This week’s picks include a thriller from the writer of New Girl about a female serial killer and the female agent trying to stop her. Plus, an Australian documentary dives into the death of bodybuilder and proto-influencer Zyzz, dance company Bangarra get its story told, and Tiger King and Chimp Crazy director Eric Goode looks at America’s exotic animal trade.

Furious ★★★★★ (Disney+)

Furious

White-hot anger vibrates through Furious, a remarkable thriller for the post Epstein-age, where the perverted and wealthy are so insulated from repercussions that they can barely hear the outrage of the masses, let alone be brought to justice.

Created by Elizabeth Meriwether (the showrunner behind 2025 standout Dying for Sex, as well as The Dropout), Furious is reportedly inspired by 1987 psychological thriller Black Widow. Both focus on a female serial killer and a female agent trying to stop her.

We open on the former – a small, childlike figure (Lola Petticrew, Say Nothing) in a Halloween cat mask watching a sedated man crawl across the floor of a Manhattan brownstone, before she heads outside to hand out candy to trick or treaters. He makes it to the stairs by the time she’s back, where she injects him and lies close to watch the light fade from his eyes.

The murder catches the eye of Alice (Emmy Rossum, Shameless), an ex-NYPD officer who left for the FBI after her boyfriend and fellow cop (The White Lotus’ Jake Lacy, excellent as always as a complete jerk) assaulted her, and is working a desk job in the hopes of moving into the sex crimes unit.

Joining forces with NYPD ally Danny (Scoot McNairy) and FBI’s sex crimes unit boss Nora (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), Alice soon identifies their killer as a trafficking victim exacting revenge. Across its eight episodes, Furious is a game of cat-and-mouse between killer and agent. And, much like Killing Eve, it’s clear that both the killer and Alice are more alike than not (although this series is free of that show’s campier impulses).

Led by three searing performances from Rossum, Petticrew and Bernstine, Furious is a rare beast: a show about sexual violence that doesn’t rely on the dead bodies of women to convey the depth of depravity that’s occurred. The violence that is on screen – mostly, yes, against men – is slight.

Its erratic, percussive score is almost more confronting, filled with jarring synths and plosive choral stuttering. Instead, the trauma lives in slight moments. The cold ease in which Petticrew’s character can slip between personas, having been trained to do so for “clients”; Alice wolfing down meals, as if suspicious of attack; Nora’s sobering fury in the few moments she lets herself feel through a haze of booze.

“The ones really to blame never get caught. Never. Never,” says Nora to Alice. “You think you’re going to catch anyone who matters?”

Thankfully, Furious doesn’t make its point about justice at the sacrifice of our own enjoyment. This is a zippy watch, full of twists that draw towards an immensely cathartic finale.

Poster Boy: Becoming Zyzz (Stan) ★★★

Poster Boy: Becoming Zyzz(Stan)

It’s been 15 years since Australian bodybuilder and proto-influencer Zyzz – aka Aziz Shavershian – died aged 22, after a heart attack in Thailand. While Zyzz’s then-52,000 Facebook followers now feels quaint, he was a true international sensation thanks to his Adonis body, cocky personality (“U mirin’?” was his catchphrase) and tendency to troll.

Made with the support of Shavershian’s otherwise private parents (who don’t appear on-screen), Poster Boy is a tell-some documentary – one that will no-doubt generate headlines for revealing his cause of death, an acute respiratory failure due to the combined use of morphine, cocaine and benzodiazepines.

Via a brisk 80 minutes with a morbid interstitial countdown to Thailand throughout, Poster Boy captures how Aziz, a skinny, awkward Kurdish teen in Western Sydney, became Zyzz, the self-titled “god of aesthetics”, before struggling with the fame and pressure to play a character.

Perhaps because of his family’s involvement, Poster Boy shies away from examining Zyzz too closely. Mention of his sex work passes by quickly, for example, and director Selina Miles (Silenced, Harley & Katya) doesn’t dispute the hagiographic talking heads from his brother and friends. Zyzz is presented as a pioneer and fitness icon. Which is true. But he’s also the precursor to the Paul brothers, Clavicular and more chauvinistic male influencers with dangerous fitness “hacks” and anti-social stunts – a link that Poster Boy gestures towards but never properly explores.

Firestarter: The Story Of Bangarra (SBS On Demand, DocPlay) ★★★★

Firestarter: The Story Of Bangarra(SBS On Demand, DocPlay)

You don’t need much knowledge or interest in contemporary dance to be enthralled by Firestarter, the 2020 documentary from Wayne Blair (The Sapphires) and Nel Minchin (Making Muriel) about world-renowned Indigenous dance company Bangarra. Founded in 1989, Bangarra’s distinct blend of tradition and contemporary dance – as seen at the 2000 Sydney Olympics – was created in large part by the Page brothers: choreographer Stephen, composer David and dancer Russell. Deeply moving, Firestarter weaves together the brothers’ stories and tragedies with wider historical context and the joys of artistic creation and Indigenous culture.

Monsters of God (HBO Max) ★★★

Monsters of God(HBO Max)

Tiger King and Chimp Crazy director Eric Goode sticks to America’s exotic animal trade in his latest documentary, a five-part series exploring reptile trafficking. What emerges is a fascinating web of warring dealers that implicates most major US zoos – at least, in the nascent days – alongside international crime rings that mix drugs and animal trafficking. The sweeping story covers seven decades of misdeeds. In the process, Goode forgets that Tiger King’s appeal was primarily as a character study, glossing over its subjects’ many eccentricities.

Nightborn (Shudder) ★★

Nightborn(Shudder)

It’s a little baffling that this Finnish folk horror has been so celebrated across the festival circuit, offering few scares, surprises or innovations to the demonic baby trope. Saga (Seidi Haarla) and her British husband Jon (Harry Potter’s Rupert Grint) relocate to the witchy, sentient Finnish woods to start a family, and Saga gives bloody, graphic birth to a very hairy son she is fearful of, always referring to him as “it”. Haarla captures slipping sanity well, and Nightborn is refreshingly resistant to elevated horror’s insistence on metaphor. But it’s otherwise unremarkable.

It Was Just An Accident (Mubi) ★★★★★

It Was Just An Accident

Last year’s Palme d’Or winner, this Iranian thriller by Jafar Panahi (The White Balloon) was, like all his films since 2010, filmed illegally. A sharp story of former Iranian political prisoners who capture a man they believe tortured them, what’s most remarkable about It Was Just An Accident isn’t its surprising humour, its complex moral questions or the fact it exists at all. How do you make something this visually arresting, well-paced and acted under constant threat of imprisonment? Without context, this is a remarkable film; with it, it’s awe-inspiring.

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