Rent EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (2025)

Slightly Shook - EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert review by griggs

I’ll admit I was mildly suspicious on two counts: I’ve never been much of an Elvis person, and I’d swerved Luhrmann’s 2022 biopic entirely in favour of Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, which had the decency to check into the heartbreak hotel of the myth rather than just fall in love with the jumpsuits. A Luhrmann follow-up built from rediscovered archive footage sounded like the kind of idea that should have been returned to sender. Turns out I was wrong, and EPiC earns its daft capitalisation.

Built from long-lost Vegas footage, rare 16mm from the road, scraps of 8mm from Graceland, and recordings that let Presley more or less narrate himself, it becomes something genuinely new: not quite a concert film, not quite a documentary, but a sustained argument for why he mattered. The editing does the heavy lifting. Luhrmann intercutting multiple performances into single songs occasionally misfires, but the extended Suspicious Minds sequence is extraordinary. You feel the room, the heat, the whole performance tipping from control into burning love.

A few songs end before they should — don’t be cruel, Baz — it’s now or never on that extra verse, a little less conversation, a little more letting them play out, and this might have been even better. Worth it anyway.