133 min | R | November 14, 2025 | Paramount Pictures
Edgar Wright’s Stephen King adaptation has style to spare but asks too much of your suspension of disbelief.
I wanted to love this movie and couldn’t quite get there. The action is competent and Edgar Wright brings his usual visual flair, but the 21st century updates create problems the 1987 original didn’t have. That version compressed everything into a single desperate run. This one stretches Glen Powell’s Ben Richards across multiple weeks of televised survival, and the logistics just don’t hold up.
Josh Brolin as Killian works better than I expected. He brings menace to a role that could have been pure cartoon villainy. The supporting cast feels designed to die, which makes narrative sense but robs the film of emotional stakes. You can’t mourn characters you never cared about.
The premise asks you to believe Americans would gleefully watch contestants hunted to death for entertainment. I want to give people more credit than that, but maybe that’s misplaced optimism in 2025. Even granting the dystopian setup, the multi-week format creates plot holes you could drive a truck through. Wright’s style keeps things watchable, but style alone can’t paper over a story that doesn’t quite believe in itself.