The cinematic experience remains an incredible escape from reality and it’s always impressive to take stock of just how much movies have evolved over a relatively short time. The film industry is certainly guilty of following certain trends and at the end of the day, it’s a business where massive blockbusters that dominate the box office are the goal.
Movies can sometimes feel a little myopic and like it’s only franchises, established intellectual properties, and connected cinematic universes that make the biggest waves. However, there are still lots of innovative filmmakers and studios that strive for originality and 2020 alone contained some especially effective movies that all have completely original premises
10 Tenet Is More Proof That Christopher Nolan Is Becoming His Own Genre
Christopher Nolan made major waves with his gritty Dark Knight trilogy, but the director’s most exciting offerings are his original stories that riff on reality and perception in challenging ways, like Memento, Inception, and most recently, Tenet. Tenet is pure, undiluted Nolan--for both better and for worse--as he engages in a complicated narrative about an operative’s voyage back in time as he attempts to prevent the start of World War III. It’s easy for Nolan’s twisty story and visual techniques to overwhelm the audience, but it still amounts to a wildly unique action blockbuster that plays by its own rules.
9 Guns Akimbo Subverts Video Game Logic In A Heightened Manner
There has been an increasing number of movies that play with the shrinking gap between video games and real-life entertainment as reality just becomes another form of escapism. Daniel Radcliffe has done exceptional work with the unconventional roles that he's chosen following his tenure as Harry Potter. In Guns Akimbo, Radcliffe plays a beleaguered video game developer who becomes the latest subject in a streaming deathmatch that threatens his real life. Radcliffe's Miles wakes up with two guns fastened to his hands and on the run from exaggerated assassins, including an especially inspired performance by Samara Weaving.
8 Palm Springs Riffs On A Familiar Idea To Push Expectations To New Places
Groundhog Day isn’t the first movie to play with time loops, but it helped push the avant-garde sci-fi concept into the mainstream. There is no shortage of movies that attempt to reappropriate Groundhog Day’s premise but in a radically different genre or environment.
Palm Springs is an intelligent comedy that leans into both the absurdity and the mystery that surrounds the supernatural circumstances that consume two unsuspecting wedding guests. Palm Springs establishes its own path and tells an exciting, unpredictable story that blossoms into a tender, honest romance.
7 Possessor Is A Dark, Destabilizing Descent Into Madness
David Cronenberg has become one of the biggest names when it comes to experimental body horror and deep examinations of humanity and society. David Cronenberg's son, Brandon Cronenberg, has started to follow in his father's footsteps and Possessor is his most striking film to date. The movie takes a look at elite corporate assassins who carry out their missions through a form of body hijacking that's possible through implanted brain technology. Possessor is full of uncomfortable executions, but also a growing divide as the film's head assassin loses sight of herself as she occupies other bodies for her work.
6 The Night House Is A Frightening And Unconventional Look Into Grief
Grief can be a fulfilling source of inspiration in horror and The Night House is one of the more successful examinations of lingering pain, responsibility, and self-doubt. The always-phenomenal Rebecca Hall leads the film as Beth, a widow who’s still raw over her husband’s abrupt death, and is left to process these feelings in the creepy lake house that he built. David Bruckner has become a growing name to watch in the horror genre after films like The Ritual, but The Night House is some of his most evocative work to date. It’s full of rewarding reveals and haunting visuals.
5 Onward Pushes Fantasy Archetypes To Evolve
Pixar has a sterling reputation when it comes to emotional animated movies that resonate just as much with adults as they do with children. Onward is set within an urban fantasy world, which immediately gives the movie a unique environment that subverts familiar fantasy tropes.
However, the strength of the movie lies in the bond between siblings that exists between elf brothers Ian and Barley, who strive to bring their father back into their lives. The core of the movie has such heart to it and Onward presents some provoking ideas on family, legacy, and technology that all connect.
4 Swallow Is A Haunting, Beautiful Character Study And Cry For Help
Swallow is one of the most uncomfortable movies to come out of 2020, with so much of its painful story hitting as hard as it does because of Haley Bennett’s raw, fearless performance as a neglected housewife who finds herself without any agency in her life. Haley Bennett’s Hunter nervously develops the compulsion of pica, where individuals consume random objects. Hunter’s frail state worsens, but she feels an odd sense of empowerment as engages in this unhealthy behavior. It’s a difficult watch to get through, but one that unpacks such moving and heartbreaking themes.
3 Vivarium Flips Marriage And Suburbia On Its Head And Keeps Going
There are many movies that present suburbia and domestic life as their own forms of prisons, whether psychologically or physically. Vivarium is a science fiction movie that stars Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots as an optimistic newlywed couple who are excited to enter the next phase of their lives. However, the neighborhood that they're indoctrinated into exhibits increasingly troubling behavior. Soon, a child enters the equation and an escape from this new life literally becomes impossible for the couple. Vivarium sometimes gets too lost in its own ideas, but it's a deeply original story that should still be experienced.
2 Bad Hair Crafts Its Horror From Poignant Places
Horror is such an infinitely versatile genre of film and ideas that would be failures elsewhere can sometimes excel in the heightened genre. Horror can work best when it leans into extremes and embraces absurdity, which is the approach taken by 2020's Bad Hair. Set in the late 1980s, the movie begins with a simple enough plot where an image-focused ingenue invests in an extravagant weave of hair, which turns out to have a murderous mind of its own. Bad Hair doesn't devolve into a tangled mess and it knows how to get the most out of this radical premise.
1 The Rental Sneaks Up On Its Audience Until It’s Too Late
Dave Franco tries his hand at directing in the intimate thriller, The Rental. Starring Alison Brie, Jeremy Allen White, and Sheila Vand, The Rental begins in an innocuous place where two couples retreat to a rental house for a weekend of fun and relaxation, only for dread to sneak in when the seemingly sinister intentions of the home's owner come forward. The couples are left unsure of what to believe and their existing trust in each other begins to evaporate. It's a small-scale and intimate look into tension, but Franco sticks the landing and makes The Rental worth the trip.