The king of sleaze always has some unique picks on his top 10 film lists every year, and this year is no exception. He usually champions unconventional, underseen, and divisive films that other critics often skip.
Waters has said he watches between 50 and 80 films a year and gravitates toward movies that challenge viewers.
“I like difficult movies; I hate movies that make you feel good. I hate whimsy. I already feel good, I don’t expect a movie to make me feel good,” he told The Baltimore Sun. “I want a movie to make me feel bad, then I know it’s powerful and well made.”
Just published in New York Magazine, his list includes a horror movie that initially surprised me, but then, thinking about it, the pick makes perfect sense.
Final Destination: Bloodlines has a campy flashback to a 1969 disaster in a high-rise that Waters probably found delightful. He called it "exploitation art." The film grossed over $315 million worldwide and became the highest-grossing and best-reviewed entry in the franchise.
His number-one pick was Ari Aster's Eddington, one of the year's more divisive films, released in the middle of a political regime change and likely stinging many audience members. It's a contemporary Western set during the COVID-19 pandemic that tackles conspiracy theories, mask mandates, the George Floyd protests, and America's political polarization.
But Waters thought it was "so terrifyingly funny, so confusingly chaste and kinky that you’ll feel coo-coo crazy and oh-so-cultural after watching. If you don’t like this film, I hate you."
This is actually the second year in a row Waters has put an Aster film at #1—he also topped his 2023 list with Beau Is Afraid. The two filmmakers share many views on the modern movie industry.
John Waters at the Edinburgh International Film Festival Credit: Wikimedia Commons
John Waters' Favorite Films of 2025
Check out his list below.
- Eddington (Ari Aster)
- Final Destination: Bloodlines (Lipovsky/Stein)
- The Oslo Trilogy (Dag Johan Haugerud)
- Sirāt (Óliver Laxe)
- Sauna (Mathias Broe)
- Room Temperature (Cooper/Farley)
- Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
- When Fall is Coming (François Ozon)
- My Mom Jayne (Mariska Hargitay)
- The Empire (Bruno Dumont)
