Rental Family

Phillip Vanderploeg (Brendan Fraser) is an American actor working in Japan but struggling to find roles outside cheesy token characters and commercials.

One day he rushes to a very confusing booking where he's playing a funeral guest and the "deceased" is very much alive.

It turns out he's been subcontracted by a "Rental family" company that hires out actors to play parts in a range of situations that exist on a kind of continuity through LARP to therapy, social work, fetish and in some cases victimless deception.

The company owner Shinji (Takehiro Hira) offers Phillip more work and after some initial hesitancy he begins to take on longer term roles.

CW: anybody who's ever done any kind of safeguarding training will want to scream at the screen about how unethical and risky this all is under the cover of "Japan being quirky"

Skinamarink

Siblings Kevin and Kaylee wake in the night and find themselves alone in the house. They look for their father but can't find him.

It's dark and unsettling so they go downstairs, build a pillow/blanket fort and watch old Merry Melodies cartoons on VHS.

Things are not right. Fundamental things like doors and then the toilet simply disappear. There are whispers in the dark.

CW: children in peril, constant flickering lights

Deathstalker (2025)

Battlefield scavenger Deathstalker (Daniel Bernhardt) travels a land ravaged by war between the kingdom of Asterian and the Dreadites controlled by the evil sorcerer Necronemnon (Nicholas Rice).

Unknowingly he takes an ancient amulet of power from a dying Prince and is bound to it and the ongoing battle.

Trying to rid himself of this burden he picks up, literally, the goblin wizard Doodad (Laurie Field/Patton Oswalt) and thief Brisbayne (Christina Orjalo) on the way but can't shake his destiny.

CW: so much cheese it could kill the lactose intolerant

Dead of Winter

Barb (Emma Thompson) closes up her bait and tackle shop and gets in her pickup to head to Lake Hilda in remote Northern Minnesota to go ice fishing. It's an ill advised journey: the radio weatherman is advising people not to travel.

Following the hand drawn map she has, Barb struggles to find her way and stops at a remote cabin to ask for directions. The guy there is defensive but points her in the right direction.

Later while Barb fishes she witnesses something terrible happening and recognises the guy from the cabin as the perpetrator. With no mobile phone signal and now properly snowed in Barb decides to do something about it.

CW: violence and dark melancholic themes

War Machine

US Army Ranger candidate 81 (Alan Ritchson) has given up everything to complete his Ranger training and fulfil the promise he made to his brother in doing so.

As he and the other Ranger candidates face their final training scenario, which is to destroy a downed experimental weapon, they find an immensely impressive prop slightly away from the expected location.

Placing their demolition charges they think they've had an unexpectedly easy ride. The only problem is: this isn't their objective.

CW: injury detail, so much jingoistic macho hoora I think I made myself dumber just by watching it

Compliance

It's a busy night at a branch of the fast food restaurant ChickWich and it's all going wrong for franchisee Sandra (Ann Dowd). A slack employee left the freezer door ajar last night so a load of food spoiled and they've only been able to replace some of the stock. They'll have to short some of the ingredients in the sandwiches and it's rumoured a secret shopper from head office is in the area.

Now a Police Officer Daniels (Pat Healy) is on the phone saying one of her counter staff, Becky (Dreama Walker), has stolen from a customer. Officer Daniels asks Sandra to take Becky aside and check her pockets and bag.

No good will come of this.

CW: vile humiliating misogyny throughout, some nudity

Project Hail Mary

Schoolteacher Dr. Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) awakes in a dishevelled, partially amnesiac state aboard a spaceship. After yanking out the life support connections dangling from him he shambles about the vessel looking for help only to find out his two crewmates are long dead.

Grace is not an astronaut and struggles to work out what is going on, but he knows this much: it must be something to do with the phenomenon dimming Earth's sun and threatening all life. Just recently he'd been failing to come up with the words to explain this sympathetically to the children in his class.

Slowly his recollection improves but Grace has another problem: he realises he is not alone.

The Running Man (2025)

Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is a construction labourer blacklisted after numerous incidents of insufficient obedience and a tendency towards union activity. It's the not too distant future and the worst imagined predations of corporate regulatory capture and unbridled power have created a two tier society even more divided than today.

His wife is lucky to have work as a hostess in a bar but when their daughter gets sick they simply can't afford the medicine she needs.

After he pleads for his old job back and fails he resolves to audition for one of the many exploitative reality game shows that pass for entertainment. Not "The Running Man" though: that would be simply suicidal.

No good will come of this.