The Last Thing I See

'Normal' (2025) Movie Review

2026-04-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

Because it’s an action movie starring Bob Odenkirk as a seemingly regular guy pushed to extreme violence and was written by Derek Kolstad, Normal is going to get compared to 2021's Nobody, for good and ill. (Honestly, the similar title doesn’t help in that regard.) While there are definite parallels, Ben Wheatley’s new movie is more average-Joe-in-extraordinary-circumstances than it is secret-badass-hiding-in-plain-sight. Quite a bit of Normal is a total blast, but just as much, if not more, sags under curious, often baffling choices. It’s a weird, mixed bag of a film.

The BoneBat Comedy Of Horrors 2026 Lineup Is Here And As Wild As Ever

2026-04-01T12:43:00.000-07:00

It’s springtime in Seattle, which means it’s either sunny and glorious outside or rainy as all hell. Either way, it’s the perfect time to spend a Saturday in a dark movie theater watching horror movies. And let’s be honest, probably drinking. That’s right, the annual BoneBat Comedy of Horrors film festival is once again upon us.

'The Well' (2025) Movie Review

2026-03-23T07:43:00.000-07:00

Working within specific, well-worn genre or subgenre frameworks can make it difficult to do something wholly new. How many rehashed slashers have we all sat through? But that doesn’t mean there aren’t worthwhile stories to tell. We still occasionally see exciting, fresh zombie tales, for instance. Post-apocalyptic movies are another example, illustrated nicely by The Well. Documentarian Hubert Davis (Black Ice), in his first narrative feature, uses these familiar trappings to tell a tense, brooding, slow-burn tale of life past the collapse of civilization.

'The Forbidden City' (2025) Movie Review

2026-03-17T10:41:00.000-07:00

Gabriele Mainetti’s The Forbidden City is a strange movie. It presents as a throwback martial arts actioner about a Chinese woman, Mei (badass stunt performer Yaxi Liu), single-mindedly battling her way through Rome’s criminal underworld in search of her missing sister. And it is that. The Italian picture comes out swinging and plays like a kung-fu movie greatest hits collection: Mei fights her way up many flights of stairs; there’s a kitchen fight, complete with using pots and pans as improvised weapons, boiling oil, and flaming stovetops; and even a red-light brothel fight. This all happens in the first few minutes. From there, it’s an odd assemblage of a face-pummeling action movie, gangster saga, melodramatic rom-com, operatic tragedy, and more. It’s an unexpected mixture and doesn’t seem like it should work, but it does, combining into something singular and unique.

'Redux Redux' (2025) Movie Review

2026-02-19T08:00:00.000-08:00

A woman stands in a desert in the darkening twilight, looming over a man, tied to a chair, burning to death at her feet. This is Irene Kelly (Michaela McManus). She’s traveling dimension to dimension, methodically killing every version of Neville (Jeremy Holm), the serial killer who murdered her daughter. It’s a hell of a first image to kick off Kevin and Matthew McManus’s (The Block Island Sound) indie sci-fi thriller Redux Redux.

'Hellfire' (2026) Movie Review

2026-02-17T07:10:00.000-08:00

According to author and famed writing teacher, John Gardner, all fictional stories can be boiled down to one of two plots: someone leaves town, someone comes to town. (OR maybe you subscribe to Christopher Booker’s Seven Basic Plots approach, or one of the many other theories, but for our purposes today, we’ll stick with Gardner.) Hellfire, the latest from direct-to-video action auteur Isaac Florentine (Ninja: Shadow of a Tear, Undisputed 2 and 3), follows this formula to a tee.

'Cold Storage' (2026) Movie Review

2026-02-12T08:33:00.000-08:00

The new sci-fi horror comedy Cold Storage is an odd movie to talk about. There’s a good amount to recommend, and it’s pretty fun. However, that’s also the best thing you can say about it, that it’s “pretty fun,” there’s not much more to it. It’s fun, but never as fun as it could, or should be. There’s gore and body horror, but nothing particularly memorable or impactful. We get some laughs, but they’re more light chuckles than full-throated guffaws. This is a movie that you can watch, be moderately entertained by, and that leaves little more impression than that. And given the pieces involved, that feels like a missed opportunity.

'Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die' (2025) Movie Review

2026-02-10T08:45:00.000-08:00

When the AI revolution finally comes to destroy the human race, it will look less like the bleak apocalyptic future of the Terminator movies and more like all of humanity staring down at their smartphones, braindead and numbed, incapable and unwilling to think or do anything for ourselves. At least according to Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, the new sci-fi black comedy from Gore Verbinski (A Cure for Wellness).

'Whistle' (2025) Movie Review

2026-02-04T05:08:00.000-08:00

If horror movies have taught us anything, never blow the Aztec Death Whistle should be high on that list. Especially one you found in a dead kid’s locker. Even if you’ve never watched a horror movie before, your first instinct when you find an old-looking carved skull—again, found in a dead kid’s locker—shouldn’t be to put it in your mouth. That’s just unsanitary and asking for trouble. But without people making this initial bad decision, we wouldn’t have Corin Hardy’s new film, Whistle, and that would be a bummer, because it’s a blast.

'Killer Whale' (2026) Movie Review

2026-01-15T07:37:00.000-08:00

2026 came out of the gate swinging when it comes to animals-running-violently-amok movies. There’s the ape-attack-centric Primate, and now this weekend’s Killer Whale from writer/director Jo-Anne Brechin. If you read our most-anticipated movies of 2026 list, you know this is one of three potential killer whale action/horror movies we may see this year. I haven’t seen Primate yet, but there’s plenty of fun chatter about it. Killer Whale, on the other hand, isn’t great, unfortunately.

The 50 Most-Anticipated Movies Of 2026

2026-01-05T05:18:00.000-08:00

Hot on the heels of another great year of movies, it’s time to flip the calendar. Which around these parts also means it’s time to look to the future and see what cinema has to offer us this year. With that in mind, here are my 50, or at least 50-ish most anticipated movies coming our way in 2026.

'We Bury The Dead' (2025) Movie Review

2026-01-02T11:49:00.000-08:00

It doesn’t feel entirely accurate to call writer/director Zak Hilditch’s We Bury the Dead a zombie movie, which is how it’s been marketed. At the same time, however, it’s difficult to talk about without mentioning the Z-word. There are undead to be found, though not the swarming, apocalyptic, flesh-hungry variety, nor are they the film’s focus. They exist in this narrative as the impetus, as part of the inciting event to get the ball rolling; they’re presence is unsettling, yes, but not often as dangerous as anticipated.

The Top 12 Movies Of 2025

2025-12-29T07:43:00.000-08:00

It’s that time of year again, where I struggle to put together a best-of list. For once, I’ll save everyone the spiel about how I don’t like ranking movies or pitting one film against another. (If you’re interested in that, you can read more about it here.)

'Wildcat' (2025) Movie Review

2025-11-25T07:57:00.000-08:00

Before he wraps up his single-take action franchise next year (the third installment, One Last Shot, is reportedly already in the can), James Nunn is back to grace us with the Kate Beckinsale-fronted DTV offering, Wildcat. And tactical action fans have a great deal to be thankful for.

'Die My Love' (2025) Movie Review

2025-11-07T11:07:00.000-08:00

Ultimately, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about Die My Love, the new film from Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin, You Were Never Really Here). There’s a great deal to appreciate, admire, and even love. It’s certainly stuck with me since I first watched it and I can’t quite shake the idea of. At times it invites the viewer in, at times it keeps us at arm’s length, intentionally oblique to the point where it invites near endless interpretations.

'This Too Shall Pass' (2024) Movie Review

2025-10-29T09:01:00.000-07:00

In 2019’s Harpoon, writer/director Rob Grant made a tense, violent, often hilarious horror movie that I called “a gory, savage black comedy potboiler” about three friends trapped on a boat and coming unraveled. For his next trick, he tackles something equally harrowing and metaphorically equivalent to being lost adrift at sea: adolescence. This Too Shall Pass is a funny, bittersweet, messy story of a time that’s, well, funny, bittersweet, and messy, even if the delivery system is at times a nostalgia overload.

'The Ice Tower' (2025) Movie Review

2025-10-03T12:14:00.000-07:00

When 15-year-old orphan runaway Jeanne (Clara Pacini) breaks into a theater to sleep for the night, she discovers the building is being used to film an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, which just so happens to be her favorite fairy tale. As she insinuates herself into production, she falls under the thrall of Cristina (Marion Cotillard), the film’s demanding, enigmatic diva, and the two develop a mutual, deepening obsession. So goes The Ice Tower, the new film from Evolution and Earwig director, Lucile Hadzihalilovic.

'Affinity' (2025) Movie Review

2025-09-29T10:34:00.000-07:00

Marko Zaror’s DNA is all over the movie Affinity. And not just because, at one point, he says, “Here’s your DNA, motherfucker,” then flings his own blood all over a dude’s face. He’s a producer, the creative team features many of his frequent collaborators (for example, Fist of the Condor director Ernesto Diaz Espinoza edited the movie), he has a story-by credit and a screenwriting credit, and he’s the fight/action director. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, he’s also the star. The fights are, as expected in his capable hands, excellent, Zaror has the chance to do some different things, acting wise, and there’s a big, wild swing at the end that I don’t think entirely lands, and that is kind of nonsense, but that I freaking love. All in an 80-minute package.

'Appofeniacs' (2025) Movie Review

2025-09-23T12:45:00.000-07:00

Warnings about new and emerging technology run amok has been a common theme in movies since damn near day one. From Frankenstein to Wells to the Terminator franchise, we’ve been counseled against the hazards of unchecked science we don’t fully grasp yet. With his debut feature, Appofeniacs, prolific music video director Chris Marrs Piliero uses a post-Pulp Fiction maze of rapid banter and intersecting narratives to raise a cautious eyebrow at the use of AI and deepfakes. What lands, lands solid, especially the frequent and ample violence, but what misses whiffs, and the mixed bag of a film winds up mostly a cautionary tale about aggrieved edgelords with no real problems and too much time on their hands.

'Deathstalker' (2025) Movie Review

2025-09-22T10:15:00.000-07:00

Within a span of a couple of months we’ve received remakes of early-1980s cult favorite swords-and-sorcery epics. First out of the gate was M.J. Bassett’s take on Red Sonja, and now we have Psycho Goreman mastermind Steven Kostanski’s version of Deathstalker. While the former knows it’s goofy, it plays things relatively straight. The latter, however, leans into the campiness with a winking, over-the-top glee.

'The Furious' (2025) Movie Review

2025-09-17T11:33:00.000-07:00

Kenji Tanigaki’s The Furious is the action movie of the year. It may be the action movie of a few years, because holy hell does it go hard. If having the legendary stunt coordinator and action director in the big chair didn’t already pique your interest, he also enlisted the great Kensuke Sonomura—director of Ghost Killer, Hydra, and Bad City, as well as all around stunt badass—as his action director. Add to this mix a cast fronted by Miao Xie (An Eye For an Eye) and Joe Taslim (The Night Comes For Us), and that heavily features Joey Iwanaga (Baby Assassins 2), Brian Le (Everything Everywhere All at Once), Yayan Ruhian (The Raid), and even an appearance by Jeeja Yanin (Chocolate), and this is action-movie-fan-Christmas.

'The Toxic Avenger' (2023) Movie Review

2025-08-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

So often when filmmakers attempt to remake a beloved niche genre film or a cult classic, you wind up with a product that may, on the surface, resemble the earlier version, but that misses the point completely. Or one that doesn’t seem to grasp what people love about the original. Writer/director Macon Blair’s (Green Room) new incarnation of Troma Entertainment favorite The Toxic Avenger is not one of those movies.

'Under Fire' (2025) Movie Review

2025-08-15T06:52:00.000-07:00

On the heels of last fall’s Aftermath, the better of the two armored-car-robbery-on-a-bridge movies that came out within a week of one another (the less said about Sylvester Stallone’s abysmal Armor, the better), Mason Gooding (Scream) and Dylan “Not Jughead” Sprouse are back for another team up. This time they team up for Under Fire, a throwback action comedy that is itself a follow up to director Steven C. Miller’s 2024 Werewolves, which if you haven’t seen, is a fine time.

'Red Sonja' (2025) Movie Review

2025-08-13T10:41:00.000-07:00

There’s been talk of a new Red Sonja movie for what feels like forever. Multiple stars and high-profile filmmakers have been attached in one form or another, until it seemed like it was destined to languish just out of reach in development hell. But here we are, in the year of our lord 2025, and M.J. Bassett, the director behind Solomon Kane and Rogue, among others, has finally delivered the goods.

'The Occupant' (2025) Movie Review

2025-08-07T12:44:00.000-07:00

Wilderness survival tales, sagas of human endurance in the face of overwhelming, unrelenting odds, are common fodder for movies. But like other oft-visited genres, they can be the staging grounds for moving, powerful stories. (It feels like I’ve written a lot about this lately when it comes to post-apocalyptic films doing fresh, interesting things.) There’s plenty of room for thrills and edge of your seat tension, and they’re perfect showcases for human resilience, the triumph of man over nature, and that sort of thing. It also helps that they tend to have relatively small casts. And into this fray comes Hugo Keijzer’s directorial debut, The Occupant.