SXSW 2025 Film Review: Festival Dispatch

CAPSULE REVIEWS FROM THIS YEAR’S SXSW FILM FESTIVAL

Welcome to my dispatch from this year’s SXSW. Like always, I won’t be writing full reviews of everything I see at the festival, but this year has plenty of notable features worth at least a quick write-up: Paul Feig’s long-awaited sequel Another Simple Favor, Michael Bay’s kinetic foray into documentaries, and Alison Brie and Dave Franco’s gross-out “metaphorror” flick. Here are the capsule reviews for A Simple Favor 2, We Are Storror, Together, and Death of a Unicorn.

Another Simple Favor

2018’s A Simple Favor was a dark horse corker: comedy maestro Paul Feig’s swerve into darker, more provocative fare. A “champagne thriller” that retained much of the filmmaker’s acerbic edge, it combined odd couple dynamics with a withering charm and a viperous Blake Lively as insouciant femme fatale. Unfortunately, its sequel — Another Simple Favor — trades in the original's salacious, airport trash novel glee for flat studio comedy. Reuniting Anna Kendrick’s amateur sleuth Stephanie Smothers with best frenemy Emily Nelson (Lively) for the latter’s lavish Italian countryside wedding, Another Simple Favor makes the huge miscalculation of going big and broad instead of continuing the original’s intimate and sharp dramedy. C

We Are Storror

It’s easy to goof on a parkour documentary in the year 2025, but We Are Storror is a near-perfect marriage between filmmaker and subject matter: exhilarating drones, sweeping kineticism, and jaw-dropping blocking profiling a group of aging traceurs. Michael Bay brings his signature maximalist lens to view sport through filmmaking: always planning, choreographing, and engaged with storytelling. We Are Storror finds its boys on the move, as if to outrun the the slow march of time and a world bent on taking their artistry away from them: a touching treatise on how little time we have to do the things we love. B+

Together

If you’re going to beat me over the head with the “metaphorror” sledgehammer, you better do it in the funniest, nastiest way possible. Michael Shanks pairs up real-life couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco as Tim and Millie, lovebirds whose move to the countryside exposes the craquelure of their relationship. When an encounter with the supernatural transmogrifies their toxic codependence into literal flesh, Tim and Millie find themselves in a horrorshow in the most unexpected — or maybe goopily expected — way. Together really only has one note to hammer across its 102-minute runtime, but when the jump scares and body horror are so disgustingly entertaining, it’s very easy to forgive. B

Death of a Unicorn

A new entry in the “eat the rich for Cocomelon babies” subgenre, Death of a Unicorn squanders creature feature potential with puddle-shallow themes and a bargain-bin Jurassic Park pastiche. Featuring a star-studded A-list cast (Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Richard Grant, Will Poulter) tasked with making a meal out of stale crumbs, Death of a Unicorn is largely unable to crawl out of its own emotionally disingenuous pit and director Alex Scharfman seems ill-equipped to find any balance between gory horror beats and tired, seen-it-before takedowns of the ultra-wealthy. There’s nothing less funny than blunt, heavy-handed satire, and this has got 107 minutes of it. C-