GENRE | Zach Cregger and Austin Abrams Chase 'Resident Evil'

"I've only used guns in video games!"

Sony Pictures / Constantin Film

Sketch comedian-turned-genre auteur Zach Cregger inventively relaunches the survival horror franchise based on the popular, now thirty-year-old Capcom video game series Resident Evil—disconnected from the long-running Milla Jovovich-starring six-film series or the ill-received 2021 Welcome to Raccoon City reboot. His highly original adaptation uses the familiar world to tell a straightforward but new mission set over a few hours in a single night, when a biohazardous infection spread by the Umbrella Corporation turns people into mutant zombies.

GENRE | Ready, Set, 'Go' – Riding the Late-'90s Hyperlink Cinema Wave

"Pardon me if I'm not in a holly jolly mood right now!"

Sony Pictures

During the tail end of the 1990s American independent film movement, director Doug Liman's sophomore 1999 feature, Go, rode the wave of the hyperlink cinema trend sparked by the popular influence and acclaim of Pulp Fiction (see also Magnolia, released the same year as Go). Somewhat forgotten and dwarfed by the phenomenon of The Matrix, Go was still a mild success at the box office that slowly grew into an alternative Christmas cult classic on DVD.

VIFF 2026 | 10 Most Anticipated Films (You Should See)

"VIFF is quickly becoming the archetype of the modern film festival."

Image | Zak Design Studio

VIFF 2026—(August 26, 2026) Fall film festival season is on the horizon. Rejoice, as our city's eleven-day arthouse filmmaking showcase, the 45th edition of the Vancouver International Film Festival, is just around the corner next month. Plan accordingly for VIFF's yearly output of mixed-media entertainment programming, anchored by hundreds of Canadian and global films, screened across the city in celebration of contemporary cinema.

REEL | Dakota Fanning Gets Over 'The Sun Never Sets'

"I like you as a boat girl."

Independent Film Company / Mongrel Media

Micro-budget auteur Joe Swanberg is back with his latest indie romantic dramedy, The Sun Never Sets, starring Dakota Fanning as a thirty-something woman reflecting on her life and age-gap relationship. After spending the summer apart from her divorced but loving, long-term boyfriend (a shockingly clean-shaven Jake Johnson) with a family of his own, she runs into her toxic ex (Cory Michael Smith), and some predictable but hilarious romantic complications ensue.

GENRE | Adria Arjona Terminates 'Onslaught'

"Prolonged exposure breaks the mind."

A24 / VVS Films

After a stint in big-budget Godzilla vs. Kong fare, indie genre director Adam Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett reteam for The Terminator-inspired action-slasher thriller, Onslaught. Starring a battered and bruised Adria Arjona as a PTSD-suffering, former army sniper battling against an experimental rogue team of genetically engineered, chainsaw-wielding super-soldiers, the slick but ultimately underwhelming 1970-80s John Carpenter homage sets up a straightforward midnight movie.

GENRE | Na Hong-jin Never Loses 'Hope' x TIFF 2026

"Bring forth true fate."

Neon / Elevation Pictures

South Korean genre director Na Hong-jin's new sci-fi alien action thriller, Hope, boasts the highest budget ever for a film from the East Asian nation, while featuring some of the worst CGI in a major release in years. It's hard to describe how electric the first hour is as audiences are dropped into the eponymous harbour town, chasing monsters before the poorly rendered creatures are revealed.

REEL | 'Looney Tunes' Sues the Pants Off 'Coyote vs. Acme'

"You tawt you taw? I don't pay you to tink you taw. I pay you to taw!"

Ketchup Entertainment / VVS Films

Coyote vs. Acme, director Dave Green's nearly shelved (for tax write-off purposes) Warner Bros. Animation hybrid live-action comedy produced by James Gunn, is finally here, and it's pretty good. Its simple but somewhat ingenious premise of the famed loser Looney Tunes cartoon character, Wile E. Coyote, suing the Acme Corporation for its faulty products causing him injury, distress, and failure is a brilliant stand-in for some real-life (coincidental) business shenanigans by a certain media conglomerate and its parent companies.

GENRE | Dave Franco and O'Shea Jackson Jr. Act Like 'Idiots'

"So, you're like The Transporter?"

Independent Film Company / VVS Films

Independent filmmaker and character actor Macon Blair writes and directs the aptly titled slacker road trip comedy, Idiots (originally titled The Sh*theads). Starring a degenerate Dave Franco (also a producer) and devout O'Shea Jackson Jr. as shady transport service co-workers and Mason Thames as the zonked-out, devilish rich kid addict they must forcibly escort to rehab, the film sticks to the usual The Hangover formula on its predictable things-go-wrong detour of a destination mission (think The Last Detail).

REEL | Willem Dafoe Waxes on 'Late Fame' in Life x SIFF 2026

"You must have been beautiful when you were young."

Magnolia Pictures / Vortex Media

Late Fame, based on Austrian dramatist Arthur Schnitzler's posthumous 1895 novella (translated and published in 2014) of the same name, is directed by New York film critic and programmer turned independent filmmaker Kent Jones and stars Willem Dafoe as an unknown, long-lost poet who, as the title suggests, experiences a bit of late-in-life interest and newfound resurgence in his previously published works within a privileged but affluent circle of wealthy, post-graduate literary admirers in present-day Manhattan.

REEL | Anne Hathaway Transports 'The End of Oak Street'

"Is that a f*cking dinosaur?"

Warner Bros. Pictures / Bad Robot

Genre filmmaker David Robert Mitchell and producer J.J. Abrams team up for the sci-fi survivalist film, The End of Oak Street. When an ordinary suburban family of four (Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, and Christian Convery) and their entire neighbourhood block in 1982 get cosmically transported back to prehistoric times, they must figure out what's going on while dodging ravenous dinosaurs.

REEL | 'Tony' (the Chef the Book the Movie) Tracks A Young Bourdain

"But I like you. You're the sin eater."

A24 Films

Toronto native Matt Johnson directs Dominic Sessa as the beloved chef, bestselling author, and travel host Anthony Bourdain in Tony, based on his formative experiences working at a Cape Cod seafood restaurant during the summer of 1975. As outlined in the memorable early chapters of his 2000 memoir Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, the film tracks the angry young cook longing to become a real "writer" (whatever that means) without having written anything or really experienced life at all at age nineteen.

GENRE | Slashing 'Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma' x Fantasia 2026

"Ride and take your revenge!"

Mubi / Plan B Entertainment

Talented trans filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun continues their intriguing horror genre-bending cinematic work in the teen slasher riff tribute, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. Set at an eerie campground (shot on Vancouver Island) in the woods à la Friday the 13th or Sleepaway Camp, the film has a meta-narrative about a young female indie director (Hannah Einbinder) remaking a niche but transphobic 1980s horror film franchise with its original but now reclusive former scream queen final girl lead actress (Gillian Anderson).

REEL | Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner Purge 'One Night Only'

"Maybe the fascists were right about this one."

Universal Pictures / Olive Bridge Entertainment

One Night Only, director Will Gluck's unusually authoritarian-tinged romantic comedy about a world where premarital sex is outlawed except for a single night a year, is clearly inspired by The Purge's dystopian horror premise. It stars Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner in an entirely charming romantic pairing, as two attractive New Yorkers looking to hook up on the only night they are legally allowed to.

REEL | Tom Holland Resets the Emotional 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day'

"Enough of this soft-serve bullsh*t!"

Sony Pictures / Marvel Studios

Spider-Man: Brand New Day refreshes Tom Holland's enthusiastic interpretation of the webslinger superhero in the current Marvel Cinematic Universe canon and continuity. Led by the talented Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton this time around, we find a lonely Peter Parker struggling with his powers after the multiverse-changing events of No Way Home.

REEL | Olivia Wilde Teases Gen Z – 'I Want Your Sex' x SIFF 2026

"You're a sexual astronaut just exploring the outer limits of experience."

Magnolia Pictures / Elevation Pictures

I Want Your Sex, provocative New Queer Cinema pioneer and Teenage Apocalypse trilogy director Gregg Araki's highly sexual but lo-fi erotic comedy, co-written with sex columnist Karley Sciortino of Slutever fame, is another intriguing exploration of young adulthood through acts of intimacy and explicit desire.

SCREEN | Jake Johnson Slams 'The Dink' on Apple TV

"When you piss off the Hammer, everyone's a nail."

Apple Original Films / Rivulet Entertainment

Funny everyman Jake Johnson (also a producer) stars as a cantankerous and washed-up former tennis pro turned reluctant pickleballer, Dusty Boyd aka "the Hammer," in the formulaic but appealing sports comedy, The Dink. Produced by and co-starring Ben Stiller, director Josh Greenbaum focuses on the basic athletic aspects of the film's humour to mine its well-worn material clearly inspired by the similarly themed Dodgeball movie that Stiller also appeared in and produced.

REEL | Christopher Nolan and Matt Damon Conquer 'The Odyssey'

"It was a song of all the promises I failed to keep."

Universal Pictures / Syncopy

Oscar-winning, visionary British-American auteur Christopher Nolan adapts The Odyssey, the second of Homer's two ancient Greek epic poems (after The Iliad), into a metaphysical but immersive action blockbuster experience. Starring regular collaborator Matt Damon as the legendary Odysseus, the departed soldier-king of Ithaca, in another hero role as a man desperate to find his way home, the dense mythical fantasy is a monumental yet accessible journey of pure cinematic spectacle, filmed on the grandest of canvases.

REEL | 90s Baby! – Still 'Dazed and Confused' After All These Years

"It'd be a lot cooler if you did."

Universal Pictures / Focus Features

Beloved Austin-based, independent filmmaker Richard Linklater's highly influential but box office disappointment of a sophomore teen film, Dazed and Confused, famously took its title from the killer Led Zeppelin classic rock song whose music rights the film was unsuccessful at securing for its bitchin' soundtrack, all the way back in the year 1993. This was one of many omens of sorts for its eventual lasting cultural legacy as a stone cold cult classic. Some three decades after its debut, its all-in-one-day, last-day-of-high-school hangout vibes remain strongly rewatchable.

REEL | Zoey Deutch Cashes in 'Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass'

"Why don't we keep it loose and freaky?"

Sony Pictures Classics / Mongrel Media

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is comedian David Wain's wild, throwback sex comedy told as a contemporary Hollywood riff on The Wizard of Oz formula. When Zoey Deutch's small-town Dorothy Gale sound-a-like title character finds out her fiancé has cashed in his "celebrity sex pass" to sleep with Jennifer Aniston, she sets out on an adventure collecting sidekicks, including Mad Men co-star John Slattery playing a comically sad sack, loser version of himself, along the way to meeting and hopefully having sex with her own free pass, one mister Jon Hamm, standing in for the Wizard.

REEL | Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde Throw 'The Invite' x SIFF 2026

"We love a contentious environment!"

VVS Films / Annapurna Pictures

Actress/filmmaker Olivia Wilde directs and stars alongside Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz, and Edward Norton in the comedic chamber-piece, The Invite, involving two middle-aged San Francisco couples and neighbours at a contentiously impromptu dinner party gone wrong. Adapted from the Spanish-language comedy, The People Upstairs (aka Sentimental), the stage-like production exploits our conceptions of contemporary romantic and sexual relationships.