DEoL Top Films of 2025

Well it's been quite a busy year. In 2025 I managed to see a total of 350 films, 90 of which were at various big screens. I coordinated the first ever free film festival in the town where I now live, showing nine films over one week to big and small appreciative audiences; I hope it's the first of many. 

I've also done a couple of film introductions, something I used to do a lot. With thanks to Dom and London's micro grindhouse cinema, The Nickel, I've been able to talk about the films of Arch Hall Jr and my beloved Ray Dennis Steckler.

In terms of written publications, as well as my (ir)regular DEoL blog posts, I was pleased to have a major piece on Japanese filmmaker Nobuo Nakagawa included in the 'We Belong Dead' publication Japanese special, which won a prestigious Rondo Award earlier this year. So I'm an award winner! Ok sort of. I also contributed some pieces for their recent book on UK 1960s 'fantastic' cinema, 'Mods and Shockers'.

My thanks as ever go to Paul Downey for opportunities given to me to cover London launches of new films and several film festivals, including this year's FrightFest and Grimmfest, for his wonderful Bloody Flicks website. This year I've covered 29 films for BF (plus a couple of book reviews), and 2026 will be my tenth year of working with him.

In terms of 'on the air' activities my friend Larry Brookes and I have continued, when personal and business commitments allow, to bring you episodes of 'Larry and David's Film Salon', this year covering The Servant, Le Mépris, Sunset Boulevard, Ran, Cutter's Way and The Wages of Fear. You can hear all the episodes here.

I also launched my own podcast under the 'Dark Eyes of London' brand. The brief here is pretty wide, and my first 'season' has been a four parter covering the work of US maverick director Jerry Warren. The second one, on director Larry Buchanan, will be out early in 2026. All episodes here.

Oh and on a musical note (arf) this December saw the release of the second album from my band Detronics. 'World Goes Bang' is the usual, as someone recently commented, "Bowie fronting Pink Floyd" stuff. It may be your bag - it may not, but you won't know unless you've had a listen.

Anyway, to my usual end of year round up. Unlike some critics I don't differentiate between 'fantastic' and non fantastic titles in my selections: if a film's great, it's great. Notes on the films where I haven't covered them, links for those I have. They're in no particular order:

Nickel Boys (USA 2004: Dir RaMell Ross) This one made a lot of critic 'best of' lists last year; it's a bold film which utilises an unusual 'first person' filming technique to tell the story of events at Arthur G Dozier’s Florida School for Boys between 1900 and 2011, told through the experiences of two friends, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson). The racism experienced is as much via set text as in the actual classroom; it's an occasionally overstaged piece but exudes a mystery way beyond the average.

A Real Pain (USA 2024: Dir Jesse Eisenberg) The director's second feature is a bittersweet two hander between Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin; they are David and Benji, two cousins from New York, who go to Poland to visit the childhood home of their late grandmother. Benji is querulous (matching his Roman Roy role in Succession) and hyper, David apologetic and seemingly long suffering. The road they take, ending up on a Holocaust tour, produces the emotional heart, the 'real pain' of the film. A Real Pain is superbly acted, knowing and sad, with some lovely support performances.

Time Travel is Dangerous (UK 2024: Dir Chris Reading)

The Ugly Stepsister (Norway/Denmark/Romania/Poland/Sweden 2024: Dir Emilie Blichfeldt)

Sinners (USA/Australia/Canada: Dir Ryan Coogler) A film of two halves in the spirit of Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn, Coogler's film dwells at the crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul, gives us a potted history of a black community living through the Depression, gang running and star crossed lovers; oh and vampires. It's a rich, witty ride and its halfway point narrative pivot disappointed as many as it won supporters. I'm definitely in the latter camp, and it's a movie that sustains multiple viewings.

Weapons (USA 2025: Dir Zach Cregger) Cregger gave us Barbarian back in 2022, a film about which I had mixed feelings. Weapons is no less high concept and, at times, awkward, revolving around 17 missing schoolchildren who have mysteriously vanished from their class, the impact of the incident on the local community and, latterly, an explanation for the event. Like Barbarian I enjoyed the first part of Weapons more than the second (the more we know the less it intrigues) but it's an enthralling ensemble piece with a superb performance by Julia Garner as Ms Grady, the teacher at the heart of the story.

The Presidents Cake (Iraq/Qatar/USA 2025: Dir Hasan Hadi)

One Battle After Another (USA 2025: Dir Paul Thomas Anderson) I blow hot and cold with Anderson's films. I didn't get on with 2021's Licorice Pizza, but I can never rewatch 2017's Phantom Thread enough. OBAA may be as much of a shaggy dog story as his last feature, littered with set pieces and a playfulness that shows a mastery of the form, but Anderson's take on counterculture, conspiracy theory, messy relationships and freewheeling road movies is nothing short of astounding. I mentioned when I originally wrote about the film, that halfway through I had to go to the cinema and buy some popcorn, because to watch it without seemed criminal.

Honey Bunch (Canada/UK 2025: Dir Dusty Mancinelli, Madeleine Sims-Fewer)

The Ice Tower (France/Germany/Italy 2025: Dir Lucile Hadzihalilovic)

Honorable mentions: The Girl with the Needle, Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii, 28 Years Later, Hallow Road, Bring Her Back, Dead of Winter, A Desert and The Housemaid.

Scary Christmas Round up of New (ish) Holiday themed Horror (ish) Movies 2025: Reviews of 'Twas the Night (USA 2023), Slay Ride - The Movie (USA 2024), The Naughty List of Mr Scrooge (USA 2024), Elf in the Hood (USA 2024) and I Know What You Did Last Christmas (UK 2025)

With the exception of 2022 - which was a very bad year - I've produced a Christmas fright flick special every year since 2018. You have to dig pretty hard these days for seasonal horror movies, and one of these dates back to 2023, but here's 5 films (I know, it's normally 6 but pickings are not rich) I haven't covered before (I was going to include Damien Leone's Terrifier 3 but it's clearly way too big budget to be included here, and isn't really my thing either).

'Twas the Night (USA 2023: Dir Joe Lujan) Low budget moviemaking can either toe the line and keep it simple, or attempt to be ambitious in a kind of 'what-the-hell-very-few-people-will-see-it' way. Lujan's eighth feature (since 2022!) does the second.

Three undesirables, Tess (Taylor Kilgore), Will (Chris Ivan) and Brent (Bryant Smith) abduct and kill people, organ farming the corpses across the world, none of which of course is shown. As they're deciding their next move, a young girl, Mya (Destiny Salas) ties them up, incapacitates them and tells them three seasonal stories (visualised in the telling) in which various people fail to be good and end up at the mercy of a 12 inch tall elf, a Gingerbread Man called Gingie (Johnny Perotti) and Jack Frost (Anthony Avery). 

Each of these three have their own role to play in the art of body harvesting, as all of the people in the stories, plus the three original miscreants, end up in limbo, awaiting the judgement of Krampus (William Suave) who decides which of the damned will end up on the naughty list. 

Cheap, not very cheerful and more than a bit bonkers, the moralistic nature of this thing suggested it might be a faith based movie. But no, Lujan is just a micro budget filmmaker who divides his time between features and music promos. He's the kind of guy whose IMDb profile lists no less than 6 upcoming projects and you pretty much know they'll all happen. I actually quite liked 'Twas the Night (particularly the crudely brought to life Elfie, voiced by Ivan), but I suspect I'm in the minority.

Slay Ride - The Movie (USA 2024: Dir Olivia Dunkley) Dunkley is no stranger to the magic of Christmas; check out her 2019 directorial debut A Holiday Boyfriend or indeed her own (cough) composition 'It Isn't Christmas', a pretty much note perfect steal from Wham!'s 'Last Christmas' (the latter available here)

Slay Ride - The Movie, whose title makes about as much sense as the rest of the film even including its overused pun (there being slayage but little actual 'riding'), front and centres the multi talented (or tasking anyway) Ms Dunkley as Holly Woods (geddit?). Successful businesswoman and mum, Holly cuts a rather K*ren-ish figure, snapping at shop staff and not beyond taking the names of police when they question her.

We're in snowy Utah (actual snow here, a bonus) where seven years previously a Father Christmas clad killer carved up his wife following the discovery of her affair. Their son Kris was committed to an asylum following the crime, but managed to escape and, as an adult (Mitchel Gene Shira) has embarked on a series of his own murders, also dressed as Santa Claus, and dubbed the Kris Kringle killer.

And it's Kris who Holly encounters in her car after visiting the local store; she manages to eject him from the passenger side, only later learning that a) he's still alive and b) she lives in the house where the original murder occurred (a fact clearly omitted when she moved in). Holly returns home only to engage in a lengthy - and I mean lengthy - battle with Kris, before her family are literally saved by Santa.

Well done everybody for keeping a straight face through this drivel, and props to Shira for playing the killer as a cross between 'Naughty' obsessed Billy from the 1984 movie Silent Night, Deadly Night, Joaquin Phoenix's Arthur Fleck and a nightclub singer. Writer/producer/star Dunkley gets to do some stunts and sing some songs on the soundtrack. And, trust me, her version of 'the Twelve Days of Christmas' over the end credits is worth the price of admission alone. Figure of speech; please don't pay to see this. 

The Naughty List of Mr Scrooge (USA 2024: Dir Jake Helgren) Nestled deep in the streaming schedules, one occasionally finds a gem of a feature. Director Helgren has a bit of a thing about the Christmas movie, but most of his output is of the more soppy end of the market, although he also gave us the slasher Bad Connection in 2024.

Not so with the mean Naughty List. Skye Coyne plays Tabby, a photographer, who's invited to a class reunion/Christmas get together by one of her former schoolmates, Chandler (Liz Fenning), also dragging along cynical boyfriend Jonny (Colin Koth). Any reticence on Tabby's part is understandable; back in college her boyfriend at the time, Glen, a troubled soul, fell off a roof and died, just about the time that a theatre production of 'A Christmas Carol' was about to open.

Once arrived at Chandler's large mansion, they're greeted by monosyllabic servant and clear red herring Marty (Benedikt Sebastian), together with other members of the sorority, namely Tucker (Adam Bucci), Julian (Ali Zahiri) and Kelsey (Kim Whalen). Missing is Franny (Coel Mahal), who everyone assumes is being flaky; but we've already seen her attacked (and beheaded) by a killer wearing a Scrooge outfit.

At the obligatory Secret Santa present exchange the original gifts have been mysteriously swapped out for mean ones with gifts and messages which tie them back, uncomfortably, to their college years, and the ever present memory of dead Glen. And it's not long before the Scrooge dressed killer has returned to despatch the party guests, all of whom are linked in some way to their dead classmate.

What makes TNLoMS, despite its silly title, such a delight is a really good cast and its unashamed borrowing of all the elements of slashers and whodunnits. It's got a sassy, sometimes very funny script and the story is solid; there's a great sense of Christmas about the whole thing too. Definitely worth checking out.

Elf in the Hood (USA 2024: Dir Jamaal Burden) I've stayed away from the films of Mr Burden ever since my mind was scarred reviewing his first movie Elves and its follow up, Abominable which was...well you get the picture.

Four years later and Burden's second Christmas themed horror movie is upon us (although the whole Christmas thing is levered into the movie as a bit of an afterthought). Malik (Taylor Latham) and his girlfriend Jada (Sabine Gavilov) are in trouble deep; in trying to help Jada's junkie sister, the pair have inherited a whole heap of debt owed to a gangland character called Silk (Chad Davis-Lenette). As the toughs close in there's just one chance; a weird elf-like doll, liberated from the gang, with a potentially hefty price tag. All Malik and Jada need to do is sell it to the right person.

The lucky recipient may be Evelyn (Kerry Walker); the doll's credentials are verified by Evelyn's friend, dark arts expert Dr Damian (Tiffanie Williams) who confirms that the doll is haunted by Juju, the ghost of a vengeful spirit who comes alive on Christmas Eve. And guess what night it is? 

Exposure to any of Mr B's works will tell you that you're in for a real watch checking ride. This one does at least have some rather good practical gore effects, to compensate for the poorly CGI animated (barely) Juju. The doll's passage of terror is mildly diverting, but the same can't be written about the movie's 'leads'; for most of the cast EitH is their only listed credit. Pretty poor.

I Know What You Did Last Christmas (UK 2025: Dir Gregory William Randolph Jr.) Another ITN Distribution outing from Louisa Warren's Champdog Films stable, this is one of two films directed this year for the company by Randolph Jr, a bonafide American (the other is the somewhat lighter in tone A Tailor-Made Romance). Both films also feature that rare thing, a low budget UK movie featuring an authentic American actor rather than UK thesps adopting US accents (don't worry, we have some of them too).

The American in this case is Californian Shayli Reagan. She plays Amber, one of a group of young people summoned to a country house (ok Airbnb rental) by a mysterious M. All of the young 'uns have received invitations suggesting a reunion of sorts offering "one last chance to make things right". You guessed it (if you hadn't already from the cheeky title borrowing), the group have a shared history, which involves the sticky end of one of their friends, Millie (Leona Clarke) in a prank gone wrong.

The other rather nondescript house occupants include Trey and sister Lila (Dan Robins and Julia Quayle, both adopting - or rather failing to adopt - American accents), You Tuber Erin (Katrina Todd) and goth lite Dax (Ashley Bedford), sporting a jumper that reads 'Winter is Coming'; 'coming' being the operative word in that, despite the Christmas decorations (and the presence of a murderous Santa) the whole thing looks like it was shot in midsummer. 

Most of the movie comprises a lot of bickering until the body count starts rising, although most of the deaths are off screen save for a candy cane in the eyeball moment. This is pretty pointless stuff, cheap and uninspiring; oh and the end credit song runs out way before the actual credits. Producers Ms Warren and ever present Scott Jeffrey, take a bow.