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Picture this. You’ve joined a squad at your company that’s designing new product features with an emphasis on automation or AI. Or your company has just implemented a personalization engine. Either way, you’re designing with data. Now what? When it comes to designing for personalization, there are many cautionary tales, no overnight successes, and few guides for the perplexed. 

Between the fantasy of getting it right and the fear of it going wrong—like when we encounter “persofails” in the vein of a company repeatedly imploring everyday consumers to buy additional toilet seats—the personalization gap is real. It’s an especially confounding place to be a digital professional without a map, a compass, or a plan.

For those of you venturing into personalization, there’s no Lonely Planet and few tour guides because effective personalization is so specific to each organization’s talent, technology, and market position. 

But you can ensure that your team has packed its bags sensibly.

There’s a DIY formula to increase your chances for success. At minimum, you’ll defuse your boss’s irrational exuberance. Before the party you’ll need to effectively prepare.

We call it prepersonalization.

Behind the music

Consider Spotify’s DJ feature, which debuted this past year.

We’re used to seeing the polished final result of a personalization feature. Before the year-end award, the making-of backstory, or the behind-the-scenes victory lap, a personalized feature had to be conceived, budgeted, and prioritized. Before any personalization feature goes live in your product or service, it lives amid a backlog of worthy ideas for expressing customer experiences more dynamically.

So how do you know where to place your personalization bets? How do you design consistent interactions that won’t trip up users or—worse—breed mistrust? We’ve found that for many budgeted programs to justify their ongoing investments, they first needed one or more workshops to convene key stakeholders and internal customers of the technology. Make yours count.

​From Big Tech to fledgling startups, we’ve seen the same evolution up close with our clients. In our experiences with working on small and large personalization efforts, a program’s ultimate track record—and its ability to weather tough questions, work steadily toward shared answers, and organize its design and technology efforts—turns on how effectively these prepersonalization activities play out.

Time and again, we’ve seen effective workshops separate future success stories from unsuccessful efforts, saving countless time, resources, and collective well-being in the process.

A personalization practice involves a multiyear effort of testing and feature development. It’s not a switch-flip moment in your tech stack. It’s best managed as a backlog that often evolves through three steps: 

1. customer experience optimization (CXO, also known as A/B testing or experimentation)
2. always-on automations (whether rules-based or machine-generated)
3. mature features or standalone product development (such as Spotify’s DJ experience)

This is why we created our progressive personalization framework and why we’re field-testing an accompanying deck of cards: we believe that there’s a base grammar, a set of “nouns and verbs” that your organization can use to design experiences that are customized, personalized, or automated. You won’t need these cards. But we strongly recommend that you create something similar, whether that might be digital or physical.

Set your kitchen timer

How long does it take to cook up a prepersonalization workshop? The surrounding assessment activities that we recommend including can (and often do) span weeks. For the core workshop, we recommend aiming for two to three days. Here’s a summary of our broader approach along with details on the essential first-day activities.

The full arc of the wider workshop is threefold:

1. Kickstart: This sets the terms of engagement as you focus on the opportunity as well as the readiness and drive of your team and your leadership. .
2. Plan your work: This is the heart of the card-based workshop activities where you specify a plan of attack and the scope of work.
3. Work your plan: This phase is all about creating a competitive environment for team participants to individually pitch their own pilots that each contain a proof-of-concept project, its business case, and its operating model.

Give yourself at least a day, split into two large time blocks, to power through a concentrated version of those first two phases.

Kickstart: Whet your appetite

We call the first lesson the “landscape of connected experience.” It explores the personalization possibilities in your organization. A connected experience, in our parlance, is any UX requiring the orchestration of multiple systems of record on the backend. This could be a content-management system combined with a marketing-automation platform. It could be a digital-asset manager combined with a customer-data platform.

Spark conversation by naming consumer examples and business-to-business examples of connected experience interactions that you admire, find familiar, or even dislike. This should cover a representative range of personalization patterns, including automated app-based interactions (such as onboarding sequences or wizards), notifications, and recommenders. We have a catalog of these in the cards. Here’s a list of 142 different interactions to jog your thinking.

This is all about setting the table. What are the possible paths for the practice in your organization? If you want a broader view, here’s a long-form primer and a strategic framework.

Assess each example that you discuss for its complexity and the level of effort that you estimate that it would take for your team to deliver that feature (or something similar). In our cards, we divide connected experiences into five levels: functions, features, experiences, complete products, and portfolios. Size your own build here. This will help to focus the conversation on the merits of ongoing investment as well as the gap between what you deliver today and what you want to deliver in the future.

Next, have your team plot each idea on the following 2×2 grid, which lays out the four enduring arguments for a personalized experience. This is critical because it emphasizes how personalization can not only help your external customers but also affect your own ways of working. It’s also a reminder (which is why we used the word argument earlier) of the broader effort beyond these tactical interventions.

Each team member should vote on where they see your product or service putting its emphasis. Naturally, you can’t prioritize all of them. The intention here is to flesh out how different departments may view their own upsides to the effort, which can vary from one to the next. Documenting your desired outcomes lets you know how the team internally aligns across representatives from different departments or functional areas.

The third and final kickstart activity is about naming your personalization gap. Is your customer journey well documented? Will data and privacy compliance be too big of a challenge? Do you have content metadata needs that you have to address? (We’re pretty sure that you do: it’s just a matter of recognizing the relative size of that need and its remedy.) In our cards, we’ve noted a number of program risks, including common team dispositions. Our Detractor card, for example, lists six stakeholder behaviors that hinder progress.

Effectively collaborating and managing expectations is critical to your success. Consider the potential barriers to your future progress. Press the participants to name specific steps to overcome or mitigate those barriers in your organization. As studies have shown, personalization efforts face many common barriers.

At this point, you’ve hopefully discussed sample interactions, emphasized a key area of benefit, and flagged key gaps? Good—you’re ready to continue.

Hit that test kitchen

Next, let’s look at what you’ll need to bring your personalization recipes to life. Personalization engines, which are robust software suites for automating and expressing dynamic content, can intimidate new customers. Their capabilities are sweeping and powerful, and they present broad options for how your organization can conduct its activities. This presents the question: Where do you begin when you’re configuring a connected experience?

What’s important here is to avoid treating the installed software like it were a dream kitchen from some fantasy remodeling project (as one of our client executives memorably put it). These software engines are more like test kitchens where your team can begin devising, tasting, and refining the snacks and meals that will become a part of your personalization program’s regularly evolving menu.

The ultimate menu of the prioritized backlog will come together over the course of the workshop. And creating “dishes” is the way that you’ll have individual team stakeholders construct personalized interactions that serve their needs or the needs of others.

The dishes will come from recipes, and those recipes have set ingredients.

Verify your ingredients

Like a good product manager, you’ll make sure—andyou’ll validate with the right stakeholders present—that you have all the ingredients on hand to cook up your desired interaction (or that you can work out what needs to be added to your pantry). These ingredients include the audience that you’re targeting, content and design elements, the context for the interaction, and your measure for how it’ll come together. 

This isn’t just about discovering requirements. Documenting your personalizations as a series of if-then statements lets the team: 

1. compare findings toward a unified approach for developing features, not unlike when artists paint with the same palette; 
2. specify a consistent set of interactions that users find uniform or familiar; 
3. and develop parity across performance measurements and key performance indicators too. 

This helps you streamline your designs and your technical efforts while you deliver a shared palette of core motifs of your personalized or automated experience.

Compose your recipe

What ingredients are important to you? Think of a who-what-when-why construct: 

• Who are your key audience segments or groups?
• What kind of content will you give them, in what design elements, and under what circumstances?
• And for which business and user benefits?

We first developed these cards and card categories five years ago. We regularly play-test their fit with conference audiences and clients. And we still encounter new possibilities. But they all follow an underlying who-what-when-why logic.

Here are three examples for a subscription-based reading app, which you can generally follow along with right to left in the cards in the accompanying photo below. 

1. Nurture personalization: When a guest or an unknown visitor interacts with  a product title, a banner or alert bar appears that makes it easier for them to encounter a related title they may want to read, saving them time.
2. Welcome automation: When there’s a newly registered user, an email is generated to call out the breadth of the content catalog and to make them a happier subscriber.
3. Winback automation: Before their subscription lapses or after a recent failed renewal, a user is sent an email that gives them a promotional offer to suggest that they reconsider renewing or to remind them to renew.

A useful preworkshop activity may be to think through a first draft of what these cards might be for your organization, although we’ve also found that this process sometimes flows best through cocreating the recipes themselves. Start with a set of blank cards, and begin labeling and grouping them through the design process, eventually distilling them to a refined subset of highly useful candidate cards.

You can think of the later stages of the workshop as moving from recipes toward a cookbook in focus—like a more nuanced customer-journey mapping. Individual “cooks” will pitch their recipes to the team, using a common jobs-to-be-done format so that measurability and results are baked in, and from there, the resulting collection will be prioritized for finished design and delivery to production.

Better kitchens require better architecture

Simplifying a customer experience is a complicated effort for those who are inside delivering it. Beware anyone who says otherwise. With that being said,  “Complicated problems can be hard to solve, but they are addressable with rules and recipes.”

When personalization becomes a laugh line, it’s because a team is overfitting: they aren’t designing with their best data. Like a sparse pantry, every organization has metadata debt to go along with its technical debt, and this creates a drag on personalization effectiveness. Your AI’s output quality, for example, is indeed limited by your IA. Spotify’s poster-child prowess today was unfathomable before they acquired a seemingly modest metadata startup that now powers its underlying information architecture.

You can definitely stand the heat…

Personalization technology opens a doorway into a confounding ocean of possible designs. Only a disciplined and highly collaborative approach will bring about the necessary focus and intention to succeed. So banish the dream kitchen. Instead, hit the test kitchen to save time, preserve job satisfaction and security, and safely dispense with the fanciful ideas that originate upstairs of the doers in your organization. There are meals to serve and mouths to feed.

This workshop framework gives you a fighting shot at lasting success as well as sound beginnings. Wiring up your information layer isn’t an overnight affair. But if you use the same cookbook and shared recipes, you’ll have solid footing for success. We designed these activities to make your organization’s needs concrete and clear, long before the hazards pile up.

While there are associated costs toward investing in this kind of technology and product design, your ability to size up and confront your unique situation and your digital capabilities is time well spent. Don’t squander it. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

Ever since I was a boy, I’ve been fascinated with movies. I loved the characters and the excitement—but most of all the stories. I wanted to be an actor. And I believed that I’d get to do the things that Indiana Jones did and go on exciting adventures. I even dreamed up ideas for movies that my friends and I could make and star in. But they never went any further. I did, however, end up working in user experience (UX). Now, I realize that there’s an element of theater to UX—I hadn’t really considered it before, but user research is storytelling. And to get the most out of user research, you need to tell a good story where you bring stakeholders—the product team and decision makers—along and get them interested in learning more.

Think of your favorite movie. More than likely it follows a three-act structure that’s commonly seen in storytelling: the setup, the conflict, and the resolution. The first act shows what exists today, and it helps you get to know the characters and the challenges and problems that they face. Act two introduces the conflict, where the action is. Here, problems grow or get worse. And the third and final act is the resolution. This is where the issues are resolved and the characters learn and change. I believe that this structure is also a great way to think about user research, and I think that it can be especially helpful in explaining user research to others.

Use storytelling as a structure to do research

It’s sad to say, but many have come to see research as being expendable. If budgets or timelines are tight, research tends to be one of the first things to go. Instead of investing in research, some product managers rely on designers or—worse—their own opinion to make the “right” choices for users based on their experience or accepted best practices. That may get teams some of the way, but that approach can so easily miss out on solving users’ real problems. To remain user-centered, this is something we should avoid. User research elevates design. It keeps it on track, pointing to problems and opportunities. Being aware of the issues with your product and reacting to them can help you stay ahead of your competitors.

In the three-act structure, each act corresponds to a part of the process, and each part is critical to telling the whole story. Let’s look at the different acts and how they align with user research.

Act one: setup

The setup is all about understanding the background, and that’s where foundational research comes in. Foundational research (also called generative, discovery, or initial research) helps you understand users and identify their problems. You’re learning about what exists today, the challenges users have, and how the challenges affect them—just like in the movies. To do foundational research, you can conduct contextual inquiries or diary studies (or both!), which can help you start to identify problems as well as opportunities. It doesn’t need to be a huge investment in time or money.

Erika Hall writes about minimum viable ethnography, which can be as simple as spending 15 minutes with a user and asking them one thing: “‘Walk me through your day yesterday.’ That’s it. Present that one request. Shut up and listen to them for 15 minutes. Do your damndest to keep yourself and your interests out of it. Bam, you’re doing ethnography.” According to Hall, “[This] will probably prove quite illuminating. In the highly unlikely case that you didn’t learn anything new or useful, carry on with enhanced confidence in your direction.”  

This makes total sense to me. And I love that this makes user research so accessible. You don’t need to prepare a lot of documentation; you can just recruit participants and do it! This can yield a wealth of information about your users, and it’ll help you better understand them and what’s going on in their lives. That’s really what act one is all about: understanding where users are coming from. 

Jared Spool talks about the importance of foundational research and how it should form the bulk of your research. If you can draw from any additional user data that you can get your hands on, such as surveys or analytics, that can supplement what you’ve heard in the foundational studies or even point to areas that need further investigation. Together, all this data paints a clearer picture of the state of things and all its shortcomings. And that’s the beginning of a compelling story. It’s the point in the plot where you realize that the main characters—or the users in this case—are facing challenges that they need to overcome. Like in the movies, this is where you start to build empathy for the characters and root for them to succeed. And hopefully stakeholders are now doing the same. Their sympathy may be with their business, which could be losing money because users can’t complete certain tasks. Or maybe they do empathize with users’ struggles. Either way, act one is your initial hook to get the stakeholders interested and invested.

Once stakeholders begin to understand the value of foundational research, that can open doors to more opportunities that involve users in the decision-making process. And that can guide product teams toward being more user-centered. This benefits everyone—users, the product, and stakeholders. It’s like winning an Oscar in movie terms—it often leads to your product being well received and successful. And this can be an incentive for stakeholders to repeat this process with other products. Storytelling is the key to this process, and knowing how to tell a good story is the only way to get stakeholders to really care about doing more research. 

This brings us to act two, where you iteratively evaluate a design or concept to see whether it addresses the issues.

Act two: conflict

Act two is all about digging deeper into the problems that you identified in act one. This usually involves directional research, such as usability tests, where you assess a potential solution (such as a design) to see whether it addresses the issues that you found. The issues could include unmet needs or problems with a flow or process that’s tripping users up. Like act two in a movie, more issues will crop up along the way. It’s here that you learn more about the characters as they grow and develop through this act. 

Usability tests should typically include around five participants according to Jakob Nielsen, who found that that number of users can usually identify most of the problems: “As you add more and more users, you learn less and less because you will keep seeing the same things again and again… After the fifth user, you are wasting your time by observing the same findings repeatedly but not learning much new.” 

There are parallels with storytelling here too; if you try to tell a story with too many characters, the plot may get lost. Having fewer participants means that each user’s struggles will be more memorable and easier to relay to other stakeholders when talking about the research. This can help convey the issues that need to be addressed while also highlighting the value of doing the research in the first place.

Researchers have run usability tests in person for decades, but you can also conduct usability tests remotely using tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or other teleconferencing software. This approach has become increasingly popular since the beginning of the pandemic, and it works well. You can think of in-person usability tests like going to a play and remote sessions as more like watching a movie. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. In-person usability research is a much richer experience. Stakeholders can experience the sessions with other stakeholders. You also get real-time reactions—including surprise, agreement, disagreement, and discussions about what they’re seeing. Much like going to a play, where audiences get to take in the stage, the costumes, the lighting, and the actors’ interactions, in-person research lets you see users up close, including their body language, how they interact with the moderator, and how the scene is set up.

If in-person usability testing is like watching a play—staged and controlled—then conducting usability testing in the field is like immersive theater where any two sessions might be very different from one another. You can take usability testing into the field by creating a replica of the space where users interact with the product and then conduct your research there. Or you can go out to meet users at their location to do your research. With either option, you get to see how things work in context, things come up that wouldn’t have in a lab environment—and conversion can shift in entirely different directions. As researchers, you have less control over how these sessions go, but this can sometimes help you understand users even better. Meeting users where they are can provide clues to the external forces that could be affecting how they use your product. In-person usability tests provide another level of detail that’s often missing from remote usability tests. 

That’s not to say that the “movies”—remote sessions—aren’t a good option. Remote sessions can reach a wider audience. They allow a lot more stakeholders to be involved in the research and to see what’s going on. And they open the doors to a much wider geographical pool of users. But with any remote session there is the potential of time wasted if participants can’t log in or get their microphone working. 

The benefit of usability testing, whether remote or in person, is that you get to see real users interact with the designs in real time, and you can ask them questions to understand their thought processes and grasp of the solution. This can help you not only identify problems but also glean why they’re problems in the first place. Furthermore, you can test hypotheses and gauge whether your thinking is correct. By the end of the sessions, you’ll have a much clearer picture of how usable the designs are and whether they work for their intended purposes. Act two is the heart of the story—where the excitement is—but there can be surprises too. This is equally true of usability tests. Often, participants will say unexpected things, which change the way that you look at things—and these twists in the story can move things in new directions. 

Unfortunately, user research is sometimes seen as expendable. And too often usability testing is the only research process that some stakeholders think that they ever need. In fact, if the designs that you’re evaluating in the usability test aren’t grounded in a solid understanding of your users (foundational research), there’s not much to be gained by doing usability testing in the first place. That’s because you’re narrowing the focus of what you’re getting feedback on, without understanding the users’ needs. As a result, there’s no way of knowing whether the designs might solve a problem that users have. It’s only feedback on a particular design in the context of a usability test.  

On the other hand, if you only do foundational research, while you might have set out to solve the right problem, you won’t know whether the thing that you’re building will actually solve that. This illustrates the importance of doing both foundational and directional research. 

In act two, stakeholders will—hopefully—get to watch the story unfold in the user sessions, which creates the conflict and tension in the current design by surfacing their highs and lows. And in turn, this can help motivate stakeholders to address the issues that come up.

Act three: resolution

While the first two acts are about understanding the background and the tensions that can propel stakeholders into action, the third part is about resolving the problems from the first two acts. While it’s important to have an audience for the first two acts, it’s crucial that they stick around for the final act. That means the whole product team, including developers, UX practitioners, business analysts, delivery managers, product managers, and any other stakeholders that have a say in the next steps. It allows the whole team to hear users’ feedback together, ask questions, and discuss what’s possible within the project’s constraints. And it lets the UX research and design teams clarify, suggest alternatives, or give more context behind their decisions. So you can get everyone on the same page and get agreement on the way forward.

This act is mostly told in voiceover with some audience participation. The researcher is the narrator, who paints a picture of the issues and what the future of the product could look like given the things that the team has learned. They give the stakeholders their recommendations and their guidance on creating this vision.

Nancy Duarte in the Harvard Business Review offers an approach to structuring presentations that follow a persuasive story. “The most effective presenters use the same techniques as great storytellers: By reminding people of the status quo and then revealing the path to a better way, they set up a conflict that needs to be resolved,” writes Duarte. “That tension helps them persuade the audience to adopt a new mindset or behave differently.”

This type of structure aligns well with research results, and particularly results from usability tests. It provides evidence for “what is”—the problems that you’ve identified. And “what could be”—your recommendations on how to address them. And so on and so forth.

You can reinforce your recommendations with examples of things that competitors are doing that could address these issues or with examples where competitors are gaining an edge. Or they can be visual, like quick mockups of how a new design could look that solves a problem. These can help generate conversation and momentum. And this continues until the end of the session when you’ve wrapped everything up in the conclusion by summarizing the main issues and suggesting a way forward. This is the part where you reiterate the main themes or problems and what they mean for the product—the denouement of the story. This stage gives stakeholders the next steps and hopefully the momentum to take those steps!

While we are nearly at the end of this story, let’s reflect on the idea that user research is storytelling. All the elements of a good story are there in the three-act structure of user research: 

• Act one: You meet the protagonists (the users) and the antagonists (the problems affecting users). This is the beginning of the plot. In act one, researchers might use methods including contextual inquiry, ethnography, diary studies, surveys, and analytics. The output of these methods can include personas, empathy maps, user journeys, and analytics dashboards.

• Act two: Next, there’s character development. There’s conflict and tension as the protagonists encounter problems and challenges, which they must overcome. In act two, researchers might use methods including usability testing, competitive benchmarking, and heuristics evaluation. The output of these can include usability findings reports, UX strategy documents, usability guidelines, and best practices.

• Act three: The protagonists triumph and you see what a better future looks like. In act three, researchers may use methods including presentation decks, storytelling, and digital media. The output of these can be: presentation decks, video clips, audio clips, and pictures. 

The researcher has multiple roles: they’re the storyteller, the director, and the producer. The participants have a small role, but they are significant characters (in the research). And the stakeholders are the audience. But the most important thing is to get the story right and to use storytelling to tell users’ stories through research. By the end, the stakeholders should walk away with a purpose and an eagerness to resolve the product’s ills. 

So the next time that you’re planning research with clients or you’re speaking to stakeholders about research that you’ve done, think about how you can weave in some storytelling. Ultimately, user research is a win-win for everyone, and you just need to get stakeholders interested in how the story ends.

As a product builder over too many years to mention, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen promising ideas go from zero to hero in a few weeks, only to fizzle out within months.

Financial products, which is the field I work in, are no exception. With people’s real hard-earned money on the line, user expectations running high, and a crowded market, it’s tempting to throw as many features at the wall as possible and hope something sticks. But this approach is a recipe for disaster. Here’s why:

The pitfalls of feature-first development

When you start building a financial product from the ground up, or are migrating existing customer journeys from paper or telephony channels onto online banking or mobile apps, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of creating new features. You might think, “If I can just add one more thing that solves this particular user problem, they’ll love me!” But what happens when you inevitably hit a roadblock because the narcs (your security team!) don’t like it? When a hard-fought feature isn’t as popular as you thought, or it breaks due to unforeseen complexity?

This is where the concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) comes in. Jason Fried’s book Getting Real and his podcast Rework often touch on this idea, even if he doesn’t always call it that. An MVP is a product that provides just enough value to your users to keep them engaged, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming or difficult to maintain. It sounds like an easy concept but it requires a razor sharp eye, a ruthless edge and having the courage to stick by your opinion because it is easy to be seduced by “the Columbo Effect”… when there’s always “just one more thing…” that someone wants to add.

The problem with most finance apps, however, is that they often become a reflection of the internal politics of the business rather than an experience solely designed around the customer. This means that the focus is on delivering as many features and functionalities as possible to satisfy the needs and desires of competing internal departments, rather than providing a clear value proposition that is focused on what the people out there in the real world want. As a result, these products can very easily bloat to become a mixed bag of confusing, unrelated and ultimately unlovable customer experiences—a feature salad, you might say.

The importance of bedrock

So what’s a better approach? How can we build products that are stable, user-friendly, and—most importantly—stick?

That’s where the concept of “bedrock” comes in. Bedrock is the core element of your product that truly matters to users. It’s the fundamental building block that provides value and stays relevant over time.

In the world of retail banking, which is where I work, the bedrock has got to be in and around the regular servicing journeys. People open their current account once in a blue moon but they look at it every day. They sign up for a credit card every year or two, but they check their balance and pay their bill at least once a month.

Identifying the core tasks that people want to do and then relentlessly striving to make them easy to do, dependable, and trustworthy is where the gravy’s at.

But how do you get to bedrock? By focusing on the “MVP” approach, prioritizing simplicity, and iterating towards a clear value proposition. This means cutting out unnecessary features and focusing on delivering real value to your users.

It also means having some guts, because your colleagues might not always instantly share your vision to start with. And controversially, sometimes it can even mean making it clear to customers that you’re not going to come to their house and make their dinner. The occasional “opinionated user interface design” (i.e. clunky workaround for edge cases) might sometimes be what you need to use to test a concept or buy you space to work on something more important.

Practical strategies for building financial products that stick

So what are the key strategies I’ve learned from my own experience and research?

1. Start with a clear “why”: What problem are you trying to solve? For whom? Make sure your mission is crystal clear before building anything. Make sure it aligns with your company’s objectives, too.
2. Focus on a single, core feature and obsess on getting that right before moving on to something else: Resist the temptation to add too many features at once. Instead, choose one that delivers real value and iterate from there.
3. Prioritize simplicity over complexity: Less is often more when it comes to financial products. Cut out unnecessary bells and whistles and keep the focus on what matters most.
4. Embrace continuous iteration: Bedrock isn’t a fixed destination—it’s a dynamic process. Continuously gather user feedback, refine your product, and iterate towards that bedrock state.
5. Stop, look and listen: Don’t just test your product as part of your delivery process—test it repeatedly in the field. Use it yourself. Run A/B tests. Gather user feedback. Talk to people who use it, and refine accordingly.

The bedrock paradox

There’s an interesting paradox at play here: building towards bedrock means sacrificing some short-term growth potential in favour of long-term stability. But the payoff is worth it—products built with a focus on bedrock will outlast and outperform their competitors, and deliver sustained value to users over time.

So, how do you start your journey towards bedrock? Take it one step at a time. Start by identifying those core elements that truly matter to your users. Focus on building and refining a single, powerful feature that delivers real value. And above all, test obsessively—for, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, Alan Kay, or Peter Drucker (whomever you believe!!), “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

Picture this: You’re in a meeting room at your tech company, and two people are having what looks like the same conversation about the same design problem. One is talking about whether the team has the right skills to tackle it. The other is diving deep into whether the solution actually solves the user’s problem. Same room, same problem, completely different lenses.

This is the beautiful, sometimes messy reality of having both a Design Manager and a Lead Designer on the same team. And if you’re wondering how to make this work without creating confusion, overlap, or the dreaded “too many cooks” scenario, you’re asking the right question.

The traditional answer has been to draw clean lines on an org chart. The Design Manager handles people, the Lead Designer handles craft. Problem solved, right? Except clean org charts are fantasy. In reality, both roles care deeply about team health, design quality, and shipping great work. 

The magic happens when you embrace the overlap instead of fighting it—when you start thinking of your design org as a design organism.

The Anatomy of a Healthy Design Team

Here’s what I’ve learned from years of being on both sides of this equation: think of your design team as a living organism. The Design Manager tends to the mind (the psychological safety, the career growth, the team dynamics). The Lead Designer tends to the body (the craft skills, the design standards, the hands-on work that ships to users).

But just like mind and body aren’t completely separate systems, so, too, do these roles overlap in important ways. You can’t have a healthy person without both working in harmony. The trick is knowing where those overlaps are and how to navigate them gracefully.

When we look at how healthy teams actually function, three critical systems emerge. Each requires both roles to work together, but with one taking primary responsibility for keeping that system strong.

The Nervous System: People & Psychology

Primary caretaker: Design Manager
Supporting role: Lead Designer

The nervous system is all about signals, feedback, and psychological safety. When this system is healthy, information flows freely, people feel safe to take risks, and the team can adapt quickly to new challenges.

The Design Manager is the primary caretaker here. They’re monitoring the team’s psychological pulse, ensuring feedback loops are healthy, and creating the conditions for people to grow. They’re hosting career conversations, managing workload, and making sure no one burns out.

But the Lead Designer plays a crucial supporting role. They’re providing sensory input about craft development needs, spotting when someone’s design skills are stagnating, and helping identify growth opportunities that the Design Manager might miss.

Design Manager tends to:

• Career conversations and growth planning
• Team psychological safety and dynamics
• Workload management and resource allocation
• Performance reviews and feedback systems
• Creating learning opportunities

Lead Designer supports by:

• Providing craft-specific feedback on team member development
• Identifying design skill gaps and growth opportunities
• Offering design mentorship and guidance
• Signaling when team members are ready for more complex challenges

The Muscular System: Craft & Execution

Primary caretaker: Lead Designer
Supporting role: Design Manager

The muscular system is about strength, coordination, and skill development. When this system is healthy, the team can execute complex design work with precision, maintain consistent quality, and adapt their craft to new challenges.

The Lead Designer is the primary caretaker here. They’re setting design standards, providing craft coaching, and ensuring that shipping work meets the quality bar. They’re the ones who can tell you if a design decision is sound or if we’re solving the right problem.

But the Design Manager plays a crucial supporting role. They’re ensuring the team has the resources and support to do their best craft work, like proper nutrition and recovery time for an athlete.

Lead Designer tends to:

• Definition of design standards and system usage
• Feedback on what design work meets the standard
• Experience direction for the product
• Design decisions and product-wide alignment
• Innovation and craft advancement

Design Manager supports by:

• Ensuring design standards are understood and adopted across the team
• Confirming experience direction is being followed
• Supporting practices and systems that scale without bottlenecking
• Facilitating design alignment across teams
• Providing resources and removing obstacles to great craft work

The Circulatory System: Strategy & Flow

Shared caretakers: Both Design Manager and Lead Designer

The circulatory system is about how information, decisions, and energy flow through the team. When this system is healthy, strategic direction is clear, priorities are aligned, and the team can respond quickly to new opportunities or challenges.

This is where true partnership happens. Both roles are responsible for keeping the circulation strong, but they’re bringing different perspectives to the table.

Lead Designer contributes:

• User needs are met by the product
• Overall product quality and experience
• Strategic design initiatives
• Research-based user needs for each initiative

Design Manager contributes:

• Communication to team and stakeholders
• Stakeholder management and alignment
• Cross-functional team accountability
• Strategic business initiatives

Both collaborate on:

• Co-creation of strategy with leadership
• Team goals and prioritization approach
• Organizational structure decisions
• Success measures and frameworks

Keeping the Organism Healthy

The key to making this partnership sing is understanding that all three systems need to work together. A team with great craft skills but poor psychological safety will burn out. A team with great culture but weak craft execution will ship mediocre work. A team with both but poor strategic circulation will work hard on the wrong things.

Be Explicit About Which System You’re Tending

When you’re in a meeting about a design problem, it helps to acknowledge which system you’re primarily focused on. “I’m thinking about this from a team capacity perspective” (nervous system) or “I’m looking at this through the lens of user needs” (muscular system) gives everyone context for your input.

This isn’t about staying in your lane. It’s about being transparent as to which lens you’re using, so the other person knows how to best add their perspective.

Create Healthy Feedback Loops

The most successful partnerships I’ve seen establish clear feedback loops between the systems:

Nervous system signals to muscular system: “The team is struggling with confidence in their design skills” → Lead Designer provides more craft coaching and clearer standards.

Muscular system signals to nervous system: “The team’s craft skills are advancing faster than their project complexity” → Design Manager finds more challenging growth opportunities.

Both systems signal to circulatory system: “We’re seeing patterns in team health and craft development that suggest we need to adjust our strategic priorities.”

Handle Handoffs Gracefully

The most critical moments in this partnership are when something moves from one system to another. This might be when a design standard (muscular system) needs to be rolled out across the team (nervous system), or when a strategic initiative (circulatory system) needs specific craft execution (muscular system).

Make these transitions explicit. “I’ve defined the new component standards. Can you help me think through how to get the team up to speed?” or “We’ve agreed on this strategic direction. I’m going to focus on the specific user experience approach from here.”

Stay Curious, Not Territorial

The Design Manager who never thinks about craft, or the Lead Designer who never considers team dynamics, is like a doctor who only looks at one body system. Great design leadership requires both people to care about the whole organism, even when they’re not the primary caretaker.

This means asking questions rather than making assumptions. “What do you think about the team’s craft development in this area?” or “How do you see this impacting team morale and workload?” keeps both perspectives active in every decision.

When the Organism Gets Sick

Even with clear roles, this partnership can go sideways. Here are the most common failure modes I’ve seen:

System Isolation

The Design Manager focuses only on the nervous system and ignores craft development. The Lead Designer focuses only on the muscular system and ignores team dynamics. Both people retreat to their comfort zones and stop collaborating.

The symptoms: Team members get mixed messages, work quality suffers, morale drops.

The treatment: Reconnect around shared outcomes. What are you both trying to achieve? Usually it’s great design work that ships on time from a healthy team. Figure out how both systems serve that goal.

Poor Circulation

Strategic direction is unclear, priorities keep shifting, and neither role is taking responsibility for keeping information flowing.

The symptoms: Team members are confused about priorities, work gets duplicated or dropped, deadlines are missed.

The treatment: Explicitly assign responsibility for circulation. Who’s communicating what to whom? How often? What’s the feedback loop?

Autoimmune Response

One person feels threatened by the other’s expertise. The Design Manager thinks the Lead Designer is undermining their authority. The Lead Designer thinks the Design Manager doesn’t understand craft.

The symptoms: Defensive behavior, territorial disputes, team members caught in the middle.

The treatment: Remember that you’re both caretakers of the same organism. When one system fails, the whole team suffers. When both systems are healthy, the team thrives.

The Payoff

Yes, this model requires more communication. Yes, it requires both people to be secure enough to share responsibility for team health. But the payoff is worth it: better decisions, stronger teams, and design work that’s both excellent and sustainable.

When both roles are healthy and working well together, you get the best of both worlds: deep craft expertise and strong people leadership. When one person is out sick, on vacation, or overwhelmed, the other can help maintain the team’s health. When a decision requires both the people perspective and the craft perspective, you’ve got both right there in the room.

Most importantly, the framework scales. As your team grows, you can apply the same system thinking to new challenges. Need to launch a design system? Lead Designer tends to the muscular system (standards and implementation), Design Manager tends to the nervous system (team adoption and change management), and both tend to circulation (communication and stakeholder alignment).

The Bottom Line

The relationship between a Design Manager and Lead Designer isn’t about dividing territories. It’s about multiplying impact. When both roles understand they’re tending to different aspects of the same healthy organism, magic happens.

The mind and body work together. The team gets both the strategic thinking and the craft excellence they need. And most importantly, the work that ships to users benefits from both perspectives.

So the next time you’re in that meeting room, wondering why two people are talking about the same problem from different angles, remember: you’re watching shared leadership in action. And if it’s working well, both the mind and body of your design team are getting stronger.

“Language is not merely a set of unrelated sounds, clauses, rules, and meanings; it is a totally coherent system bound to context and behavior.” — Kenneth L. Pike

The web has accents. So should our design systems.

Design Systems as Living Languages

Design systems aren’t component libraries—they’re living languages. Tokens are phonemes, components are words, patterns are phrases, layouts are sentences. The conversations we build with users become the stories our products tell.

But here’s what we’ve forgotten: the more fluently a language is spoken, the more accents it can support without losing meaning. English in Scotland differs from English in Sydney, yet both are unmistakably English. The language adapts to context while preserving core meaning. This couldn’t be more obvious to me, a Brazilian Portuguese speaker, who learned English with an American accent, and lives in Sydney.

Our design systems must work the same way. Rigid adherence to visual rules creates brittle systems that break under contextual pressure. Fluent systems bend without breaking.

Consistency becomes a prison

The promise of design systems was simple: consistent components would accelerate development and unify experiences. But as systems matured and products grew more complex, that promise has become a prison. Teams file “exception” requests by the hundreds. Products launch with workarounds instead of system components. Designers spend more time defending consistency than solving user problems.

Our design systems must learn to speak dialects.

A design dialect is a systematic adaptation of a design system that maintains core principles while developing new patterns for specific contexts. Unlike one-off customizations or brand themes, dialects preserve the system’s essential grammar while expanding its vocabulary to serve different users, environments, or constraints.

When Perfect Consistency Fails

At Booking.com, I learned this lesson the hard way. We A/B-tested everything—color, copy, button shapes, even logo colors. As a professional with a graphic design education and experience building brand style guides, I found this shocking. While everyone fell in love with Airbnb’s pristine design system, Booking grew into a giant without ever considering visual consistency.  

The chaos taught me something profound: consistency isn’t ROI; solved problems are.

At Shopify. Polaris () was our crown jewel—a mature design language perfect for merchants on laptops. As a product team, we were expected to adopt Polaris as-is. Then my fulfillment team hit an “Oh, Ship!” moment, as we faced the challenge of building an app for warehouse pickers using our interface on shared, battered Android scanners in dim aisles, wearing thick gloves, scanning dozens of items per minute, many with limited levels of English understanding.

Task completion with standard Polaris: 0%.

Every component that worked beautifully for merchants failed completely for pickers. White backgrounds created glare. 44px tap targets were invisible to gloved fingers. Sentence-case labels took too long to parse. Multi-step flows confused non-native speakers.

We faced a choice: abandon Polaris entirely, or teach it to speak warehouse.

The Birth of a Dialect

We chose evolution over revolution. Working within Polaris’s core principles—clarity, efficiency, consistency—we developed what we now call a design dialect:

Constraint	Fluent Move	Rationale
Glare & low light	Dark surfaces + light text	Reduce glare on low-DPI screens
Gloves & haste	90px tap targets (~2cm)	Accommodate thick gloves
Multilingual	Single-task screens, plain language	Reduce cognitive load

Result: Task completion jumped from 0% to 100%. Onboarding time dropped from three weeks to one shift.

This wasn’t customization or theming—this was a dialect: a systematic adaptation that maintained Polaris’s core grammar while developing new vocabulary for a specific context. Polaris hadn’t failed; it had learned to speak warehouse.

The Flexibility Framework

At Atlassian, working on the Jira platform—itself a system within the larger Atlassian system—I pushed for formalizing this insight. With dozens of products sharing a design language across different codebases, we needed systematic flexibility so we built directly into our ways of working. The old model—exception requests and special approvals—was failing at scale.

We developed the Flexibility Framework to help designers define how flexible they wanted their components to be:

Tier	Action	Ownership
Consistent	Adopt unchanged	Platform locks design + code
Opinionated	Adapt within bounds	Platform provides smart defaults, products customize
Flexible	Extend freely	Platform defines behavior, products own presentation

During a navigation redesign, we tiered every element. Logo and global search stayed Consistent. Breadcrumbs and contextual actions became Flexible. Product teams could immediately see where innovation was welcome and where consistency mattered.

The Decision Ladder

Flexibility needs boundaries. We created a simple ladder for evaluating when rules should bend:

Good: Ship with existing system components. Fast, consistent, proven.

Better: Stretch a component slightly. Document the change. Contribute improvements back to the system for all to use.

Best: Prototype the ideal experience first. If user testing validates the benefit, update the system to support it.

The key question: “Which option lets users succeed fastest?”

Rules are tools, not relics.

Unity Beats Uniformity

Gmail, Drive, and Maps are unmistakably Google—yet each speaks with its own accent. They achieve unity through shared principles, not cloned components. One extra week of debate over button color costs roughly $30K in engineer time.

Unity is a brand outcome; fluency is a user outcome. When the two clash, side with the user.

Governance Without Gates

How do you maintain coherence while enabling dialects? Treat your system like a living vocabulary:

Document every deviation – e.g., dialects/warehouse.md with before/after screenshots and rationale.

Promote shared patterns – when three teams adopt a dialect independently, review it for core inclusion.

Deprecate with context – retire old idioms via flags and migration notes, never a big-bang purge.

A living dictionary scales better than a frozen rulebook.

Start Small: Your First Dialect

Ready to introduce dialects? Start with one broken experience:

This week: Find one user flow where perfect consistency blocks task completion. Could be mobile users struggling with desktop-sized components, or accessibility needs your standard patterns don’t address.

Document the context: What makes standard patterns fail here? Environmental constraints? User capabilities? Task urgency?

Design one systematic change: Focus on behavior over aesthetics. If gloves are the problem, bigger targets aren’t “”breaking the system””—they’re serving the user. Earn the variations and make them intentional.

Test and measure: Does the change improve task completion? Time to productivity? User satisfaction?

Show the savings: If that dialect frees even half a sprint, fluency has paid for itself.

Beyond the Component Library

We’re not managing design systems anymore—we’re cultivating design languages. Languages that grow with their speakers. Languages that develop accents without losing meaning. Languages that serve human needs over aesthetic ideals.

The warehouse workers who went from 0% to 100% task completion didn’t care that our buttons broke the style guide. They cared that the buttons finally worked.

Your users feel the same way. Give your system permission to speak their language.

Today’s web is not always an amiable place. Sites greet you with a popover that demands assent to their cookie policy, and leave you with Taboola ads promising “One Weird Trick!” to cure your ailments. Social media sites are tuned for engagement, and few things are more engaging than a fight. Today it seems that people want to quarrel; I have seen flame wars among birders.  

These tensions are often at odds with a site’s goals. If we are providing support and advice to customers, we don’t want those customers to wrangle with each other. If we offer news about the latest research, we want readers to feel at ease; if we promote upcoming marches, we want our core supporters to feel comfortable and we want curious newcomers to feel welcome. 

In a study for a conference on the History of the Web, I looked to the origins of Computer Science in Vienna (1928-1934)  for a case study of the importance of amiability in a research community and the disastrous consequences of its loss. That story has interesting implications for web environments that promote amiable interaction among disparate, difficult (and sometimes disagreeable) people.

The Vienna Circle

Though people had been thinking about calculating engines and thinking machines from antiquity, Computing really got going in Depression-era Vienna.  The people who worked out the theory had no interest in building machines; they wanted to puzzle out the limits of reason in the absence of divine authority. If we could not rely on God or Aristotle to tell us how to think, could we instead build arguments that were self-contained and demonstrably correct? Can we be sure that mathematics is consistent? Are there things that are true but that cannot be expressed in language? 

The core ideas were worked out in the weekly meetings (Thursdays at 6) of a group remembered as the Vienna Circle. They got together in the office of Professor Moritz Schlick at the University of Vienna to discuss problems in philosophy, math, and language. The intersection of physics and philosophy had long been a specialty of this Vienna department, and this work had placed them among the world leaders.  Schlick’s colleague Hans Hahn was a central participant, and by 1928 Hahn brought along his graduate students Karl Menger and Kurt Gödel. Other frequent participants included philosopher Rudolf Carnap, psychologist Karl Popper, economist Ludwig von Mises (brought by his brother Frederick, a physicist),  graphic designer Otto Neurath (inventor of infographics), and architect Josef Frank (brought by his physicist brother, Phillip).  Out-of-town visitors often joined, including the young Johnny von Neumann, Alfred Tarski, and the irascible Ludwig Wittgenstein. 

When Schlick’s office grew too dim, participants adjourned to a nearby café for additional discussion with an even larger circle of participants.  This convivial circle was far from unique.  An intersecting circle–Neurath, von Mises, Oskar Morgenstern–established the Austrian School of free-market economics. There were theatrical circles (Peter Lorre, Hedy Lamarr, Max Reinhardt), and literary circles. The café was where things happened.

The interdisciplinarity of the group posed real challenges of temperament and understanding. Personalities were often a challenge. Gödel was convinced people were trying to poison him. Architect Josef Frank depended on contracts for public housing, which Mises opposed as wasteful. Wittgenstein’s temper had lost him his job as a secondary school teacher, and for some of these years he maintained a detailed list of whom he was willing to meet. Neurath was eager to detect muddled thinking and would interrupt a speaker with a shouted “Metaphysics!” The continuing amity of these meetings was facilitated by the personality of their leader, Moritz Schlick, who would be remembered as notably adept in keeping disagreements from becoming quarrels.

In the Café

The Viennese café of this era was long remembered as a particularly good place to argue with your friends, to read, and to write. Built to serve an imperial capital, the cafés found themselves with too much space and too few customers now that the Empire was gone. There was no need to turn tables: a café could only survive by coaxing customers to linger. Perhaps they would order another coffee, or one of their friends might drop by. One could play chess, or billiards, or read newspapers from abroad. Coffee was invariably served with a glass of purified spring water, still a novelty in an era in which most water was still unsafe to drink. That water glass would be refilled indefinitely. 

In the basement of one café, the poet Jura Soyfer staged “The End Of The World,” a musical comedy in which Professor Peep has discovered a comet heading for earth.

Prof. Peep: The comet is going to destroy everybody!

Hitler:  Destroying everybody is my business.

Of course, coffee can be prepared in many ways, and the Viennese café developed a broad vocabulary to represent precisely how one preferred to drink it: melange, Einspänner, Brauner, Schwarzer, Kapuziner. This extensive customization, with correspondingly esoteric conventions of service, established the café as a comfortable and personal third space, a neutral ground in which anyone who could afford a coffee would be welcome. Viennese of this era were fastidious in their use of personal titles, of which an abundance were in common use. Café waiters greeted regular customers with titles too, but were careful to address their patrons with titles a notch or two greater than they deserved. A graduate student would be Doktor, an unpaid postdoc Professor.  This assurance mattered all the more because so many members of the Circle (and so many other Viennese) came from elsewhere: Carnap from Wuppertal, Gödel from Brno, von Neumann from Budapest. No one was going to make fun of your clothes, mannerisms, or accent. Your friends wouldn’t be bothered by the pram in the hall. Everyone shared a Germanic Austrian literary and philosophical culture, not least those whose ancestors had been Eastern European Jews who knew that culture well, having read all about it in books.

The amiability of the café circle was enhanced by its openness. Because the circle sometimes extended to architects and actors, people could feel less constrained to admit shortfalls in their understanding. It was soon discovered that marble tabletops made a useful surface for pencil sketches, serving all as an improvised and accessible blackboard.

Comedies like “The End Of The World” and fictional newspaper sketches or feuilletons of writers like Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig served as a second defense against disagreeable or churlish behavior. The knowledge that, if one got carried away, a parody of one’s remarks might shortly appear in Neue Freie Presse surely helped Professor Schlick keep matters in hand.

The End Of Red Vienna

Though Austria’s government drifted to the right after the War, Vienna’s city council had been Socialist, dedicated to public housing based on user-centered design, and embracing  ambitious programs of public outreach and adult education. In 1934 the Socialists lost a local election, and this era soon came to its end as the new administration focused on the imagined threat of the International Jewish Conspiracy. Most members of the Circle fled within months: von Neumann to Princeton, Neurath to Holland and Oxford, Popper to New Zealand, Carnap to Chicago. Prof. Schlick was murdered on the steps of the University by a student outraged by his former association with Jews.  Jura Soyfer, who wrote “The End Of The World,” died in Buchenwald.

In 1939, von Neumann finally convinced Gödel to accept a job in Princeton. Gödel was required to pay large fines to emigrate. The officer in charge of these fees would look back on this as the best posting of his career; his name was Eichmann.

Design for Amiability

An impressive literature recounts those discussions and the environment that facilitated the development of computing. How can we design for amiability?  This is not just a matter of choosing rounded typefaces and a cheerful pastel palette. I believe we may identify eight distinct issues that exert design forces in usefully amiable directions.

Seriousness: The Vienna Circle was wrestling with a notoriously difficult book—Wittgenstein’s Tractus Logico-Philosophicus—and a catalog of outstanding open questions in mathematics. They were concerned with consequential problems, not merely scoring points for debating. Constant reminders that the questions you are considering matter—not only that they are consequential or that those opposing you are scoundrels—help promote amity.

Empiricism: The characteristic approach of the Vienna Circle demanded that knowledge be grounded either in direct observation or in rigorous reasoning. Disagreement, when it arose, could be settled by observation or by proof. If neither seemed ready to hand, the matter could not be settled. On these terms, one can seldom if ever demolish an opposing argument, and trolling is pointless.

Abstraction: Disputes grow worse when losing the argument entails lost face or lost jobs. The Vienna Circle’s focus on theory—the limits of mathematics, the capability of language—promoted amity. Without seriousness, abstraction could have been merely academic, but the limits of reason and the consistency of mathematics were clearly serious.

Formality: The punctilious demeanor of waiters and the elaborated rituals of coffee service helped to establish orderly attitudes amongst the argumentative participants. This stands in contrast to the contemptuous sneer that now dominates social media.  

Schlamperei: Members of the Vienna Circle maintained a global correspondence, and they knew their work was at the frontier of research. Still, this was Vienna, at the margins of Europe: old-fashioned, frumpy, and dingy. Many participants came from even more obscure backwaters. Most or all harbored the suspicion that they were really schleppers, and a tinge of the ridiculous helped to moderate tempers. The director of “The End Of The World” had to pass the hat for money to purchase a moon for the set, and thought it was funny enough to write up for publication.

Openness: All sorts of people were involved in discussion, anyone might join in. Each week would bring different participants. Fluid borders reduce tension, and provide opportunities to broaden the range of discussion and the terms of engagement. Low entrance friction was characteristic of the café: anyone could come, and if you came twice you were virtually a regular. Permeable boundaries and café culture made it easier for moderating influences to draw in raconteurs and storytellers to defuse awkward moments, and Vienna’s cafés had no shortage of humorists. Openness counteracts the suspicion that promoters of amiability are exerting censorship.

Parody: The environs of the Circle—the university office and the café—were unmistakably public. There were writers about, some of them renowned humorists. The prospect that one’s bad taste or bad behavior might be ridiculed in print kept discussion within bounds. The sanction of public humiliation, however, was itself made mild by the veneer of fiction; even if you got a little carried away and a character based on you made a splash in some newspaper fiction, it wasn’t the end of the world.

Engagement: The subject matter was important to the participants, but it was esoteric: it did not matter very much to their mothers or their siblings. A small stumble or a minor humiliation could be shrugged off in ways that major media confrontations cannot.

I believe it is notable that this environment was designed to promote amiability through several different voices.  The café waiter flattered each newcomer and served everyone, and also kept out local pickpockets and drunks who would be mere disruptions. Schlick and other regulars kept discussion moving and on track. The fiction writers and raconteurs—perhaps the most peripheral of the participants—kept people in a good mood and reminded them that bad behavior could make anyone ridiculous.  Crucially, each of these voices were human: you could reason with them. Algorithmic or AI moderators, however clever, are seldom perceived as reasonable. The café circles had no central authority or Moderator against whom everyone’s resentments might be focused. Even after the disaster of 1934, what people remembered were those cheerful arguments.

What Most Businesses Get Wrong About Marketing written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the full episode: Episode Overview In this solo episode, John Jantsch revisits a core principle he has championed for years: strategy must come before tactics. Despite the explosion of marketing channels, tools, and now AI, most businesses are not lacking activity. They are lacking clarity. John breaks down why inconsistent messaging, misaligned teams, and […]

What Most Businesses Get Wrong About Marketing written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Catch the full episode:

Episode Overview

In this solo episode, John Jantsch revisits a core principle he has championed for years:
strategy must come before tactics. Despite the explosion of marketing channels, tools,
and now AI, most businesses are not lacking activity. They are lacking clarity.

John breaks down why inconsistent messaging, misaligned teams, and scattered priorities
are symptoms of a missing strategic foundation. He shares insights from working with
hundreds of businesses that achieved significant growth only after narrowing their focus,
defining their ideal customer, and building a systemized marketing approach.

He also introduces a new evolution of his “Strategy First” methodology, a compressed,
high-impact one-day strategic experience designed to align teams, clarify positioning,
and create a practical 90-day roadmap for growth.

Guest Bio

John Jantsch is a marketing strategist, speaker, and bestselling author
of multiple books including Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine,
and Marketing Rebellion. He is the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing system,
which has been licensed by over 400 agencies worldwide. Jantsch is widely recognized for
his practical, systems-based approach to small business marketing and his emphasis on
strategy before tactics.

Key Takeaways

1. Activity Is Not the Problem, Clarity Is

Most businesses are overwhelmed with marketing options but lack a clear strategy.
More effort without direction leads to wasted time and inconsistent results.

2. Strategy Enables You to Do Less, Better

A strong strategic foundation helps eliminate unnecessary tactics and focus only on
what drives meaningful growth.

3. Ideal Customer Definition Is Critical

Growth accelerates when businesses clearly define who they serve and, just as importantly,
who they do not serve.

4. Lack of Strategy Leads to Misalignment

Teams, vendors, and departments often operate in silos, creating inefficiencies and
diluted messaging.

5. Differentiation Comes From Strategic Clarity

Without a clear strategy, businesses struggle to communicate what makes them unique
and why customers should choose them.

6. AI Has Increased Complexity, Not Reduced It

While AI promises efficiency, many businesses are working harder trying to manage
new tools without a guiding strategy.

7. Strategy Creates Internal Alignment and Reduces Stress

Clarity around direction and priorities brings relief to business owners and helps
teams operate more cohesively.

8. A Compressed Strategy Process Can Be More Effective

Condensing strategy into a focused, one-day experience eliminates delays, overthinking,
and miscommunication.

9. Shared Experience Drives Better Execution

Bringing the entire team into the strategy process ensures alignment, shared language,
and stronger buy-in.

10. A 90-Day Roadmap Turns Strategy Into Action

Effective strategy is not theoretical. It results in a clear, actionable plan for the
immediate future.

Great Moments (Timestamps)

• 00:01 – Introduction to a Solo Strategy Discussion
• 01:00 – The Core Problem: Too Much Activity, Not Enough Clarity
• 02:20 – The Hidden Cost of Misalignment
• 03:00 – Real Results From Strategy-First Businesses
• 03:40 – The Myth of “Everyone Is My Customer”
• 04:40 – The Traditional Strategy Process (30-45 Days)
• 06:00 – Introducing Strategy First in One Day
• 07:05 – The Power of Team Alignment in One Room
• 08:00 – What the One-Day Strategy Experience Includes
• 09:00 – Immediate Benefits: Clarity, Alignment, and Focus
• 10:00 – Who This Is For (and Who It’s Not)
• 10:45 – The Real Growth Problem: Lack of Shared Strategy
• 11:00 – Call to Action: Explore Strategy First

Memorable Quotes

“Nobody’s short on marketing activity. The real challenge is they’re short on clarity.”

“If your growth feels messy, the problem usually isn’t effort. It’s the absence of a shared strategy.”

 

 

Some movie scenes don’t just age well, they feel almost untouched by time. While technology evolves rapidly, certain filmmakers managed to create moments so visually striking, so well-crafted, that even decades later, they still rival modern productions. Whether through groundbreaking CGI, practical effects, or masterful direction, these scenes continue to impress new generations of viewers. They’re the kind of sequences you revisit and think, “How does this still look this good?” From epic battles to intimate long takes, here are 15 movie scenes that prove great filmmaking doesn’t expire, it only becomes more iconic with time.

The post 15 Movie Scenes That Still Look Incredible After 20 Years appeared first on Den of Geek.

The braintrusts that have presided over SXSW since nearly its inception have always smiled on the festival for its contrasts. It’s a fest where south meets west, and music meets film, meets technology, meets comedy, meets plain ol’ innovation. And in no other year has that felt more like a lived-in ethos than 2026, which saw everything happening everywhere and all at once (heh).

With the film, TV, music, activation, and cornucopia of other moments all occurring simultaneously in Austin, it was a whirlwind that can nearly overwhelm. Yet the Den of Geek team was there for almost all of it, covering what we can, and bringing it to you in this handy, dandy round-up.

Movies

The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist

At the turn of the century, the world was excited by the prospect of new technology. The internet was a shiny toy, the dot com bubble hadn’t burst, and the iPod (never mind the iPhone) was still a glint in Steve Jobs’ eye. Filmmaker Daniel Kwan and technology ethicist Tristan Harris remember those days as a bit like a lost kingdom. After all, the world it has wrought has very little good cheer left in the public for new tech, especially with the AI revolution that is now commencing.

“With social media, we were not great stewards of that technology and how it rolled out,” Harris observes in the Den of Geek studio. “We created the most anxious and depressed generation of our lifetime, even though some of the people who were building it—the people who started Instagram, they were my dorm mates at Stanford—they didn’t intend for that to happen.” Which raises the question of why should folks have any confidence that many of the same companies and technology leaders will do better with the far more powerful prospect of artificial intelligence.

That conundrum is something which both men are confronting in the new Daniel Roher documentary, The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, which Kwan is also a producer on. As the title suggests, the film examines both the most pessimistic and rosiest predictions for AI’s future, and everything in between. All possibilities are running rampant in Silicon Valley while billion-dollar companies dash madly toward being the first to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Yet the film also interrogates what tools can be put in place to create better stewards in the next generation. As Oscar-winner Kwan notes, “I think Big Tech has broken our social contract that we have as a society with technology. They have used our world as a playground to basically consolidate more power and more resources. The technology that they’re building—even though a lot of the architects and the technicians building this stuff, they have the greatest intentions and the greatest ideals of what this technology can do—the fact that it is being deployed within this current system, within this current incentive structure, it is taking a neutral technology and turning it into an extractive one.” – David Crow

Amazing Live Sea Monkeys

As the large, colorful gates open to Yolanda Signorelli’s Maryland estate, she’s without electricity, feeding woodland creatures tiny crackers – an unexpectedly intimate introduction to the woman at the center of The Amazing Live Sea Monkeys. Directed by Mark Becker and Aaron Schock, the documentary uses the nostalgia of comic books and the ‘60s to showcase an oddly complex legal saga and the history of the beloved “instant life” toy while uncovering lesser-known details about its creator, Harold von Braunhut. At its core is a David-and-Goliath-style battle between Signorelli, often called the “mother of Sea-Monkeys,” and Big Time Toys, which began licensing and distributing the product in 2007.

Through interviews with Signorelli, her lawyer, journalists, former collaborators, and illustrators behind the brand’s imagery, the film tells the story while keeping the people behind it at the center. Signorelli’s love for animals and the sea monkeys shine through all aspects of the film; Schock even told us that revealing the “sea monkey secret formula” was always a concern of Signorelli while filming. Throughout the documentary, Becker and Schock never shy away from examining von Braunhut’s various controversies in vivid detail. At the same time, the filmmakers didn’t want to lump Signorelli and her passion into the worst of what her former husband had done. It was complex, captivating, and perfectly fit for a SXSW premiere. – Darcie Zudell

American Dollhouse

John Valley doesn’t want to reinvent cinema with his movie, American Dollhouse. The story of a struggling woman named Sarah (Hailley Laurèn), who inherits her childhood home only to be beset by unstable neighbor Kelly (Kelsey Pribilski), follows in the tradition of horror greats, including Psycho, Peeping Tom, and Black Christmas. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have bigger things on its mind.

“I’m obsessed with how a slasher can be minimalist, but yet a container for huge, modern ideas,” Valley tells Den of Geek. “I stuck to the conventions and tropes, and kept telling the cast that it’s just a meat and potatoes slasher film, but we also tried to find some new, modern life in it.”

Part of that work fell on Pribilski, who had to embody an adult who has reverted to a childlike state in frightening ways. “I thought about how an eight-year-old acts. They’re a little bit animated because we as adults have learned to contain our emotions,” Pribilski reveals. “It was about knowing when to go bigger. We had to choose very carefully the moments for me to go into ‘grizzly bear’ mode, as John would call it.”

As Pribilski got to play big moments, it fell on her co-star Laurèn to keep things grounded in reality. “Sarah is a full person, and it was important to me that, when she makes a decision, it doesn’t come out of nowhere,” she says. That approach makes Sarah a formidable opponent, even for a killer as strange as Kelly. “Sarah’s a loyal fighter, for herself and the people she loves. She’s not going to just go down.”

Thanks to the work of Pribilski and Lauren, American Dollhouse adds a great new killer and final girl to the slasher tradition. – Joe George

Black Zombie

In a pop culture saturated with zombie shows like The Walking Dead and The Last of Us, many have forgotten the roots of Z-culture. Writer-director Maya Annik Bedward is not one of them. Right down to the title of Black Zombie conjuring the racist shadow of the nearly century-old Hollywood film White Zombie (1932), Bedward’s haunting documentary looks at more than a hundred years of appropriation, reinvention, and evolution of a concept that’s rooted in the vast sweep of African diaspora, and the Black Haitian experience of revolution in particular.

“In Haiti, everyone knows about the zombie, and in Haiti, stories of zombies and zombification are regularly talked about,” says Bedward. “It’s adjacent to vodou, but it’s not an everyday practice. Zombification is these stories of ‘I saw zombies in the field,’ and very connected to these ideas of enslavement.” These are the roots which inspired the white fiction that in turn gave the world their beloved modern flesh-easters. Black Zombie observes, critiques, and even at times celebrates this transition—within limits as the othered monster has increasingly become a symbol for tearing down sinister systems. Or just a fear of the status quo breaking… – DC

Brian 

Multiple castmates in Will Ropp’s directorial debut, Brian, were student body presidents in high school; a connection they didn’t make until SXSW. Ben Wang, who plays the titular character running for student body president to impress his crush, says he drew from his own awkward quirks when portraying the role. Edi Patterson and Randall Park play Wang’s parents, who care a little too much that their son finally made a friend. William H. Macy, who plays Brian’s therapist, talks Brian through his various panic attacks and struggles with mental health that cause him to lose roles in drama club, freak out his classmates, and annoy his friends. Meanwhile, his cool English teacher, portrayed by Natalie Morales, just wants to help Brian develop his party platform without indulging his inappropriate attraction to her. 

It’s a coming of age movie about mental health and the messy aspects of high school, but even more than that, the script by Mike Scollins is effortlessly funny in a way that will have you quoting Patterson’s and Park’s one-liners long after the first watch. Speaking of Patterson and Park, they got to have a lot of fun improvising during some dining room table scenes. Brian’s a good time, but one that will yank its audiences’ right back to high school in a visceral and emotional way.  – DZ 

Chasing Summer

Directed by Josephine Decker and written by leading lady, Iliza Shlesinger, Chasing Summer is a romantic comedy that is sexy, realistic, and overwhelmingly nostalgic. 

Jamie (Shlesinger) returns to her Texas hometown after a breakup, shocked to find that while the small hamlet may look the same, the people within it have changed. She picks up her old job at the roller rink, now owned by her sister (Cassidy Freeman), and meets Harper (Lola Tung), her young co-worker. Harper convinces Jamie to attend a party, where she meets a much younger Colby (Garrett Wareing). The two pursue a questionable fling while Jamie rekindles relationships with old high school classmates, including her ex-boyfriend, Chase (Tom Welling). The rest of the story is a sticky recreation of summer love that invokes the refreshing feeling of stepping into AC.

At times predictable, the film also has moments of shock, including a soap-opera-level reveal that will leave middle-aged women everywhere swooning. It is a retrospective on summers of days past, and the inevitability of moving on. It’s conventional, easy, and delivers the promise of a classic romcom. – Alexandra Hopkins

Crash Land 

What happens when a group of amateur stuntmen try to make a “real movie” so they can prove their worth to a town that hates them? Crash Land, directed by Dempsey Bryk, answers that very question. 

“It came out of COVID,” Bryk says. “I was stuck with my brother and my entire family… living behind the couches in the living room, as you do, and I was watching this Jackass marathon on loop and the idea blossomed out of there.” The film evokes classics of the genre – think Napoleon Dynamite, Superbad, and Bottle Rocket – against a Canadian backdrop of charming chaos. 

“There was a process of trying to make it not like anything else after being so inspired your entire life by the things you love, and then you have to try to find your own voice,” Bryk says. 

As Crash Land follows this group of boys becoming men one wipeout at a time, it simultaneously tells another coming of age story. The spirit behind Crash Land is the much more successful story of Dempsey Bryk and his brother Billy, who plays the emotional catalyst of the movie. Through his influence, the characters crash and land in a world that is fun, endearing, and unexpectedly touching. – Sophia Rooksberry 

Drag

Horror movies often tend to revolve around similar, oftentimes outlandish, concepts: A deranged killer, a disturbing monster, a haunted setting. But Drag, the debut feature film from Raviv Ullman and Greg Yagolnitzer, finds a scary story in an everyday, all-too-human problem. Yes, it’s a movie that’s really about the terrifying specter of lower back pain. 

The film stars Lizzy Caplan and Lucy DeVito as a pair of frequently-at-odds siblings who find themselves in increasing trouble during a house robbery gone wrong. When one of the pair throws their back out mid-heist, the other must help her escape by dragging her from the house’s upstairs bathroom down to the waiting car. Painfully uncomfortable (and often downright grisly) acts of body horror ensue, with plenty of gross-out details in full close-up even as they discover that the man they’ve come to rob is not everything he appears to be. – Lacy Baugher

Drift 

SXSW needs an Action Documentary screening section solely for Drift to exist in. Described by director Deon Taylor as a real life Catch Me If You Can, the documentary stars real-life action hero Isaac Wright as he recounts his career going to unprecedented heights for his art.

“The documentary is a lot more than just my artwork,” Wright says. “It has to do with my life and what I feel like my artwork really represents and a full portrait of what I think the goal of life is.” 

Under the artist name Drift, he climbs to the very top of the country’s tallest buildings capturing the most breathtaking and adrenaline-spiking photos, slowly working toward his dream of summiting the Empire State Building. 

“We went to the Instagram and these beautiful photos are just so captivating that it’s really overwhelming, and wondering why the hell he’s up there and what he’s doing was my initial reaction,” Roxanne Avent Taylor, the film’s producer, says. 

The documentary answers those questions in an exploration of the human spirit, as the occasional illegality of Drift’s climbs resulted in a multi-year battle with law enforcement across multiple states. 

“I believed that everyone could connect to the human story based on the fact that we’ve all been through something,” Taylor says. “We’ve all been misrepresented or someone has tried to tear down your character in some way.” 

On its surface, Drift is an action thriller come to life. At its core, Drift is a tear-jearking testament to a freedom that only the birds and the film’s namesake have experienced. – SR

Family Movie

When watching Family Movie, a chipper-oddball indie directed by Kevin Bacon and starring Kevin Bacon, as well as wife Kyra Sedgwick, daughter Sosie Bacon, and son Travis Bacon, one gets the sense that this is not what a real family flick with the Bacons would look like. At least you’d hope so! But given how mirthful this splatter-comedy is when their fictional doppelgängers are forced to deal with a murderer on the set of their horror movie-within-a-horror movie, you nonetheless feel like you’re sitting across from the gang during a lively game night.

“I think the movie definitely reflects on all our personalities individually and how we relate to each other,” Travis explains. “There’s definitely some little moments like that, but we’re still acting.”

Kevin later adds that screenwriter Dan Beers was able to collect some surprisingly accurate depictions of interpersonal dynamics after interviewing them each separately. Says the director: “When we got the first draft of the script, we were like, ‘Holy shit, how did you know that?!’ And it’s not like it’s pieces of dirt… it’s just ways of being.” – DC

Forbidden Fruits

A title like Forbidden Fruits suggests a heavy drama, thick with Biblical overtones and meditations on the nature of sin. Yet, one look at the new movie starring Lili Reinhart as the leader of a witch cult of mall girls promises the exact opposite, presenting itself as a spunky horror comedy.

However, according to director Meredith Alloway, religion weighs heavily on the story. “I love the idea that women are told that we’re quite literally the origin of evil and sin,” Alloway tells Den of Geek, a theme that goes all the way to the source material, the play “Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die” by Lily Houghton, who cowrote the screenplay with Alloway. 

Alloway continues, “When I read the play, I see all these women reclaiming that. Witchcraft and being in a coven are ways to make that narrative ours. I think when women get together and set an intention, whether it’s magic or literally just talking at a sleepover, that is really powerful.”

As Apple, Reinhart gathers a team of women to join her coven, including Lola Tung as Pumpkin, Victoria Pedretti as Cherry, and Alexandra Shipp as Fig,” all characters who are more than they initially appear. 

“No one’s playing a stereotype,” says Pedretti. “There are a lot of cues that might lead you to misjudge these women before you get to know them. Each character ends up surprising the audience with their humanity.”

“I think we all play very complex human individuals who just so happen to be born in a female body in this lifetime, who are trying to navigate the structures of our world,” adds Shipp.

In other words, the characters are richer and more complicated than one might think, just like Forbidden Fruits itself. – JG

The Fox 

Ever wanted to get in bed with a fox voiced by Olivia Colman? Well, Jai Courtney got to in Dario Russo’s The Fox, a magical realism comedy about what happens when people try to change themselves for their partners. Emily Browning reluctantly agrees to marry Courtney’s character, Nick, while secretly having an affair with her boss (Damon Herriman), who is also cheating on his wife (Claudia Doumit). In an effort to win their partner back, Nick listens to a fox he was moments away from killing in the woods, leading all the characters down a hole where they literally lose themselves. 

Russo directed, wrote, and scored The Fox, so naturally he had a very specific vision for the fantasy and comedy elements of the film. Russo says he finds it really annoying when characters in films deliver an over-exaggerated reaction to talking animals, so in this universe, talking foxes are the least out-of-the-ordinary thing. Though they didn’t really act alongside Colman, Doumit and Browning were obsessed with her narration; Browning says she listened to a recording of Colman’s voice acting over and over again on a run one time. The film is as ambitious as it is mystical, but it never loses its ability to make fun of the chaos and camp of it all. – DZ

He Bled Neon

With all its neon lights and gleeful indulgence of vice, Las Vegas has always made for a popular movie setting. Still, Vegas-native and He Bled Neon producer Nate Bolotin felt there was a certain kind of movie that Sin City had not yet played host to. 

“Twenty years ago, my step brother and best friend passed away. I got a text message from a mutual friend, just like how it happens in the movie actually, and had to go back and bury him and reconnect with the people that I had lost touch with. Someone came up to me at the funeral and said ‘hey, I think there’s some foul player here’ but we never went too deep. Fifteen years later or so it just clicked: we haven’t seen a Vegas revenge noir thriller in a world outside the Vegas strip.”

True to Bolotin’s real life experiences, He Bled Neon picks up with successful businessman Ethan (Joe Cole) receiving the fateful text and returning home to Las Vegas where he reconnects with his old crew (which includes characters played by Marshawn Lynch, Rita Ora, and Ismael Cruz Cordova) and begins to unpack the mystery of his brother Darren’s (Paul Wesley) death.

He Bled Neon aces the set-up, largely thanks to the colorful sensibilities of director Drew Kirsch and electronic soundscapes of composers Joe Trapanese and DJ Zhu. Once the revenge plot moves into the desert and grimy environs outside the strip, however, the film loses its distinctive sense of place and settles into a disappointingly conventional crime story. – Alec Bojalad

Hokum

Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy became a SXSW Midnighter hero when 2024’s Oddity took home the festival’s Audience Award. Now he’s returned to Austin with some extra star power in tow. The horror auteur’s next spooky effort, Hokum, stars Severance’s Adam Scott as Ohm Bauman, an American novelist who absconds to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes and finish his latest book. Of course, it just so happens that this particular inn contains a honeymoon suite that is said to be haunted by an ancient witch…

Speaking of hauntings, Hokum’s first act is haunted by a weak characterization of Scott’s Ohm, whose lifetime of unaddressed grief has apparently manifested itself as a need to be a real dick. Once the movie gives way to the charismatic actor’s charm and McCarthy begins to flex his horror muscles, the back half blossoms into a pleasingly macabre experience. It’s also quite dark. Literally. 

“It’s dark in the film, and it was literally dark when we were in there making it,” Scott told Den of Geek. “It was pretty clear that this was going to be unsettling. As an actor, since your control is limited, you never know really how something is going to turn out at the end of the day. Having so much faith in Damian and seeing all the components they put together on set, I knew there was a chance that this could work.”  And indeed Hokum does work. – AB

I Love Boosters

Three projects into his burgeoning film career, it’s fair to say that Boots Riley has developed a house style. For a lesser creative, that level of one-note fixation might begin to grow stale. Thankfully, the marriage of the surreal with leftist politics is a note that this rapper, songwriter, and record-producer-turned-filmmaker knows how to play quite well. And he continues to do so in I Love Boosters.

Keke Palmer stars as Corvette, an aspiring fashion designer who ekes out a living as a “booster,” pinching high-end textiles and selling them to her neighborhood at a discount. Together with her friends Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige), Corvette sets her booster sights on high-end fashion entrepreneur Christie Smith (Demi Moore) to close the fashion gap between the haves and have-nots.

Like Sorry to Bother You before it, I Love Boosters’ premise is merely a jumping off point for all the vivid imagery and offbeat twists to come. The movie that a ticket-buyer expects to see at minute 0 is very much not the movie they experience by minute 60 or so. Unlike Sorry to Bother You, however, Boosters’ absurdist twist isn’t a completely out-of-left-field human-animal hybrid situation but a far more mundane science fiction tool that we won’t spoil. Despite the relatively conventional sci-fi trappings of its back half, I Love Boosters feels satisfyingly anarchic and bizarre all the way through. – AB

Imposters 

The idea of changelings, body snatchers, or other false creatures that are somehow swapped into existing families without any of their members being the wiser is nightmare fuel from time immemorial. Imposters takes this idea and runs with it, crafting a story that wrestles with ideas of parenthood, commitment, and fear. 

The film stars Jessica Rothe and Charlie Barnett as Paul and Marie, a couple forced to contend with any parent’s worst nightmare when their baby mysteriously disappears. While everyone is convinced the resident Town Creep is responsible, Marie’s not so sure, and when she turns to the mysterious Orson (Bates Wilder) for help, he sends her to a mysterious cave in the woods. But the child Marie brings back from the forest may not be the son she lost.

A genre-bending film that’s full of the sort of twists even seasoned moviegoers will likely not see coming, that explores the all-too-human pain of love and loss through a filter that’s covered with no small amount of blood. – LB

Kill Me

At first glance, Kill Me seems to ask the question, “What if Charlie Kelly woke up in a bathtub of his own blood?” But with a deeply emotional and revelatory performance from Charlie Day, the horror-dramedy becomes so much more. Sure, our main character, Jimmy, lives in a dingy apartment a la Charlie and Frank, and his frenetic energy while trying to solve his own murder attempt harkens back to a Pepe Silvia obsession… but that’s not a bad thing. The audience is immediately comforted by the familiarity of Day’s impeccable comedic timing right before adjusting to the sobering reality that his character has a history of trying to take his own life—making him the perfect choice to carry the emotional weight of this film. 

Jimmy meets his match in Allison Williams’ 911 operator, Margot. She grounds both him and a film that turns into an unlikely whodunit. Williams has also become something of a scream queen over the last decade (starring in Get Out, M3GAN, The Perfection), but pure horror this film is not. Similarly to Day, she brings the authenticity and depth needed to be Jimmy’s “straight man” as she navigates the hijinks of solving a maybe-murder while healing from her own trauma. 

It’s a feat to address subject matter as serious as suicide while ensuring the audience knows they’re allowed to laugh—and a lot for that matter. Director Peter Warren tactfully displays both ends of the spectrum that people with mental illness can experience: the dramatics of suicide attempts but also the mundanity of ordering the same meal every day for months. In his own words, “Depression and mental illness are incredibly dangerous but can also be dumb and annoying. It’s like stepping on a rake a million times in your head.” – Britt Migs

Lainey Wilson: Keepin’ Country Cool

Amy Scott is the director behind Counting Crows: Have You Seen Me Lately? and Sheryl, proving an affinity for documentary storytelling about some of the music industry’s most iconic names. Now, she is bringing the story of modern country idol Lainey Wilson to Netflix.

Lainey Wilson: Keepin’ Country Cool is set to premiere globally on April 22. It follows the country star on her ascent to major stardom while traveling the country on the “Country’s Cool Again Tour” in 2024. 

“After a while, it was apparent that we weren’t chasing the tour, we were chasing Lainey,” Scott says. “Her life is all over the place. Her life is not a straight line, so we just tried to hold onto that mechanical bull ride.” 

While being jostled around the country and holding on for dear life, Scott and her team discovered the heart of Wilson’s music and her musical persona. Not only are her powerful vocals and charisma emblematic of industry titans like Dolly Parton, but her compassion and grit are what give her music, and this documentary, their spirit. 

“Vulnerablilty can come in many different flavors,” Scott says. “It can be vulnerability about struggles, but vulnerability also is when you can be funny and have a really unguarded, self-deprecating nature, and we realized early on that (Lainey) is really, really funny.”

Throughout the documentary, Wilson is seen constantly songwriting when she isn’t rehearsing or performing. She has spent her career banking songs for upcoming records, using her determination and open heart as fodder for the future of her skyrocketing career; Scott’s latest project delivers all of these details in a way that is careful, exciting, and, of course, incredibly cool. – SR

Leviticus

The land down under has long been a reliable source of uniquely upsetting films, from Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) to Lake Mungo (2008), but Australian horror has enjoyed a renaissance as of late, thanks to hits such as The Babadook (2014) and Talk to Me (2022). 

Director Adrian Chiarella continues that tradition with his debut, Leviticus, which stars Joe Bird of Talk to Me and Stacy Clausen as two gay teens forced to participate in a conversion ritual by a fundamentalist pastor. The ritual releases a malevolent entity that takes the form of the person the victim most desires, which, for the boys, is one another.

“When I started thinking about things that were personal to me as a gay man, I knew that homophobia was something that I wanted to tackle in a film,” Chiarella tells Den of Geek. “There’s a clue in the word: homophobia is a fear. So I started digging deeper into what that might look like through the lens of this genre.”

The stars of Leviticus followed Chiarella’s lead by playing the reality of their characters’ plight. “I think that horror films are, in a way, dramas with horror elements because the emotions are so real and raw,” observes Bird. “It’s not like I was filming a horror film in one scene and a romance film in others. These were just real, natural people going through this experience.”

Chiarella adds, “I knew the horror element wouldn’t work unless you were really invested in the connection between these two lead characters.” To that end, he sent Bird and Clausen out on various field trips to build their characters. Those trips included visits to the country because, like any other good piece of Australian horror, the terror in Leviticus comes from the landscape. – JG

Mam

Part of the appeal of film festivals like SXSW is the chance for audiences to take in both mid-budget blockbusters bound for big theaters and the indie-est indies that ever indie-d. Projects like Over Your Dead Body and I Love Boosters occupy the former space on 2026’s SXSW roster. Mam is very much part of the latter. 

Directed by Nan Feix, Mam is an unabashed love letter to Vietnamese cuisine, New York’s Chinatown, and love itself. It’s also a novel blend of fictional narrative and documentary. While Mam is fully scripted, it recounts the real life story of chef Jerald Head as he moves to New York from Texas and tries to make it in the culinary world. Playing Head and his wife and business partner Nhung Dao Head are Head and Nhung themselves, who now own and operate Mắm on Forsyth Street. 

Shot in a scant 16 days (usually after a shift at the restaurant, Head revealed in a post-screen Q&A), Mam wears its lowkey indie status on its sleeve. The rough-around-the-edge film is unlikely to have a second life outside of Austin. But for 81 pleasant minutes, it made festival-goers in Alamo Drafthouse’s auditorium 5 very, very hungry. – AB

Manhood

What is likely to earn points as the most unusual and eyebrow-raising documentary at this year’s festival (or perhaps almost any other) is Daniel Lombroso’s Manhood, a sober look at the growing popularity of “male enhancement” cosmetic procedures (read: penis enlargement). It’s a subject ripe for ridicule or late night comedy, and yet the film takes a clinical lens that flits between aloof and sympathetic, depending on the interviewee. All are part of a larger line, though, of dudes willing to sell their house or risk their mortgages to increase their girth.

Astutely setting the film primarily in the Dallas and Miami areas of the South, Lombroso pulls at a thread from a previous documentary—his depressingly prescient study of the then fringe elements of the alt-right in the Atlantic’s White Noise (2020)—to draw a link between the manosphere culture of supplemental pills and Joe Rogan-like podcasts, and a lot of the guys desperate to add a few inches at any cost. Yet there’s perhaps a bit more empathy for the younger and more vulnerable parties who get taken for a ride and permanently disfigured by grifters with white coats and needles stuffed with filler.

The film could draw a stronger link in its thesis between the modern culture that its title obviously evokes and the guys on the table, but it finds both pathos and condemnation to varying degrees for alleged “medical” predators, and the type of souls who end up thinking they need to have this procedure done. One wishes to spend more time with the partners who often shrug they don’t even care. – DC

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice

Writer-director BenDavid Grabinski might have been too young to make movies in the ‘90s, but he was definitely watching them. And nowadays he appears to be determined to bring a flavor of them back, complete with a hard-swaggering, high-concept genre exercise starring Vince Vaughn at his most confident. A movie about gangsters, parties, and time travel, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is a bit like if Swingers, Go, and Back to the Future had a half-forgotten love child who we’re now only meeting as an adult. And that’s meant as a compliment.

As the title suggests, this is a love triangle served in four parts after gangster Nick (Vaughn) time travels about half a year into the past in order to stop his slightly younger self (also Vaughn) from murdering their best friend Mike (James Marsden) for the affair he’s carrying on with Nick’s unhappy wife, Alice (Eiza González). It’s a gonzo premise that is treated with just enough seriousness to give meat to the idea of considering second chances—whether through the magic of a proverbial “undo” button,  or where you’d even want to hit it to fix a bad mistake. As González notes in our studio, “I always connect with moving forward. I think there’s something beautiful about the chaos. Some of the craziest, most beautiful things that happened in my life have come from real terrible circumstances and bad moments”

Still, in its heart, this movie is all about the vibes, as indicated by its structure being based around the “PARTY,” “AFTERPARTY,” and “AFTER-AFTER-AFTERPARTY” which its main quartet crashes while trading barbs in a screenplay with more wisecracks than there are bullets. And trust us, this movie has a whole lotta bullets. It’s bravado and muscular mischief and suggests Grabinski is one to watch. – DC

My Brother’s Killer

This documentary solves a murder case gone cold. My Brother’s Killer, directed by Rachel Mason, traces the 36 years since the brutal murder of 25-year-old William “Billy London” Arnold Newton in West Hollywood. 

This film captures the violence, trauma, and grief gay men experienced during the AIDS epidemic, as well as their resilience. Through archival material and dozens of interviews with those connected to the case, including her own mother, Mason uncovers shocking information.

“It was a terribly violent time and I think that’s another undocumented part of gay history,” Mason says. “Sadly, it is hard to always focus on the negativity and sadness, and the resilience of gay culture is the most amazing thing. In the sea of death, you also have this vibrancy, and I really wanted to showcase that. It doesn’t always have to be dark, the fight can be joyful in a strange way.”

Billy was an adult filmmaker, poet, and illustrative artist—he was also deeply loved by the people around him, a feeling evident throughout the documentary. This documentary is more than a true crime film, it showcases the struggle of representation and provides recognition and closure for those involved. – AH

Normal

Full disclosure: We were not able to actually see director Ben Wheatley and screenwriter Derek Kolstad’s new action movie starring Bob Odenkirk—the deceptively titled Normal—in Austin. However, we were able to speak with all three men, who have described the movie as a kind of inversion of High Noon. In that classic Western, Gary Cooper stood alone as a sheriff willing to face up bad men while all the people who loved him turned their backs in fear.

“It’s ultimately taking those themes, the sense and the appeal, and wrapping it around small-town Americana,” Kolstad observes about their new film. But it’s also doing so in a modern context with the America of today, setting the stage for an action spectacle apropos of the scribe behind John Wick.

For his part, director Wheatley appreciates that he has brought a British sensibility to the proceedings, saying, “An outsider’s perspective is always interesting. Not to say it’s better than worse from any other point-of-view, but I think there’s a long history of people coming from the outside to film the States and to see it with different eyes.” It also might be befitting of the neo-Western. While genre icon John Wayne famously detested High Noon back in the day, refusing to believe a small town wouldn’t support a good man in need, Normal’s viewers might be much more open to the idea. As Odenkirk quips, “He should meet some small towns.”

Over Your Dead Body

When it comes to filmmaking, the concept of “escalation” can be just as important as acting, scripting, or even turning the damn cameras on in the first place. Few movies at the 2026 SXSW Film Festival understand the importance of raising the stakes better than action comedy thriller Over Your Dead Body. 

Based on the 2021 Norwegian film The Trip and directed by The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone, all Over Your Dead Body knows how to do is escalate. Things start relatively simple with husband and wife Dan and Lisa (Shrinking’s Jason Segel and Ready or Not’s Samara Weaving) repairing to a remote cabin upstate to save their dying marriage… and also to kill each other. Dan and Lisa’s murderous plans are complicated by a cascade of interlopers and extenuating circumstances, leading to mass amounts of blood, gore, and perhaps even some rekindled romance. 

Over Your Dead Body’s commitment to ratcheting absurdity means that its first act runs a bit dry. But once two prison escapees (Timothy Olyphant, Keith Jardine) and their guard conspirator (Juliette Lewis) enter the narrative, the movie really gets rolling and never looks back. And like any good partnership, Segel and Weaving excel in dabbling in the other’s home turf of horror and comedy, respectively. 

“I’m just so proud to have made a remake that I feel like has teeth,” Taccone says. “It’s dark, it’s fucked up, and it’s more gory than the original, weirdly. It has its own tone, and I just feel very proud that we could make something that I like equally to the original.” – AB

Pizza Movie

In a shameless throwback to the stoner comedies of the 2000s, Pizza Movie is the type of slouched and underachieving good time that is destined to best be seen in a crowded theater or even rowdier dorm room. Which isn’t to say it’s dumb. Writers-directors Nick Kocher and Brian McEllhaney take some boldly clever swings in their high-concept (ahem) where a couple of college screw-ups (Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone) indulge in an experimental drug they find in their dorm room. However, the thing has such potent magical properties, it not only gets them high but causes them to break the space-time continuum with time-loops and fourth-wall breaks. They’re like a pair of blitzed Punxsutawney co-eds.

The only cure? Pizza, of course, which is down in the lobby if they can get down there in time—or face severe consequences. It’s a deliberately, heavily-baked concept, which Kocher describes as based on a true story. “In college, we had the idea. Everyone’s ordered food when they’re not fully sober and it’s difficult.” You can say that again, dude. – DC

Power Ballad

It is said that success is the child of many fathers while failure is an orphan. But that doesn’t mean every papa gets the credit they deserve, particularly in fields as competitive (and lucrative) as songwriting. Such is the appealing conceit of John Carney’s latest bittersweet laugher that looks into the music business with as much affection as there is contempt. They, in fact, walk hand-in-hand when Paul Rudd’s washed up wedding singer Rick meets Nick Jonas’ former boy band heartthrob searching for reinvention, Danny. The two jam and jive during a joyous night over drinks in Ireland, including when Rick shows a few of the pieces he’s working on, particularly a poignant ballad that’s only missing a bridge.

Six months later, the song has it, as does Danny who’s introduced it to the world as an instant sensation—and as a piece of musical magic he wrote solo. A bit of a music industry “Book of Job,” where Rudd’s hurt and aggrieved Rick must deal with the eye-rolls and second-guessing of nearly everyone in his life, from his bandmates to even his wife and daughter. There’s a lot of humor in the scenario, but plenty of pathos as Rudd gives one of the finest performances of his career. He’s a man losing his sanity and his even-keel, to the point where he must travel from the Emerald Isle to the City of Angels. – DC

Pretty Lethal

The loftiness of chasing perfection, and the physical demand of what many consider the highest performing art, has always made ballet a compelling subject for filmmakers. Storytellers often wish to track the psychic or physiological toll of achieving révérence—or at least contrasting it with gonzo, blood-splattered spectacle. Pretty Lethal attempts both in a daffy B-crowdpleaser that essentially Die Hards five prima ballerinas when they’re trapped in an eastern European den of iniquity run by a vamping Uma Thurman. 

The movie gets a lot of mileage out of its balletic heroines being decidedly not John McClane (or Ana de Armas in a John Wick movie, for that matter). Instead, they nervously use their on pointe routine to “Waltz of the Flowers” for a blood-soaked defense in a bar involving knives, shattered wine bottles, and knives in the slippers. Says star Maddie Ziegler, “We sort of came up with a style we’re calling ballet-fu, which was really fun. Because we referenced if you put a bunch of feral cats in a box, that was what we were doing to survive. But I think we used our strengths to our advantage,” complete by combining the input of stunt coordinators and ballet choreographers. Grace is harmony. – DC

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

In an age of so-called “elevated” and sober-minded horror cinema, it is a blessing from Mr. Le Bail that we have Radio Silence ready to turn up the gore and fun. The filmmaking collective behind Ready or Not, Abigail, and the best Scream movies made in this century return to their own blood-red haunts and splash new buckets of crimson in the delightfully sinister Ready or Not 2. Like its predecessor, this is a grinning romp suffused with eat-the-rich gallows humor as we revisit the Bride in the splattered dress (Samara Weaving) mere moments after she parted brutally with her groom for good. (He was in the process of trying to sacrifice her to Satan. As apparently one does in country estates.)

Unfortunately for Grace, there are plenty of other Devil-worshipping billionaires out there. It turns out to be a blessing for the audience, though, as she inevitably slaughters them alongside sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) during a new hide-and-seek game at a country club that looks suspiciously like Mar-a-Lago. As director Gillett acknowledges, “All of the institutions that we engage with, if you follow them fall enough, you’re probably going to find some form of corruption.”

The movie doesn’t quite reach the same highs as the first movie since we know the punchline this time, but the climax at an elite Satanic altar is every bit as giddy as the combustible billionaires last time, and Samara Weaving still knows how to deliver a killing parting shot. – DC

The Saviors

Filmmakers don’t get to choose whether their films will be “timely” or not. Movies take a long time to make and time itself, as you might have noticed, has a tendency to Inexorably March On. Rarely has there ever been a better case study of that phenomenon than the unusually (and completely accidentally) timely comedy thriller The Saviors. 

Adam Scott and Danielle Deadwyler star as Sean and Kim, a couple in a failing marriage who look to supplement their income by renting their shed to Amir and Jahan – a brother and sister from an undisclosed Middle Eastern nation played by Theo Rossi and Nazanin Boniadi. While Amir and Jahan seem nice, they’re also suspiciously interested in the president of the United States’ whereabouts and appear to be building some sort of dangerous device. But this can’t be what Sean and Kim think it is, right? They’re not bigots and this isn’t a mediocre season of 24… right?

Due to a confluence of events like a pandemic, two Hollywood work stoppages, and the general improbability of getting a movie produced at all, The Saviors took 10 years to make from conception to premiere. And in that 10 years, the world shifted away from Obama-era progressive optimism to a more overt return to Islamophobia with the United States even entering war with Iran just two weeks before the film’s premiere.  

“You know, there was a period in those 10 years when I thought the world had changed a bit, and maybe we should focus on a different project,” director and co-writer Kevin Hamedani says. “And then the world changed again, and suddenly The Saviors is even more timely, unfortunately.”

The Saviors’ incidental resonance to current events only enhances what is already a compelling narrative. Scott and Deadwyler shine as two ostensibly progressive individuals who need answers but don’t want to seem like Bradley Whitford’s “I’d have voted for Obama a third time if I could” character in Get Out. Hamedani and the script deftly guide the audience through those choppy waters, always leaving enough breadcrumbs so that the viewer doesn’t fully feel like Bradley Whitford either. The end result is a nifty little thriller that feels like The ‘Burbs for the Airbnb age. – AB

Seekers of Infinite Love

Though Seekers of Infinite Love may one day be a cult comedy, right now it’s literally a comedy about a cult… but also about family

Hannah Einbinder (Hacks), John Reynolds (Search Party), and Griffin Gluck (American Vandal) star as a trio of siblings who must rescue their sister from the clutches of the Peoples Temple-esque the Seekers of Infinite Love. Helping them on their mission is ex cult member-turned-cult deprogrammer Rick (Justin Theroux) and his wardrobe of tactical vests. 

According to writer/director Victoria Strouse, Seekers’ cult angle emerged unexpectedly late in the writing process of the script, which was featured on 2008’s Black List.

“I’m utterly fascinated by siblings and I think some of the complexities in sibling relationships, [it] kind of ends up talking so much about all human relationships,” she says. “As I was working on it, I became really interested in cults, this idea of a secondary but corrupt family.”

That fascination with family shines through with Einbinder, Reynolds, and Gluck evoking a believably agitated sibling unit, if not a believably genetic one with their diverse mix of heights and hair colors. While the end result could have used a little more cult whackiness to fully live up to its comedic potential, it’s hard to be disappointed with time spent on a road trip to oblivion with four very funny actors. – AB 

See You When I See You

Before 2025’s SXSW title The Baltimorons, indie filmmaking titan Jay Duplass had not directed a movie since 2012’s The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, opting to help shepherd other storytellers’ visions alongside his brother and producing partner Mark Duplass. But when fellow producing family Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon brought the script for See You When I See You his way, he knew he had to get behind the camera once again. “It just felt big and scary and like I couldn’t say no,” he says. 

It’s easy to see why the project appealed to Duplass. Written by comedian Adam Cayton-Holland, and based on his memoir Tragedy Plus Time, See You When I See You is an intensely personal story about Cayton-Holland’s PTSD following the death of his sister by suicide. Cooper Raiff (director and star of Cha Cha Real Smooth) steps in as the film’s Cayton-Holland analogue, Aaron, and does marvelous work unpacking the young man’s confused journey through grief.

Outside of some creative visual choices representing Aaron’s struggle to reclaim happy memories of his sister, See You When I See You doesn’t have much new to say about the grieving process. Ultimately though, that’s a feature, not a bug, as the rhythms of pain should resonate with anyone who has experienced real tragedy. Even if those experiences involve significantly less Third-Eye Blind and Sum 41 than Aaron’s. – AB

Sender

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever been sent in the mail? The answer to that question can range from the mundane—a gardening hat you didn’t order—to the truly bizarre. Actor David Dastmalchian, for one, tells us he was mailed dirty underwear more than once by an anonymous…. fan? “It was accompanied by a really bizarre letter,” the actor grimaces.

That’s obviously immediately creepy, yet writer-director Russell Goldman’s Sender takes an initially more innocuous stance before turning the screws. And according to Goldman, this too is based on real-life. “[Folks will] send you cheap objects that are related, most likely, to your search history online and any cookies or data can take from what you’re looking like. They send it to your home so they can write reviews in your name that are five stars, so those products can then get a boost on the algorithms.”

Sender takes that conceit to its most ominous, Hitchockian extreme when Britt Lower’s Julia receives a mysterious package from an even more mysterious, and threatening, source. – DC

Sinner Supper Club

Described as a “gay mumblecore ghost story” directors of Sinner Supper Club, Daisy Rosato and Nora Kaye, deliver exactly what is promised. Shot on an iPhone within six days and rooted in improvisation, the film is a scrappy documentation of a NYC-based friend group on the fritz during a heat wave. 

Gathered in a small apartment for Genevieve’s (Genevieve Simon) “eviction funeral,” tensions arise amidst the group over things big and small. On top of navigating their shared-traumatic experience, the death of a best friend, nothing seems to go right — a melted ice cream cake, the power going out, and worst of all, an uninvited partner is brought to the gathering. The night culminates in an unexpected, yet restorative, paranormal experience. 

Sinner Supper Club explores the surrealness of grief from an intrinsically queer perspective. It delivers comedic beats and moments of grief with the fluidity of a high-budget film. While there are moments of hesitance from the actors, the ensemble cast delivers a performance where you feel dropped in the middle of their hangout. – AH

They Will Kill You

The idea for They Will Kill You blossomed after director Kirill Sokolov stayed in an eerie hotel that he believed to be inhabited by a cult of old women. The fictionalized and much gorier version stars Zazie Beetz as the new housekeeper at a decadent hotel with a history of mysterious disappearances. As Sokolov brings her violent journey through the mysterious building to the big screen, the company explores countless genres, from mystery to slapstick to fantasy. 

“Kirill was always reminding us that yes, there’s action, and yes, there’s comedy, but also, at least for me, the most important thing was the truth at the moment,” Myha’la, who plays Beetz’s sister, says. “Then, if it feels truthful and honest and real to me and us in this moment, the comedy is going to come in the edit.” 

The highlight of the movie is the performances from actors like Patricia Arquette, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, and the aforementioned sister duo. They expertly balance multiple styles and tropes, giving the movie an edge in an arguably oversaturated genre.  

“It is genre-defying because it is a love story about two sisters, and that’s really at the core of everything, and then you mix in the brilliant Kung Fu and gore and martial arts and heroism,” Felton says. “It’s a unique blend. I don’t think a film has ever been made quite like this.” – SR 

Time and Water

“The future we were warned about is no longer distant, it is here.” This is the message that Oscar-nominated director Sara Dosa shares in her newest documentary Time and Water. Through archival material and the writings of Icelandic author, Andri Snær Magnason, Dosa puts together an expansive story focused on generational memory and humanity’s relationship with nature. 

Centered on Magnason’s own family ties, Time and Water captures the vast existence of Icelandic glaciers and the tremendous loss felt by the author as he witnesses the disappearance of these titans, and the passing of his grandparents. The audience is transported through the passing of time and experiences the indelible impression humans make on the world and people around them.  

“There is something radical about love, especially in a time that is so polarizing,” Dosa says. “Wherever we can center love and joy amid the doom and the apocalyptic stories abound, I think it could inspire hope…I think it can give a sense of a light in the dark to keep people working toward the change that we so badly need.” 

Time and Water is a stark wake-up call, not only to protect the planet we call home, but to cherish our time with loved ones. The future is now, and Dosa captures the course we took to get here. – AH

Wishful Thinking

It sometimes feels impossible to be happy—even with someone you love—when there’s so much bad news in the world. So imagine the pressure Julia and Charlie (Maya Hawke and Lewis Pullman) are under in Wishful Thinking, a supremely clever and wholesome romantic comedy where the fate of Portland, Oregon, if not the world, rests on the straining romance of two young people at a crossroads in their life. As it slowly dawns on them, when things are good in their domestic life, Julia is suddenly up for a promotion at work, and Charlie’s crypto investments are skyrocketing. When they’re unhappy with each other, literal earthquakes can occur.

It’s a shrewd use of magical realism to entertain wish fulfillment—like literally getting rich off crypto after a particularly sexy date night—but also comment on the pressures we put on each other in the modern world, particularly for those who are as socially entangled and plugged in as the film’s Gen-Z antiheroes. It’s an indie rom-com about the challenge of early adult romances, complete with a big swing ending. But it finds an innovative way to engage these elements, especially when Hawke and Pullman are simpatico—and perhaps even more so when they’re not. – DC

Woodstockers

We were delighted to welcome film and TV mainstay Corbin Bernsen back to the Den of Geek Studio at SXSW to chat about his indie TV pilot, Woodstockers. This time, Bernsen–who is the showrunner, writer, and star– was joined by his son, Oliver, who directed the pilot episode (he also had a feature-length directorial debut, Bagworm, play at the festival).

The delightfully funny dramedy puts the audience in the headspace of an aging hippie confronting life, death, and a bygone era and its legacy set against scenic upstate New York. Our conversation was introspective as the Bernsen’s grappled with deep conversations on set, Corbin’s own career journey, which launched during that period in 1967, and their excitement for independent filmmaking in the television space. Their commitment to the form paid off: Woodstockers took home an Audience award. Now that’s Flower Power. – Chris Longo

Television

Are We Still Married?

Indie TV pilot Are We Still Married? stars Dustin Milligan as Jack, a husband who has been turned into a vampire via a bite from a mysterious bat, and Taylor Misiak as Laura, his wife who isn’t sure whether we should let him back in the house. While that is undoubtedly a bold genre concept, the inspiration for the story came from a real life experience for writer/director Kit Steinkellner (who also created the Facebook Watch series Sorry For Your Loss).

“My husband did get bit by a bat,” she tells Den of Geek. “It was that kind of crazy thing that doesn’t happen except when it does. He got a rabies shot and was OK. I don’t know how you process trauma in your marriage but comedic bits are our go-to. So we just started cracking vampire jokes. At a certain point, he was like ‘but if I were a vampire, you would let me back in the house, right?’ I paused and he didn’t like that pause.”

Through the safety of her closed kitchen window, Laura peppers Jack with questions about vampirism that he doesn’t have the answers to (the bat didn’t exactly explain all the rules of this whole thing). Steinkellner and the actors make beautiful work of the premise, both having fun with the genre silliness of it all while also delving into the pathos of a loving marriage interrupted by a truly unforeseeable calamity. Coming in at just 15 minutes long, Are We Still Married? serves as a compelling proof of concept for whatever direction, and medium, Steinkellner wants to take the story from here.

“I did write a feature inspired by this that was on this past year’s Blacklist. At the same time, in having this conversation with South by, a part of the independent pilot requirement is to submit a series bible. I’ve actually not done this with other ideas before but I have pretty thoroughly explored both options. Ultimately I just want to keep telling this story.” – AB

The Audacity

Have you ever wondered where the wunderkind techbros of Silicon Valley get the audacity? Thankfully so has Jonathan Glatzer, a former writer on Succession and Better Call Saul and now the creator and showrunner of AMC’s fittingly named The Audacity. 

“For years, I thought of audacity as a kind of superpower that we all have, but few of us actually employ because it involves crashing through norms of behavior. Most of us are not bulls in China shops, but in Silicon Valley, it is kind of regarded as an attribute. There’s a lot of broken dishes around there, but that’s what they like: move fast and break things,” he says.

Through its first three episodes, The Audacity doesn’t move fast, but it does break some things. Billy Magnussen (a compelling character actor probably best known for Game Night and Made For Love) steps into the megalomaniacal shoes of Hypergnosis CEO Duncan Park. Eager to prove that he’s much more than the product of some well-timed good luck, Duncan leverages his relationship with his therapist Joanne Felder to gain some (flagrantly illegal) advantages over his competition. 

The Audacity excels as a slice of life look at the excesses (and yes, audacity) of Silicon Valley’s elite in the rapidly expanding AI era. While its early episodes come off as more of a vibe in search of a story, the level of talent both behind and in front of the camera suggests that it has plenty of room to grow. – AB

The Comeback Season 3

Since The Comeback first premiered in 2005, Valerie Cherish has always returned to TV when it needs her the most. The first season of the HBO comedy found the aging sitcom diva played by Lisa Kudrow trying to navigate the brave new world of reality TV, recording her comeback as Aunt Sassy on new sitcom “Room and Bored.” In 2014’s season 2, Valerie attempted to get in on the Bravo-fication of the medium by pitching a pilot to Andy Cohen. Now, with The Comeback’s third and final season, Valerie is set to tackle television’s gravest challenge yet: artificial intelligence.

“[The Comeback] began with what everyone thought was the first extinction event [of TV], which was reality TV, eliminating scripted television for the more economical – no rules, no unions,” Kudrow says. “Happily that wasn’t the end. [Co-creator Michael Patrick King and I] were having lunch and he was like ‘What about this: Valerie is finally offered the lead in a multi-camera sitcom but it’s written about AI.’”

The Comeback season 3’s eight episodes present yet another comedic masterclass of industry satire and character-building. There’s never been someone quite like Valerie Cherish on television and there is unlikely to be ever again. The fading superstar is desperate for fame yet uniquely ill-equipped to handle it, spending much of her adult life flourishing in front of sitcom studio multicams while putting her foot in her mouth in front of documentary single cams. 

The Comeback’s satire is so subtle as to be barely visible. Really it’s the story of a singular character who refuses to let her story end regardless of how many times the industry tries to close the book… and all the humiliation she endures with a grin because of it. Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King give Valerie Cherish the ending she so richly deserves, but we’ll miss her all the same. – AB

The Dark Wizard

The history of rock climbing is rife with larger-than-life characters and adventure sport trailblazers, but few loom as large as Dean Potter. A climber, high-liner, BASE jumper and all around Yosemite Valley Renaissance man, Potter set speed records and free soloed daunting walls at an unprecedented caliber for the duration of his career. Now, Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen – documentary filmmakers and Potter’s old friends – are bringing his story to HBO Max with their new docuseries, “The Dark Wizard.” 

“His aura and myth dominated the sport, both because he was pioneering all these crazy things … but there was also a much broader story there, the behind the scenes and what was going on in his personal world that was really compelling that no one had really heard about,” Rosen says. 

“The Dark Wizard” not only details Potter’s Herculean feats and the impact he had on the climbing community, but also his mental health journey that took place behind the closed doors of an alpha facade. 

“It’s unbelievable seeing all these Olympic athletes talk about their mental health and the struggles,” Mortimer says. “That just was not happening back in the time.” 

The only documentation of Potter’s internal dialogues were in his journals, which his sister donated to the filmmaking duo so they could platform the realities of his life. Using stylistic images and animations from these diaries, alongside interviews with Potter and his inner circle, Mortimer and Rosen crafted a chilling recapitulation of the climber’s life. – SR 

Margo’s Got Money Troubles

Margo’s got money troubles, sure. But she’s also got some big expectations to meet. The Apple TV dramedy entered the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival as the undisputed TV headliner, thanks to the involvement of two prestige studios (A24 and the aforementioned Apple TV), a legendary TV showrunner (David E. Kelley), and a high-powered cast that would fit right in at this year’s Oscars ceremony (Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nick Offerman, Nicole Kidman, and more). Still, it’s one thing to have a lot of expensive toys; it’s another thing entirely to know how to play with them. Thankfully, Margo’s Got Money Troubles puts forward an eight-episode experience well worthy of its creative firepower. 

Based on a novel of the same name by Rufi Thorpe, Margo stars Elle Fanning as the titular young woman with money problems due to an unexpected pregnancy following a tryst with her douchey literature professor. Anticipating little help from her ex-Hooters waitress mother (Pfeiffer) or professional wrestler estranged father (Offerman), Margo gets creative (and sometimes nekkid) to pay the bills. Margo’s Got Money Troubles is Juno for the OnlyFans generation. It’s also the rare “prestige” episodic experience that doesn’t feel like a two-hour movie script that got out of hand. That’s all thanks to a preposterously charming lead performance from Fanning and her equally likable supporting cast. – AB

The post Everything We Saw at SXSW 2026: I Love Boosters, Wishful Thinking, The Comeback, and More appeared first on Den of Geek.

Sometimes the most successful video games are the ones nobody asked for. Whether it was a strange concept, an unfamiliar developer, or a risky shift in direction, these titles didn’t exactly inspire confidence before launch. Some even looked like they were destined to fail. But against all expectations, they connected with players hugely and went on to become massive hits. From experimental indie projects to bold franchise reinventions, these games prove that taking risks can pay off. Here are 15 video games that players didn’t think they wanted until they couldn’t stop playing them.

The post 15 Video Games Nobody Knew They Really Wanted appeared first on Den of Geek.

The braintrusts that have presided over SXSW since nearly its inception have always smiled on the festival for its contrasts. It’s a fest where south meets west, and music meets film, meets technology, meets comedy, meets plain ol’ innovation. And in no other year has that felt more like a lived-in ethos than 2026, which saw everything happening everywhere and all at once (heh).

With the film, TV, music, activation, and cornucopia of other moments all occurring simultaneously in Austin, it was a whirlwind that can nearly overwhelm. Yet the Den of Geek team was there for almost all of it, covering what we can, and bringing it to you in this handy, dandy round-up.

Movies

The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist

At the turn of the century, the world was excited by the prospect of new technology. The internet was a shiny toy, the dot com bubble hadn’t burst, and the iPod (never mind the iPhone) was still a glint in Steve Jobs’ eye. Filmmaker Daniel Kwan and technology ethicist Tristan Harris remember those days as a bit like a lost kingdom. After all, the world it has wrought has very little good cheer left in the public for new tech, especially with the AI revolution that is now commencing.

“With social media, we were not great stewards of that technology and how it rolled out,” Harris observes in the Den of Geek studio. “We created the most anxious and depressed generation of our lifetime, even though some of the people who were building it—the people who started Instagram, they were my dorm mates at Stanford—they didn’t intend for that to happen.” Which raises the question of why should folks have any confidence that many of the same companies and technology leaders will do better with the far more powerful prospect of artificial intelligence.

That conundrum is something which both men are confronting in the new Daniel Roher documentary, The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, which Kwan is also a producer on. As the title suggests, the film examines both the most pessimistic and rosiest predictions for AI’s future, and everything in between. All possibilities are running rampant in Silicon Valley while billion-dollar companies dash madly toward being the first to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Yet the film also interrogates what tools can be put in place to create better stewards in the next generation. As Oscar-winner Kwan notes, “I think Big Tech has broken our social contract that we have as a society with technology. They have used our world as a playground to basically consolidate more power and more resources. The technology that they’re building—even though a lot of the architects and the technicians building this stuff, they have the greatest intentions and the greatest ideals of what this technology can do—the fact that it is being deployed within this current system, within this current incentive structure, it is taking a neutral technology and turning it into an extractive one.” – David Crow

Amazing Live Sea Monkeys

As the large, colorful gates open to Yolanda Signorelli’s Maryland estate, she’s without electricity, feeding woodland creatures tiny crackers – an unexpectedly intimate introduction to the woman at the center of The Amazing Live Sea Monkeys. Directed by Mark Becker and Aaron Schock, the documentary uses the nostalgia of comic books and the ‘60s to showcase an oddly complex legal saga and the history of the beloved “instant life” toy while uncovering lesser-known details about its creator, Harold von Braunhut. At its core is a David-and-Goliath-style battle between Signorelli, often called the “mother of Sea-Monkeys,” and Big Time Toys, which began licensing and distributing the product in 2007.

Through interviews with Signorelli, her lawyer, journalists, former collaborators, and illustrators behind the brand’s imagery, the film tells the story while keeping the people behind it at the center. Signorelli’s love for animals and the sea monkeys shine through all aspects of the film; Schock even told us that revealing the “sea monkey secret formula” was always a concern of Signorelli while filming. Throughout the documentary, Becker and Schock never shy away from examining von Braunhut’s various controversies in vivid detail. At the same time, the filmmakers didn’t want to lump Signorelli and her passion into the worst of what her former husband had done. It was complex, captivating, and perfectly fit for a SXSW premiere. – Darcie Zudell

American Dollhouse

John Valley doesn’t want to reinvent cinema with his movie, American Dollhouse. The story of a struggling woman named Sarah (Hailley Laurèn), who inherits her childhood home only to be beset by unstable neighbor Kelly (Kelsey Pribilski), follows in the tradition of horror greats, including Psycho, Peeping Tom, and Black Christmas. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have bigger things on its mind.

“I’m obsessed with how a slasher can be minimalist, but yet a container for huge, modern ideas,” Valley tells Den of Geek. “I stuck to the conventions and tropes, and kept telling the cast that it’s just a meat and potatoes slasher film, but we also tried to find some new, modern life in it.”

Part of that work fell on Pribilski, who had to embody an adult who has reverted to a childlike state in frightening ways. “I thought about how an eight-year-old acts. They’re a little bit animated because we as adults have learned to contain our emotions,” Pribilski reveals. “It was about knowing when to go bigger. We had to choose very carefully the moments for me to go into ‘grizzly bear’ mode, as John would call it.”

As Pribilski got to play big moments, it fell on her co-star Laurèn to keep things grounded in reality. “Sarah is a full person, and it was important to me that, when she makes a decision, it doesn’t come out of nowhere,” she says. That approach makes Sarah a formidable opponent, even for a killer as strange as Kelly. “Sarah’s a loyal fighter, for herself and the people she loves. She’s not going to just go down.”

Thanks to the work of Pribilski and Lauren, American Dollhouse adds a great new killer and final girl to the slasher tradition. – Joe George

Black Zombie

In a pop culture saturated with zombie shows like The Walking Dead and The Last of Us, many have forgotten the roots of Z-culture. Writer-director Maya Annik Bedward is not one of them. Right down to the title of Black Zombie conjuring the racist shadow of the nearly century-old Hollywood film White Zombie (1932), Bedward’s haunting documentary looks at more than a hundred years of appropriation, reinvention, and evolution of a concept that’s rooted in the vast sweep of African diaspora, and the Black Haitian experience of revolution in particular.

“In Haiti, everyone knows about the zombie, and in Haiti, stories of zombies and zombification are regularly talked about,” says Bedward. “It’s adjacent to vodou, but it’s not an everyday practice. Zombification is these stories of ‘I saw zombies in the field,’ and very connected to these ideas of enslavement.” These are the roots which inspired the white fiction that in turn gave the world their beloved modern flesh-easters. Black Zombie observes, critiques, and even at times celebrates this transition—within limits as the othered monster has increasingly become a symbol for tearing down sinister systems. Or just a fear of the status quo breaking… – DC

Brian 

Multiple castmates in Will Ropp’s directorial debut, Brian, were student body presidents in high school; a connection they didn’t make until SXSW. Ben Wang, who plays the titular character running for student body president to impress his crush, says he drew from his own awkward quirks when portraying the role. Edi Patterson and Randall Park play Wang’s parents, who care a little too much that their son finally made a friend. William H. Macy, who plays Brian’s therapist, talks Brian through his various panic attacks and struggles with mental health that cause him to lose roles in drama club, freak out his classmates, and annoy his friends. Meanwhile, his cool English teacher, portrayed by Natalie Morales, just wants to help Brian develop his party platform without indulging his inappropriate attraction to her. 

It’s a coming of age movie about mental health and the messy aspects of high school, but even more than that, the script by Mike Scollins is effortlessly funny in a way that will have you quoting Patterson’s and Park’s one-liners long after the first watch. Speaking of Patterson and Park, they got to have a lot of fun improvising during some dining room table scenes. Brian’s a good time, but one that will yank its audiences’ right back to high school in a visceral and emotional way.  – DZ 

Chasing Summer

Directed by Josephine Decker and written by leading lady, Iliza Shlesinger, Chasing Summer is a romantic comedy that is sexy, realistic, and overwhelmingly nostalgic. 

Jamie (Shlesinger) returns to her Texas hometown after a breakup, shocked to find that while the small hamlet may look the same, the people within it have changed. She picks up her old job at the roller rink, now owned by her sister (Cassidy Freeman), and meets Harper (Lola Tung), her young co-worker. Harper convinces Jamie to attend a party, where she meets a much younger Colby (Garrett Wareing). The two pursue a questionable fling while Jamie rekindles relationships with old high school classmates, including her ex-boyfriend, Chase (Tom Welling). The rest of the story is a sticky recreation of summer love that invokes the refreshing feeling of stepping into AC.

At times predictable, the film also has moments of shock, including a soap-opera-level reveal that will leave middle-aged women everywhere swooning. It is a retrospective on summers of days past, and the inevitability of moving on. It’s conventional, easy, and delivers the promise of a classic romcom. – Alexandra Hopkins

Crash Land 

What happens when a group of amateur stuntmen try to make a “real movie” so they can prove their worth to a town that hates them? Crash Land, directed by Dempsey Bryk, answers that very question. 

“It came out of COVID,” Bryk says. “I was stuck with my brother and my entire family… living behind the couches in the living room, as you do, and I was watching this Jackass marathon on loop and the idea blossomed out of there.” The film evokes classics of the genre – think Napoleon Dynamite, Superbad, and Bottle Rocket – against a Canadian backdrop of charming chaos. 

“There was a process of trying to make it not like anything else after being so inspired your entire life by the things you love, and then you have to try to find your own voice,” Bryk says. 

As Crash Land follows this group of boys becoming men one wipeout at a time, it simultaneously tells another coming of age story. The spirit behind Crash Land is the much more successful story of Dempsey Bryk and his brother Billy, who plays the emotional catalyst of the movie. Through his influence, the characters crash and land in a world that is fun, endearing, and unexpectedly touching. – Sophia Rooksberry 

Drag

Horror movies often tend to revolve around similar, oftentimes outlandish, concepts: A deranged killer, a disturbing monster, a haunted setting. But Drag, the debut feature film from Raviv Ullman and Greg Yagolnitzer, finds a scary story in an everyday, all-too-human problem. Yes, it’s a movie that’s really about the terrifying specter of lower back pain. 

The film stars Lizzy Caplan and Lucy DeVito as a pair of frequently-at-odds siblings who find themselves in increasing trouble during a house robbery gone wrong. When one of the pair throws their back out mid-heist, the other must help her escape by dragging her from the house’s upstairs bathroom down to the waiting car. Painfully uncomfortable (and often downright grisly) acts of body horror ensue, with plenty of gross-out details in full close-up even as they discover that the man they’ve come to rob is not everything he appears to be. – Lacy Baugher

Drift 

SXSW needs an Action Documentary screening section solely for Drift to exist in. Described by director Deon Taylor as a real life Catch Me If You Can, the documentary stars real-life action hero Isaac Wright as he recounts his career going to unprecedented heights for his art.

“The documentary is a lot more than just my artwork,” Wright says. “It has to do with my life and what I feel like my artwork really represents and a full portrait of what I think the goal of life is.” 

Under the artist name Drift, he climbs to the very top of the country’s tallest buildings capturing the most breathtaking and adrenaline-spiking photos, slowly working toward his dream of summiting the Empire State Building. 

“We went to the Instagram and these beautiful photos are just so captivating that it’s really overwhelming, and wondering why the hell he’s up there and what he’s doing was my initial reaction,” Roxanne Avent Taylor, the film’s producer, says. 

The documentary answers those questions in an exploration of the human spirit, as the occasional illegality of Drift’s climbs resulted in a multi-year battle with law enforcement across multiple states. 

“I believed that everyone could connect to the human story based on the fact that we’ve all been through something,” Taylor says. “We’ve all been misrepresented or someone has tried to tear down your character in some way.” 

On its surface, Drift is an action thriller come to life. At its core, Drift is a tear-jearking testament to a freedom that only the birds and the film’s namesake have experienced. – SR

Family Movie

When watching Family Movie, a chipper-oddball indie directed by Kevin Bacon and starring Kevin Bacon, as well as wife Kyra Sedgwick, daughter Sosie Bacon, and son Travis Bacon, one gets the sense that this is not what a real family flick with the Bacons would look like. At least you’d hope so! But given how mirthful this splatter-comedy is when their fictional doppelgängers are forced to deal with a murderer on the set of their horror movie-within-a-horror movie, you nonetheless feel like you’re sitting across from the gang during a lively game night.

“I think the movie definitely reflects on all our personalities individually and how we relate to each other,” Travis explains. “There’s definitely some little moments like that, but we’re still acting.”

Kevin later adds that screenwriter Dan Beers was able to collect some surprisingly accurate depictions of interpersonal dynamics after interviewing them each separately. Says the director: “When we got the first draft of the script, we were like, ‘Holy shit, how did you know that?!’ And it’s not like it’s pieces of dirt… it’s just ways of being.” – DC

Forbidden Fruits

A title like Forbidden Fruits suggests a heavy drama, thick with Biblical overtones and meditations on the nature of sin. Yet, one look at the new movie starring Lili Reinhart as the leader of a witch cult of mall girls promises the exact opposite, presenting itself as a spunky horror comedy.

However, according to director Meredith Alloway, religion weighs heavily on the story. “I love the idea that women are told that we’re quite literally the origin of evil and sin,” Alloway tells Den of Geek, a theme that goes all the way to the source material, the play “Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die” by Lily Houghton, who cowrote the screenplay with Alloway. 

Alloway continues, “When I read the play, I see all these women reclaiming that. Witchcraft and being in a coven are ways to make that narrative ours. I think when women get together and set an intention, whether it’s magic or literally just talking at a sleepover, that is really powerful.”

As Apple, Reinhart gathers a team of women to join her coven, including Lola Tung as Pumpkin, Victoria Pedretti as Cherry, and Alexandra Shipp as Fig,” all characters who are more than they initially appear. 

“No one’s playing a stereotype,” says Pedretti. “There are a lot of cues that might lead you to misjudge these women before you get to know them. Each character ends up surprising the audience with their humanity.”

“I think we all play very complex human individuals who just so happen to be born in a female body in this lifetime, who are trying to navigate the structures of our world,” adds Shipp.

In other words, the characters are richer and more complicated than one might think, just like Forbidden Fruits itself. – JG

The Fox 

Ever wanted to get in bed with a fox voiced by Olivia Colman? Well, Jai Courtney got to in Dario Russo’s The Fox, a magical realism comedy about what happens when people try to change themselves for their partners. Emily Browning reluctantly agrees to marry Courtney’s character, Nick, while secretly having an affair with her boss (Damon Herriman), who is also cheating on his wife (Claudia Doumit). In an effort to win their partner back, Nick listens to a fox he was moments away from killing in the woods, leading all the characters down a hole where they literally lose themselves. 

Russo directed, wrote, and scored The Fox, so naturally he had a very specific vision for the fantasy and comedy elements of the film. Russo says he finds it really annoying when characters in films deliver an over-exaggerated reaction to talking animals, so in this universe, talking foxes are the least out-of-the-ordinary thing. Though they didn’t really act alongside Colman, Doumit and Browning were obsessed with her narration; Browning says she listened to a recording of Colman’s voice acting over and over again on a run one time. The film is as ambitious as it is mystical, but it never loses its ability to make fun of the chaos and camp of it all. – DZ

He Bled Neon

With all its neon lights and gleeful indulgence of vice, Las Vegas has always made for a popular movie setting. Still, Vegas-native and He Bled Neon producer Nate Bolotin felt there was a certain kind of movie that Sin City had not yet played host to. 

“Twenty years ago, my step brother and best friend passed away. I got a text message from a mutual friend, just like how it happens in the movie actually, and had to go back and bury him and reconnect with the people that I had lost touch with. Someone came up to me at the funeral and said ‘hey, I think there’s some foul player here’ but we never went too deep. Fifteen years later or so it just clicked: we haven’t seen a Vegas revenge noir thriller in a world outside the Vegas strip.”

True to Bolotin’s real life experiences, He Bled Neon picks up with successful businessman Ethan (Joe Cole) receiving the fateful text and returning home to Las Vegas where he reconnects with his old crew (which includes characters played by Marshawn Lynch, Rita Ora, and Ismael Cruz Cordova) and begins to unpack the mystery of his brother Darren’s (Paul Wesley) death.

He Bled Neon aces the set-up, largely thanks to the colorful sensibilities of director Drew Kirsch and electronic soundscapes of composers Joe Trapanese and DJ Zhu. Once the revenge plot moves into the desert and grimy environs outside the strip, however, the film loses its distinctive sense of place and settles into a disappointingly conventional crime story. – Alec Bojalad

Hokum

Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy became a SXSW Midnighter hero when 2024’s Oddity took home the festival’s Audience Award. Now he’s returned to Austin with some extra star power in tow. The horror auteur’s next spooky effort, Hokum, stars Severance’s Adam Scott as Ohm Bauman, an American novelist who absconds to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes and finish his latest book. Of course, it just so happens that this particular inn contains a honeymoon suite that is said to be haunted by an ancient witch…

Speaking of hauntings, Hokum’s first act is haunted by a weak characterization of Scott’s Ohm, whose lifetime of unaddressed grief has apparently manifested itself as a need to be a real dick. Once the movie gives way to the charismatic actor’s charm and McCarthy begins to flex his horror muscles, the back half blossoms into a pleasingly macabre experience. It’s also quite dark. Literally. 

“It’s dark in the film, and it was literally dark when we were in there making it,” Scott told Den of Geek. “It was pretty clear that this was going to be unsettling. As an actor, since your control is limited, you never know really how something is going to turn out at the end of the day. Having so much faith in Damian and seeing all the components they put together on set, I knew there was a chance that this could work.”  And indeed Hokum does work. – AB

I Love Boosters

Three projects into his burgeoning film career, it’s fair to say that Boots Riley has developed a house style. For a lesser creative, that level of one-note fixation might begin to grow stale. Thankfully, the marriage of the surreal with leftist politics is a note that this rapper, songwriter, and record-producer-turned-filmmaker knows how to play quite well. And he continues to do so in I Love Boosters.

Keke Palmer stars as Corvette, an aspiring fashion designer who ekes out a living as a “booster,” pinching high-end textiles and selling them to her neighborhood at a discount. Together with her friends Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige), Corvette sets her booster sights on high-end fashion entrepreneur Christie Smith (Demi Moore) to close the fashion gap between the haves and have-nots.

Like Sorry to Bother You before it, I Love Boosters’ premise is merely a jumping off point for all the vivid imagery and offbeat twists to come. The movie that a ticket-buyer expects to see at minute 0 is very much not the movie they experience by minute 60 or so. Unlike Sorry to Bother You, however, Boosters’ absurdist twist isn’t a completely out-of-left-field human-animal hybrid situation but a far more mundane science fiction tool that we won’t spoil. Despite the relatively conventional sci-fi trappings of its back half, I Love Boosters feels satisfyingly anarchic and bizarre all the way through. – AB

Imposters 

The idea of changelings, body snatchers, or other false creatures that are somehow swapped into existing families without any of their members being the wiser is nightmare fuel from time immemorial. Imposters takes this idea and runs with it, crafting a story that wrestles with ideas of parenthood, commitment, and fear. 

The film stars Jessica Rothe and Charlie Barnett as Paul and Marie, a couple forced to contend with any parent’s worst nightmare when their baby mysteriously disappears. While everyone is convinced the resident Town Creep is responsible, Marie’s not so sure, and when she turns to the mysterious Orson (Bates Wilder) for help, he sends her to a mysterious cave in the woods. But the child Marie brings back from the forest may not be the son she lost.

A genre-bending film that’s full of the sort of twists even seasoned moviegoers will likely not see coming, that explores the all-too-human pain of love and loss through a filter that’s covered with no small amount of blood. – LB

Kill Me

At first glance, Kill Me seems to ask the question, “What if Charlie Kelly woke up in a bathtub of his own blood?” But with a deeply emotional and revelatory performance from Charlie Day, the horror-dramedy becomes so much more. Sure, our main character, Jimmy, lives in a dingy apartment a la Charlie and Frank, and his frenetic energy while trying to solve his own murder attempt harkens back to a Pepe Silvia obsession… but that’s not a bad thing. The audience is immediately comforted by the familiarity of Day’s impeccable comedic timing right before adjusting to the sobering reality that his character has a history of trying to take his own life—making him the perfect choice to carry the emotional weight of this film. 

Jimmy meets his match in Allison Williams’ 911 operator, Margot. She grounds both him and a film that turns into an unlikely whodunit. Williams has also become something of a scream queen over the last decade (starring in Get Out, M3GAN, The Perfection), but pure horror this film is not. Similarly to Day, she brings the authenticity and depth needed to be Jimmy’s “straight man” as she navigates the hijinks of solving a maybe-murder while healing from her own trauma. 

It’s a feat to address subject matter as serious as suicide while ensuring the audience knows they’re allowed to laugh—and a lot for that matter. Director Peter Warren tactfully displays both ends of the spectrum that people with mental illness can experience: the dramatics of suicide attempts but also the mundanity of ordering the same meal every day for months. In his own words, “Depression and mental illness are incredibly dangerous but can also be dumb and annoying. It’s like stepping on a rake a million times in your head.” – Britt Migs

Lainey Wilson: Keepin’ Country Cool

Amy Scott is the director behind Counting Crows: Have You Seen Me Lately? and Sheryl, proving an affinity for documentary storytelling about some of the music industry’s most iconic names. Now, she is bringing the story of modern country idol Lainey Wilson to Netflix.

Lainey Wilson: Keepin’ Country Cool is set to premiere globally on April 22. It follows the country star on her ascent to major stardom while traveling the country on the “Country’s Cool Again Tour” in 2024. 

“After a while, it was apparent that we weren’t chasing the tour, we were chasing Lainey,” Scott says. “Her life is all over the place. Her life is not a straight line, so we just tried to hold onto that mechanical bull ride.” 

While being jostled around the country and holding on for dear life, Scott and her team discovered the heart of Wilson’s music and her musical persona. Not only are her powerful vocals and charisma emblematic of industry titans like Dolly Parton, but her compassion and grit are what give her music, and this documentary, their spirit. 

“Vulnerablilty can come in many different flavors,” Scott says. “It can be vulnerability about struggles, but vulnerability also is when you can be funny and have a really unguarded, self-deprecating nature, and we realized early on that (Lainey) is really, really funny.”

Throughout the documentary, Wilson is seen constantly songwriting when she isn’t rehearsing or performing. She has spent her career banking songs for upcoming records, using her determination and open heart as fodder for the future of her skyrocketing career; Scott’s latest project delivers all of these details in a way that is careful, exciting, and, of course, incredibly cool. – SR

Leviticus

The land down under has long been a reliable source of uniquely upsetting films, from Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) to Lake Mungo (2008), but Australian horror has enjoyed a renaissance as of late, thanks to hits such as The Babadook (2014) and Talk to Me (2022). 

Director Adrian Chiarella continues that tradition with his debut, Leviticus, which stars Joe Bird of Talk to Me and Stacy Clausen as two gay teens forced to participate in a conversion ritual by a fundamentalist pastor. The ritual releases a malevolent entity that takes the form of the person the victim most desires, which, for the boys, is one another.

“When I started thinking about things that were personal to me as a gay man, I knew that homophobia was something that I wanted to tackle in a film,” Chiarella tells Den of Geek. “There’s a clue in the word: homophobia is a fear. So I started digging deeper into what that might look like through the lens of this genre.”

The stars of Leviticus followed Chiarella’s lead by playing the reality of their characters’ plight. “I think that horror films are, in a way, dramas with horror elements because the emotions are so real and raw,” observes Bird. “It’s not like I was filming a horror film in one scene and a romance film in others. These were just real, natural people going through this experience.”

Chiarella adds, “I knew the horror element wouldn’t work unless you were really invested in the connection between these two lead characters.” To that end, he sent Bird and Clausen out on various field trips to build their characters. Those trips included visits to the country because, like any other good piece of Australian horror, the terror in Leviticus comes from the landscape. – JG

Mam

Part of the appeal of film festivals like SXSW is the chance for audiences to take in both mid-budget blockbusters bound for big theaters and the indie-est indies that ever indie-d. Projects like Over Your Dead Body and I Love Boosters occupy the former space on 2026’s SXSW roster. Mam is very much part of the latter. 

Directed by Nan Feix, Mam is an unabashed love letter to Vietnamese cuisine, New York’s Chinatown, and love itself. It’s also a novel blend of fictional narrative and documentary. While Mam is fully scripted, it recounts the real life story of chef Jerald Head as he moves to New York from Texas and tries to make it in the culinary world. Playing Head and his wife and business partner Nhung Dao Head are Head and Nhung themselves, who now own and operate Mắm on Forsyth Street. 

Shot in a scant 16 days (usually after a shift at the restaurant, Head revealed in a post-screen Q&A), Mam wears its lowkey indie status on its sleeve. The rough-around-the-edge film is unlikely to have a second life outside of Austin. But for 81 pleasant minutes, it made festival-goers in Alamo Drafthouse’s auditorium 5 very, very hungry. – AB

Manhood

What is likely to earn points as the most unusual and eyebrow-raising documentary at this year’s festival (or perhaps almost any other) is Daniel Lombroso’s Manhood, a sober look at the growing popularity of “male enhancement” cosmetic procedures (read: penis enlargement). It’s a subject ripe for ridicule or late night comedy, and yet the film takes a clinical lens that flits between aloof and sympathetic, depending on the interviewee. All are part of a larger line, though, of dudes willing to sell their house or risk their mortgages to increase their girth.

Astutely setting the film primarily in the Dallas and Miami areas of the South, Lombroso pulls at a thread from a previous documentary—his depressingly prescient study of the then fringe elements of the alt-right in the Atlantic’s White Noise (2020)—to draw a link between the manosphere culture of supplemental pills and Joe Rogan-like podcasts, and a lot of the guys desperate to add a few inches at any cost. Yet there’s perhaps a bit more empathy for the younger and more vulnerable parties who get taken for a ride and permanently disfigured by grifters with white coats and needles stuffed with filler.

The film could draw a stronger link in its thesis between the modern culture that its title obviously evokes and the guys on the table, but it finds both pathos and condemnation to varying degrees for alleged “medical” predators, and the type of souls who end up thinking they need to have this procedure done. One wishes to spend more time with the partners who often shrug they don’t even care. – DC

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice

Writer-director BenDavid Grabinski might have been too young to make movies in the ‘90s, but he was definitely watching them. And nowadays he appears to be determined to bring a flavor of them back, complete with a hard-swaggering, high-concept genre exercise starring Vince Vaughn at his most confident. A movie about gangsters, parties, and time travel, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is a bit like if Swingers, Go, and Back to the Future had a half-forgotten love child who we’re now only meeting as an adult. And that’s meant as a compliment.

As the title suggests, this is a love triangle served in four parts after gangster Nick (Vaughn) time travels about half a year into the past in order to stop his slightly younger self (also Vaughn) from murdering their best friend Mike (James Marsden) for the affair he’s carrying on with Nick’s unhappy wife, Alice (Eiza González). It’s a gonzo premise that is treated with just enough seriousness to give meat to the idea of considering second chances—whether through the magic of a proverbial “undo” button,  or where you’d even want to hit it to fix a bad mistake. As González notes in our studio, “I always connect with moving forward. I think there’s something beautiful about the chaos. Some of the craziest, most beautiful things that happened in my life have come from real terrible circumstances and bad moments”

Still, in its heart, this movie is all about the vibes, as indicated by its structure being based around the “PARTY,” “AFTERPARTY,” and “AFTER-AFTER-AFTERPARTY” which its main quartet crashes while trading barbs in a screenplay with more wisecracks than there are bullets. And trust us, this movie has a whole lotta bullets. It’s bravado and muscular mischief and suggests Grabinski is one to watch. – DC

My Brother’s Killer

This documentary solves a murder case gone cold. My Brother’s Killer, directed by Rachel Mason, traces the 36 years since the brutal murder of 25-year-old William “Billy London” Arnold Newton in West Hollywood. 

This film captures the violence, trauma, and grief gay men experienced during the AIDS epidemic, as well as their resilience. Through archival material and dozens of interviews with those connected to the case, including her own mother, Mason uncovers shocking information.

“It was a terribly violent time and I think that’s another undocumented part of gay history,” Mason says. “Sadly, it is hard to always focus on the negativity and sadness, and the resilience of gay culture is the most amazing thing. In the sea of death, you also have this vibrancy, and I really wanted to showcase that. It doesn’t always have to be dark, the fight can be joyful in a strange way.”

Billy was an adult filmmaker, poet, and illustrative artist—he was also deeply loved by the people around him, a feeling evident throughout the documentary. This documentary is more than a true crime film, it showcases the struggle of representation and provides recognition and closure for those involved. – AH

Normal

Full disclosure: We were not able to actually see director Ben Wheatley and screenwriter Derek Kolstad’s new action movie starring Bob Odenkirk—the deceptively titled Normal—in Austin. However, we were able to speak with all three men, who have described the movie as a kind of inversion of High Noon. In that classic Western, Gary Cooper stood alone as a sheriff willing to face up bad men while all the people who loved him turned their backs in fear.

“It’s ultimately taking those themes, the sense and the appeal, and wrapping it around small-town Americana,” Kolstad observes about their new film. But it’s also doing so in a modern context with the America of today, setting the stage for an action spectacle apropos of the scribe behind John Wick.

For his part, director Wheatley appreciates that he has brought a British sensibility to the proceedings, saying, “An outsider’s perspective is always interesting. Not to say it’s better than worse from any other point-of-view, but I think there’s a long history of people coming from the outside to film the States and to see it with different eyes.” It also might be befitting of the neo-Western. While genre icon John Wayne famously detested High Noon back in the day, refusing to believe a small town wouldn’t support a good man in need, Normal’s viewers might be much more open to the idea. As Odenkirk quips, “He should meet some small towns.”

Over Your Dead Body

When it comes to filmmaking, the concept of “escalation” can be just as important as acting, scripting, or even turning the damn cameras on in the first place. Few movies at the 2026 SXSW Film Festival understand the importance of raising the stakes better than action comedy thriller Over Your Dead Body. 

Based on the 2021 Norwegian film The Trip and directed by The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone, all Over Your Dead Body knows how to do is escalate. Things start relatively simple with husband and wife Dan and Lisa (Shrinking’s Jason Segel and Ready or Not’s Samara Weaving) repairing to a remote cabin upstate to save their dying marriage… and also to kill each other. Dan and Lisa’s murderous plans are complicated by a cascade of interlopers and extenuating circumstances, leading to mass amounts of blood, gore, and perhaps even some rekindled romance. 

Over Your Dead Body’s commitment to ratcheting absurdity means that its first act runs a bit dry. But once two prison escapees (Timothy Olyphant, Keith Jardine) and their guard conspirator (Juliette Lewis) enter the narrative, the movie really gets rolling and never looks back. And like any good partnership, Segel and Weaving excel in dabbling in the other’s home turf of horror and comedy, respectively. 

“I’m just so proud to have made a remake that I feel like has teeth,” Taccone says. “It’s dark, it’s fucked up, and it’s more gory than the original, weirdly. It has its own tone, and I just feel very proud that we could make something that I like equally to the original.” – AB

Pizza Movie

In a shameless throwback to the stoner comedies of the 2000s, Pizza Movie is the type of slouched and underachieving good time that is destined to best be seen in a crowded theater or even rowdier dorm room. Which isn’t to say it’s dumb. Writers-directors Nick Kocher and Brian McEllhaney take some boldly clever swings in their high-concept (ahem) where a couple of college screw-ups (Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone) indulge in an experimental drug they find in their dorm room. However, the thing has such potent magical properties, it not only gets them high but causes them to break the space-time continuum with time-loops and fourth-wall breaks. They’re like a pair of blitzed Punxsutawney co-eds.

The only cure? Pizza, of course, which is down in the lobby if they can get down there in time—or face severe consequences. It’s a deliberately, heavily-baked concept, which Kocher describes as based on a true story. “In college, we had the idea. Everyone’s ordered food when they’re not fully sober and it’s difficult.” You can say that again, dude. – DC

Power Ballad

It is said that success is the child of many fathers while failure is an orphan. But that doesn’t mean every papa gets the credit they deserve, particularly in fields as competitive (and lucrative) as songwriting. Such is the appealing conceit of John Carney’s latest bittersweet laugher that looks into the music business with as much affection as there is contempt. They, in fact, walk hand-in-hand when Paul Rudd’s washed up wedding singer Rick meets Nick Jonas’ former boy band heartthrob searching for reinvention, Danny. The two jam and jive during a joyous night over drinks in Ireland, including when Rick shows a few of the pieces he’s working on, particularly a poignant ballad that’s only missing a bridge.

Six months later, the song has it, as does Danny who’s introduced it to the world as an instant sensation—and as a piece of musical magic he wrote solo. A bit of a music industry “Book of Job,” where Rudd’s hurt and aggrieved Rick must deal with the eye-rolls and second-guessing of nearly everyone in his life, from his bandmates to even his wife and daughter. There’s a lot of humor in the scenario, but plenty of pathos as Rudd gives one of the finest performances of his career. He’s a man losing his sanity and his even-keel, to the point where he must travel from the Emerald Isle to the City of Angels. – DC

Pretty Lethal

The loftiness of chasing perfection, and the physical demand of what many consider the highest performing art, has always made ballet a compelling subject for filmmakers. Storytellers often wish to track the psychic or physiological toll of achieving révérence—or at least contrasting it with gonzo, blood-splattered spectacle. Pretty Lethal attempts both in a daffy B-crowdpleaser that essentially Die Hards five prima ballerinas when they’re trapped in an eastern European den of iniquity run by a vamping Uma Thurman. 

The movie gets a lot of mileage out of its balletic heroines being decidedly not John McClane (or Ana de Armas in a John Wick movie, for that matter). Instead, they nervously use their on pointe routine to “Waltz of the Flowers” for a blood-soaked defense in a bar involving knives, shattered wine bottles, and knives in the slippers. Says star Maddie Ziegler, “We sort of came up with a style we’re calling ballet-fu, which was really fun. Because we referenced if you put a bunch of feral cats in a box, that was what we were doing to survive. But I think we used our strengths to our advantage,” complete by combining the input of stunt coordinators and ballet choreographers. Grace is harmony. – DC

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

In an age of so-called “elevated” and sober-minded horror cinema, it is a blessing from Mr. Le Bail that we have Radio Silence ready to turn up the gore and fun. The filmmaking collective behind Ready or Not, Abigail, and the best Scream movies made in this century return to their own blood-red haunts and splash new buckets of crimson in the delightfully sinister Ready or Not 2. Like its predecessor, this is a grinning romp suffused with eat-the-rich gallows humor as we revisit the Bride in the splattered dress (Samara Weaving) mere moments after she parted brutally with her groom for good. (He was in the process of trying to sacrifice her to Satan. As apparently one does in country estates.)

Unfortunately for Grace, there are plenty of other Devil-worshipping billionaires out there. It turns out to be a blessing for the audience, though, as she inevitably slaughters them alongside sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) during a new hide-and-seek game at a country club that looks suspiciously like Mar-a-Lago. As director Gillett acknowledges, “All of the institutions that we engage with, if you follow them fall enough, you’re probably going to find some form of corruption.”

The movie doesn’t quite reach the same highs as the first movie since we know the punchline this time, but the climax at an elite Satanic altar is every bit as giddy as the combustible billionaires last time, and Samara Weaving still knows how to deliver a killing parting shot. – DC

The Saviors

Filmmakers don’t get to choose whether their films will be “timely” or not. Movies take a long time to make and time itself, as you might have noticed, has a tendency to Inexorably March On. Rarely has there ever been a better case study of that phenomenon than the unusually (and completely accidentally) timely comedy thriller The Saviors. 

Adam Scott and Danielle Deadwyler star as Sean and Kim, a couple in a failing marriage who look to supplement their income by renting their shed to Amir and Jahan – a brother and sister from an undisclosed Middle Eastern nation played by Theo Rossi and Nazanin Boniadi. While Amir and Jahan seem nice, they’re also suspiciously interested in the president of the United States’ whereabouts and appear to be building some sort of dangerous device. But this can’t be what Sean and Kim think it is, right? They’re not bigots and this isn’t a mediocre season of 24… right?

Due to a confluence of events like a pandemic, two Hollywood work stoppages, and the general improbability of getting a movie produced at all, The Saviors took 10 years to make from conception to premiere. And in that 10 years, the world shifted away from Obama-era progressive optimism to a more overt return to Islamophobia with the United States even entering war with Iran just two weeks before the film’s premiere.  

“You know, there was a period in those 10 years when I thought the world had changed a bit, and maybe we should focus on a different project,” director and co-writer Kevin Hamedani says. “And then the world changed again, and suddenly The Saviors is even more timely, unfortunately.”

The Saviors’ incidental resonance to current events only enhances what is already a compelling narrative. Scott and Deadwyler shine as two ostensibly progressive individuals who need answers but don’t want to seem like Bradley Whitford’s “I’d have voted for Obama a third time if I could” character in Get Out. Hamedani and the script deftly guide the audience through those choppy waters, always leaving enough breadcrumbs so that the viewer doesn’t fully feel like Bradley Whitford either. The end result is a nifty little thriller that feels like The ‘Burbs for the Airbnb age. – AB

Seekers of Infinite Love

Though Seekers of Infinite Love may one day be a cult comedy, right now it’s literally a comedy about a cult… but also about family

Hannah Einbinder (Hacks), John Reynolds (Search Party), and Griffin Gluck (American Vandal) star as a trio of siblings who must rescue their sister from the clutches of the Peoples Temple-esque the Seekers of Infinite Love. Helping them on their mission is ex cult member-turned-cult deprogrammer Rick (Justin Theroux) and his wardrobe of tactical vests. 

According to writer/director Victoria Strouse, Seekers’ cult angle emerged unexpectedly late in the writing process of the script, which was featured on 2008’s Black List.

“I’m utterly fascinated by siblings and I think some of the complexities in sibling relationships, [it] kind of ends up talking so much about all human relationships,” she says. “As I was working on it, I became really interested in cults, this idea of a secondary but corrupt family.”

That fascination with family shines through with Einbinder, Reynolds, and Gluck evoking a believably agitated sibling unit, if not a believably genetic one with their diverse mix of heights and hair colors. While the end result could have used a little more cult whackiness to fully live up to its comedic potential, it’s hard to be disappointed with time spent on a road trip to oblivion with four very funny actors. – AB 

See You When I See You

Before 2025’s SXSW title The Baltimorons, indie filmmaking titan Jay Duplass had not directed a movie since 2012’s The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, opting to help shepherd other storytellers’ visions alongside his brother and producing partner Mark Duplass. But when fellow producing family Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon brought the script for See You When I See You his way, he knew he had to get behind the camera once again. “It just felt big and scary and like I couldn’t say no,” he says. 

It’s easy to see why the project appealed to Duplass. Written by comedian Adam Cayton-Holland, and based on his memoir Tragedy Plus Time, See You When I See You is an intensely personal story about Cayton-Holland’s PTSD following the death of his sister by suicide. Cooper Raiff (director and star of Cha Cha Real Smooth) steps in as the film’s Cayton-Holland analogue, Aaron, and does marvelous work unpacking the young man’s confused journey through grief.

Outside of some creative visual choices representing Aaron’s struggle to reclaim happy memories of his sister, See You When I See You doesn’t have much new to say about the grieving process. Ultimately though, that’s a feature, not a bug, as the rhythms of pain should resonate with anyone who has experienced real tragedy. Even if those experiences involve significantly less Third-Eye Blind and Sum 41 than Aaron’s. – AB

Sender

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever been sent in the mail? The answer to that question can range from the mundane—a gardening hat you didn’t order—to the truly bizarre. Actor David Dastmalchian, for one, tells us he was mailed dirty underwear more than once by an anonymous…. fan? “It was accompanied by a really bizarre letter,” the actor grimaces.

That’s obviously immediately creepy, yet writer-director Russell Goldman’s Sender takes an initially more innocuous stance before turning the screws. And according to Goldman, this too is based on real-life. “[Folks will] send you cheap objects that are related, most likely, to your search history online and any cookies or data can take from what you’re looking like. They send it to your home so they can write reviews in your name that are five stars, so those products can then get a boost on the algorithms.”

Sender takes that conceit to its most ominous, Hitchockian extreme when Britt Lower’s Julia receives a mysterious package from an even more mysterious, and threatening, source. – DC

Sinner Supper Club

Described as a “gay mumblecore ghost story” directors of Sinner Supper Club, Daisy Rosato and Nora Kaye, deliver exactly what is promised. Shot on an iPhone within six days and rooted in improvisation, the film is a scrappy documentation of a NYC-based friend group on the fritz during a heat wave. 

Gathered in a small apartment for Genevieve’s (Genevieve Simon) “eviction funeral,” tensions arise amidst the group over things big and small. On top of navigating their shared-traumatic experience, the death of a best friend, nothing seems to go right — a melted ice cream cake, the power going out, and worst of all, an uninvited partner is brought to the gathering. The night culminates in an unexpected, yet restorative, paranormal experience. 

Sinner Supper Club explores the surrealness of grief from an intrinsically queer perspective. It delivers comedic beats and moments of grief with the fluidity of a high-budget film. While there are moments of hesitance from the actors, the ensemble cast delivers a performance where you feel dropped in the middle of their hangout. – AH

They Will Kill You

The idea for They Will Kill You blossomed after director Kirill Sokolov stayed in an eerie hotel that he believed to be inhabited by a cult of old women. The fictionalized and much gorier version stars Zazie Beetz as the new housekeeper at a decadent hotel with a history of mysterious disappearances. As Sokolov brings her violent journey through the mysterious building to the big screen, the company explores countless genres, from mystery to slapstick to fantasy. 

“Kirill was always reminding us that yes, there’s action, and yes, there’s comedy, but also, at least for me, the most important thing was the truth at the moment,” Myha’la, who plays Beetz’s sister, says. “Then, if it feels truthful and honest and real to me and us in this moment, the comedy is going to come in the edit.” 

The highlight of the movie is the performances from actors like Patricia Arquette, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, and the aforementioned sister duo. They expertly balance multiple styles and tropes, giving the movie an edge in an arguably oversaturated genre.  

“It is genre-defying because it is a love story about two sisters, and that’s really at the core of everything, and then you mix in the brilliant Kung Fu and gore and martial arts and heroism,” Felton says. “It’s a unique blend. I don’t think a film has ever been made quite like this.” – SR 

Time and Water

“The future we were warned about is no longer distant, it is here.” This is the message that Oscar-nominated director Sara Dosa shares in her newest documentary Time and Water. Through archival material and the writings of Icelandic author, Andri Snær Magnason, Dosa puts together an expansive story focused on generational memory and humanity’s relationship with nature. 

Centered on Magnason’s own family ties, Time and Water captures the vast existence of Icelandic glaciers and the tremendous loss felt by the author as he witnesses the disappearance of these titans, and the passing of his grandparents. The audience is transported through the passing of time and experiences the indelible impression humans make on the world and people around them.  

“There is something radical about love, especially in a time that is so polarizing,” Dosa says. “Wherever we can center love and joy amid the doom and the apocalyptic stories abound, I think it could inspire hope…I think it can give a sense of a light in the dark to keep people working toward the change that we so badly need.” 

Time and Water is a stark wake-up call, not only to protect the planet we call home, but to cherish our time with loved ones. The future is now, and Dosa captures the course we took to get here. – AH

Wishful Thinking

It sometimes feels impossible to be happy—even with someone you love—when there’s so much bad news in the world. So imagine the pressure Julia and Charlie (Maya Hawke and Lewis Pullman) are under in Wishful Thinking, a supremely clever and wholesome romantic comedy where the fate of Portland, Oregon, if not the world, rests on the straining romance of two young people at a crossroads in their life. As it slowly dawns on them, when things are good in their domestic life, Julia is suddenly up for a promotion at work, and Charlie’s crypto investments are skyrocketing. When they’re unhappy with each other, literal earthquakes can occur.

It’s a shrewd use of magical realism to entertain wish fulfillment—like literally getting rich off crypto after a particularly sexy date night—but also comment on the pressures we put on each other in the modern world, particularly for those who are as socially entangled and plugged in as the film’s Gen-Z antiheroes. It’s an indie rom-com about the challenge of early adult romances, complete with a big swing ending. But it finds an innovative way to engage these elements, especially when Hawke and Pullman are simpatico—and perhaps even more so when they’re not. – DC

Woodstockers

We were delighted to welcome film and TV mainstay Corbin Bernsen back to the Den of Geek Studio at SXSW to chat about his indie TV pilot, Woodstockers. This time, Bernsen–who is the showrunner, writer, and star– was joined by his son, Oliver, who directed the pilot episode (he also had a feature-length directorial debut, Bagworm, play at the festival).

The delightfully funny dramedy puts the audience in the headspace of an aging hippie confronting life, death, and a bygone era and its legacy set against scenic upstate New York. Our conversation was introspective as the Bernsen’s grappled with deep conversations on set, Corbin’s own career journey, which launched during that period in 1967, and their excitement for independent filmmaking in the television space. Their commitment to the form paid off: Woodstockers took home an Audience award. Now that’s Flower Power. – Chris Longo

Television

Are We Still Married?

Indie TV pilot Are We Still Married? stars Dustin Milligan as Jack, a husband who has been turned into a vampire via a bite from a mysterious bat, and Taylor Misiak as Laura, his wife who isn’t sure whether we should let him back in the house. While that is undoubtedly a bold genre concept, the inspiration for the story came from a real life experience for writer/director Kit Steinkellner (who also created the Facebook Watch series Sorry For Your Loss).

“My husband did get bit by a bat,” she tells Den of Geek. “It was that kind of crazy thing that doesn’t happen except when it does. He got a rabies shot and was OK. I don’t know how you process trauma in your marriage but comedic bits are our go-to. So we just started cracking vampire jokes. At a certain point, he was like ‘but if I were a vampire, you would let me back in the house, right?’ I paused and he didn’t like that pause.”

Through the safety of her closed kitchen window, Laura peppers Jack with questions about vampirism that he doesn’t have the answers to (the bat didn’t exactly explain all the rules of this whole thing). Steinkellner and the actors make beautiful work of the premise, both having fun with the genre silliness of it all while also delving into the pathos of a loving marriage interrupted by a truly unforeseeable calamity. Coming in at just 15 minutes long, Are We Still Married? serves as a compelling proof of concept for whatever direction, and medium, Steinkellner wants to take the story from here.

“I did write a feature inspired by this that was on this past year’s Blacklist. At the same time, in having this conversation with South by, a part of the independent pilot requirement is to submit a series bible. I’ve actually not done this with other ideas before but I have pretty thoroughly explored both options. Ultimately I just want to keep telling this story.” – AB

The Audacity

Have you ever wondered where the wunderkind techbros of Silicon Valley get the audacity? Thankfully so has Jonathan Glatzer, a former writer on Succession and Better Call Saul and now the creator and showrunner of AMC’s fittingly named The Audacity. 

“For years, I thought of audacity as a kind of superpower that we all have, but few of us actually employ because it involves crashing through norms of behavior. Most of us are not bulls in China shops, but in Silicon Valley, it is kind of regarded as an attribute. There’s a lot of broken dishes around there, but that’s what they like: move fast and break things,” he says.

Through its first three episodes, The Audacity doesn’t move fast, but it does break some things. Billy Magnussen (a compelling character actor probably best known for Game Night and Made For Love) steps into the megalomaniacal shoes of Hypergnosis CEO Duncan Park. Eager to prove that he’s much more than the product of some well-timed good luck, Duncan leverages his relationship with his therapist Joanne Felder to gain some (flagrantly illegal) advantages over his competition. 

The Audacity excels as a slice of life look at the excesses (and yes, audacity) of Silicon Valley’s elite in the rapidly expanding AI era. While its early episodes come off as more of a vibe in search of a story, the level of talent both behind and in front of the camera suggests that it has plenty of room to grow. – AB

The Comeback Season 3

Since The Comeback first premiered in 2005, Valerie Cherish has always returned to TV when it needs her the most. The first season of the HBO comedy found the aging sitcom diva played by Lisa Kudrow trying to navigate the brave new world of reality TV, recording her comeback as Aunt Sassy on new sitcom “Room and Bored.” In 2014’s season 2, Valerie attempted to get in on the Bravo-fication of the medium by pitching a pilot to Andy Cohen. Now, with The Comeback’s third and final season, Valerie is set to tackle television’s gravest challenge yet: artificial intelligence.

“[The Comeback] began with what everyone thought was the first extinction event [of TV], which was reality TV, eliminating scripted television for the more economical – no rules, no unions,” Kudrow says. “Happily that wasn’t the end. [Co-creator Michael Patrick King and I] were having lunch and he was like ‘What about this: Valerie is finally offered the lead in a multi-camera sitcom but it’s written about AI.’”

The Comeback season 3’s eight episodes present yet another comedic masterclass of industry satire and character-building. There’s never been someone quite like Valerie Cherish on television and there is unlikely to be ever again. The fading superstar is desperate for fame yet uniquely ill-equipped to handle it, spending much of her adult life flourishing in front of sitcom studio multicams while putting her foot in her mouth in front of documentary single cams. 

The Comeback’s satire is so subtle as to be barely visible. Really it’s the story of a singular character who refuses to let her story end regardless of how many times the industry tries to close the book… and all the humiliation she endures with a grin because of it. Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King give Valerie Cherish the ending she so richly deserves, but we’ll miss her all the same. – AB

The Dark Wizard

The history of rock climbing is rife with larger-than-life characters and adventure sport trailblazers, but few loom as large as Dean Potter. A climber, high-liner, BASE jumper and all around Yosemite Valley Renaissance man, Potter set speed records and free soloed daunting walls at an unprecedented caliber for the duration of his career. Now, Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen – documentary filmmakers and Potter’s old friends – are bringing his story to HBO Max with their new docuseries, “The Dark Wizard.” 

“His aura and myth dominated the sport, both because he was pioneering all these crazy things … but there was also a much broader story there, the behind the scenes and what was going on in his personal world that was really compelling that no one had really heard about,” Rosen says. 

“The Dark Wizard” not only details Potter’s Herculean feats and the impact he had on the climbing community, but also his mental health journey that took place behind the closed doors of an alpha facade. 

“It’s unbelievable seeing all these Olympic athletes talk about their mental health and the struggles,” Mortimer says. “That just was not happening back in the time.” 

The only documentation of Potter’s internal dialogues were in his journals, which his sister donated to the filmmaking duo so they could platform the realities of his life. Using stylistic images and animations from these diaries, alongside interviews with Potter and his inner circle, Mortimer and Rosen crafted a chilling recapitulation of the climber’s life. – SR 

Margo’s Got Money Troubles

Margo’s got money troubles, sure. But she’s also got some big expectations to meet. The Apple TV dramedy entered the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival as the undisputed TV headliner, thanks to the involvement of two prestige studios (A24 and the aforementioned Apple TV), a legendary TV showrunner (David E. Kelley), and a high-powered cast that would fit right in at this year’s Oscars ceremony (Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nick Offerman, Nicole Kidman, and more). Still, it’s one thing to have a lot of expensive toys; it’s another thing entirely to know how to play with them. Thankfully, Margo’s Got Money Troubles puts forward an eight-episode experience well worthy of its creative firepower. 

Based on a novel of the same name by Rufi Thorpe, Margo stars Elle Fanning as the titular young woman with money problems due to an unexpected pregnancy following a tryst with her douchey literature professor. Anticipating little help from her ex-Hooters waitress mother (Pfeiffer) or professional wrestler estranged father (Offerman), Margo gets creative (and sometimes nekkid) to pay the bills. Margo’s Got Money Troubles is Juno for the OnlyFans generation. It’s also the rare “prestige” episodic experience that doesn’t feel like a two-hour movie script that got out of hand. That’s all thanks to a preposterously charming lead performance from Fanning and her equally likable supporting cast. – AB

The post Everything We Saw at SXSW 2026: I Love Boosters, Wishful Thinking, The Comeback, and More appeared first on Den of Geek.

Movies are full of surprises, and sometimes the most fascinating details are the ones almost nobody notices. Behind the scenes, in the editing room, or buried in the credits, filmmakers slip in little secrets, strange coincidences, or obscure technical achievements that make a movie even more interesting. These are the tiny nuggets of trivia that most viewers would never guess, yet they reveal just how much thought, creativity, and sometimes sheer luck went into making a film. Here are 15 fun movie facts that are so obscure, you probably could never have known them.

The post 15 Fun Movie Facts You Could Never Have Known appeared first on Den of Geek.

The braintrusts that have presided over SXSW since nearly its inception have always smiled on the festival for its contrasts. It’s a fest where south meets west, and music meets film, meets technology, meets comedy, meets plain ol’ innovation. And in no other year has that felt more like a lived-in ethos than 2026, which saw everything happening everywhere and all at once (heh).

With the film, TV, music, activation, and cornucopia of other moments all occurring simultaneously in Austin, it was a whirlwind that can nearly overwhelm. Yet the Den of Geek team was there for almost all of it, covering what we can, and bringing it to you in this handy, dandy round-up.

Movies

The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist

At the turn of the century, the world was excited by the prospect of new technology. The internet was a shiny toy, the dot com bubble hadn’t burst, and the iPod (never mind the iPhone) was still a glint in Steve Jobs’ eye. Filmmaker Daniel Kwan and technology ethicist Tristan Harris remember those days as a bit like a lost kingdom. After all, the world it has wrought has very little good cheer left in the public for new tech, especially with the AI revolution that is now commencing.

“With social media, we were not great stewards of that technology and how it rolled out,” Harris observes in the Den of Geek studio. “We created the most anxious and depressed generation of our lifetime, even though some of the people who were building it—the people who started Instagram, they were my dorm mates at Stanford—they didn’t intend for that to happen.” Which raises the question of why should folks have any confidence that many of the same companies and technology leaders will do better with the far more powerful prospect of artificial intelligence.

That conundrum is something which both men are confronting in the new Daniel Roher documentary, The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, which Kwan is also a producer on. As the title suggests, the film examines both the most pessimistic and rosiest predictions for AI’s future, and everything in between. All possibilities are running rampant in Silicon Valley while billion-dollar companies dash madly toward being the first to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Yet the film also interrogates what tools can be put in place to create better stewards in the next generation. As Oscar-winner Kwan notes, “I think Big Tech has broken our social contract that we have as a society with technology. They have used our world as a playground to basically consolidate more power and more resources. The technology that they’re building—even though a lot of the architects and the technicians building this stuff, they have the greatest intentions and the greatest ideals of what this technology can do—the fact that it is being deployed within this current system, within this current incentive structure, it is taking a neutral technology and turning it into an extractive one.” – David Crow

Amazing Live Sea Monkeys

As the large, colorful gates open to Yolanda Signorelli’s Maryland estate, she’s without electricity, feeding woodland creatures tiny crackers – an unexpectedly intimate introduction to the woman at the center of The Amazing Live Sea Monkeys. Directed by Mark Becker and Aaron Schock, the documentary uses the nostalgia of comic books and the ‘60s to showcase an oddly complex legal saga and the history of the beloved “instant life” toy while uncovering lesser-known details about its creator, Harold von Braunhut. At its core is a David-and-Goliath-style battle between Signorelli, often called the “mother of Sea-Monkeys,” and Big Time Toys, which began licensing and distributing the product in 2007.

Through interviews with Signorelli, her lawyer, journalists, former collaborators, and illustrators behind the brand’s imagery, the film tells the story while keeping the people behind it at the center. Signorelli’s love for animals and the sea monkeys shine through all aspects of the film; Schock even told us that revealing the “sea monkey secret formula” was always a concern of Signorelli while filming. Throughout the documentary, Becker and Schock never shy away from examining von Braunhut’s various controversies in vivid detail. At the same time, the filmmakers didn’t want to lump Signorelli and her passion into the worst of what her former husband had done. It was complex, captivating, and perfectly fit for a SXSW premiere. – Darcie Zudell

American Dollhouse

John Valley doesn’t want to reinvent cinema with his movie, American Dollhouse. The story of a struggling woman named Sarah (Hailley Laurèn), who inherits her childhood home only to be beset by unstable neighbor Kelly (Kelsey Pribilski), follows in the tradition of horror greats, including Psycho, Peeping Tom, and Black Christmas. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have bigger things on its mind.

“I’m obsessed with how a slasher can be minimalist, but yet a container for huge, modern ideas,” Valley tells Den of Geek. “I stuck to the conventions and tropes, and kept telling the cast that it’s just a meat and potatoes slasher film, but we also tried to find some new, modern life in it.”

Part of that work fell on Pribilski, who had to embody an adult who has reverted to a childlike state in frightening ways. “I thought about how an eight-year-old acts. They’re a little bit animated because we as adults have learned to contain our emotions,” Pribilski reveals. “It was about knowing when to go bigger. We had to choose very carefully the moments for me to go into ‘grizzly bear’ mode, as John would call it.”

As Pribilski got to play big moments, it fell on her co-star Laurèn to keep things grounded in reality. “Sarah is a full person, and it was important to me that, when she makes a decision, it doesn’t come out of nowhere,” she says. That approach makes Sarah a formidable opponent, even for a killer as strange as Kelly. “Sarah’s a loyal fighter, for herself and the people she loves. She’s not going to just go down.”

Thanks to the work of Pribilski and Lauren, American Dollhouse adds a great new killer and final girl to the slasher tradition. – Joe George

Black Zombie

In a pop culture saturated with zombie shows like The Walking Dead and The Last of Us, many have forgotten the roots of Z-culture. Writer-director Maya Annik Bedward is not one of them. Right down to the title of Black Zombie conjuring the racist shadow of the nearly century-old Hollywood film White Zombie (1932), Bedward’s haunting documentary looks at more than a hundred years of appropriation, reinvention, and evolution of a concept that’s rooted in the vast sweep of African diaspora, and the Black Haitian experience of revolution in particular.

“In Haiti, everyone knows about the zombie, and in Haiti, stories of zombies and zombification are regularly talked about,” says Bedward. “It’s adjacent to vodou, but it’s not an everyday practice. Zombification is these stories of ‘I saw zombies in the field,’ and very connected to these ideas of enslavement.” These are the roots which inspired the white fiction that in turn gave the world their beloved modern flesh-easters. Black Zombie observes, critiques, and even at times celebrates this transition—within limits as the othered monster has increasingly become a symbol for tearing down sinister systems. Or just a fear of the status quo breaking… – DC

Brian 

Multiple castmates in Will Ropp’s directorial debut, Brian, were student body presidents in high school; a connection they didn’t make until SXSW. Ben Wang, who plays the titular character running for student body president to impress his crush, says he drew from his own awkward quirks when portraying the role. Edi Patterson and Randall Park play Wang’s parents, who care a little too much that their son finally made a friend. William H. Macy, who plays Brian’s therapist, talks Brian through his various panic attacks and struggles with mental health that cause him to lose roles in drama club, freak out his classmates, and annoy his friends. Meanwhile, his cool English teacher, portrayed by Natalie Morales, just wants to help Brian develop his party platform without indulging his inappropriate attraction to her. 

It’s a coming of age movie about mental health and the messy aspects of high school, but even more than that, the script by Mike Scollins is effortlessly funny in a way that will have you quoting Patterson’s and Park’s one-liners long after the first watch. Speaking of Patterson and Park, they got to have a lot of fun improvising during some dining room table scenes. Brian’s a good time, but one that will yank its audiences’ right back to high school in a visceral and emotional way.  – DZ 

Chasing Summer

Directed by Josephine Decker and written by leading lady, Iliza Shlesinger, Chasing Summer is a romantic comedy that is sexy, realistic, and overwhelmingly nostalgic. 

Jamie (Shlesinger) returns to her Texas hometown after a breakup, shocked to find that while the small hamlet may look the same, the people within it have changed. She picks up her old job at the roller rink, now owned by her sister (Cassidy Freeman), and meets Harper (Lola Tung), her young co-worker. Harper convinces Jamie to attend a party, where she meets a much younger Colby (Garrett Wareing). The two pursue a questionable fling while Jamie rekindles relationships with old high school classmates, including her ex-boyfriend, Chase (Tom Welling). The rest of the story is a sticky recreation of summer love that invokes the refreshing feeling of stepping into AC.

At times predictable, the film also has moments of shock, including a soap-opera-level reveal that will leave middle-aged women everywhere swooning. It is a retrospective on summers of days past, and the inevitability of moving on. It’s conventional, easy, and delivers the promise of a classic romcom. – Alexandra Hopkins

Crash Land 

What happens when a group of amateur stuntmen try to make a “real movie” so they can prove their worth to a town that hates them? Crash Land, directed by Dempsey Bryk, answers that very question. 

“It came out of COVID,” Bryk says. “I was stuck with my brother and my entire family… living behind the couches in the living room, as you do, and I was watching this Jackass marathon on loop and the idea blossomed out of there.” The film evokes classics of the genre – think Napoleon Dynamite, Superbad, and Bottle Rocket – against a Canadian backdrop of charming chaos. 

“There was a process of trying to make it not like anything else after being so inspired your entire life by the things you love, and then you have to try to find your own voice,” Bryk says. 

As Crash Land follows this group of boys becoming men one wipeout at a time, it simultaneously tells another coming of age story. The spirit behind Crash Land is the much more successful story of Dempsey Bryk and his brother Billy, who plays the emotional catalyst of the movie. Through his influence, the characters crash and land in a world that is fun, endearing, and unexpectedly touching. – Sophia Rooksberry 

Drag

Horror movies often tend to revolve around similar, oftentimes outlandish, concepts: A deranged killer, a disturbing monster, a haunted setting. But Drag, the debut feature film from Raviv Ullman and Greg Yagolnitzer, finds a scary story in an everyday, all-too-human problem. Yes, it’s a movie that’s really about the terrifying specter of lower back pain. 

The film stars Lizzy Caplan and Lucy DeVito as a pair of frequently-at-odds siblings who find themselves in increasing trouble during a house robbery gone wrong. When one of the pair throws their back out mid-heist, the other must help her escape by dragging her from the house’s upstairs bathroom down to the waiting car. Painfully uncomfortable (and often downright grisly) acts of body horror ensue, with plenty of gross-out details in full close-up even as they discover that the man they’ve come to rob is not everything he appears to be. – Lacy Baugher

Drift 

SXSW needs an Action Documentary screening section solely for Drift to exist in. Described by director Deon Taylor as a real life Catch Me If You Can, the documentary stars real-life action hero Isaac Wright as he recounts his career going to unprecedented heights for his art.

“The documentary is a lot more than just my artwork,” Wright says. “It has to do with my life and what I feel like my artwork really represents and a full portrait of what I think the goal of life is.” 

Under the artist name Drift, he climbs to the very top of the country’s tallest buildings capturing the most breathtaking and adrenaline-spiking photos, slowly working toward his dream of summiting the Empire State Building. 

“We went to the Instagram and these beautiful photos are just so captivating that it’s really overwhelming, and wondering why the hell he’s up there and what he’s doing was my initial reaction,” Roxanne Avent Taylor, the film’s producer, says. 

The documentary answers those questions in an exploration of the human spirit, as the occasional illegality of Drift’s climbs resulted in a multi-year battle with law enforcement across multiple states. 

“I believed that everyone could connect to the human story based on the fact that we’ve all been through something,” Taylor says. “We’ve all been misrepresented or someone has tried to tear down your character in some way.” 

On its surface, Drift is an action thriller come to life. At its core, Drift is a tear-jearking testament to a freedom that only the birds and the film’s namesake have experienced. – SR

Family Movie

When watching Family Movie, a chipper-oddball indie directed by Kevin Bacon and starring Kevin Bacon, as well as wife Kyra Sedgwick, daughter Sosie Bacon, and son Travis Bacon, one gets the sense that this is not what a real family flick with the Bacons would look like. At least you’d hope so! But given how mirthful this splatter-comedy is when their fictional doppelgängers are forced to deal with a murderer on the set of their horror movie-within-a-horror movie, you nonetheless feel like you’re sitting across from the gang during a lively game night.

“I think the movie definitely reflects on all our personalities individually and how we relate to each other,” Travis explains. “There’s definitely some little moments like that, but we’re still acting.”

Kevin later adds that screenwriter Dan Beers was able to collect some surprisingly accurate depictions of interpersonal dynamics after interviewing them each separately. Says the director: “When we got the first draft of the script, we were like, ‘Holy shit, how did you know that?!’ And it’s not like it’s pieces of dirt… it’s just ways of being.” – DC

Forbidden Fruits

A title like Forbidden Fruits suggests a heavy drama, thick with Biblical overtones and meditations on the nature of sin. Yet, one look at the new movie starring Lili Reinhart as the leader of a witch cult of mall girls promises the exact opposite, presenting itself as a spunky horror comedy.

However, according to director Meredith Alloway, religion weighs heavily on the story. “I love the idea that women are told that we’re quite literally the origin of evil and sin,” Alloway tells Den of Geek, a theme that goes all the way to the source material, the play “Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die” by Lily Houghton, who cowrote the screenplay with Alloway. 

Alloway continues, “When I read the play, I see all these women reclaiming that. Witchcraft and being in a coven are ways to make that narrative ours. I think when women get together and set an intention, whether it’s magic or literally just talking at a sleepover, that is really powerful.”

As Apple, Reinhart gathers a team of women to join her coven, including Lola Tung as Pumpkin, Victoria Pedretti as Cherry, and Alexandra Shipp as Fig,” all characters who are more than they initially appear. 

“No one’s playing a stereotype,” says Pedretti. “There are a lot of cues that might lead you to misjudge these women before you get to know them. Each character ends up surprising the audience with their humanity.”

“I think we all play very complex human individuals who just so happen to be born in a female body in this lifetime, who are trying to navigate the structures of our world,” adds Shipp.

In other words, the characters are richer and more complicated than one might think, just like Forbidden Fruits itself. – JG

The Fox 

Ever wanted to get in bed with a fox voiced by Olivia Colman? Well, Jai Courtney got to in Dario Russo’s The Fox, a magical realism comedy about what happens when people try to change themselves for their partners. Emily Browning reluctantly agrees to marry Courtney’s character, Nick, while secretly having an affair with her boss (Damon Herriman), who is also cheating on his wife (Claudia Doumit). In an effort to win their partner back, Nick listens to a fox he was moments away from killing in the woods, leading all the characters down a hole where they literally lose themselves. 

Russo directed, wrote, and scored The Fox, so naturally he had a very specific vision for the fantasy and comedy elements of the film. Russo says he finds it really annoying when characters in films deliver an over-exaggerated reaction to talking animals, so in this universe, talking foxes are the least out-of-the-ordinary thing. Though they didn’t really act alongside Colman, Doumit and Browning were obsessed with her narration; Browning says she listened to a recording of Colman’s voice acting over and over again on a run one time. The film is as ambitious as it is mystical, but it never loses its ability to make fun of the chaos and camp of it all. – DZ

He Bled Neon

With all its neon lights and gleeful indulgence of vice, Las Vegas has always made for a popular movie setting. Still, Vegas-native and He Bled Neon producer Nate Bolotin felt there was a certain kind of movie that Sin City had not yet played host to. 

“Twenty years ago, my step brother and best friend passed away. I got a text message from a mutual friend, just like how it happens in the movie actually, and had to go back and bury him and reconnect with the people that I had lost touch with. Someone came up to me at the funeral and said ‘hey, I think there’s some foul player here’ but we never went too deep. Fifteen years later or so it just clicked: we haven’t seen a Vegas revenge noir thriller in a world outside the Vegas strip.”

True to Bolotin’s real life experiences, He Bled Neon picks up with successful businessman Ethan (Joe Cole) receiving the fateful text and returning home to Las Vegas where he reconnects with his old crew (which includes characters played by Marshawn Lynch, Rita Ora, and Ismael Cruz Cordova) and begins to unpack the mystery of his brother Darren’s (Paul Wesley) death.

He Bled Neon aces the set-up, largely thanks to the colorful sensibilities of director Drew Kirsch and electronic soundscapes of composers Joe Trapanese and DJ Zhu. Once the revenge plot moves into the desert and grimy environs outside the strip, however, the film loses its distinctive sense of place and settles into a disappointingly conventional crime story. – Alec Bojalad

Hokum

Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy became a SXSW Midnighter hero when 2024’s Oddity took home the festival’s Audience Award. Now he’s returned to Austin with some extra star power in tow. The horror auteur’s next spooky effort, Hokum, stars Severance’s Adam Scott as Ohm Bauman, an American novelist who absconds to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes and finish his latest book. Of course, it just so happens that this particular inn contains a honeymoon suite that is said to be haunted by an ancient witch…

Speaking of hauntings, Hokum’s first act is haunted by a weak characterization of Scott’s Ohm, whose lifetime of unaddressed grief has apparently manifested itself as a need to be a real dick. Once the movie gives way to the charismatic actor’s charm and McCarthy begins to flex his horror muscles, the back half blossoms into a pleasingly macabre experience. It’s also quite dark. Literally. 

“It’s dark in the film, and it was literally dark when we were in there making it,” Scott told Den of Geek. “It was pretty clear that this was going to be unsettling. As an actor, since your control is limited, you never know really how something is going to turn out at the end of the day. Having so much faith in Damian and seeing all the components they put together on set, I knew there was a chance that this could work.”  And indeed Hokum does work. – AB

I Love Boosters

Three projects into his burgeoning film career, it’s fair to say that Boots Riley has developed a house style. For a lesser creative, that level of one-note fixation might begin to grow stale. Thankfully, the marriage of the surreal with leftist politics is a note that this rapper, songwriter, and record-producer-turned-filmmaker knows how to play quite well. And he continues to do so in I Love Boosters.

Keke Palmer stars as Corvette, an aspiring fashion designer who ekes out a living as a “booster,” pinching high-end textiles and selling them to her neighborhood at a discount. Together with her friends Sade (Naomi Ackie) and Mariah (Taylour Paige), Corvette sets her booster sights on high-end fashion entrepreneur Christie Smith (Demi Moore) to close the fashion gap between the haves and have-nots.

Like Sorry to Bother You before it, I Love Boosters’ premise is merely a jumping off point for all the vivid imagery and offbeat twists to come. The movie that a ticket-buyer expects to see at minute 0 is very much not the movie they experience by minute 60 or so. Unlike Sorry to Bother You, however, Boosters’ absurdist twist isn’t a completely out-of-left-field human-animal hybrid situation but a far more mundane science fiction tool that we won’t spoil. Despite the relatively conventional sci-fi trappings of its back half, I Love Boosters feels satisfyingly anarchic and bizarre all the way through. – AB

Imposters 

The idea of changelings, body snatchers, or other false creatures that are somehow swapped into existing families without any of their members being the wiser is nightmare fuel from time immemorial. Imposters takes this idea and runs with it, crafting a story that wrestles with ideas of parenthood, commitment, and fear. 

The film stars Jessica Rothe and Charlie Barnett as Paul and Marie, a couple forced to contend with any parent’s worst nightmare when their baby mysteriously disappears. While everyone is convinced the resident Town Creep is responsible, Marie’s not so sure, and when she turns to the mysterious Orson (Bates Wilder) for help, he sends her to a mysterious cave in the woods. But the child Marie brings back from the forest may not be the son she lost.

A genre-bending film that’s full of the sort of twists even seasoned moviegoers will likely not see coming, that explores the all-too-human pain of love and loss through a filter that’s covered with no small amount of blood. – LB

Kill Me

At first glance, Kill Me seems to ask the question, “What if Charlie Kelly woke up in a bathtub of his own blood?” But with a deeply emotional and revelatory performance from Charlie Day, the horror-dramedy becomes so much more. Sure, our main character, Jimmy, lives in a dingy apartment a la Charlie and Frank, and his frenetic energy while trying to solve his own murder attempt harkens back to a Pepe Silvia obsession… but that’s not a bad thing. The audience is immediately comforted by the familiarity of Day’s impeccable comedic timing right before adjusting to the sobering reality that his character has a history of trying to take his own life—making him the perfect choice to carry the emotional weight of this film. 

Jimmy meets his match in Allison Williams’ 911 operator, Margot. She grounds both him and a film that turns into an unlikely whodunit. Williams has also become something of a scream queen over the last decade (starring in Get Out, M3GAN, The Perfection), but pure horror this film is not. Similarly to Day, she brings the authenticity and depth needed to be Jimmy’s “straight man” as she navigates the hijinks of solving a maybe-murder while healing from her own trauma. 

It’s a feat to address subject matter as serious as suicide while ensuring the audience knows they’re allowed to laugh—and a lot for that matter. Director Peter Warren tactfully displays both ends of the spectrum that people with mental illness can experience: the dramatics of suicide attempts but also the mundanity of ordering the same meal every day for months. In his own words, “Depression and mental illness are incredibly dangerous but can also be dumb and annoying. It’s like stepping on a rake a million times in your head.” – Britt Migs

Lainey Wilson: Keepin’ Country Cool

Amy Scott is the director behind Counting Crows: Have You Seen Me Lately? and Sheryl, proving an affinity for documentary storytelling about some of the music industry’s most iconic names. Now, she is bringing the story of modern country idol Lainey Wilson to Netflix.

Lainey Wilson: Keepin’ Country Cool is set to premiere globally on April 22. It follows the country star on her ascent to major stardom while traveling the country on the “Country’s Cool Again Tour” in 2024. 

“After a while, it was apparent that we weren’t chasing the tour, we were chasing Lainey,” Scott says. “Her life is all over the place. Her life is not a straight line, so we just tried to hold onto that mechanical bull ride.” 

While being jostled around the country and holding on for dear life, Scott and her team discovered the heart of Wilson’s music and her musical persona. Not only are her powerful vocals and charisma emblematic of industry titans like Dolly Parton, but her compassion and grit are what give her music, and this documentary, their spirit. 

“Vulnerablilty can come in many different flavors,” Scott says. “It can be vulnerability about struggles, but vulnerability also is when you can be funny and have a really unguarded, self-deprecating nature, and we realized early on that (Lainey) is really, really funny.”

Throughout the documentary, Wilson is seen constantly songwriting when she isn’t rehearsing or performing. She has spent her career banking songs for upcoming records, using her determination and open heart as fodder for the future of her skyrocketing career; Scott’s latest project delivers all of these details in a way that is careful, exciting, and, of course, incredibly cool. – SR

Leviticus

The land down under has long been a reliable source of uniquely upsetting films, from Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) to Lake Mungo (2008), but Australian horror has enjoyed a renaissance as of late, thanks to hits such as The Babadook (2014) and Talk to Me (2022). 

Director Adrian Chiarella continues that tradition with his debut, Leviticus, which stars Joe Bird of Talk to Me and Stacy Clausen as two gay teens forced to participate in a conversion ritual by a fundamentalist pastor. The ritual releases a malevolent entity that takes the form of the person the victim most desires, which, for the boys, is one another.

“When I started thinking about things that were personal to me as a gay man, I knew that homophobia was something that I wanted to tackle in a film,” Chiarella tells Den of Geek. “There’s a clue in the word: homophobia is a fear. So I started digging deeper into what that might look like through the lens of this genre.”

The stars of Leviticus followed Chiarella’s lead by playing the reality of their characters’ plight. “I think that horror films are, in a way, dramas with horror elements because the emotions are so real and raw,” observes Bird. “It’s not like I was filming a horror film in one scene and a romance film in others. These were just real, natural people going through this experience.”

Chiarella adds, “I knew the horror element wouldn’t work unless you were really invested in the connection between these two lead characters.” To that end, he sent Bird and Clausen out on various field trips to build their characters. Those trips included visits to the country because, like any other good piece of Australian horror, the terror in Leviticus comes from the landscape. – JG

Mam

Part of the appeal of film festivals like SXSW is the chance for audiences to take in both mid-budget blockbusters bound for big theaters and the indie-est indies that ever indie-d. Projects like Over Your Dead Body and I Love Boosters occupy the former space on 2026’s SXSW roster. Mam is very much part of the latter. 

Directed by Nan Feix, Mam is an unabashed love letter to Vietnamese cuisine, New York’s Chinatown, and love itself. It’s also a novel blend of fictional narrative and documentary. While Mam is fully scripted, it recounts the real life story of chef Jerald Head as he moves to New York from Texas and tries to make it in the culinary world. Playing Head and his wife and business partner Nhung Dao Head are Head and Nhung themselves, who now own and operate Mắm on Forsyth Street. 

Shot in a scant 16 days (usually after a shift at the restaurant, Head revealed in a post-screen Q&A), Mam wears its lowkey indie status on its sleeve. The rough-around-the-edge film is unlikely to have a second life outside of Austin. But for 81 pleasant minutes, it made festival-goers in Alamo Drafthouse’s auditorium 5 very, very hungry. – AB

Manhood

What is likely to earn points as the most unusual and eyebrow-raising documentary at this year’s festival (or perhaps almost any other) is Daniel Lombroso’s Manhood, a sober look at the growing popularity of “male enhancement” cosmetic procedures (read: penis enlargement). It’s a subject ripe for ridicule or late night comedy, and yet the film takes a clinical lens that flits between aloof and sympathetic, depending on the interviewee. All are part of a larger line, though, of dudes willing to sell their house or risk their mortgages to increase their girth.

Astutely setting the film primarily in the Dallas and Miami areas of the South, Lombroso pulls at a thread from a previous documentary—his depressingly prescient study of the then fringe elements of the alt-right in the Atlantic’s White Noise (2020)—to draw a link between the manosphere culture of supplemental pills and Joe Rogan-like podcasts, and a lot of the guys desperate to add a few inches at any cost. Yet there’s perhaps a bit more empathy for the younger and more vulnerable parties who get taken for a ride and permanently disfigured by grifters with white coats and needles stuffed with filler.

The film could draw a stronger link in its thesis between the modern culture that its title obviously evokes and the guys on the table, but it finds both pathos and condemnation to varying degrees for alleged “medical” predators, and the type of souls who end up thinking they need to have this procedure done. One wishes to spend more time with the partners who often shrug they don’t even care. – DC

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice

Writer-director BenDavid Grabinski might have been too young to make movies in the ‘90s, but he was definitely watching them. And nowadays he appears to be determined to bring a flavor of them back, complete with a hard-swaggering, high-concept genre exercise starring Vince Vaughn at his most confident. A movie about gangsters, parties, and time travel, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is a bit like if Swingers, Go, and Back to the Future had a half-forgotten love child who we’re now only meeting as an adult. And that’s meant as a compliment.

As the title suggests, this is a love triangle served in four parts after gangster Nick (Vaughn) time travels about half a year into the past in order to stop his slightly younger self (also Vaughn) from murdering their best friend Mike (James Marsden) for the affair he’s carrying on with Nick’s unhappy wife, Alice (Eiza González). It’s a gonzo premise that is treated with just enough seriousness to give meat to the idea of considering second chances—whether through the magic of a proverbial “undo” button,  or where you’d even want to hit it to fix a bad mistake. As González notes in our studio, “I always connect with moving forward. I think there’s something beautiful about the chaos. Some of the craziest, most beautiful things that happened in my life have come from real terrible circumstances and bad moments”

Still, in its heart, this movie is all about the vibes, as indicated by its structure being based around the “PARTY,” “AFTERPARTY,” and “AFTER-AFTER-AFTERPARTY” which its main quartet crashes while trading barbs in a screenplay with more wisecracks than there are bullets. And trust us, this movie has a whole lotta bullets. It’s bravado and muscular mischief and suggests Grabinski is one to watch. – DC

My Brother’s Killer

This documentary solves a murder case gone cold. My Brother’s Killer, directed by Rachel Mason, traces the 36 years since the brutal murder of 25-year-old William “Billy London” Arnold Newton in West Hollywood. 

This film captures the violence, trauma, and grief gay men experienced during the AIDS epidemic, as well as their resilience. Through archival material and dozens of interviews with those connected to the case, including her own mother, Mason uncovers shocking information.

“It was a terribly violent time and I think that’s another undocumented part of gay history,” Mason says. “Sadly, it is hard to always focus on the negativity and sadness, and the resilience of gay culture is the most amazing thing. In the sea of death, you also have this vibrancy, and I really wanted to showcase that. It doesn’t always have to be dark, the fight can be joyful in a strange way.”

Billy was an adult filmmaker, poet, and illustrative artist—he was also deeply loved by the people around him, a feeling evident throughout the documentary. This documentary is more than a true crime film, it showcases the struggle of representation and provides recognition and closure for those involved. – AH

Normal

Full disclosure: We were not able to actually see director Ben Wheatley and screenwriter Derek Kolstad’s new action movie starring Bob Odenkirk—the deceptively titled Normal—in Austin. However, we were able to speak with all three men, who have described the movie as a kind of inversion of High Noon. In that classic Western, Gary Cooper stood alone as a sheriff willing to face up bad men while all the people who loved him turned their backs in fear.

“It’s ultimately taking those themes, the sense and the appeal, and wrapping it around small-town Americana,” Kolstad observes about their new film. But it’s also doing so in a modern context with the America of today, setting the stage for an action spectacle apropos of the scribe behind John Wick.

For his part, director Wheatley appreciates that he has brought a British sensibility to the proceedings, saying, “An outsider’s perspective is always interesting. Not to say it’s better than worse from any other point-of-view, but I think there’s a long history of people coming from the outside to film the States and to see it with different eyes.” It also might be befitting of the neo-Western. While genre icon John Wayne famously detested High Noon back in the day, refusing to believe a small town wouldn’t support a good man in need, Normal’s viewers might be much more open to the idea. As Odenkirk quips, “He should meet some small towns.”

Over Your Dead Body

When it comes to filmmaking, the concept of “escalation” can be just as important as acting, scripting, or even turning the damn cameras on in the first place. Few movies at the 2026 SXSW Film Festival understand the importance of raising the stakes better than action comedy thriller Over Your Dead Body. 

Based on the 2021 Norwegian film The Trip and directed by The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone, all Over Your Dead Body knows how to do is escalate. Things start relatively simple with husband and wife Dan and Lisa (Shrinking’s Jason Segel and Ready or Not’s Samara Weaving) repairing to a remote cabin upstate to save their dying marriage… and also to kill each other. Dan and Lisa’s murderous plans are complicated by a cascade of interlopers and extenuating circumstances, leading to mass amounts of blood, gore, and perhaps even some rekindled romance. 

Over Your Dead Body’s commitment to ratcheting absurdity means that its first act runs a bit dry. But once two prison escapees (Timothy Olyphant, Keith Jardine) and their guard conspirator (Juliette Lewis) enter the narrative, the movie really gets rolling and never looks back. And like any good partnership, Segel and Weaving excel in dabbling in the other’s home turf of horror and comedy, respectively. 

“I’m just so proud to have made a remake that I feel like has teeth,” Taccone says. “It’s dark, it’s fucked up, and it’s more gory than the original, weirdly. It has its own tone, and I just feel very proud that we could make something that I like equally to the original.” – AB

Pizza Movie

In a shameless throwback to the stoner comedies of the 2000s, Pizza Movie is the type of slouched and underachieving good time that is destined to best be seen in a crowded theater or even rowdier dorm room. Which isn’t to say it’s dumb. Writers-directors Nick Kocher and Brian McEllhaney take some boldly clever swings in their high-concept (ahem) where a couple of college screw-ups (Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone) indulge in an experimental drug they find in their dorm room. However, the thing has such potent magical properties, it not only gets them high but causes them to break the space-time continuum with time-loops and fourth-wall breaks. They’re like a pair of blitzed Punxsutawney co-eds.

The only cure? Pizza, of course, which is down in the lobby if they can get down there in time—or face severe consequences. It’s a deliberately, heavily-baked concept, which Kocher describes as based on a true story. “In college, we had the idea. Everyone’s ordered food when they’re not fully sober and it’s difficult.” You can say that again, dude. – DC

Power Ballad

It is said that success is the child of many fathers while failure is an orphan. But that doesn’t mean every papa gets the credit they deserve, particularly in fields as competitive (and lucrative) as songwriting. Such is the appealing conceit of John Carney’s latest bittersweet laugher that looks into the music business with as much affection as there is contempt. They, in fact, walk hand-in-hand when Paul Rudd’s washed up wedding singer Rick meets Nick Jonas’ former boy band heartthrob searching for reinvention, Danny. The two jam and jive during a joyous night over drinks in Ireland, including when Rick shows a few of the pieces he’s working on, particularly a poignant ballad that’s only missing a bridge.

Six months later, the song has it, as does Danny who’s introduced it to the world as an instant sensation—and as a piece of musical magic he wrote solo. A bit of a music industry “Book of Job,” where Rudd’s hurt and aggrieved Rick must deal with the eye-rolls and second-guessing of nearly everyone in his life, from his bandmates to even his wife and daughter. There’s a lot of humor in the scenario, but plenty of pathos as Rudd gives one of the finest performances of his career. He’s a man losing his sanity and his even-keel, to the point where he must travel from the Emerald Isle to the City of Angels. – DC

Pretty Lethal

The loftiness of chasing perfection, and the physical demand of what many consider the highest performing art, has always made ballet a compelling subject for filmmakers. Storytellers often wish to track the psychic or physiological toll of achieving révérence—or at least contrasting it with gonzo, blood-splattered spectacle. Pretty Lethal attempts both in a daffy B-crowdpleaser that essentially Die Hards five prima ballerinas when they’re trapped in an eastern European den of iniquity run by a vamping Uma Thurman. 

The movie gets a lot of mileage out of its balletic heroines being decidedly not John McClane (or Ana de Armas in a John Wick movie, for that matter). Instead, they nervously use their on pointe routine to “Waltz of the Flowers” for a blood-soaked defense in a bar involving knives, shattered wine bottles, and knives in the slippers. Says star Maddie Ziegler, “We sort of came up with a style we’re calling ballet-fu, which was really fun. Because we referenced if you put a bunch of feral cats in a box, that was what we were doing to survive. But I think we used our strengths to our advantage,” complete by combining the input of stunt coordinators and ballet choreographers. Grace is harmony. – DC

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

In an age of so-called “elevated” and sober-minded horror cinema, it is a blessing from Mr. Le Bail that we have Radio Silence ready to turn up the gore and fun. The filmmaking collective behind Ready or Not, Abigail, and the best Scream movies made in this century return to their own blood-red haunts and splash new buckets of crimson in the delightfully sinister Ready or Not 2. Like its predecessor, this is a grinning romp suffused with eat-the-rich gallows humor as we revisit the Bride in the splattered dress (Samara Weaving) mere moments after she parted brutally with her groom for good. (He was in the process of trying to sacrifice her to Satan. As apparently one does in country estates.)

Unfortunately for Grace, there are plenty of other Devil-worshipping billionaires out there. It turns out to be a blessing for the audience, though, as she inevitably slaughters them alongside sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) during a new hide-and-seek game at a country club that looks suspiciously like Mar-a-Lago. As director Gillett acknowledges, “All of the institutions that we engage with, if you follow them fall enough, you’re probably going to find some form of corruption.”

The movie doesn’t quite reach the same highs as the first movie since we know the punchline this time, but the climax at an elite Satanic altar is every bit as giddy as the combustible billionaires last time, and Samara Weaving still knows how to deliver a killing parting shot. – DC

The Saviors

Filmmakers don’t get to choose whether their films will be “timely” or not. Movies take a long time to make and time itself, as you might have noticed, has a tendency to Inexorably March On. Rarely has there ever been a better case study of that phenomenon than the unusually (and completely accidentally) timely comedy thriller The Saviors. 

Adam Scott and Danielle Deadwyler star as Sean and Kim, a couple in a failing marriage who look to supplement their income by renting their shed to Amir and Jahan – a brother and sister from an undisclosed Middle Eastern nation played by Theo Rossi and Nazanin Boniadi. While Amir and Jahan seem nice, they’re also suspiciously interested in the president of the United States’ whereabouts and appear to be building some sort of dangerous device. But this can’t be what Sean and Kim think it is, right? They’re not bigots and this isn’t a mediocre season of 24… right?

Due to a confluence of events like a pandemic, two Hollywood work stoppages, and the general improbability of getting a movie produced at all, The Saviors took 10 years to make from conception to premiere. And in that 10 years, the world shifted away from Obama-era progressive optimism to a more overt return to Islamophobia with the United States even entering war with Iran just two weeks before the film’s premiere.  

“You know, there was a period in those 10 years when I thought the world had changed a bit, and maybe we should focus on a different project,” director and co-writer Kevin Hamedani says. “And then the world changed again, and suddenly The Saviors is even more timely, unfortunately.”

The Saviors’ incidental resonance to current events only enhances what is already a compelling narrative. Scott and Deadwyler shine as two ostensibly progressive individuals who need answers but don’t want to seem like Bradley Whitford’s “I’d have voted for Obama a third time if I could” character in Get Out. Hamedani and the script deftly guide the audience through those choppy waters, always leaving enough breadcrumbs so that the viewer doesn’t fully feel like Bradley Whitford either. The end result is a nifty little thriller that feels like The ‘Burbs for the Airbnb age. – AB

Seekers of Infinite Love

Though Seekers of Infinite Love may one day be a cult comedy, right now it’s literally a comedy about a cult… but also about family

Hannah Einbinder (Hacks), John Reynolds (Search Party), and Griffin Gluck (American Vandal) star as a trio of siblings who must rescue their sister from the clutches of the Peoples Temple-esque the Seekers of Infinite Love. Helping them on their mission is ex cult member-turned-cult deprogrammer Rick (Justin Theroux) and his wardrobe of tactical vests. 

According to writer/director Victoria Strouse, Seekers’ cult angle emerged unexpectedly late in the writing process of the script, which was featured on 2008’s Black List.

“I’m utterly fascinated by siblings and I think some of the complexities in sibling relationships, [it] kind of ends up talking so much about all human relationships,” she says. “As I was working on it, I became really interested in cults, this idea of a secondary but corrupt family.”

That fascination with family shines through with Einbinder, Reynolds, and Gluck evoking a believably agitated sibling unit, if not a believably genetic one with their diverse mix of heights and hair colors. While the end result could have used a little more cult whackiness to fully live up to its comedic potential, it’s hard to be disappointed with time spent on a road trip to oblivion with four very funny actors. – AB 

See You When I See You

Before 2025’s SXSW title The Baltimorons, indie filmmaking titan Jay Duplass had not directed a movie since 2012’s The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, opting to help shepherd other storytellers’ visions alongside his brother and producing partner Mark Duplass. But when fellow producing family Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon brought the script for See You When I See You his way, he knew he had to get behind the camera once again. “It just felt big and scary and like I couldn’t say no,” he says. 

It’s easy to see why the project appealed to Duplass. Written by comedian Adam Cayton-Holland, and based on his memoir Tragedy Plus Time, See You When I See You is an intensely personal story about Cayton-Holland’s PTSD following the death of his sister by suicide. Cooper Raiff (director and star of Cha Cha Real Smooth) steps in as the film’s Cayton-Holland analogue, Aaron, and does marvelous work unpacking the young man’s confused journey through grief.

Outside of some creative visual choices representing Aaron’s struggle to reclaim happy memories of his sister, See You When I See You doesn’t have much new to say about the grieving process. Ultimately though, that’s a feature, not a bug, as the rhythms of pain should resonate with anyone who has experienced real tragedy. Even if those experiences involve significantly less Third-Eye Blind and Sum 41 than Aaron’s. – AB

Sender

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever been sent in the mail? The answer to that question can range from the mundane—a gardening hat you didn’t order—to the truly bizarre. Actor David Dastmalchian, for one, tells us he was mailed dirty underwear more than once by an anonymous…. fan? “It was accompanied by a really bizarre letter,” the actor grimaces.

That’s obviously immediately creepy, yet writer-director Russell Goldman’s Sender takes an initially more innocuous stance before turning the screws. And according to Goldman, this too is based on real-life. “[Folks will] send you cheap objects that are related, most likely, to your search history online and any cookies or data can take from what you’re looking like. They send it to your home so they can write reviews in your name that are five stars, so those products can then get a boost on the algorithms.”

Sender takes that conceit to its most ominous, Hitchockian extreme when Britt Lower’s Julia receives a mysterious package from an even more mysterious, and threatening, source. – DC

Sinner Supper Club

Described as a “gay mumblecore ghost story” directors of Sinner Supper Club, Daisy Rosato and Nora Kaye, deliver exactly what is promised. Shot on an iPhone within six days and rooted in improvisation, the film is a scrappy documentation of a NYC-based friend group on the fritz during a heat wave. 

Gathered in a small apartment for Genevieve’s (Genevieve Simon) “eviction funeral,” tensions arise amidst the group over things big and small. On top of navigating their shared-traumatic experience, the death of a best friend, nothing seems to go right — a melted ice cream cake, the power going out, and worst of all, an uninvited partner is brought to the gathering. The night culminates in an unexpected, yet restorative, paranormal experience. 

Sinner Supper Club explores the surrealness of grief from an intrinsically queer perspective. It delivers comedic beats and moments of grief with the fluidity of a high-budget film. While there are moments of hesitance from the actors, the ensemble cast delivers a performance where you feel dropped in the middle of their hangout. – AH

They Will Kill You

The idea for They Will Kill You blossomed after director Kirill Sokolov stayed in an eerie hotel that he believed to be inhabited by a cult of old women. The fictionalized and much gorier version stars Zazie Beetz as the new housekeeper at a decadent hotel with a history of mysterious disappearances. As Sokolov brings her violent journey through the mysterious building to the big screen, the company explores countless genres, from mystery to slapstick to fantasy. 

“Kirill was always reminding us that yes, there’s action, and yes, there’s comedy, but also, at least for me, the most important thing was the truth at the moment,” Myha’la, who plays Beetz’s sister, says. “Then, if it feels truthful and honest and real to me and us in this moment, the comedy is going to come in the edit.” 

The highlight of the movie is the performances from actors like Patricia Arquette, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, and the aforementioned sister duo. They expertly balance multiple styles and tropes, giving the movie an edge in an arguably oversaturated genre.  

“It is genre-defying because it is a love story about two sisters, and that’s really at the core of everything, and then you mix in the brilliant Kung Fu and gore and martial arts and heroism,” Felton says. “It’s a unique blend. I don’t think a film has ever been made quite like this.” – SR 

Time and Water

“The future we were warned about is no longer distant, it is here.” This is the message that Oscar-nominated director Sara Dosa shares in her newest documentary Time and Water. Through archival material and the writings of Icelandic author, Andri Snær Magnason, Dosa puts together an expansive story focused on generational memory and humanity’s relationship with nature. 

Centered on Magnason’s own family ties, Time and Water captures the vast existence of Icelandic glaciers and the tremendous loss felt by the author as he witnesses the disappearance of these titans, and the passing of his grandparents. The audience is transported through the passing of time and experiences the indelible impression humans make on the world and people around them.  

“There is something radical about love, especially in a time that is so polarizing,” Dosa says. “Wherever we can center love and joy amid the doom and the apocalyptic stories abound, I think it could inspire hope…I think it can give a sense of a light in the dark to keep people working toward the change that we so badly need.” 

Time and Water is a stark wake-up call, not only to protect the planet we call home, but to cherish our time with loved ones. The future is now, and Dosa captures the course we took to get here. – AH

Wishful Thinking

It sometimes feels impossible to be happy—even with someone you love—when there’s so much bad news in the world. So imagine the pressure Julia and Charlie (Maya Hawke and Lewis Pullman) are under in Wishful Thinking, a supremely clever and wholesome romantic comedy where the fate of Portland, Oregon, if not the world, rests on the straining romance of two young people at a crossroads in their life. As it slowly dawns on them, when things are good in their domestic life, Julia is suddenly up for a promotion at work, and Charlie’s crypto investments are skyrocketing. When they’re unhappy with each other, literal earthquakes can occur.

It’s a shrewd use of magical realism to entertain wish fulfillment—like literally getting rich off crypto after a particularly sexy date night—but also comment on the pressures we put on each other in the modern world, particularly for those who are as socially entangled and plugged in as the film’s Gen-Z antiheroes. It’s an indie rom-com about the challenge of early adult romances, complete with a big swing ending. But it finds an innovative way to engage these elements, especially when Hawke and Pullman are simpatico—and perhaps even more so when they’re not. – DC

Woodstockers

We were delighted to welcome film and TV mainstay Corbin Bernsen back to the Den of Geek Studio at SXSW to chat about his indie TV pilot, Woodstockers. This time, Bernsen–who is the showrunner, writer, and star– was joined by his son, Oliver, who directed the pilot episode (he also had a feature-length directorial debut, Bagworm, play at the festival).

The delightfully funny dramedy puts the audience in the headspace of an aging hippie confronting life, death, and a bygone era and its legacy set against scenic upstate New York. Our conversation was introspective as the Bernsen’s grappled with deep conversations on set, Corbin’s own career journey, which launched during that period in 1967, and their excitement for independent filmmaking in the television space. Their commitment to the form paid off: Woodstockers took home an Audience award. Now that’s Flower Power. – Chris Longo

Television

Are We Still Married?

Indie TV pilot Are We Still Married? stars Dustin Milligan as Jack, a husband who has been turned into a vampire via a bite from a mysterious bat, and Taylor Misiak as Laura, his wife who isn’t sure whether we should let him back in the house. While that is undoubtedly a bold genre concept, the inspiration for the story came from a real life experience for writer/director Kit Steinkellner (who also created the Facebook Watch series Sorry For Your Loss).

“My husband did get bit by a bat,” she tells Den of Geek. “It was that kind of crazy thing that doesn’t happen except when it does. He got a rabies shot and was OK. I don’t know how you process trauma in your marriage but comedic bits are our go-to. So we just started cracking vampire jokes. At a certain point, he was like ‘but if I were a vampire, you would let me back in the house, right?’ I paused and he didn’t like that pause.”

Through the safety of her closed kitchen window, Laura peppers Jack with questions about vampirism that he doesn’t have the answers to (the bat didn’t exactly explain all the rules of this whole thing). Steinkellner and the actors make beautiful work of the premise, both having fun with the genre silliness of it all while also delving into the pathos of a loving marriage interrupted by a truly unforeseeable calamity. Coming in at just 15 minutes long, Are We Still Married? serves as a compelling proof of concept for whatever direction, and medium, Steinkellner wants to take the story from here.

“I did write a feature inspired by this that was on this past year’s Blacklist. At the same time, in having this conversation with South by, a part of the independent pilot requirement is to submit a series bible. I’ve actually not done this with other ideas before but I have pretty thoroughly explored both options. Ultimately I just want to keep telling this story.” – AB

The Audacity

Have you ever wondered where the wunderkind techbros of Silicon Valley get the audacity? Thankfully so has Jonathan Glatzer, a former writer on Succession and Better Call Saul and now the creator and showrunner of AMC’s fittingly named The Audacity. 

“For years, I thought of audacity as a kind of superpower that we all have, but few of us actually employ because it involves crashing through norms of behavior. Most of us are not bulls in China shops, but in Silicon Valley, it is kind of regarded as an attribute. There’s a lot of broken dishes around there, but that’s what they like: move fast and break things,” he says.

Through its first three episodes, The Audacity doesn’t move fast, but it does break some things. Billy Magnussen (a compelling character actor probably best known for Game Night and Made For Love) steps into the megalomaniacal shoes of Hypergnosis CEO Duncan Park. Eager to prove that he’s much more than the product of some well-timed good luck, Duncan leverages his relationship with his therapist Joanne Felder to gain some (flagrantly illegal) advantages over his competition. 

The Audacity excels as a slice of life look at the excesses (and yes, audacity) of Silicon Valley’s elite in the rapidly expanding AI era. While its early episodes come off as more of a vibe in search of a story, the level of talent both behind and in front of the camera suggests that it has plenty of room to grow. – AB

The Comeback Season 3

Since The Comeback first premiered in 2005, Valerie Cherish has always returned to TV when it needs her the most. The first season of the HBO comedy found the aging sitcom diva played by Lisa Kudrow trying to navigate the brave new world of reality TV, recording her comeback as Aunt Sassy on new sitcom “Room and Bored.” In 2014’s season 2, Valerie attempted to get in on the Bravo-fication of the medium by pitching a pilot to Andy Cohen. Now, with The Comeback’s third and final season, Valerie is set to tackle television’s gravest challenge yet: artificial intelligence.

“[The Comeback] began with what everyone thought was the first extinction event [of TV], which was reality TV, eliminating scripted television for the more economical – no rules, no unions,” Kudrow says. “Happily that wasn’t the end. [Co-creator Michael Patrick King and I] were having lunch and he was like ‘What about this: Valerie is finally offered the lead in a multi-camera sitcom but it’s written about AI.’”

The Comeback season 3’s eight episodes present yet another comedic masterclass of industry satire and character-building. There’s never been someone quite like Valerie Cherish on television and there is unlikely to be ever again. The fading superstar is desperate for fame yet uniquely ill-equipped to handle it, spending much of her adult life flourishing in front of sitcom studio multicams while putting her foot in her mouth in front of documentary single cams. 

The Comeback’s satire is so subtle as to be barely visible. Really it’s the story of a singular character who refuses to let her story end regardless of how many times the industry tries to close the book… and all the humiliation she endures with a grin because of it. Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King give Valerie Cherish the ending she so richly deserves, but we’ll miss her all the same. – AB

The Dark Wizard

The history of rock climbing is rife with larger-than-life characters and adventure sport trailblazers, but few loom as large as Dean Potter. A climber, high-liner, BASE jumper and all around Yosemite Valley Renaissance man, Potter set speed records and free soloed daunting walls at an unprecedented caliber for the duration of his career. Now, Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen – documentary filmmakers and Potter’s old friends – are bringing his story to HBO Max with their new docuseries, “The Dark Wizard.” 

“His aura and myth dominated the sport, both because he was pioneering all these crazy things … but there was also a much broader story there, the behind the scenes and what was going on in his personal world that was really compelling that no one had really heard about,” Rosen says. 

“The Dark Wizard” not only details Potter’s Herculean feats and the impact he had on the climbing community, but also his mental health journey that took place behind the closed doors of an alpha facade. 

“It’s unbelievable seeing all these Olympic athletes talk about their mental health and the struggles,” Mortimer says. “That just was not happening back in the time.” 

The only documentation of Potter’s internal dialogues were in his journals, which his sister donated to the filmmaking duo so they could platform the realities of his life. Using stylistic images and animations from these diaries, alongside interviews with Potter and his inner circle, Mortimer and Rosen crafted a chilling recapitulation of the climber’s life. – SR 

Margo’s Got Money Troubles

Margo’s got money troubles, sure. But she’s also got some big expectations to meet. The Apple TV dramedy entered the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival as the undisputed TV headliner, thanks to the involvement of two prestige studios (A24 and the aforementioned Apple TV), a legendary TV showrunner (David E. Kelley), and a high-powered cast that would fit right in at this year’s Oscars ceremony (Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nick Offerman, Nicole Kidman, and more). Still, it’s one thing to have a lot of expensive toys; it’s another thing entirely to know how to play with them. Thankfully, Margo’s Got Money Troubles puts forward an eight-episode experience well worthy of its creative firepower. 

Based on a novel of the same name by Rufi Thorpe, Margo stars Elle Fanning as the titular young woman with money problems due to an unexpected pregnancy following a tryst with her douchey literature professor. Anticipating little help from her ex-Hooters waitress mother (Pfeiffer) or professional wrestler estranged father (Offerman), Margo gets creative (and sometimes nekkid) to pay the bills. Margo’s Got Money Troubles is Juno for the OnlyFans generation. It’s also the rare “prestige” episodic experience that doesn’t feel like a two-hour movie script that got out of hand. That’s all thanks to a preposterously charming lead performance from Fanning and her equally likable supporting cast. – AB

The post Everything We Saw at SXSW 2026: I Love Boosters, Wishful Thinking, The Comeback, and More appeared first on Den of Geek.