Euphoria star-making case file no. 675: Austin Abrams. He had a burgeoning acting career prior to that — a stint on The Walking Dead, supporting roles in mostly smaller films — but one can easily argue that his two-season run on the provocative HBO series raised his profile enough that he now headlines high-concept, bigger-budget flicks like smash horror hit Resident Evil and WTF thriller Whalefall, in which he finds himself acting his ass off inside the digestive tract of a sperm whale.

Sure, Abrams isn’t at Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney or even Jacob Elordi status yet, but he sure seems to be on track to join them in the ranks of Hollywood’s young crop of stars. He’s worked his way through indies and bit parts, YA roles, and a surely intimidating gig between the relentlessly bantering George Clooney and Brad Pitt. He’s done drama and comedy and the gray areas in-between, and it’s that range, coupled with the selection of some smart and challenging roles, that puts him in the zeitgeist — and makes him subject to this retrospective list of his most notable films.

Here’s your guide to the best Austin Abrams movies to watch, arranged from his earliest parts to his most recent hits:

• Prior to his fame of being the guy behind The White Lotus, Mike White made some small dramedies for the big screen, including this 2017 White Guy Midlife Crisis movie led by Ben Stiller, playing a reasonably successful but insecure fella who’s jealous of his peers’ achievements — and also of his son’s achievements-to-be. Abrams plays that son, an optimistic go-getter who bonds with his old man as they tour Ivy League colleges. It’s an excellent showcase for Abrams, who holds his own dramatically and comedically across from a wily Hollywood vet.

  Read more about brad’s status

• There are far worse gigs than to be sandwiched between Brad Pitt and George Clooney in a wiseass crime-com written and directed by the guy who helmed three Spider-Man movies (Jon Watts). The superstar duo play rival fixers and Abrams is the schmuck stuck in the middle, a drugged-out doof who leads them on a One Crazy Night wild goose chase that gives our guy an opportunity to make us laugh by giving the film some big loser energy. Not a home run by any means, movie- or performance-wise, but an enjoyable-enough diversion for those intrigued by Abrams’ comedic talents.

  Read more about wolfs

• For many young actors, YA movies are a rite of passage, and this melodramatic coming-of-ager (or Melancholy Indie Rock Romance, if you’re feeling flippant) gave Abrams a reasonably juicy and complex co-headlining role that nudged him a little further into the spotlight. He and Lili Reinhart play teens awkwardly navigating yearnful feelings and the tragedies of life, and all that, after they meet in the office of the school newspaper. She walks with a cane and is into poetry and her overall demeanor is obviously troubled, and he tries to crack that nut, and it’s all quite serious, of course. Fairly standard tropes of the genre, sure, but the film’s more thoughtful than most of its ilk, and memorable, and for that we should credit Reinhart and Abrams’ strong dramatic performances. Abrams stands out in his more comedic roles, but this one showcases his versatility.

  Read more about chemical hearts

• This Netflick finds Abrams third-billed beneath Camila Mendes and Maya Hawke in Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s (2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer remake) Heathers-y high school satire. He plays the sneaky, cheating, sex-tape-leaking creep who’s the object of the thing in the title, and it’s fun to see him shift from the naivete of his Chemical Hearts character to being a loathsome, villainesque representation of ye olde toxic masculinity. A fun one.

  Read more about do revenge

• Don’t overlook this harrowing doozy of a drama about fraternity hazing that might be Abrams most complex role yet. He plays an arrogant and entitled freshman at a Deep South university who’s pledging to join Toxic Alpha Toxic, and his tone and demeanor is a serious threat in the eyes of the arrogant and entitled upperclassmen leading the frat. So many icky characters here, and this is peak Abrams, finding some core humanity in a loathsome guy who deserves some form of come-uppance, but maybe not one quite like this.

  Read more about the line

• Zach Cregger’s 2025 horror masterpiece gave Abrams his highest-profile platform yet, as the funny-slash-disturbing quasi-comedy rocketed to $270 million at the box office and became the year’s most prominent watercooler movie. Part of a brilliantly cast and arranged ensemble, Abrams plays a homeless drug addict who unwittingly peels back a layer of the mystery behind a missing-children case, and the character’s desperation is the source of some of the film’s dark comedy, a key component of its success. He’s a major cog in this well-oiled machine of a movie, one of the most provocative in recent memory.

  Read more about weapons

• Few things in 2026 were funnier than Abrams muttering WTFs to himself under his breath in this $400 million hit, Cregger’s follow-up to Weapons, which reanimated a moribund zombie franchise based on legacy video-game IP. Abrams is the primary driver of an episodic, sparsely plotted sort-of-survivalist action-horror saga, and he’s never been funnier as his hapless almost-slacker protag stumbles from one gruesome scenario to the next. He’s in nearly every shot of the movie, which likely broadened his fanbase from cinemaphiles and Euphoria junkies to more general audiences.

  Read more about resident evil

• Whalefall

  This is easily the best swallowed-whole-by-a-whale movie ever — with all due respect to Pinocchio, which, conceptually speaking, isn’t just a swallowed-whole-by-a-whale movie, and also to Jonah: A Veggietales Movie, which is in a category of its own. Quite the subgenre we have here. Anyway, where was I? Right: Abrams. His performance soaked up a goodly amount of this movie’s accolades, between the physical survival sequences and soapy flashbacks that actually allow him to deliver dialogue that isn’t glub-glub-glub. If you’re not looking forward to what Abrams does next, you’re not watching closely enough.

  Read more about whalefall

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.