Heat Vision’s Top 10 Movies of 2025

At its best, (that run back to safety amid the Aurora Borealis), 28 Years Later felt like the franchise’s answer to Mad Max: Fury Road, taking a beloved property and elevating its tension and production value in ways you couldn’t have imagined back when the original opened. Director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland’s decades-in-the-making sequel mostly lived up to the pent-up demand, though the sharp left-turn in the middle of the movie left some audiences feeling duped. Then again, that’s built into the DNA of the franchise (remember the army base act in 28 Days Later)?

James Gunn didn’t thread a Superman needle as much as jam a firehose to it and open it full throttle. A movie that swings from high highs to low lows, it was also the one big superhero movie with actual cool moments (almost anytime Mr. Terrific was onscreen, especially that beach fight sequence) and memorable character moments (almost anytime Metamorpho or Jimmy Olsen were on screen) that, at its best, captured the fun of a Superman story. 

If you told us a year ago that a movie featuring a K-pop group would be in the Heat Vision Top 10, we would have revoked your geek credentials. But then came along this confection, a mélange of Korean mythology, anime, martial artistry, and soul-sucking demons. And, it’s a musical! Directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, the movie was years-in-the-making but somehow felt perfectly timed to our now, blasting you with a gleeful energy and pop concert visuals and sucking you into its tractor beam of loony teenage angst and butt-kicking. The most infectious movie of the year.

Movies about spies used to dangerous and sexy. Well, in the hands of director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp, working in top form, they were once again. A delectably stylish movie follows an intelligence officer (Michael Fassbender, showing us he needs to be seen more often) that has to find a traitor in his midst … and the list of suspects includes his wife (Cate Blanchett, mysterious). As good as the pair are, it’s the supporting players that dazzle, particularly Marisa Abela. The movie kicks off with one of the best scenes of 2025, that dinner in which the truth drug is secretly administered and revelations spill out, and takes you through a relationship minefield.   

Going into 2025, you would have been hard-pressed to think that a Final Destination movie would land on almost any top 10 list, but then again, none of them had the deft touch of Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein, who crafted a loving tribute to the franchise and then blew it into smithereens. Taking what makes a Final Destination movie so much fun, the filmmaker duo, with the help of such franchise newcomers as producer Jon Watts, and co-writer Gary Busick, also make mini-movies an essential component of its kills, coming up with inventive and fun sequences that make you squirm with glee. Just a bloody good time.

A Predator movie with Vikings?! Check. A Predator movie with samurais?! Double check. A Predator movie with fighter planes over the skies of World War Two Europe?! Triple check! An action-packed, gory, thrillfest that embraces the Predator DNA, Dan Trachtenberg and co-director Joshua Wassung treated viewers to compelling characters imbued with pathos and reasons for which to live, fight, and die. All wrapped up in a bow of beautiful, painterly, “concept art come to life” animation. A fanboy’s dream. 

One of the better Marvel movies in quite some time, even if, sadly, not that many saw it. One reason: it’s a movie about something, in this case, mental health and depression and the dark places we go in tough times. Reason number two: Florence Pugh, truly a standout here as assassin Yelena Belova, bringing gravitas and pathos and humanity to a weary superhero movie genre. And then there is Lewis Pullman, the freshest and most exciting new face to the MCU in years, and who is able to go toe-to-toe with Pugh as vulnerable, wounded and all-powerful Bob.

Guillermo del Toro finally achieves his dream of bringing Mary Shelley’s novel to life, and it’s everything you imagined a GDT opus would be. Melodramatic, romantic, operatic, sentimental and lush, this is Hollywood’s most gothic filmmaker using everything at his disposal to make an affecting father and son story, horror elements very much at the forefront, with the sexiest Creature (a soulful Jacob Elordi) Shelley could have imagined.  

A genre B movie elevated to the highest order by a filmmaker in control and a knockout cast, Sinners was a vampire thriller that, yes, got its fangs into your neck, but it also hooked you by the ear with its depiction of the urgency of music for the Black community in the Jim Crow South. Playing twin brothers who take their ill-gotten gains to start a juke joint, Michael B. Jordan commands the movie with his performances, with the help from a stellar cast, from newcomer Miles Caton to heavy hitter Delroy Lindo, not mention the very able Hailee Steinfeld and shady Jack O’Connell. 

Amid a swamp of mostly mediocre morass, Zach Cregger’s horror masterpiece was a like a needle shot of originality in the arm of summer movie blandness. A mosaic that slowly reveals a larger and terrifying story, the audience is always kept on its toes as we follow a series of disparate characters dealing with the aftermath of a class of children going mysteriously missing. Spookiness and dread build slowly in some of the most memorable scenes of the year until the villain, both outrageous and creepy, is revealed. Aunt Gladys, played masterfully by Amy Madigan. But that is only half the story. The end, when it comes, is cathartic, funny and terrifying, and it’s only then do you realize you just got off a roller coaster designed by a master horror architect.