Anniversary begins with a party.  Ellen Taylor (Diana Lane), a professor at Georgetown University, is celebrating the 25th anniversary of her marriage to Paul (Kyle Chandler), a restauranteur.  The family has gathered at Lina and Paul’s ocean-side mansion.  Daughter Cynthia (Zoey Deutch) and her husband Rob (Daryl McCormick) are environmental attorneys.  Another daughter, Anna (Madeleine Brewer), is a performance artist who is very close to the youngest child, teenage Birdie (McKenna Grace).  Finally, Josh (Dylan O’Brien) is the only son, a struggling writer who arrives with his fiancée, Liz Nettles (Phoebe Dynevor).

Ellen immediately recognizes Liz as a former student, one who wrote a dissertation advocating for a one-party state.  At the time, Ellen called out Liz’s totalitarian ideology, to the extent that Liz accused Ellen of bullying her and ended up transferring to a different college.  Now, Ellen is not happy to discover that Liz has written a book called The Change and that Josh has abandoned his own “sci-fi trilogy” to help Liz out with her projects.  Liz is polite to Ellen but, before she leaves, she gives her future mother-in-law a forced hug and says, “I’m not scared of you anymore.”

From there, the film jumps forward from year-to-year, from gathering-to-gathering.  Liz’s book is a best-seller that soon sparks a movement.  Ellen watches in horror as her neighbors start to fly Change flags (which is the American flag, with the stars in the center).  Josh goes from being awkward and dorky to being arrogant and finally threatening.  With each year, the Change becomes more powerful and more menacing, until eventually Paul can’t even stand outside at night without a drone warning him that he’s violating curfew.  Anna becomes a fugitive while Birdie tries to find her place in a rapidly changing world.  The tragedies that follow all feel inevitable.

Anniversary is definitely an uneven film.  Some of the performances are better than others.  Diane Lane, Kyle Chandler, Dylan O’Brien, and Phoebe Dynevor all give excellent performances.  If nothing else, this film shows that Dylan O’Brien may be one of the most underrated actors working today.  At the same time, Madeline Brewer goes so over-the-top that I was almost relieved when Anna had to go into hiding and Zooey Deutch is let down by a script that doesn’t seem to be quite sure what to do with her character.  There are a few moments that are a bit too heavy-handed for their own good and the viewer is sometimes left to wonder if the film has the self-awareness necessary to understand that the Taylors, with their combination of wealth and radical chic politics, are often their own worst enemies.

That said, Anniversary is definitely a film of the moment.  There are enough brilliant scenes — like a meeting with two “census takers” that gradually turns menacing — to make up for the scenes that don’t work.  It’s best moments have an undeniable power in which the viewer realizes that the film’s melodrama is far more plausible today than it would have been in a pre-COVID era.  The scene where Paul is told that he is violating curfew would seem heavy-handed if not for the fact that, in 2020, we pretty much saw the same thing happening across the country.

Some online critics have complained that The Change’s ideology is purposefully left vague but that misses the point that most successful movements actually are vague about the details.  (Historically, most American third party movements tend to fall apart as soon as they start taking actual policy positions.)  The Change becomes powerful specifically because people can view it as being whatever they want it to be.  Whereas some people might see it as a return to a “simpler” time, others will view it as the warmth of collectivism replacing the frigidity of rugged individualism.  The Change is all about vibes and paranoia, the feeling that people are being left behind by the system and the only way to solve the problem is for everyone to embrace The Change without question.  The thing that all the followers of The Change share is a belief that dissent cannot be tolerated.

Anniversary is a crudely effective film, one that shows a small act of revenge can grow into something much larger.  It was overlooked when released but it still carries a powerful punch.