Epilogue: October 2026
You wanna see something really scary?
Most of the scares this month didn’t take place onscreen. Take a look at the numbers for Digger, which is expected to lose Warner Bros. $245 million and go down in history as one of the biggest box-office bombs of all time. Or maybe read the details of the Skydance merger, which combined Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery and made it far less likely that either studio will ever back ambitious projects like Digger (however ill-conceived it may have been) again. Despite these thrills (and chills), October was an unusually quiet month for the spookiest of all genres. 2026 has been a banner year for horror nevertheless, and the next two months will reveal whether it’s also an annus mirabilis for movies as a whole.
Digger
In the same way that Eddington was a movie about a data center being built, Digger is a movie about a dying cat. It certainly doesn’t present itself as such — Alejandro González Iñárritu’s latest stars Tom Cruise as an oil tycoon whose reckless business practices bring about an apocalyptic climate catastrophe — but the decrepit, emaciated feline holding on for dear life emerges as the most sympathetic, memorable character in a film full of cartoon villains and one-dimensional caricatures. Cruise, clearly angling for that long-overdue Oscar, gives his showiest performance since Tropic Thunder as the eponymous billionaire, leaving the stacked ensemble led by Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Emma D’Arcy, and a scene-stealing Jesse Plemons to chew what little scenery is left over.
Iñárritu has slowed his pace considerably since winning back-to-back Academy Awards for directing Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015); this is only his second film since that vanishingly rare achievement, with 2022’s Bardo being a similarly ambitious misfire. That film wasn’t nearly as theatrical or bombastic as Digger, especially once Iñárritu pulls back the curtain to reveal what his latest is really about — an ill-advised twist best left unsaid for now. Bookending the overstuffed plot is the plight of Maggie, the one-eyed, animatronic whom Digger refuses to let go of, both because he loves her dearly and isn’t used to not getting everything he wants. “Words are perception and perception is reality,” he says in a crucial scene. Fortunately for Iñárritu, who’s earned far more accolades throughout his career than his filmography warrants, that’s mostly true.
The Social Reckoning
Is a sequel to The Social Network that isn’t directed by David Fincher and doesn’t star Jesse Eisenberg really a sequel to The Social Network? Not in any of the ways that count, apparently. Aaron Sorkin, who deservedly won an Oscar for that era-defining classic’s screenplay, pulls double duty as both writer and director here; as in his previous directorial efforts, he once again proves ill-equipped to adapt his own scripts. It’s not that this particular story isn’t worth telling. The plot focuses on the fact that Facebook knew it was radicalizing its users and, rather than put out the fire, threw gasoline on it. But thanks in no small part to the movie Sorkin wrote 16 years ago, everyone already knows Facebook is a soulless corporation run by a pod person — and most of the site’s three billion users have decided they don’t care.
Where its predecessor was era-defining, The Social Reckoning is years behind the curve. Sorkin has no answer to Rooney Mara’s tone-setting “It’ll be because you’re an asshole” monologue, no equivalent to the “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook” mic drop, and certainly nothing resembling the timeless last scene in which Zuckerberg 1.0 refreshes his own Facebook feed to see if Mara’s character has accepted his friend request. The Social Reckoning also completely lacks the visual flair that made its predecessor more than the sum of its rapidfire dialogue, though Anora star Mikey Madison, as whistleblower Frances Haugen, does an admirable job of delivering it.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother
According to a story told in several Islamic hadiths, the three people to whom you owe the most are your mother, your mother, and your mother. Only when the question is asked a fourth time is the answer “your father.” By that logic, single dad and devout muslim Latiff (Mahershala Ali) has to fill shoes three times his size as he attempts to raise his children while leaving behind a life of crime in this stirring drama that only exists because Blade doesn’t. Marvel’s loss is everyone else’s gain: after the dissolution of that project, which even the most superhero-fatigued of viewers would readily admit sounded awesome, Ali and original director Bassam Tariq reunited on this one.
“Recently widowed hitman goes on a days-long odyssey through Houston in search of breast milk for his infant daughter while doing his utmost to avoid fulfilling his latest contract” might be the most original premise in some time, and Tariq, who also wrote the screenplay, is careful not to squander it. A performer of unusual gravitas with two Oscars to his name, Ali is also a practicing Muslim for whom this project is clearly personal. “God has blessed him with a gift,” Latiff’s boss says of the conflicted killer; our hero would disagree. Sporting conspicuous muscles and a sword with the phrase “die before you die” etched into it in Arabic, Latiff cuts an even more imposing figure than most of Ali’s characters as he struggles to reconcile his faith with his actions. Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother may not be the box-office force that Blade was destined to be, but it is a defiant statement of purpose from both director and star.
Wicker
Bed-breaking, bodice-ripping, and genre-bending abound in Wicker, an inverted Obsession in which a lonely fisherwoman (Olivia Colman, wonderful as always) asks the village basket weaver (Peter Dinklage, ditto) to make her a husband. There’s no Frankenstein-style “It’s alive!” moment as he fashions a hunky hubby out of willow branches, just the growing sense that Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s romantasy fable has more on its mind than how their parts fit together. What follows isn’t exactly Beauty and the Beast, especially with Alexander Skarsgård playing the groom in question, but their happy union does disturb the sexually frustrated villagers. The true monster in Wicker is the one with green eyes: jealousy, which rears its ugly head early and reveals many a character’s true nature throughout.
“It’s easier to believe the bad than the good,” the fisherwoman bemoans despite all available evidence suggesting that her husband, who exists solely to please her (both in the bedroom and beyond), enjoys every moment of it. An adaptation of Ursula Willis’ short story “The Wicker Husband” in which every character is referred to by their job title or their relationship, Wicker isn’t quite the steamy, internet-breaking drama many were expecting. Instead, it’s something better: a genuinely sweet, feminist fairy tale in which there’s a shoe for every foot and everyone, including the audience, gets what they deserve.
Asking the important questions.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
That old chestnut.
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Movie Brief is a weekly movie review.
By Michael Nordine, © 2025
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