SXSW Highs and Lows: Matthew McConaughey Singing, Nicole Kidman Fizzling Out, Time-Traveling Pranksters and More

variety.com:

SXSW Film & TV Festival, which concludes on Saturday, featured a time-traveling RV, a disemboweling unicorn, a transracial surgery and credible testimony that extra-terrestrials exist.

Here’s what rose to the top, and what failed to take flight. SXSW has distinguished itself among the top film festivals with its Headliners section, a lineup of star-driven, studio-backed, crowd-pleasing premieres that thrill SXSW audiences and help launch the films into their wide releases — from “Bridesmaids,” “21 Jump Street,” and “A Quiet Place” to “Us,” “John Wick 4” and “The Idea of You.” This year, only one Headliner fully fit the bill: The gory horror comedy “Death of a Unicorn,” starring Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega, had the audience laughing, screaming and cheering along with its story of a pair of homicidal fantasy creatures dispatching a über-wealthy family in the Canadian wilderness. “Drop,” Blumhouse’s upcoming Christopher Landon-directed thriller, came awfully close, too, with lead Meghann Fahy absolutely captivating the crowd.

Best known for one of the stand outs of “The White Lotus” Season 2, “Drop” cemented Fahy’s place as a movie star, appearing in every single scene of the movie as the widowed single mother who starts getting death threats and horrifying “drops” to her phone while on a first date (with the ever-so-charming Brandon Sklenar).

Meanwhile, “The Studio,” Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s satiric TV series about Hollywood, captivated fans with a two-episode premiere on opening night featuring cameos from Greta Lee, Sarah Polley, Paul Dano, Steve Buscemi, Charlize Theron and Martin Scorsese, all playing versions of themselves.