Sanctuary (2023)

Sanctuary is a razor-wire two-hander that turns a single luxury hotel room into a pressure cooker, where desire, ambition, and self-invention keep changing the rules mid-scene. Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott are electrifying together, playing a seductive chess match with such emotional precision you can feel the power shifting in real time, and Zachary Wigon’s controlled direction makes every glance and pause land like a move. The script is wickedly funny in places and genuinely tense in others, stylish without showing off, and smart about how intimacy can become a language people use to negotiate identity. It is decidedly not for the prudish or anyone allergic to kink-adjacent dialogue, but if you like thrillers that are more psychological than action-driven, it’s the kind of movie that grabs you by the collar and doesn’t let go.

Sanctuary is aiming for a sleek, two-hander psychological thriller where sex, control, and corporate power all blur into one nasty little chess match, and it mostly lives or dies on whether you enjoy watching two people verbally knife-fight in a single room. Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott commit hard, and there’s a sharp, stage-play intensity to the setup that can be genuinely gripping in bursts. But the film can feel airless and repetitive over feature length, with pacing that lurches and twists that sometimes play more like contrivances than revelations, so the tension doesn’t always deepen—it just tightens. If you’re not into claustrophobic power games, kink-adjacent provocation, or stories that prioritize psychological sparring over emotional resonance, this one may test your patience more than your nerves.