New Movies in Theaters This August, Ranked by What’s Worth It

August is the month studios use to clear the shelf, and this one runs true to form: a thin slate with two genuine reasons to buy a ticket and a long tail of competent genre behind them. The honest version of a release guide says which is which, instead of pretending the whole month is an event and insulting the reader who paid for parking. Most of what opens now is here because there was room, not because anyone was confident it would land in a busier window.

So this list is ranked by how much each film gives you an actual reason to leave the house, best first — the two that matter at the top, the filler below them in descending order of who it is for. Nothing here is padded to fill a number; a short honest list beats a long dishonest one. The surprises start further down, and so does most of the argument.

1. Coyote vs. Acme

Coyote vs. Acme is the one release this month with a real story attached, and the single best reason to show up on opening weekend rather than wait. It is a finished, well-liked Looney Tunes hybrid that a studio wrote off for the tax deduction, then let go of after the reaction to shelving it turned toxic — a film that exists in a cinema at all because burying it quietly became more expensive than releasing it. The premise is almost too on the nose: a cartoon that spent years being sued out of existence by the corporation that made it, now arriving as the underdog it plays on screen. Whatever it finally turns out to be, that saga is the most interesting thing happening in a cinema this month, and nothing else on the slate carries anything close to it.

2. The Dog Stars

The Dog Stars is Ridley Scott adapting Peter Heller’s post-collapse novel — a survivor, a plane and a dog, about as stripped down as Scott has worked in years. At eighty-eight he remains an event by default, and the source material is exactly the kind of quiet, interior story his late run has mostly traded away for scale and spectacle. Heller’s book runs on loneliness and small mercies rather than action, which is not the register the Scott of the last decade reaches for first. The gamble is whether the restraint holds, or whether the old instinct for size creeps back in and swallows the small story at the centre.

3. Insidious: Out of the Further

Insidious: Out of the Further is the dependable one. Five films in, this is a franchise that knows precisely what it sells and delivers it on schedule, which in a thin month reads as a virtue rather than a limitation. The series has never pretended to reinvent horror; it runs on timing, sound design and the shared jolt of a crowd that came to be scared together. If what you want is the August experience of a full, loud room flinching in unison, this is the ticket with the best odds of providing it.

4. Toxic

Toxic is the festival entry making the jump to a wider release, and the month’s likeliest candidate to be the film people are still arguing about long after the credits. It is smaller, harsher and far less interested in being liked than anything else opening around it — a coming-of-age story with the sentimentality scraped off, set among teenagers with fewer exits than the adults around them notice. This is the one title on the slate with something to prove instead of something to sell, and the one most likely to reward the risk of a ticket bought on trust.

5. Mutiny

Mutiny is genre done straight: a confined-space thriller that lives or dies on its cast holding tension without a set piece to hide behind. The setup — one man, a cargo ship, a conspiracy closing in — is as old as the form, and that is the point; films like this succeed on execution, not novelty. It is worth a look if the reviews say the ensemble works and worth skipping if they do not, because a story built this tightly around performance rarely lands anywhere in the middle.

6. The End of Oak Street

The End of Oak Street is the month’s quiet mover, a small drama that arrived with more advance interest than its budget can explain. That usually means one of two things — strong word of mouth out of a festival, or a performance someone is quietly campaigning — and the high-concept hook of a suburban street torn loose from the world around it gives the interest somewhere to point. Either way it is the title most likely to be underrated on release and reappraised later, once the crowds chasing the louder openings have moved on.

7. OK! Madam: Bon Voyage

OK! Madam: Bon Voyage is the biggest opening of the month by raw audience interest, and the clearest sign of where the popular energy in cinema now sits. A Korean action-comedy sequel is set to outdraw the American slate in its own release window, which a decade ago would have been a headline and today is simply the shape of the market. If you have not seen the first one, that is the homework to do before the ticket.

Also dated this month but harder to recommend sight unseen: Ice Cream Man, The Rope Curse 4: Kuntilanak, Idiots, The Brink of War and Vishwanath & Sons — regional and festival titles that will find their audiences without a ranking pointing the way.

These are the announced US theatrical dates, and in August they slip more often than in any other month; a thin slate is an easy one to reshuffle. If a title moves it tends to slide to the autumn rather than vanish, so a film missing from opening weekend is usually delayed, not dead.

Tags: Ridley Scott, cinema, The Dog Stars, Toxic, Coyote vs. Acme, Insidious: Out of the Further