Opinion: The top ten movies of 2025

I am crossie, and I bid you welcome, dear reader, to my top ten movies of 2025 list! Enter freely, go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring in the comment section, here or at my Letterboxd account!

This year, I have chosen as my Best Furry movie of the year Zootopia 2. Please do not be too surprised by this. I pick a furry movie each year as the list is not meant to be primarily furry, despite Flayrah being a furry site. In addition, I sometimes pick a movie that I saw too late to include on last year's list, but would have made a good choice; this year that movie is The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, and only then because it had a small awards qualifying run in 2024.

With those preliminaries out of the way, read on for the actual list. (Note that each movie title as well as movie poster has a link to either a Flayrah review, when available, or barring that, an IMDB page.)

10. Night of the Zoopocalypse

I like horror movies, and I like furry movies. So a hybrid of the two is something it should not be surprising to find that I enjoy. Even if Night of the Zoopocalypse is closer to a parody of a horror movie than a straight horror movie. I wasn't sure when I first watched it if it would go the distance and actually be a real horror movie. I was kind of disappointed it didn't really, but not disappointed enough to dislike it.

Besides, it's a good funny animal parody of horror movies, with a unique visual style. It's a really fun-looking movie! It feels like it is trying to be an introduction to the genre for the younger crowd, and I think it does a good job at that. Just know, kids, not all horror movies have a happy ending ...

9. Final Destination: Bloodlines

Speak of the devil! I have to admire a horror franchise nihilistic enough to routinely kill off its entire main cast ... twice! Way back in 2012, when I did my first ever top ten list for 2011, I got snarked at in the comments for even mentioning Final Destination 5 as a guilty pleasure. I also mentioned the series as one I was looking forward to the next installment of. Well, nearly a decade and a half later, and I'm just going to put that next installment in the actual list this time.

Perhaps Green Reaper should have killed this whole thing right there. Does Flayrah really need a top ten movies list? Well, at this point, it's simply inevitable. Like death, or Diane Warren in the Best Original Song category at the Oscars. And 2026 will end, eventually. And when that happens, well, I'll see you soon.

8. The Phoenician Scheme

After that bit of mayhem and bloodshed, maybe let's lighten things up with a nice, easy Wes Anderson movie. Or not, as this movie opens with a scene where a man is violently blown in half by a bomb. It's honestly not that far from a Final Destination death, except it's shot in that personal style of Anderson's.

This is Anderson's take on the genre of spy thriller, and I have to admit it may not have been the most thrilling thriller I saw this year, but Anderson never really set out to make a movie like that. I mean, it is like that, but it's not like that. If you get it, you get it, I guess.

7. The Bad Guys 2

Pairing nicely with The Phoenician Scheme is The Bad Guys 2, another spy thriller with a style not usually applied to the spy genre. In this case, that unusual style is funny animals, so that makes it the second actually furry movie to make it on the list.

Spoiler, but it's basically horror and murder mysteries from here on out, so The Phoenician Scheme and The Bad Guys 2 would seem to be the odd ones out in this otherwise pretty Gothic list, but really the spy genre is just as an appropriately Gothic genre, evolving from the mystery story which is itself a direct offshoot of Gothic literature. Certainly did not mean to do it, but 2025's list has the most thematically similar movies I've done so far.

6. Weapons

And now for our next venture into the darkness, a story of missing children and the adults desperate to find them, or at least answers as to why they all disappeared. The way the movie is structured, with new characters taking center stage and revealing new perspectives on the events of the movie, is a fun way to tell the story, and the reveals are wonderfully grotesque.

I also liked the odd narration, told in a child's voice. As I said earlier, many horror stories do not end happily, and though the mysteries of Weapons are more or less solved by the end of the movie, that narration does remind us that just because the horrors are over doesn't mean everything just goes back to the way it was before.

5. The Long Walk

This is a different kind of horror movie, and isn't about monsters out to get the characters. Some viewers might not even see it as such, even with it being based on a Stephen King book. That usually gets you into the horror category, no questions asked, but this is just a story about a contest to see who can walk the longest. Take out the "last man standing" aspects, and it kind of sounds fun.

On a personal note that doesn't really have anything to do with the quality of the movie, I was struck by a scene where the characters note how young one of the contestants in the titular walk seems, because, to me, watching the movie, all these actors looked like kids. I'm getting older, and I'm looking at the walk ahead, and somehow I don't think any wishes will come true at the end of it.

4. Frankenstein

I'm surprised how much I liked this movie. I've never really vibed with Guillermo del Toro as a director before. He seems nice enough, and his choice of material has been right up my alley, but I just haven't got him like I've gotten, say, Wes Anderson up there. In a similar manner, as Gothic archetypes go, I've always been more of Dracula guy than a Frankenstein guy, personally. (Or, you know, werewolves.)

But this movie finally got to me. I would say it's the second best adaptation of the Frankenstein story ever (after The Bride of Frankenstein, of course), though I guess my antipathy to that kind of story wouldn't make me the best judge of that. It just worked for me in a way a lot of versions of this story didn't.

3. Zootopia 2

I was kind of hoping when I would get to review this movie that I would use it to finally put the horrors of the year 2016 to rest. But, no, we're still stuck in them. Some have gotten worse, sure. But I don't get people talking about 2016 nostalgically, because I remember it. It sucked at the time. 2016 sucked. Except for Zootopia.

One thing about this movie that Disney hasn't done in the past, at least in their animated movies, is that this is actually a murder mystery. Yes, the murder happened in the distant past, but they still solve the crime of murder. Yes, the murderer basically gets away with it, too. That's going back to my whole Gothic theme I've been creating with this list. The horrors of the past beget the horrors of today.

2. Wake Up Dead Man

Of course, another aspect of the Gothic is expressed in this more traditional murder mystery, and that's that it's all fake. The Gothic literature tradition that Dracula and Frankenstein came out of was started by a guy who lived in a fake "ancient" castle he built himself. The characters of this movie point out that the "Gothic" church the story mostly takes place in is only decades old, at most, and there's a similiar church in my hometown I hate because I literally have Pokémon Go monsters older than it.

But there's also still value to telling the stories, even if they are just stories. In this story, for example, there's a scene involving a simple phone call that is absolutely one of the best representations of why religion is still important to people, even today. Nestle that in a fun Gothic murder mystery, and you have my attention.

1. Sinners

Well, we've had zombies and witches and death itself and even some wolves who have human attributes (if not exactly werewolves), so now it's time to bring on the bloodsuckers! This is another classic Gothic story, told well, but that's why the Gothic horror story, and all the weird mutations off of it, have lasted so long, and so successfully. The idea of the past coming alive and living on as some sort of malevolent force has so much applicability.

There is a scene that illustrates this so well. A song with magical powers is sung, and we see how it connects to the past, and the future with the way its staged. It's insane how good it is! And yet, this exact performance is what draws the vampires to attack the main characters. Because that's the way it works sometimes. Remember, not all horror movies end happily ...