Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like The Lobster:
Friendship
Friendship is one of the more unique comedies of 2025—a weird, squirm-inducing, unexpectedly affecting film that feels true to its title in all the worst (and best) ways. It’s another feather in A24’s cap for championing daring, off-kilter voices in comedy. If you’re in tune with Tim Robinson’s specific wavelength, it’s a must-watch.
Punch-Drunk Love
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love is the rare romantic comedy that hums like a live wire. The movie finds Anderson collapsing love and rage into the same nervous system, paring down the sprawl of Magnolia to something smaller, stranger, and sharper. The film’s scale is modest compared with Boogie Nights or There Will Be Blood, but its voltage is unmistakable—an anxious fairytale painted in glowing blues and reds, propelled by Jon Brion’s jittery, percussive score and bursts of abstract color.
The Banshees of Inisherin
The story in The Banshees of Inisherin is simultaneously laugh-out-loud audacious and deftly potent with real questions on life and legacy. This is essentially Martin McDonagh’s treaties on friendship and what you leave behind once you leave Earth. Colin Farrell is the film’s stand-in for niceness towards those around you, and Brendan Gleeson’s character is a stand-in for tangible contributions to the world (in the film’s case, music). McDonagh constantly tries to unearth what it means to leave behind a legacy, and who will care about us when we die.
Bugonia
Whether Bugonia “counts” as an alien film is part of the gag, and I will not spoil that. What matters is that Yorgos Lanthimos uses the premise to pry at paranoia, credulity, and the way hurt curdles into certainty. The first half plays a little too straight, the second half finally swings. I liked this space for him more than his recent detours, even if the result lands in the middle of the pack.
Triangle of Sadness
Although it’s visually pleasing and pretty refreshing at its peak moments, Triangle of Sadness doesn’t come together as tight as it should. For many filmmakers, winning a Palme d’Or would be a reason to stay the course for the foreseeable future, but Ruben Östlund keeps audiences guessing. He didn’t hit a home run here, but I can surely admire the effort and vision that he is trying to complete. It probably won’t compete for many awards this upcoming season, but I imagine Östlund will be back for a vengeance.
Beau Is Afraid
Ari Aster puts his career and positive public perception on the line to create his most singular and divisive piece of filmmaking yet. Although easily his least accessible and structured movie, Beau Is Afraid still manages to work due to Aster‘s distinct eye for jaw-dropping images and scenes and Joaquin Phoenix‘s committed performance.
Kinds of Kindness
As a side project conceived during the creation of Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness is quite the undertaking for Yorgos Lanthimos. The movie is hefty and left with a lot of gristle. While the performances of the cast suggest a film trying to have a lot of fun, the lack of cohesion took me out of a movie overstaying its welcome.
Adaptation
Maybe Adaptation rewards multiple viewings, but on this watch, I found it less interesting than I expected. It’s undeniably one of the most metatextual films ever made, but it also feels like Kaufman disappearing into his own self-obsession. He wrote a movie entirely about himself, and I’m still not sure whether to applaud him for it or roll my eyes.
Together
Together takes a clever premise about romantic codependence and pushes it into body horror, pairing real-life couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie as partners who cannot let go even when their bodies tell them otherwise. Tim (Franco) leans hard on Millie (Brie) for everything from money to basic life skills, and their move from the city to the countryside exposes every fault line. He is an underemployed musician. She is an elementary school teacher trying to prove herself in a new job. The stress and isolation sharpen Tim’s anxieties and bring on disorienting visions of his mother and his father’s decaying corpse, which plants the film’s queasy tone long before the grotesque turn.
Companion
I went into Companion completely blind, and that’s the best way to experience it. Drew Hancock’s directorial debut thrives on twists, constantly reinventing itself in ways that keep the audience on edge. The film shares DNA with Barbarian, which makes sense given that Barbarian director Zach Cregger serves as a producer here. Both films pull the rug out from under viewers, placing their protagonists in escalating danger with seemingly no way out. But as was the case with Barbarian, discussing Companion without spoilers is nearly impossible—so consider this your warning.
READ MORE: The Lobster (2015), Best A24 Movies of All Time, Yorgos Lanthimos
