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It’s always fun to pick out themes of a festival and wonder what they say about the state of the world. Of course, it seems like every other Sundance has a dozen road trip movies about families finding each other, but the truly unexpected visual or narrative motifs can often be the most fascinating. What does it say about 2026 that people are getting sliced and diced in every other movie at SXSW, often by losing fingers? Discuss amongst yourselves.
The good news is that several of these films in which blades meet flesh have been pretty good, especially two in this particular dispatch. One of the best comedies of SXSW 2026 is the wickedly clever and unexpectedly violent “Chili Finger,” a Midwestern production that echoes early films by the Coen brothers like “Blood Simple,” “Raising Arizona,” and “Fargo.” It’s funny to be old enough to remember how so many indie filmmakers tried and failed to do the Coen thing in the ‘90s only to now feel kind of nostalgic for a brand of dark humor that’s not common today. The truth is that those films dubbed “Coen-esque” usually faltered because filmmakers didn’t realize how difficult it is to balance violence and humor in a way that doesn’t feel glib or even exploitative. One of the many joys of Edd Benda and Stephen Helstad’s film is watching them thread that needle: keeping the proceedings both tense and funny at the same time.
“Chili Finger” is extremely loosely based on a true story, the writer/directors taking that tabloid tale and turning it into something both hilarious and even moving, a movie about a mother who is so rattled by becoming an empty nester that she opens a door to the unthinkable and can’t close it again. So many Coen films are about ordinary people who make really bad decisions, usually welcoming violence into their lives and realizing that they can’t take it back. Benda and Helstad turn the story of Anna Ayala, a woman who fraudulently claimed to find a finger in a Wendy’s chili bowl, into something strikingly relatable and funny, thanks in large part to the best work of Judy Greer’s career.
The always-welcome performer shines as Jess, a Wisconsin lawyer who tries (and fails) to hold back the tears as her only daughter goes off to college. Not only does this mean she’s stuck now with only husband Ron (Sean Astin) but she’s going to be reminded more often that they don’t have enough money to visit their out-of-state child. They can’t even afford to replace their bed frame. It’s not that Ron is a bad guy—Astin is great at playing a sort of unambitious-but-kind Midwestern dude—but he seems to only find joy in his near-daily visits to a regional fast-food chain called Blake Junior’s. While at lunch there one day, Jess finds a finger in her chili. To say chaos ensues would be an understatement.
At first, it seems like an executive named after her father, Blake (an effective Madeline Wise) will handle it all. She offers Jess and Ron a sizable amount of money, but it comes with a clause: They can never come to Blake Junior’s again. This is kind of a dealbreaker for Ron, and the negotiating intensifies until they’re walking out with $100k. When daddy Blake himself (a wonderful John Goodman) finds out about the payout, he gets suspicious, sending an old friend and enforcer named Dave (Bryan Cranston) to investigate. It becomes clear pretty early that something isn’t right here. After all, the finger isn’t cooked.
“Chili Finger” navigates the ridiculous and the relatable, holding both in the same beat. It is a film about ludicrous people making bad choices, but the writing and ensemble keep those choices believable. In particular, Greer has a marvelous immediacy. We can see the wheels turning in her mind when she’s negotiating or navigating her way out of a new bad situation. Much of the joy of “Chili Finger” comes from how it places compiling problems in its protagonist’s way in a manner that makes watching her get around them a joy in itself. We root for Jess, a character who personifies that brand of Midwestern Nice in that she wants to do the right thing, but you better not get in her way.
There’s a similar effective rooting interest in Peter Warren’s very good “Kill Me,” which features the best acting to date by the great Charlie Day, giving a performance that’s not just funny but vulnerable and moving, too. It starts with the kind of whodunit open that promises a tense mystery, and there are elements of that remain throughout Warren’s film, but it’s also a moving character study, a story of depression embedded in a twisting narrative with multiple suspects. It’s ultimately the story of man who thinks he’s investigating his own attempted murder but may come to learn that he’s the most likely suspect. Overall, despite a stronger first half than second, it’s an engaging thriller-comedy that should open doors for both Madden and Day, and, hopefully, signal to people that Allison Williams has greater range than she’s been allowed to show.
The “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” star plays Jimmy, who wakes up in his bathtub with his wrists slashed. As he starts to drown, he places a call to 911, but it’s not a typical suicide call. The thing is that Jimmy is positive he didn’t do this. Someone has tried to murder him and frame it as self-harm. Without the help of Margot (Williams) on the other end, it might have worked.
Jimmy wakes up in a hospital bed surrounded by family that includes his supportive mother (Jessica Harper) and emotional sister Alice (Aya Cash). You see, Alice found Jimmy four years ago when he tried to take his own life. A past attempt, a recent break-up, a door locked from the inside—it’s all adding up to look like a failed suicide. But Jimmy is insistent that’s not the case. And only Margot might be the one who believes him.
Day has long displayed ace comic timing, but this turn allows him to dig a bit deeper in his arsenal, finding notes of true sadness in Jimmy. Being so distraught that you commit self-harm requires a certain level of acting to be believable but add to that the frustration that would arise from no one around you believing you were a victim of anyone but yourself. There’s a fascinating subtext in Warren’s script and Day’s performance regarding how we don’t really listen to people going through depression or other forms of mental strife. We blame them more often than we truly engage. Even as clues pile up that something weird is going on here, Jimmy remains the #1 suspect because that’s just an easier solution to this mystery. It should also be noted that Williams makes a perfect partner, herself finding a vein of melancholy that she’s not really been allowed to play.
“Kill Me” gets a bit more convoluted because the nature of the mystery requires to do so, but it actually works best when it steps back from the whodunit of it all and captures two semi-broken people becoming whole again through their connection. As someone who has battled depression himself, I often remind myself that for every valley there is a peak. This movie understands that, and we root for Jimmy and Margot to find their mountains again.
Finally, and briefly, there’s the horror-comedy “Family Movie,” a genre exercise starring the easy-to-root-for Bacon family. Kevin Bacon co-directs with his wife Kyra Sedgwick, and the two star alongside their kids Sosie Bacon (so great in “Smile”) and Travis Bacon, who also provides the score. I bet they had some relatives doing some catering and driving on set, too. There’s a subtext of “Family Movie” that might be suggesting that being a family of actors can only lead to violence that’s the best thing about the project, but it fails to overcome some of the truly clunky filmmaking. It’s a movie that I suspect some people will embrace in part because of its rough edges, but that “DIY family project” aspect holds it back too often, sliding into laziness instead.
Bacon plays a D-movie director, the kind of filmmaker who struggles to hold onto a $10k budget for a cheesy horror flick with 10 crew members. While filming his latest project, “Blood Moon,” a light falls on star Jackie Earle Haley, sending him fleeing. It doesn’t help that a behind-the-scenes filmmaker (Liza Koshy) is documenting the production with her iPhone, while also sleeping with Bacon’s son Travis. Adding drama to the proceedings is the fact that Bacon’s daughter Sosie is about to take a better part in a bigger project. The biggest problem of all? His wife and star may be a serial killer.
There are individual beats that work in “Family Movie.” There simply has to be with stars as talented as these, but family projects often have an issue with a lack of outside vision, people able to say that a joke or a plot twist isn’t working because they don’t have to go home with half the cast later that day. “Family Movie” too often feels like talented people aggressively trying to be “goofy” with one another, leaning into genre tropes because they want people to know how much fun they can have together. It’s very cool that the Bacons are so supportive and collaborative. Sadly, that can’t be all to hold onto in a movie.
from Roger Ebert https://ift.tt/ctsA9XO
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