April film preview: A Minecraft Movie, Sinners, and The Accountant 2 celebrate the end of tax season

Freaky Tales (April 4)

For their first movie since Captain Marvel, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck offer an anthology of four, uh, freaky tales set in Oakland, California, circa 1987. Led by Pedro Pascal, the movie plays off the era’s most popular genres, including horror and heist, with a distinct throwback look and atmosphere, drawing inspiration from the usual suspects: Carpenter, Cameron, Verhoeven, and Zemeckis. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a gamble—anthologies are tricky and ’80s pastiche isn’t exactly reinventing the wheel.

The Amateur (April 11)

Rami Malek gets back to computer hacking in The Amateur, playing a CIA cryptographer on a John Wick-ian vengeance quest against the bastard terrorists who killed his wife. The plot may sound cliched, but Amateur boasts a solid cast, including Julianne Nicholson, Jon Bernthal, Rachel Brosnahan, Laurence Fishburne, and Holt McCallany, the latter playing a stuffed shirt from the Agency. Come for Malek’s convoluted Saw-esque traps, stay for McCallany in shirtsleeves telling Malek to “let this one go.”

Drop (April 11)

Happy Death Day 2U director Christopher Landon drops in with another high-concept horror movie, Drop. Violet (Meghann Fahy) is a single mother finally getting a night out to reenter the dating scene. Unfortunately, her first date with what looks like a really great guy is interrupted by a sadistic troll AirDropping her memes that are anything but dank, unsolicited dating advice, and videos of a masked figure breaking into her house. If she wants her kid and babysitter to survive the night, she’ll have to do everything the AirDropper says, such as murdering her date, who, again, looks like a really great guy.

Warfare (April 11)

Warfare reteams Civil War director Alex Garland and the film’s military supervisor Ray Mendoza, who co-directs a story about Mendoza’s time with the Navy SEALs in Iraq. Told in real time, Warfare has assembled a battalion of up-and-coming actors—including D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor, Michael Gandolfini, Adain Bradley, Noah Centineo, Joseph Quinn, and Charles Melton—for a boots-on-the-ground companion piece to Civil War. Fred Hechinger’s team dropped the ball on this one.

Sacramento (April 11)

It’s been too long since Michael Cera has been in full-on frightened-of-life mode. Sacramento offers some respite via a buddy comedy about a mentally unwell man, Rickey (director and co-writer Michael Angarano), bursting back into his estranged best friend Glenn’s (Cera) life, taking him on a road trip to self-discovery before Glenn’s first baby arrives. With a cast that includes Maya Erskine and Kristin Stewart, Sacramento looks like an even sweeter riff on A Real Pain.

Sinners (April 18)

Another unfortunate victim of Warner Bros.’ endless release date shuffling, Sinners finally reunites Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan after teasing filmgoers with a March date that never came to pass. Together, the pair leave Wakanda for a Jim Crow-era horror movie in which Jordan pulls double duty as twin brothers fighting a horde of possessed, blood-sucking villagers. The movie’s plot is still pretty under wraps beyond that premise, but it was filmed by Coogler’s Wakanda Forever cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw with IMAX cameras using 70mm. The trailers may be light on story, but Sinners looks gorgeous and terrifying.

The Ugly Stepsister (April 18)

One of the most discussed movies of the early festival season, Emile Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister boasts “severed extremities and anesthetic-free nosejobs,” according to Jacob Oller’s Sundance review. Blichfeldt’s Cinderella riff tells of Elvira (Lea Myren), a girl competing for Prince Charming’s hand with her much more attractive stepsister (Thea Sofie Loch Næss). To pull a phrase from another fairy tale, Elvira will be the fairest one of all—no matter the cost.

The Shrouds (April 25)

Nearly a year after its Cannes premiere, director David Cronenberg allows us to wear The Shrouds. The director’s latest stars Vincent Cassel as Karsh, the widower inventor of GraveTech, a camera system that gives mourners access to a video feed inside the deceased’s coffin. However, following the desecration of his wife’s grave, Karsh goes looking for the perpetrators, and that’s when things, as the trailer puts it, start to get weird.

The Accountant 2 (April 25)

He’s back for another audit. The Accountant 2 arrives nearly a decade after Gavin O’Connor’s original action thriller. Once again, Ben Affleck will adjust his glasses and pick up his semi-automatic sniper rifle as Christian Wolff, the assassin CPA with autism. No longer content with laundering money to deadly results, Wolff gets help from his loose-cannon brother Brax (Jon Bernthal) to figure out which assassins killed whoever J. K. Simmons played in the first movie.

Until Dawn (April 25)

Based on the 2015 PlayStation game, Until Dawn tweaks its source material’s choice-dependent gimmick into a time loop, helping it stand out in a wide field of horror movies. Though the trailer doesn’t do it much favors, Until Dawn has a fun conceit: Every time a character dies, they end up in the same spot with a new monster trying to kill them. With Shazam! Fury Of The Gods now behind him, director David F. Sandberg can hopefully get back to over-delivering on seemingly bad ideas, as was the case on the first Shazam! and the underrated prequel Anabelle: Creation.

More April premieres:

April 2

Screamboat

April 4

Gazer

April 10

G20

April 11

One To One: John & Yoko

Colorful Stage! The Movie: A Miku Who Can’t Sing

April 17

Neil Young: Coastal

April 25

The Legend Of Ochi

On Swift Horses