ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Official synopsis: Chile, 1989: the Pinochet regime is on the decline and tabletop wargame champion Udo Berger is vacationing with his girlfriend at a coastal resort. When a friend suddenly vanishes, Udo invites a mysterious local to join him for a game in this effortlessly stylish adaptation of Roberto Bolaño’s The Third Reich.

 Writer/director Alicia Scherson’s Summer War (Uruguay/Argentina/Canada/Chile Italy; 2026) treads between slow-burn thriller and drama with well-timed humor. It’s an unusual but amusing film that features a protagonist who isn’t often easy to root for but you can’t help but wonder what his fate will be.

Canadian actor Dan Beirne is no stranger to playing decidedly offbeat characters — check out our review of his film Paying for It from February here, for example — and he gets a plum opportunity here as board game enthusiast Udo Berger. Udo is more fixated on one such game that he is reviewing for a magazine than on his girlfriend Ingrid (Lux Pascal) and the Chilean vacation that they are on. 

His other main fixation on the trip is Elsa (Aline Kuppenheim), the manager of the hotel where he and Ingrid are staying. He has had a crush on her since first visiting the hotel when he was 14 years old, and he is intent on making up for lost time now that he is an adult.

When one of the couple’s new local acquaintances suddenly mysteriously disappears and the authorities seem little concerned, Elsa flies back home but Udo insists on staying behind until the mystery is solved. He finds a challenging board game opponent in El Quemado (David Gaete), an enigmatic indigenous man who lives in a tent on the nearby beach. Other locals have warned Udo about associating with this burn-scarred man, but have been vague about why.

Summer War is populated with intriguing characters and the sizable cast is top-notch throughout. Scherson’s screen adaptation of Bolaño’s novel is engaging. The pacing is unusual but I found it to be ultimately quite satisfactory. An undercurrent of things going sideways or terribly dangerous runs throughout, though it often feels as though it is bubbling just under the surface. 

Compelling but just a shade shy of hypnotic, Summer War is sumptuously shot by Cinematographer Alejo Maglio, wonderfully written and helmed by Scherson, and winningly acted by Beirne, Pascal, and the supporting players. Cinephiles in search of an unusual approach to genre fare would do well to seek this one out.

Summer War screened at the Tribeca Festival, which took place June 3–14, 2026 in New York City.