Prisoners (2013)
Holy crap I wasn't expecting this film to be so good. The basic hook of the movie is what if the horrible depraved and stylized villains from a
Criminal Minds episode showed up in the real world and inflicted their sadistic, implausible, and elaborate plan on otherwise normal people. I really don't want to give away too much of the plot and let me tell you that if you've seen the trailers and think you've already figured this movie out, think again. The trailers really do give off the impression that this your typical run-of-the-mill detective story with sprinklings of something more interesting, but will ultimately turn into yet another story about how grief transforms people. While that is certainly the case, in most stories grief makes them rise to become something better, but here... well... not so much. It takes a realistic look at how grief and tragedy can utterly destroy a person, where the mystery takes the backseat and instead allows for the journey to the end be the main point of the movie. Easily one of the darkest mainstream movies I've seen in a good long while and the antithesis to something like
The Purge which squandered potential to deconstruct a tropes of its particular genre.
So yeah call this one a win for September movies.