Omaha

• Director: Cole Webley
• Writer: Robert Machoian
• Starring: John Magaro, Molly Bell Wright, Wyatt Solis, Talia Balsam, Emma Keifer, Teo Santos

Grade: B

Those who follow the Sundance Film Festival regularly know that it attracts a certain type of indie film with recurring sensibilities. I’d never profess to be a long-standing expert on this phenomenon, but Cole Webley’s Omaha (which premiered at Sundance in 2025 and will soon be in theaters nationwide) plays as an emblematic example of what the festival does best, for better or worse. That is, a portrait of a hard-up family or individual scraping by, probably somewhere in rural or small-town America, as they’re faced with external or existential adversities – with some sad indie guitar music peppered in for flavor. Webley’s film is exactly that, a road trip focused on a family as they move from their foreclosed home to the titular Nebraska city.

Blue Heron

• Director: Sophy Romvari
• Writer: Sophy Romvari
• Starring: Eylul Guven, Iringó Réti, Ádám Tompa, Edik Beddoes, Amy Zimmer, Liam Serg, Preston Drabble, Lucy Turnbull, Jecca Beauchamp

Grade: B+

How could this have been prevented? It’s frequently one of the first questions asked once tragedy strikes, and it’s one that Blue Heron, the stunningly assured debut feature from writer-director Sophy Romvari, wrestles with. There are elements of the film that are autobiographical to Romvari’s life, accentuated by specificities which feel like they were plucked from her memories. But its greatest triumph is in not feeling so isolated, as if anyone can find something relatable within its story.

Thrash

• Director: Tommy Wirkola
• Writer: Tommy Wirkola
• Starring: Phoebe Dynevor, Whitney Peak, Djimon Hounsou, Gemma Dart, Alyla Browne, Dante Ubaldi, Stacy Clausen, Elijah Ungvary, Amy Mathews

Grade: C-

From its opening introductory text regarding the increasing frequency of intense hurricanes, Thrash – now streaming on Netflix – presents its thesis as a grand metaphor for climate change and its potentially unintended consequences. Of course, it’s nothing new for horror/thriller films to throw in a political or social message through varying degrees of subtlety, but writer-director Tommy Wirkola clues us in right off the bat regarding where his film’s priorities lie. Fortunately the film doesn’t always feel like a glorified PSA throughout its entire runtime, a la Don’t Look Up. Rather, as the film goes on, the climate change metaphor takes a back seat to shark mayhem, to varying degrees of success.