When you picture Robin Hood, you probably imagine the classic heroic tales: a brightly green-clad outlaw, donning a longbow and a feathered bycocket. Well, to paraphrase the old adage, this isn’t your grandmother’s Robin Hood. Here, Hugh Jackman embodies a blend of his finest roles: Jean Valjean in Les Misérables (2012) and the title character of Logan (2017). He’s ageing, broken, and rugged. His vibrant costume has been swapped for a more period-accurate depiction set against a brutal Scottish landscape. With a deep, whitish-grey beard and hair, he looks more like Santa Claus than Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). In The Death of Robin Hood, we see the legendary outlaw as he’s never been shown on the big screen before.

Early in the film, Robin and his closest ally, Little John (Bill Skarsgård), scout out the farm belonging to John’s wife. With their outlaw past behind them but their crimes still catching up, John urges Robin to consider a new life—a chance to move on from the violence of their younger days.

“There are open lands past the mountains,” John says. “I don’t aim to begin again,” Robin replies. That line lands heavily, offering the sharpest insight into Robin Hood of Locksley. Robbing the rich to give to the poor? That’s not exactly what writer-director Michael Sarnoski is interested in exploring.

There have been plenty of darker takes on the legend recently, such as Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood (2010) starring Russell Crowe, and even the Guy Ritchie-esque Robin Hood (2018) featuring Taron Egerton. Yet, Sarnoski’s interpretation introduces us to Robin Hood at his absolute oldest. He could be in his 50s, like Jackman, or his 80s—it’s the Middle Ages, after all, so people aged differently. It offers a portrait of the marksman we haven’t seen before: old, jaded, and waiting for the end. No longer do we have the swashbuckling hero of Errol Flynn, the charismatic Disney fox, or even Jonas Armstrong’s short-lived tenure in the BBC’s Robin Hood (2006-09). Personally, I still view that three-season series as one of the most entertaining live-action adaptations we’ve had. Jackman and Sarnoski’s Robin Hood, however, is truly unique. Yet, as bold a swing as it is—and despite being performed with great sincerity by the cast—I’m not entirely convinced it was the right one.

After a gruesome encounter leaves Little John hunted by a local lord, the Elderfather (Clive Russell), Robin is left to defend John and his young daughter, Little Margaret (Faith Delaney). His youthful agility and skill are long gone, leaving Robin battered and hanging onto life by a thread.

“I’ve heard stories of a priory hidden away,” John tells Robin as the latter lies paralysed in the back of an ox cart, reminiscent of Sotnikov in Larisa Shepitko’s World War II film, The Ascent (1977). ‘I’ll take you to her, and she’ll make you well again.’ As we’ve already heard from Robin in the opening scenes, he might eventually be made physically whole again, but he’ll never be mentally or emotionally restored.

At the priory, Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer) nurses Robin until he’s able to stand and assist with daily tasks. Before long, Little Margaret is brought to the sanctuary by the local Leper (Murray Bartlett), and Robin begins to find new meaning in this secluded lifestyle.

Before reaching the sanctuary, however, The Death of Robin Hood is unflinchingly brutal. Arrows to the eyeball, crushing bones, and strangulations in the mud are all beautifully captured on 35mm film by cinematographer Pat Scola. The movie is unambiguously anti-violence, yet the sheer savagery of the first act makes it difficult to reconcile with its own themes.

The director François Truffaut once told The Chicago Tribune: “I find that violence is very ambiguous in movies. For example, some films claim to be anti-war, but I don’t think I’ve really seen an anti-war film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war.” While masterpieces like Come and See (1985) have since challenged this argument, Truffaut’s point about this inherent dichotomy remains valid. Sometimes, the over-the-top violence meant to repel us becomes so stylised that the filmmaker’s message gets lost in the artistry. The unfiltered brutality of those opening action scenes definitely teeters on the edge of that line. Perhaps that’s why the film’s meditative second act emerges as its greatest strength.

As Robin’s strength returns, he grows closer to Brigid and the Leper, who help him view a second chance at life as a genuine possibility. This shift allows the actors to truly explore the humanity at the core of the story.

Jodie Comer (28 Years Later) is exceptionally powerful as the prioress drawn to the mysterious outlaw. Comer, a known chameleon when it comes to dialects, drops her native Scouse for a seamless Scottish accent here. Beyond her vocal mastery, Comer has consistently tackled complex, multi-dimensional roles since her star-making turn in Killing Eve (2018-2022). Sarnoski’s finest screenwriting flourish is creating Brigid as the perfect companion for a broken Robin—a woman who is, in her own way, a pained and reborn nun. Comer beautifully unlocks the harsh tension between human desire and spiritual rebirth.

Equally surprising is Murray Bartlett’s supporting role as the Leper. In true medieval fashion, he’s covered head to toe in bandages to halt the spread of his incurable condition. With his features hidden away, Bartlett delivers an unbelievable, standout performance using only the cadence of his voice and his physical presence, moving through scenes like a spectre of Hood’s past.

Jackman delivers his best performance since Logan, providing a powerful central anchor for the film. While it’s far from a classic interpretation of the character, he showcases an impressive emotional range: a man torn between a dark past and an unfamiliar glimmer of hope. He also taps into a primal nature that feels less like the legendary archer and more like an authentic reflection of a desperate, deprived era. In one striking scene, Robin walks into a dark cave during an impending storm, his face illuminated only by the flicker of his torch. In that moment, he looks terrifyingly demonic, an image beautifully undercut by the scene’s subsequent tender interaction. This showcases the film’s greatest charm: raw, authentic acting viewed through a genuinely artistic lens.

The narrative culminates beautifully in the second act when Hood confronts the Elderfather’s nephew, Godwyn (Noah Jupe), who is on his own destructive path. Jupe (Hamnet) is slightly underutilised, but it’s exciting to watch his growth as an actor as he commands the screen alongside a veteran like Jackman. Their conversation is the highlight of the movie. Unfortunately, The Death of Robin Hood begins to drag once this moment passes.

It’s the overarching arc of Jackman’s character that ultimately falls apart under close scrutiny. He’s violent, and past atrocities are frequently hinted at. Yet, according to legend, it’s Robin’s magnanimous spirit that elevates him to a folk hero. The film discards this entirely, framing his actions against the rich and the “bad” (as Robin calls them) as fundamentally unforgivable. Modern audiences are far more jaded than those of the 20th-century, particularly regarding class consciousness. Are Robin Hood’s actions so irrevocably evil that his altruistic end goals don’t matter? The filmmakers make that decision for the audience, leaving the final third of the movie to linger in a bleak darkness without properly dissecting what his legacy means. To them, the simple message that ‘violence is bad’ is deemed a sufficient theme.

Ultimately, The Death of Robin Hood is easily the finest ‘dark’ adaptation of the character we’ve seen. It features a sharp psychological dissection of its protagonist—a strength Sarnoski previously demonstrated in his directorial debut, Pig (2021). The score’s moody crescendos and quiet, thoughtful moments perfectly match the unfolding drama, and the colour grading is masterfully executed. While audiences may suffer from “greyscale fatigue” in modern cinema, this film uses its visual palette with immense skill, and the 35mm format looks spectacular. Elevated by a brilliant ensemble cast, The Death of Robin Hood is a worthy, visually stunning entry into the outlaw’s canon. It’s only the film’s narrow thematic outlook that prevents it from becoming something truly transcendent—a story that could deeply resonate in a modern world grappling with its own fractured societies.

USA | 2026 | 122 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Michael Sarnoski
writer: Michael Sarnoski (based on the ballad ‘Robin Hood’s Death’ by Anonymous).
starring: Hugh Jackman, Jodie Comer, Bill Skarsgård, Murray Bartlett, Faith Delaney, Clive Russell & Noah Jupe.

The post THE DEATH OF ROBIN HOOD (2026) appeared first on Frame Rated.

Netflix presents audiences with yet another Harlan Coben adaptation. The crime author’s adaptations, including Fool Me Once (2024) and Missing You (2025), have dominated their chart, but they’re hardly renowned for their quality. This latest miniseries, adapted from Coben’s 2023 novel, features his usual brand of outlandish twists, family secrets and missing children.

Fans of Coben will be as gripped as ever by I Will Find You, but those not yet indoctrinated may struggle with the unrealistic twists, ham-fisted dialogue and flat performances. Somehow, though, it’s all so outlandish that it’s hard to turn away. You’ll want to keep watching just to see how the writers extract themselves from such ridiculous plots and resolve such a ludicrous narrative.

I Will Find You follows David Burroughs (Sam Worthington), a man serving life behind bars for the murder of his young son. One day, his life is turned upside down when his investigative journalist sister-in-law (Britt Lower) visits him with evidence that his son is still alive. Luckily, his son has a highly distinctive birthmark on his cheek, which helps later in the story.

Naturally, David breaks out of jail on a mission to clear his name and find his son. The series follows much of the same formula as Coben’s previous work, only this time it’s set in America rather than his usual UK-centric outings. Because of the transatlantic move, we’re now treated to gunfights, car chases and explosive action scenes. Just what we needed!

On David’s tail is Max Williams (Chi McBride), a legend in the FBI’s Fugitive Task Force, and his daughter, Sarah (Logan Browning). They speak exclusively in police procedural clichés, as if starring in a Leslie Nielsen project. He’s the wise old cop doing one last job; she’s the plucky but inexperienced daughter trying to win her father’s respect. It hits every beat you could imagine.

Somehow involved in this web of red herrings are Rachel’s ex-boyfriend-turned-confidant Hayden (Milo Ventimiglia) and David’s ex-wife, Cheryl (Erin Richards). Clancy Brown’s crime boss and Madeleine Stowe’s big-pharma heiress also slot themselves into the grand tapestry of the story. There are multiple shady villains who might not actually be bad guys, but they all blend into one by the end. It doesn’t really matter who any of these people are, anyway; they’re all thinly written and exist solely to highlight individual plot points.

And a web it is, as the story weaves in and out of prison conspiracies, big-pharma conspiracies, international conspiracies and one final episode twist that will leave you scratching your head as to how we got there. Adapted by Robert Hull (Gotham), this story relies on everything falling exactly into place, and on every character being stupid enough to know only a very specific amount of information. The script also loves to introduce people, places and jobs, only for them never to be mentioned again, while ignoring what should be key milestones in these characters’ lives. At times, it feels like this show was a mix of five drafts sewn together without an edit—or as if they ran Coben’s other shows through an AI generator and asked it to create an Americanised version.

I Will Find You lurches from one red herring to another, leaving a canyon of plot holes in its wake. The obsession with prioritizing dead ends over a cohesive, flowing story means you’ll be left scratching your head about numerous narrative strands. As the story barrels forward, it leaves a trail of questions in the rearview mirror that it has no intention of resolving. To enjoy it, you’ll have to turn your brain off and get caught in the riptide of the show’s stupidity.

It may have worked better as a four-part series or a film, although a more boring one. The joy—and the downside—of this series is that different groups of people with the same mission all repeat the same exposition. This means you may hear the same revelation or clue four or five times an episode. That’s terrible for standard TV viewing, but great for anyone looking to put some nonsense on in the background while scrolling social media.

Sam Worthington is poor here, but he hardly has the material to work with. Britt Lower also gives a wooden performance that lacks any of the nuances of her Severance character. The quality of the acting does improve when Milo Ventimiglia is on screen; he almost manages to make the dialogue seem plausible. Almost.

Despite its many, many faults, it’s hard to look away from I Will Find You—not because it’s good, but out of sheer morbid curiosity. Just when you think you’ve grasped what’s happening, there’s a new outrageous twist. You’ll click to watch the next episode in desperation to find out what happens. It’s not because the show is gripping or engaging, but because you’ll be desperate to see just how mad it gets. This is by no means the worst adaptation of a Harlan Coben novel; it’s car-crash TV at its absolute best.

USA | 2026 | 8 EPISODES | 2.00:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

writers: Robert Hull, Steven Lilien, Bryan Wynbrandt & Heather Mitchell (based on the novel by Harlan Coben).
directors: Brad Anderson, Maja Vrvilo, Adam Davidson & Maggie Kiley.
starring: Sam Worthington, Britt Lower, Milo Ventimiglia, Erin Richards, Jonathan Tucker, Madeleine Stowe, Clancy Brown, Logan Browning, Vas Saranga & Chi McBride.

The post I WILL FIND YOU – Limited Series (2026) appeared first on Frame Rated.

Director and dramatist Shūji Terayama remains largely overlooked beyond the shores of Japan, despite being recognised as one of the most provocative voices of the nation’s post-war counterculture. It’s high time a fresh audience rediscovered his films, and this new HD transfer of The Boxer, making its world Blu-ray premiere via Radiance, presents the ideal opportunity. While it might not be entirely representative of his audacious avant-garde style, it is perhaps the perfect place to start because it is the only film he made for a major studio. Working with Toei’s budget and resources afforded him new creative avenues to explore, while ensuring he did not stray too far from cinematic conventions. Yet, it remains stylistically bold and satisfyingly experimental.

By the late-1970s, all of Japan’s studios were struggling with a volatile market. The proliferation of colour television posed a significant challenge, and big-budget Hollywood imports dominated the box office. It seemed audiences had tired of the jidaigeki (period costume dramas) that had been Toei’s mainstay; following a string of misfires and flops, 1977 became the studio’s annus horribilis. Innovation was desperately needed, so executives looked to new talent while simultaneously playing it safe by churning out movies that pastiched foreign blockbusters at a fraction of the cost.

Rocky (1976) had been a massive hit during the spring of 1977, prompting Toei to commission the versatile screenwriter Fumio Ishimori to quickly rattle off a distinctly Japanese take on the story. Ishimori was known for his work on the popular television series Kamen Rider (1972) and Ultraman Ace (1972–73), alongside The Legend of Love & Sincerity trilogy (1974–76)—a series of highly melodramatic youth movies.

Shūji Terayama and his frequent collaborator Rio Kishida co-wrote the final screenplay. Terayama tailored it to his own uncompromising vision by reducing the reliance on dialogue, while Kishida injected a feminist subtext to counter the central machismo. When considered alongside the director’s own life, certain elements of the story take on a poignant,autobiographical resonance.

The enigma at the core of The Boxer’s relatively simple narrative is why champion boxer Hayato (Bunta Sugawara) stopped fighting mid-match. He was clearly winning when he suddenly quit, lowered his guard, and allowed his opponent to pummel him into submission. Did he see his younger self in his adversary and think the kid deserved a chance? Did he intentionally throw the fight due to gangland pressure? Did he realise how much victory meant to his opponent and choose to render it meaningless? Or had he simply had enough of everything?

This dilemma recalls the philosophical heart of Henry Miller’s 1956 novella The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder,though that featured a circus clown with no physical adversary and offered a more subtle fable of the self against “the other”. Of course, boxing has long lent itself to powerful literary metaphors. Ernest Hemingway and Charles Bukowski come readily to mind, but the tradition spans a broad variety of media—from Simon & Garfunkel’s 1970 song “The Boxer” to Harry Crews’s 1988 novel The Knockout Artist, and even the “Domino the Destitute” story arc from Coheed and Cambria’s multimedia Amory Wars albums and graphic novels.

Before Rocky, several seminal films noirs dealt with boxing and its murky surrounding world, notably Champion (1949)—starring Kirk Douglas and adapted from the 1924 short story by the appropriately named Ring Lardner.Probably the most famous precursor is Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954), starring Marlon Brando and immortalised by the legendary line, “I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody…” John Huston’s Fat City (1972), based on the 1969 novel by Leonard Gardner, also shares significant thematic overlaps. Terayama’s film is a worthy addition to this lineage, and far more than a mere historical footnote.

Aged 10, Terayama was displaced by war when his family home burned to the ground during the intense bombing of Aomori. This trauma deeply marked him, leaving him with a fatalistic appreciation of the fragility of established social structures and the precariousness of the lives sustained within them.

Aged 18, while studying at the Department of Japanese Language and Literature at Waseda University, he won the second Tanka Research Newcomer Award for poetry, but dropped out before completing his degree. He, too, quit while he was winning—though his departure was forced by nephritis, a serious kidney condition that required prolonged hospitalisation, rather than an attempt to make a philosophical statement.

Since his inexplicable surrender in the ring, Hayato has been on a downward spiral. His marriage has failed, and he now lives with his dog in a shabby boarding house, drinking away the days. His ex-wife, Harumi (Masumi Harukawa),works in a hostess bar but wants to reconcile. His daughter, Mizue (Yōko Natsuki), is a lost soul clinging to the last vestiges of youthful innocence while dreaming of escaping the poverty trap that ensnared her parents. Hayato’s brother (Takeshi Wakamatsu) works at the same scrapyard as Tenma (Kentarô Shimizu). Both men rival for the affections of Kazuyo (Hiroko Isayama), who has just announced her engagement to Hayato’s brother when Tenma, operating a crane, drops part of a wrecked truck on him. We see that the crane controls are old and rickety, and that Tenma was looking elsewhere at the time, but ambiguity surrounds the tragedy. When Tenma repeatedly asserts it was an accident,it sounds very much as though he is trying to convince himself.

Naturally, when Tenma shows up at Hayato’s place offering incense for his deceased brother, he is entirely unwelcome.Yet Tenma, a rookie boxer himself, deeply admires Hayato. When his own trainer rejects him because of a minor disability, he pesters the ex-champion to teach him how to compensate for his weak ankle. After a rocky start, a genuine friendship develops as Tenma weaves himself into a position akin to a substitute, if antagonistic, sibling.

There is no denying that The Boxer retains similar narrative beats to Rocky, including the mandatory extended training montage. However, the relationship between the washed-up Hayato and his angry young protégé never edges into the mawkish sentimentality seen between Mickey (Burgess Meredith) and Rocky (Sylvester Stallone).

In 1967, alongside his partner Eiko Kujo and other creative collaborators, Terayama formed the radical collective Tenjo Sajiki. Their interdisciplinary practice centred on ambitious street theatre, with performances spreading over several days and across multiple locations. The narratives of these “city-plays” were mostly abstract and non-linear, drawing comparisons with the art of Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol rather than traditional Japanese theatrical forms. Terayama quickly earned notoriety as a fiercely avant-garde poet, dramatist, photographer, and experimental filmmaker. In Japan, he’s revered for forging a new visual lexicon for the expressive arts, exploring these groundbreaking theories alongside co-editor Masahiko Akuta in the influential journal Underground Drama / 地下演劇.

As a theatrical dramatist, Terayama elicits powerful performances across the board. He constructs character not solely through dialogue and action, but through subtext and reaction. He strictly adheres to the “show, don’t tell” ethos, deploying words primarily to establish an atmosphere from which character naturally manifests. Despite a fairly rigid narrative structure, the film’s subtler threads grow from character interaction—or purposeful avoidance. He also successfully weaves in beautifully incongruous scenes, using unconventional camera movements, heavy colour casts, and varied lighting textures to paint a patchwork of emotional environments.

Cinematographer Tatsuo Suzuki deserves equal credit for this distinctive use of colour, which is occasionally so saturated that the image becomes virtually monochrome. One scene is bathed entirely in green, another in mauve, while the early morning exercise routines are conducted in deep blue. Place becomes character, and mise-en-scène replaces dialogue.

This role must rank among Bunta Sugawara’s most nuanced and vulnerable performances. He is perhaps better remembered for starring in Kinji Fukasaku’s brutal yakuza franchise, Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973–76), and for his earlier, more chivalrous anti-heroes in the Red Peony Gambler series (1968–72).

Relative newcomer Kentarô Shimizu impressively conveys a complex, ambiguous character who is by no means an honourable or compassionate person. He is genuinely unlikable at times, and we only root for him because we know his background, understand his physical limitation, and have witnessed his vulnerable side. But then, do we not always root for the underdog? The fight scenes themselves are unglamourised, visceral, and painful to watch.

Boxing serves as a recurring metaphor to explore the struggle against systemic adversity, including class divisions,racial prejudice, and social conflict. It is also the only major sport where both enduring pain and intentionally inflicting injury are fundamental to success. Because it’s a one-on-one sport, the fighters become pared-back symbols of the self and “the other”, each trying to define themselves through opposition. Hayato encourages Tenma to channel his anger into a focused hatred that he can vent in the ring. This dynamic explores the hatred of the opponent as an expression of self-loathing—especially since the fighters closely mirror one another, are bound by the same rules, and often share identical socio-economic circumstances. This exploration carries just as much, if not more, social resonance today, as modern media outlets routinely promote false dichotomies and stoke hatred of “the other” for political leverage.

In his native Japan, Shūji Terayama’s career was adorned with accolades and critical respect, yet he remained comparatively obscure overseas. His plays were complex and ephemeral, and few of his highly contentious,controversial films ever secured international distribution—some failing to clear local censorship laws even when submitted for festival screenings.

There were notable exceptions. Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974) was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes and for Best Feature at the Chicago International Film Festival. Subsequently, Terayama was appointed to the official jury for the 26th Berlin International Film Festival in 1976. A decade later, his global relevance was cemented by Farewell to the Ark (1984), which brought another Palme d’Or nomination and won both the Caixa de Catalunya for Best Director and the International Critics’ Jury Prize at the Sitges Film Festival. Regrettably, these final honours were awarded posthumously.

In 1983, aged just 47, Terayama died of cirrhosis—possibly exacerbated by his chronic nephritis, but more likely linked to the habitual heavy drinking of his youth. The purpose-built Shūji Terayama Memorial Hall and Museum in Misawa, Aomori Prefecture, opened in 1997 and houses an extensive collection of personal effects and theatrical props celebrating his remarkable life and works.

JAPAN | 1977 | 94 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | JAPANESE

Limited Edition Blu-ray Special Features:

• High definition digital transfer.
• Original uncompressed mono audio.
• NEW interview with composer J.A. Seazer (2026, 18 mins.) Following Terayama’s untimely death, musician J.A Seazer joined other core collaborators from Tenjo Sajiki in establishing the Experimental Laboratory of Theatre ◎ Universal Gravitation (演劇実験室◎万有引力) — sometimes simply denoted by the symbol ◎ alone — which pursued the same challenging spirit of ritualistic, esoteric, often abstract forms of drama. Here he recalls his first meeting and how Terayama would encourage youngsters with a creative bent to strike out on their own and discover their inherent talents. He’d joined the troupe as an actor but later switched to musician at the director’s suggestion and went on to provide the eclectic, experimental soundscapes for live performances as well as Terayama’s films. Here, he reminisces and shares insight into the lively creative scene surrounding Tenjo Sajiki during that period of cultural regeneration amid socioeconomic turmoil
• The Year Toie Failed — NEW visual essay on Toei studio in the year 1977 by Tom Mes (2026, 12 mins.) In which he tracks the challenges and pitfalls of a year when the studios had lost their way and were searching for a new identity, experimenting with exploitation, gore and ‘pinky violence’ porn. They found hope in Sonny Chiba’s martial arts movies and the harsh ‘true account’ yakuza fare of Kinji Fukasaku and finally clawed their reputation back the following year with the impressive period epic The Fall of Akō Castle (1978)
• NEW and improved English subtitle translation
• Reversible sleeve featuring artwork based on original posters
• Limited Edition booklet featuring new writing by Maria Roberta Novielli. Not available at time of review.
• Limited Edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings.

Cast & Crew

director: Shūji Terayama.
writers: Fumio Ishimori, Rio Kishida & Shūji Terayama.
starring: Bunta Sugawara, Kentarō Shimizu, Masumi Harukawa, Hiroko Isayama, Yōko Natsuki Juro Kara, Shoichi Ozawa, Keiko Niitaka.

The post THE BOXER (1977) appeared first on Frame Rated.

Click is a curious film, one at war with its own premise. Though the execution is middling, the central idea is a winner: an embittered, work-obsessed businessman, Michael Newman (Adam Sandler), finds himself skipping forward in time to reach a place of contentment. Many of us do this in figurative ways, listlessly letting time slip by, too caught up in our weary routines to notice life running out from under us. If you let the problem escalate, as Michael does to a horrifying extent, you risk waking up to the reality of your situation, observing the debris of your senseless lifestyle without being able to pinpoint when it started to crumble. At that point, it would be tempting to indulge a defeatist mindset—but there is no end, not as long as you are still breathing.

But that is reality. While Click has some worthwhile things to say about it, its central premise is far more terrifying. On a late-night trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond to purchase a universal remote, Michael bemoans his life and its constant complications. Issues at work are a given, firmly cemented in his mind as obstacles to overcome. His family is just another difficulty to heap onto the pile; loved ones become irritating obligations and family trips are cancelled in favour of changing work plans. Purchasing a remote is exactly the kind of minor inconvenience that would take very little out of Michael in calmer circumstances, but it proves to be the last straw for this overworked protagonist.

While there, he stumbles into a back room that resembles a blend of a warehouse and a laboratory. Only one worker is present: the mad-scientist-esque Morty (Christopher Walken). Anyone familiar with Walken will expect eccentricities before he even opens his mouth, and Click is no different. This odd, seemingly fantastic figure offers Michael the ultimate universal remote: a device that can alter time. The only downside is that the remote cannot be returned—but why care about that when it does exactly what is required?

It’s only when Michael gets home that he realises this magical device can alter the very fabric of reality, contorting it to his anger-induced whims. If more time at work is needed, necessitating cancelled family plans and disappointed loved ones, what better use of the remote than to skip to the end of the project? What about just before sex, when his conspicuously gorgeous, perfect wife, Donna (Kate Beckinsale), asks for a massage? What could be the harm in fast-forwarding to skip right to the main event?

It does not take a keen analyst to recognise that this “too good to be true” premise is shaping up to be just that. By skipping through life, Michael removes all obligations and obstacles. But with his main difficulties gone, what about the new ones that will inevitably follow? Our lives are never problem-free; if they were, we would probably become as listless as Michael when he flash-forwards through time, these intervals of lost time continually expanding. By prioritising destinations, the journey of life is rendered null and void.

The protagonist does not disappear—that would be no good, since he needs to be physically present for Donna and his two children, Samantha (Danielle Tatum McCann) and Ben (Joseph Castanon). Instead, he effectively sleepwalks through life, present in body but offering little in the way of company or personality.

Click does not ignore the fantastical elements of its premise, working through them with ease. Viewers are never left baffled by the ridiculousness of the concept, which is mostly used to explore the human condition instead of genre flashiness. (A few short sequences laden with SFX would beg to differ, but they are few and far between and, surprisingly, do not look particularly dated.) The film’s starting point might be distinctly sci-fi, but this does not carry over to its beating heart. Michael continually makes the worst decisions possible, for reasons that are entirely understandable given his mental state and the terrible power with which he is burdened.

But a science-fiction premise and poignancy about the human condition are not the only tonal elements at work. The film is not nearly so capable of making its broad comedy or treacly sentimentality work, let alone effectively blending the two. On the latter front, Click is often overwrought; if it cannot wrangle a tear from your eye, it’s unlikely to win you over.

Yet just as frequent as the dramatic beats are the comedic notes, with Sandler finally putting a semi-human face on his typical comedic style, where a caricatural one usually resided. A titan of the genre by this time, with some of his greatest hits having just arrived in the rearview mirror, it’s difficult now to imagine how much Click shook up casual moviegoers’ expectations. Viewing it today, 20 years after its release and with its reputation as an unlikely tearjerker long since solidified, I found myself more surprised and distracted by the film’s dreadful comedy.

Click’s simple but profound poignancy is ignored for insufferable stretches—such as when Michael decides to freeze time just to wiggle his ass in his boss’s face and fart. In case any reader is clamouring to know whether pantsing and kicks to the nuts are incorporated, rest assured that every inane joke imaginable related to this premise occurs here.

Imagine, for a moment, if A Christmas Carol featured one of the ghosts farting in Ebenezer Scrooge’s face. Doing so brings you a few steps closer to understanding the tonal whiplash that enshrouds Click. There is room for comedy here, but not in the crass way this film taps into Sandler’s typical style. In this sense, and numerous others, the blueprint for Click’s success can be found in another Sandler film, Uncut Gems (2019), which presented an even more unconventional starring role for the superstar.

In Josh and Benny Safdie’s crime caper, comedy and drama intertwine seamlessly, coalescing around a garish, selfish, and pitiful gambling addict. The more time you spend with the protagonist, Howard Ratner (Sandler), the funnier and sadder the film becomes. Life is a sick joke for an unrepentant gambler chasing the next high and sprinting away from the enemies he amasses along the way. If you don’t laugh, you will surely cry.

You want to shake your head at this wayward loser—you even want to shake him by the scruff of his neck—but only because you care. Why we care about someone so openly selfish remains a mystery. Yet there is a strange charm in watching this brazen figure allow himself to be utterly repugnant, his natural charisma and crassness bleeding through in constant excess.

That same crass, selfish streak infects Michael, but it bleeds out in bland, formulaic ways: he lashes out at his faultless, impossibly gorgeous wife or angrily dismisses his kids’ efforts to win his good graces. He’s a stereotypical deadbeat dad by the time the film begins, and he only gets worse over time, as short-term ease corrupts any chance of long-term happiness. The treacly sentimentality—laid on so thick it’s hard to glimpse the emotional resonance at Click’s tragic core—is continually undercut by broad comedic bits that feel entirely disconnected from Michael or the wider film. Most of the gags could work just as well in any other movie.

There is nothing specific about Michael, who remains a walking, talking trope of the foolish businessman too focused on the corporate ladder to consider anyone else. He’s a ridiculous figure, just as much as Howard, but the influence of a capitalist, go-getting society has rid him of the ability to see it. Each hollow pay cheque is still real, even if chasing career success separates him from the people who matter most. Yet even at its most dumbed-down and heavy-handed, there are glimmers of storytelling gold, as the device maps onto Michael’s habits, skipping through giant chunks of his life in alignment with his previous wishes.

These sequences soar in brief snippets because of the ideas underpinning them and Sandler’s compelling lead performance. But screenwriters Steve Koren and Mark O’Keefe are too constricted by their limited ambitions and, presumably, the interests of appeasing financiers, to make viewers sit with Michael’s mistakes. In order for this waking nightmare to be at its most potent, these continued reminders of a wasted life should be slowly draped over the story, delivering a cold, sinking feeling that is as dire as it is inescapable.

Instead, these characters become unrecognisable over time, since there was little beyond a trope and a grand plot motivation guiding their characterisation. As Michael is forced to reckon with the tragedy of confronting his grown-up, unknowable children, another kind of tragedy emerges for the viewer: an inability to connect with his pain, since his children were always unknowable to the film’s creatives.

Just as Michael callously dismissed them before the magical remote control ruined his life, director Frank Coraci and writers Koren and O’Keefe do the very same thing throughout Click. Even minor glimpses of who they are—and who they might one day be—would be much appreciated. The less said of the oh-so-perfect wife, the better, as well as the couple’s cringe-inducing “falling in love” sequence, involving a cocktail napkin, trite sentiment, and lazy reincorporation.

Even with these flaws, there is a kernel of beauty and tragedy in Click that I cannot—and do not want to—ignore. This It’s a Wonderful Life-inspired tragicomedy might have little going for it in a comedic sense, but it has such a winning premise that it is hard not to root for its success. Watching Sandler in a dramatic role is less illuminating now than it must have been 20 years ago, but it’s still gratifying to see him flex that aspect of his creative arsenal, especially when it’s still utilised so rarely.

Few actors could have pulled off this film’s blend of abject tragedy and crass humour, so it’s appealing to watch him take that gamble and succeed. But why should anyone have to try? Click, desperate for a hook and a reason to justify its $85M budget, casts big names and employs a hundred unfunny jokes to deliver its poignant message, leaving so little time to focus on its dramatic core that it wields its emotional moments with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

Living in the age of the remake is a painful reminder of the drudgery of mainstream cinema, but that does not mean there are no older films that could be successfully revived. One of them, undoubtedly, is Click, tapping into the timeless qualities of this script’s messaging. The only snag is that so few actors can pull off that blend of comedy and drama. So why blend the two at all?

USA | 2006 | 107 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH • SPANISH • JAPANESE • PORTUGUESE

Cast & Crew

director: Frank Coraci.
writers: Steve Koren & Mark O’Keefe.
starring: Adam Sandler, Christopher Walken, Kate Beckinsale, Henry Winkler, Julie Kavner, David Hasselhoff, Sean Astin, Danielle Tatum McCann & Joseph Castanon.

The post CLICK (2006) appeared first on Frame Rated.

A macabre murder mystery that fuses Gothic horror with stalk-and-slash suspense, Madhouse boasts a stellar cast spearheaded by two genre giants: Vincent Price and Peter Cushing. It should be a classic. Alas, it falls short on several counts. Yet despite its flaws, the film remains hugely enjoyable, and Eureka Entertainment’s cleaned-up HD presentation on Blu-ray will be welcomed by horror fans—especially those who first saw it during their formative years.

The opening scenes make little sense, though this only becomes apparent in retrospect. Even so, the unfolding events are at once satirical, shocking, and intriguing enough to pull the viewer into what promises to be an ingenious mystery.

At a New Year’s Eve soiree that is more sordid than chic, ageing movie star Paul Toombes (Vincent Price) screens the fifth instalment of his popular Dr Death franchise. These macabre movies feature a skull-faced villain who murders attractive women in sadistically inventive ways. We are treated to a re-dubbed clip from Roger Corman’s The Haunted Palace (1963), interspersed with shots of Toombes as a torch-bearing Dr Death. It was perhaps a mistake to remind us just how beautiful Corman’s Gothic aesthetic could be, as it sets an impossibly high bar. However, horror aficionados can look forward to further clips from the Corman-Price collaborations scattered throughout. Spotting these highlights—along with cameos from horror-heyday icons like Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone—is half the fun.

We are introduced to the key players at the screening party as Toombes acknowledges his friend Herbert Flay (Peter Cushing), the writer of the Dr Death scripts to whom he owes his fame and fortune. He also introduces his latest co-star, Ellen Mason (Julie Crosthwait), teasing that she has a worse fate in store than her predecessors… if she accepts his marriage proposal. She seems elated, but an old flame, Faye Carstairs (Adrienne Corri), is less than thrilled—as is pornographer Oliver Quayle (Robert Quarry), who smugly reveals Ellen’s previous starring roles in his films, and his bed. Suspecting Ellen of being a gold-digging, fame-obsessed starlet, a disillusioned Toombes immediately retracts his proposal and leaves in a huff.

A point-of-view sequence follows as someone dons Dr Death’s trademark black cape and fedora, creeping up behind Ellen in her boudoir with a dagger in a black-gloved hand. It’s a knowing trope straight out of the giallo playbook; the resemblance to the killer in Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace (1964) cannot be coincidental. Having dozed off, Toombes awakes with a pang of regret over his hasty judgement and decides to apologise. However, when he speaks to Ellen, he’s disconcerted by her silence. He affectionately touches her hair, only to dislodge her severed head from her torso.

How did the killer decapitate Ellen so neatly without leaving a trace of blood on her long blonde hair, her clothes, or the deep-pile white carpet? How is it possible that, so soon after death, there is not even a trickle of blood from such a surgically precise slice? We must be dealing with a mad genius who somehow dispatched his victim during a party, drained her body entirely of blood, and disposed of it without spillage or witnesses. It’s a technically audacious murder that The Abominable Dr Phibes (1971) would be proud of, promising a gruesome Gothic mystery worthy of C. Auguste Dupin. Unfortunately, Madhouse makes grand promises that it simply cannot keep.

Flash forward several years. Having been acquitted of his fiancée’s unsolved murder and following a stint in a psychiatric hospital, Toombes is coaxed out of retirement by Flay. He is to reprise his role as Dr Death for a British television series produced by Quayle, the now-reformed pornographer. However, as production begins, a series of murders mimicking the on-screen killings gets underway, and Toombes suspects he may be responsible while in a fugue state. It’s a plausible theory shared by Detective Bradshaw (Ian Thompson) and Inspector Harper (John Garrie), who are hot on his heels. From here, the plot veers away from the Gothic, feeling more like Columbo colliding with a second-rate giallo edited for teatime television.

As with many a giallo, any buxom blonde with a speaking part is essentially signing her own death warrant—especially if she is scheming and sharp-tongued. However, Julia (Natasha Pyne), the young blonde assigned as Toombes’s PR assistant, subverts the cliché, making far more headway with her sleuthing than the police.

The murder set-pieces build nicely but end abruptly with grainy freeze-frames. Like Ellen’s decapitation, they are bloodless affairs until the final act, which suddenly turns visceral when a character we actually care about gets it in the neck. Horror fans will find plenty to enjoy along the way, even if they end up equally delighted and disappointed. Personally, I leaned towards delight, thoroughly enjoying the film’s nostalgic, self-aware frisson. It’s a film that draws deliberately from the horror heritage it pastiches while trying to inject fresh ideas into the genre. It’s just a shame it does not execute either with quite enough gusto. While the clips from genuine Vincent Price classics are wonderful to see, they frequently remind us how the film we are watching falls short.

From its inception, Madhouse was pulled in different directions by its co-producers, American International Pictures (AIP) in the US and Amicus in Britain. Both wanted to capitalise on their respective genre legacies while adapting to the increasingly sexualised and gorier horror trends emerging in the early 1970s. There was a general consensus that Gothic horror was waning and that the genre needed modernising.

With Robert Fuest attached to direct, Amicus began pre-production on Revenge of Doctor Death, featuring a script by Greg Morrison based on Angus Hall’s 1970 novel Devilday. Hoping to resurrect the delightfully diabolical dynamic of Fuest’s The Abominable Dr Phibes and Dr Phibes Rises Again (1972), AIP placed Price at the head of the cast. However, Price rejected the original script, suggesting Ken Levison rewrite it—a surprising move given they had no professional history, and this remains the sole overlap in their filmographies.

In Hall’s novel, the plot chronicled the descent into depravity of Paul Toombes: Hollywood actor, television host, drug addict, and Satanist who turns to human sacrifice in a desperate bid to remain forever young. While the protagonist’s name survived the adaptation, the occult themes evaporated, transforming the character into an elder statesman of the horror genre and the plot into a standard whodunnit.

The Doctor Death title—intended to evoke comparisons to Dr Phibes—was dropped to avoid audiences dismissing it as a sequel to Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls (1973). Though I have not seen that film, it was by all accounts a camp disaster, even if its synopsis bears a closer resemblance to Hall’s source novel. By the time Madhouse entered production, Fuest had moved on to direct The Final Programme (1973).

He was replaced by Jim Clark, who was better known as a skilled film editor, having worked on classics such as Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961) and Stanley Donen’s Charade (1963). Clark had also directed a couple of cheeky British comedies: Every Home Should Have One (1970) starring Marty Feldman, and Rentadick (1972), co-written by John Cleese and Graham Chapman during their early Monty Python days.

Editor Clive Smith’s credentials felt more appropriate for the genre. He had previously served as dubbing and sound editor on the cult TV show The Prisoner (1967–68) and several notable 1960s B-movies. Immediately prior to Madhouse, he had achieved a hat-trick of British horror films with Asylum (1972), The Vault of Horror (1973), and And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973).

If those titles spark a nostalgic tingle, you are precisely the right demographic for Madhouse, if only to enjoy a stalwart British cast whose faces were ubiquitous during the tumultuous, transitional era of 1970s cinema and television. The supporting actors do their best with a flimsy narrative framework and a smattering of decent dialogue. Linda Hayden started the decade with Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) before landing her most memorable role in the seminal folk-horror The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971). Adrienne Corri also deserves credit for bringing genuine nuance to what could have been a cartoonish Miss Havisham pastiche; she had kicked off the decade with key roles in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Vampire Circus (1972). Meanwhile, Barry Dennen—fresh from playing Pontius Pilate in both the stage and screen versions of Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)—adds a welcome touch of class as the beleaguered television director.

In a bid to modernise, Madhouse looked to Italian pulp cinema, particularly the burgeoning giallo sub-genre pioneered by Mario Bava. Bava had successfully transitioned from Gothic fairy tales to contemporary murder mysteries while maintaining a striking, expressive lighting aesthetic shared by Corman. However, Clark was clearly reluctant to lean into these elements. Consequently, Madhouse never achieves that level of stylistic confidence, though it flirts with it just enough to dilute the grittier, realist approach that constantly threatens to take over.

The final act escalates beautifully towards what should have been a macabre and satisfying twist. It’s undeniably great, gruesome fun right up until the confusing, overly clever meta-ending—which makes sense on screen but falls apart the moment you think about it. Even if one forgives the scientifically ludicrous, rubbery spider scene, it leaves the distinct impression that a major narrative thread, hinted at by a single line of dialogue, was completely excised in the editing room. Because Madhouse never pretends to be grounded in reality, it would have benefited from embracing its fleeting moments of nightmarish surrealism with far more enthusiasm. Instead, the producers seemingly gave up halfway through, relying entirely on the simple faith that putting Vincent Price and Peter Cushing on screen together would be enough.

And it very nearly is.

UK • USA | 1974 | 91 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Limited Edition Blu-ray Special Features:

• Limited Edition O-card slipcase featuring original poster artwork [2000 copies].
• Limited Edition booklet featuring new writing on Madhouse by genre film expert Christopher Stewardson and an archival interview with director Jim Clark conducted by John Hamilton, originally published in The Dark Side [2000 copies]. At 28 pages, the collector’s booklet is a handsome accompaniment to this release, though its imagery is somewhat scant.It lacks behind-the-scenes photographs, production sketches, and other ephemera, though a portion of this material is available in the on-disc gallery. In his essay, Christopher Stewardson frames Madhouse within the context of the rise and fall of American International Pictures—from its heyday with Roger Corman’s sequence of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations starring Vincent Price, to the studio’s eventual decline and the actor’s waning career. He discusses this legacy alongside the commodification of horror icons, noting how Price and his character, Toombes, reflect an industry in flux and the erosion of the traditional star system. He also highlights the poignant use of clips from the studio’s glory days, mourning those lost collaborators. Finally, Stewardson addresses the film’s underwhelming release, indicating that despite attempting to reinvent certain tropes, it remains an anomaly in the horror landscape of the mid-1970s. Director Jim Clark’s own account of making Madhouse is a candid chronicle of a chaotic production that he found deeply dispiriting. He recalls his initial excitement about working with Vincent Price, but also his profound disappointment upon reading Greg Morrison’s script. This friction led to a clash with producer Milton Subotsky when Ken Levison delivered a last‑minute rewrite. Although Clark praises Price’s professionalism and camaraderie, he ultimately considers the shoot “a nightmare” and the result “a terrible film”—one he lacked the power to save after the final cut was wrested from his hands.
• 1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray. There are some surviving artefacts such as colour banding and inconsistency of grain and visual textures but these may enhance the nostalgic frisson. However, the garin is over-emphasised for the archival clips from other films and this remains an effective differentiation.
• Original English mono audio.
• Optional English subtitles (SDH).
• New eight-minute introduction to Madhouse by horror novelist Stephen Laws. He is perfectly placed to comment on the source material by Angus Hall as they are both horror writers hailing from Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He begins by discussing the title changes and ends by suggesting alternative titles and tag lines that would’ve better suited the film. Between, he sings the praises of a cast who made the best of the muddled script and places the movie within a career context for Robert Quarry, Adrienne Corri, Linda Hayden, Vincent Price and Peter Cushing. He discusses the on-set tensions and, by way of a brief plot summary, draws astute parallels with other films and literary works.
• Lights, Camera, Murder!—NEW 26-minutes video essay on Madhouse by horror and gothic scholar Mary Going. Discusses the gothic horror heritage of Madhouse and its fusion of elements associated with the German Krimi, Italian Giallo and the then nascent Slasher genre. She unpicks the meta-casting of Price and Cushing that leans into the genre star power of their transatlantic filmographies. After listing specific similarities with several classics such as Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace and Bay of Blood (1971), she takes time to consider the structural similarities with The Abominable Doctor Phibes and Theatre of Blood (1973) before offering some alternative, post-modern interpretations of the finale.
• Audio commentary by film historian David Del Valle. This detailed commentary is an absolute treat, coming from a critic who operated on the periphery of the industry as a press and PR agent, having met and worked professionally with many of the cast. He begins by discussing the abortive attempts to get the movie into production and provides a brief synopsis of the original novel, pointing out the few similarities and vast differences between the source material and the finished film. He also delves into the rivalry and abrasive camaraderie between Vincent Price and Robert Quarry, which stemmed from a falling-out while filming the Dr Phibes duology. Apparently, the film entered production just days after the script was delivered, leaving no time for rehearsals; consequently, Quarry rewrote most of his dialogue on the fly. David Del Valle usefully highlights the presence of make-up artist George Blackler, who appears on screen as the man responsible for the Dr Death skull-face, having previously worked with Price on Theatre of Blood (1973). Alongside these anecdotes, Del Valle provides potted biographies for the key cast and crew, highlighting their relevant roles and tracing their interconnected careers.Subsequent rewatches in his company make the film even more enjoyable, even if he ultimately sums it up as “a catalogue of missed opportunities.”
• Archival 11-minutes Making Of featurette. Covers the adaptation from the original novel, the script re-writes, casting, and locations. Reiterates that the film was underway before the script was finalised and writing continued during the shoot. Mentions the dissatisfaction of the leads and director, exacerbated in post-production by three or four recuts with the studio executives ar AIP having final say before retitling it.
• Stills Gallery.
• Original theatrical trailer.

Cast & Crew

director: Jim Clark.
writers: Ken Levison & Greg Morrison (based on the 1969 novel ‘Devilday’ by Angus Hall).
starring: Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Robert Quarry, Adrienne Corri, Natasha Pyne, Linda Hayden & Barry Dennen.

The post MADHOUSE (1974) appeared first on Frame Rated.

On the surface, it seems impossible to bury secrets, let alone for decades, in the fictional border town of Frontera. Its sunny weather and arid climate leave little room for shadowy corners, and you won’t find any high-rises ’round these parts. The roads are quiet. The locals possess an affable charm. But there is much resentment lurking in this town, constantly in the process of swelling up and dying down again—never quite rising to the surface, but never absent, either.

John Sayles’ Lone Star presents a town with competing boundaries, where its residents’ identities are threatened by their neighbours, whilst each of their versions of reality continually clashes. What so many of these all-too-human characters fail to recognise is that their boundaries are entirely self-made, whether governmental (where the United States lies on one side of the film’s all-important border and Mexico on the other), historical (as Frontera’s residents can’t decide on what Texas’s true history is), or personal (with children struggling to reconcile the fact that they were moulded into who they are by their parents).

On the surface, the film is a murder mystery, but one of the most languid you’ll ever find, where more time is spent absorbed in the ambience of this quietly fractured community than investigating the skeleton found on an army shooting range. Viewers aren’t given red herrings or criss-crossing motives from a host of equally plausible suspects. Without spoiling anything, the mystery seems obvious long before any conclusions can be drawn. And when we are shown detective work, there are no frills or theatrics as Sheriff Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) pores over old documents relating to his father, local hero Buddy Deeds (Matthew McConaughey), and the sheriff before his dad, Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson).

Back when Buddy was under Wade’s supervision, the rookie cop defied his superior publicly, standing up to his wrath when no one else in the town dared to. Wade was a tyrant, accepting criminal schemes as long as he could make money out of them, and threatening violence towards anyone who defied his orders. It turns out that the buried skeleton was once this foreboding figure. Kristofferson portrays Wade with a small-minded kind of menace—a local sheriff drunk on the power of knowing that his presence strikes fear in the hearts of the unlawful and innocent alike. Buddy’s act of defiance was a storybook tale of the unlikely hero rising against an unimpeachable villain, and, better yet, he won in the end. The popular legend goes that Wade ran from town out of embarrassment, taking $10,000 of county funds with him. Charlie Wade never returned, and Frontera entered a more peaceful era with the heroic Buddy Deeds as its new sheriff.

It’s a brilliant story to tell around a campfire, one that many of its older residents are all too happy to reminisce over with Sam. But Lone Star, as a deeply meditative take on the Western, is more strongly associated with revisionist works in the genre than traditional ones. It’s a film about mythmaking, where we can’t resist transforming our political and personal histories into neat narratives that, like Wade, are unimpeachable. Schoolteacher Pilar Cruz (Elizabeth Peña) confronts this directly amongst aggrieved parents, who bicker over how their children should be taught about Texan history. We all seek out simple, self-contained stories to sum up who we are and where we came from, but how does this relate to a series of battles where both sides put their lives on the line for a cause they believed in? Who was the aggressor? Who was the victim?

Pilar and Sam are not trying to become or endorse myths. Sam knows not to trust urban legend; he has been made aware all his life that there are different ways of viewing a person. The honourable Buddy Deeds might have been a hero to most of the town, but Sam’s view of his father is far more complicated. There are dissenting opinions about Buddy’s role as an enforcer of the law, and it doesn’t take long to see that some of his admirers don’t exactly give much reason to cheer about Sam’s recently deceased father. One of them, a bartender called Cody (Leo Burmester), is a character so minor he would easily be forgotten in any other film. Not so in Lone Star, since Sayles’ love for his characters shines through so clearly that even the bit-part players bask in his warmth.

It’s also true that almost any other movie would be quick to dismiss Cody and his racist theories, writing him off as an ignorant hick before he’s had a chance to lay out his argument. Even though his rationale is rooted in racial superiority, there’s a grain of logic to his theory on how adversity in colder regions requires greater willpower and ingenuity to overcome harsh weather, building stronger communities and nations as a result. What’s most important here is that Sayles trusts his audience not to buy into Cody’s theory. By allowing his characters to speak plainly, with a laid-back atmosphere that gives them the space—and the inclination—to put forth this bigoted theory freely, we’re given multiple perspectives at once.

On the one hand, we can glimpse this argument’s ugliness and the post hoc rationalisation underpinning it, as well as how sickeningly it is expressed, as Cody deplores a mixed-race couple sitting at the other side of the bar. But this belief is integral to the bartender, and not something that a diplomat like Pilar or a conscientious observer like Sam can hope to sway. It is an expression of him, his history, and the invisible ties that bind us all to our unique understanding of the world around us.

Like so many of Lone Star’s scenes, this is a small moment, tucked away between wider plot machinations and character ruminations, but it glimmers with resonance and insight. The film moves to the beat of its own drum, as Sayles puts his faith in viewers as freely as he does with these characters. He takes you on a journey but isn’t concerned with fast pacing or constant gimmicks. The film is always careful with how it drip-feeds information about these characters and their community, but it never feels didactic or too ordered for its own good, as it also drifts in and out of different storylines.

Pilar isn’t just a teacher struggling to convey the complexity of history; she’s also a mother to a well-behaved daughter and a wayward son who’s straying towards criminality. Pilar’s mother, Mercedes Cruz, looks down on her staff—recent Mexican immigrants—even though her own past is reflected in them. She has forgotten her own history, losing something of her identity in the process, whilst her grandson struggles to understand his place in the world.

The same is true of another teen, Chet (Eddie Robinson), who has recently moved back to Frontera with his family. His father, Colonel Delmore Payne (Joe Morton), lived here as a boy, whilst Delmore’s absentee father, Otis (Ron Canada), has never left. Chet’s animosity towards his father is reflected in Delmore’s animosity towards Otis, but for opposite reasons: Otis was never in Delmore’s life, whilst the overbearing Delmore has a habit of treating his teenage son as if he were an underling at his Army base.

Not even family members are safe from this fractured environment. In fact, a person isn’t even safe from themselves. Their memories undercut their sense of reality, as the film’s slow pans so often illuminate; without switching to a new shot, viewers watch as characters ruminate on their past, then witness their younger selves forming these pivotal memories in the same locales. At no point do these teenagers or young adults know they are building their narrative and mythology of themselves, but they are unable to escape the formation of these patterns. Lone Star is a deeply heartfelt reminder that the past is never far from us because, on some level, it is us.

The film’s languid pacing appears leisurely, but that is just the mask the characters’ conversations—and the film as a whole—bear to conceal heavy contemplation. In Lone Star’s most emotionally potent moments, you can feel the weight of the characters’ shared histories influencing each line of dialogue they utter. There isn’t a single wasted word in Sayles’ tight, note-perfect script. The music cues, from the writer-director’s long-time composer, Mason Daring, embody these troubling undercurrents of discontent well, whilst boasting an eclectic style that encompasses its diverse characters’ backgrounds.

For as much as Lone Star centres itself around lofty themes, handling them with such ease that you hardly feel like you’re being guided towards a particular message or outlook, it is also a deeply human portrayal of father-son strife. It’s a film about making sense of who we are, acknowledging that within our ordered sense of self is a myriad of possibilities waiting to blossom, if we could only bring ourselves to invite them in. But how can we ever afford that kindness to ourselves if we can’t be charitable with our neighbours, whether within our immediate family or the wider one we all belong to?

One would think that it would take lengthy discussions, and plenty of them, to illuminate these issues. But in Lone Star, sparse dialogue and the strength of the performers offer more poignancy than long, ruminating conversations ever could. McConaughey and Kristofferson put forth masterclasses in carrying themselves with the confident swagger of men born to lead, living up to the kinds of traditional Western mythmaking that Sayles gently criticises. This is especially impressive of the former, who was far from a household name when he was cast in the film. Sayles had a near-impossible task: casting a relative rookie who could stand toe-to-toe with the natural intimidation Kristofferson bore so well. McConaughey rose to the occasion with seeming effortlessness, and the rest is history for his star-studded career.

Cooper and Peña, meanwhile, are studies in quiet, troubled meditation. Whilst Charlie Wade and Buddy Deeds were domineering adversaries, the latter pair are struggling, everyday figures trying to reconcile their shared history. Hope and connection don’t come easily to this film’s disparate characters, but that’s what makes this delicately layered, stunningly empathetic film so moving.

USA | 1996 | 135 MINUTES | 2.35:1 | ENGLISH • SPANISH

Cast & Crew

writer & director: John Sayles.
starring: Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Peña, Kris Kristofferson, Matthew McConaughey, Míriam Colón, Clifton James, Joe Morton, Ron Canada & Eddie Robinson.

The post LONE STAR (1996) appeared first on Frame Rated.

After 21 years, Steven Spielberg returns to alien-themed sci-fi with Disclosure Day, a movie that, on the surface, is a thriller concerning extraterrestrial beings. However, once the film gets underway, you soon realise it’s trying to be more ambitious with its themes. It may share a few similarities with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), but if you’re expecting the same type of spectacle and epic scope that film provided, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

The narrative’s genesis came after the legendary director read a 2017 New York Times investigative article about the Pentagon’s secret UFO – or as they’re now called, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) – research programme.

From the off, the influence of this premise involving a shadowy agency is immediately apparent. One of the main characters, cybersecurity specialist Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), steals alien technology and files showing historical human-alien contact from the Wardex Corporation, a top-secret arm of the US government. Daniel reveals everything to his girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson), and tells her he intends to leak this knowledge to the world. Naturally, the powers that be within Wardex don’t want this to happen.

Alongside this X-Files-style scenario, Kansas City TV weather presenter Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) begins speaking in a strange, unknown language during a live broadcast. This occurs soon after she sees a cardinal fly into her home, an event that appears to awaken a dormant empathic ability; suddenly, she can understand the emotions and languages of anyone she encounters. What does this all mean, and is it connected to Wardex and the alien technology?

Daniel is declared a foreign spy by Wardex CEO Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) who, after seeing footage of Margaret,identifies the language as being of otherworldly origin. He sets out to capture them so this monumental discovery stays hidden from the global population.

So far, so good. As I indicated earlier, the screenplay isn’t interested in a straight alien-visitation story. Instead, it explores themes centred around what would happen if actual footage of human-extraterrestrial contact were revealed – and the religious and societal consequences if such knowledge were shared with the world.

Tied into all this is the underlying message that, in our current state of global unrest, humanity is experiencing a huge existential crisis due to a lack of empathy. We as a species don’t connect like we once did, and the film attempts to reflect this through its science-fiction mystery plot. While these concepts can be commended for trying to bring something fresh and philosophical to the genre, the overall screenplay is, unfortunately, not quite up to its lofty ambitions.

Perhaps its main fault is that the narrative pacing is all over the place; the screenplay simply tries to do too much within the confines of one feature film. Its 1970s-era conspiracy thriller trappings are fine in themselves, but combining this approach with a prescient look at modern societal ills requires stronger writing across the board to be entirely successful. After hearing that screenwriter David Koepp had to turn in 43 drafts before it was signed off, I wasn’t surprised.

These ambitious themes might have been better served by a multi-episode TV series, allowing more time for the characters and thematic elements to properly play out. What we get instead is a mishmash of action set-pieces combined with underdeveloped plot points and clunky, expository dialogue. It’s a shame, since the direction, set-pieces and acting throughout are all excellent.

Out of all the strong performances, Emily Blunt stands head and shoulders above everyone else. She brings genuine emotional depth and naturalistic dramatic weight to the proceedings. The scene when she starts uttering weird alien clicks during her weather presentation is truly compelling to behold. Apparently, she was told initially that the moment would be enhanced using A.I. processing techniques, but she opted to perform it herself in one take. Truly astonishing.

Josh O’Connor delivers another typically fine performance as tech nerd Daniel. His vulnerability as someone essentially out of his depth is always believable, and this helps drive the narrative along. Credit must also be given to Colman Domingo and Colin Firth. Domingo plays Hugo, a former Wardex employee-turned-whistleblower. His scenes with all his co-stars, especially Firth’s antagonist Scanlon, have genuine chemistry, and his character is certainly one of the stronger elements of the film. Meanwhile, Firth is clearly enjoying himself immensely as the movie’s ‘bad guy’. He can be menacing, but ultimately, by the film’s conclusion, you see more than a passing semblance of humanity emerge.

As you’d expect from a movie directed by Spielberg, the technical aspects are first-rate. Considering the filmmaker is nearly 80, the camerawork is breathtaking: shot after shot is perfectly composed and executed, with some scenes easily reminding you why the man is still one of the best in the business. The sequence involving Blunt, O’Connor and their car being pushed into a moving train is terrifying and masterfully put together – having, I think, more than a passing nod to a similar scene in the director’s first movie, Duel (1971).

His long-time collaborators, cinematographer Janusz Kamiński and composer John Williams, also turn in quality work. Kamiński’s use of dark shadows and light is superbly handled. Filmed on 35mm, there’s a fair bit of lens flare employed, alongside some shots that seem to naturally capture reflections in windows and mirrors. Unlike many of Spielberg’s movies, Williams’ score is more restrained than usual, lending a darker, more atmospheric tone to the feature.

A lot of the public’s reviews for Disclosure Day on social media appear to be either gushing with praise or hailing it a disaster, and I’m not surprised. Some of that is possibly down to audience expectation and the film’s marketing. After all, it’s Spielberg working again within the sci-fi alien arena, so of course everyone is going into this thinking it’ll be the next Close Encounters. Sure, there are the government cover-ups, benign extraterrestrials and alien mind implants that drive characters along their journey – but that’s where the similarities end.

So, while this film isn’t about awe-inspiring UFOs in the night, lost warplanes being found in the desert, and a family man deciding to head off with his new alien friends, what it is concerned with is our need to connect with each other again; that through empathy we can truly flourish on this planet. For me, right now, the film didn’t completely work. With a tighter script, maybe there’s a stronger movie waiting to get out – but I’m still happy to see a major studio release something so bold and original. In this day and age, that’s quite an achievement.

USA • CANADA • NEW ZEALAND | 2026 | 145 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Steven Spielberg.
writer: David Koepp (story by Steven Spielberg).
starring: Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo & Wyatt Russell.

The post DISCLOSURE DAY (2026) appeared first on Frame Rated.

It is 1715. A Jacobite rebellion threatens the aristocracy, while deep in the English countryside, Lord Chauncey Savage (Richard E. Grant, playing a chancy savage—get it?) and his wife (Claire Foy) dream of bettering themselves. Savage House has fallen into disrepair, both literally and reputationally, though it was arguably doomed as soon as Chauncey arrived. The son of a lowly pig farmer, Chauncey rose through ambition and charm to marry Lady Savage. Through his debauchery and greed, however, he has, down the years, reduced her house to its present state.

They are the bottom feeders of the British elite, just managing to keep the creditors at bay with the help of Chauncey’s footman and fellow rake—meaning a man of loose morals—Reginald (Jack Farthing). But even Reginald is conspiring with the lady’s maid, Dorothy (Bel Powley), to steal the Savage seat. So, when the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire ask to be received, the Savages see this as their chance to restore their noble name. Selling everything they can to afford the perfect night and climb the social ladder, they try not to see it as a bad omen that the evening coincides with a total eclipse, when evil spirits are said to fly down.

Written and directed by British-American filmmaker Peter Glanz, Savage House is a take on the picaresque novel, a genre popular from the mid-16th to the 19th-centuries. It included in England such works as Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749) and William Makepeace Thackeray’s The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844), which became the famous Stanley Kubrick film Barry Lyndon (1975). No doubt if Savage House were based on a novel, that source material would have been called something like The Chances of Chauncey Savage, a Noble Rake. The picaresque mixes comedy and satire to tell the story of a rogue—a man of low means and social standing who nonetheless lives by his wits to rise through the ranks of his world. The style is realistic, the tone tragicomic, and the endings often bleak, leaving the rake reduced or compromised. In keeping with this picaresque structure, the film is narrated by Robert Bathurst and proceeds in episodes with chapter titles, counting down to the Duke and Duchess’s arrival.

Glanz’s basic approach is to take the genre and turn it up to 11, soaking it in Gothic grotesquerie. Savage House is filled with gangrenous wounds, festering limbs, rotting flesh, piles of literal excrement, pestilence, infidelity, murder, shootings, stabbings, madness, cruelty, greed, and a plot where everyone is miserable forever—including their descendants, probably. It is also one of the best films I have seen this year.

In fairness, the film has something in common with, say, the John Waters satires of the 1970s, like Pink Flamingos (1972) and Female Trouble (1974). As much as I love those films (and I do, for my sins), especially Female Trouble, they are aggressive and exhausting watches. Savage House is not near that level, of course. It does not rely on non-actors screeching their lines and circus sideshow acts. But it does operate on a similar wavelength, constantly rubbing your nose in how fetid its world and people are. Rarely have I envied posh people less.

The best word to describe the film’s aesthetic is “morbid”. The palette is milky and grey, the camera’s eye shot through with glaucoma. There are no beauty shots of elegant candlelit halls or sweeping estates with well-kept fields and sundials, as seen in Barry Lyndon. Nor is there a sense, as there also is in Barry Lyndon, that any character is truly innocent and merely a victim of their social milieu. The closest anyone comes to that is Fanny Savage (Kíla Lord Cassidy, excellent at just 16), daughter of Lord and Lady Savage. She keeps pet mice, studies the stars, and, in the manner of a Disney princess, chafes at being just a bride to serve her family.

Grant’s performance is the centrepiece, though heavily supported by Foy; both are superlative. Grant does the impossible here by making Chauncey likeable (to me, at least—I am sure many, on hearing that, will indignantly reply, ‘not I!’). I cannot say he did not deserve everything he got, nor even that I did not want him to get it, necessarily. He is venal, selfish, often stupid, and criminal to boot. As much as Mr Black (Pip Torrens), the creditor who shows up periodically to threaten Chauncey through Reginald, represents the evil of debtors’ prison, he is never actually in the wrong. Chauncey has defrauded him, and for no better reason than wanting money to waste on gambling and fripperies.

Yet Grant invests this role with a charm and sympathy (of a sort) where any other actor—even a great one—might have made him purely wretched and villainous. Of course, I have no idea what Grant is like in real life, but he exudes a warmth and kindliness that shapes his dramatic roles. Foy’s rich and assured performance provides a stout support beam, so that we view Chauncey through her eyes as well as our own, perceiving her complex sympathy for him. Chauncey is, in the end, a self-obsessed and licentious buffoon rather than someone genuinely bad or cruel. And he exists in a cruel and, well, savage age. Although the 18th-century was deeply Christian, we get nary a whiff of that here. The Savages’ daughter reflects on beliefs that seem almost pagan, with her astronomy and talk of evil spirits in the dark. It is fair to say that England at this time was experiencing spiritual drift—a subtle slide away from a core of values and beliefs.

Richard McCabe and Vicki Pepperdine play Mr and Mrs Bennett, frenemies of Savage House who are tolerated by Chauncey and his lady because who else besides their staff would keep them company? This captious pair are grasping social climbers themselves, just about held together by affection, perhaps, though willing to bribe one half of a duel to put a bullet in the other’s head to ensure their own chance at upward social mobility.

UK | 2026 | 114 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

writer & director: Peter Glanz.
starring: Claire Foy, Richard E. Grant, Kila Lord Cassidy, Bel Powley, Jack Farthing, Richard McCabe, Vicki Pepperdine, Pip Torrens & Miles Jupp.

The post SAVAGE HOUSE (2026) appeared first on Frame Rated.

The talent assembled for The Marked Woman / La desconocida, both on-screen and off, looks promising. Candela Peña, in one of the lead roles, is a two-time Goya winner – Spain’s equivalent of an Academy Award. Rosa Montero, author of the source novel, also boasts a crowded awards shelf, while the screenwriter, cinematographer, and composer all come with impressive filmographies.

The film starts well, too, thick with mystery. At Barcelona’s freight port, a security guard’s dog refuses to leave a particular container alone. Once opened, a shackled woman (Ana Rujas) is found inside. She has forgotten everything: the year, her name, and what happened to her. “The memories are still there, you just have to open the right door,” a doctor tells her.

Next, we meet Anna (Peña), a detective desperate to get back to work after taking leave to deal with unspecified psychological trauma — a detail presumably meant to build suspense. She wants this case and has to fight her sceptical superior to get it.

Overused-trope alarms may begin to sound, and they certainly will once the next main detective is introduced. Quique (Pol López) is a blunt, disreputable-looking investigator from the southern city of Algeciras, where the container originated and which Spanish audiences will recognise as a people-smuggling hub. Unsurprisingly, he’s under investigation by internal affairs. Predictably, the two detectives form a bickering, chalk-and-cheese pair. Later, Anna will even utter that classic line: “this goes a lot deeper than we thought”.

The way The Marked Woman falls back on such clichés is irritating because the premise holds so much potential, and the storyline is initially intriguing enough to hold the viewer’s attention. It emerges that the amnesiac woman was drugged and tortured inside the container. “I look inside, and there’s just terror,” she says, speaking of her mind, though she could easily be referring to the metal box. Later, the mystery deepens when she recalls a single detail: a string of numbers.

Unfortunately, most of the suspense this enigma generates is squandered when her identity is suddenly revealed in an abrupt manner that smacks more of writer’s convenience than plausibility. We also learn that before being abducted, she had joined a gym and mastered hand-to-hand combat — a frankly laughable mechanism used to justify an incongruous (though well-shot) fight sequence for a character you wouldn’t expect to be so literally kick-ass.

The Marked Woman then lurches, rather unsatisfactorily, into a different film. The mystery is no longer who the amnesiac woman, Clara, is, but why she was kidnapped. Some of the answers fall into place far too quickly, with Clara remembering swathes of her past and essentially delivering them as a monologue to the camera.

By the movie’s second half, there’s little left to draw you in. The storyline remains fast-moving, but it lacks any sense of urgency. While plenty of unanswered questions remain, none is as immediately gripping as the initial puzzle of Clara’s identity. It turns out another woman was also targeted by the same abductors, but we’re told very little about her or the circumstances. There are clearly bad people pulling the strings, but the precise wrong the protagonists are trying to right remains vague. Without a pressing threat, what ought to be a climactic showdown feels dull; we simply aren’t invested in the outcome.

It’s a pity, because the film is otherwise well-made. Gabe Ibáñez is a capable director — his film Automata (2014), which he also co-wrote, is an atmospheric dystopian tale that anticipates today’s big debates around A.I., even if it owes a heavy debt to Blade Runner (1982). Here, he handles long, complex passages with confidence. There’s an excellent, extended outdoor surveillance scene, for example, and another where Clara explores a building where she was held as visual memories rush back.

Ibáñez uses locations well, capturing the dingier, tourist-free corners of Barcelona. Bernat Bosch’s creative cinematography elevates the visuals, complemented by an effective score from the prolific Spanish composer Fernando Velázquez. Blending electronic and orchestral elements, the music perfectly underscores Clara’s psychological torment — looking back, it often sounds more suited to a horror movie than a detective thriller.

Among the cast, López is the clear stand-out as the potentially dodgy Algeciras cop. His role may be a stereotype, but it possesses some inherent intrigue (is he a good guy or a bad guy?) and he plays it brilliantly. By contrast, Peña, as his Barcelona counterpart, spends most of her time looking haunted.

To be fair, the shallowness of her performance is largely down to the script. Unlike most detective movies, The Marked Woman spends very little time on the private lives of its law-enforcement characters, despite initially highlighting them. This is usually a welcome relief — writers in this genre often overdo the investigators’ personal woes to the point of tedium — but here, screenwriter Lara Sendim goes too far in the opposite direction, leaving Anna with barely any personality at all.

The same issue plagues Clara. We never get a real sense of what’s going on inside her, even after she recovers her memory; she remains largely passive, carried along by events rather than shaping them. Rujas does the best she can with such a limiting character.

Ultimately, the flaws of The Marked Woman lie in the writing — not the dialogue itself, but the lack of a compelling narrative driver once the puzzle of Clara’s identity is solved. The ingredients for a strong film are all there, but there’s nothing to pull them together.

SPAIN • ARGENTINA | 2026 | 109 MINUTES | 2.35:1 | COLOUR | SPANISH

Cast & Crew

director: Gabe Ibáñez.
writer: Lara Sendim (based on the novel by Rosa Montero & Olivier Truc).
starring: Candela Peña, Ana Rujas, Kira Miró & Pol López.

The post THE MARKED WOMAN (2026) appeared first on Frame Rated.

A child can be loved, feared, protected, resented, or mourned. In The Omen, Damien is something colder and more useful before he is anything else: he is a solution. He is the child placed where a child is required, the missing piece in a perfect family portrait, the small body that allows grief, scandal, and domestic fracture to be quietly covered over. That is the film’s most interesting horror. The devil does not need to smash his way into power; he only needs to be adopted by it.

Richard Donner’s film begins in Rome, where American diplomat Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) learns that his newborn son has died. His wife, Katherine (Lee Remick), does not know. A priest offers Thorn another child born the same night, whose mother has also died. With no records, no public disgrace, and no unnecessary pain, Thorn accepts. Katherine believes the child is hers. The boy, Damien (Harvey Spencer Stephens), grows up inside a world of privilege, diplomatic cars, large houses, polished rooms, and political possibility.

A few years later, Thorn is the American ambassador to Britain. His life appears not merely successful but arranged. Then things begin to break. A nanny’s death at Damien’s birthday party introduces a note of public horror into this carefully managed household. Mrs Baylock (Billie Whitelaw), the new governess, arrives with unnerving confidence. A black dog appears as both protector and warning. Churches, animals, photographs, and priests begin to suggest that Damien isn’t simply a difficult child, nor even a disturbed one. He may be the Antichrist.

As drama, The Omen isn’t especially subtle. Its plot proceeds by confirmation rather than uncertainty. One sign follows another; one warning becomes another death. The film is more schematic than the best of its 1970s horror peers. The audience is rarely asked to wonder whether something demonic is happening. The real question is how long it will take Thorn to accept what the film has already arranged around him.

That bluntness is a limitation, and it matters. The Omen is a better film to watch than to recount. Its screenplay is linear, sometimes even mechanical, yet Donner’s direction gives the material a stronger visual intelligence than its narrative structure might suggest. The film’s reputation rests less on what it reveals than on how confidently it frames what is already visible.

The best way to read Damien isn’t as a psychologically rich child, because the film does not build him that way. Nor is he given many genuinely affectionate scenes with Thorn. He is present in scenes of family life, but often as part of a composition: the handsome child in the handsome household, the son who completes the picture. The early domestic images have the quality of an album rather than a relationship. Damien isn’t loved dramatically so much as positioned.

That matters because Thorn’s original decision isn’t simply an act of paternal feeling; it’s also an administrative act. A fact has become intolerable, so another fact is substituted. A dead child is replaced by a living one, the wife is kept ignorant, and the family image survives. Thorn isn’t presented as a monster for making this choice, and Peck plays the scene with genuine anguish. But the decision belongs to a man trained by power: a diplomat who instinctively understands concealment, continuity, and the management of appearances.

Peck’s performance is stronger than it’s sometimes given credit for. He does not play Thorn as a horror protagonist waiting to unravel. He plays him as a public man, a controlled man, a man whose body seems accustomed to ceremony, protocol, and restraint. His stiffness works for the film. Thorn’s fear isn’t theatrical; it’s the gradual collapse of a posture. What begins as composure becomes denial, then calculation, then panic. Peck’s gravity also helps keep the film from slipping too easily into exploitation. When the material becomes lurid, he makes it look morally expensive.

The film’s political dimension is simple but effective. Damien does not enter the world through poverty, chaos, or marginality. He enters through diplomacy, wealth, and succession. The threat isn’t that evil lurks outside the gates of civilisation, but that civilisation may have already prepared a room for it. Thorn’s household isn’t invaded in any ordinary sense; it has a vacancy, and Damien fills it.

Thorn’s world has explanations ready before it has understanding. A priest can be dismissed as a fanatic, Katherine’s fear can be treated as illness, a photograph can be blamed on damaged film, and a death can be filed under accident. The modern order does not collapse because it’s rational; it collapses because it keeps mistaking the sacred for a disturbance in the system.

Donner’s direction reinforces this by making ordinary space feel watched, bent, and subtly hostile. Wide-angle lenses give rooms and corridors a warped pressure, as though respectable interiors were no longer reliable containers. The camera often peers through railings, gates, parapets, and architectural divisions, placing Thorn inside a world already divided and observed. Handheld movement, point-of-view shots, and circular camera motions pull the film away from the polished order of diplomatic life and towards a more unstable visual field. The plot tells us Damien is evil; the camera suggests the world has begun to organise itself around that fact.

Jerry Goldsmith’s Academy Award-winning score is even more decisive. Without it, The Omen would be a far easier film to reduce to demonic melodrama. Goldsmith gives the film its black ceremonial force. His choral writing does not simply accompany evil; it officiates it. Yet the score isn’t only imposing in its grander gestures; it also knows when to support a scene rather than overwhelm it, tightening fear, grief, or disbelief without announcing itself too loudly. The music turns pulp material into liturgy, lending the story a scale and inevitability the screenplay cannot always generate on its own. Damien himself does not need to be frightening in every scene, because the score makes him feel preceded by something older, larger, and already enthroned.

The film moves efficiently, but efficiency isn’t depth. Donner keeps events advancing with a clean sense of escalation, yet after the first death The Omen becomes increasingly procedural: one warning, one sign, one death, one further confirmation. Its religious machinery is often more blunt than unsettling, and its supernatural logic is uneven. The forces protecting Damien can arrange grotesquely precise deaths, yet they become oddly inefficient whenever Thorn must move closer to his final moral crisis.

That inconsistency isn’t a small issue, because the film depends on a sense of diabolical design. If the machinery of evil can operate with such spectacular precision, the plot has to work hard to explain why Thorn is permitted to continue investigating. It does not really do that; it simply needs him to reach the end of the story. This does not ruin the film, but it keeps it closer to a well-made piece of horror engineering than to a fully convincing tragedy.

Damien also remains more symbol than character, which weakens the emotional force of Thorn’s later crisis. The film asks us to feel the horror of a father facing the possible destruction of his child, but it has not fully built that child as an object of love. We understand the dilemma; we do not always feel its deepest wound.

Yet that flaw is partly inseparable from the film’s most revealing idea. Damien isn’t a child who gradually becomes monstrous; he is a function that gradually reveals what has occupied it. The Omen isn’t at its best when asking whether the boy is evil. It’s better when showing how easily evil can pass through the forms of respectability: family, inheritance, diplomacy, public image, religious denial, and political ambition.

Its drama is blunt, its theology crude, and its suspense more procedural than mysterious. But its images, music, and central casting give it enough cold authority to explain why it endured. The Omen is a classic of horror iconography more than a great horror film: its strongest fear isn’t that the devil might be born, but that, once born, he may find the modern world ready to give him a family, a title, and an inheritance.

UK • USA | 1976 | 111 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH • LATIN • ITALIAN

Cast & Crew

director: Richard Donner.
writer: David Seltzer.
starring: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, Harvey Stephens, David Warner, Billie Whitelaw, Patrick Troughton & Leo McKern.

The post THE OMEN (1976) appeared first on Frame Rated.