An Honest Fangirl's Best of 2025

As the year comes to the end, it is now time for us here at Doux Reviews to give our personal recaps and Best Of lists. I get to start us off! It was hard deciding what to spotlight, and two of my picks are going to be highly predictable, but here are the books, shows, movies, and games that I loved most in 2025.

Best Television Show: The Pitt

 

Any show that willingly gets me to wake up at 6:39 AM so that I can sit down and watch it for 15 hours straight, write 13,801 words over 44 pages while I watch it, edit that monstrosity, and then fling it out into the greater Internet is going to be my top show of the year. There just isn’t any other option.

The Pitt recaptured a feeling that I hadn’t felt since high school: waking up excited every Thursday morning because a new episode was going to air that night. And every Thursday, my excitement was validated. It’s just well made. I don’t know how many times I’ve rewatched it, but I catch something new almost every time.

It made me laugh. It made me sob. It made me sit up straight on my couch like I was about to be inundated with patients from a mass casualty event. Plus, it gave me my latest TV crush in Dr. Frank Langdon.

The best part? Season Two is less than a month away.

Runner-Up: Heated Rivalry

Best Movie: Sinners

Yep, still my movie of the decade. There really isn’t anything else to say beyond that. I love this movie. A lot. Sinners was definitely, by far, the best moviegoing experience that I had in 2025. I still get chills whenever I watch the “I Lied To You” scene, even if it’s just a clip on social media.

Michael B. Jordan’s performances as Smoke and Stack were incredible. My brain still insists that there were actually two people there as opposed to him pulling double duty. Obviously, a ton of credit here goes to behind the camera as well for making it so seamless. I still can’t get over the opening cigarette scene.

I love this movie.

Runner-Up: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Best Documentary: Titan: The Oceangate Disaster (Netflix) and Implosion: the Titanic Sub Disaster (HBO Max)

I’m double dipping here, but it’s impossible for me to elevate one over the other. They came out within a week of each other, and I watched them back to back. They complement each other very well.

Netflix focused a lot more on Stockton Rush as a person and Oceangate in the lead up to the disaster, whereas HBO Max went deeper into what actually happened and the investigation afterwards. Nothing felt repetitive, and it was fascinating to see the same Coast Guard hearing from (literally) different angles.

The most memorable moment from the Netflix documentary is definitely hearing the popping and snapping of the carbon fibers and how it changed overtime. It’s haunting. You’re listening to something that should be enough red flags to fill the ocean, but instead it’s a banshee’s cry.

For the HBO Max documentary, it’s everything involving Josh Gates. He scrapped an episode about the Titan submersible, and the footage from that is just as haunting as popping and snapping but in a very different way. You’re watching someone go from open and curious to scared and furious as he realizes not just how dangerous the Titan sub is, but also how blinded Stockton Rush is.

If you want a documentary that isn’t about serial killers or gruesome murders, then this is an excellent alternative.

Runner-Up: One Night in Idaho: The College Murders

Best Book: A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul G. Tremblay

When Merry was eight years old, she and her family were the subject of a reality TV show called The Possession, which as the name implies, centered around the idea that her fourteen year old sister, Marjorie, was possessed and followed the family as they tried to deal with this.

I read this book back in March, and I still can’t stop thinking about it. It tapped into my favorite subgenre: shows about ghosts and demons actually find them. Or did they? Was Marjorie possessed, or was she just a very sick girl who was exploited by everyone around her?

Merry is our narrator, but she’s just a little girl. Is she actually seeing evidence that her sister is possessed, or is that just how her brain is interpreting it because she’s eight. I don’t know if the book scared me as much as it made me deeply sad. Merry gets all dressed up and is excited to go to school the day after the first episode airs, only to be mocked and tormented. There are moments where the film crew seems to realize that they’re doing real harm to a very real family, but they don’t stop filming.

My favorite parts were the Last Final Girl blog posts. If “ghost hunters find real ghosts” is my favorite subgenre, then “meta analysis and discussion of in-universe media” is my favorite niche literary format. These blog posts are our only real knowledge of what the show actually was, and it presents a very different view from what Merry is experiencing. I would have loved more of them. (And if you know of any other books that have this kind of thing, let me know!)

Runner-Up: Night Film by Marisha Pessl

Best Superheroes: Dispatch

There was a lot of really good superhero stuff this year! I loved Superman, liked Fantastic Four: First Steps and Marvel Zombies, and am very excited for the second season of Daredevil: Born Again. But my favorite piece of superhero media is the video game Dispatch, made by Adhoc Studio.

You play as Robert Robertson III, a superhero called Mecha Man. When his mech gets destroyed, he agrees to become a dispatcher for other heroes. Unfortunately for him, he gets the Z-Team, a bunch of former villains who are an absolutely dysfunctional mess. He also has the fattest dog in the world. I love them all.

Adhoc is full of ex-Telltale developers, and most of the game will feel very similar to Telltale. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but it is done very well. The animation is clean, the character designs are distinct, and the cast is stacked with talent. Like I said, I loved every character and I cared a lot about them. Especially Robert. He’s not always likable, and he’s frequently a mess, but I was incredibly protective over him by the end.

Every so often, though, Robert will clock into a dispatching shift, where he receives calls from the area and you have to assign which hero to send out in response. Each hero has their own strengths and weaknesses, and they can’t be everywhere at once. It frequently grows chaotic, and by the end of my last dispatch, I was breathless and shaking from adrenaline and incredibly proud of my team.

The only negative is the hacking minigames that you’re occasionally forced to do, but besides that? I was incredibly satisfied and emotionally fulfilled by the time the credits rolled.

Runner-Up: Superman

Best Video Game: Blue Prince

I have poured close to 200 hours into Blue Prince, and I haven’t solved half of its mysteries. And I think that I’ve finally reached the point where I am okay with that.

Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle game. Your initial task is fairly straightforward: find the hidden 46th room of a 45 room mansion. The catch is that you must leave the mansion each night, and come morning, the layout must be constructed anew.

It’s a very addictive gameplay loop, and I found a lot of pleasure in simply building the house room by room, trying to leave myself paths forward without getting blocked or locked out. When it comes together, it’s exhilarating.

The frustration comes from the puzzle side. Every time you open an explored door, you’re given three, random rooms to choose from. There were times where I desperately needed one, specific room in order to progress a specific puzzle, and I never saw that room once over the course of a dozen runs. Or I would find the room, but not the item that I needed for the puzzle. Usually, I could just divert and pursue something else, but not always.

When you finally do solve that puzzle, though? When you stumble across an entirely new mystery? When you get the perfect sequence of rooms? Blue Prince is brilliant.

Runner-Up: The Seance of Blake Manor

I wish everyone health and peace as the calendar turns to 2026. As always, I’ve really loved the community here. It’s my favorite corner of the internet, and it’s an honor and a pleasure to write reviews for you all.

Happy New Year!

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An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally manages to put words together in a coherent and pleasing manner.