The highest scores on IGN’s review scale are 9 for “Amazing” and 10 for “Masterpiece.” This year, only sixteen films received the highest marks from IGN’s roster of critics, and of those, only two films received a perfect score of 10.
Horror movies were particularly well received by our reviewers, as were indie films, but the most obvious throughline with all of these picks is that they were films made by great directors such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Spike Lee, Guillermo del Toro, Ryan Coogler, and Kelly Reichardt, just to name a few. Surprise! Great directors usually make great movies.
Here are IGN’s best reviewed movies of 2025, starting with all the 9s:
“We’re the Real Monsters”
From one of the most iconic creatures in cinematic history to blues-lovin’ vampires and a new breed of the Infected, this was a big year for monster movies. And by monsters, we mean humans; there are no Xenomorphs or killer sharks to be found on this list.
Guillermo del Toro finally realized his decades-long ambition to adapt Frankenstein, which IGN’s Scott Collura called “a crowning achievement for the beloved genre director and one of the most effective adaptations of the Mary Shelley story ever put to film.” In his review, Collura hails del Toro for going “for a tale of tragedy, romance, and redemption rather than a straight horror flick. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t plenty of gore or creepy moments, but that’s the trimmings of this film, as blood-red as they are. No, del Toro’s really interested in – to paraphrase the Creature – why violence so often feels inevitable. And what it takes to stop it.”
Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein and Charles Dance as his nasty dad are the true monsters in the film, with the Creature being written by del Toro and, in a revelatory performance, played by Jacob Elordi as “a sympathetic, sad-sack SOB who just wants a friend. That the actor also seems to be channeling the body work of GDT regular and creature-player extraordinaire Doug Jones only accentuates how different Elordi’s Creature is from past incarnations.”
Ryan Coogler also found the humanity in the monsters of his film Sinners, with Eric Goldman writing in his review: “They’re sufficiently creepy and bloodthirsty, but Coogler also leans hard into the idea that vampires, in many cases, are depicted as seductive, sexual creatures – and there’s an allure to joining their undead ranks.”
“The vampires of Sinners share something of a hive mind. Amid all the racism and other senseless reasons humans turn on each other for – which Smoke, Stack, and their loved ones are especially familiar with given where they live – here is a society that moved beyond such petty hatred. If you’re a vampire, you’re accepted, regardless of your skin color. You only need to watch out if you’re not one.”
And there’s Weapons, Zach Cregger’s darkly funny horror-thriller that examines an entire community of people. “The mystery of a mass disappearance and its impact on a small town unfold in a fascinatingly layered way that gives every character a chance to shine; the wise decision to break their stories up into multiple, time-scrambling chapters creates multiple cliffhangers that set up a shattering finale,” Tom Jorgensen wrote in his review.
“From that primal starting point, Weapons unfurls itself in time-hopping chapters that afford the story a tremendous sense of scope in spite of its relatively diminutive setting. Each segment takes its time to dig into how the disappearances have affected the lives of those closest to the situation, and Cregger takes care to introduce the audience to the characters in quiet, personal moments of struggle. No one person’s perspective feels more important than any other’s; what’s revealed by these various vantage points makes us constantly reassess our own view of Weapons’ bigger picture.”
Across the pond, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland revisited post-apocalyptic Britain in 28 Years Later. The movie introduced the Alpha, a subspecies of the Infected who procreate and run around buck naked and buck wild; they’re returning for the upcoming sequel, 28 Days Later: The Bone Temple. “These crazy-ripped, nigh invincible hulks immediately ratchet up the tension any time they’re on screen, with finishers that would make even Sub-Zero exclaim ‘flawless victory’ in satisfied wonder,” Tom Jorgensen wrote in his review. “But as is often the case in zombie fiction – here, let me just lean in and whisper real quick… maybe we’re the real monsters,”
In the film, generations of young Brits have had to grow up too quickly and have only ever known life with the Rage Virus. “The way Holy Island’s citizens are lionizing Spike’s ascension to the hunter role, good-natured though it is, has a haunting, violence-begets-violence quality to it, underlined by the montages of child soldiers and the war poetry of Rudyard Kipling peppered into the edit,” according to Jorgensen.
Elio: The Pixar Box Office Bomb We Loved
Pixar Animation once had the Midas touch at the box office, but in the wake of flops like The Good Dinosaur and Lightyear, they’re no longer a sure thing commercially. That’s too bad, because we found their most recent film, Elio – about a boy who wants to venture into outer space to live with aliens – to be an audience-pleaser despite its dismal box office performance.
“With incisive humor, radiant, eye-catching animation, and peculiar alien characters, there’s enough entertainment value in Elio to satisfy viewers who are the protagonist’s age or younger,” Carlos Aguilar wrote in IGN’s review. “But it’s the heartfelt insight about universal (literally and figuratively) sorrows and joys that make this one of the studio’s most poignant projects to date – even if it leaves you wishing some of its imaginative concepts and creations would have received more screen time.”
This Is Bananas
One film has a pop star chimp, the other has an evil wind-up monkey toy, and both received a 9 from our critics.
First up is the Robbie Williams biopic, Better Man, which depicts the British singer as a CGI chimp brought to life by Weta. “The bold risk of transforming Robbie Williams into an enjoyable CGI chimp pays off both emotionally and visually,” Hanna Ines Flint wrote in IGN’s review. “Turning his back catalogue into epic musical numbers with stunning choreography and heart-wrenching storytelling, Better Man comes out swinging and winning.” (Editor’s note: Better Man had a limited theatrical release in North America during the Christmas week of 2024 before it opened wide on Jan. 10, 2025; our review was posted on Jan. 8, 2025, so we have included the film among this year’s releases.)
Then there’s Osgood Perkins’ horror film, The Monkey, which we hailed as “a multifaceted rollercoaster of a midnight movie that elicits as many laughs as shocks or gross-out gags.” IGN’s Tom Jorgensen wrote in his review that “The Monkey marches to the beat of its own bloodstained drum – and it’s an irresistible rhythm to groove to. Osgood Perkins and cast balance the horror and comedy inherent in the movie’s silly premise exceptionally well, and the surreal, absurd touches the Longlegs director adds to a world sketched out by Stephen King only help to set it apart from less imaginative, body-count-obsessed movies.”
The Return of the Indie Auteurs
Two of the biggest names in ’90s and ’00s indie cinema had new films out this year. Kelly Reichardt was back with The Mastermind, which our critic Chase Hutchinson noted in his review features “career-best work from Josh O’Connor” and cements Reichardt’s place as “one of the best filmmakers working today, cutting deeply into both character and country to make a great new American heist film.”
That OG slacker, Richard Linklater, had not one but two new movies this year, Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon, the latter earning a spot on this list. In his Blue Moon review, Siddhant Adlakha praised Linklater’s film about “the final days of Broadway songwriting legend Lorenz Hart (a magnificently melancholy Ethan Hawke) on the opening night for one of his former creative partner’s biggest hits. Jealousies and creative anxieties fly as Hart tries to maintain balance through friendly conversations, all while the specter of World War II hangs overhead, posing the question of what makes art, artists, and audiences tick during difficult times.”
A Cut Above
Not one but two action movies about vengeful women with samurai swords have landed on our list of best reviewed movies of 2025… albeit one movie is actually a combination of two films released over 20 years ago.
Although it screened at film festivals years ago, Quentin Tarantino waited until he could own the rights before seeking theatrical distribution for the four-and-a-half-hour-long Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair.
“The film is as vicious, fun, and sentimental as it’s always been, and although you could technically rewatch Vol. 1 (2003) back-to-back with Vol. 2 (2004) for a similar experience, nothing rivals the delights of watching Tarantino’s cross-cultural mash-up the way it was meant to be seen,” Siddhant Adlakha explained in his review.
“It’s perhaps the mash-up maverick’s most overt work of cultural bastardization-slash-homage, a thin line he traipses with gusto by combining the sounds and styles of spaghetti Westerns, spy B movies, Japanese chanbara (or swordplay) and Chinese wuxia, all choreographed by Hong Kong stunt legend Yuen Woo-ping. However, the long-overdue release is also a more mournful tribute to bygone eras of cinema, simply by virtue of the passage of time: Many of its stars have since departed, including David Carradine, Sonny Chiba, Michael Madsen, and Michael Parks, as well as the film’s editor, Sally Menke. Kill Bill should have always been this way, but it’s better late than never.”
Tarantino veteran Tim Roth, meanwhile, plays the villain in Slow West director John Maclean’s period action film, Tornado. Hanna Ines Flint’s review said “Maclean brilliantly captures the brutality and hardship of 18th-century Britain in a bleak but blistering coming-of-age tale loaded with nods to the samurai stories of Akira Kurosawa. Japanese actor Kōki is sharp and passionate in the lead role, Tim Roth impresses as a tired but ruthless crimelord, and Takehiro Hira and Jack Lowden are compelling in their supporting roles. With a blistering score and a darkly comic undercurrent, Tornado is a timeless revenge thriller filled with hurt and heart.”
A24’s Big Year
Indie distributor A24 released many notable films this year, many of which were well received but – IGN score-wise – fell short of meeting this article’s threshold of a 9 or above. Among the A24 films that didn’t make the cut were Civil War, Eternity, Eddington, Bring Her Back, Ne Zha II, Friendship, Opus, The Smashing Machine, and The Legend of Ochi.
However, Josh Safdie’s table tennis dramedy, Marty Supreme, featuring a stellar lead performance by Timothée Chalamet, earned a 9 from IGN’s Michael Calabro. In his review, Calabro forecast that “Marty Supreme and Uncut Gems will spawn many of their own Goodfellas/Casino debates in the future. It doesn’t matter what side you take; we’re insanely lucky all these films exist.”
Meanwhile, Spike Lee was back in a big way with Highest 2 Lowest, his remake of an Akira Kurosawa classic that Siddhant Adlakha explained in his review “begins as an austere class melodrama, but soon gives way to some of the most exciting, visceral images of Spike Lee’s career. It filters the kidnapping conundrum of its source materials through a kaleidoscope of Black culture, anchored by the great Denzel Washington at his most Shakespearean. It’s been nearly 20 years since the director and actor last collaborated, but neither man has lost a step.”
Celine Song followed up her Oscar-nominated Past Lives with Materialists, a romantic drama about dating in middle age. In his review, Adlakha wrote that Song “uses the screen presences of lovelorn leads Dakota Johsnon, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal to play with rom-com expectations. The result is an unexpected love triangle of cynics, both rich and poor alike, caught in a world where dating can be a game of numbers, forcing them to harden themselves towards romance. But as the possibility of the real thing rears its head, Song presents it in deeply alluring hues without ever shying away from the realistic allure of even the most bitter alternatives.”
But our highest-rated A24 film of the year – Sorry, Baby – is also one of only two films we awarded a perfect score of 10.
The 10s: Our Top Two Films of the Year
Films that earn a score of 10 are labeled by IGN as Masterpieces, which our review scale explainer describes as “classics in the making.” But what does that actually mean? IGN’s Michael Calabro wrestled with that very question in his One Battle After Another review:
“Frankly, when trying to come up with my final score for this movie, I’ve spent an absurd amount of time trying to figure out the difference between a 9 out of 10 and a 10 out of 10. What does an abstract “one better” mean? Then it hit me: Who says our review scale is linear, with each number being equally spaced from the other? We’re ‘measuring’ art with numbers, for Christ’s sake; it’s all a construction we’ve collectively made up.”
In delivering his score, Calabro ultimately concluded that “the elements that separate an ‘amazing’ film from a ‘masterpiece’ are minor. … There are so many little details, seemingly inconsequential touches – the filmmaker’s style, if you will – that all add up bit by bit to turn this amazing movie into a masterpiece.” But Paul Thomas Anderson’s politically charged and darkly funny saga of revolutionaries and fascists wasn’t the only film to receive a perfect score from us in 2025.
Eva Victor made a stunning directorial debut with Sorry, Baby. Carlos Aguilar called it a “bittersweet, unassuming stunner,” writing in IGN’s review that “Sorry, Baby pulls off astounding feats of storytelling. It’s not only because it jumps across multiple time periods with powerful impact, but also because it addresses a challenging topic like the trauma of sexual assault with nuance, restraint, and even effective and consistent humor. Writer-director-star Eva Victor has made a movie that’s at once approachable, incredibly perceptive, and subtly stirring.”
What are your picks for the best movies of 2025? Let us know in the comments below, vote in our poll, and be sure to check out our various other best of awards for 2025 across film, TV, gaming, and comics. We’ll see you in 2026.
Source link
