ANNIVERSARY movie poster | ©2025 Lionsgate

Rating: R
Stars: Diane Lane, Kyle Chandler, Madeline Brewer, Zoey Deutch, Phoebe Dynevor, Mckenna Grace, Daryl McCormack, Dylan O’Brien, Selda Kaya, Sky Yang, Flavia Watson
Writer: Lori Rosene-Gambino, story by Jan Komasa and Lori Rosene-Gambino
Director: Jan Komasa
Distributor: Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions
Release Date: October 29, 2025 (theatrical)

No one is going to confuse ANNIVERSARY with a movie made after the 2024 election. Few would argue that the U.S. has remained the same since then, but it hasn’t changed in exactly the way ANNIVERSARY anticipates.

Scripted by Lori Rosene-Gambino from a story she co-wrote with director Jan Komasa, ANNIVERSARY shows political alteration through the eyes of the well-heeled Taylor family, mainly Georgetown University professor and matriarch Ellen (Diane Lane) and successful restauranteur and patriarch Paul (Kyle Chandler).

Paul and Ellen have four offspring, only one of whom, aspiring biologist Birdie (Mckenna Grace), still lives at home. The other three are successful comedian Anna (Madeline Brewer), environmental lawyer Cynthia (Zoey Deutch), who is married to colleague Rob (Daryl McCormack), and failed writer Josh (Dylan O’Brien).

Josh brings serious girlfriend Liz Nettles (Phoebe Dynevor) to Ellen and Paul’s lavish twenty-fifth anniversary celebration at the family’s large home. It turns out that Liz was a student of Ellen’s eight years earlier. This was not a happy classroom experience. Ellen felt Liz’s writings revealed a budding fascist mentality; Liz felt that Ellen was trying to censor her.

Ellen is unhappy that Josh has given up his own literary ambitions to help Liz with her nonfiction. Worse, it turns out that Liz has penned THE CHANGE, a massive tome about how the U.S. would be so much better if there were no more political parties, but rather had everyone come together in the center.

The book becomes a bestseller and a rallying cry. To the surprise of few, certainly not Ellen, it lays the groundwork for censorship, the stripping of civil rights and worse.

Things play out differently for each of the Taylors, but over the course of five years, everything becomes exponentially grimmer.

ANNIVERSARY is in the same dystopian near-future genre as THE HANDMAID’S TALE, but it is less concerned with reproductive freedom and gender issues than dissent in general.

While the movie certainly shows the results of government clampdowns in some ways that are distressingly familiar, it also slightly falls victim to what it condemns. Ellen denounces Liz’s screed for covering an agenda with a seemingly agreeable blandness.

We never get the specifics of Liz’s platform, so all we hear are the ads. Granted, this is the case with a lot of destructive real-life policy, and pinpointing issues could easily have made ANNIVERSARY ponderously didactic. ANNIVERSARY avoids the latter, but exactly how we get from A to B via Liz’s doctrine is a little vague and overly polite (real oppression has the habit of showing its true face on occasion).

Director Komasa handles the interpersonal dynamics well, letting his actors convey a great deal in silence. Lane does a remarkable job of showing Ellen’s actual emotions through the opposite expressions she feels she ought to have on her face at any given moment. Chandler is warm and honest and vulnerable.

Dynevor keeps Liz telegenic and enigmatic, while O’Brien deploys subtlety in illustrating Josh’s alterations. Brewer is lively, Deutch and McCormack enact fluctuating states well, and Grace is charming.

ANNIVERSARY is a well-made movie about social catastrophe that feels a little like a speeded-up miniseries. That’s not a bad thing, and we become engaged with its people.

The filmmakers can scarcely be faulted for not foreseeing the current state of absurdity in our nation; nobody could have precisely predicted what’s going on in the world right now. Still, the gap between our reality and the universe of ANNIVERSARY gives the movie a somewhat dreamlike aspect that is at odds with the urgency that appears intended.

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