Critic Reviews

Anniversary may be, like its “movie of the moment” forebears, another shout into the void. But everybody involved — especially Lane, whose performance is another career highlight — can take heart in trying to sum up democracy’s collapse as seen through one, generally slow-to-alarm inside-the-beltway family’s disintegration. Yeah, it happened like this.

The result feels like one of the many thoughtful films made about life under dictatorship, but with a unique twist: This one isn’t critiquing past events in Argentina, Chile, or Uganda from a safe historical distance, but events happening right now in the U.S., from behind a scrim of metaphor as thin as tissue paper.

Jan Komasa’s Anniversary should be in the running for least-subtle movie of the year. It should also be in the running for most terrifying. This ruthlessly effective thriller rarely beats around the bush with what it’s trying to say, nor does it ask its famous actors to rein in their performances––despite occasionally needing to––but it certainly hits its mark with unnerving accuracy.

Anniversary is a deeply nihilistic film that can’t be described as a cautionary tale — that horse has left the barn. Rather, it’s a hypothetical question as character study, an examination of how this happens, and an assertion that a system like this shows no mercy, not even to its most loyal subjects, despite what we want to believe.

With its sly, unsettling mix of politics and psychology, Anniversary is both over-the-edge and utterly recognizable.

What Jan Komasa’s film gets right is how so much right-wing radicalization, especially in upper classes, stems from status-based grievances.

Despite Lane and Chandler elevating Anniversary with their respective performances, the film doesn't reward its stacked cast with the memorable onscreen moments they each deserve.

Even as it thrusts itself into an electrifying, bloodied thriller of a final act, the film doesn’t land any of its social commentary: Its satire remains much too obtuse, its parable much too diffused.

Taut and well-acted as this queasy little thriller can be, its unflinching tale of corporate authoritarianism is much too streamlined to reflect the emotional truth of watching totalitarianism in motion. The result is a hollow synecdoche of today’s America that seems timely and ridiculous in equal measure.

With a film like Anniversary, any ideas formed from the jump best take occupancy at the door. This is not meant to establish an unexpectedly entertaining journey or incredible third-act twist, but rather something far more frustrating.