All Of Deadline’s Critiques From The Competition

The 2026 SXSW Movie & TV Competition kicked off March 7, in Austin and options 49 world premieres amongst debuts. It’s the primary time the occasion has launched on a Thursday.

Boots Riley’s sci-fi comedy I Love Boosters was the opening-night movie, and different anticipated movies embrace Searchlight’s Radio Silence sequel Prepared or Not 2: Right here I Come, New Line’s Samara Weaving-Zazie Beetz horror motion comedy They Will Kill You,  Lionsgate’s John Carney-directed music film Energy Ballad starring Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas, the Vince Vaughn gangster pic Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice and Jorma Taccone’s couples-trying-to-kill-each-other pic Over Your Useless Physique.

Here’s a compilation of Deadline’s film opinions from the thirty third anniversary fest, which runs via March 18 within the Texas capital.

Part: Narrative Highlight
Administrators: Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick
Forged: Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Sosie Bacon, Travis Bacon, Liza Koshy, John Carroll Lynch, Jackie Earle Haley, Andrea Savage, Austin Amelio, Scoot McNairy, Nathaniel Woolsey
Deadline’s takeaway: There may be no query the Bacons are having a hell of a very good time sending up this well-traveled style. The premise might sound like a riff, nevertheless it works. — PH

Part: Narrative Function Competitors
Administrators: Brea Grant, Ed Dougherty, Chelsea Stardust
Forged: Barbara Crampton, Rob Huebel, Christopher Marquette, Jessika Van, Vinny Thomas, Mercedes Mason, Matt Mercer, Aubrey Shea
Deadline’s takeaway: The ingenious horror-comedy anthology achieves the just about unthinkable: whereas it delivers the requisite laughs and shocks — by no means a straightforward steadiness to strike, even at the most effective of instances — it’s simply as efficient in its jabs on the gig economic system as something by Britain’s Ken Loach or every other director from the college of social realism. — DW

Part: Headliner
Director-screenwriter: Boots Riley
Forged: Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, LaKeith Stanfield, Will Poulter, Demi Moore
Deadline’s takeaway: Boots Riley’s sophomore function is a surreal, hyperpop love letter to creatives dwelling below capitalism that efficiently captures the hopelessness of our present dystopia. The camp issue is clear in each body. — GG

Part: Documentary Highlight
Director: Rachel Mason
Deadline’s takeaway: My Brother’s Killer is an overdue valediction for the sufferer of a ugly, lengthy unsolved L.A. homicide, a romantic loner whose haunting and horribly prophetic poem “A Piece of Me” bookends the movie, providing a poignant glimpse of a future that may have been however by no means was. — DW

Part: Headliner
Director: Jorma Taccone
Forged: Samara Weaving, Jason Segel, Timothy Olyphant, Juliette Lewis, Paul Guilfoyle, Keith Jardine
Deadline’s takeaway: With ample quantities of gore that someway feels earned, Jorma Taccone weaves a enjoyable, tense comedy thriller, with assist from Jason Segel and Samara Weaving’s unhinged onscreen chemistry and a gifted ensemble solid. — GG

Part: Narrative Highlight
Director: John Carney
Forged: Paul Rudd, Nick Jonas, Peter McDonald, Marcella Plunkett, Havana Rose Liu, Jack Reynor
Deadline’s takeaway: Regardless of Energy Ballad‘s comedic shortcomings, the movie has the potential to function a feel-good film for a date evening or perhaps even a consolation look ahead to artists who wish to really feel valued in an oversaturated artistic panorama. — GG

Part: Headliner
Director: Vicky Jewson
Forged: Iris Apatow, Lana Condor, Millicent Simmonds, Avantika, Maddie Ziegler, Uma Thurman
Deadline’s takeaway: In Fairly Deadly, Jewson manages to stroll that line of gritty darkish motion, a la John Wick and Tarantino’s complete toxically masculine oeuvre, balanced with unapologetic laughs and an emotionally satisfying story of sisterhood. — GG

Part: Headliner
Administrators: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Forged: Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Néstor Carbonell, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wooden
Deadline’s takeaway: This action-packed, blood-soaked sequel is simply what followers have been ready for the previous seven years, hopefully paving the way in which for a trilogy on this sinister world Radio Silence has created. — GG

Part: Narrative Highlight
Director-screenwriter: Victoria Strouse
Forged: Hannah Einbinder, Justin Theroux, John Reynolds, Griffin Gluck, Justine Lupe, Greg Kinnear, David Ury, Michelle Johnston, Andrea Pyle
Deadline’s takeaway: Good, sharply written and directed comedies are a uncommon chicken as of late, however Victoria Strouse takes a scenario that simply might have sailed excessive, solid it intelligently and created some outrageously humorous conditions. — PH