The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2025) turned 50 this year, and to celebrate, Netflix has brought acclaimed films like Frankenstein and others, but here’s what fans think.
TIFF 2025 is well underway, and now that the festival has hit the middle of its run, it’s clear which films have attracted the most attention from festival-goers. To celebrate TIFF 2025, Netflix has brought successful films like Frankenstein (which was said to receive a 13-minute standing ovation at the Venice International Film Festival) and the currently still rating pending Korean drama, Good News (with many of the returning cast from the hit series, Squid Game) to the festival.
While critics have raved about Netflix’s bigger offerings, early impressions have sung a similar tune regarding what Netflix has brought to the festival. Frankenstein, and Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery have been lauded so far, but Steve has had a more middling response. Here’s what everyone is saying about Netflix films so far at TIFF 2025.
CGMagazine’s review of Steve calls it “Powerful, overwhelming, heartbreaking, and hopeful,” whereas many other critics who have flocked to Rotten Tomatoes to say what they didn’t like, or why they felt it was a middling experience. Overall, reception has middled, considering one of the biggest complaints is how Netflix deviated from the source material. Clarisse Loughrey says, “it’s deliberately made itself second to its source material,” in a mediocre-scored review, and many share the same thought. Currently, Steve sits at a 70% on Metacritic, despite discourse regarding the film’s direction.
On the other hand, critics and fans seem to have middled on the latest Knives Out film, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. CGMagazine’s review says, “I thought this felt the most textbook murder mystery—but lacked the pizzaz to keep me enthralled the whole way through,” calling it “the weakest mystery of the three films,” in the series thus far. Overall reception has given the film its stars though, with critics giving the film an 81% on Metacritic (at the time of this posting), lauding its “darker tone” and mystery.
Netflix’s TIFF 2025 slate includes Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, Steve, Good News, Wayward, Frankenstein, Nouvelle Vague, Saturn Return and Black Rabbit, and all of their offerings haven’t been premiered just yet.
So far, other Netflix offerings at TIFF 2025: the Korean drama Good News and Mae Martin’s Wayward (series) haven’t been given a bigger look at the festival yet (like Frankenstein), they will be shown in the remaining days of TIFF 2025. TIFF 2025 runs until September 14, and as the festival continues, there will be more impressions from the festival floor, right here at CGMagazine.
