SXSW 2026: All Of Deadline’s Movie Reviews

The 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival kicked off March 7, in Austin and features 49 world premieres among debuts. It’s the first time the event has launched on a Thursday.

Boots Riley’s sci-fi comedy I Love Boosters was the opening-night film, and other anticipated films include Searchlight’s Radio Silence sequel Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, New Line’s Samara Weaving-Zazie Beetz horror action comedy They Will Kill You,  Lionsgate’s John Carney-directed music movie Power Ballad starring Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas, the Vince Vaughn gangster pic Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice and Jorma Taccone’s couples-trying-to-kill-each-other pic Over Your Dead Body.

Here is a compilation of Deadline’s movie reviews from the 33rd anniversary fest, which runs through March 18 in the Texas capital.

Family Movie

Section: Narrative Spotlight
Directors: Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick
Cast: Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Sosie Bacon, Travis Bacon, Liza Koshy, John Carroll Lynch, Jackie Earle Haley, Andrea Savage, Austin Amelio, Scoot McNairy, Nathaniel Woolsey
Deadline’s takeaway: There can be no question the Bacons are having a hell of a good time sending up this well-traveled genre. The premise may sound like a riff, but it works. — PH

Grind

Section: Narrative Feature Competition
Directors: Brea Grant, Ed Dougherty, Chelsea Stardust
Cast: Barbara Crampton, Rob Huebel, Christopher Marquette, Jessika Van, Vinny Thomas, Mercedes Mason, Matt Mercer, Aubrey Shea
Deadline’s takeaway: The ingenious horror-comedy anthology achieves the almost unthinkable: while it delivers the requisite laughs and shocks — never an easy balance to strike, even at the best of times — it is just as effective in its jabs at the gig economy as anything by Britain’s Ken Loach or any other director from the school of social realism. — DW

I Love Boosters

Section: Headliner
Director-screenwriter: Boots Riley
Cast: Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, LaKeith Stanfield, Will Poulter, Demi Moore
Deadline’s takeaway: Boots Riley’s sophomore feature is a surreal, hyperpop love letter to creatives living under capitalism that successfully captures the hopelessness of our current dystopia. The camp factor is evident in every frame. — GG

My Brother’s Killer

Section: Documentary Spotlight
Director: Rachel Mason
Deadline’s takeaway: My Brother’s Killer is an overdue valediction for the victim of a gruesome, long unsolved L.A. murder, a romantic loner whose haunting and horribly prophetic poem “A Piece of Me” bookends the film, offering a poignant glimpse of a future that might have been but never was. — DW

Pretty Lethal

Section: Headliner
Director: Vicky Jewson
Cast: Iris Apatow, Lana Condor, Millicent Simmonds, Avantika, Maddie Ziegler, Uma Thurman
Deadline’s takeaway: In Pretty Lethal, Jewson manages to walk that line of gritty dark action, a la John Wick and Tarantino’s entire toxically masculine oeuvre, balanced with unapologetic laughs and an emotionally satisfying story of sisterhood. — GG

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

Section: Headliner
Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Cast: Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Néstor Carbonell, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood
Deadline’s takeaway: This action-packed, blood-soaked sequel is just what fans have been waiting for the past seven years, hopefully paving the way for a trilogy in this sinister world Radio Silence has created. — GG

Seekers of Infinite Love

Section: Narrative Spotlight
Director-screenwriter: Victoria Strouse
Cast: Hannah Einbinder, Justin Theroux, John Reynolds, Griffin Gluck, Justine Lupe, Greg Kinnear, David Ury, Michelle Johnston, Andrea Pyle
Deadline’s takeaway: Smart, sharply written and directed comedies are a rare bird these days, but Victoria Strouse takes a situation that easily could have sailed over the top, cast it intelligently and created some outrageously funny situations. — PH

We Are The Shaggs

Section: 24 Beats Per Minute
Director: Ken Kwapis
Deadline’s takeaway: This charming documentary sees the strange, one-album band of sisters known as The Shaggs for who they really and were, pushing past the “outsider art” label to arrive at something much more dignified, personal and, ultimately, moving. — DW

Wishful Thinking

Section: Narrative Feature Competition
Writer-director: Graham Parkes
Cast: Lewis Pullman, Maya Hawke, Randall Park, Jake Shane, Kate Berlant, Amita Rao, Eric Rahill
Deadline’s takeaway: Wishful Thinking is ultimately a dreamy romantic comedy about the lengths people will go for the ones they love, as well as the realization that they need inner harmony to foster a harmonious relationship with others. — GG