Directed By Jan Komasa

Starring – Diane Lane, Kyle Chandler, Phoebe Dynervor

The Plot – In this gripping thriller, a close-knit family is caught in the turmoil of a controversial rising movement known as “The Change.” Ellen and Paul (Lane and Chandler) witness their lives fall apart when Ellen’s former student Liz (Dynevor) reappears and starts dating their son (Dylan O’Brien). As Liz becomes a part of the Taylor family, tensions rise and loyalties are tested. Liz’s role in “The Change” brings simmering conflicts to the surface, unraveling the fabric of the family just as the nation itself stands on edge during an alarming and challenging time of uncertainty.

Rated R for adult language throughout, some violent content, drug use and sexual references.

Anniversary (2025) Official Trailer – Diane Lane, Kyle Chandler, Phoebe Dynevor, Dylan O’Brien

POSITIVES

Arriving at a time when our country lies as detrimentally divided as ever, on account of our political ideologies, “Anniversary” initially begins as a bickering family drama, on the surface, before delving all together into a crippling escapade about the causes that we ruthlessly attach ourselves to, and while Komasa’s overall execution does sacrifice an engaging narrative to invest his audience, he does inscribe increments of truth to grow her drama into something unavoidably terrifying, crafting what can undeniably be described as a cautionary tale to the beliefs that we irresponsibly put before family connection. The truths are clearly evident in her scathing disdain towards both political parties, with the movie not only articulating the discontent that liberals have for anyone who doesn’t line up accordingly to everything that they believe, but also the illogical extremism of conservatives, which here is emulated in the depths of an uprising known as “The Change”, the likes of which I’m sure are easily identifiable to anyone watching the film, and it gives the exploration a lot of shifts and turns in the designs of the characters, which feel unidentifiable by film’s end, on account of their sharply contrasting evolutions, bringing to light the single worst examples of ourselves when we let politics in the door of our sacred traditions. Komasa’s vitally ambitious decision to craft the narrative over quite a few years in the lives of these family members, specifically in the confines of this family home, do not in any way condense the bigger picture in messaging to what’s transpiring, instead imbedding an element of inescapable claustrophobia to the tensely uncomfortable interactions. Like the shifts of the aforementioned characters, the film’s single biggest example of its internalized disconnect among its family members presents itself in the sudden shifts in the design and atmosphere of the household, throughout the various jolts forward in the timeline, helping to appraise reality in expectations, each time we have to properly feel things out throughout events that we haven’t gotten a chance to experience. It’s clear that Komasa utilizes this single stage setting as the heartbeat of the family dynamic, beginning initially as a warmly inviting and prospering place full of upbeat optimism, before eventually compromising it into a bit of jealousy and distrust, and while the production doesn’t necessarily concern itself with stylistic impulses, in ways to articulate the imagery to convey the power dynamics persisting in these pocketed rivalries within the family, Komasa and fellow screenwriter Lori Rosene-Gambino do spend ample time vividly growing the movie’s dialogue, tepidly tiptoeing a minefield of sensitivities amid backhanded psychologies, that practically beg for the audience to gauge audibly. Besides all of this, the film also features solid performances among a stacked ensemble, with Diane Lane and Dylan O’Brien taking the biggest steps towards greatness, in the varying journeys of their characters. Lane’s initial disarming confidence and unapologetic demeanor eventually gives way to a distantly draining melancholy, as the surreal events transpire among her family, and Dylan, while enacting what is easily his most versatile performance of his entire career, to this point, balances an initialized timidness with an eventual arrogance, that feels like the fully-fledged incarnational influence of this movement, effortlessly reveling in the detestability that you simply cannot look away from.

NEGATIVES

While “Anniversary” does have a lot of good ideas towards conjuring an entertaining film, its converging of so much ambition comes to ultimately define it in the worst kind of ways, particularly in the inaccessibility towards these characters, which in turn undercuts the magnitude of the movie’s defined stakes. With the exception of Kyle Chandler’s Paul, who receives little to no screen time or narrative focus until the movie’s final half hour, there isn’t a single character, liberal or progressive, whom I identified with and invested in, leaving the tragic elements of this conflict feeling unintentionally self-satisfying, rather than haunting, on account of being forced to spend nearly two hours with people who I wouldn’t normally give five minutes of my life to, all on its way towards turning such a realistic engagement full of conflictual familiarities, into a hilarious satire lacking any semblance of nuance or subtlety. While I can certainly understand Komasa’s intention of taking us into the darkest dimensions of what possibly could transpire with MAGA’s current building of momentum and power, it deduces the film into feeling like an overly long episode of The Twilight Zone, where realism and even logic are absolved from world-building that is constantly on worst-case scenario. Part of the problem is certainly in the film’s disjointed structure, where its abrupt flashes forward not only leave developed dynamics feeling unresolved, while transcribing a tediousness with having to constantly interpret what has transpired in the time that we weren’t privy towards, but just as much emphasis in responsibility lies with the burden of having to constantly flesh out so many characters under one roof, where the balance of focus shifts so heavily towards one way, while leaving the other merely table dressing to the bigger cause contained within the movie’s thematic impulses. The biggest of these detracting contributors is regretfully Phoebe Dynervor’s Elizabeth, who despite being billed as the movie’s primary antagonist in the marketing and prominently in the movie’s opening act, takes a disappointing backseat to O’Brien’s Josh, the longer the film drowns on, wasting away the poking and prodding agitation that produced alluring magnetism for the actress during its initial set-up, while making her feel like a character who is barely registering, by film’s end, leaving so much about her ambiguity trivialized by a lack of consistent effort paid to the definition and importance of her character. If this isn’t enough, the film is occasionally framed towards feeling like a shameless shilling of marketing towards the movement within the movie, featuring these exaggeratedly extensive sequences involving American imagery and overhead narration, which occurred far too often to feel forgivable. If this happened once near the movie’s ending, in order to flourish more reality in the dramatic shifts of this world-building, then I could’ve understood the inclusion, however the movie goes to this gimmick three times throughout the proceedings, furthering us from the depths of development that feel like they’re finally starting to muster some dramatic intensity, before cutting away from them to reside within these commercials, creating a frustrating level of dejection that only grew more consistent the longer the film goes on. In addition to detestable characters and a penchant for the melodramatic, some of the editing techniques in the visual storytelling came across as meanderingly distracting, instead of alluringly artistic, resulting in some vital scenes during the first and third acts of this movie feeling like they’re transitioning with a passage of time, despite unmitigated focus towards the entirety of the conversations framed in real-time. The compromising cuts of brutalized levels of intrusion often lead to continuity issues in the layout of the scene, or motions of the character, making it feel like two different executions of the same moment are continuously at odds with one another over the film’s focus, and while this probably won’t alienate most audiences from attaching themselves to the movie’s beginning phases, especially considering those are the moments when the film feels like it truly has something, it left me dejectedly dazed in ways that tested the firmness and resiliency of my patience, leaving me happy that the production didn’t attempt more experimental deviation, in order to make the engagement stand out uniquely.

OVERALL
“Anniversary” can occasionally feel like a provocatively tense trip into the worst case scenario of political divide, but it ultimately stumbles satirically in attempting to juggle various characters and corresponding subplots, to the heaviness of commentary that Komasa articulates so unsubtly. Despite the film attaining hope in the gravity of its intoxicating performances, and sentiments of its single stage setting, the film’s lack of realism or illustrating in its world-building or characters has it searching for a soul that it never effectively attains, feeling unpredictable in the least compelling or grounded kind of ways.

My Grade: 5.5 or D