5 Indie Movies This Week: The Wrong Girls, American Doctor, The Host, & 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:
The Wrong Girls (2026)
American Doctor (2026)
Union County (2026)
Babes (2024)
The Host (2006)

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Welcome back to Indie Film Weekly for the week of August 14, 2026. I'm your host, Glenn Reynolds. This week in theaters, we've got a sci-fi stoner comedy with two women getting pulled into a very weird adventure. We've got a Verite documentary about three American doctors working in Gaza. And we've got a rural Ohio recovery drama about two foster brothers trying to stay on track inside drug court. Quick ask before we move on if you can see one of these films in a theater this weekend. Indie films need early ticket buyers, not silent supporters who plan to catch up when the movie is already gone. On demand, I've got a friendship comedy about pregnancy, panic, and the terrifying realization that adulthood was not merely a rumor. And for our classic, we're celebrating a 20th anniversary Korean monster movie with family chaos, political bite, and one very rude creature in the Han River. Want the written version of these picks each week? I also published 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 The Wrong Girls, directed by Dylan Meyer. This is a sci-fi stoner comedy starring Kristen Stewart and Alia Shockat, which already tells you the movie is not applying for a permit to behave. The setup has two women being pulled into a bizarre chain of events involving a briefcase, strange powers, hired muscle, and the kind of escalating weirdness where every answer makes the day less normal. Stuart plays Frankie, and Shaw Cat plays Molly. And the fun is watching them move through the chaos with a slightly stunned confidence of people who cannot believe this is now their problem. The supporting cast is stacked with Kate Blanchett, Tony Hale, Lake Stanfield, Seth Rogan, Camille Nangiani, and Kate McKinnon, all somewhere in the orbit. But the core appeal is the friendship energy. This is the kind of comedy where the plot can be wild, but the emotional engine is two people trying to stay connected while reality gets aggressively unhelpful. Meyer co-wrote the script with Stewart, and the friendship at the center keeps the movie grounded, even when the plot appears to be sprinting towards the nearest exit. Giant squids, Danish hitmen, talking cats, and supernatural trouble may be in the mix, but the heart is still about being the wrong girls in a world that keeps pretending it knows who belongs. Our second indie film in theaters this week is American Doctor, directed by Pose Teng. This documentary follows three American physicians, Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian, who traveled to Gaza during the war to help save lives. The film is verite, which means it stays close to the work as it happens. The hospital corridors, the surgeries, the exhaustion, the triage, and the impossible choices that come when medicine is being practiced inside catastrophe. This is obviously a serious pick this week, and it should be. The hook is not just that these doctors come from different backgrounds. It is that their shared oath becomes the thing that matters most when the politics outside the hospital are overwhelming. The film looks at what it means to show up with skill, training, and good intentions, then realize that even all of that may not be enough. It also keeps the focus on civilian life, infrastructure, and the human cost that can be flattened when war is talked about from a distance. There's no way to make this one light, and I'm not going to try, but indie films should make room for work like this, where the camera's close enough to remind you that every headline lands somewhere, in someone's body, in someone's family, and in someone's hands trying to stop the bleeding. Our last indie film in theaters this week is Union County. Directed by Adam Meeks, this drama is set in rural Ohio and follows Cody, a man working through a county-mandated drug court program in the shadow of the opioid epidemic. Recovery here is not treated like one big dramatic breakthrough. It is meetings, routines, check-ins, work, temptation, boredom, and the daily pressure of trying not to wreck what little stability you've managed to build. Will Poulter plays Cody, and he brings a worn-down intensity that feels right for someone trying to make forward motion look normal. Noah Centennial plays Jack, Cody's foster brother, who's also in the program, which makes the relationship both a support system and a stress test. The film is strongest when it stays with process, how people try to rebuild inside a system that can help them and trap them at the same time. It also uses real participants and staff from the local drug court, which gives the world a lived-in texture you cannot fake with a few inspirational speeches in a folding chair. Meeks is from this area, and that matters. The film does not look at the community like a case study. It looks at it like home, wounded, complicated, and still worth fighting for. So in theaters this week, that's The Wrong Girls, American Doctor, and Union County. Our spotlight indie film on demand this week is Babes, directed by Pamela Adlon. This comedy follows Eden and Dawn, lifelong best friends whose lives are suddenly in very different places. Dawn is married, already deep in motherhood, and living in the daily tornado of kids, exhaustion, and logistics. Eden is single, freer, and then unexpectedly pregnant after a one-night stand. That is when the friendship has to absorb the shock. Ilana Glazer plays Eden with a combination of confidence and panic that feels painfully accurate. Michelle Buteau plays Dawn as the friend who loves Eden deeply, but is also running on the battery life of a smoke alarm. The movie works because it treats pregnancy as funny, gross, emotional, inconvenient, and occasionally terrifying, which seems closer to the truth than the glowing belly version. It's also smart about adult friendship. Loving someone for decades does not mean you stay in the same phase of life at the same time. Sometimes one person is talking about baby names, while the other is just trying to remember whether she showered. The film is warm without being fake, and it lets women be messy in ways comedies still do not do enough. You can rinse it on Apple TV, Amazon Video, or Fendango at home. Our indie film classic this week is The Host, celebrating its 20th anniversary. Directed by Bong Jun-ho, this Korean monster movie starts with toxic chemicals dumped into the Han River, then jumps forward to a creature emerging from the water and attacking a crowd in broad daylight. That scene still plays like a masterclass in Mayhem. The monster is fast, ugly, unpredictable, and deeply inconsiderate about people's lunch plans. At the center is the Park family, especially Geng Du, a not exactly heroic snack bar worker, whose young daughter Hyunseo is taken by the creature. From there, the family launches a rescue mission that is part action movie, part family farce, part political satire, and part grief machine. Song Kang Ho plays Geng Du and he is perfect because he can be foolish, terrified, stubborn, and heartbreaking without ever changing movies. Bong's great trick is tonal control. The film can be funny, then scary, then furious, sometimes in the same scene, and somehow it never falls apart. It's a monster movie where the monster is real, but so is the institutional failure around it. Bad information, bad leadership, bad priorities. Very relaxing, obviously. If you only know Bong from later work, this is essential. You can rinse it on Apple TV, Amazon Video, or Fandango at home. And that wraps it for the August 14, 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 weird, keep it awake, and keep it indie.