{"id":360366,"date":"2025-12-21T20:30:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T20:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/360366\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T20:30:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T20:30:18","slug":"the-best-movie-sequels-of-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/360366\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Movie Sequels of 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve come along way since \u201cScream 2\u201d declared, with all the confidence of a stuck-up film student, that \u201csequels suck.\u201d Once upon a time feature film follow-ups were, typically, cynical cash-grabs, made with less time, money and ambition, just to make an easy buck. But now a lot of our sequels are optimistic cash-grabs made with more time, money and ambition, and with some regularity, some these sequels actually turn out great.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re not all great, of course. \u201cCaptain America: Brave New World<\/a>,\u201d \u201cTron: Ares<\/a>\u201d and the non-actiony parts of \u201cMission: Impossible \u2013 The Final Reckoning<\/a>\u201d were pretty tough sits. But quite a few sequels this year improved on the original, and\/or added something new to the franchise, and\/or were a heck of a lot of fun. These are the films that proved those snooty film students wrong in 2025.<\/p>\n

\"\"Blake Lively in \u2018Another Simple Favor\u2019 (Amazon MGM Studios)<\/p>\n

\u2018Another Simple Favor\u2019<\/p>\n

You won\u2019t find many twistier, turnier, or funnier thrillers than Paul Feig\u2019s \u201cA Simple Favor,\u201d released seven years ago to widespread critic acclaim and, sadly, mediocre box office. The film, about a perfect suburban mom seduced into a life of luxury \u2014 and murder \u2014 by her alluring, extremely well-dressed neighbor, was a tough act to follow, and a follow-up was no sure thing in the first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother Simple Favor\u201d was worth the wait, not because it was as tightly constructed as the original \u2014 because plot-wise, it\u2019s actually pretty sloppy \u2014 but because Kendrick and Lively have perfect chemistry. You\u2019re never sure if they\u2019re going to kiss each other or kill each other, and they\u2019d probably prefer to do both. It\u2019s a welcome return to the first film\u2019s winking tone and, even better, its absurdly on-point costumes. Whoever put Blake Lively in that ridiculous hat deserves an Oscar.<\/p>\n

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\"\"Alexandria Walton, Lea Rose Sebastianis and Ivy Wolk in \u2018Castration Movie Anthology ii. The Best of Both Worlds\u2019 (Louise Weard)<\/p>\n

\u2018Castration Movie Anthology ii. The Best of Both Worlds\u2019<\/p>\n

If you saw another movie like \u201cCastration Movie Anthology ii. The Best of Both Worlds\u201d in 2025\u2026 no you didn\u2019t. There\u2019s no way in hell you saw a movie like \u201cCastration Movie ii.\u201d If this isn\u2019t the only five-hour movie about a trans woman escaping a YouTube influencer\/A.I. cult that\u2019s obsessed with hot dogs and then falling in love with an abrasive ex-non-binary woman in Bushwick, you\u2019re going to need to show your work, because I do not believe you.<\/p>\n

Louise Weard\u2019s first \u201cCastration Movie\u201d was one of the best films of the decade, and the sequel is completely unexpected, a massive shift in genre that asks extremely difficult questions about individual and group identity in this age of persecution and misunderstood gender dynamics. It\u2019s also punk rock as hell, with a story that waffles from extremely realistic and personal to extremely perverse and surreal, all united by Ward\u2019s fascinating and daring low-fidelity, high ambition aesthetic, which captures the tale in a series of extended takes that seem damn near impossible to pull off at this scale, or almost any other.<\/p>\n

\u201cCastration Movie Anthology ii. The Best of Both Worlds\u201d isn\u2019t for everybody \u2014 a lot of audiences probably couldn\u2019t handle its length, let alone its challenging conversations about hot button topics \u2014 but it\u2019s one of the most interesting ongoing artworks of the decade, and the first sequel is, like the original, a must-see for all lovers of independent cinema.<\/p>\n

\""FinalNew Line Cinema<\/p>\n

\u2018Final Destination: Bloodlines\u2019<\/p>\n

Compared to a lot of the sequels on our list, \u201cFinal Destination Bloodlines<\/a>\u201d may not seem like it\u2019s about a whole lot. Like every other installment of the series, it\u2019s the story of a group of people who should have died already, and how Death \u2014 the abstract concept, who not only has agency but also a cruel sense of humor \u2014 kills them in absurdly elaborate ways. So now they live in perpetual fear of the inevitable, while doing everything they can to extend their own lives. On the surface that\u2019s a contrived scary movie concept. At its core, however, these \u201cFinal Destination\u201d movies represent an ongoing dichotomy between existentialism and fatalism, where the former is only possible by outwitting the latter.<\/p>\n

Yes, yes, so it\u2019s all a big college philosophy paper. It\u2019s also wicked gross. \u201cFinal Destination Bloodlines\u201d is one Grand Guignol, absurdly theatrical death scene after another, presented like Rube Goldberg machines, if Goldberg made them while chugging amphetamines as if they were Skittles. Even the worst \u201cFinal Destination\u201d movies have fun, gory gags, and \u201cBloodlines\u201d is the best of the lot, with unforgettable gross and hilarious death scenes, grounded by a genuine sense of tragedy, thanks to a cast of characters we actually give a damn about. It\u2019s deceptively simple, high octane entertainment, and the effort that went into this particular installment is inspiring.<\/p>\n

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\"\"Cassandra Naud in \u2018Influencers\u2019 (Shudder)<\/p>\n

\u2018Influencers\u2019<\/p>\n

In a perfect world, Kurtis David Harder\u2019s \u201cInfluencer\u201d would have been a huge hit in 2022, with its twisted and sinister approach to modern social media culture, and the love\/hate relationship we have with its stars. But it was a cult favorite, thanks largely to the slithery performance from Cassandra Naud, as a murderer and con artist named CW, who targets women with a huge Instagram following and steals their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cInfluencers<\/a>\u201d takes us deeper into CW\u2019s obsessive psyche, introducing her one true love, and setting one of her would-be victims on a globe-trotting mission to bring her to justice. Along the way, CW also infiltrates the lives of a misogynistic manosphere icon and his ultra-conservative girlfriend, whose lives are rapidly obliterated. Writer\/director Harder has an incredibly dark sense of humor, and a freaky sense of karmic justice, which leads the biting \u201cInfluencers\u201d to a memorable, over the top conclusion that steers this potential franchise into the realm of glorious camp.<\/p>\n

\"\"Amie Donald and Ivanna Sakhno in \u2018M3GAN 2.0\u2019 (Universal Pictures)<\/p>\n

\u2018M3GAN 2.0\u2019<\/p>\n

Gerard Johnstone\u2019s \u201cM3GAN\u201d was the A.I. version of \u201cGremlins,\u201d where a seemingly benign new addition to the family \u2014 in this case, a sophisticated toy robot \u2014 runs amok and kills everybody, all with a demonic, quirky sense of humor. It was awesome, it was a blockbuster, and now it\u2019s got a sequel that\u2019s basically the A.I. version of \u201cGremlins 2: The New Batch,\u201d with wild new ideas and hilarious gags that push the concept about as far as it can possibly go.<\/p>\n

It turns out M3GAN (Amie Donald, voiced by Jenna Davis) is back, and still trying to protect Cady (Violet McGraw) from every threat imaginable. Except this time the threat is another killer robot, AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno), who is on a quest to destroy the human world. So it\u2019s up to M3GAN and her creator\/former would-be murder victim, Gemma (Allison Williams) to team up and save the day, in a story that starts out weird and gets even stranger as it goes. \u201cM3GAN 2.0\u201d is weird, it\u2019s witty, and it\u2019s everything you could possibly want from a \u201cM3GAN\u201d sequel. So naturally it bombed at the box office, turning the future of this franchise into a great big question mark. Sigh.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u2018Ne Zha 2\u2019 (Enlight Pictures<\/p>\n

\u2018Ne Zha 2\u2019<\/p>\n

The highest-grossing film of 2025, by such a substantial margin that even \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash\u201d might have trouble catching up, is also the highest-grossing animated film in history. \u201cNe Zha 2<\/a>\u201d barely got released in America because it\u2019s a Chinese production, based on a 16th century Chinese novel, and the sequel to a movie that also barely got released in the U.S., and distributors didn\u2019t think audiences would go for that sort of thing. (Whoops.)<\/p>\n

That being said, \u201cNe Zha 2\u201d has all the elements American filmgoers love, like jaw-dropping action \u2014 the gigantic climax is nearly an hour long, and never stops reinventing itself \u2014 and potty humor. Lots and lots of potty humor. \u201cNe Zha 2\u201d is the kind of film when a young martial arts expert will accidentally make everyone drink his urine, and then an hour later he\u2019s weeping sincerely over the loss of his loved ones, and trying to kill every dragon in the world in bitter, hateful revenge. Tonally, it\u2019s a lot of whiplash, but for sheer spectacle \u201cNe Zha 2\u201d delivers like no other film in 2025. (You might want to see the original first, though, since the filmmakers assume you did, and they don\u2019t spend a lot of time catching their audience up.)<\/p>\n

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\"ElleElle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi in \u2018Predator: Badlands\u2019 (20th Century)<\/p>\n

\u2018Predator: Badlands\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cPredator: Badlands<\/a>\u201d isn\u2019t the first great sequel to completely redefine the franchise, but it may be the first sequel to do it nearly 40 years later. After almost four decades of films about aliens hunting humans for sport, all from humanity\u2019s perspective, director Dan Trachtenberg completely flipped the script and made a movie from the Predator\u2019s perspective. What\u2019s more, he made the Predator a noble hero, and he made humanity, by way of the A.I. we created to pursue our heartless goals, the villain. And not only does \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d work, despite the complete reversal of a classic formula, it\u2019s one of the best films of the series. (Give it some time. It\u2019ll probably get that #1 spot eventually.)<\/p>\n

What makes \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d such a game-changer is that, in spite of the total reversal of the formula, it\u2019s everything \u201cPredator\u201d movie always was. It\u2019s the story of a mighty hunter, on a strangely different planet, tracking prey who won\u2019t go down easily. It\u2019s the story about machismo, in which a protagonist who considers themselves a badass finds out they\u2019re not the center of the universe, and learns to solve their problems in a smarter, and in this case more sensitive way.<\/p>\n

Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) learns to care about other people in the middle of his epic journey in \u201cPredator: Badlands,\u201d thanks to an android named Thia (Elle Fanning, giving an award-worthy performance), but not because he\u2019s becoming a pacifist. It turns out that eschewing toxic masculinity makes you even stronger and deadlier, and more noble. That\u2019s one hell of an arc. No wonder \u201cPredator: Badlands\u201d elevates the franchise. It gives us everything we want, from a brand new perspective, and completely revitalizes the series in the process.<\/p>\n

\"\"Jorma Tommila in \u2018Sisu: Road to Revenge\u2019 (Lionsgate)<\/p>\n

\u2018Sisu: Road to Revenge\u2019<\/p>\n

Jalmari Helander is \u2014 I\u2019ve said it before and I\u2019ll say it again \u2014 the best genre filmmaker most Americans don\u2019t know about. His Christmas horror classic \u201cRare Exports\u201d and his \u201cDie Hard in a Forest with a Little Kid Protecting President Samuel L. Jackson from Assassins\u201d classic \u201cBig Game\u201d should speak for themselves. But apparently his biggest hit in the U.S. was \u201cSisu,\u201d a 2022 Finnish action movie about an old man, played by Jorma Tommila, killing Nazi scum at the end of World War II. It was big, it was brassy, it was gloriously, fist-pumpingly patriotic.<\/p>\n

The sequel finds our hero, Aatami Korpi, trying to rebuild his life after the Russians annexed a swath of Finland. He crosses the border, disassembled his house log by log, and tries to drive it home in a giant truck. But the Soviets, who also made an enemy of Aatami, won\u2019t let him leave, sending wave after wave of soldiers, trucks and fighter jets to take him out in a frantic high speed car chase that\u2019s half \u201cMad Max: Fury Road\u201d and half Bugs Bunny cartoon. \u201cSisu: Road to Revenge<\/a>\u201d doesn\u2019t have the same \u201coomph\u201d as the original but action movies didn\u2019t get much better in 2025. So genre fans, whatever you do, don\u2019t miss it.<\/p>\n

\"\"Alfia Williams, Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes in \u2018Predator: Badlands\u2019 (20th Century Studios)<\/p>\n

\u201928 Years Later\u2019<\/p>\n

Danny Boyle revitalized the whole zombie genre with his 2002 horror classic \u201c28 Days Later,\u201d introducing the concept of \u201cfast zombies,\u201d and cramming the themes of George A. Romero\u2019s first three genre-defining classics \u2014 \u201cNight of the Living Dead,\u201d \u201cDawn of the Dead\u201d and \u201cDay of the Dead\u201d \u2014 into a single, densely-packed, contemporarily relevant narrative. And now, over two decades later, after the premise has flourished and mutated, he\u2019s back and showing the rest of us how it\u2019s done. Again.<\/p>\n

\u201c28 Years Later<\/a>\u201d doesn\u2019t introduce a brand new wrinkle into the zombie concept (even the possibly that zombies could be rehabilitated was previous explored by, you guessed it, George A. Romero), but it feels radical anyway, because it dares to suggest there\u2019s a possibility for hope, even in a society that\u2019s been obliterated. Literally or figuratively, that resonates today. Especially in the wake of COVID-19, when everyone in the world was simultaneously traumatized, and forced to live with the constant threat and reality of death \u2014 and especially after some people convinced themselves, or let others do it for them, that those deaths weren\u2019t a big deal.<\/p>\n

\u201c28 Years Later\u2019s\u201d philosophical and spiritual ideas hit hard, and raise questions not about humanity\u2019s survival, but about how humanity deals with mortality. Have we become so inured to violence and horror that we no longer care about what it all means, and how it defines us? These are big questions for a movie to ask, especially when it\u2019s also full of Robin Hood archery action sequences with the living dead, and a whole heck of a lot of zombie genitals just flapping away, doing their thing, like that\u2019s not in any way distracting.<\/p>\n

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\""Wake\u201cWake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery\u201d (Netflix)<\/p>\n

\u2018Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery\u2019<\/p>\n

Rian Johnson\u2019s \u201cKnives Out\u201d movies \u2014 which should really be called \u201cBenoit Blanc\u201d movies, but the branding gods have already spoken \u2014 are a miracle in today\u2019s big budget marketplace. All three installments are fiercely intelligent mysteries, venomous social satires, and as entertaining as any high-flying action movie. \u201cKnives Out\u201d was great, \u201cGlass Onion\u201d was arguably better,\u201d and \u201cWake Up Dead Man\u201d bests them all.<\/p>\n

Josh O\u2019Connor stars as Father Jud Deplenticy, a priest trying to move on from his history of violence, who gets assigned to a small parish run like a cult, and with an iron fist, by Monsignor Wicks (Josh Brolin). Unlike most murder mysteries, where everyone has a motive to kill the victim, everyone in \u201cWake Up Dead Man\u201d seems to live Wicks except for our Father Jud, who immediately becomes the sole suspect. That\u2019s when Benoit Blanc shows up to solve the mystery, exonerate (or possibly accuse) Father Jud, and\u2026 learn about the healing power of Catholicism despite his atheistic worldview and the church\u2019s endless controversies and unforgivable crimes?<\/p>\n

Yeah, on top of all the wonderfully fun locked room murder mystery shenanigans, \u201cWake Up Dead Man\u201d does a better job than almost any other modern movie of interrogating the value of religion in a secular society. What\u2019s more, it comes to meaningful, soulful, but hardly pious conclusions. Johnson\u2019s film illustrates the push and pull between sin and salvation even-handedly, never forgetting the church\u2019s sins, and never arguing entirely against the tender, conflicted hearts of the truly godly. It\u2019s not just a great all-star murder mystery. It\u2019s a great film of any kind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019ve come along way since \u201cScream 2\u201d declared, with all the confidence of a stuck-up film student, that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[29043,155133,49,48,155134,75,20713,2352,7371,337,44915,56360,155135,70083,3598],"class_list":["post-360366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-28-years-later","tag-another-simple-favor","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-castration-movie","tag-entertainment","tag-final-destination-bloodlines","tag-influencers","tag-m3gan-2-0","tag-movies","tag-ne-zha-2","tag-predator-badlands","tag-sisu-road-to-revenge","tag-wake-up-dead-man","tag-what-to-watch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}