Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | Film | November 26, 2025
Jan Komasa’s Anniversary might feature the strongest ensemble cast of the year — Kyle Chandler, Diane Lane, Zoey Deutch, Phoebe Dynevor, Dylan O’Brien, Madeline Brewer, and McKenna Grace, among others — and it may be the most politically relevant movie of 2025. If its messaging weren’t so vague and muddled, it could have been the most politically powerful movie of 2025.
It is so close to being great. Alas, it settles for merely pretty good.
The problem isn’t that Anniversary pulls its punches — it’s that it swings too wildly. Komasa presents an almost Handmaid’s Tale-like future, but the bigger the dystopia becomes, the less impact it has. The film wants to explore how authoritarianism crushes one family, yet the dystopia gets lost in their melodrama.
Anniversary fittingly opens at a party celebrating the 25th anniversary of Paul and Ellen Taylor (Chandler and Lane). Paul is a restaurateur; Ellen is a liberal Georgetown professor. They’ve raised four kids: Anna (Brewer), a politically charged stand-up comedian; Cynthia (Deutch), an environmental lawyer married to another environmental lawyer, Rob (Daryl McCormack); Birdie (McKenna Grace), the intellectually curious teenager; and Josh (Dylan O’Brien), an aspiring writer introducing his girlfriend Elizabeth (Phoebe Dynevor) to the family for the first time.
Ellen recognizes Elizabeth — a former student and conservative intellectual with whom she clashed. Elizabeth embodies everything Ellen stands against (though, frustratingly, the film is never clear on the specifics). Elizabeth has written a book, The Change, which argues for a single-party system because the two-party system “divides us.”
By the time the family gathers again a year later, The Change has become gospel to a conservative think tank. Over the next five years, it becomes the blueprint for America’s ruling party. It’s Project 2025 in cinematic form: one-party rule, “unity” through the brute elimination of dissent. Journalists and liberal professors don’t stand a chance.
Most of the film focuses on how this political shift wrecks the Taylors. Anna blasts the government during a stand-up performance and must vanish underground. Family bonds fracture as Elizabeth becomes the public face of the authoritarian movement.
It’s bleak and often gripping, but it would have landed harder if its political vision felt more grounded. Not that the nightmare here seems impossible — it absolutely does — but Anniversary doesn’t need sci-fi exaggeration to make its point. Our current reality is already terrifying.
Still, Anniversary is a strong film anchored by a stellar cast wrestling with dark themes. The tragedy is that its message is too diffuse. Even a movie about fascism seems hesitant to name names — or the political party currently dragging us toward the abyss.
‘Anniversary’ is currently available to rent or buy on the usual digital platforms. I dare you to watch it with your conservative family members over the holiday.
