The political thriller “Anniversary,” about a family being torn apart by an authoritarian movement within the United States of America, is a film ripe for nitpicking and perhaps outright rejection on the basis that it’s too on-the-nose, too opportunistically topical, too muddled in its message, too fragmented in its storytelling, or just too inconsistent. As always, your mileage will vary; be warned that the first act is a bit of a slog, with exposition that goes down as smoothly as broken glass in a garbage disposal. But if you take a macro rather than micro view, the film’s majestic ambition is easy to see—and its timing is chillingly perfect.
Directed by Polish filmmaker Jan Komasa (“Suicide Room,” “Corpus Christi”) and written by Lori Rosene-Gambino, who came up with the story together, the movie’s title seems to refer to the familial event that opens the story: The 25th wedding anniversary of Ellen (Diane Lane), a political science professor with progressive views who teaches at Georgetown University, and Paul (Kyle Chandler), a restauranteur whose Washington, D.C. eatery is a magnet for the city’s power players, and profitable enough to fund elite educations for the couple’s four children, all but one of whom have left the nest.
As the story plays out over five years, culminating in the couple’s 30th anniversary, we watch the extended family grow in size but shift in power dynamics, then break apart as an authoritarian movement known as The Message spreads across society. The agent of change is a young woman named Liz (Phoebe Dynevor), a former student of Ellen’s who felt rejected and humiliated because of her outspoken right-wing politics, but whose first book, The Change: A New Social Compact–a manifesto as thick as a shoebox—is about to be published. Liz is dating the couple’s only son, Josh (Dylan O’Brien), a wannabe novelist whose first effort was rejected by publishers. This made Josh feel like a failure in relation to his mom, a public intellectual who’s drafted by her department head to appear on a national news show and defend the Ivy League system against conservative accusations that they’re “bastions for organized liberalism.”
Liz is phonier than a televangelist’s tears, but not everyone at the party recognizes it because she’s mastered a compassionate gaze and a warm tone, and they’re kindhearted people who want to think the best of everybody. Exhibit A is Josh, who insists that anyone taking part in a family gathering leave their personal politics at the front door. Initially, we have no idea where Josh stands on the issue of the day. Is he also a progressive, albeit less outspoken than Ellen, or a conservative who loves his wife more than he hates her politics? We’re also not sure about their youngest daughter, Birdie (McKenna Grace), a budding scientist who seems focused on the mechanics of viral infection.
There’s no doubt about the other two, though. Anna (Madeline Brewer) is an out lesbian and shock comic fueled by left-wing politics and feminist solidarity. Cynthia (Zoey Deutch) is a lawyer working on environmental cases with her boyfriend Rob (Daryl McCormick), the only nonwhite member of the core cast, though one whose identity is less of a factor in his decisions as the desire to be accepted by the family and the power structure and not have to scramble to pay the bills. You can immediately see where things are headed. Some of these characters are more secure in their identities and choices than others. And the promise of money, influence, or both can go a long way towards convincing certain people to jump the fence and find out what’s on the other side.
The movie isn’t shy about offering disease as a metaphor for how ideological contagions spread. Liz’s manifesto becomes a surprise bestseller, igniting a “common sense” movement that claims it’s about uniting a divided populace and putting people at the center of American life again, positioning itself as centrist or somehow “above politics” even as it embraces right-wing signifiers, such a redesigned national flag and a partnership with a huge corporation that funds a right-wing think tank in the vein of The Heritage Foundation (the architects of Project 2025, the blueprint for Trump’s second term). The violence and chaos that gradually accrue after right-wing populists unite around Liz’s book are mirrored inside the household, where people who want to get along end up clawing at each other and selling each other out for one advantage or another.
A bombshell always goes off at cinematic events like Ellen and Paul’s anniversary party. Liz presses the button by telling Ellen that she and Josh are engaged. This is the first of many power moves that seem meant to avenge past injuries by Ellen, who treated Liz the student as an adversary and will treat Liz the political figurehead as a menace to democracy. The point here isn’t whether Ellen is wrong or right, even though it’s hard to see how Liz could be the hero of this movie, unless you’re the kind of viewer who argues that “Star Trek” only recently began endorsing progressive messages, or that the Galactic Empire was the good guys in “Star Wars.”
It is also the first instance of a motif that’s true to what we know about human nature: the origin story of many authoritarian figureheads is a moment of failure or humiliation, whether it’s a future German despot being labeled a bad painter or a future American president getting slagged by his predecessor at a White House Correspondents Dinner. Private citizens do it as well, and we see it happening throughout “Anniversary.” After Ellen slights Liz by treating her as an adversary at the anniversary party, Liz weaponizes her anniversary gift by handing it to Ellen fully wrapped as they’re heading out the front door to drive home: another explosive device, but one that will detonate after they’re a safe distance away.
In subsequent visits to the family estate by Liz and Josh, the bombs are Liz’s advanced pregnancy (with twins!) and her promotion to a coveted slot at Georgetown, which dethrones her as the history department’s star. Both Josh and Liz revel in the spectacle of their parents stifling their discomfort and watching their words for fear of making a scene. The New Josh verbally torments family members who either didn’t validate his ambitions before he met Liz or consider him a menace now that Liz’s success has enabled him to buy fancy cars, hire a multilingual au pair to raise the twins, and otherwise carry on like a smug young German officer in a World War II thriller.
Allegiances and tactics shift over time. The conflicts, sudden tragedies, and moments of distilled rage and fear within the household reflect events in the broader world. We see how easily political power can be weaponized to punish those whose only crime is to criticize or oppose their leaders. We see how certain words—such as “sedition” in this movie, and “terrorist” in modern America—can be twisted into all-purpose rubber stamps justifying inhumane policies. Most of all, we see how power itself can seem like a life force unto itself, a ravenous, feral beast that ruthlessly ambitious people mistakenly believe they can train and control like a house pet. There’s a subplot that’s the political thriller version of the classic 2015 Twitter post “‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.” By the end, people are selling each other out for everything from influence to resentment while staying indoors and whispering about whether a disappeared person should be presumed dead. You might feel as if you’re watching a movie about Argentina’s Dirty War transplanted to North America—not a cautionary tale, but a projection of what the U.S. will become if present trends continue.
The brutal scenarios “Anniversary” envisions are already unfolding across the country. The majority that prefers an imperfect democracy to a perfect engine of cruelty is organizing to stave off worse scenarios, like the ones in the second half of “Anniversary.” The movie didn’t predict the future, however. Shot in 2023, during a liberal interregnum between the two Trump administrations, the filmmakers gamed out where things could go if authoritarians took over the federal government a second time, based on similar scenarios that have unfolded in other countries —and unfortunately, they nailed it.
The result feels like one of the many thoughtful films made about life under dictatorship, but with a unique twist: This one isn’t critiquing past events from a safe historical distance, but events happening right now, behind a scrim of metaphor as thin as tissue paper. An Iranian, Chinese or Russian film as uncompromising in its values and as unambiguous about its targets might not have gotten funding in 2025, or at least domestic distribution, if it had been written this year, and it did find its way to the starting line, some of its participants might have dropped out after watching nine months’ worth of video of citizens being assaulted, detained, and disappeared by masked men for criticizing the government or having the wrong color skin. That “Anniversary” depicts oppressed and terrorized Americans doing riskier things under far bleaker circumstances saves it from doomerism, leaving viewers with shreds of hope.
