She Rides Shotgun (2025)

It almost feels unfair that She Rides the Shotgun, Nick Rowland’s wiry, nerve-jangling new thriller, has been dropped with such little marketing fanfare. Lionsgate hasn’t given the film the push it deserves, but make no mistake: this is one of those rare movies that sneaks up on you, grabs your throat, and doesn’t let go until you’ve laughed, cried, and gasped your way through its haunting finale.Based on Jordan Harper’s award-winning novel (with the author himself co-writing the script alongside Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski), the film follows Nate McClusky (Taron Egerton), a hardened ex-con just out of prison, whose survival instincts collide head-on with his responsibility as a father. Almost immediately after release, Nate scoops up his estranged 11-year-old daughter Polly (Ana Sophia Heger, a revelation) from school. This isn’t a tearful reunion; the car window is shattered, Nate is buzzing with tension, and Polly barely remembers this anxious man now pulling her into his storm. What she doesn’t know yet is that her mother has just been murdered — and that both of them are next on a hit list from a white supremacist gang Nate crossed behind bars.

From the first getaway drive, Rowland frames father and daughter in isolation — often each in their own shot, as if they were ghosts orbiting one another. It’s a stylistic choice that mirrors their fractured relationship but also keeps us off balance. Can they learn to trust each other before the world closes inThe plot unfurls like a powder keg: cops who know Nate didn’t kill Polly’s mother still pursue him, a brutal Aryan gang (the terrifying Slabtown) has infiltrated every institution from police squads to roadside motels, and the duo find themselves in a cycle of flight, violence, and fleeting refuge. Nate teaches Polly survival the only way he knows how: dyeing her hair neon orange to avoid recognition, instructing her how to swing a baseball bat not for sport but to shatter knees and skulls, and forcing her to watch the ugly realities of his world. She’s shoved under car seats during shootouts, helps stitch his wounds, and endures a harrowing car chase that plays like a nightmare version of Breaking Bad.