Top 5 This Week — Feb 17, 2026

Davika Hoorne spends much of this film acting through a mid-range household appliance. It sounds like a late-night sketch, but her performance as a dead wife reborn inside a vacuum cleaner anchors Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s weirdly specific Thai satire. The film rejects typical jump scares to explore the “tangible, emotional effects these specters can have on the living.”

It’s a sharp, cynical look at labor. Nat isn't just a spirit; she’s a tool that must prove her worth by sucking up vengeful factory ghosts to please her in-laws. The script hits hard with a “deft blend of comedy and pathos,” using dust pollution—the thing that killed Nat—as a biting political backdrop. It’s messy. The genre-hopping from queer romance to industrial horror feels jagged, but the director's voice stays loud and clear. He isn't interested in being polite.

Watch this if you want your supernatural stories served with a side of class warfare and absurdist humor. Skip it if you prefer your ghosts to stay in the shadows rather than under the sofa.

Meagan Good stares at a laptop screen, her eyes wide with a mix of horror and recognition as she finds her missing daughter’s photo on an escort website. It’s the high-stakes beat Lifetime lives for. Buying Back My Daughter aims for a "tough and unflinching look at sex trafficking," but the execution often feels like a checklist of tropes. Fragments of logic fall away quickly. The script forces its protagonists into baffling corners. Critics aren't wrong when they argue "every single character in this movie was dumb," making choices that defy survival instincts just to keep the clock ticking. While the direction tries to maintain "nail-biting suspense," the logic gaps are wide enough to drive a truck through. One review noted the parents treat their daughter’s trauma "as if her ordeal was something slight," and that emotional disconnect stings. Some claim the script is "well-constructed," but it only works if you ignore how real people actually behave. Good gives a spirited performance, but she can’t save a plot that treats a tragedy like a puzzle with missing pieces.

For: Fans of the "ripped from the headlines" genre. Skip it: If you need your thrillers to make sense.

The way the creature wearing Hikaru’s skin mimics a smile doesn't just look wrong; it feels like a violation. It’s the kind of body horror that lingers because the show cares more about the wreckage of grief than the monster under the bed. The Summer Hikaru Died refuses to be a generic ghost story. Instead, it offers a sweaty, claustrophobic look at a boy who would rather live with a parasite than a funeral.

The series prioritizes "emotional horror over cheap jump scares," and the gamble pays off. Yoshiki’s attachment to this thing is both pathetic and terrifying. He’s drowning in "self-disgust and a sense of relief," trapped in a relationship where the affection feels real but the person is dead. Director Ryohei Takeshita makes the rural heat feel suffocating, turning the buzzing of cicadas into a low-frequency threat. It isn't a question of whether the monster eats him; it’s about how much of his own humanity he’ll trade to keep the lie alive.

Watch this if you want horror that leaves a bruise and a messy, tragic romance. Skip it if you need clear-cut heroes or can't stand a slow-burn existential crisis.

Brie Larson stares at a beaker with the kind of intensity most people reserve for their firstborn. As Elizabeth Zott, she is the smartest person in any room, yet her 1950s peers constantly try to shove her into a kitchen drawer. It's a triumph for Larson, who weaponizes her signature stoicism against a sea of mediocre men. The show works best when it treats cooking like a cold, hard science. It falters when it hunts for you go girl cheers by stacking the deck too heavily. These moments make the series feel unstable, oscillating between a sharp critique of sexism and a glossy, over-sugared fairy tale.

While the narrative occasionally simplifies complex grief, the found-family dynamics provide some necessary heat. It's a handsome production that knows exactly which buttons to push, even if it pushes them with a heavy hand. For: Viewers who want their feminism with a side of mid-century aesthetics and high-end melodrama. Skip it: If you prefer historical drama without the predictable, feel-good frosting.

Tony Stark whispers into a hollowed-out Iron Man helmet, adrift and starving. It’s a quiet, grim start for a movie that eventually turns into a noisy stadium concert. Avengers: Endgame isn't a film so much as a three-hour corporate victory lap. The Russo Brothers deliver a "somber yet epic sci-fi adventure" where the survivors "confront cosmic grief." It works when focusing on the broken faces of the heroes, but stumbles when the time-travel logic starts to leak.

The middle hour plays like a loud greatest hits album, "wielding hope as their last weapon" while revisiting earlier, better entries. It’s a "time-bending ballet" that requires a decade of homework. You’re here for the payoff, and the film provides it, even if the CG-heavy finale looks like a muddy screen saver. It hits hard because we’ve spent years with these characters, not because the script is airtight.

Watch it if: You’ve seen the previous 21 movies and need to see the original heroes get their closure.

Skip it if: You want a standalone story or logic in your physics.