This is one of the areas where I consistently feel the most behind. With movies and TV especially, I also don’t have a good sense of when things came out. Everything is either upcoming, or it came out years ago, and things that are new to me, probably everyone else had already watched/played them and moved on. That said, here are some movies, TV shows, and games that I’m reasonably confident did in fact come out this year and that I enjoyed.
Sinners
This is the obvious one, right? Written and directed by Ryan Coogler, beautifully shot, brilliantly acted all around but particularly by Michael B. Jordan in his dual role as twins Smoke and Stack, and Miles Canton as Sammie – a performance that’s doubly impressive for being his acting debut. It’s a slow-burn monster movie where the monsters don’t even show up until late in the game. It’s also a movie about music, family, community, belonging, but also regret, loss, and violence. The gore feels earned when it is deployed, and similarly the music is such a core part of the storytelling, speaking volumes on its own. Is is a musical? A horror movie? A historical drama? All of the above? Yes. Whatever you want to call it, it’s a damn good film and it deserves all the praise thrown its way.
K-Pop Demon Hunters
Tonally, this is a different movie from Sinners, obviously, but there is crossover. They’re both monster movies where music is a core part of the experience. They’re both, to a degree, about community and family. They were both runaway hits this year, but K-Pop Demon Hunters is probably the more surprising of the two, though it probably shouldn’t have been. Catchy songs, bright colors, appealing to both kids and adults? What’s not to like? At its core, it’s a relatively straightforward story about being yourself, but it’s sweet, it doesn’t take itself too overly seriously, and it has fun along the way. Sometimes you just need something bright, joyous, and celebratory with an earwormy soundtrack and an adorable derpy tiger whose buddy is a multi-eyed crow.
Weapons
The premise of this movie, printed right on the posters, is incredibly effective, creepy, and hooky. “Last night at 2:17 am every child from Mrs. Gandy’s class woke up, got out of bed, went downstairs, opened the door, walked into the dark–and they never came back.” Perfect, right? The movie gave us several new iconic horror images and moments – the children running down the street with their arms out, the sticks being snapped, Gladys. There are jump scares, but they didn’t feel obnoxious. The layering of various viewpoints to build the story worked well, and the unexpected humor was a nice counterpoint to the tension.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Okay, it isn’t technically speculative fiction, but also isn’t it a little bit? Benoit Blanc feels like a mythic figure by this point, his third movie. His powers of reasoning and crime solving seem near supernatural. He shows up, transforms lives and towns, and moves on, presumably never to be seen again. It wouldn’t feel like a stretch to learn that he’s a Time Lord, is what I’m saying. Rian Johnson does an excellent job building characters quickly, so that even when those characters are fairly straightforward, they feel complete, understandable, and motivated. The movie is beautifully lit, framed, and shot, and the actors all do a fantastic job. It manages to comment on the genre without feeling like it’s undermining or mocking it, and as mysteries go, it’s just good fun.
Poker Face
Speaking of Rian Johnson, mysteries, and things that aren’t technically speculative fiction but kind of are – Poker Face season two aired in 2025. Charlie Cale’s ability to tell when someone is lying is basically a superpower, and the show doesn’t feel the need to justify or explain it. It’s just a thing, and the way the show is constructed, you’re willing to go with it. The structure of each episode is similar to the structure used in Wake Up Dead Man. The crime occurs, all the pieces are laid out, and then Charlie shows up halfway through to solve the mystery, and you get to see where she fit into the story all along. It’s charming, and Natasha Lyonne is perfectly cast. There are fun guest stars throughout, and overall, it feels like a loving homage to 70s, 80s, and 90s television, Colombo in particular, which it references indirectly several times, and directly in season 2.
Haunted Hotel
Katherine inherits her brother’s haunted hotel, struggling to keep the business afloat while raising her two kids, Ben and Esther, and her sort of semi-adopted, semi-son, Abaddon, an ancient demon trapped in a young boy’s body. Katherine’s brother, Nathan, is one of the hotel’s hauntings, some of which are human and some of which are very much not. There’s a Gravity Falls vibe to the show, with most episodes having a simple monster-of-the-week premise, while also occasionally contributing to the larger season-long arc. The show starts off being fairly light-hearted, but does get into some heavier themes as it goes on. Like Gravity Falls, family is key to the show, and it definitely scratches that same itch of weird, funny, and heartfelt,
Doctor Who
What can I say? I’m a sucker for the show, and I enjoyed Ncuti Gatwa’s turn as the Doctor. It ended too soon; I would have liked to see more from him; I wasn’t ready to let go. But that’s the nature of the Doctor, isn’t it? I’m almost never ready to say goodbye to any single iteration of them, but at the same time, I’m excited to see what comes next. Overall, I felt Gatwa’s first season/series was stronger than the second, but a few episodes stood out this season. “Lux” had a lot of fun with animation and the line between fiction and reality. “The Well” took the Doctor back to a familiar planet, but had it look very different this time, and the monster felt very classic to new-era Who monster episode. “The Story & the Engine” did a lovely job celebrating the power of storytelling itself. Problems with Disney aside, it was fun to see Doctor Who with a larger budget, particularly as it impacted costuming. Rather than having one or two looks for an entire series, the actors got spiffed up in all kinds of fun threads, sometimes changing clothes multiple times an episode. In addition to getting cool period-appropriate clothing, it felt like the show was doing fun things with colors, mood, and style for each character. Like the Doctor, the show itself is always changing. It’ll be interesting to see where it goes from here.
Dead Take
As kids, my stepsister and I played a fair number of computer games together, but the ones we were truly obsessed with were the horror puzzle games 7th Guest and its sequel 11th Hour. Dead Take is very much in that vein, mixing puzzle gameplay with full motion video. It’s quite a short game. I knocked it out in about 6 hours, spaced out over a few days, but one could probably run through it in even less time. The puzzles aren’t complex, nor are they meant to be. There were one or two that caught me up, only because it wasn’t obvious that certain objects could be manipulated in certain ways, but otherwise, it’s the story that takes center stage. The premise is that you’re an actor, exploring the creepy, abandoned mansion of a director in the aftermath of a movie premier party for a role you didn’t get. Or did you? Solving each puzzle lets you piece together additional bits of the story, but the game leaves many elements open to interpretation. There are some effective jump scares, the atmosphere overall is pleasantly eerie, and the story offers a nice exploration of fame, obsession, and the churn of the Hollywood machine.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
I haven’t actually finished the game yet, but I can pretty confidently say it deserves all the accolades and awards it’s garnered thus far. Visually, it is stunning. The music is gorgeous. The acting is brilliant. The story is well-written. The three acts feel very distinct from each other, and the world and the characters evolve as the game unfolds. There are moments that are truly heartbreaking, but in a good way, or at least in a way that feels right for the world and the story being told. The monster design, the character design, the world itself, are all incredible – unique and lovely and beautiful and frightening. The gameplay itself is very twitch/reaction time based, which is not the type of game I normally go for, but it’s worth it for the story, setting, and everything else. Even when I get frustrated, I want to keep playing. The combat is satisfying when it goes right, and regardless, the game is breathtaking. Plus, you can be blood-spattered from battle and have very serious and emotional conversations while dressed in the most stereotypical French clothing possible, with a baguette strapped to you back. What’s not to love?
Two honorable mentions I want to throw in here are the co-op games RV There Yet? and Goblin Clean-Up. On its surface, RV There Yet? isn’t speculative fiction. Up to four blobby characters navigate their RV through a map, solving physics puzzles in order to get the vehicle through the increasingly absurd terrain while occasionally being attacked by bears, eagles, and alligators. Except ***SPOILER WARNING*** at the end you’re suddenly driving through a post-apocalyptic construction zone landscape while being shot at by helicopters, which makes me think the blobby characters were some kind of escaped science experiment all along, so maybe it is speculative fiction. Goblin Clean-Up, on the other hand, is very speculative. The premise is that you’re part of the clean-up crew that goes into dungeons after the adventurers have passed through, mopping up blood stains, feeding chunks of meat to the resident mimic, resetting traps without getting trapped yourself, and so on. I don’t particularly like cleaning in real life, but when it earns me fun hats for my cutesy goblin character and I’m using a slime on a stick to mop blood out of a dungeon, it’s actually rather satisfying.
