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Here’s the full breakdown:
*Indicates programming available only in the U.S.
TOP STORIES
Highway Horror
Terror takes the fast lane in these souped-up joyrides into fear. While the road movie typically imagines the open highway as a conduit for freedom and self-discovery, these films explore the genre’s dark underside, where a wrong turn, a chance encounter along a desolate byway, or a serious case of road rage plunges travelers into a desperate fight for survival. From pedal-to-the-metal tales of crazed killers behind the wheel (Duel, The Hitcher) to terrifying detours into the hostile wilderness (Alone) to careening journeys into the occult and supernatural (Race with the Devil, The Appointment), these nightmares on wheels turn the open road into a freeway to hell.
Programmed by Clyde Folley
FEATURING: And Soon the Darkness (1970), Duel (1971),* The Cars That Ate Paris (1974), Race with the Devil (1975), Road Games (1981), The Appointment (1982), The Hitcher (1986),* Maximum Overdrive (1986), The Wraith (1986), The Vanishing (1988), Cohen and Tate (1989), Highway to Hell (1991), Dust Devil (1992),* Joy Ride (2001), Alone (2020)*
Made-for-TV Terror
The small screen delivers big shocks in these horror gems from the golden age of the American television movie. Both a proving ground for up-and-coming talent and a haven for Hollywood veterans, the TV movie gave viewers the chance to see a new feature-length film in the comfort of their home nearly every week, with horror and thriller films making a particular impact. From genre touchstones like Steven Spielberg’s high-octane directorial debut, Duel, and Tobe Hooper’s atmospheric Stephen King adaptation Salem’s Lot to ripe-for-discovery cult favorites like the indelibly creepy slasher Dark Night of the Scarecrow, these exemplars of taught, economical filmmaking deliver maximum thrills.
Programmed by Brian Belovarac
FEATURING: Duel (1971),* Someone’s Watching Me! (1978), Salem’s Lot (1979), Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)
Unwelcome Guests
The sanctuary of the home becomes a terrifying trap in these disturbing tales of sinister, unannounced guests who arrive at the door with shocking consequences. Whether the menace comes from the satanists next door in Rosemary’s Baby, the gang of masked home invaders who interrupt a family reunion in You’re Next, or the seemingly innocuous acquaintance who turns up and refuses to leave in The Gift, these domestic nightmares invite us to consider a most unsettling question: How do we react when the horror is already inside the house?
FEATURING: The Night of the Hunter (1955), Rosemary’s Baby (1968),* Play Misty for Me(1971),* Homebodies (1974), The Plumber (1979), Pacific Heights (1990), When a Stranger Calls Back (1993),* La cérémonie (1995), Funny Games (1997), You’re Next (2011), The Gift (2015)*
Marc Maron’s Adventures in Moviegoing
On his recently retired podcast WTF with Marc Maron, the fearlessly unfiltered comedian and cultural commentator often used his platform to delve into the creative lives and processes of some of contemporary cinema’s most vital filmmakers. In this edition of Adventures in Moviegoing, he joins The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey for a typically probing discussion of his own relationship to cinema, from childhood exposures to highly age-inappropriate films to his obsession with silent-movie stars to his evolving relationship with the French New Wave. The films he has selected include art-house touchstones by Michelangelo Antonioni (Red Desert), John Cassavetes (A Woman Under the Influence), and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Veronika Voss), auteurs whose films he views as puzzles that continue to inspire questions and fascination even after multiple viewings.
FEATURING: Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Red Desert (1964), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), The American Friend (1977), Veronika Voss (1982)
Possessions
These boundary-pushing visions of total takeover examine the terror and transgressive thrill of losing oneself to a host of uncanny forces. Ancient demons (The Omen), AI gone rogue (Demon Seed), alien parasites (Lifeforce), and adolescent bloodlust (Jennifer’s Body) turn the body into a battleground in tales of physical and psychic invasion that explore the primal anxieties and provocative possibilities of transformation from within.
FEATURING: Itim (1976), The Omen (1976), Demon Seed (1977), Possession (1981), The Entity(1982), Lifeforce (1985), The Faculty (1998),* Jennifer’s Body (2009), The Wailing (2016)
EXCLUSIVE PREMIERES
The Last One for the Road
A casual caper, a tribute to a vanishing industrial Italy, a scruffy intergenerational odyssey, and a free-flowing bender through time and space: this amiably ambling, booze-soaked road movie follows Carlobianchi (Sergio Romano) and Doriano (Pierpaolo Capovilla), two small-time Italian crooks confronting a lifetime of failure as they face middle age. The return of an exiled partner in crime affords a second chance for long-lost riches—but can they put down their beers long enough to keep their eyes on the prize? Along their slow-motion, alcoholic grand tour of the Venetian countryside, they cross paths with Giulio (Filippo Scotti), a shy, heartsick architecture student who reluctantly warms to the sodden pair. Beautifully shot on 16 mm film and soundtracked by a wistful blues-rock score, The Last One for the Roadcaptures the wonderfully woozy wobble of a life lived moment to moment and drink to drink.
REDISCOVERIES AND RESTORATIONS
By Hook or By Crook
Groundbreaking when it was made and still fiercely original today, this trans and butch buddy film chronicles three weeks in the life of Shy (Silas Howard), a handsome, gender-bending small-town dreamer with a nagging messiah complex. Reeling from his father’s death, Shy heads to the big city to sink himself into a “life of crime.” He is quickly distracted by Valentine (Harry Dodge), a deliriously expressive wiseacre on a misguided search for his birth mother. The two misfit grifters join forces and learn the true meaning of “poise under pressure” in this endearingly lo-fi, antiauthoritarian tale of friendship, trust, and redemption.
CRITERION COLLECTION EDITIONS
Selections from The Complete Kubrick
Celebrate the October release of Criterion’s monumental box set The Complete Kubrick with three masterworks by the auteur who opened up popular cinema to new realms of moral profundity and metaphysical mystery. With Lolita, Kubrick turned Vladimir Nabokov’s scandalous bestseller into a surreally absurdist satire of self-delusion; with Barry Lyndon, he took the historical epic to new heights of painterly visual majesty; and with his final film, the psychosexual riddle Eyes Wide Shut, he brought twentieth-century cinema to a tantalizing, hypnotic close.
FEATURING: Lolita (1962), Barry Lyndon (1975), Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
The Others (Alejandro Amenábar, 2001)
Criterion Collection Edition #1195
On her remote country estate, a mother (Nicole Kidman) keeps her light-sensitive children enshrouded in darkness and isolation, until unwelcome intruders begin to haunt her insular world.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by director Alejandro Amenábar, a conversation between Amenábar and film critic Pau Gómez, making-of programs, and more.
Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)*
Criterion Collection Edition #745
A couple experience tragedy and supernatural terror amid an elegantly decaying Venice in Nicolas Roeg’s brilliantly disturbing horror milestone.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: A conversation between editor Graeme Clifford and film writer and historian Bobbie O’Steen, an interview with composer Pino Donaggio, programs on the making of the film, and more.
Altered States (Ken Russell, 1980)
Criterion Collection Edition #1284
A researcher’s psychological experiments take him to the outer limits of consciousness in Ken Russell’s brainwave-blasting cosmic freakout.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan, interviews with Russell and actor William Hurt, and more.
Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)*
Criterion Collection Edition #630
A young mother-to-be (Mia Farrow) grows increasingly suspicious that her overfriendly neighbors are concealing satanic secrets in the ultimate occult shocker.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: A documentary featuring interviews with director Roman Polanski, Farrow, and producer Robert Evans; an interview with author Ira Levin; and more.
Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg, 1988)
Criterion Collection Edition #21
Two Jeremy Irons are twice as diabolical in David Cronenberg’s chilling tale of twin gynecologists caught in a whirlpool of sexual confusion, drugs, and madness.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by Cronenberg, Irons, editor Ron Sanders, production designer Carol Spier, and cinematographer Peter Suschitzky; and more.
DIRECTOR SPOTLIGHTS
Directed by Dario Argento
Bathed in electric color, bursting with kaleidoscopic set pieces, and dripping with blood, the thrillers of Italian horror maestro Dario Argento are vivid excursions into baroque excess and dreamlike abstraction. Setting a new benchmark for the giallo murder mystery—complete with black-gloved killers, intricately staged violence, and psychosexual delirium—with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and The Cat o’ Nine Tails, Argento continued to push his style into increasingly surreal realms with masterpieces like the supernatural tour de force Inferno and the self-reflexive giallo deconstruction Tenebrae.
FEATURING: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971), Inferno(1980), Tenebrae (1982), Two Evil Eyes (1990)
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Merging psychological dread with existential inquiry, the films of Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa use genre trappings to probe the alienation and anxiety underpinning modern life. Quivering with whisper-quiet unease that gathers with slow-burn intensity, the J-horror touchstones Cure and Pulse are indelibly disturbing visions of psychic disintegration and technological contagion, while thrillers like Serpent’s Path and Cloud blend gripping suspense with incisive social commentary. And in sui generis dramas like Bright Future and To the Ends of the Earth, Kurosawa brings his keen-eyed formalism to stories of characters cast adrift in an increasingly uncertain world.
FEATURING: Door III (1996), Cure (1997), Serpent’s Path (1998), Eyes of the Spider (1998), Charisma (1999), Pulse (2001), Bright Future (2003),* Penance (2012), Creepy (2016), To the Ends of the Earth (2019), Cloud (2024), Serpent’s Path (2024)
Bruce LaBruce: Reluctant Pornographer
Godfather of the queercore movement that challenged respectability politics with punk defiance, Bruce LaBruce leaves no taboo unshattered in his outrageously subversive, unabashedly kinky cinematic provocations. Bringing underground camp humor to a queer reimagining of Sunset Boulevard with Hustler White, necrolust to the goth zombie satireOtto; or, Up with Dead People, and surprising tenderness to the sexually frank age-gap love story Gerontophilia, LaBruce asserts a radically queer vision that finds liberation in transgression.
FEATURING: Hustler White (1996), Otto; or, Up with Dead People (2008), Gerontophilia(2013)
Directed by Mike De Leon
One of the defining figures of Philippine cinema, Mike De Leon brought a razor-sharp formal precision, fierce political intelligence, and subversive edge to a remarkable array of genres. From the claustrophobic domestic horror of Kisapmata to the harrowing college-hazing drama Batch ’81 to the wild rock-opera satire Will Your Heart Beat Faster?, his rigorous, intensely psychological films deploy potent symbolism and provocative allegory to attack patriarchy, abuse of power, and the authoritarian brutality of the Ferdinand Marcos regime.
FEATURING: Itim (1976), Will Your Heart Beat Faster? (1980), Kisapmata (1981), Batch ’81 (1982)
EPISODIC SERIES
Terror in Resonance
From Shinichiro Watanabe, the visionary creator of Cowboy Bebop, this provocative anime series wraps a potent critique of nationalism and abuse of power in the guise of a tantalizing cat-and-mouse puzzle. Operating under the name of Sphinx, two teenage boys unleash a wave of terrorist attacks across Tokyo. As demoted detective Kenjiro Shibazaki races to decipher their cryptic online clues, he gradually uncovers the shocking motive behind their campaign of destruction. With its mesmerizingly moody visuals and a gorgeous score by Yoko Kanno, Terror in Resonance emerges as a haunting meditation on trauma, alienation, and the consequences of institutional violence.
AMERICAN INDEPENDENTS
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Violent, confrontational, and shockingly realistic, Tobe Hooper’s horror landmark remains one of the most terrifying movies ever made.
Party Girl
Nineties indie queen Parker Posey is at her effortlessly cool best in this irresistible comedy as a hard-partying scenester who must take a job as a librarian after she’s arrested for throwing an illegal rave.
Homebodies
Threatened with eviction, six elderly people devise a grisly plan to protect their home in this offbeat, darkly comic ’70s horror gem.
SHORT FILMS
The Last Jiangshi
An ancient Chinese vampire navigates life in the modern world in this wildly imaginative blend of folkloric fantasy and punk irreverence.
HOLLYWOOD HITS
The Social Network
In anticipation of The Social Reckoning, revisit one of the great films of the twenty-first century thus far. David Fincher’s brilliant and unsettling look at the rise of the social-media era goes behind the scenes of early-2000s startup culture to reveal the moral bankruptcy between the billions.
The Keep*
In Michael Mann’s darkly ravishing second feature, Nazi invaders unwittingly unleash a sinister presence lurking within the walls of an ancient fortress in the Carpathian Alps—a presence that doesn’t take kindly to unwanted guests.
MUSIC FILMS
Magazine
Bucolic isolation takes on a sense of impending doom in this full-album video for the blistering second album by experimental rock outfit YHWH Nailgun.
Hideous
Yann Gonzalez directs this luxuriantly transgressive queer horror fantasia starring the xx’s Oliver Sim and featuring songs from his synth-drenched debut solo album.