Top Five Movies You Need to See this October: “The Smashing Monster,” “Frankenstein,” “Bugonia” & More

October is a great time to be at the movie theater. As the fall season cranks into high gear, there is almost always a plethora of enticing cinematic offerings, with a nice blend of season-appropriate genre movies and awards season underdogs. This year, October brings not only some great new spooky stuff but also some genuinely invigorating material from storied auteurs. These are the top five movies you need to check out this October.

5. The Smashing Machine

Releasing on October 3^rd, The Smashing Machine is directed by Benny Safdie (one half of the directing duo behind Good Time and Uncut Gems) and stars Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in what appears to be a genuinely transformative performance. Johnson is playing the real-life MMA fighter Mark Kerr in this A24 sports biopic, and appears to have treated the undertaking as a bona fide challenge.

The off-kilter combo of Safide behind the camera, who helped get such unorthodox and against-type performances from Robert Pattinson and Adam Sandler in his previous films, and Johnson returning to actual acting rather than simply mugging for the camera, makes this one a must-see.

4. Tron: Ares

Tron is a fascinating franchise in that it’s never actually been anywhere near as successful or relevant. Rather, the original Tron was a formative technical benchmark, whose aesthetic served to inspire an entire generation of creators who went on to repurpose it and build upon it in one way or another. The film got a legacy sequel back in 2010, in the form of Tron: Legacy, which was solid, visually stunning fun, but didn’t exactly find emotional resonance with audiences.

Now, fifteen years later, Disney is trying to resurrect this oddity of a franchise once more with Tron: Ares, and I am nothing if not exceedingly curious to see what exactly this is. On the one hand, the first trailer promised spectacular visuals, high-octane action, and a killer Nine Inch Nails score. On the other hand, the repugnant and always underwhelming Jared Leto is the star of the film, and every subsequent trailer has made me less excited for this. Still, I will be there in the trenches, even if it is only to see Tron flop once more.

3. Black Phone 2

I adored Scott Derrickson’s Black Phone from a few years back, finding it to be the filmmaker’s strongest outing by a country mile. Ethan Hawke’s antagonistic performance was great, and the way in which Derrickson straddled the line between literal and metaphorical material just really worked for me. As such, I would have been fairly jazzed for this sequel regardless, but the marketing has sent this thing into overdrive for me. Hawke is back, the story is taking an even more cosmic turn, and the whole thing is set against an icy backdrop? Yes, please. I’ll be there on opening night.

2. Frankenstein

Guillermo del Toro is one of the greatest and most idiosyncratic filmmakers working today, and nothing is better than the maestro tackling classic monsters. From films like Cronos and Hellboy II: The Golden Army up to more recent works like The Shape of Water, Guillermo is phenomenally gifted at taking established characters or stories and turning them into his own in spectacular fashion. Frankenstein promises to be this and more.

The filmmaker has long spoken about his desire to adapt the classic tale, and it’s finally happening now. The film will release on Netflix in November, but is getting a limited theatrical run in October, and I cannot express to you enough how much I need to see this on the big screen. The trailers have promised an even more gonzo, insane aesthetic that I could have imagined, and I refuse to watch this anywhere but at the theater for the first time.

1. Bugonia

Yorgos Lanthimos has been on an absolutely fucking insane run for several years now. For the purposes of this, I’ll keep it to his most recent trio of films: Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness, and now Bugonia. Each of these films have been made with frequent collaborators (Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, etc.) and have seen Lanthimos progressively pushing his craft and process to new extremes.

This latest film is about some men who kidnap a female CEO (Stone) because they are convinced by an in-depth conspiracy theory that she must be an alien, and the things that happen from there. I could not be more sold on this, and look extremely forward to another darkly comedic, viciously uncomfortable viewing experience of a Yorgos movie, just as god intended.