The trailer opens with a series of flashbacks, revealing that this is indeed a sequel to the first film, though, interestingly, those flashbacks don’t have much of Russell Crowe’s Maximus character. The new film takes place long after the original, with a grown-up Lucius (Paul Mescal) fighting in the arena. Much like his father, Lucius is living a peaceful farm life when General Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) invades his home under the command of some really evil emperors. It looks like the nuance of Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus is going right out the window with these guys, and instead, the complex villain role will be handed off to Pascal’s character.

It also looks like there were plenty of prolific battles in the Colosseum, including a sea battle. That may seem ridiculous, but the Romans could actually flood the Coloseum and have ship battles on it. Things are definitely getting cranked up to the extreme this time around, judging from not just that battle but the one with the rhino as well. All of this plays out as Macinus (Denzel Washington) uses Lucius to ignite his own revolution, though his reasons seem less virtuous than Proximo’s in the original film.

Related: House of the Dragon: What Potion Does Grand Maester Orwyle Give Alicent Hightower?

The highly anticipated film also stars Connie Nielsen, Joseph Quinn, Fred Hechinger, Rory McCann, Lee Charles, Lior Raz, and Derek Jacobi. It is directed by Scott from a screenplay by David Scarpa based on a story by Scarpa and Peter Craig.

Gladiator II will hit theaters on November 22, 2024.

Back when Disney+’s MCU television shows were still fresh and exciting, WandaVision kicked everything off with a show that gave us one of the MCU’s best villains, Agatha Harkness. Played perfectly by Kathryn Hahn, the character became quite the hit, and Marvel Studios jumped on board to do something more with Hahn, announcing Agatha All Along a few years ago (though it was called something different). It’s taken a while, but we now have our first look at the series, which will see Agatha team up with some other witches to get her powers back after Wanda defeated her and trapped her.

Related: Deadpool & Wolverine Teaser Features a Long-Awaited Mutant Battle

Pivoting Agatha into an anti-hero shouldn’t be too hard as Hahn has enough charm to make anything work, but it definitely looks like this story will play into both the dark side of Agatha’s character and Hahn’s comedic ability. That seems to be in full force as she’s knocked out of the pocket reality that Wanda trapped her in by Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), which is probably an easier feat given the conclusion of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Once free, she goes on a quest to retrieve her powers, partnering with a collection of characters played by Joe Locke, Patti LuPone, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Debra Jo Rupp, and Miles Gutierrez-Riley. Emma Caulfield Ford is also returning from WandaVision.

Agatha All Along will drop its first two episodes on September 18 and air weekly after that.

It was revealed earlier this year that the fifth season of Lower Decks would be its final season, a fact that absolutely no one was happy with but that the show’s creator and showrunner, Mike McMahan, says is something he prepared for. While McMahan has said he had years’ worth of ideas for the series, which is both a fantastic Star Trek show and a wonderful parody of them, Paramount+ decided to cancel the show, and McMahan knew this was a possibility. He told The ‘Verse Podcast (via Trek Movie) that he knew the fifth season could be the last, thanks to Paramount’s rocky situation and a general contraction of the streaming market, and he planned accordingly.

That is, of course, good news. The even better news, however, is that McMahan hints that this might not be the end of animated, comedic Star Trek. The showrunner strongly hinted that spinoffs are a possibility for Lower Decks and that he’s setting them up in this fifth season of the Star Trek show.

Related: The Best Order to Watch All of Star Trek

“The ending of Season 5 it is the ending of a chapter that I knew I wanted to do,” he said. “There are things that happen in it… I’m being very careful… that are sort of setting up spinoffs and setting up backdoor pilots. There’s characters I’m introducing that you’ll see clearly I wanted to do more with.”

McMahan went on to discuss the possibility of Lower Decks returning in some other form, like movies or comics, but that seemed like wishful thinking rather than concrete plans. There’s also the possibility that Lower Decks gets sold off like Star Trek: Prodigy did to a streamer like Netflix. McMahan says he has no control over that, of course, but it is possible, and that means everyone watching Prodigy on Netflix is even more important for even the most remote possibility of getting more Lower Decks.

“I don’t want to get into any of that,” he said when discussing a possible jump to another streamer. “Listen, I don’t wear a tie, and that’s tie questions. What I would say is, these characters are like my heart and soul. I put all of myself into this show, I really really love it. And I’m always down to make more if the cards align.”

The sixth and final season of Cobra Kai will be split into two parts as Netflix drags out the final adventure of Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) a little bit longer. With the two competing dojos joined together and Cobra Kai finally forced out of the Valley, the new season will focus on the joined dojo taking on the entire world. But that appears to mean taking on Cobra Kai founder and all-around bad dude John Kreese (Martin Kove) once again. Plus, there is still high drama between the students of the dojo, setting us up for what is sure to be an eventful final season.

Even more of a setup is the tease at the end of the trailer, which promises that a secret of Mr. Miyagi’s will be revealed and that it might not be a good one. Could this finally be the lead-in for Hillary Swank returning to reprise her role from The Next Karate Kid? The actress has said she’d be happy to return, and no one has ever ruled it out. She’s really the only major actor from the original franchise’s timeline to not return, and it just feels like it has to happen.

Outside of the possibility of Swank returning, the sixth season of the show will actually star Xolo Maridueña, Jacob Bertrand, Mary Mouser, Tanner Buchanan, Peyton List, Gianni DeCenzo, Courtney Henggeler, Vanessa Rubio, Dallas Dupree Young, Yuji Okumoto, Alicia Hannah-Kim, Griffin Santopietro, and Oona O’Brien.

If you haven’t watched Cobra Kai, do so now. It may look ridiculous, but it is brilliant. And you’ll then be ready for the elongated release of the sixth season, with the first half dropping on Netflix on July 18, the second half dropping on November 28, and then a special finale dropping sometime in 2025. And just in case you’re worried about not having enough Karate Kid content after that, don’t forget that Macchio and Jackie Chan have teamed up for a new Karate Kid movie.

Hugh Jackman’s portrayal of the clawed mutant became an instant hit with X-Men, and 20th Century Fox (now just 20th Century under Disney’s rule) ran with it, pulling him into every X-Men movie it could. The result is a stacked list of nine films that you could call Wolverine movies, and that’s not including the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine.

But how to rank them all from worst to best? Are we going solely on the quality of the film, or should we also base judgment on the quality of the Wolverine role in the movie? It feels like a mix of both is the right choice, judging each film on both how good they are as movies and how good they are as Wolverine vehicles. As such, this list of all the Wolverine films ranked might not shake out quite as you thought.

Every Wolverine Movie, Ranked

9. X-Men: The Last Stand

If you’re at all familiar with the nine films on this list, then it might come as a surprise that X-Men: The Last Stand is the worst movie on it. For most, the knee-jerk reaction would be to call X-Men Origins: Wolverine the worst movie. However, The Last Stand is both a horrible film and a horrible performance from Hugh Jackman. The actor, seemingly knowing the film’s plot is more interested in cramming as many mutants as possible into the movie than being good, entirely checks out for this performance. Even the climactic conclusion of his killing of Jean Grey falls horribly flat as it takes place in a haphazard action sequence that feels like the film ran out of money. From the death of Cyclops to the Juggernaut actually yelling, “I’m the Juggernaut, b*tch!” the film is just a series of bad decisions. Also, worst Wolverine hair by a mile.

8. X-Men Origins: Wolverine

The Last Stand being the last film on this list does not let X-Men Origins: Wolverine off the hook in any way. Origins is an awful film full of bad decisions, terrible special effects, and, of course, an entirely gagged Deadpool. Wolverine’s infamously bad claws are just the crappy icing on the turd cake. It is a superhero film made by people who clearly didn’t understand the assignment, but at least Jackman seems interested in being in it, and while not executed well in the least, Liev Schrieber chews the scenery as Sabertooth. More than a decade after its release, it’s easier to watch Origins as a so-bad-its-good film, though it never actually reaches that point and is, in fact, just bad.

7. X-Men: Apocolypse

The first film on this list that we’ll file under “Not Actually a Wolverine Movie,” X-Men: Apocolypse features an entirely unneeded Wolverine cameo (or Weapon X, to be more precise). Sure, his brutal and murderous action sequence provides one of the few interesting parts of the movie, but Jackman’s involvement in the film is clearly a desperate bid to shove the most popular X-Men into the movie to move tickets. Outside of Wolverine, the film itself is a mess, almost as nonsensical as Last Stand. The final showdown between Apocolypse and the X-Men is like CGI vomit of swirling powers and space lasers. The few enjoyable parts are basically just lackluster redoes of scenes from the far better X-Men: Days of Future Past.

6. X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class is one of the best X-Men movies, but it is not a Wolverine movie. The only reason it’s on this list is thanks to an incredibly brief cameo where Wolverine drops an f-bomb while talking to Professor X and Magneto. It’s a fantastic moment in a great film and is a perfect Wolverine line, so it gets to sit far above the three films below it, but ranking it any higher in a list of Wolverine movies is disingenuous.

5. X-Men

Considering much of the train wrecks that came after it, X-Men is a shockingly tight and well-structured film. It also features Jackman in a fantastic turn as Wolverine, even if he seems less jacked compared to his other performances. Already the favored character, the movie still finds ways to treat the rest of the X-Men with respect (well, maybe not Storm) while letting Wolverine shine. While some of the clunkiness that would crop up in later movies is present here, it’s still a superhero film that stands on its own and a Wolverine movie that works.

Related: Are Wade Wilson and Vanessa Still a Couple in Deadpool 3?

4. X2: X-Men United

On paper, X2 should not work better than X-Men. It crams a host of new mutants into the storyline while going bigger with almost everything. In fact, if this was a list of X-Men movie rankings, it might be below its predecessor, but X-2 is a really good Wolverine movie. Taking a ton of time to delve into the character’s past and his unrequited love for Jean Grey, the film gives Jackman a lot to chew on. Its pacing works well, and it never feels overcrowded despite actually being so. Plus, you get to see Wolverine throw down with Lady Deathstrike in a fight sequence that works far better than it should in a PG-13 movie.

3. The Wolverine

The Wolverine is James Mangold’s practice run at Wolverine perfection. The first appearance of Huge Jackedman (the ridiculously ripped version of Hugh Jackman), the film is a wonderfully poignant and paced homage to samurai films and Japanese cinema – until its third act. Resplendently shot, the movie takes a deep dive into the fumbled ending of Last Stand, piecing back together a broken and struggling Wolverine and maybe even slightly redeeming that film simply because it led to this one. Sadly, the movie’s conclusion ends in the samurai-armor equivalent of the giant sky laser cliche, turning what should have been an emotional conclusion into a tepid action sequence.

2. X-Men: Days of Future Past

20th Century Fox was in quite the pickle after First Class was released. It somehow managed to bring the X-Men back to life after the turgid back-to-back releases of Last Stand and Origins, but they didn’t have Wolverine in it. Thus, they adapted the iconic comic run “Days of Future Past” but sent Wolverine back in time to engage with the new actors portraying the X-Men. Simultounesly new and full of nostalgia and freshness, the film delivers a great X-Men movie and a powerhouse turn for Jackman as Wolverine.

1. Logan

There are superhero movies, and then there is Logan. Almost in a class of its own in the genre itself, Logan is not just a great Wolverine movie, not just a great superhero movie, but a great piece of cinema. Bloody and violent thanks to the franchise’s first R-rating, the movie could have just been a bunch of prolific action set pieces, but instead, director James Mangold used that R-rating to make an actual adult film, influenced by Westerns and focussed on themes such as aging, regret, guilt, parenthood, and salvation. It is the rare superhero movie that chooses character over action and delivers, at the time, a touching swan song to Jackman’s Wolverine. A swan song so well done that if it was for any other film than Deadpool & Wolverine, his return as the character would feel cheap.

And that’s every Wolverine movie, ranked worst to best.

Deadpool & Wolverine hits theaters on July 26.

Of course, The Batman wasn’t really Batman like we’d seen him before, but The Penguin seems to be veering even further away from the traditional comic book style. Instead, the series is a mob thriller, focusing on Colin Farrell’s take on The Penguin as he rises up in an attempt to take over the Falcone crime family after the events caused by The Riddler in The Batman. Standing in his way is not just most of the crime syndicate but also Carmine Falcone’s two children, Al (Michael Zegen) and Sofia (Cristin Milioti), who both want to rule as well. All of this takes place in a collapsing Gotham City, and so far, there’s no sign of Batman.

That all seems to be by design, as the series will look to make a name for itself without the Dark Knight butting in. Farrell’s Penguin, for which the actor looks unrecognizable, isn’t the wobbling, umbrella-wielding criminal from the comics or even the disturbing Tim Burton version. Instead, while he may somewhat resemble his nickname, he’s far more Oswald than Penguin and far more threatening than ever before. That’s about all we can ask for.

Related: All Dragons & Their Riders in House of the Dragon

Reeves is carving himself out his own little corner in James Gunn’s DC film and television plans. There is a second Batman film with Robert Pattinson coming that will continue the story from the conclusion of this series. However, Reeves’ shows and films are not part of Gunn’s cinematic universe, being under the DC Elseworlds label, meaning they can play out however they like.

The Penguin will land on Max this September.

While Brandy Norwood, who does not age, being in the film doesn’t scream instantly to anyone that the movie is art house or high quality, the actor/singer did perform admirably as a scream queen in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. However, she’s not playing a screaming teen running from a man with a fishhook this time around but instead a wife and mother who invites her mother-in-law (Kathryn Hunter) to live with them despite her husband’s concerns. Things go south pretty quickly, as it turns out her mother-in-law is not just a terrible person but also literally demonic.

The tone of The Front Room, judging from the trailer, is a mix between A24’s “elevated horror” style and some sort of campy horror film, and I’m totally here for that.

Related: All Major Actors & Cast List for Civil War

The movie is the directorial debut of Max and Sam Eggers, whose last name you probably recognize thanks to their brother, Robert Eggers. The latter is the man who basically kicked off A24’s dominance of this corner of the horror genre with The Witch and continued to rule it with films like The Lighthouse and The Northman. His brothers have collaborated with him for a while, and Sam even wrote The Lighthouse, but whether or not they’ve got their brother’s knack for horror from the director’s chair is yet to be seen.

The Front Room also stars Neal Huff and Andrew Burnap and is adapted from a short story of the same name by Susan Hill. It will be released on September 6.

For those who have not seen the first two Paddington films, this trailer may just look like another kid’s movie you can skip over. After all, this movie takes a talking bear on an adventure through the Amazon with his friendly family and a host of wacky characters. It couldn’t possibly look more cliche. But that was what the trailers for the first two films looked like, too, and what we got out of them were two of the most heartfelt, wonderfully directed, soul-comforting films ever made. While the third does look a bit more action-driven and moves us out of the cozy London home where Paddington lives, it also adds Olivia Colman, and that makes any movie better.

Returning for the movie are Hugh Bonneville and Emily Mortimer, and they’re joined now by Colman and Antonio Banderas. Ben Whishaw is back as the now iconic voice of Paddington, while Imelda Staunton returns as his Aunt Lucy, who appears to have gone missing in Peru.

Related: Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc Has an All-New Look for Knives Out 3

Bot returning is director Paul King, who directed the first two films along with writing them and should receive much of the credit in elevating them into the wonderful movies they are. While King did return to co-write Paddington in Peru, it is Dougal Wilson who has been tapped to guide the marmalade-loving bear in this third outing. Hopefully, he can capture the same magic that King did.

Paddington in Peru will be released in theaters on November 8, 2024, in the UK and on January 17, 2025, in the US.

Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire will now be called Rebel Moon — Chapter One: Chalice of Blood and Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver is now titled Rebel Moon — Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness. At least Snyder’s name was struck from the beginning this time around. Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon — Chapter One: Chalice of Blood is a bit of a mouthful. No matter the title change, though, the new cuts will both drop on August 2.

The director’s cuts will not just be longer but also “viciously sexier” and “bloodier.” Snyder has spoken about the fact that he wanted versions of the movies that everyone could watch and versions with a hard R-rating for adults, and that’s why Netflix agreed to release all four versions despite the fact that the director wasn’t under any pressure to cut things from the films’ original release. However, with Snyder pre-planning to release more violent director’s cuts, the end result was PG-13 original releases with fight sequences that seem oddly edited and entire scenes seemingly truncated.

Related: Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc Has an All-New Look for Knives Out 3

The other question raised is if anyone wants to sit through both these films again, especially if they’re even longer. While the first film definitely saw a lot of interest on Netflix – most likely from name brand alone – Part Two slumped hard in viewership, with fewer people tuning in over the first week and a striking drop off after that. The message seemed to be that people weren’t that interested, and if they weren’t that interested in the originals, it’s hard to believe they would tune in for more.

Rebel Moon — Chapter One: Chalice of Blood and Rebel Moon – Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness will drop on Aug. 2 on Netflix.

We can’t really call this a first look at the film since it’s just a “candid” shot of Craig in his Blanc costume, but it does give us a hint that Wake Up Dead Man will at least be a somewhat different take on the whodunit genre because this is a new look for the southern detective. Craig is once again impeccably dressed – the actor lept from one well-dressed character to another after leaving Bond — but his hair is longer, and he has a scruffy beard. One might even say the great detective is looking a little disheveled compared to his far more clean-cut looks in Knives Out and Glass Onion. Also, if there’s a man who can still make a fedora work, it’s Craig.

Blanc’s new look is well in line with what Johnson has been saying about this third film. The director has noted multiple times that this movie will be different from the first two, which shouldn’t be that surprising since the first two were different from each other. “I love everything about whodunnits, but one of the things I love most is how malleable the genre is. There’s a whole tonal spectrum from Carr to Christie, and getting to explore that range is one of the most exciting things about making Benoit Blanc movies,” he said of the film on X.

Related: Is Netflix’s The 8 Show Getting a Second Season?

What won’t be different? The third film’s cast is just as stacked, if not more so, as the first two. Already confirmed for the film are Josh O’Connor, Cailee Spaeny, Andrew Scott, Kerry Washington, Glenn Close, Jeremey Renner, Mila Kunis, Daryl McCormack, Josh Brolin, and Thomas Haden Church. Sadly, we do not have confirmation of Hugh Grant returning as Blanc’s romantic partner, Phillip, in the film, but his casting was a surprise for that movie, so maybe that’s the case once again.

The third Knives Out film, Wake Up Dead Man, will be released on Netflix in 2025.

To be perfectly clear, as of right now there is no bad Mad Max movie, there are just five good movies, so when we rank one of them in last place, that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means it’s less good than the rest. Director/creator/writer George Miller is an absolute maverick of a filmmaker, and with his Mad Max films, he has delivered a slew of different styles of film that all work in their own way. But which way is best? Find out below.

5. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

When your worst movie establishes a term (Thunderdome) still used in regular conversation today, you’ve made a really good worst movie. Still, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is a bit of an outlier among the other films in the franchise. The only PG-13 film, the movie is the least action-filled and the most traditional in terms of Hollywood blockbusters, even featuring an acting turn and song from Tina Turner.

Functioning as a kind of Mad Max meets a Spielberg adventure film with direction that feels like a precursor to the then up-and-coming Sam Raimi, the film takes Max and puts him in the role of caregiver and true hero. It works, especially once a chase sequence kicks off at the end, and is just as leather-clad and weird as the rest of the movies but in a very different, surprisingly comedic way.

4. Mad Max

Mad Max, at its heart, is a revenge film about a man named Max living sometime right before the fall of civilization. However, the revenge story doesn’t kick in until the final third of the film. It’s a very strange structure to a movie, which spends a lot of time just reveling in its own weird world of leather-filled dystopian, low-budget, truly impressive car chases. Compared to the films that followed it, it is amateur, and yet the seeds of what have made Mad Max successful are still there.

The world isn’t spoon-fed to you, there’s thought behind the crumbling society, and the action — at the time some of the best you could see — still holds up. Really, it’s just fun to watch even if you’re waiting most of the time for the story to actually happen.

3. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

The only film in the franchise so far to actually be directly connected to another film, Furiosa once again proves that George Miller has no interest in making the same Mad Max movie again. A bigger, longer, lore-filled installment with only a very brief cameo from Max himself, the film never reaches the pure action levels of Fury Road but is nonetheless an incredible installment in the franchise. If it falls short anywhere, it’s in not living up to the non-stop action of its predecessor, but that’s obviously not what Miller wanted to do with this movie. In the future, with the weight of expectations gone, Furiosa should only get better.

2. Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior)

The film that truly turned Mad Max into a global hit, Mad Max 2 (retitled The Road Warrior in the U.S. after the first film failed at the box office) is basically like a really good inverse version of Fury Road. With Max coming upon a group of people trapped in one of the last functioning oil refineries by Lord Humungus and his Wasteland gang, the film plays out like an apocalyptic siege with Mel Gibson’s Max as a disgruntled anti-hero.

The action is nothing short of stellar and every last bit of it is practical. The film is crammed full of the weirdness that permeates the world of Mad Max and features the villain Wex, one of the best the franchise has to offer. While it may, in retrospect, feel a bit like a practice run for making Fury Road, Mad Max 2 easily stands as a great film on its own.

1. Mad Max: Fury Road

Considering the fact that one could argue that Mad Max: Fury Road could sit at the top of a ranking list of every movie ever made, it should come as no surprise it’s at the top of this list. While the other Mad Max films are all great, Fury Road is a masterpiece. Decades in the making, Miller took everything he learned from the first three films and went all in, delivering an action movie that never stops, shot nearly entirely practically, and creating a second iconic anti-hero in Furiosa. Every shot of this film is a lesson in filmmaking. Fury Road doesn’t just deliver the best Mad Max movie, it delivers the kind of cinema that defines the medium.

The above article was updated on June 1, 2024, by Matthew Razak to include in the ranking Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

The idea behind the upcoming slasher film In a Violent Nature, from writer/director Chris Nash, is not wholly original. It is a horror film from the killer’s perspective, which, while uncommon isn’t unheard of. However, never has the idea been more fully committed to and in such a brutally deliberate manner.

To describe the plot of the film is to do it an injustice considering its entire concept is to take the tropes of the slasher genre and present them in a way we haven’t seen before. A group of 20-somethings steal a locket from an old fire watch tower in the woods, awakening Johnny (Ry Barrett), a fire-mask-wearing killer along the lines of Jason Vorhees who wields an axe and two hooks attached to chains. Bloody, gory, grotesque death ensues as Johnny goes on a killing spree in an attempt to get the locket, which was his mother’s, back. It is, story-wise, one of the most basic slashers you could ever watch.

In A Violent Nature doesn’t play with these tropes either. It isn’t here to poke fun or twist them into something new but instead to present them in a way that’s totally different. We are, for the most part, stuck with the entirely silent Johnny throughout the movie, either following him as he trudges through the woods or watching him brutally murder someone. The plot, then, plays out without us as we only pick up on the cliche snippets when Johnny is near his next victim. That makes this one of the best studies of the genre there’s been in a long while as audiences easily pick up on story points they weren’t present for simply because they’ve seen them so often. We all know these characters so when we come in on a conversation halfway through we can fill in the story, leaving the movie to quietly ruminate or cover the screen in blood.

The idea of the film being from Johnny’s perspective is taken further than just following him around with the camera. Shot entirely in 4:3, as you’d watch old VHS copies of slasher films, the film removes almost every other form of horror tactic for brutally paired-down presentation. There is no score to the movie and all sound is ambient, forcing an almost meditative nature to the film. Voices seem disconnected from the people speaking them and the camera is often placed in a distant, stationary place from the main action, creating a slasher film that’s shot like some sort of Terrance Malick movie. It can be truly scary but not in the traditional sense of a horror/slasher where you jump from shock. It’s the kind of horror that stays with you as you try to go to sleep.

That does not mean, however, that the film isn’t a bloody gore fest. It is, in fact, one of the gorier slashers I’ve seen in a long time or… at least it feels like it. The lack of score means every bone-crunching, gore-filled kill is elevated to an almost disgusting level with nauseating sound design. Long, extended shots of Johnny simply walking through the woods as we follow him ratchet up tension like none other. The camera’s stillness during murders means we often watch them with unrelenting remorse that makes you squirm. Yet the film also understands that sometimes less is more. There are cutaways, off-screen kills, and bloodless murders that feel just as disturbing or awesome as the over-the-top murders. It is a true smorgasbord of death presented in a way we’ve never seen.

In A Violent Nature is, without a doubt, the most cliche of cliche slasher films but that is its entire point. It delivers these tropes with no apology, reveling in them from a perspective and style that breathes new life. This is the rare slasher film that delivers both the blood-curdling kills and the kind of slow-burn horror that infests your dreams.

In A Violent Nature releases in theaters on May 31.