Author: SceneByGreen

Bring Her Back (2025)

Danny and Michael Philippou | 1hr 39min

On paper, there is nothing explicably wrong with Andy and Piper’s new foster mother, Laura. Even when they first meet her, she greets them with a friendly smile, offering sympathy for their father’s recent passing as she welcomes them into her home. Everything might almost seem completely ordinary were it not for the strange, unsettling presence of Oliver – another young foster child whose vacant stare and eerie muteness suggest a deep disturbance beneath this household’s bubbly surface. The fact that Laura’s daughter Cathy tragically drowned in the pool shouldn’t necessarily be cause for alarm given the evidence of her sincere grief, yet as Bring Her Back draws stepsiblings Andy and Piper into her crushing embrace, it is that obsessive, unresolved heartache which rots the foundations of their new life.

After plunging into the realm of ritual occultism with Talk to Me, Danny and Michael Philippou continue to explore the twisted horror of necromancy and possession in their follow-up, capitalising on their tremendous indie success. The expanded budget is not explicitly revealed in the small-scale narrative, but rather through the exceptional casting of an Australian-accented Sally Hawkins, flipping her familiar, maternal warmth upside-down as Laura and distorting her face through refracted surfaces. Her apparent affection toward Andy and Piper is not so much an act as it is a memory of who she was before losing Cathy, anchoring this villain to her humanity, and masking a curdled, neurotic fixation on the barriers between life and death.

Manipulation and gaslighting are Laura’s psychological weapons of choice here, seeking to erode Piper’s trust in her big brother. Although she confronts Andy with private knowledge of old mistakes and intrusively pries into his text messages, she clearly holds even greater secrets close to her chest. In the darkness of her bedroom, this enigmatic caretaker watches bootleg VHS tapes sourced from Russia, where grotesque, arcane rituals flicker through layers of lo-fi static. By establishing these forbidden videos as a sinister motif, the Philippou brothers imbue the film with a demented mythology, foreshadowing the demonic depths that Laura will pursue to mend her broken heart.

For those familiar with Danny and Michael Philippou’s work, the self-mutilation that takes place in Bring Her Back should be no surprise, yet the gore is enough to make even the strongest stomachs churn. Next to Hawkins, child actor Jonah Wren Phillips leaves the strongest impression in the role of Oliver, his body degrading over the course of the film with bloodshot eyes, a bloated belly, and shattered teeth as he consumes all sorts of inedible objects. Whatever lives inside him, it possesses a ravenous appetite that not even Laura can control, culminating in one particularly harrowing scene where a knife finds its way into his mouth. Andy and Piper are evidently not the only ones far out of their depth – Laura’s entire existence is consumed by desperate delusion, struggling to maintain the illusion of normalcy amid uncanny, uncontrollable forces.

That Bring Her Back pours so much time into developing the siblings’ relationship too only makes the stakes that much more intimate. Even beyond the loss of their parents, the two have endured significant hardship in their short lives, carefully navigating Piper’s severe visual impairment while Andy conceals their late father’s abuse. The codeword “grapefruit” reveals the intricate depth of their bond, cryptically asking for complete openness while hiding its meaning from others present. It is a survival tactic of children who have grown up in unstable environments, and consequently safeguard an unconditional trust between them, thus making Laura’s attempts to undermine it particularly cruel.

The Philippou brothers refuse to sanitise the reality of child abuse for Andy and Piper here, depicting its full range from subtle exploitation to shocking physical assault. As a result, Bring Her Back also pushes beyond conventional horror boundaries in its assault of innocence, leaving our young characters mortally exposed. It is no coincidence after all that Laura chooses to take in a blind child with the same condition as her late daughter, effectively condemning Piper to a devastatingly similar fate. Through one particularly crafty match cut, the two are visually entwined, reinforcing the recurring pattern of surrogacy and death that underpins multiple relationships within the film.

For stepsiblings like Andy and Piper, securing family beyond one’s own bloodline may be the most powerful redemption they can find. Had Laura accepted these children as more than just vessels of her grief, perhaps she might have even found similar healing too. As it is though, obsessive attachment to that which has been irrecoverably lost blinds this human monster to the possibility of renewal, and ultimately surrenders Bring Her Back to the tragic despair of a corrupted, maternal love.

Bring Her Back is currently available to rent or purchase on Apple TV and Amazon Video.

Late Spring (1949)

Yasujirō Ozu | 1hr 48min

The cycles of life in Yasujirō Ozu’s domestic dramas are as natural as seasonal changes, and just as inevitable. Parents grow old, children move out of home, and their youthful innocence matures into a worldly wisdom which guides them into new experiences. This is the transitory period that he represents in the title Late Spring, where the youth of 27-year-old Noriko comes to an end, though Chishū Ryū’s gently spoken widower Shukichi is not the obstacle to his daughter’s inevitable departure. As Noriko holds tight to her ageing father, it is rather her reservations about marriage which create friction in their household, pensively reflecting the evolving responsibilities of mid-century Japanese women in their families and society at large.

Setsuko Hara is radiant here in her first of many fruitful collaborations with Ozu, becoming the emotional centre around which his mise-en-scène and narrative layers delicately form. Her perpetual, beaming smile draws our focus in wide and mid-shots alike, and even continues through her savage digs at the remarriage of her father’s friend Onodera, somewhat amusingly labelling the act “filthy” and “indecent” without so much as a scowl crossing her face.

Even outside his perfectly arranged interiors, Ozu keeps his eye for framing with exterior modern architecture.

From Noriko’s perspective, building a new life outside of her current home would be a selfish act, with even the mere thought threatening to undermine the security she finds in caring for her father. As far as she is concerned, “Marriage is life’s graveyard” – or at least, those are the words her divorced friend Aya puts in her mouth. The moment that Aunt Masa starts pushing her strongly in this direction by suggesting that her father is planning to remarry their widowed neighbour Mrs. Miwa, Hara’s magnetic smile is wiped from her face, and it is quite some time before we see it return.

When she’s smiling, it’s impossible to imagine Hara’s face with any other expression, and then there is a marked shift in her demeanour upon discovering her father’s plans to remarry. This shot mirrors nicely with the shot in the final scene with Ryū in a strikingly similar position.

Indeed, Ozu’s thoughtful blocking of Noriko in his open doorways, corridors, and shoji screens essentially constructs a protective shell around her, connecting the young woman to the monotonous minutia of her family home. He designs his compositions through parallel and transversal lines, geometrically splitting the frame into segments that give structure to the organic, and beauty to the mundane. Here, he develops a formally rigorous aesthetic which would extend to the end of his career, representing every book, chair, and hanging garment as an extension of his characters.

Ozu segmenting the frame through these vertical lines.
There is also of course a depth of field to Ozu’s staging as well, containing characters within their frames, and returning to the hanging laundry here as a consistent visual presence.

Through Ozu’s consistently low angles too, there is also an extraordinary humility baked into this perspective. The seconds before an actor enters a room and after they exit are spent in quiet reflection, finding traces of life that exist beyond drama, and embodying their gentle presence by what remains behind – a pair of sitting cushions, a coat hanging on a rack, and a hat resting on a briefcase for instance, collectively break up the living room’s harsh angles with hints of humanity. When Noriko cycles with her engaged friend Hattori, this pattern continues in his framing of their parallel bikes, parked in the foreground while mirroring their tender pairing in the distance. There may not be any romance shared between them, yet this does not devalue their connection in Ozu’s eyes, earning the greatest honour he could bestow upon any relationship – a beautiful, elegant composition.

Ozu is a master of mise-en-scène, but his talent doesn’t announce itself loudly. There is precision in the placement of each cushion, coat, and hat, leaving traces of characters around the scene even when they aren’t present.
Parallel bikes parked in the foreground mirroring the friends in the background – human connection represented through the scenery.

At its most enigmatic, Ozu’s dedication to still life artistry stirs something deep and inexplicable in our souls too, mystifying generations of film scholars who would pick apart the meaning of a simple vase. This shot in question is specifically a cutaway during Noriko and her father’s overnight stay in an inn, wedged between two close-ups of the young woman’s face as she silently comes to terms with their inevitable separation. Given that Noriko’s eyeline is aimed towards the ceiling, it is notably not a point-of-view shot, so we are left to surmise that the perspective we are being given is solely Ozu’s. In this context, perhaps what the vase symbolises is less important than its formal function, acting like a comma halfway through a sentence. As such, the cutaway emphasises the crucial difference between the pair of close-ups it separates – that bright, radiant smile, completely disappeared when we return a few seconds later.

The infamous, enigmatic vase cutaway. So much has been written on its meaning, though formally it fits effortlessly into the pacing and flow of the scene.

No words are needed to express the insecurity that Noriko feels around the prospect of her father remarrying, especially with Ozu using the backdrop of a Noh performance to underscore their exchanged glances across the audience with Mrs. Miwa. His editing is in tune with her distracted mind, following her father’s lead with a friendly nod and smile to their neighbour, before her expression drops into sullen sorrow. “The iris hedge planted next to our old home, only the colour remains as it was back then,” the Noh singers drone in long, slow verses, wistfully reflecting on that ephemeral past which slips from Noriko’s grasp and is replaced by a newfound wisdom. “All the earth will be enlightened, even the flowers and the trees,” they conclude as Ozu cuts to a low angle of tree branches spreading out across the sky, connecting her spiritual journey to the very earth itself.

A silent interaction unfolds among audience members of this Noh play, following Noriko’s distracted mind through the editing.
Melding visuals with the lyrics sung onstage, reflecting Noriko’s story in the music and the earth.

Nevertheless, Ozu’s Japan remains a land of quiet conflict between nature and civilisation. As we watch his transient pillow shots unfold, we often question if these ancient pagodas, commercial train lines, and modern interiors stand alone as observances of an evolving post-war society, or whether they are functional establishing shots announcing the location of the next scene. We are effectively led to consider both with equal significance, sensitising us to the intricacies of Noriko’s world that boldly strives for the future, yet which paradoxically holds onto its nostalgic heritage. It is consequently easy to empathise with both sides of Late Spring’s core conflict, though as Noriko finds herself falling for the man she has been set up with, Ozu’s visual harmonies develop a strange, distinctive melancholy.

Pagodas, train lines, domestic interiors – Ozu’s pillow shots do an immense amount of work laying out the coexistence of tradition and modernity.

The pillow shots step up in frequency here, floating along lyrical meditations of the fate that has befallen this engaged woman, and the lonely father who now mourns the void left in his home – not that he would ever let that show. The notion that he would be remarrying was merely a lie he constructed to nudge her along without feelings of guilt, and now as her bittersweet departure arrives, he gifts her his own words of wisdom.

“Happiness isn’t something you wait around for. It’s something you create yourself. Getting married isn’t happiness. Happiness lies in the forging of a new life shared together. It may take a year or two, maybe even five or ten. Happiness comes only through effort. Only then can you claim to be man and wife.”

Late Spring settles on a strange melancholy in its final minutes, returning to an iconic Ozu shot though now with a darkened frame.

Sitting alone in his darkened home, he slowly peels an apple, recognising that Noriko’s happiness is no longer his to hold onto. Chishu Ryū doesn’t need words to express such incredible sorrow either as he bows his head in resignation, gracefully submitting to those cycles of nature which Ozu manifests in one last cutaway to rolling waves upon a beach. With such thoughtful editing and curated imagery guiding Late Spring’s lyrical rhythms forward, there is both profound joy and sadness to be found in this father-daughter love – dominant for the years of one’s youth, though poignantly lacking the longevity of romantic, lifelong matrimony.

Ending with the powerful image of Ryū peeling the apple, delivering a poignant silent performance as he is left alone.
An open-ended, cyclical return the natural world in the final shot, rolling waves across the shoreline.

Late Spring is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Caught Stealing (2025)

Darren Aronofsky | 1hr 47min

Years have passed since a devastating car crash ended New York bartender Hank’s baseball dreams, but just as life seems to have settled, the curveballs come back hard and fast in Caught Stealing. What initially seems to be a simple request to cat-sit for his neighbour rapidly escalates into a bloody scramble through alleyways, bars, and apartments, locking him in the crosshairs of rival gangs seeking a mysterious key hidden in the litterbox. If Hank knew its significance when he first uncovered it, perhaps he would have turned it over and walk away unscathed – so it’s poor luck indeed that he should carelessly lose it on a drunken night out.

Caught Stealing isn’t exactly a return to form for Darren Aronofsky after the overwrought theatrics of The Whale, but its eccentric crime caper is nonetheless a refreshing shift in style and genre. It’s less a subtle nod to Guy Ritchie’s sardonic urban thrillers than a full-volume homage, basking in a 90s rock soundtrack dominated by post-punk band IDLES and throttling forward with the desperate momentum of a base runner rounding third. Austin Butler’s savvy performance certainly helps too, toning down his brooding intensity and leaning more into his natural charm, thereby giving us a hero whose street-smart ingenuity keeps him afloat – but not quite enough to shield loved ones from the fallout.

Aronofsky may be eschewing his trademark psychological intensity, but he can’t stray too far from the body horror that often comes with it, rendered here in creatively grotesque violence. His camera doesn’t shy away from stitches cut open mid-interrogation, stab wounds to the feet, nor the recurring, slow-motion nightmare of that life-shattering car collision. It is especially through the latter that Hank’s trauma continues to surface, replaying the loss of both his friend and baseball career, yet constantly drowned out by the sedative haze of alcohol. The frequent close-ups we get of Butler’s panicked expression waking up in unfamiliar locations only underscores the relentless grip of his past, exposing a man on the run from his guilt, yet driven more by reflex than reason.

Despite Hank’s Californian upbringing, he is undoubtedly a man of New York, modelled here after the dingy lighting, trash-strewn sidewalks, and feverish nightlife of Taxi Driver. Graffiti smothers the derelict apartment building where he resides, while the city itself is a vast, multicultural ecosystem, churning with Jewish gangsters, Russian mafioso, and British punks who all stake their claim in its underworld. The extraordinary ensemble casting certainly plays a part here too, drawing on the talents of character actors such as Carol Kane, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Liev Schreiber, while Matt Smith and Regina King fill in morally grey characters with disarming nuance.

Zoë Kravitz is commendable as Hank’s girlfriend Yvonne too, doing what she can in an underwritten role that functions more as a narrative device than anything else. Charlie Huston’s screenplay often gets caught up in predictable plot conventions such as this, quite literally giving Hank a ‘save the cat’ moment as the film’s inciting incident, though at least executing them with enough flair to barrel past its more formulaic beats.

Besides, along with the baseball motif, the introduction of this animal companion anchors Hank to an enduring sense of purpose amid kinetic disarray. “You have the same eyes,” a stranger remarks late in the film, by which point the two have indeed become mirrors of each other, bound by shared trauma and resilience. Loyalties flicker with slippery inconsistency in Aronofsky’s chaotic world, but through the blur of violence and loss, Caught Stealing settles on a redemptive union of man and feline that feels much less like triumph than weary, hard-won survival.

Caught Stealing is currently playing in cinemas.

A Hen in the Wind (1948)

Yasujirō Ozu | 1hr 24min

Looming large over the rundown homes of Tokiko’s village in Tokyo, an immense, round monolith of metal beams dominates the skyline. Unlike the smokestacks and factories which dot these urban outskirts, its purpose remains unclear – perhaps it is scaffolding for some postwar reconstruction, or maybe it is an abandoned industrial project. As far as Yasujirō Ozu is concerned, its function is not as important as the immense symbol of oppression it imposes upon those living in its shadow. It may fade into the background at times, blurred through his shallow focus, but it never disappears entirely from view. Even when Tokiko carries her ailing infant son Hiroshi through town streets, there it is right behind her, rising up in a low angle tracking shot as she desperately seeks help.

The year that neorealism peaked in Italy, Ozu was centring this hulking, industrial structure in his own examination of postwar poverty and its debilitation of the marginalised working class. There was no time to sit and mourn the great losses that were suffered from World War II – society simply needed to move on, leaving behind women like Tokiko whose enlisted husbands had not yet returned from war. Options are consequently limited for Tokiko, and as A Hen in the Wind sees her driven into a dire corner with rising inflation, Ozu offers nothing but incredible sympathy for the unfathomable choices she must make in extreme circumstances.

Ozu’s opening pillow shots introduce us to the giant, metal monolith that looms over this rundown town, using architecture as a statement of oppression and industrial progress.
Every sacrifice made in A Hen in the Wind is for the sake of the younger generations, hoping and striving for a better future.

“There’s an easier way for her to live,” Tokiko’s neighbour Orie slyly suggests one day, indirectly planting the idea of prostitution to pay for Hiroshi’s exorbitant hospital bills. It is telling that Ozu lines the bottom of the frame here with empty sake bottles, underscoring another set of struggles altogether within Orie’s home. She may be a minor character, but she is fully detailed in her short screen time, hinting at the nihilism which may similarly consume Tokiko in her reluctant turn to sex work. Hiroshi is all that matters, and as she examines her tired expression in the mirror, Ozu sombrely cuts between her face and its reflection. She knows what must be done, and in compromising moral dignity for an abiding love of her son, Kinuyo Tanaka’s performance manifests a tragic, pitiful sorrow.

Character neatly established through mise-en-scène, lining the bottom of the frame with bottles of sake.
Kinuyo Tanaka was one of Japan’s greatest actresses in the 1940s, yet she only collaborated with Ozu twice, particularly standing out here in this mirror shot. As we cut between her face and her reflection, we see her silently recognise the tragic sacrifice that must be made for her son.

Of course, Ozu would never be so explicit as to reveal Tokiko at her most compromised. A string of pillow shots transition into the shady local establishment where prostitutes meet their clients, settling on smoking ash trays, futons, and low-lit corridors, before meeting a group of patrons and staff playing mahjong. Their brief conversation fills in the gaps, revealing that Tokiko decided to only spend a single night working at this brothel, before Ozu poetically bookends the scene with identical pillow shots in reverse order.

Even with hard-hitting subject matter, Ozu chooses carefully what to keep offscreen, instead using pillow shots to reveal the dark, empty rooms of the local brothel.
Always present, and captured from endlessly refreshing angles. Ozu works wonders with this bizarre, alien structure all through the film.

Tokiko’s plea for her friend’s understanding cuts right to the heart of this undignifying dilemma, and through Ozu’s front-on camera placement, it virtually resonates as a plea to the viewer as well.

“If you were a woman with no money and your child got sick, what would you do? Where would you get the money for the hospital? What else can a woman do?”

The wait for her husband Shuichi’s return from war is made all the more agonising for this betrayal, overwhelming her with guilt as she speaks to his framed photo. Still, the shame felt upon his actual arrival may be even worse. From here, Ozu follows Shuichi’s tormented search for answers to his wife’s infidelity, hoping to find within himself the ability to forgive her. Visiting the brothel where she worked, he begins by finding some sympathy for a young prostitute whose elderly father and school-age brother financially rely upon her. With their conversation set against a view of distant cargo ships and industrial bridges, we are reminded of the harsh realities that consume these unlikely companions, yet which ultimately grants them a mutual understanding of each other’s difficult circumstances.

More than anything else in this era of Japanese society, shame and betrayal threatens the very foundation of Tokiko and Shuichi’s marriage.
Shuichi’s innocent bonding with a young prostitute is set against an industrial harbour, displaying the common circumstances that impact these vastly different characters.

The scraps of junk metal which dot this lookout not only serve to further underscore these poor conditions, but also become the subject of Ozu’s recurring pillow shots, handsomely framing backgrounds through hollow, rusted barrels. At a certain point, they even draw Shuichi’s focus as he wanders alone, pensively considering society’s abandoned litter alongside his own personal problems. A Hen in the Wind moves with him along this meditative journey, giving him that familiar low angle tracking shot which previously captured his wife and child against the monolith, and building out underlying formal patterns which echo particularly strongly at its climax.

Ozu brings incredible structure to his compositions, using metal pieces of junk to frame the background and reveal society’s postwar pollution.
Great formal strength in this pair of low angle tracking shots, alternately attached to Tokiko and Shuichi, and using the harsh local architecture as backdrops.

The initial setup arrives in a confrontation between the two when his heated questions completely shut her down. Frustrated by her refusal to speak, he throws a can down the stairs in a fit of anger, and Ozu momentarily departs from the scene with a cutaway to the ground floor where it eventually stops. Taken alone, this fleeting pause lets us grasp the pain which quietly lingers in the wake of Tokiko and Shuichi’s altercation, though its return in an even greater outburst also reveals it to be an accomplished piece of foreshadowing. As Tokiko ashamedly clings to him with profuse apologies, she is met with a callous shove that incidentally sends her tumbling down the stairs – and Ozu does not miss the chance to recall the exact same shot from earlier. In the silence which follows, she lies motionless in the same spot where the can once rested, crumpled and dehumanised by the comparison. Ozu very rarely uses physical violence in his films, but when he does it evidently carries the power to shatter entire worlds, fracturing the foundations of his characters’ humble lives.

One of Ozu’s finest moments as a formalist, lingering on this can falling down the stairs…
…and later revealing it to be a smart piece of foreshadowing as Tokiko suffers the same fate.

Yet somehow, even at Tokiko and Shuichi’s lowest, Ozu does not lose faith in the redemption of their souls. It takes a forced confrontation with the impact of his own behaviour for Shuichi to recognise where this cycle of resentment must end, and where healing between husband and wife must begin, putting each other’s transgressions behind them. Just as Japan must rebuild after the war, so too shall these aggrieved lovers piece together the remnants of their once-happy lives, finding whatever joy can survive beneath the shadow of that featureless monolith. There in the closing shots, children harmoniously play at its feet, and for the first time A Hen in the Wind reveals a fragile renewal lifting the historical weight of sacrifice, shame, and an entire generation’s moral compromise.

Children play in the shadow of the monolith, bringing life and joy to an otherwise sombre setting.

A Hen in the Wind is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Eddington (2025)

Ari Aster | 2hr 29min

Sheriff Joe Cross does not appear to be a particularly dangerous man in Eddington. He may belong on the more conservative end of the political spectrum, denouncing COVID-19 mask mandates and asserting police authority during Black Lives Matter protests, but his ineffectiveness in both public and private life is also clear. Especially next to Mayor Ted Garcia, he recedes into an uncharismatic emblem of old-fashioned masculinity, deciding to run for office yet failing to rally the support which that beloved, progressive politician effortlessly whips up among locals. Plastered across the buildings of this rural town, Ted’s election posters bear giant, beaming smiles, while Joe physically shrinks beneath them in palpable discomfort.

When this embittered sheriff’s misfortunes consequently reach a breaking point midway through Eddington, Ari Aster’s sweeping narrative takes a shockingly dark turn. There is a malevolence in Joe which we severely underestimated, transforming him from a comically tragic figure – not unlike Joaquin Phoenix’s usual roles of late – into a chilling embodiment of paranoid authoritarianism.

The ‘woke’ protestors who Aster lightly mocks may be misguided in their attempts to instigate social justice, but this is not a story of parallel evils. Even when Eddington submits to the right-wing fantasy of one man standing against an army of violent terrorists, its satirical target is blatantly apparent, dismantling the delusional bravado embedded in modern American mythology. What initially begins as a portrait of impotence here gradually reveals itself as a study in reactionary control, and those ideological narratives which legitimise it. Naïve idealism might falter in this twisted reflection of recent history, but self-aggrandising power fatally corrodes.

Eddington does not waver from the trajectory of Aster’s career thus far, leaving behind the pure horror of Hereditary and Midsommar, and embracing psychologically distorted mirror worlds one step away from our own. Where Beau is Afraid dove in the deep end of one man’s anxious self-loathing, Aster instead anchors Eddington to May 2020, during the tumultuous early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Traces of Robert Altman’s Nashville can be found in the idiosyncratic ensemble which makes up this Southwestern town, exposing the politics that hide in every corner of mundane life, though Aster uses a global health crisis to stoke its simmering tensions rather than a country music festival. The result is thematically ambitious, capturing a microcosm of America’s fractured political landscape, creeping religious extremism, and digitally mediated existence, but there is nevertheless a formal lack of focus here which struggles to handle the combustible chaos waiting to be lit.

It is a rocky road that Aster has traversed once before in the expansive, metaphysical odyssey of Beau is Afraid, though without the same dedication to motifs which effectively tie its looser elements together. In comparison, Eddington tends to wander, sacrificing tension in subplots concerning a fringe cult and viral conspiracy theories that only intermittently surface. At the very least, each still play a part in Aster’s patchwork tapestry, obliquely illustrating a declining, disillusioned nation.

With Eddington’s lone lawmen, frontier justice, and desert landscapes as well, what better genre is there to reveal the rot in America’s heartland than the Western? Composer Bobby Krlic evidently understands the task at hand in his dissonant, off-kilter callbacks to Ennio Morricone’s musical cues, tensely underscoring stand-offs in the town’s main street where asphalt replaces dirt, and assault rifles supplant pistols. In tense wide shots too, Aster visually places physical distance between Joe and Ted as they verbally spar, transforming these classic archetypes into subjects of political theatre. With the sheriff’s posturing and the mayor’s virtue signalling, neither seem entirely adept at running the town, but their rivalry nonetheless locks them in a performative struggle for control.

The collateral damage of this conflict is ravaging, though not always necessarily fatal. Among the first of its victims is Louise, Joe’s anxious, reclusive wife, played by a gaunt-faced Emma Stone with deep mental scars. Living almost entirely behind closed doors, she spends her days sewing creepy dolls to decorate their home, and longing for connection beyond her preoccupied husband and overbearing mother. Although Joe occupies his free time watching YouTube videos on ‘How to Convince Your Husband or Wife to Have a Baby [5 STEPS!]’, he completely neglects to inform Louise of his intention to run for mayoral office before publicly launching his campaign, leaving her wounded and betrayed. Even worse, she is rendered a political pawn in his attempt to smear Ted with allegations of sexual assault, not only forcing her secrets out into the open but misrepresenting them in the process.

As grim as Eddington gets in its grappling with real traumas and events, Aster holds his darkly comedic ground, capturing all-white crowds protesting institutional racism and attempting to bring progressive ideologies home to close-minded parents. Their cause is not trivialised so much as detached from the motives of individual characters, at least one of whom joins purely to get closer to his crush, Sarah. That the woefully infatuated Brian should flip so easily and become a conservative influencer when given the opportunity amusingly reveals the moral vacancy at his core, drawing an especially pointed allusion to the viral elevation of teen vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse. Meanwhile, the romantic drama that entangles Sarah, Ted’s son, and the town’s only Black cop Michael further muddies the waters of identity politics, becoming a lightning rod for Joe’s ambitions in his self-serving climb to the top.

With long tracking shots sinking us into the sheriff’s unravelling psyche, it is easy to lose ourselves in Eddington’s polarised tensions and overlook the third power at play, insidiously nudging everyone towards mutually assured destruction. The tech industry’s influence is woven into the fabric of the narrative, propagating misinformation and manipulating police investigations, but its encroaching presence is also subtly present in the development of a hyperscale data centre just outside of town. Few residents are particularly supportive of its development, especially given the land ownership dispute between Native Americans and local authorities, yet the project continues to quietly progress as more explosive conflicts dominate the public eye. Its growth is passive but persistent, reshaping the entire town while everyone else is too distracted to notice – right up until its construction is finished, inescapably looming in Eddington’s final shot.

For a man whose greatest fear was always loss of control, Joe’s fate is almost poetic in its cruelty, thrusting him into the feeble, helpless state he has spent his life trying to avoid. As diffuse as Aster’s storytelling may be at times, he is always cognisant of the threat which turns fragile men into dangerous myths. America’s faceless institutions of power are much larger than any one individual, and in Eddington, they do not distinguish between idealists or opportunists – only those who serve the narrative, and those who are sacrificed to sustain it.

Eddington is currently playing in cinemas.

Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947)

Yasujirō Ozu | 1hr 12min

Whether they were abandoned, lost, or orphaned, young children were among the most impacted civilians of wartime Japan, making seven-year-old Kōhei one of many stranded without parents in Record of a Tenement Gentleman. Every survivor is dealing with their own struggles though, so when O-tane’s neighbour picks him up off the street, the question arises – why must this middle-aged widow be the one to take him in? If you ask her, it is because her friends agreed to randomly select who should be his carer, and she unfortunately drew the lot with an X on it. If you ask Tashiro or Tamekichi, the game was rigged so that all the lots were marked with an X, and she simply revealed hers first. To Yasujirō Ozu though, there is a maternal warmth beneath her spiky exterior that she might refuse to acknowledge, yet which predisposes her to the enormous responsibility of raising Kōhei.

Record of a Tenement Gentleman may be the closest this director of domestic dramas ever got to shooting a war film, rejecting the spectacle of battle for the quiet struggles of those whose homes were torn apart by bloodshed. Death and violence takes place entirely offscreen, never clarifying what led to the demise of O-tane’s husband, and only relaying the backstory of Kōhei’s bombed-out home through a neighbour’s brief exposition. The child’s father left for Japan to find work, we learn, and at some point along the way they were separated.“Your dad’s cold-hearted,” O-tane cynically reasons as they share food together atop a dune, overlooking a breezy, grey ocean.

“You didn’t get lost. You got abandoned.”

Grey skies and oceans form the negative space upon which O’tane and Kōhei’s figures are imprinted, bleakly looking out at the horizon as this middle-aged woman breaks the tragic news to the boy.

Perhaps this is her lack of faith in humanity speaking, or maybe it is her own justification to keep him by her side – not that she is terribly well-equipped as a mother. He is little more than a nuisance to her, earning her ire for failing to win a lottery draw, and repeatedly wetting his bed. Ozu’s storytelling through pillow shots is strong here, not only using his characteristic laundry montages to transition between scenes, but also frequently returning to the wet patch on his hanging sheets to reveal the chronic nature of this issue.

Unusually for Ozu, the narrative progresses through his trademark laundry shots, returning to this hanging blanket to reveal the chronic nature of Kōhei’s bed-wetting.
Ozu patiently builds out postwar Tokyo’s rundown districts, composing long shots littered with junk and debris as O-tane navigates its streets.

Through its elegant union of style and character, what is largely underrated as a minor Ozu film displays graceful, minimalist sophistication, building out Tokyo’s rundown districts and the people that inhabit them. His path may have never crossed with the Italian neorealists of the time, but his ability to find tenderness in mundane suffering certainly aligns with theirs, compassionately studying behaviours as simple as O-tane’s discontented grinding of flour. Hanging kitchen utensils clutter the ceiling in her home too, pressing down from above in isolating wide shots as she smokes alone, and serving a similar purpose as the obstructions so often framed in the foreground.

O-tane’s state of mind is expressed through everyday motions, comparing her slow grinding of flour to the rapid, frustrating grinding later on.
Hanging tools and utensils from the kitchen ceiling, pressing down on O-tane from this isolating wide shot.

When Kōhei runs away one day out of fear of wetting the bed again, Ozu’s focus turns to the rundown streets of O-tane’s neighbourhood, joining her silent, uneasy search for this regretfully mistreated child. There, he lingers on street litter as it is lightly tousled by the breeze, as equally disregarded as those young children who pass their days fishing from the bridge. Their featured presence in cutaways all throughout Record of a Tenement Gentleman is impactful – they live on the periphery of society, yet they are crucial to Ozu’s portrait of innocence in mid-century Japan, particularly centring Kōhei as a generational symbol of resilience.

A very fine montage as O-tane searches for a missing Kōhei, as Ozu cycles through shots set up earlier in the film.
The theme of society’s forgotten children echo poignantly through the scene, ending in this shot of litter blowing in the wind – sharp parallels drawn through imagery.

Upon this child’s safe return home, we see something shift in O-tane, lovingly spoiling him with a day trip to the zoo. “I’ve never felt like this before. Motherly love?” she wonders aloud to her friend, who humorously jabs back that she is more like a grandmother. For all the severity of these characters’ circumstances, Ozu maintains a gentle humour and levity in their interactions, making the unexpected arrival of Kōhei’s father to take him home all the more bittersweet.

Warmth and joy emerge in this surrogate mother-son dynamic, cracking O-tane’s stone heart and providing Kōhei a source of stability.
Ozu knows how to design a frame at this point his career, imbuing the scenery with hypnotic, repetitive motions.

No longer does O-tane find the same satisfaction in her solitude as she did before, and in Kōhei’s absence, the world again becomes a cold and lonely place. Ozu would later refine the conclusion of his character arcs, delivering emotional gut punches in a single, devastating composition rather than a monologue as he does here with O-tane’s explicit moralising, speaking to the life-changing marvel of children. It is fortunate indeed then that Record of a Tenement Gentleman does not give her the final say, but rather returns to the children of Tokyo, this time playing in Ueno Park where she plans to adopt one. There, a statue of Takamori Saigō watches over them like a vigilant protector, connecting this dark period of Japanese history back to one of its greatest icons of honour. O-tane may not strike nearly impressive a figure as this noble samurai, yet as her broken nation emerges from the darkness of war, so too does she embrace a quiet, compassionate heroism of her own.

O-tane’s world is once again a dark and lonely place to be, sinking her into shadows when Kōhei is taken back home.
Takamori Saigō – a symbolic, silent protector of Japan’s children, who smoke, talk, and play at his feet in the film’s closing pillow shots.

Record of a Tenement Gentleman is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Weapons (2025)

Zach Cregger | 2hr 8min

When seventeen children from a single third-grade class rise from bed at 2.17am, walk out their front doors, and run into the night with their arms outstretched, we feel as if we are witnessing something deeply primordial unfold. George Harrison’s sombre, mellow vocals accompany the montage, cautioning the town to ‘Beware the Darkness’ – and indeed, this is only the beginning of the trauma soon to be inflicted on this fragmented community. The child’s eerie narration which recounts these events even frames it as a twisted fairy tale, albeit one that it claims to be a “true story,” daring us to accept the reality that no grieving parent ever wants to confront.

Following on from his debut Barbarian, Zach Cregger is once again exposing the horrors hidden beneath America’s suburban façade in Weapons, though this time ambitiously branching his narrative out further than before. Its structure is a shattered mirror, split into six pieces which reflect the perspectives of different individuals – the bewildered teacher, the bereaved parent, the unassuming principal, the feckless police officer, the homeless witness, and the single, surviving child from the decimated class. Each segment offers answers to questions raised in others, though due to their non-linear arrangement, it is the act of piecing them together which reveals the full scope of this collective nightmare. Unlike so many other contemporary horror films, Weapons cannot be pinned down to a straightforward allegory, instead building its formal strength upon the ingenuity of its disquieting, fractured storytelling.

One of the most haunting images from a horror film in recent years, sending a class of young children running into the darkness with their arms outstretched.
Six characters, six intersecting perspectives – Cregger’s formal ambition continues to grow with this inventive narrative structure, sprawling its horror across the town.

With that said, there is a thematic undercurrent of addiction which runs strong through multiple characters here, beginning with the teacher whose entire class almost entirely disappeared overnight – Justine. The anguish of losing these children is only compounded by the scrutiny of a town desperate for a scapegoat, driving her back to the familiar refuge of liquor stores and bars. Her ex-boyfriend Paul suffers from similar vices, while wandering vagrant James seems wholly dedicated in his mission to score meth, and even the junk food that decorates Principal Marcus’ home subtly underscores his surrender to unhealthy habits. Of them all though, it is Archer who is most passionately dedicated to his obsession, consumed by grief and zealously seeking answers to his son’s disappearance.

Justine’s lesson on parasites and the documentary that Marcus watches about mind-controlling fungi serve as eerie foreshadowing here, echoing the underlying fear which runs deep in Weapons – total loss of physical and psychological control. Cregger deftly teases out the terror which lurks within the home of the class’s only survivor, Alex, only gradually revealing its domestic decay to be a manifestation of addiction’s corrosive grip. Though no fault lies with his immediate family, it is as if a spirit has drained this house of all joy and love, rendering its occupants empty vessels of their former selves.

Cregger has further to grow as a visual artist, but he still displays an admirable control over lighting and framing within ordinary homes to underscore the lurking dread.

Of course, the truth of the danger lies even deeper than Alex initially comprehends, and Cregger relishes unravelling it with a slow, suffocating dread. At some point during each of our six lead characters’ segments, he invariably hangs his camera on the back of their heads, attaching us to their overwhelmed psyches through steady, prolonged tracking shots. Formally, this device is also an extension of the subjectivity woven into the very narrative, matching its haunting mosaic of intersecting perspectives.

A strong stylistic and formal choice in the recurring tracking shots, following behind each primary character as we adopt their perspective.

If there is any weakness to Weapons’ structure, then it lies in the digressions of some later chapters, swerving away from the single point-of-view conceit to revisit previously established characters. Nevertheless, it is a minor detail that Cregger efficiently smooths over with his parallel editing, and the emotional continuity carried by Julia Garner’s highly-strung presence certainly helps too. If any single performance takes the spotlight here, it is her portrayal of a deeply flawed schoolteacher, known for frequently overstepping boundaries with children yet unable to resist her own maternal instincts.

In terms of pure horror, Cregger’s splintered storytelling effectively heightens the element of the unknown too through chilling, elongated suspense. Although Justine investigates Alex’s house and finds two motionless silhouettes inside, it isn’t until James’ segment that we see their faces, and only once we reach Alex’s do we learn who they are. Similarly, visions of faces painted in clown makeup haunt the dreams of multiple characters, casting a chilling omen that finally comes into focus with the arrival of Alex’s flamboyant Aunt Gladys. Her bright orange wig, oversized glasses, and smeared lipstick might almost be mistaken for a drag queen’s getup if she did not project such a sinister aura, suggesting a far more malevolent force hiding beneath that mask of camp eccentricity.

Surreal symbolism in Justine and Archer’s tormented dreams.

This is a film of searing, unshakable images after all, not so easily forgotten thanks to their uncanny distortion of the familiar. There is no soul behind the bulging eyes of one possessed victim, their mouth black with vomit and face grotesquely bloodied, nor is there any humanity in the jerky movements of a woman staggering through the darkness towards an unconscious target. Cregger knows when to hold a shot, and it is especially in that latter scene where the lingering camera draws the tension to a breaking point, refusing to reveal who or what this figure is shambling towards us.

One of the most disturbing scenes of the film unfolds in broad daylight, stripping a possessed victim of their soul and humanity.
Cregger returns to this black doorway multiple times, mounting suspense around what lies on the other side of its darkness.

Perhaps most frustrating of all is the helplessness of these adults in addressing the local catastrophe. We are consistently led to place our trust in authority figures, yet each time we are let down, watching them fall prey to an unfathomable force not even they can grasp. As such, Weapons is also lightly imbued with the spectre of a school shooting metaphor, seeing parents desperately try and fail to rationalise the inexplicable destruction of innocence – yet this explanation alone does not capture the complete, psychological disorientation that saturates the film. Even when the peril is finally driven into the light and comically mocked, the lifelong trauma remains, reminding the community of their existential fragility. Grief is a corrosive, all-consuming affliction after all, and Cregger renders its sprawling impact with sinister precision in Weapons, hollowing out a forsaken town suspended between denial and dread.

Weapons is currently playing in cinemas.

There Was a Father (1942)

Yasujirō Ozu | 1hr 43min

The emotional bond between Shuhei and his son Ryohei may be strong in There Was a Father, yet there is a wistful sorrow in the past tense of this title which suggests the memory of some earlier, tragic loss. That patriarchal title of honour is one Shuhei struggles to lay claim to after failing in his duty as a teacher, inadvertently letting one student drown during an excursion under his supervision. In his eyes, a father is a role model, an educator, and a protector, so a man who cannot fulfil his most basic duty for any child in their care has no business looking after them.

Shuhei’s grief reverberates far beyond his resignation though, sending Ryohei to a boarding school and thereby placing a physical distance between them. He may never truly stop being a father, and Yasujirō Ozu even recognises the undeniable harmony of this relationship through the recurring shot of their fishing lines being cast in perfect unison, yet Chishū Ryū’s performance nevertheless resonates a stoic self-pity for his negligence. Guilt requires atonement, and atonement is a duty to be undertaken in meditative isolation. Having lost his wife some years ago too, Shuhei’s one shot at redemption now seems to be through the professional success of his only living family member.

Ozu illustrates harmony across generations through the simple motion of fishing lines cast in unison, mirrored between father and son.
A beautifully devastating detail – setting up the neat row of umbrellas, and then knocking one down as students rush out to learn of their drowned classmate.

Prior to the instigating tragedy, Ozu is meticulous in setting up Shuhei’s ordered, untroubled world. Symmetrical rows of students impeccably frame their teacher in the classroom, and even when they leave for a lakeside retreat, static pillow shots linger on their perfectly aligned umbrellas resting against a wall. Nevertheless, the peace is soon disturbed by the news of one boy’s boat capsizing, and the toppling of a single umbrella in the subsequent rush makes for a devastatingly symbolic detail. Before reaching the overturned rowboat though, Ozu neatly inserts a single cutaway to a nearby stone pillar, as if to punctuate the disaster with a reflective, melancholy sigh.

Ozu resists the sensational and grotesque, letting the death of this student sink in through pillow shots that show everything but his body.

Even amid dire misfortune, chaos is simply not part of Ozu’s cinematic language, and There Was a Father especially asserts his proclivity for ritualistic repetition to smooth over emotional disruptions. When Shuhei breaks the news to Ryohei while fishing that he will be sent to a boarding school, the scene is bookended by two shots of another stone pillar near the river, and when this young boy eventually grows up, another pattern is established as he follows in his father’s occupational footsteps. “Your duty is to study hard,” this young teacher advises one homesick student, echoing the ethos he was raised with, though his dedicated diligence does not come at the expense of long-distance visits to his father in Tokyo.

Ozu uses this stone pillar as a sort of bookmark to his scene, turning cutaways into visual punctuation bridging one moment in time to the next.
Further mirroring between Shuhei and his son – both taking the role of teachers, and appearing almost identical in their suits and ties.
Wayward students perched atop stone pillars like crows, letting time drift away.

Shuhei and Ryohei’s reunion dominates the second half of There Was a Father, frequently leaning into wide shots of the two relaxing in carefully composed interiors. Within the grand view of Ozu’s career, this is where his thorough layering of shots through shoji doors begins, capturing frames within frames which draw our eyes to characters in their domestic habitats. Here he continues to quietly underscore the parallels between generations of men, beginning one scene with Ryohei smoking on his own, joining them together in a discussion of marriage prospects, before ending with an almost identical shot of a lone Shuhei taking his son’s position.

Ozu relishes the reunion between Shuhei and Ryohei, returning to this fishing motif which carries across years in their lives.
Again, astounding parallels drawn in the framing, bookending a scene by isolating both in identical shots.

Loneliness is inevitable in any relationship strained by distance though – in this instance, giving way to a tension which arises over Ryohei’s desire to quit his job and move closer to his father. “Do your duty for both of us,” Shuhei demands, longing for Ryohei to become the teacher he believes he never could be, and revealing how profoundly his past failure still weighs on his parental expectations.

It is also during Ryohei’s trip to Tokyo though that Shuhei finds companionship in an even more unlikely reunion, organised by his now-grown students. It has been a decade since their graduation, and while their teacher has spent the interim living in reclusive guilt, they have held onto nothing but positive memories of his mentorship. He continues to visit the deceased student’s grave out of a sense of remorse, he tells them, but is evident that his impact on their lives far outweighs this single tragedy. Through the low perspective of Ozu’s tatami shots, we become part of the seated celebration too, observing how its demonstration of enduring appreciation begins to heal the ex-teacher’s wounded soul.

Healing through reminiscence, celebration, and Ozu’s tatami shots, giving Shuhei the closure he needs from old students whose fond memories far outweigh any consideration of his failures.

If Shuhei’s guilt was keeping him clinging to a lonely life of penitence, perhaps this is just the closure he needed to finally escape it once and for all. Growing disorientated and weak, he collapses one morning as he gets ready to leave for work, struck by a heart attack. Ozu once again uses a cutaway to pause before we move to the hospital, this time meditatively lingering on an array of flowerpots, a clothing horse, and a watering can sitting in the garden, each item never to be touched by Shuhei again. Ozu creates a sort of temporal negative space in moments like these, not quite part of one scene or the next, but rather offering a soothing transition to prepare us for significant changes in the lives of his characters.

The stray garden items of Shuhei’s home, left exactly where he last put them down – his absence is painfully felt in this pillow shot.

Lining the corridor outside Shuhei’s hospital room, his past students gather, honouring the man who became a father to each of them. “It’s nothing to be sad about. I did the very best I could,” he mumbles with his dying breath, finally finding forgiveness within himself. As for Ryohei, this final week spent together was the happiest of his life, he admits, having always wanted to live with his father since being sent away to boarding school. This is a man who died with his dignity intact, and the teary crowd which gathers around his deathbed in the final minutes of There Was a Father pays thankful testament to that, recognising a remarkable, resilient legacy which transcended the grief etched deep in his soul.

Students gather round the deathbed of their old teacher, mourning and commemorating a life which touched far more people than Shuhei ever realised.

There Was a Father is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (1941)

Yasujirō Ozu | 1hr 46min

When the rock at the centre of the Toda family is lost, there is little that remains to hold its fragments together – though the enthusiastic attendance of Shintarō’s 69th birthday celebrations might originally suggest otherwise. Surely his children would loyally support each other after his passing, and they would certainly never try to palm off their now-homeless mother and youngest sister Setsuko, effectively washing their hands of responsibility. For those who comfortably belong to Japan’s upper-class though, family ties are diminished by their lack of interdependence, and Yasujirō Ozu’s filmic foray into the stratosphere of the elite exposes the true weakness in their relationships.

With his focus shifting away from society’s disenfranchised, the personal conflicts in Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family stem more apathy than the insecurity of Ozu’s previous characters, marking a notable departure from the industrial wastelands of The Only Son or the provincial streets of A Story of Floating Weeds. Perhaps this break from rundown locations is partly why its visuals are a little more muted, but it’s tough to criticise his mise-en-scène too much when it still bears the markings of his carefully set interiors. Here, patterned wallpaper forms delicate frames around doorways, while abundant flowers densely crowd out compositions at Shintarō’s funeral, commemorating his life through immoderate displays of wealth.

It is at Shintarō’s birthday party though where we get our first taste of this family’s decay, revealed in pillow shots which follow his initial collapse and move into an empty doctor’s office. There, a grandfather clock rhythmically swings its pendulum with the repetitive, ringing telephone, marking the first of several instances that Ozu calls upon this symbol of time and mortality – not that the Toda children necessarily consider the weight that either bear on their lives. Apparently the cultural tradition of honouring one’s elders only applies to the underprivileged who continue to lean on them, and even after being wracked by Shintarō’s post-mortem debts, still these siblings dedicate the bare minimum to looking after their mother.

When Mrs. Toda and Setsuko move in with the eldest brother Shin’ichiro, disharmony finds fertile ground, eventually sprouting into a confrontation between his wife Kazuko and Setsuko. Quarrels in Ozu films are rarely impassioned, yet resentment simmers in glacial accusations, beginning with Setsuk’s simple request that Kazuko avoid playing piano while she and her mother are sleeping. Kazuko is seemingly happy to oblige, but not without questioning why they didn’t greet the guest they had earlier that day, openly laying out her disdain for all to see.

Perhaps then peace will be found living with the eldest sister Chizuko, but when Setsuko expresses her desire to get a job, she is chastised for even considering the disgraceful notion of joining the working class. Elsewhere in this household, Chizuko’s resistance to disciplining her rebellious son sparks a clash with her mother, and ends in Chizuko sharing perhaps the harshest words of the film.

“Just stay away from my son.”

With this arrangement failing as well, Ayako is next to reluctantly offer her home, so she is relieved indeed when a frustrated Mrs. Toda resolves instead to reside in the family’s only remaining property – a rundown house by the sea. If there is any redemption to be found among the Toda siblings, then it is through the final sibling Shōjirō, whose move to China shortly after his father’s death has largely insulated him from these affairs. Upon his return for the one-year anniversary of Shintarō’s passing, he effectively becomes Ozu’s mouthpiece, scolding each of his siblings for neglecting their gracious mother. His home in China is not ideal given its distance, but it is nevertheless a safe place for his mother to relax and Setsuko to find work, free from judgement.

Rarely does Ozu take so firm a stance on the tension between tradition and modernity as he does in Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family. Shin’ichiro, Chizuko, and Ayako may not be villains, but the shallowness with which they approach their personal responsibilities brands them hypocrites in his eyes, holding the foundations of their privilege in little esteem. Prosperity is evidently not the measure of family bonds in this cutting class critique. Through grief and adversity, the hollowness of their affluence is laid bare, and reverent devotion for one’s roots holds on by a single, resilient thread.

Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Warfare (2025)

Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza | 1hr 35min

For a filmmaker as cerebral as Alex Garland, Warfare is an unexpected swing away from the realm of speculative fiction, chronicling a mission undertaken by U.S. Navy SEALS in the thick of the Iraq War. For his co-director Ray Mendoza, it couldn’t be more personal. Not only did he serve as a combat communications specialist during the Second Battle of Ramadi, but his experiences form the autobiographical foundation of this narrative, following in the steps of Oliver Stone to bring a visceral, firsthand authenticity to cinematic depictions of war. He is our anchor within this ensemble too, offering the subjective perspective through which the procedural banality of war is filtered, and ultimately transformed into a harrowing, disorienting horror.

Mendoza has his own fair share of experience in the movie industry, acting as a military advisor for many Hollywood productions including Garland’s own Civil War, though it is evident where the co-directors’ respective skill sets lie here. Credit must be given to Garland for the neat handling of Warfare’s real-time structure, focusing on day-to-day operations within the armed forces as Mendoza’s platoon takes control of a house, executes a sniper overwatch mission, and drastically pivots when they come under attack. Having honed his skills directing some of the best high-concept films of the past decade, he brings patience and precision to the storytelling, while Mendoza draws on his own direct experience to shape its emotional core with remarkable detail.

With that said, it is no coincidence that this significant step outside Garland’s usual mode of filmmaking also results in one of his weaker efforts. This is a director whose contemplations of consciousness, identity, and fate have often been grounded in otherworldly settings and soundscapes, encouraging a psychological disconnection from the physical world, though here he trades off introspection for the brutal immediacy of combat. The result is immersive, mounting tension as Mendoza’s platoon observes suspicious activities around the market down the street, yet Dunkirk this is not. Perhaps out of respect for his co-director’s vision, Garland’s direction never quite mounts to anything more than the primal, sensory experience of each passing moment, leaving it slightly lacking in formal ambition.

Still, Warfare’s tactile realism gives plenty of opportunities to admire the collaboration between these two directors, particularly when the enemy lands their first attack on the platoon’s hideout with a hand grenade and a hail of bullets. The injury suffered by their medic Elliott is reason enough to call him an emergency evacuation, though when the team taking him out are blindsided by a makeshift bomb, the mission spirals into chaos. Yellow smog fills the air, smothering wounded and fallen soldiers alike in a sickly hue, and Garland periodically drops out sound altogether as the survivors struggle to regain their senses.

That this building hosts a pair of innocent Iraqi families who have been forced to wait inside a bedroom only adds to the moral complexity at play. They are largely sidelined in the narrative, yet their terror exposes the collateral impact of such an invasive mission, treated as secondary to the platoon’s strategic objectives. This tension between duty and consequence is further amplified too when Lieutenant Jake’s request for a second evacuation is denied due to concerns over another explosive device, effectively leaving them stranded. In response, he orders his subordinate to impersonate a commanding officer, giving unauthorised approval and breaking a whole host of protocols along the way.

Garland and Mendoza do not bother with any sort of epilogue to close out their tale of full-throttled panic and strained procedure. As the platoon’s evacuation tank noisily rolls out of town, it leaves an eerie silence in its wake, broken only by the quiet sounds of Iraqi civilians nervously exiting their homes. If there’s any catharsis to be found in Warfare, it is suspended in this uneasy ambiguity, emptied of soldiers yet filled with uncertainty for those left behind. There is little time for reflection amid the violent chaos, but as the dust settles and life feebly resumes, Garland and Mendoza leave us with a sobering image of the enduring psychological residue that lingers long after the fighting has ended.

Warfare is currently streaming on Prime Video.