The New York Film Festival returns with films about obsession, deception, and monsters. Together, those subjects offer an intriguing way into the event: through characters whose desires, secrets, or fears make the world increasingly difficult to read.
For viewers, the appeal extends beyond suspense. Obsession can make a destructive decision feel briefly reasonable. Deception can turn an ordinary conversation into a contest over who controls the truth. A monster can expose the fragile agreements holding a community together. My interest in this thematic combination lies in how each invites us to understand someone while questioning what that understanding excuses.
This is a spoiler-free thematic preview, not a review of individual festival selections. The discussion below offers a framework for watching these subjects; it does not describe unverified plots, dialogue, or screenings.
Obsession: Watch What Falls Outside the Frame
An obsessive character usually knows what they want. The more revealing question is what they have stopped noticing. A goal can absorb so much attention that friends become interruptions, affection becomes leverage, and another person's refusal becomes an obstacle to overcome.
That narrowing of attention gives filmmakers a powerful formal opportunity. Repeated images, recurring sounds, and tightly restricted viewpoints can make an audience experience a character's fixation before recognizing its cost. We begin looking for the same object or waiting for the same response. The character's priorities start organizing our own attention.
For me, the strongest version of this storytelling gives the neglected world enough presence to push back. Someone outside the fixation needs a life that cannot be reduced to helping or frustrating the protagonist. Otherwise, a film may claim to examine obsession while simply celebrating the obsessive person's importance.
Watch the supporting performances. Does a pause suggest exhaustion that the lead character fails to register? Does a conversation continue to matter after the protagonist loses interest? Those details can reveal whether a film understands the difference between sharing someone's perspective and accepting their account of reality.
This question of who receives a meaningful inner life also runs through our discussion of character perspective in a new Sleeping Beauty adaptation. It is especially useful when one person's desire threatens to define everybody else's story.
Deception: The Lie Matters Less Than the Relationship It Changes
A deception story can build toward a revelation, but surprise alone offers a limited payoff. Once the concealed information becomes available, what remains? Ideally, the answer is a changed understanding of a relationship: why someone trusted, why someone performed trustworthiness, and what maintaining the lie required.
There are several distinct ways to involve an audience. We might know that a character is lying and worry about discovery. We might share another character's mistaken belief. Or we might recognize that something is wrong without knowing which explanation to accept. Each arrangement creates a different emotional responsibility for the viewer.
My preference is for films that make those arrangements legible in retrospect. A revelation should deepen earlier behavior rather than make it arbitrary. A glance that once seemed affectionate might become calculating; an apparent evasion might turn out to have been an attempt at protection. The scene gains a second meaning without losing its first dramatic logic.
Performance is crucial here. A convincing liar does not necessarily look suspicious. More interesting work may involve a character adjusting their manner to a particular listener: warmer with someone who needs reassurance, brisker with someone who respects certainty. Deception then becomes a form of close observation, with intimacy making manipulation possible.
It also helps to separate the pleasure of discovering a trick from the consequences of being tricked. If the deceived character disappears from the emotional center once the secret emerges, the movie may have solved its puzzle while abandoning its most compelling person.
Monsters: Fear Needs a Point of View
The word monster promises an image, but the image is only part of the attraction. Scale, movement, sound, and the timing of an appearance can produce immediate fear. What sustains that fear is our sense of whose world has been interrupted and what they stand to lose.
A useful distinction is between a creature's design and its dramatic function. An extraordinary design can command attention. Its function determines whether an encounter means anything beyond spectacle. Does the threat expose a character's cowardice, force an act of care, or overturn a belief that previously made life feel secure?
Perspective can change the answer. From a distance, destruction becomes a pattern. From the position of someone trying to reach another person, the same space becomes a series of urgent barriers. A film's choice of where to place us determines whether we admire the spectacle, fear it, or experience an uncomfortable mixture of both.
I would also resist treating every monster as a code with one correct solution. A creature can invite social or psychological interpretation while retaining its physical strangeness. Explaining away everything unfamiliar can diminish the very quality that makes the encounter unsettling.
The most rewarding question may be who gets called monstrous, and by whom. That is an invitation to examine framing and behavior, not an assumption that every frightening figure is secretly innocent or every human authority secretly evil.
How to Use These Themes When Choosing What to Watch
A thematic preview is most useful when it helps viewers identify the experience they want. These three subjects can overlap, but they direct attention toward different pleasures:
- For psychological intensity: Look for descriptions emphasizing a character's consuming desire and its effects on other people. Consider whether you enjoy remaining close to an uncomfortable perspective.
- For uncertainty and discovery: Seek stories organized around conflicting accounts, concealed motives, or unstable trust. Decide how much you want to know before watching; detailed previews can reduce the pleasure of inference.
- For fear and spectacle: Consider whether your interest lies in the creature itself, the atmosphere surrounding it, or the human response. Those expectations can lead to very different viewing choices.
Keep anticipation separate from judgment. A compelling premise identifies an opportunity; it does not establish that a film fulfills it. Our examination of the limits of judging a movie from its trailer offers a related way to approach early impressions.
The Connection Worth Taking Into the Theater
Obsession, deception, and monsters all raise questions about control. An obsessive person tries to force reality into the shape of a desire. A deceiver tries to manage another person's understanding. A monstrous presence can make familiar systems of control suddenly useless.
That connection is my reading of the preview's themes, not a verdict on the festival's films. It suggests a productive question to carry into a screening: when control breaks down, does the character become more capable of recognizing others, or more determined to deny their independence?
The answer need not arrive in a speech or a final revelation. It may emerge through whom the camera stays with, whose reaction receives time, or which loss the ending asks us to remember. Those choices are where an arresting subject can become a film worth discussing afterward.
Original content by this site's editorial team. Published: September 28, 2026 at 15:39:59 PDT (Los Angeles time)
