5 Indie Movies This Week: Chum, Underland, Trainspotting, & More

This week on Indie Film Weekly, Glen Reynolds highlights five indie films worth knowing about: three in theaters, one on demand, and one classic.

🎥 Indie Film Reviews:
Chum (2026)
Underland (2026)
Carolina Caroline (2026)
Daddio (2024)
Trainspotting (1996)

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Transcript

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Welcome back to Indie Film Weekly for the week of June 5th, 2026. I'm your host, Glenn Reynolds. This week in theaters, we've got a destination wedding that turns into a survival situation with the ocean on one side and a human nightmare on the other. We've got a documentary that heads underground into caves, tunnels, and deep science labs to show how much of the world we never see. And we've got a romantic crime story where a young woman links up with a charming con man while searching for her estranged mother. Quick ask before we move on. If you can see one of these in a theater this weekend, please do. Indie films don't get a long runway, and opening weekend tickets are what keeps show times from evaporating. On demand, I've got a two-hander that's basically one long cab ride, and it still manages to surprise you. And for our classic, we're celebrating a 30th anniversary re-release that plays like a time capsule with a live wire inside it. Want the written version of these picks each week? I also publish the Indie Film Weekly Newsletter. It's the same five films in a quick read. Sign up at newsletter.com. Let's dive in. Our first indie film in theaters this week is Chum, directed by Jonathan Zuck. It starts with a destination wedding in Malta that's supposed to be sun, vows, and a hangover you can laugh about on Monday. The newlyweds and their friends head out on a yacht excursion, and the first problem is a shark in the water. That would be enough for most people to call it a day, but the bigger problem is on the boat. A fisherman with his own agenda turns the celebration into a trap, and suddenly the group is stuck between open water and a human predator who can follow them anywhere. The film plays with that awful vacation feeling. The moment you realize you're far from home, nobody is coming, and your cute itinerary has turned into a survival math problem. The couple's relationship gets stress tested in real time as secrets surface, loyalties shift, and the group starts making the kind of decisions you only make when adrenaline is driving. Alice Eve is the recognizable face here, and she brings the right mix of composure and panic as things escalate. And yes, the title becomes a dark joke very fast. If you like your thriller setups clean and your danger immediate, this one doesn't waste time. It's sharks, then it's people, and it keeps tightening until somebody runs out of options. Our second film in theaters this week is Underland. Directed by Rob Pettit. This documentary is inspired by Robert McFarland's book and built around one irresistible premise. The world under our feet is a whole other planet. The film moves through caves, tunnels, labs, cenotees, and storm drains, following people who go below ground for very different reasons. You meet a Mexican archaeologist descending into a sacred Maya cenote. You meet a physicist working deep underground on dark matter research in the Canadian lab. You meet an urban explorer mapping hidden spaces in Las Vegas, including the storm-drain world, where unhoused people live out of sight. The film links these places through the idea of deep time, the sense that the underground holds memory differently than the surface does. It's part science, part travelogue, part mood piece, with narration that leans poetic instead of journalistic. The strongest moments come when the film contrasts natural worlds, ancient, quiet, and different, with human-made ones, coldware bunkers, utility tunnels, and spaces built to hide what we don't want to face. Visually, it's the kind of film that makes you sit up and lean in because the textures are unreal. It's not horror, but it does make the surface world feel suddenly flimsy. If you like docks that feel like an essay you can walk through, this one will scratch that itch. Our last indie film in theaters this week is Carolina Caroline, directed by Adam Carter Raymeyer. It follows a young woman who links up with a charming con man on the run and winds up in a moving target of life. Part romance, part crime spree, part search mission. Caroline isn't just looking for excitement. She's looking for her estranged mother, and the trip through the Southeast becomes a messy, impulsive attempt to find the person who disappeared from her life. The con man sells the dream of freedom, easy money, no rules, and a clean break from the past. The film keeps asking whether that dream is real or just a different kind of trap. What makes the setup fun is that the hustle is constant. They're always improvising, always talking their way into something, always trying to stay one step ahead of the consequences. There's also a romantic charge that's equal parts chemistry and bad judgment, which is the correct combination for this sort of story. Raymeyer has a good eye for the way a couple can feel like a private world even while they're leaving wreckage behind them. It doesn't moralize, it watches the choices and lets them land. If you like movies where the charm is real, but the danger is real too, this is a good Friday night pick. So in theaters this week, that's Chum, Underland, and Carolina Caroline. Our spotlight indie film on demand this week is Daddy O. Written and directed by Christy Hall. It's basically one long cab ride from JFK into Manhattan, and the entire movie lives in the front seats. A woman credited as Gurley climbs into a yellow taxi after a trip and winds up in an unexpectedly intimate conversation with her driver, Clark. They talk about relationships, sex, loneliness, and the stories people tell to make their own choices feel less messy. Dakota Johnson plays Gurley with a guarded confidence that keeps cracking as the ride goes on. Sean Penn plays Clark as a guy who's seen enough of the city to think he's immune to surprise until he isn't. The hook is that nothing happens in the conventional sense, yet the power keeps shifting because questions become confessions and jokes become reveals. It's also a New York movie in a very specific way. The city is there as light, movement, traffic, and nighttime anonymity, but the real action is in faces, pauses, and the split decision to answer honestly. If you like talkie films that actually earn the talk, this is a great on-demand pick. You can rent it on Apple TV, Amazon Video, or Fandango at home. Our indie film classic this week is Trainspotting, celebrating its 30th anniversary. Directed by Danny Boyle, it follows Mark Renton, a young guy in Edinburgh who keeps trying to choose life and keeps getting dragged back toward heroin and the orbit of friends who normalize self-destruction. The film isn't a drug movie that stays in one mode. It's hilarious, disgusting, tender, and terrifying sometimes in the same minute. Rinton's crew is a rotating disaster, sweet, reckless, violent, and somehow loyal until loyalty stops being convenient. Ewan McGregor plays Rinton with the exact mix of charm and self-loathing that makes you understand why he can talk himself into anything. Robert Carlyle shows up as Begby, the kind of friend who turns every room into a hazard zone just by entering it. What still holds up is Boyle's energy and control. He makes addiction feel seductive, then immediately makes it feel like a trap you can't climb out of without losing pieces of yourself. The film also captures that early 20s panic, the fear that your life is already set and you didn't get a vote. This is a movie that plays even better with an audience because the laughs catch in your throat and you can feel the room reacting together. It's back in theaters in a new 4K restoration, and you can also rent it on YouTube. And that wraps it for the June 5th, 2026 edition of Indie Film Weekly. If you want to support the show, do the simple stuff. Subscribe so you don't miss next week. Share it with one friend who likes being early, rate it because it helps the apps take the show seriously. Then leave a quick review, even one sentence helps. Until next week, keep it curious, keep it brave, and keep it indie.