7 BuzzVerdicts, ranked by rating across Movies (2), TV Shows (4), Books (1)
2010 · Denis Villeneuve · 131 min · Drama
A devastating mystery that unfolds across two timelines, Incendies builds toward a revelation so shattering it redefines everything that came before it, anchored by Lubna Azabal's extraordinary performance.
2018 · 1 Season · Netflix · Horror Drama
The Haunting of Hill House is the rare horror series that earns its emotional punches by making you care deeply about the characters before it scares you with them. Its finale is divisive, but the journey to get there is some of the finest horror television ever made, and the Long Silence episode alone is worth the entire watch.
2021 · 4 Seasons · The CW · Superhero / Family Drama
Superman & Lois proved that the Man of Steel could anchor a deeply personal family drama, delivering CW superhero TV at a quality level the network rarely achieved.
2014 · Celeste Ng · 297 pages · Literary Fiction
Celeste Ng's debut novel opens with the death of a teenage girl and uses that tragedy to unravel a family's worth of secrets, resentments, and misplaced love. The structure is brilliantly controlled, moving between past and present to reveal how small parental choices compound into enormous damage. The mystery element fades once the family dynamics take center stage, which may disappoint readers drawn in by the opening hook. But as a portrait of how the desire to belong, both within a family and within a country that sees you as other, can warp everything it touches, it's precise and devastating.
2016 · 2 Seasons · Channel 4 · Dark Comedy
Flowers is one of the most unique shows British television has produced, a dark comedy about a deeply dysfunctional family that manages to be simultaneously hilarious, heartbreaking, and visually stunning. Will Sharpe's creation blends deadpan humor with genuine emotional devastation in ways that shouldn't work but absolutely do. It opens with a suicide attempt and somehow gets funnier from there, without ever making light of the pain at its center.
2020 · 1 Season · Apple TV+ · Legal Thriller
Defending Jacob is a taut, well-acted legal thriller that uses a murder case to dismantle a family from the inside. Chris Evans delivers his best dramatic work as a father forced to choose between truth and loyalty, and the show builds tension through quiet domestic scenes as effectively as through courtroom confrontations. The pacing drags in spots, and the ending will frustrate viewers who want clear answers, but the central question of how well you really know your own child lingers long after the credits.
2009 · Yorgos Lanthimos · 97 min · Drama
An unflinching and deeply disturbing allegory about control and isolation, Dogtooth introduced the world to Lanthimos' singular vision with a film that is impossible to forget and difficult to recommend.