Rating: R | Runtime: 112 minutes
Release Date: October 29th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Lionsgate
Director(s): Jan Komasa
Writer(s): Lori Rosene-Gambino / Jan Komasa and Lori Rosene-Gambino (story)

What choice did we have?

I think we’ve all learned this past year (if not prior) that liberalism is a disease propping up flawed and entitled figures who are too quick to throw its ideals aside. Because “equality before the law” only works when the laws are fair. It’s why fascism and communism both ultimately lead towards autocracy. Whomever gains control will always seek to sustain it. Their “individual liberty” will always be more important than everyone else’s and therefore drive them to persecute all who dare to achieve what they have. Equality inevitably breeds fear.

Why? Because to be equal is to accept the person to your side has as much right to your position as you do. We’re too selfish a species for that. So, we create myths like the “American Dream” to dangle as bait while working behind the scenes to ensure the possibility of achieving it remains out of grasp. Social services meant to bridge the gap are therefore seen as “unfair” by those who don’t need them presently rather than a necessity for the potential future where they might. It’s why the pendulum forever swings without any real change.

Enter director Jan Komasa and screenwriter Lori Rosene-Gambino’s Anniversary. Rather than attempt to find an answer to the unanswerable problem of the American experiment—a miracle in its progressiveness and a curse by having been created in a time of civil injustice (just enough equality to seem perfect so opportunists can point to its perfection as a means to discriminate in its name)—they seek to expose it. And what better way to do so than turning today’s one-party structure on its head while revealing the song remains the same?

Because that lack of change is a result of a corrupt system wherein republicans and democrats both just want control. Elected officials are no longer public servants for the people. They are puppets for the corporate interests lining their pockets. They both siphon off just enough money to sustain votes despite doing so in different ways (democrats through those social services that make the well-to-do angry and republicans through tax breaks that make the poor angry). So, they all pontificate and laugh while we find ourselves without a viable alternative.

Until Liz Nettles (Phoebe Dynevor) creates one, of course. From a provocative thesis calling for the abolition of all political parties as a means to give power back to the people to a nationwide bestselling book entitled The Change, her superficially apolitical rhetoric sweeps through the country just as extremely political movements like MAGA do. Because people like to hear that they are in control even if it comes from the people who will actually be in control. Ellen Taylor (Diane Lane) recognizes the danger and calls it out.

Because it’s another ruse. Whether the fallacy of having two parties with almost identical agendas or that of no parties as though the concept isn’t just a third arm coming in to cut off the other two, Ellen sees where it leads—especially in our current world of convenience, misinformation, and destruction of debate via partisan hacks adhering to an agenda with zero interest in pretending they can be persuaded otherwise. It’s why she called Liz out through her role as professor and why she does it again through her role as mother to Liz’s new boyfriend.

But Anniversary is about more than one adversarial relationship. It simply wields that dynamic as the entry point into a family with just enough money to say dumb things like “we aren’t liberal or conservative” and just enough education to think reason and truth still matters. Because the Taylors aren’t saviors or destroyers. They’re merely comfortable citizens straddling a line for which they never needed to wonder about its height off the ground. Not until Liz tapped into Josh’s (Dylan O’Brien) insecurities and radicalized the others against her.

Told over a span of five years, the film starts by showing us the freedoms the Taylors enjoyed as a tenured professor at Georgetown (Ellen) and respected chef (Kyle Chandler’s Paul) with an out-spoken lesbian comedian (Madeline Brewer’s Anna), environmental lawyer (Zoey Deutch’s Cynthia and her husband, Daryl McCormack’s Rob), aspiring writer (Josh), and teenage scientific wunderkind (Mckenna Grace’s Birdie) as children. And, as The Change grips the nation, how they handle losing that once impenetrable illusion of control.

While I don’t deny Komasa and Rosene-Gambino’s script is heavy-handed in the mirror it holds up to today’s political chaos and its tidy visual (René Magritte’s The Lovers) and narrative threads, I implore you not to deny the emotional impact born from the execution of those machinations. The time skips expertly foster the space for some truly powerful character and relationship metamorphoses. How does Josh change at Liz’s side? How do familial bonds shift via widespread indoctrination? When does “open mindedness” become censorship?

And through those evolutions we receive what is probably the best ensemble of performances this year with a wealth of impassioned acts of courage and crucial examples of ambiguity when motivation and reality diverge. Because a lot of Anniversary exists in a duality of interpretation. Has Liz started dating Josh to get revenge on her old professor or did she fall in love first with that connection being exposed as a coincidence? Does Liz write The Change with an idyllic hope for unity that spirals or was it always about taking America’s reins?

It’s in this gray that the best moments arise because preconceptions on behalf of the characters have the potential of pushing those they’re trying to save right over the cliff. The brilliance of the film doesn’t therefore lie in its “us versus them” propulsion, but in the nuance of believing love and blood still mean something in an era of hate. Not only that, but there’s also the reality that fear itself comes from myriad places. Ellen and Paul fear for their souls and those of their kids. Is Liz’s eventual fear of Josh about the same thing? Or is it about losing her place?

The final shot will answer this question, but the more important one should be you asking yourself what you’d do under similar circumstances. Not as a hypothetical, but as preparation. Because all signs point to the fact we currently reside within the second chapter labeled “two years” after the initial anniversary party. What happens in the mid-term elections and the next presidential election (if there is one) will dictate whether we move into chapter three and four with their “loyalty oath” census. I hope I’d take the knife too.

It’s why I’m not going to shake Anniversary anytime soon. Not the spite within O’Brien’s performance or the determination from Chandler. Not Lane’s righteousness or Dynevor’s naïveté. There are so many unforgettable exchanges that tap into today’s psychology and the ways we’ve leveraged our relationships to serve ourselves. Or the ways we’ve manipulated our own reality to pretend the mental gymnastics of our actions have bolstered our safety when they’ve truly just left us exposed to the harm of their consequences.

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[L-R] Dylan O’Brien as “Josh Taylor” and Phoebe Dynevor as “Liz Nettles” in the thriller ANNIVERSARY, a Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions release. Photo credit: Owen Behan / Courtesy of Lionsgate.