As always, Sundance is a great preview for the year ahead, a chance to get a glimpse at some of the indie films that will be hitting theaters and streaming services over the coming months. This year, the festival returned to an in-person format after a few years online, and the lineup was pretty solid. It was a particularly good year for horror, with stories about evil fairies, depraved vacations, cursed hands, and a reimagining of Frankenstein. We also got some interesting new science fiction - including a movie that Hideo Kojima will almost definitely love - and plenty more.

Here are a handful of our favorites to keep an eye on.

Aliens Ab …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Out of all the films that debuted at this year's Sundance Film Festival, none were quite as visually striking as Nigerian writer / director C.J. Obasi's Mami Wata, a monochromatic modern-day myth about a small village during a time of upheaval. One doesn't need to be familiar with Mami Wata's eponymous embodiment of the divine feminine to appreciate its story about multiple generations of women doing everything in their power to keep their people safe. But as you let Mami Wata wash over you, the film paints a picture of people fighting to understand their beliefs in forces larger than themselves. And in each of those people, you can see shad …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a group of high school kids gets their hands on a cursed occult object, and after some fun and games, they end up being terrorized by a presence from the other side. It's not the most original premise. But in Talk To Me - the directorial debut from brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, best known for their YouTube channel - it takes on a new urgency and ferocity with a story that races to its bloody, brutal conclusion without letting up.

The occult object in question is an embalmed hand that supposedly has the power to let people see, and be possessed by, the spirits of dead folk. The process is stra …

Read the full story at The Verge.

When Jonathan Majors takes to the bodybuilding competition stage in writer / director Elijah Bynum's arresting new drama Magazine Dreams, it's impossible not to feel as if the movie's in direct conversation with the way that its lead star's fame has become wrapped up in the public's fascination with his body. Magazine Dreams' deep dive into the life of an obsessive, aspiring pro lifter longing for a shot at fitness fame is one of the most difficult pieces of cinema to debut at this year's Sundance Film Festival. But as it's breaking your heart and making you sweat, Magazine Dreams is also laying bare many painful truths about what it means t …

Read the full story at The Verge.

In writer / director Sophie Barthes' peculiar new sci-fi satire The Pod Generation, there's little doubt or disagreement about how overworked, hyper-surveilled, and disconnected from nature many people are. Set in a near future where things like freshly 3D-printed toast have become the norm, most everyone understands how deeply messed up it is that their child-obsessed society's given up on any semblance of a public educational system. People who have quality healthcare through their jobs know that they're a privileged class, and it's no secret how that kind of stratification can be harmful. It's just that people are far, far too enamored wi …

Read the full story at The Verge.

In Landscape With Invisible Hand, the alien invasion doesn't incite violence or an all-out galactic war: it screws up the economy. The sci-fi flick from director Cory Finley, based on a novel by M. T. Anderson, premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival. It takes place in a future where an alien race has descended on Earth, bestowing advanced technology and the riches that come with it - but only for the human elite. What follows is a somewhat messy fable about capitalism and art, one that looks at the aftermath of an invasion rather than the event itself.

The movie takes place in the 2030s, around five years after the arrival of the V …

Read the full story at The Verge.

There are multiple moments throughout director Laura Moss' brilliant new psychological horror drama Birth/Rebirth that are so abjectly brutal that the festival goers who reportedly fell ill while watching the movie at this year's Sundance could almost be forgiven for their theatrics. Birth/Rebirth's story of two unlikely kindred spirits finding one another in the midst of tragedy is both disturbing and moving as it reworks pieces of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein into a modern-day myth about motherhood and mortality.

Between its unflinching focus on the dangers of pregnancy and its depiction of the violence hidden throughout the US healthcare …

Read the full story at The Verge.