Stop! That! Train! is one of 2026's best-reviewed films—clock the data
Among critics, the first-ever RuPaul's Drag Race movie is outperforming Star Wars, Spielberg, and long-awaited sequels.
2026 has been a disruptive year for cinema. Six months in, several indies have managed to literally outperform massive blockbusters in box office gross, critical acclaim, and social media buzz.
Kane Parsons, 20, turned a digital world he created into the Backrooms movie, which shattered box office expectations and became A24’s biggest opening weekend of all time. 26-year-old Curry Barker, who also made a name for himself on YouTube, wrote and directed one of the most popular horror films of the decade: Obsession.
But even as those films set new expectations for moviegoers, it was hard to imagine that a comedy-disaster film starring RuPaul’s Drag Race queens — made with a tiny budget and shot in just 17 days — would receive a warm reception from mainstream media outlets.
And just like that, Stop! That! Train! entered the chat.
Stop! That! Train! currently holds an 83% Tomatometer score, which puts it in the upper echelon of Rotten Tomatoes reviews compared to other live-action films released in 2026.
Namely, the Drag Race movie has a higher Tomatometer score than the gigantic Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu (62%); the buzzy Masters of the Universe (68%); and various fan-favorite sequels like The Devil Wears Prada 2 (77%), Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (75%), Mortal Kombat II (64%), Scream 7 (30%), and Scary Movie 7 (24%).
The biggest gag of the season? Stop! That! Train! premiered on the same day as Steven Spielberg’s highly anticipated Disclosure Day — and the aliens are losing to the drag queens!
Yes, you read that right. Spielberg’s Disclosure Day currently has an 80% score on Rotten Tomatoes, thus ranking below Stop! That! Train!’s 83% as of this writing.
Considering Tomatometer scores, Stop! That! Train! ranks below four films from 2026: Obsession (94%), Project Hail Mary (94%), I Love Boosters (92%), and Backrooms (88%).
Altogether, I see five movies that took big swings; weren’t helped by established cinematic franchises; and leaned on ambition, authorship, and audacity over algorithms.
Ultimately, the so-called “greatest trainwreck in herstory” is serving critically acclaimed realness while establishing itself as one of the best-reviewed live-action movies of 2026 on Rotten Tomatoes.
To be clear: a Rotten Tomatoes score is one way to measure a movie’s success and popularity. Success can also be measured by box office gross, by award nominations (and wins), by the ability to introduce greater cinematic universes, and other metrics deemed important to Hollywood execs.
There isn’t a catch-all way to measure success and determine which project is better than the other, but reviews are certainly taken into consideration by the industry.
With that said, it’s pretty incredible to see Stop! That! Train! getting rave reviews from The New York Times, The Guardian, Vulture, NPR, Mashable, Deadline, Them, Variety, and ScreenRant, and that’s just a few.
You better werk, indeed.