For better or for worse, Zack Snyder has made a name for himself with films that have impressive visuals, meticulous montages, and unforgettable soundtracks. Though sometimes an acquired taste, all of these elements came together magnificently in the 2009 feature film adaptation of Watchmen. An ambitious film for any director, Watchmen was adapted from Alan Moore’s graphic novel that questions fascism and the hero worship of superheroes in a complex and immersive tome. Adapting one of the best graphic novels to date would be a high order for anyone, which could have been the reason that Watchmen didn’t find its audience early on. In recent years, however, the film has become more embraced by audiences who were admittedly too hard on it at first.

As The Boys comes to a close, a collective sigh was heard from around the world. Five seasons is a good run for any television series, but as the series ends, so too does the razor-smart satire and relief for superhero fatigue. Showrunner Eric Kripke always had his finger on the pulse of pop culture, almost to a terrifying degree. While fans will miss the sometimes startlingly relevant social commentary, another series can always fill that void.

It’s been five years since Netflix’s horror masterpiece debuted, and the impact has still not subsided. Midnight Mass was Mike Flanagan’s magnum opus, a limited series that follows a small religious community on a remote fishing island that becomes overrun with vampires. The horror tale was a masterclass in storytelling, charting the drama of many damaged characters as they overcome their personal flaws in the service of something bigger than themselves: fighting vampires.

Christian Bale has long been a powerhouse in entertainment, from his unnerving role as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho to the Caped Crusader himself in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy. Batman hung up his cowl in 2012 after The Dark Knight Rises, but that wasn’t the end for Bale. Pretty soon after, the performer delivered a gripping performance in a forgotten thriller that deserves a second chance.

Horror films have entered a new era where they are about the only thing that is getting fans into theaters, but the genre has had a long and widespread tradition in entertainment. A perfect vehicle for social commentary, horror is even better paired with the thriller genre. That is about the only way to describe The Silence of the Lambs, a psychological horror that walks that line perfectly.

When HBO’s The Last of Us first redefined what trauma really means, it couldn’t have been more timely. Neil Druckmann’s celebrated video game came out in 2013, before the world experienced a pandemic firsthand. This wasn’t the case when the television series hit the streamer in 2023. Fresh from a global pandemic, The Last of Us was highly relevant, which made infected humans puppeteered by evil mushrooms even more terrifying. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t be the most prophetic version of a virus.

Who says that action films can’t have excitement as well as emotional storytelling? Not Christopher Nolan, that’s for sure. After making a splash with Memento and Insomnia, the visionary director took on one of the most famous action vigilantes of all time. While not an obvious choice to lead a new era of Batman, Nolan was one of the pioneers of the gritty superhero genre. Christian Bale stars as the Caped Crusader in a trilogy that defied all tropes of the genre up until that point.