’s breakout horror hit that earned Amy Madigan a well-deserved Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Basically, I was coming into this more as a fan of Zach Cregger and the horror genre in general than as a fan of Resident Evil, and I can confidently say this is the most fun I’ve had in a movie theater all year. This movie absolutely rips.
Austin Abrams stars as a lovable buffoon of a medical courier tasked with transporting a very important package to Raccoon City General, where some nasty biohazard has escaped the top-secret lab (stop me if you’ve heard this one) and is rapidly transforming the residents of the surrounding area into something… evil. Got ‘em.
This film delivered in ways I find few modern horror movies do. It’s unpretentious and aims solely to entertain, but it doesn’t use that as an excuse not to present itself with confidence and creativity. There is genuinely exceptional cinematography here. The first true location of the film is a farmhouse surrounded by snow, and I absolutely love how Cregger chooses to shoot these scenes. Through the windows, you can see the trail our protagonist has made in the snow leading to the distant headlights of both his car and the flashing lights of a crashed police car (I won’t spoil how we end up here, it’s too fun of a sequence and another instance of the filming choices greatly enhancing the experience of what could otherwise have been a fairly routine set piece). Some of these shots almost resembled something out of Leviathan, but they also plant the seed of expectation that something could come running towards us at any moment.
I can’t tell you how refreshing it felt to watch a horror film that always felt one step ahead of me. Horror fans generally have to resign ourselves to the fact that we’re going to be frustrated with the characters making stupid decisions, but I was delighted to find in this film that every time I internally screamed at the protagonist for his choices, the film would immediately punish him for it. So many horror films lack this sense of consequence, and in turn, tension. Watching this movie is so thrilling because it’s clear Cregger has felt the same way watching lacklustre horror films and is exerting conscious effort to not fall into those traps. Certain scares genuinely caught me off guard in ways horror films haven’t done to me in a long, long time. I also admire how far the film is willing to go in terms of ghastly imagery and conceptually disturbing scenarios. No one is safe here, and I haven’t gasped with such fervor at horror imagery since The Substance.
It really can’t be overstated just how much fun I had watching Resident Evil. The runtime absolutely flew by, Zach Cregger’s trademark balancing act of horror and humor is in full force here, Austin Abrams is such a charismatic leading man, and I just had the biggest smile on my face the entire time. I guess some fans of the games are disappointed this wasn’t a more faithful adaptation, but obviously I could not care less about that. I came to see a good horror movie, and I left incredibly satisfied and then some. Not only do I think this is Zach Cregger’s best film, it’s genuinely one of the best films of the year.