10 Best Films of 2025

Ellen looking to the heavens

In a year packed with 1990s revivalism, noir resuscitation and franchise exhaustion, these are the films I liked the most in 2025. I’ve attempted to avoid the obvious but not be wilfully obscure and have probably succeeded at neither. Without further ado, with links to full reviews, here goes – in 1-10 order. Dying (dir: Matthias Glasner) A German black comedy so bleak you might laugh out of desperation, following a pair of oldsters as they reach the end of the road, and their two appalling adult children. Superbly underplayed by a top-notch cast, it’s a novelistic, dense, all-enveloping wallow in human misery, three hours long and worth every minute of the grief. … Read more

Bring Her Back

Oliver and Laura on either side of a window

Unsettling, spooky, nasty, demonic and icky, Bring Her Back is a modern horror classic demonstrating brothers Danny and Michael Philippou’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the genre, spun their own way. Their feature debut, 2022’s Talk to Me, was no flash in the pan. It takes a while to work out what’s going on but the brothers give us domestic jeopardy to chew on until all can be revealed. After their father dies unexpectedly in the shower, sibling teenagers – he older than her – are farmed out to a foster carer. Andy (Billy Barratt) is nearly 18 and in three months intends to become his almost blind stepsister’s legal guardian. All he has to … Read more