See ‘Backrooms’ in theaters, rent ‘Fuze,’ stream ‘Dead Man’s Wire’

Welcome to Trust Me, I Watch Everything, a weekly guide to all the new movies out each Friday and where to find them. This week’s buzziest release is Backrooms, a movie directed by a 20-year-old YouTuber, set to become a box office sensation and A24’s highest opening ever. If “creepypasta” and liminal horror aren’t your thing, there’s a terrific counterprogramming option in Tuner, an old-fashioned thriller with a killer premise and fun characters.

If you’d rather have a movie night at home, you can rent or buy a slew of new releases, including the incredibly expensive box office bomb that was the Saudi Arabian historical epic blockbuster Desert Warrior, starring Anthony Mackie, or the lean and tense heist thriller Fuze.

And on streaming services you’re likely already paying for, Scream 7 makes its way to Paramount+ after becoming a huge hit, despite its many controversies, and Gus Van Sant’s underseen Dead Man’s Wire makes its debut on Netflix.

Intrigued? Let’s get into it!

🎥 What to watch in theaters

Editor’s note: My Yahoo colleague Kelsey Weekman reviewed this one.

The biggest release: Backrooms

Why you should see it: We’ve never seen anything like Backrooms — a horror film based on a web series imagined by then-teen YouTube star Kane Parsons (he just turned 20), who was then given the resources and budget to bring it to life. It’s projected to make a ton of money at the box office, where young people are always champing at the bit to see something familiar yet fresh, like YouTuber Markiplier’s Iron Lung earlier this year.

The film follows Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a divorced and miserable owner of a furniture store who’d much rather be an architect. He’s seeing a therapist named Mary (Renate Reinsve) to address his misery and rage. She’s got problems of her own, of course. But one day, Clark is drawn to one of the walls of his store, and accidentally falls into it, getting trapped inside a labyrinth of dull, pale rooms that seem to invite supernatural happenings (and jump scares).

The plot diverges from the original web series and abandons much of the lore that fans will be looking for — as a fan myself, I was bummed — to focus on the atmospheric dread its characters experience. But I think it shows a maturity and depth within Parsons that he’d abandon the popular media adaptation playbook and rely more heavily on themes and thoughtfulness than, say, familiar memes

There’s just one problem: It’s boring. It takes almost an hour for anything to happen. That ramps up the unsettling factor, making liminal spaces feel more tense and beige walls feel more uncanny, but it’s also straight-up unpleasant at times. In a twisted way, that made me excited for the new generation that will come out in droves to see it. Iron Lung had the same problem, which suggests to me that the nation’s youth’s attention spans might not be totally fried after all.

What other critics are saying: They like it for the most part. Owen Gleiberman of Variety says, “It may alienate anyone expecting a conventional fear ride. Parsons, for all he shows you, leaves you with the sensation that the real horror may be just out of reach — which, in its way, is what makes the liminal-space aesthetic a form of cool.” TheWrap’s William Bibbiani writes that “this movie doesn’t seem to want to be a major motion picture. I think it just wants to be a Halloween Haunt.”

How to watch: Backrooms is now playing in theaters nationwide.

Get tickets

Editor’s note: My Yahoo colleague Suzy Byrne reviewed this one.

The family-friendly release: The Breadwinner

Why you should skip it: Nate Bargatze is undeniably the main attraction here. His clean humor feels safe and distinct in a comedy landscape that’s so shock-based. (Did you watch the Kevin Hart roast?) The Breadwinner is also a PG film you can bring your family to. No uncomfortable moments, no surprises, and you’ll even have a few laughs.

But it’s also basically 95 minutes of “Dad is an incompetent idiot.”

Bargatze plays (you guessed it) Nate, a Nashville Toyota salesman whose life gets turned upside down when his stay-at-home wife, played by Mandy Moore, invents a parenting gadget (the Star Minder) that lands a Shark Tank deal and takes her out of town for a month, leaving him to manage their three daughters. (Yes, Mr. Wonderful is in another movie. And Lori Greiner too.)

Nate can’t cook, clean, grocery shop, do laundry or manage the kids without the entire house collapsing around him. It’s very Mr. Mom meets The Money Pit: slapstick, chaos, predictable emotional lessons and a happy ending.

While much of the comedy is silly, some of the smaller parenting moments resonated. Managing even one school-age child requires a CEO-level scheduling system. Schools constantly need something from parents — snacks, volunteers, donations, costumes, spirit days — especially at this time of year. And if you’ve ever attended a school spelling bee, you know they somehow last three hours — two more than you allotted to sneak away from work for. Those moments showcase Bargatze’s observational humor far better than his crashing through walls and destroying the house.

My bigger issue is: Why are movie dads always morons?

Yes, moms often carry a lot of the mental load, but dads aren’t universally helpless children. My husband may not run the family calendar,  but he also would not destroy the house if I left town for a month — and he does plenty, from making school lunch to carpooling. Movie (and TV!) dads are constantly portrayed as idiots incapable of basic domestic life, which feels lazy.

The supporting cast — Colin Jost, Will Forte, Kumail Nanjiani — is solid, though they’re mostly playing goofy guys. Nanjiani does get the movie’s best line as Nate’s superfit workplace rival: “The pecs bring in the checks.”

If you don’t care about predictability and inept dads, and you like Bargatze, this movie is easy to watch and mildly funny. But it settles for easy tropes instead of giving its main character more depth — or competence — and that doesn’t exactly kill.

What other critics are saying: Most critics agree, unfortunately. Natalia Winkelman at Variety writes that “select moments may land a laugh, but zoom out a little, and the real joke is that this movie was made in 2026.” IndieWire’s Alison Foreman damned it with faint praise, calling it “the funniest feature-length ad you’ve seen in a while.”

How to watch: The Breadwinner is now playing in theaters nationwide.

Get tickets

But that’s not all …

Tuner: This efficient and entertaining low-budget indie crime-drama thriller boasts a great cast and even stronger characters. Leo Woodall stars as a talented piano tuner whose life is turned upside down when he discovers that his meticulous piano-tuning skills can also be applied to cracking safes. The circumstances by which the piano tuner reluctantly falls into his life of crime are clever and engrossing, and there’s also a compelling romance between Woodall and costar Havana Rose Liu. The killer sound design stands out, and it’s great to see Dustin Hoffman having fun here — his character even has his own bobble head in the world of the film. The script embraces some genre clichés by the end, but not enough to detract from all it does right. Get tickets.

💸 Movies newly available to rent or buy

The biggest release: Desert Warrior

Why you should watch it: When you think of 7th-century Arabia, surely your mind immediately goes to Anthony Mackie and Sharlto Copley, right?

If you’re able to put aside the inherent absurdity of the casting, Desert Warrior is actually far more competent than it sounds on paper, mostly thanks to esteemed director Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), who imbues the action with life and fills the movie with gorgeous desert images.

It’s a $150 million Saudi-backed film, and the money is, in fact, on the screen. The poster and title may lead you to believe that Mackie is the titular desert warrior, but the movie is smarter than that and has a real plot that actually makes sense.

In the film, Princess Hind (Aiysha Hart, the real desert warrior here) defies her fate, refusing to become a concubine to the ruthless Emperor Kisra (Sir Ben Kingsley). Fleeing into the desert with her father, she is hunted by a merciless army and forced to trust a legendary bandit (Mackie), who has secrets of his own. Rising from fugitive to fearless warrior, Hind unites warring tribes for a final battle that will change history forever.

Desert Warrior makes the absolute most of on-location filming in exotic locales; it’s beautifully photographed throughout, and the set pieces are all exciting and well put together. Surely many liberties have been taken in adapting this slice of history into an action film, but in the process, Saudi Arabia proves it can make a big-budget spectacle that largely stands up to the best Hollywood has to offer. (Largely because Hollywood doesn’t even try to make historical epics anymore.)

What other critics are saying: They were not as kind as myself. The AV Club’s Monica Castillo writes, “While the story onscreen is dull and the performances uninspired, it’s the story around Desert Warrior that solidifies it as a strange chapter in a country’s self-promotional history.”

How to watch: Desert Warrior is now available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Prime Video, and other VOD platforms.

Rent or buy

Another solid option: Fuze

Why you should watch it: The plot of Fuze is simple yet also more complex than it appears at first glance.

It’s a tense, ticking-clock thriller about an unexploded WWII bomb that is discovered on a busy construction site in the middle of London. Chaos ensues as the military and police begin a mass evacuation, and the true nature of the situation gets revealed. Now it’s a heist movie!

It’s an incredibly efficient and propulsive flick that keeps you invested as more complications are revealed. Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as the guy defusing the bomb, and Sam Worthington and Theo James show up as the criminals committing a robbery, using the bomb situation as cover.

It’s directed by David Mackenzie, who was behind the Taylor Sheridan-penned Hell or High Water. The cross-cutting and editing here really keep things moving along; it’s a brass-tacks genre exercise and nothing more, but it succeeds within those parameters.

What other critics are saying: They like it! Amy Nicholson at the Los Angeles Times writes, “While the outro feels tacked on, upon reflection, it’s the missing piece that transforms the movie from a puzzle into a proclamation on group cohesion. Only afterward does it hit us that Mackenzie has really made a thriller about trust.” TheWrap’s Drew Taylor dubs it “all killer, no filler.”

How to watch: Fuze is now available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Prime Video and other VOD platforms.

Rent or buy

But that’s not all…

• Over Your Dead Body: This off-putting action comedy is far more violent and lighter on laughs than you’re expecting. Jason Segel and Samara Weaving star as a dysfunctional couple who head to a remote cabin to “reconnect,” but each has secret intentions to kill the other. Imagine if The War of the Roses, remade just last year as The Roses, got incredibly gory and violent, and you’ve basically got the gist. The movie’s plotting gets increasingly over-the-top as it goes, and there’s a single scene that puts a bad taste in your mouth that never goes away. Rent or buy.

• Animal Farm: Andy Serkis has been trying to adapt George Orwell’s novel since 2011, when he starred as Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes and decided it was time for a “modern retelling.” What was once an ambitious-sounding motion-capture project is now, after a series of hurdles, including a brief attempt at Netflix, a cheaply animated CGI talking-animal film for children starring Seth Rogen as a pig who farts onscreen at least once. Rent or buy.

📺 Movies newly available on streaming services you may already have

The biggest release: Scream 7

Why you should skip it: Scream 7 comes nearly three years after Scream 6 became the highest-grossing entry in the newly rebooted franchise.

It’s been a rather tumultuous journey from script to screen. Melissa Barrera, the series’s new leading lady, was fired for her social media posts about the war in Gaza. Jenna Ortega, arguably the biggest name in 5 and 6, dropped out shortly thereafter. Those exits led to a last-minute rewrite and very public salary negotiations with Neve Campbell, who ultimately returned after sitting out the last entry and making headlines for turning down what she considered an insulting offer. Obnoxiously, news of other original movie cast members returning also made headlines long in advance, which ruined the element of surprise, but I won’t say who, in case you missed them.

Kevin Williamson, the writer of the original film and its first sequel, returns to the fold here, but in the director’s chair as well. It’s his first feature film since directing Teaching Mrs. Tingle, back in 1999.

It’s worth mentioning all that baggage because this is a Scream movie, after all. It’s a franchise known for its meta-commentary on horror films and their conventions, and these extratextual elements do wind up factoring into the story in one way or another.

In the film, a new Ghostface killer emerges in the quiet town where Campbell’s Sidney has built a new life. Suddenly, her darkest fears are realized as her daughter becomes the next target. Determined to protect her family, she must face the horrors of her past to put an end to the bloodshed once and for all. Essentially, Sidney must face off against the most terrifying adversary yet … her teenage daughter!

After a cold open kill sequence that’s easily the highlight of the movie, we’re introduced to a particularly forgettable new set of teens, along with the return of familiar characters — including original cast member Courteney Cox as Gale Weathers and Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown as the Meeks-Martin twins (half of the “Core Four”) — as the typical machinations of the whodunnit kick in.

Without delving into spoiler territory, the biggest problem with Scream 7 is that the series has now fully completed its transition from espousing wisdom on the genre at large to commenting entirely on itself, a phenomenon that’s become truer with each new entry since the 2022 reboot.

By the time Savoy Brown’s Mindy lists new rules that the 2026 version of Ghostface will follow, it’s such a half-hearted attempt at pontificating on nostalgia, including references to Halloween (2018) and Laurie Strode’s trauma, that even the character can’t get away from the topic fast enough. If she kept talking, maybe Mindy would eventually realize the movie she’s in is guilty of the very thing she’s critiquing by bringing back Sidney Prescott to be tormented yet again — or that Kevin Williamson basically already made this movie way back in 1998 with Halloween: H20.

It wants to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to the use of deepfakes and AI. That sounds like fertile ground for a modern Scream movie in theory, considering the film’s iconic use of phone calls, but in practice, it’s inherently uncinematic, low-rent and cheap-feeling.

Scream 7 is constantly talking out of both sides of its mouth, indulging in the very behavior it’s meant to be satirizing, like when Sidney flat-out says that a certain plot element would make for a “better story” than what the movie is actually doing. The ending, i.e., the killer’s big “here’s what motivated me” reveal, is clearly meant to make fun of a certain type of Scream fan and their reaction to the last movie, yet it still winds up feeling like it’s endorsing that view by including it.

There is some stuff worth praising in here, though. The cold open is genuinely fun, scary and playful in a way the rest of the movie is not, and a couple of surprisingly gnarly kills do deliver what fans of the series are looking for. There are a few shots of Ghostface lingering in the background that are striking, menacing and really creepy. I didn’t expect much from Williamson as a director, considering his lack of experience, but the set pieces are fine. It’s a shame, though, that the movie has the very modern problem of being way too dark — literally, a problem apparent from the opening shot that is borderline illegible. The Sidney “refusing to discuss her trauma with her daughter” stuff also would’ve hit harder had every legacy sequel not gotten there first.

Scream (2022) lovingly targeted the idea of fandom run amok through a not-so-subtle reference to The Last Jedi, with the killers’ motivations revolving around fans’ reactions to Stab 8, the in-universe movies based on the “real” events of Scream. Scream 7 has, sadly, come full circle in that it’s absolutely the Rise of Skywalker of the series: a bizarre attempted course-correct that feels like an apology for the last movie, which was actually a hit and is more beloved than this one will ever be.

What other critics are saying: It’s the worst-reviewed entry in the franchise since 2000’s Scream 3. IndieWire’s Alison Foreman writes, “Williamson’s greatest failure comes in the film’s relationship to meta-commentary. Once the series’s calling card, self-awareness has here been dulled into self-soothing.” Variety’s Owen Gleiberman declares, “Williamson has gone back to basics, but the result is a Scream sequel that, while it nods in the direction of being seductively convoluted, is really just … basic.”

How to watch: Scream 7 is now streaming on Paramount+.

Watch on Paramount+

A better option: Dead Man’s Wire

Why you should watch it: Legendary independent filmmaker Gus Van Sant returns with his first film since 2018, and it’s a ripped-from-the-headlines period-piece true story that is so clearly indebted to Dog Day Afternoon, Van Sant even cast Al Pacino in a supporting role. It’s a throwback to crime thrillers of the 1970s, and the filmmaker really captures that vibe perfectly.

On Feb. 8, 1977, Tony Kiritsis entered the office of Richard Hall, president of the Meridian Mortgage Company, and took him hostage using a sawed-off shotgun wired with a “dead man’s wire” from the trigger to Tony’s own neck.

Bill Skarsgård stars as Kiritsis and delivers a very big performance, equal parts anxious and confident as he gets more and more out of his depth. Van Sant expertly captures the texture of the time period through his grainy camerawork and impeccable production design. Its craft elements are analog and retro in a way that make it feel genuine; it talks the talk and walks the walk. And it’s got a killer soundtrack to boot!

The details of why Kiritsis did this evoke modern anxieties of corporate greed. He kidnaps the son of the head of a mortgage firm that he claims railroaded him into bankruptcy so it could profit from his land. He held the man at gunpoint in his apartment for days as it became a media circus all over TV and radio. It feels like an early example of how the media can turn someone into a folk hero overnight, regardless of whether they’re committing a violent crime.

What other critics are saying: It’s getting great marks. The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney writes, “Scripted with fat-free economy by Austin Kolodney and made in the gritty, realistic style of Sidney Lumet’s ’70s thrillers, the film pays tribute to Dog Day Afternoon while carving its own identity.” Nick Schager at the Daily Beast writes, “In this age of Luigi Mangione, it’s a snapshot of violent anti-establishment resentment and fury that’s eerily timely — and smartly leaves its own perspective on its mayhem open for debate.”

How to watch: Dead Man’s Wire is now streaming on Netflix.

Watch on Netflix

But that’s not all…

Psycho Killer: Georgina Campbell should be hailed as one of contemporary horror’s finest scream queens working today. With roles in Barbarian, The Watchers, the underrated Influencers, and even the recent Cold Storage, Campbell deserves flowers as red as the blood spilled in those features. In the procedural horror-thriller Psycho Killer, Cold Storage producer-turned-filmmaker Gavin Polone’s feature directorial debut, she continues this streak, playing a police officer who is tasked with locating a serial killer after witnessing her husband’s murder. The most notable detail here is that the screenplay comes from Andrew Kevin Walker, known for writing Se7en. Psycho Killer aims for those same ’90s serial-killer movie thrills and feels like it was fished out of a drawer from that era, but it becomes borderline incomprehensible by the end, clearly edited down, full of bad automated dialogue replacement and casually insane reveals. The dialogue is so horrendous that it makes Campbell look like an amateur, and she’s great! I laughed very hard at the Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation-style conspiracy they threw in there in the final seconds, but its inclusion indicates that at one point, Psycho Killer had grander ambitions than what ended up onscreen. Now streaming on Hulu.

That’s all for this week — we’ll see you next week at the movies.

Looking for more recs? Find your next watch on the Yahoo 100, our daily list of the most popular movies of the year.