In an era where film criticism often demands that blockbusters serve as manifestos, Freddie deBoer offers a refreshing, contrarian take: two of the year's most celebrated films are being mistaken for profound political statements when they are, at their core, simply excellent genre entertainments. The piece challenges the modern critical imperative that a movie must "speak to the moment" to be worthy of praise, arguing that this pressure to find hidden depth is actually degrading our appreciation of cinema.
The Trap of Over-Interpretation
DeBoer opens by acknowledging the critical consensus that Ryan Coogler's Sinners and Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another are titanic clashes of cultural significance. He describes the former as a "Southern Gothic vampire extravaganza" treated as a meditation on intergenerational trauma, and the latter as a "prophetic pre-autopsy of the MAGA era." Yet, deBoer pushes back against this fever pitch. "I want to be clear that I liked both of these movies, very much," he writes, establishing his credibility before dismantling the hype. "But I think that both have been the subject of a particular kind of overheated praise... they're fundamentally fun-but-shallow exercises in action filmmaking that are being hung with implied depth they don't contain."
The author's central thesis is that the film industry and its critics have become incapable of celebrating a movie simply for being a well-made lark. In the current economy of cultural prestige, entertainment is not enough; a film must be "important." DeBoer argues that this demand forces critics to "stuff symbolic weight into characters and events that frankly do not have the heft to serve as symbols." This is a compelling critique of the "halo effect" surrounding established auteurs, where the reputation of the director precedes the actual content of the film. By treating these works as sociopolitical avatars rather than films, the critical class risks missing what is actually on the screen.
The notion that these are profoundly Trump era works of art... is the kind of thing that movie reviewers think they have to say, these days, and the idea is belied by the fact that either of these could have been released 10 or 20 or 30 years ago and been just as fun and effective.
This observation holds significant weight. It suggests that the "relevance" critics claim to find is often a projection of their own anxieties rather than the text's intent. However, one might argue that in a polarized society, audiences naturally gravitate toward art that mirrors their current struggles, regardless of the filmmaker's original timeline. The context of the era shapes the reception, even if the production predates it.
Sinners: When Genre Meets Gravitas
Turning to Sinners, deBoer praises the film as a "sweaty, gory, immaculately shot B-movie" that features Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo. He notes the film's "enjoyable false gravitas," a phrase that perfectly captures the tension between the movie's horror elements and its serious themes. The author points out that while the film is a blast, the critical urge to find deep racial politics in every frame undermines the horror. "Critics find the 'bare stains of American racism' in every whip-pan, a fate that actual Hammer horror movies were blessedly exempt from thanks to their status as real-deal B movies," deBoer writes.
Here, deBoer draws a sharp distinction between the film's success as a genre piece and its failure as a profound statement. He notes that the film's attempt to balance a slow-burn first half with a "bravura, cracking vampire horror-farce" results in a tonal clash. The inclusion of the KKK at the climax, he argues, is a "thudding obviousness" reminiscent of Bob Dylan's cameo in Inside Llewyn Davis, which he calls "one of the worst decisions in a recent movie I can remember." This specific criticism highlights the danger of "ham-handed overexplanation" when filmmakers try to satisfy the demand for elevated themes.
The reference to Hammer Film Productions is particularly apt here. Just as Hammer horror films of the 1950s and 60s were celebrated for their style and atmosphere rather than their sociological treatises, deBoer suggests Sinners would have been stronger if it had embraced its B-movie roots without the burden of being a "manifesto." The film's vampires, he argues, "just aren't very scary, in large part because they're too busy being hung with #discourse markers and 21st century politics." This is a bold claim, suggesting that the very act of politicizing the monsters dilutes their power.
One Battle After Another: The Auteur's Burden
The second half of the commentary tackles Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, a film deBoer describes as a "technical marvel" and an "inspired bit of pop agitprop." He praises the kinetic energy, noting that the car chase makes one want to "pace the theater just to burn off the adrenaline." Yet, he contends that the film's reputation as a "generational masterpiece" is a construct of the critical establishment. "Because it's Paul Thomas Anderson... we've been told that One Battle After Another is a 'profound statement of America in decline,'" deBoer writes. "But the attempt to find greater depths here feels very mannered and overwrought to me, fugazi, an affect."
DeBoer's critique focuses on the film's structural incoherence and its indifference to the political backdrop it uses. He questions the film's treatment of its immigrant characters, noting that the sanctuary city setting serves merely as a backdrop for a family drama. "It's funny; this movie is taken to be an Anderson movie of the highest caliber, while my favorite PTA movie, Inherent Vice, is regularly dismissed as a minor interlude," he observes. "But Inherent Vice has more moral seriousness, character depth, and political salience than One Battle After Another by a country mile."
This comparison is striking. It suggests that the critical lionization of Anderson's newer work is driven by a desire to see the director as a sage of the current moment, rather than an honest assessment of the film's merits. DeBoer argues that the film's ending, with its sentimental letter and the disappearance of key characters, feels "jerry-rigged and discordant." The film's "utter indifference to the fate of the sanctuary city" reveals that it is not, in fact, a defense of immigration, despite the critical narrative. "That story, itself, is kinetic, touching, and wise," deBoer admits, "but our culture industry insists on injecting everything with portentous ideological content, whether or no it's there."
This is what happens when you turn directors into deities; you stop seeing the movie on the screen and start seeing only the auteur behind the camera.
This sentence encapsulates the piece's most powerful insight. The reverence for the director creates a blind spot where critics see what they want to see, rather than what is there. A counterargument might be that the "auteur theory" has always encouraged this kind of deep reading, and that the difference now is simply the intensity of the political moment. Yet, deBoer's point remains: when the reading becomes a requirement for the film's success, the film itself suffers.
Bottom Line
Freddie deBoer's argument is a necessary corrective to a critical landscape that often confuses importance with quality. The strongest part of his case is the demonstration that Sinners and One Battle After Another are more effective as genre films than as political allegories. His biggest vulnerability is the risk of dismissing valid audience interpretations that arise from the cultural moment, even if the filmmakers didn't explicitly intend them. Readers should watch for whether this pushback against "elevated popcorn" gains traction, or if the demand for movies to be "prophetic" continues to dominate the awards conversation. Ultimately, the piece reminds us that a movie can be a masterpiece of entertainment without being a manifesto.