Best Movies of September 2026, Ranked
Our ranking of the best movies of September 2026 has one of the strongest top ends we’ve had all year, with four films clearing an 80 and a top three that would hold up in almost any month on the calendar. Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime took our top spot as one of the most original films 2026 has produced, turning To Catch a Predator inside out with a rigor almost nothing else has attempted, while Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil landed just behind it as the clearest proof yet that a video game adaptation can be real filmmaking. Na Hong-jin returned after a decade away with Hope, a 156-minute genre blender that works precisely because it embraces its own chaos, and Padraic McKinley’s debut, The Weight, proved that a familiar premise in confident hands still has plenty left in it. DreamWorks’ Forgotten Island rounded out the top five as a genuine argument that children’s films have no obligation to be simple, and HBO’s documentary Band of Brothers: Legacy delivered the month’s most quietly emotional hour.
The back half is where the month thinned out considerably, with Heart of the Beast failing to build the groundwork its finale needed, Unabomber circling the easiest material about one of the most complex figures imaginable, and Onslaught sitting squarely in the middle of a category A24 has spent the year elevating. Things got rough at the bottom, as Paul Greengrass’s The Uprising buried itself under some of the strangest marketing a legend has ever been subjected to, and Gal Gadot’s The Runner closed things out as another reminder that Prime Video’s film output still hasn’t caught up to its television. Between the standouts, the misfires, and the considerable gap between them, September gave us plenty to talk about heading into October. Here is TwilightRoom’s full Film Monthly ranking of every September 2026 movie we reviewed.
16. The Runner
36.0/100 - Kevin Macdonald - Prime Video
The Runner closes out our list this month, a straight-to-streaming thriller starring Gal Gadot as a London lawyer racing to save her abducted son at the command of Damian Lewis’s mysterious caller, and one that nobody expected to be good and that does very little to challenge that expectation. There is not much to report here beyond the basics of a running thriller that never generates much tension, though the question worth asking is how this film got made in the first place and whether someone at the studio genuinely believed Gadot was the person for it, because her running form alone is so unconvincing it becomes a distraction across the entire runtime. Prime Video has been killing it in television this year and deserves real credit for that, but its film output continues to be the clear weak point of an otherwise excellent run, and this is another release that feels made to fill a slot rather than to be seen. Kevin Macdonald is a capable filmmaker, and there are stretches where the craft keeps things moving, but there’s no premise sturdy enough underneath to make any of it matter. The Runner lands at the bottom of a strong month without ever really trying to climb, earning a 36/100 from TwilightRoom.
15. Tom and Jerry Forbidden Compass
45.0/100 - Zhang Gang - Streaming
Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass sits at number fifteen, an absolute mess from start to finish and a film that required a VPN just to watch, which should tell you most of what you need to know about how it ended up here. We’re still not entirely sure how a Chinese production dubbed into English built around Tom and Jerry in strange 3D animation made it onto our list for the month, but here we are, and somehow it is not the worst film of the year despite being a legitimate contender on pure quality. What saves it from the very bottom is that the chaotic attitude, the total absence of coherence, and the complete lack of internal logic make it unintentionally hilarious in stretches, which genuinely provides more entertainment than some of the films sitting below it on our yearly rankings. That’s a backhanded compliment, and it’s meant as one, because nothing here works on any level it was presumably aiming for, and the animation in particular is rough enough to be distracting throughout. We cannot recommend this one in good conscience, though it took us thirty minutes just to track it down online, so you may not be able to watch it even if you wanted to, earning a 45/100 from TwilightRoom.
14. The Uprising
58.2/100 - Paul Greengrass - Theaters
The Uprising comes in at number fourteen, a film that arrived under some of the strangest marketing a legend has ever been subjected to, with Focus Features withholding the Robin Hood connection entirely until weeks before release and then having Andrew Garfield dramatically pull his hood up onscreen for no reason beyond claiming the IP outright. That instinct to hit the audience over the head is emblematic of the broader problem here, a refusal to trust viewers to arrive at anything on their own, and it carries through a film that moves a mile a minute without ever giving you time to process what’s happening or feel the emotion the characters so clearly feel. Paul Greengrass builds the whole thing around the real 1381 Peasants’ Revolt that helped inspire the Robin Hood legend in the first place, and a revolt storyline in this era is always going to find an audience with us, which the film does genuinely deliver on. The biggest gripe is technical, as the editing and cinematography are both remarkably dull for a production with this scale behind it, with Greengrass’s handheld style never quite translating from modern thriller to medieval uprising. Garfield leads a strong ensemble alongside Jamie Bell, Thomasin McKenzie, and Tom Hollander, and the last ten minutes do rock pretty hard, but this is a very up-and-down experience, now available to watch at home, that will likely be remembered more for its confused rollout than for anything on screen, earning a 58/100 from TwilightRoom.
13.Onslaught
63.4/100 - Adam Wingard - Theaters
Onslaught, starring Adria Arjona as an ex-Army sniper fending off escaped super soldiers, comes in at number thirteen, a film we took our time getting to and finally caught at one of its last theatrical showings, only to come away disappointed with how little it does with what it has. With all the unique and carefully considered work A24 has put out this year, we figured we would at least get something here that stood apart from the far-fetched action thriller mini-blockbusters that arrive annually, and instead this one sits directly in the middle of that category without ever threatening to climb out of it. Adam Wingard is a director who has built a career on finding an angle into genre material, and the absence of one here is the most frustrating thing about the whole experience, with the film settling for competence at every turn where it could have been pushing. That is not to say there is no fun to be had, and Drew Starkey is genuinely enjoyable every time he is on screen, giving the film a charge it badly needs whenever he turns up. The rest of it simply never finds that same energy, leaving Onslaught as an underwhelming release from a studio that has spent the year setting a much higher bar for itself, earning a 63/100 from TwilightRoom.
12. Mayday
64.0/100 - Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley - Apple TV
Mayday sits at number twelve, a pleasant surprise and a fun addition to the straight-to-streaming sphere this year, even if it took us about an hour to figure out what its angle actually was. The realization that this is a genuinely serious Ryan Reynolds performance with very little comedy attached recontextualizes the whole thing, and the film works best when Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh are simply stumbling through the spy action thriller without the heavier tone that keeps creeping into the plot and pulling us out of it. Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley made their name on comedic timing with Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, so the restraint here is an interesting choice even when it leaves scenes feeling caught between two registers they never fully reconcile. What saves it is that both leads commit entirely, with Reynolds showing there may still be real juice left in him outside the mode he’s been locked into for years, and Branagh doing what Branagh always does. It’s better than expected and a solid watch that you won’t get a ton out of, which is a perfectly respectable place to land for a release like this, earning a 64/100 from TwilightRoom.
11. By Any Means
64.2/100 - Elegance Bratton - Theaters
By Any Means comes in at number eleven, a film starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Mark Wahlberg that pulls you through its runtime without ever convincing us it was told the way it should have been. Wahlberg’s prosthetic nose is comically oversized for no discernible reason, and the whole thing carries heavy white-savior energy that no amount of true-story framing manages to offset, leaving a story that clearly deserved a sharper treatment than this one. The performances, the writing, and the editing all land squarely in the ordinary, and the closest comparison that keeps surfacing is BlacKkKlansman with the inspiration drained out of it and Wahlberg dropped into the middle. That said, we were genuinely intrigued by how the final act was going to play out, and there is real emotion when the vengeance the film has been building toward finally arrives. We’re also honestly curious how much historical material Elegance Bratton actually had to work with here, because the closing credit roll gives the distinct impression that roughly two lines of documented history got stretched into an entire feature. By Any Means holds attention without earning much of it, scoring a 64/100 from TwilightRoom.
10. Unabomber
64.9/100 - Janus Metz - Netflix
Unabomber sits at number ten, a film that looked promising on its cast alone, with Shailene Woodley and Russell Crowe, who are always at least good and usually great, and who do produce real intrigue here across a straight-to-streaming Netflix release that needed every bit of it. The irony of a corporation this size releasing a biopic about Ted Kaczynski is not lost on us, and while Jacob Tremblay is serviceable in the lead, the dialogue and the way Janus Metz has chosen to tell this story are decidedly not, which is where the whole thing comes apart. The film dwells far too long on a single repetitive moment and activity from his early adulthood, and while that period is genuinely important to understanding him, leaning on it this heavily is a strange way to depict someone this cruel and this complexly evil. There’s a version of this story that reckons with the contradictions at its center, and this one keeps circling the easiest material instead of pressing into any of it. Unabomber is likely not the start Netflix was hoping for its potential awards-season slate, earning a 64/100 from TwilightRoom.
9. The Incomer
66.3/100 - Louis Paxton - Theaters
The Incomer comes in at number nine, a film we caught a couple of days early and one that might have landed differently in a theater, because the strangeness of its premise and the intentionally awkward delivery from a cast led by Domhnall Gleeson generate real intrigue that the overall execution never quite sustains. There are pieces of an underrated gem of the year buried in this Sundance NEXT Innovator Award winner, and the dialogue is odd in a way we genuinely mean as a compliment, the sort of thing that is going to find its way permanently into the hearts of a certain audience. It simply did not find its way into ours, mostly because the film keeps trying to play both sides of the independent and mainstream coin rather than committing to either, and that hedging drains the weirdness of its power. Louis Paxton clearly has the instincts for something sharper, and the three main performances from Gleeson, Gayle Rankin, and Grant O’Rourke are easily the strongest thing on offer, holding the whole thing together whenever the script wanders. The Incomer has real positives working for it, but the narrative never embraces its strange side enough to keep the film from coming off blander than we had hoped, earning a 66/100 from TwilightRoom.
8. Heart of the Beast
69.3/100 - David Ayer - Theaters
Heart of the Beast lands at number eight, and we have to ask why they keep making dog movies engineered to wreck you for an entire final act, though its closest comparison this year is Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars, released just a month earlier. We got an ad before our screening claiming this is Brad Pitt at his best, which may have set expectations higher than the film could meet, because what’s here is about as serviceable without being great as a movie gets. Where we loved The Dog Stars for its creativity in landscape cinematography, its magnificent score, and its real honesty, we came away let down by this one for being middling in every one of those categories. What the film does genuinely well is build tension across its final forty minutes toward a moment that absolutely wins you over, but there simply isn’t enough background or emotional groundwork laid in the first half to make that payoff hit the way David Ayer clearly hoped it would. Our biggest gripe is with the first twenty seconds of the runtime, which reveal one specific detail that would have dramatically improved the entire build of tension and emotion had it just been cut and the story allowed to unfold linearly. It’s a good film sitting right around the middle of our year, held back by choices it made before it ever got going, earning a 69/100 from TwilightRoom.
Heart of the Beast lands at number eight, and we have to ask why they keep making dog movies engineered to wreck you for an entire final act, though its closest comparison this year is Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars, released just a month earlier. We got an ad before our screening claiming this is Brad Pitt at his best, which may have set expectations higher than the film could meet, because what’s here is about as serviceable without being great as a movie gets. Where we loved The Dog Stars for its creativity in landscape cinematography, its magnificent score, and its real honesty, we came away let down by this one for being middling in every one of those categories. What the film does genuinely well is build tension across its final forty minutes toward a moment that absolutely wins you over, but there simply isn’t enough background or emotional groundwork laid in the first half to make that payoff hit the way David Ayer clearly hoped it would. Our biggest gripe is with the first twenty seconds of the runtime, which reveal one specific detail that would have dramatically improved the entire build of tension and emotion had it just been cut and the story allowed to unfold linearly. It’s a good film sitting right around the middle of our year, held back by choices it made before it ever got going, earning a 69/100 from TwilightRoom.
Heart of the Beast lands at number eight, and we have to ask why they keep making dog movies engineered to wreck you for an entire final act, though its closest comparison this year is Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars, released just a month earlier. We got an ad before our screening claiming this is Brad Pitt at his best, which may have set expectations higher than the film could meet, because what’s here is about as serviceable without being great as a movie gets. Where we loved The Dog Stars for its creativity in landscape cinematography, its magnificent score, and its real honesty, we came away let down by this one for being middling in every one of those categories. What the film does genuinely well is build tension across its final forty minutes toward a moment that absolutely wins you over, but there simply isn’t enough background or emotional groundwork laid in the first half to make that payoff hit the way David Ayer clearly hoped it would. Our biggest gripe is with the first twenty seconds of the runtime, which reveal one specific detail that would have dramatically improved the entire build of tension and emotion had it just been cut and the story allowed to unfold linearly. It’s a good film sitting right around the middle of our year, held back by choices it made before it ever got going, earning a 69/100 from TwilightRoom.
7. Lego Star Wars The Mandalorian
72.4/100 - Chris Buckley - Disney +
LEGO Star Wars: The Mandalorian comes in at number seven, and there is not a tremendous amount to report here beyond what it says on the tin: a LEGO recap of The Mandalorian storyline that presumably exists because these always do well and someone felt like making one. What we did not expect is how much funnier it is than it has any business being, and it picks up real points from us on that alone, with the comedy landing consistently enough to carry the whole thing across its runtime. The genuine confusion is why the jokes that work this well here cannot find their way into the actual shows, because the Mandalorian universe has been crying out for exactly this kind of levity at specific moments and keeps refusing to supply it. There is nothing especially ambitious about the project, and it is clearly not trying to be, but it knows precisely what it is and executes that without ever overstaying its welcome. It’s a light, easy watch that does more with the material than expected, earning a 72/100 from TwilightRoom.
6. Band of Brothers: Legacy
78.9/100 - Chase Millsap - HBO Max
Band of Brothers: Legacy comes in at number six as an incredibly emotional and well-assembled sixty-minute HBO documentary marking the 25th anniversary of the original series, blending the real stories behind it, the brutal training the cast went through to portray them, and the lasting success of what remains one of the greatest limited series ever made. The complexities of the documentary itself are not top tier, which is why it lands as good rather than great in our rankings, but the material gathered here could not be more interesting or more carefully compiled. Blending actual military accounts of heroism with the blood, sweat, and tears that went into the casting and training process is exactly the right structure for this subject, and it earns its emotion honestly rather than manufacturing it. Whether or not you’ve seen the original show, and you absolutely should because it’s amazing, this deserves your attention, and considerably more of it than the documentary has received so far. Chase Millsap has made something genuinely worth every second of its runtime, earning a 78.9/100 from TwilightRoom.
5. Forgotten Island
80.0/100 - Joel Crawford & Januel Mercado - Theaters
Landing at number five this month is Forgotten Island, DreamWorks’ trip into Philippine mythology and one of the stronger arguments this year that a film made for kids can still be complex. The setup finds Jo and Raissa, childhood friends in the 1990s Philippines facing separation as Raissa prepares to leave for college in the States, suddenly pulled onto the mystical island of Nakali, where memories fade the longer you stay, and the two of them have to find a way out before they forget each other entirely. That premise is far heavier than most animated films this side of Pixar’s best are willing to attempt, and the real achievement here is that directors Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado never water it down, trusting a young audience to sit with the idea that growing apart is its own kind of loss.
The mythology does enormous work in that regard, with the Tiyanak, the Batibat, and the Manananggal all rendered as genuinely unsettling creatures rather than sanded-down mascots, and the animation around them is gorgeous, textured, and specific in a way that treats Filipino folklore as something worth looking at closely rather than something to borrow from. What really elevates it is the dialogue, which has a naturalism and a sense of restraint most kids’ films abandon in favor of constant joke density, letting Jo and Raissa talk like actual friends with actual history between them, and H.E.R. and Liza Soberano both bring real warmth to that. There’s a full ensemble around them with Dave Franco, Jenny Slate, Manny Jacinto, Dolly de Leon, Jo Koy, and Lea Salonga, and the film is funny when it wants to be without ever using comedy to escape the emotion underneath. Forgotten Island is proof that nuance, complexity, and serious craft belong in children’s filmmaking, earning an 80/100 from TwilightRoom.
4. The Weight
80.1/100 - Padraic McKinley - Theaters
The Weight comes in at number four as a film overshadowed by a few other releases arriving around it and a genuinely satisfying Depression-era wilderness thriller from debut director Padraic McKinley that understands its own strengths completely, leaning into atmosphere, performance, and conversation rather than chasing a reinvention it never needed. Ethan Hawke delivers one of his most controlled recent performances as Samuel Murphy, a man so muted by the loss and separation from his family that his stillness becomes the emotional center of everything around him, while Russell Crowe’s Warden Clancy is exactly the role Crowe has spent a career perfecting, a man whose friendliness is never quite separable from his leverage. Clancy’s pitch to a group of prisoners to smuggle gold out of a mine, on a mission dangerous enough that the offer reads as an admission he doesn’t expect most of them back, gives the film a pressure it never releases, and the script is smart enough to treat that setup as a character engine rather than a plot one.
The boldest swing here is building everything around conversation instead of escalating thriller beats, letting these people talk their way through a grueling journey until it turns existential, and Hawke playing Murphy’s passivity as grief rather than stoicism gives the group a real center to orbit. The craft is the strongest argument for the film, with consistently excellent cinematography, a score that never overplays its hand, and a handful of blended horizon-to-photo transitions that hint at a more formally adventurous movie living inside this one. The final act of defiance and the car chase that follows are more conventional than what precedes them, but ending back on Clancy’s doorstep with a beer waiting is the single best image in the film, and the group getting their papers signed together as something closer to a family is a resolution the movie genuinely built toward. The Weight is entertaining, handsome, and proof that a well-worn premise in confident hands still has plenty left in it, earning an 80/100 from TwilightRoom.
3. Hope
84.2/100 - Na Hong-jin - Theaters
Hope lands at number three as Na Hong-jin’s first feature in a decade and one of the most ambitious swings any filmmaker has taken this year, blending mystery, creature horror, sci-fi, bits of comedy, and all-out action into a single 156-minute package that works precisely because it embraces its own chaos. Police Chief Ko Bum-seok, played by Hwang Jung-min reuniting with Na after The Wailing, gets called out over a dead bull in the remote border village of Hope Harbor, and what starts as a mystery melts into the discovery that enormous, extremely fast extraterrestrial beings are tearing through the town, with wildfires severing communication and stranding everyone in genuine isolation alongside them. The first thirty minutes are patient and methodical in exactly the way Na’s earlier work always was, holding until roughly the fifty-minute mark when the creature is revealed and a horror chase score flips the tone of the entire film in a single sequence, and that willingness to fundamentally change what kind of movie you’re watching an hour in is the boldest structural choice any director has made this year.
The woods give the final act real geography, and the use of horses injects a tactile, almost old-fashioned quality into a thoroughly modern production, while Hwang and Hoyeon anchor everything with genuine emotional stakes, and Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Taylor Russell, and Cameron Britton give the motion-captured aliens real presence despite the limitations working against them. The rough CGI is a clear flaw throughout, particularly in wide shots, and the final ten minutes get confused with themselves in a way that separates a true masterpiece from a film that approaches being one. None of that undermines the experience, because comments about CGI never win out over great emotion, unique expression, and a well-written story, and Hope stands as both the best action film of the year and a top-three sci-fi horror entry simultaneously, earning an 84/100 from TwilightRoom.
2. Resident Evil
85.9/100 - Zach Cregger - Theaters
Resident Evil lands at number two as Zach Cregger’s best horror project yet, a film that blends his signature comedy, organic jump scares, and a wild, consistent ride better than he ever has before, which says a great deal given that both of his previous horror films are genuinely excellent in their own right. The stroke of genius is that Cregger has no interest in adapting a Resident Evil story and instead builds the entire thing around what it actually feels like to play one, structuring every beat like a run through a game you’ve played before, with the scarcity, the doubling back, and the sense that every room has already decided what it’s going to do to you. Bryan spends his nights delivering packages hospital to hospital before one high-priority run sends him through the snowy forest toward Raccoon City, and after hitting an odd woman with his car, he falls into a slow reveal of some adaptable creature taking over human bodies, all while contemplating the news that his girlfriend is pregnant.
Austin Abrams lands his biggest lead role yet and is fantastic throughout, carrying one of the hardest solo horror performances of the past few years and confirming that his working relationship with Cregger after Weapons is one of the more exciting in modern horror. The decision to set everything during a heavy snowfall is the single smartest choice Cregger makes, with the red glow of Bryan’s taillights bleeding into that white backdrop and the later spotlight sequences giving the film a visual identity most video game adaptations never even attempt. The one real flaw is character logic in the final stretch, where decisions come off much dumber than the previous hour prepared you for, though Cregger’s biggest plot swing largely reels you back in. At a perfect 94 minutes, this is the clearest proof yet that the right director can make a video game adaptation feel like real filmmaking, and it earns an 85/100 from TwilightRoom.
1. Primetime
91.0/100 - Lance Oppenheim - Theaters
Primetime claims our top spot this month as one of the most anticipated films of the year and one of the most distinctive entries 2026 has produced, a movie that takes a concept everybody consumed without thinking twice and turns it inside out with a rigor almost no American film has attempted. Rather than delivering a typical narrative, Lance Oppenheim builds a deconstruction and then a reconstruction of what To Catch a Predator actually required, tracking how the Dateline segment earned its prime-time spot while digging into the difficult inner workings and the real-world implications nobody involved had planned for. The odd and harrowing process of preparing and reading the chat logs is given genuine weight, and the casting of the decoy who poses as the underage child becomes its own unsettling thread entirely.
Robert Pattinson is fantastic as Chris Hansen, not just for the impersonation but for a singular blend of delivery, comedy, and odd, creepy tone that understands Hansen was a television construct long before he was a person, while Merritt Wever anchors the serious half with a bluntness that keeps everything grounded. The true standout is Skyler Gisondo as decoy Dan Plumb, who is absolutely remarkable, doing all the thematic heavy lifting without ever appearing to reach for it in legitimately Oscar-worthy work. What shocked us most was the comedy, timed well enough to earn laughs out of material that should be impossible to laugh at, including one gag that had the entire theater going for a full twenty seconds without ever undercutting the horror underneath. David Bolen’s cinematography puts you inside the TV screen of the 2000s and shows you the dark, awkward machinery nobody ever thought to question, making the film’s argument visually rather than through any thesis statement. The Oscar buzz building around it is entirely deserved, and it earns a 91/100 from TwilightRoom.
