Anniversary (2025) | Film Review

Anniversary reaffirms that there is little more terrifying than a family gathering. The stress, the dad jokes, the awkwardness. The Taylors have gathered for what should be a simple, sentimental evening; Ellen (Diane Lane) and Paul (Kyle Chandler) celebrating 25 years of marriage, surrounded by family, nostalgia, and polite smiles. Their adult children – Cynthia, Josh, Anna, Birdie (Zoey Deutch, Dylan O’Brien, Madeline Brewer, Mckenna Grace) – are home and everything appears fine. Looks, as they say, can be deceiving.

When Josh introduces his new girlfriend Liz (Phoebe Dynevor), the night takes a quiet but irreversible turn. Ellen recognizes Liz as a former student. A small, awkward connection that slowly cracks open years of unspoken guilt, resentment, and ideological difference. The dinner table becomes a battleground as we learn about Liz’s new book – The Change – which focuses on a single-party system, and the family (like the country around them) teeters on the edge of something irreversible.

Director Jan Komasa and co-writer Lori Rosene-Gambino have crafted a smart, unsettling, and deeply layered thriller. None of the story is spoon-fed to the audience, it it unraveled for us to make what we choose out of it. What makes Anniversary so effective isn’t the element of mystery, it’s the precision. The film builds tension like a chess match, moving from one small conversational misstep to a full-blown reckoning of morality and loyalty.

Komasa’s direction is taut and disciplined. He uses stillness as suspense, allowing awkward pauses to hang like landmines. Working with cinematographer Piotr Sobociński Jr., he turns the Taylors’ bright, comfortable home into a cage of light and shadow. As the initial night wears on, the air thickens with dread, not because of what’s said, but what is barely held back.

Anniversary is not a film about shouting; it is a film about unraveling. And that unraveling feels both painfully intimate and disturbingly familiar as time extends over the course of several years.

Running quietly beneath the domestic drama is a sharp political allegory centered around a book circulating within the film’s world: The Change. It’s a manifesto that promises clarity in chaos, unity in division. A call to action that is both seductive and horrifying. The parallels to modern real-world extremism are unmistakable. The book becomes the film’s mirror, reflecting how movements built on fear and disillusionment can spread through ordinary people looking for meaning.

That’s where Josh’s arc comes in. Dylan O’Brien delivers one of the film’s most quietly chilling performances, portraying a young man who begins the story as uncertain and overlooked. A son trying to prove himself, desperate to be seen. As the film unfolds, Josh’s insecurity becomes a gateway for ideology. He’s drawn to The Change not because he believes in its ideals, but because it makes him feel powerful for the first time.

O’Brien captures that transformation beautifully: the posture straightening, the tone sharpening, the fragile ego hardening into conviction. It’s a haunting portrayal of how good intentions can twist into dangerous resolve when fueled by resentment and fear. Through Josh, Anniversary explores how revolutions – real or imagined – often begin with the people who feel the smallest.

At the emotional core stands Diane Lane, giving a powerhouse performance as Ellen. Her character is all intellect and control until those traits become her undoing. Lane’s eyes do more than most scripts, showing the instant where pride turns to panic. It’s her finest work in years, filled with quiet fury and deep empathy.

Kyle Chandler brings warmth and restraint as Paul, a man who still believes the right words can heal old wounds. His optimism feels tragic as the evening unspools. Chandler’s subtle performance grounds the chaos; he’s the calm eye of the storm, holding the family together until even he no longer can.

The chemistry of this entire cast is effortless, decades of love and regret distilled into glances and half-smiles. Lane and Chandler at the forefront make you feel the history between them long before the dialogue explains it. As each member of the Taylors experience The Change more directly, their own values of family and country are tested.

Anniversary is a bleak, gripping study of family, ideology, and the terrifying ease with which ordinary lives fracture under pressure. It’s as much about the collapse of communication as it is about political unrest. Diane Lane commands the screen with steely elegance, Kyle Chandler provides the film’s emotional ballast, and Dylan O’Brien emerges as its most unsettling revelation, a portrait of how lost souls can find purpose in the wrong cause.

Director Jan Komasa has delivered a film that is timely, daring, and painfully human. It asks us to consider how far we will go to feel seen, and what happens when the search for belonging turns into a movement we cannot control. Simply put, Anniversary is one of the most captivating and thought-provoking films of the year.