Annual Top Films Lists

Top 100 Most Anticipated American Indie Films of 2018: #76. Sam Levinson’s Assassination Nation

Published on January 15, 2018

Assassination Nation

Sam Levinson offered us one of the best films of 2011 with his directorial debut — we called it “a bitter, nasty, angry film about family members getting together for a wedding”. Pulling a 180 degree turn, there won’t be many comparison points between Another Happy Day and his sophomore project. Selected for the Sundance Film Fest, filming on Assassination Nation commenced the past March back in New Orleans, Louisiana.

With Odessa Young, Suki Waterhouse, Hari Nef, Abra, Bill Skårsgard, Bella Thorne, Maude Apatow, Colman Domingo, Anika Noni Rose and Joel McHale, this Bron Studios production is being coined as a one-thousand-percent true story about how the quiet, all-American town of Salem, absolutely lost its mind. This might be the ‘The Crucible’ for millennials.

Release Date/Prediction: Assassination Nation grabbed a Midnight section spot at the Sundance Film Festival.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).