Genre: Thriller, Drama
Directed by: Jan Komasa
Starring: Diane Lane, Dylan O’Brien, Zoey Deutch
Release Date: October 29, 2025
Platform: Theaters
Star Rating: 2.5/5
By Karl Simpson Jr.
“Love turns conditional, loyalty becomes dangerous, and compassion erodes until all that’s left is devotion to a cause.”
ANNIVERSARY left me frustrated. You can feel the weight of what it’s trying to say, but it never slows down to let those ideas breathe. The tension is gripping, the atmosphere is thick, and the performances are very strong, but the emotional depth never fully lands. It’s a film filled with potential and purpose, yet it races past the moments that would’ve made its impact unforgettable.
The film centers on a couple whose lives are upended when their son introduces them to his new girlfriend, a young woman involved in a radical movement called “The Change.” What begins as a polite family gathering quickly unravels into a suffocating nightmare of ideology and paranoia. While the film captures the rising tension around the family beautifully, it doesn’t always give enough space for the emotions within the film to grow. You’re told there’s history, conflict, and pain between the characters, but you rarely see it unfold.
What the film nails is its atmosphere. Every conversation feels like it’s teetering on the edge of collapse. Every pause is loaded with dread. It’s claustrophobic, like you’re trapped in a room where the air is getting thinner. The shift from warmth to hostility happens so subtly that you don’t even notice when comfort turns to fear. Midway, you’re just waiting for the inevitable breaking point. It’s a slow descent into emotional chaos that’s genuinely hard to look away from.
At its core, the film is about how easily ideas can become prisons. The film captures the speed with which conviction hardens into fanaticism, showing how ideals meant to liberate can just as easily enslave. The film is less about the movement and more about what it represents. The home becomes a microcosm for a world unraveling under ideological pressure. Love turns conditional, loyalty becomes dangerous, and compassion erodes until all that’s left is devotion to a cause.
The family dynamic is where the emotional weight should hit the hardest, but this is also where the film stumbles. The heavy unease between the mother and her son’s girlfriend is constantly referenced but never explored. You never get the intimate moments between them that would make their tension feel dramatic. In addition, the son’s transformation into a believer happens almost overnight, skipping the slow corruption that would’ve made his rapid descent believable. These missing pieces make the drama feel detached, as if the film is describing its characters’ downfall rather than letting us witness it.
Despite its flaws, the cast gives it their all. The chemistry between the leads feels authentic, and the moments of silence often say more than any line of dialogue. It’s clear the actors understand the emotional undercurrents better than the script itself. This could’ve been something incredible if the writing had matched the performance’s strength.
What holds the film back is its unwillingness to slow down. It wants to hit hard and provoke but forgets that true devastation takes time to build. The film moves so quickly through its ideas that it ends up feeling more conceptual than emotional. You understand what it’s about, but you don’t feel it as deeply as you should. There’s brilliance in its premise, and the execution flirts with greatness, but it doesn’t linger long enough in its own darkness to make it resonate.
Overall, ANNIVERSARY is an unnerving, thought-provoking film that builds incredible tension but doesn’t always know what to do with it. You walk away haunted by its ideas but not necessarily by its characters. It lingers more for what it could’ve been than for what it really is. The film is powerful in flashes, hollow in others, and ultimately just a step shy of being good.
