Horror Movie A Day

Welcome!

2026-05-01T09:12:00.001-07:00

If you're just coming here for the first time, uh... you're late. The site is no longer updated daily (see HERE for the story). But it's still kicking a few times a month, and it's better late than never! Most reviews nowadays are labeled "FTP:" and you should read THIS PRIMER to understand why. Also, while they're marked nowadays, many of the site's older reviews (i.e. 2010 or older) do contain unannounced spoilers, so tread carefully! Thanks for coming by and be sure to leave comments, play nice, and as always, watch Cathy's Curse.

The Mummy (2026)

2026-05-01T09:12:00.000-07:00

APRIL 26, 2026

GENRE: POSSESSION
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

While a lot of folks flipped their lids for Evil Dead Rise, I found it to be disappointing. There was no real progression to the madness, the setting was wasted, and the central “woman who doesn’t want to be a mom but is forced into the role” motif has been done to death over the years. But the thing that really killed it for me was that the characters seemed incapable of reacting normally to their obviously possessed mother/sister - scene after scene had them see her do something creepy and they would react as if it was the first time she had displayed such behavior. Sadly, Lee Cronin does the same damn thing in The Mummy (full title, and stop encouraging him), albeit in a movie that runs much longer, which means it generated even MORE instances of me saying “Does this character have amnesia?”

You can tell it’s gonna be one of those movies that runs too long right from the start, as we are treated to a lengthy epilogue with characters who are not speaking English. Being that this is a major studio horror movie, we know damn well that they will not be important characters, and therefore we should not be spending more than 3-4 minutes tops with them to set up whatever they’re there to set up and be on their way. But it just keeps going and going, and yet still leaves us with questions that won’t be answered until much later. After what seems like 15 minutes we finally meet our actual main characters, and before long the plot kicks in: their daughter disappears and eight years later, as they’ve more or less finally moved on, she is found. But she’s not right…

Now, if she APPEARED to be right and gradually got all creepy and possessed, it’d be one thing. Exorcist works because Regan seems perfectly normal at first, even after displaying a few odd behaviors. Here, she is clearly, you know, the possessed little monster girl from a horror movie. She contorts in strange positions, has weird liquids oozing from around her body, makes clicking noises… it’d be like if the “Let Jesus f— you!” version of Regan was the one that Ellen Burstyn started being a little hesitant around. And yet, the parents (Jack Reynor and Laia Costa) act as if she’s merely a little quiet or something. They take her home and she starts doing horror movie things almost instantly, yet they never call a doctor or bring her to one, and even when Reynor starts to express concern that something might be wrong, it’s treated like a “You’re an uncaring dad!” kind of moment as opposed to, you know, a guy being perfectly rational.

And this sort of thing continues over and over throughout the movie! Both parents just sort of shrug off extreme behavior; even when her antics clearly cause the death of someone, they basically forget about it a scene later. Since Exorcist is just as much of an influence here as any Mummy movie I’ve ever seen (there is SOME Mummy esque stuff here, technically - though it’s basically Exorcist mixed with the same bag of tricks he used in Evil Dead), I started getting the impression that the first version of Friedkin’s masterpiece that Cronin watched was the 2000 recut/expanded one, and the stupid and pointless spider-walk scene unlocked something within him. “Yes!” a young Cronin presumably thought. “Real horror is a technically scary and creepy scene with zero followup whatsoever, never mentioned again!” Crazy things happen in this movie - many of them fun on their own! - but then there is no followup to them, making them feel weightless, not to mention continuing to increase my belief that the parents were brain damaged. Any time Cronin comes up with an idea that would force the plot to change gears, he simply cuts to black and picks up a day later, as if it never happened.

It certainly doesn’t help that the movie runs an unforgivable 135 minutes (longer than the actual Exorcist!), and not because of its complicated plot or wealth of well-developed characters. No, it’s just that every scene goes on much longer than it should, and it’s riddled with pointless subplots like Reynor visiting a professor to have some markings translated. Not only do we get a bit of the guy’s class, suggesting maybe he will be an important character (he isn’t), but there’s a whole other character (a cop who investigated the girl’s disappearance in the first place) whose point in the movie is to find answers, so this information could have been discovered by her. Instead we just have the father leaving his family behind with a clearly dangerous person to go talk to some guy he’s never met, all to get information he then does nothing with.

All of that is a shame, because at 85 minutes or so, this could have at least been a fun little Halloween time “spook a blast” type movie. Cronin uses diopters to an almost comical degree, but on the other hand he has a penchant for gnarly gore and bodily harm that serves him well here (the death via falling out a window has a very cruel/funny button to it), and the makeup for the possessed Katie is quite good. And she starts mind-controlling her siblings, resulting in some fun profanity from a little girl, always an easy way to win me over. But when the movie runs damn near an hour longer than necessary, by the halfway point it’s hard to remain engaged when the parents are so bafflingly inept. Like I understand the idea that they finally got their daughter back and don’t want to give her up again, but when she’s clearly posing a threat to their OTHER children, it just comes off as insane behavior. At least in Cathy’s Curse (a movie I would never defend for its strong character work) they establish that the mom has mental problems before she nonchalantly ignores her daughter teleporting around the house. I legit started cackling when the mom responded to the dad’s (EXTREMELY JUSTIFIABLE) concerns with the same face my own wife gives me when I tell her I don’t feel like taking our kid to his swim class or something.

Oh well. Despite the title, it’s technically an original R rated horror movie and it’s doing fairly well at the box office, so that’s always a good thing. But between this and Rise, I feel that - much like Fede Alvarez, weirdly enough since he made Evil Dead (2013) - despite their popularity with a lot of fans, I just don’t connect with this filmmaker’s particular brand of horror, so I can’t say I’ll be too excited for whatever he makes next. And that’s OK! There are probably people out there who couldn’t ever see what the big deal is with Carpenter or Romero. Just sucks when you can’t have the same fun others are having, though at least here even the people who overall liked it agree it was too long, so that’s not just me being an old grouch.

What say you?

Faces Of Death (2026)

2026-04-08T14:54:00.000-07:00

APRIL 6, 2026

GENRE: SERIAL KILLER, TECHNOLOGY
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREMIERE SCREENING)

Lots of movies feel dated due to changing attitudes, or focusing on technology that was almost outdated by the time the movie came out, let alone decades later (The Net is a real laugh riot now). But the original Faces of Death is an unusual example in that it’s dated simply because its “appeal” (for lack of a better word) has since been outpaced by our everyday life. Sure, in 1978 and for the first few years of VHS supremacy, the idea of watching an alleged snuff film carried a certain taboo thrill, but now we get people live streaming their murders and/or suicides, sometimes seeing these things without even looking for them thanks to autoplay and “suggested” reels on social media.

So on one hand, on paper it’s the exact kind of movie that should be remade, because the original almost feels pointless now (that it’s a somewhat boring movie is another benefit; I DARE someone to come out and say that they’re “violating my childhood!” or whatever). On the other hand, how can this new Faces of Death possibly compete with what we see on any given day when scrolling through Twitter?

The relatively genius answer from the team of Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei is to take things into a meta direction. Our hero Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at some kind of TikTok-like social media channel as a content moderator, occasionally flagging things that are too extreme while allowing pretty much most others to get through. (In what I assume is a joke about America’s puritan ways, she is fine with pretty much every violent video she comes across, but when she sees a clip of a woman demonstrating how to put a condom on by using a banana, she flags it as “sexually graphic.”) One day she sees a clip of a man being executed in the electric chair and is somewhat unsure if it’s real or not, tentatively allowing it to go through. Then the next day, she sees another one that’s seemingly even MORE realistic, and starts getting concerned.

Eventually she breaks a work rule and reposts one of the clips on Reddit, asking the forum if they think it’s real or not, and someone points out that it "looks like a scene in Faces of Death." She can’t find it on streaming (A+ joke that was probably true when the movie was shot three years ago; it's on Roku and Amazon now) but luckily her roommate has a VHS copy and she checks it out, coming to the conclusion that YES these videos are legitimately snuff films and the culprit is intentionally restaging scenes from the original movie. But the movie is actually a two-hander, because rather than treat this as some kind of 8MM-style mystery, we spend half our runtime with the actual killer, played by Dacre Montgomery (Billy (RIP) from Stranger Things). He’s a tech whiz who can find someone’s location in seconds and goes after pseudo-celebrities (an influencer, a TV news host, etc) as the unwilling actors in his recreations, and naturally gets alarmed when Margot figures out what he’s up to and posts about it, tries to get the cops to help, etc.

I know that’s more of a summary than I usually bother with here, but I want to make sure it’s clear that unlike the original, this is a traditional thriller with suspense and cat and mouse sequences and all that good stuff, not a series of random clips like the original. Some might cry foul that making what essentially amounts to a modern-day, tech driven Seven-type thriller is a waste of the branding (no one will “dare” you to watch this, in other words), but as I have zero affinity for the IP I just took it as a perfectly decent serial killer thriller with a few good jokes at the expense of influencer culture. The movie could have been titled anything (it was shot under the title Home Movies) and just used the original film as a point of reference in the same way that Scream used Halloween or Prom Night or whatever.

Another smart move was to have the killer drug and kidnap his victims to bring them back to his home / “studio” for his recreations (which are otherwise populated with mannequins , a creepy visual). This allows Margot a chance to save some of them as he gets everything ready for the next video, giving the movie more suspense than it might have if it was just a series of straightforward killings. At one point he DOES kill someone instantly and it was actually a bit of a shock, as so far he hadn’t been so direct and it stood to reason that he wouldn’t bother anyone that wasn’t going to be the star of one of his clips.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not some minor masterpiece or anything. It gets a bit draggy at times despite a mere 95 min runtime, and there’s a brief turn from Charlie XCX that exists only for the producers to say that Charlie XCX is in the movie, which is the sort of thing that tends to annoy me (especially given the occasional flab in the runtime; both of her scenes could be deleted entirely without a single effect on the rest of the movie). And there’s a tragic backstory for Margot that rings false; she herself was inadvertently in a viral video in which her “co-star” was killed, but is mocked in public for it as if she was the “Boom Goes the Dynamite” guy or something. And when we learn this bit of history, her actions at her job make less sense to me - you’d think she’d be flagging pretty much everything as too graphic, instead of being so lenient on other violent images.

But again, the original isn’t something I hold dear, and I was worried a modern one would attempt to “top” it in some way, so using it as a springboard for something a little more involving (if not particularly groundbreaking) was a relief. I should also note that I had a little bit of personal attachment to the concept that I wouldn’t have gotten if I just watched the movie on streaming or even a day later. As I was walking from the parking garage to the theater, I saw a police car barreling down the street and suddenly swerve into a gas station where I had just been walking not 15 seconds before. The cops got out of the car, guns drawn, screaming at someone to get down, as two other officers (also guns drawn) made their way around the building from the other side to join them.

I couldn’t see the suspect from where I was now standing, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wonder if I should pull out my cell phone and start filming in case they ended up opening fire (from my position, they’d have to be wildly terrible shots for me to be in any danger from them OR whoever they were about to arrest. Luckily, the suspect surrendered without a shot fired and I just continued on my way to the theater, but it was that very “dare you to watch” kind of thing that drove interest in the original, and (not a spoiler, it’s in the trailer) gave the killer his motive in this new take. I was almost part of the problem!

(Alas, as is almost always the case, I can’t find anything online about the incident. If someone savvier than me wants to look, it was at about 615pm on Monday, April 6, at the VP Racing Fuels gas station at Hollywood & Highland.)

So, I dunno. YMMV. A friend said it was the worst movie he’s seen in over a decade, so clearly it’s not a universal crowd pleaser. And even though I enjoyed it, I can’t say for sure I’d ever watch it again, though I’d probably check out a commentary if offered (the filmmakers were there for Q&A and were worth listening to; they also made CAM, if you liked that one). But for a movie that’s been on the shelf for almost three years and was (technically) a remake of a film I considered a complete waste of my time, that it was even watchable is kind of a minor miracle. That it held my attention and made me chuckle a few times at the expense of influencers (I also liked the score a lot, reminded me of Rob’s for Maniac) is a win, in my book.

What say you?

Scream 7 Spoilers!

2026-03-06T09:05:00.000-08:00

MARCH 5, 2026

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: MY OWN THOUGHTS!

As I did for the last one, I thought I would write a second "review" of sorts for Scream 7 where I go in detail about my issues with the film's third act, since (also like S6) I think the film is really good until the reveals start coming in, at which point the movie nosedives. I don't think it's AS crippling as the last one, because the reveal there was not only weak but also once again revealed the characters to be idiots (as I mentioned in my traditional review: the fact that it was Richie's entire family means that Sam, Kirby, AND Gale all managed to somehow remain ignorant of their existence, despite dating, investigating, and writing about him, respectively), and this one is merely just weak. But considering this was Kevin Williamson's grand return to the series, I can't help but feel more disappointed that the screenwriter's big unmasking was the least surprising in this entire franchise.

Spoilers begin... NOW!

OK, so if you're still here you either know or simply don't care that the mastermind was Jessica (Anna Camp), with Marco (Ethan Embry) as her muscle/right-hand man. They also had another guy helping them earlier whose name I already forgot, but seeing a Ghostface killed 40 minutes in was a great surprise (as was the reveal of who was driving the van that hit him) and his anonymity was part of the point, so there's nothing to complain about there. But in Camp and Embry's case, I can't imagine there's a person alive who would be surprised to see their faces under the masks, given that they are both recognizable actors who were playing absolute nothing roles. Especially Embry, whose sole purpose (and *only* scene prior) is to show up and try to convince Sid (read: the audience) that Stu is still alive, a concept I never believed for a second.

Camp at least has a little more to do, as Sid's neighbor/BFF who Williamson and Guy Busick thankfully bothered to give I think three scenes sprinkled into the narrative. But they make the same dumb mistake that they did in 6, which is to have Camp shoehorn in some backstory about their past that is too extraneous to buy as traditional character development, and merely points a big arrow at their head reading "KILLER!" As soon as she says something about having an abusive ex (just as Quinn randomly dropped the fact that she had a dead brother), we know that's going to be crucial information, and it's a shame to recall that Williamson used to be so much better at this. When Billy mentioned his mother leaving in the original, it never once came off as a clue - it played exactly as it was meant to; a clunky attempt at sympathizing with Sid re: her own mother's death, with few being being tipped off that there was any more to it.

And really, they could have fixed it easily by simply having Jessica say that she first "met" Sid when the latter was posing as Laura for her crisis hotline stint in Scream 3. Even if it wasn't the same guy, we (sadly) know how many women tend to leave one abusive partner only to end up with another (the one she refers to here is also the father of her teen son, so unless she stuck with him for a decade or so, the time wouldn't work), so it still could have played as a "how they met" thing without raising any alarms. Bonus: it would have made Jessica's grand plan a little tragic on top of everything else. She's apparently upset that Sid gave up being a Final Girl (by sitting out of New York, a recurring theme in the movie) and wants Tatum (Sid's daughter) to take over as America's premiere survivor, which is kind of silly even for these things, but at least could have been a bit sad if Jessica had spent the past 25 years worshiping Sid for helping her with her own struggles only to be crushed by the latter's decision to live a normal life instead of continuing to fight Ghostfaces.

All that said, I can forgive the "why" if the "who" is at least satisfying. As stupid as the whole "Stu survived!" thing was to me, it would honestly be better to do a repeat killer than have two people we've barely met take off the masks, with their recognizable faces ("It's the Pitch Perfect girl!") doing the majority of the work for whoever in the audience might not have figured it out long before that. I didn't exactly take a stopwatch to the screening, but I'd bet $63.6m that no previous Ghostface has had less screentime than either of the main culprits here (again, the other guy was anonymous by design so I don't care about him). It just baffles me that no one involved thought to say "Hey, fans love going back and figuring out which killer performed which kill, and that can't happen here because neither killer had enough involvement with the story for their whereabouts to be determined at any given time." Again, Embry is in ONE SCENE! Who could possibly be satisfied with that reveal?

As for Stu, as I mentioned in my main review, Matthew Lillard is clearly having a good time reprising his role, and he hasn't lost any of that manic energy (if you've followed his later work, he's actually a solid and fairly subtle dramatic actor, so it's fun to see him go big again). It's a shame that pre-release casting news spoiled most of the other cameos from now-dead cast members (there was one they didn't, and it was a great little "Whoa!" moment for me), because it basically answered the movie's central mystery of "Is Stu really alive or is this AI?" right from the start. We know without a doubt that Dewey, Roman, etc. are dead (Stu is, I think, the only GF with the slightest chance of having survived) but thanks to pre-release publicity we also know they're going to be in it, and this isn't a supernatural series. So therefore, AI/deep-fake nonsense will be coming into play, and in turn Stu is clearly among the killer's pixelated creations. Without their casting known (David Arquette even has his name on the poster!), if Stu was the only returning "dead" person, the mystery could have actually worked to some degree. For a series that started as a commentary on horror films and their fans, it's weird that Scream 7 would actually work best if you watched it in a total vaccuum and (re: the two killers) without having seen any other movies besides the previous Screams, so that Embry and Camp wouldn't be any more recognizable to you than the handful of newcomer actors playing Tatum's friends.

Speaking of them, I will give the movie this much of a win over S6: at least the deaths are all of named characters. Yes, Ghostface is once again incapable of killing anyone we really like (Joel McHale, welcome to the "Somehow survived several brutal stabbings" club!), but I was surprised that literally ALL of Tatum's friends get killed off. The body count is a little lower than the last one, but I'll always take 5-6 named characters over a dozen randos. It's a little weird how they're spaced out though; after the surprisingly early death of Hannah (McKenna Grace's character) - which was far and away the best designed one, very Argento-y - no one dies for a bit and then he wipes out the rest of her friends in a matter of minutes right as the third act kicks into gear. Paying homage to The Burning, maybe? (On the subject of the body count: once we get the motive, we then realize the opening kill is pointless. Why would Sid care about that?)

Like I said in the main review, the movie mainly won me over thanks to the Sid and Gale stuff, but the more I think about the whole Ghostface plot, the sloppier it feels, so it might end up slipping back under 6 over time. I was happy to see a scarier and more stalker-y version of the guy again, but when it's all in service of such a weak killer plot, with absolutely ZERO tension to the mystery of who was behind it, I suspect that stuff won't be as fun on repeat viewings, especially when (again) there's no possible way to determine which one was responsible for this or that kill. The monster opening weekend practically guarantees another one, so I hope when that day comes that they really take their time to come up with a solid mystery again. Give us the red herrings! Give us a scene where one killer is trying to convince Sid (or whoever) that the other person is the killer! GIVE US A REASON TO REWATCH THE DAMN THING!!!

What say you?

Scream 7 (2026)

2026-02-27T11:44:00.000-08:00

FEBRUARY 25, 2026

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PRESS SCREENING)

As I am back to pretty much full time in the office as opposed to working from home, I no longer have the time to rewatch a franchise before a new entry. And let's face it, with a movie like Scream 7, I hardly NEEDED to refresh my mind - I've been there on opening weekend for every single entry, and watched them all multiple times since (even the ones I don't care for as much!). But I do at least usually rewatch the previous entry and, if time allows, one other random one just for the hell of it. So I sighed my way through VI again (that third act gets worse with every viewing, folks) and then, for my random one, I opted for Scream 3.

That may surprise those who know me, as I've never exactly been enamored by that one, but over the years I've come to like it a little more than I used to (in fact, Scream 4 now takes my bottom slot). However, the real reason I picked that one is because Kevin Williamson was returning to the series in full force for the first time since Scream 2, as his contributions to 3 and 4's screenplays were largely overwritten by Ehren Kruger and his presence on 5 and 6 were kind of ceremonial at best. So I had a feeling that, for him, this would be a sort of "true" Scream 3 - not that he'd be erasing the entries in between or anything, but sort of taking it back to basics and doing something along the lines of what he would have done had he been able to work on the original Scream 3 as much as he did with the first two. (The return of Matthew Lillard as Stu, which has been publicized to the point that his name is on the poster, also suggested this, since Williamson's original idea had a surviving Stu be the mastermind behind that film's plot. More on Lillard later.)

But even if I was way off, I'd still be grateful for my random selection, because there's a moment in Scream 3 I love that really kind of sets up what I enjoyed most about this entry, and I'm glad it was fresh in my mind. It's about halfway through the movie, when Sid finally arrives in Los Angeles and sees Dewey. After their big hug and hello, Sid takes a pause and says "...is she OK?", meaning Gale. It's a perfectly played moment; Sid and Gale are not exactly besties, and there's some deserved animosity toward the latter, but they had been through this crap together *twice* by that point, and at the end of the day, Gale did save her life, so she can't help but care about the woman even if she's probably hoping for another excuse to smack her in the face. This "frenemy" status is confirmed a scene later, when they meet and share an awkward hug. But since then, we hadn't gotten much of this dynamic; they don't interact much in 4, and in 5 their pairing is motivated more by their shared love of Dewey than any real affection for each other, and then of course in 6 Sid doesn't appear at all.

That unlikely bonding they now have drives a lot of their scenes together here, and while obviously people are coming for a fresh round of Ghostface attacks, for my old ass-who has watched these two characters grow along with me for three decades-I absolutely adored how their relationship is handled here. Gale doesn't enter the story until about 45 minutes in (and does so in absolutely spectacular, crowd-pleasing fashion), and doesn't have much to do in the climax, but she spends nearly every one of her scenes with Sid, and their long, strained history is at the forefront of nearly every one of those encounters. Gale, suffering extreme nerve damage from her near-fatal attack in 6, assumes that since this new Ghostface is after Sid and her daughter specifically that Sid will be proactive and joining her old pal for another crime solving adventure, and is dismayed that Sid just wants to run and keep her daughter safe. I won't run through every one of their conversations, but there's one that genuinely made me tear up, as it offered what may be the first time in this series that Sid actually felt sorry for Gale, and also realizing that despite her fame-seeking demeanor, the woman has done a hell of a lot more for her over the years than she has in return. It's lovely!

But then Ghostface calls again and ruins the whole thing.

OK that's being a bit harsh. But while I enjoyed the movie overall (more than the last one, at least after this one viewing), I can't help but feel that they have officially run out of ideas for the mystery plots. I thought 6's reveal was clunky and plot-hole ridden (still trying to understand how neither Sam, Gale, OR Kirby were totally in the dark about Richie's family), but at least the usual "I'm out for revenge for killing my kid!" thing makes sense. Here, not only is the identity of the killer almost laughably easy to pin (thankful that Dermot Mulroney had the decency to not even bother with an unmasking scene, since it was so obvious - when the killer takes their mask off here, it's as anticlimactic as any such moment has been in this entire franchise), but their motive is utter nonsense, to the extent that I turned to my friend and said "Wait, what?" I mean, to be fair, these people are lunatics, so I guess it kind of tracks that their motive will be equally insane, but it sure doesn't make for a very exciting reveal (also, once we know what their motive was... what exactly was the point of the opening scene?). And as I've noted more than once: nailing the final reel is absolutely crucial to these things, because that's what we're gonna leave on. It doesn't matter how good the first 90 minutes are (and they are, for the most part, quite good here), if it's all building to a wet fart, it's gonna be hard to justify further viewings. Think about the first time you rewatched the OG Scream and noticed that winking nod from Billy to Stu when the former showed up at the party (after killing Tatum) and how fun that was - there's nothing like that here. You'll know who it is as soon as they appear, leaving only the "Why?" to your imagination, and I'm guessing whatever you come up with will probably be more satisfying than what these writers did.

That said, I was charmed by the fact that (minor spoiler, maybe?) Sid's book plays a part in the big "Why I am doing this" speech. Again, Williamson hasn't exactly been a driving force behind the storytelling since the 2nd film, and I wouldn't have been surprised if he flat out ignored 3-6. But no, every single sequel has some kind of connection here, without any kind of retconning or erasing (for those who were fretting about how Sidney clearly had more than one child in 5 - it's explained: the younger girls are off at their paternal grandparents for the week, and we can just assume that the 17ish Tatum, who would have been 12 or 13 in 5's events, was just at school or something). But apart from Chad and Mindy's appearance (which is brief and largely pointless, though I maintain that Mason Gooding is so effortlessly charming that I will forgive the clunkiness just to spend a few minutes with him again), you could honestly pick up from 3, maybe even 2, and not really feel like you're missing out on anything, character-wise.

And actually, if you go from 2, you'll be spared the rest of the fans' agony that Sidney's cop husband Mark is not the same cop named Mark that was clearly set up as a love interest in 3. Scheduling/salary stuff prevented Patrick Dempsey from returning as planned, but since 5 and 6 both went out of their way to establish that Sid was married to "Mark" (as an easter egg for fans), they had to keep the name here. Why he had to still be a cop, I have no idea (Sid has a type?), but Joel McHale makes the most of it, especially in his flirty bedroom scene with Sid, which is basically the first/last time we see her smile in the entire movie. No reference to Dempsey's Mark is made, though given the numerous rather catty jokes about Sid not being in New York (a story decision also dictated by salary squabbles) I wouldn't be surprised if there was a petty line about ol' Detective Kincaid in the script at one point.

Mark 2.0 is also written out as a suspect extremely early, which is weird. Yes, we can expect more than one killer (only Scream 3 tried a solo venture, and given its generally low popularity among fans, I can't imagine them ever trying it again), but GF attacks him at around the 30 minute mark with no other witnesses, so if it was an intentional way to throw us off, it would be a big cheat (in 4, whenever Jill was "attacked," she was with Sid or Kirby at the time), only failing to get the kill due to his trademark clumsiness. Again, the mystery is totally bungled here, with a shocking lack of red herrings, most of whom are canceled out within moments of their introduction for one reason or another, but they could have at least let McHale be a reasonable suspect for a little while, and a few edits could have allowed it to be so.

Especially when the main suspect is... (big spoiler here for those who haven't paid attention to any casting news) Stu Macher. Again, Williamson toyed with the idea of making him the mastermind in 3, and ever since, fans have clung to the idea that he never actually died. They even bring this up in 6, and when Lillard was actually announced as returning in this one, my heart sank a little, because I found it to be an incredibly stupid idea. I know this series can be sloppy in retrospect as each new sequel tries to rewrite some old history (i.e. Gale writing books about people but apparently never looking at a family photo), but even by their standards, I cannot for one second believe that in the FIVE times that a new Ghostface has popped up in these peoples' lives since Stu got a TV dropped on him, no one ever said "Could it be Stu?" if he somehow survived and was merely locked up somewhere. And if he was in hiding all this time, what the hell was he waiting for, for 30 years? You'd think he'd want to at least help out his successors and make sure he got the death blow himself. I won't spoil the particulars of his appearance, but I will say it was actually rather fun to see him again (especially since we've gotten two revivals of Billy) and Lillard seemed to be having fun with his part, despite his brilliant quote about how he appreciates what it did for him but ultimately doesn't care about the character (he likened it to a plumber still caring about a toilet he fixed decades ago). I saw somewhere that people were upset that the series was going the supernatural route, but that's not the case. That said, even a straight up Jason-style undead zombie Stu would be better than what they came up with instead.

Luckily the chases/kills themselves are largely fantastic, and as a result this is certainly the scariest entry since 2. 6 has some good setpieces (the ladder, the convenience store) but they're held back by the film's obvious inability to bring themselves to kill any returning characters. They get around that here by leaving our four returning friends largely out of harm's way (Gale never directly interacts with Ghostface once, and he flat out tells Sid that he's not going to hurt her because he wants her to suffer from seeing her daughter die) and having him focus on the daughter (named Tatum) and her friends. There's a terrific, Argento-y kind of kill involving a harness, and a moment with a beer tap that would make Mr. Voorhees proud. He also stalks more than he has in recent entries, at one point even doing a Michael Myers-style "fading in and out of the light in the background" move, which delighted me. And as bungled as the mystery might be, at least I can say "Yeah, I can see that person doing the Ghostface stuff we saw earlier", which hasn't been the case for five of the last seven murderers (I like 5 a lot, but I don't know if anything in this franchise is as silly as specifically making it clear that it's tiny Mikey Madison lifting Dewey off the ground to kill him). Alas, the flipside is that when you go back and rewatch, there can never be much of a "OK, THIS kill had to be _____, because [other killer] was accounted for" type of puzzling it out, because the culprits were so peripheral to the story anyway it could conceivably be both of them for every single kill. Now, is this better or worse than scenes like the convenience store in 6, where all THREE killers were accounted for elsewhere? You tell me.

And yet all those issues just kept getting shrugged off, because I was getting the first real full on Sid movie since 2 (she was kind of jammed into 3 as much as possible due to having scheduling issues with her show, in 4 she splits her time with the new cast, in 5 she doesn't really enter the story until the third act, and she's not in 6 at all). Neve Campbell came back firing on all cylinders; someone noted that thanks to H20 this is the 2nd time Williamson has brought back the lead for a part 7, but unlike that movie, where Jamie Lee was just playing herself instead of Laurie Strode, Campbell really does feel like the older, wiser version of that normal girl we met 30 years ago. And in a nice contrast from the OTHER return of Jamie Lee (for the DGG Halloweens), she hasn't turned her daughter into a survival expert - in fact it's the opposite, and she's sheltered her so much that the girl doesn't have much of a fight in her at all. Tatum doesn't really know much about her mom's history (at first I thought she was living under a fake name or something and the girl had no idea; she actually does know a bit, but wants to hear it from her mother, not the Stab movies and Gale's books, and Sid just brushes off such prying attempts). Sid has yet another career (now she runs a coffee shop!), but she does mention she used to act, with a note of sadness that she gave it up after her time at Windsor - another nice example of how much of her life has been affected by this stuff, and it's made clear that she's not hiding or running from it, but merely wants to stop having so much of her life being dictated by it as well, which is exactly what running would do. That she eventually finally takes a second to acknowledge how much all this misery has taken a toll on Gale is just icing on the cake - it's a legitimately great arc to play out for the actress, and while Williamson's script (with Guy Busick) may be spotty when it comes to the Ghostface stuff, it certainly doesn't let Sid down even for a second, which more than makes up for her absence last time around.

Of course, as we all know, this was not even the original plan. Whether she would have even been in it at all, I don't know, but the 7th Scream film was going to focus once again on Sam and Tara Carpenter, played by Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, but the former was fired from the film after tweeting in support of Palestine and the latter either quit over scheduling, salary, or in solidarity with her on-screen sister, depending on who you ask. This also led to the departure of Christopher Landon (who received death threats for Barrera's firing, even though he didn't do that himself or even agree with it), forcing Paramount and Spyglass to presumably back up an armored truck to Neve Campbell's house and let Williamson direct himself, something he's only done one other time (Teaching Mrs. Tingle, all the way back in 1999). Both of these moves can only be seen as "Let's make sure fans have something to be excited about to make up for our shitty business practices," and I have to wonder if, as one final punishment to the performers, Williamson was forbidden to even MENTION their two characters. So it's a cynically made movie, and I don't blame those who are boycotting or letting that cynicism (which isn't evident on-screen; if you don't read behind the scenes stuff you'd never know anything was amiss) inform their opinion on the film itself. But luckily, at least for me, while Campbell may have been enticed more by the big paycheck than a burning desire to play this character for a sixth time, it never once shows in the finished product. And Courteney Cox, who seemed a bit bored last time around in her limited role, seems to have some of her old spark again as a result of playing off her old pal instead of a bunch of kids she has no real connection to. A silver lining to a very dark, unfortunate, and frankly icky cloud.

So ultimately, it's another mixed bag like 6, though as of this writing I will give it the edge for the strong character work, the surprisingly graphic kills (holy shit, this film's obligatory "you gotta shoot them in the head" moment), and keeping it grounded after all the worry. Yes, it's a little weird that Sam and Tara aren't mentioned (another reason why Chad and Mindy's appearance felt so forced - the "core four" split up, I guess?) and the film occasionally feels like the very sort of slasher that the first film would have name checked (in fact, outside of the cold open, no horror movies - or the Stabs - are mentioned at all unless you count a marquee showing Texas Chainsaw Massacre). But the shift back to being suspenseful while downplaying attempts to be clever/meta was a relief for me, as I just wanted to get my slasher fix in a familiar setting. That it gave my girl Sid several layers to play AND some true bonding moments with Gale that we've been denied for quite some time now? Icing.

What say you?

P.S. Since it seems relevant for these things: 1 2 5 7 6 3 4.

Send Help (2026)

2026-02-03T14:31:00.000-08:00

FEBRUARY 1, 2026

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

HMAD has been here for almost 20 years now, and in that entire time there's only been two Sam Raimi movies that qualified for review here. The first was Drag Me To Hell, which I loved so much I hosted a "repertory" screening of it not even five years later, and the second is Send Help (which I'd love to host someday!). In between we got a godawful Oz movie that I don't even want to remember, and his Doctor Strange sequel (which had some solid scary stuff in it too, for the record, but it was first and foremost a Marvel movie that was following up a TV show and also a Spider-Man movie, while also setting up more multiverse stuff, so it's not fully HIS). Basically it's nice to have him back, but it'd be nicer if he didn't leave at all, you know?

The plot set up is simple but genius: "What if Cast Away but also Misery?" Rachel McAdams (she will only make a genre movie if a plane is involved, I guess) plays Linda, a frumpy, awkward woman who is also the most competent employee of a finance company. The president of the company has promised her a big promotion, but unfortunately he dies (all we see of him is a painted portrait, which you should definitely pay attention to) before it goes into effect. And now his son Bradley (Dylan O'Brien) has taken over and given the promotion to his frat buddy. This part of the setup isn't all that unique, and could have been a routine office thriller where she gets her revenge, but instead, the one employee there who sees her worth insists she join O'Brien and his bros on a private flight to Bangkok to oversee a merger. During the flight the engine explodes and the plane crashes into the water just offshore of a deserted island. Only Linda and Bradley survive, and the latter only thanks to the efforts of the former, who-as we learn via her homelife and as well as Bradley's ridicule-is also a survival expert hooked on Survivor.

So the tables turn; he's an alpha male in the office but can barely tie two sticks together on his own, whereas she only needs a day to have a fire, shelter, food, and water for them (it took Tom Hanks like a week!). At first he's still berating her and dismissing her, but ultimately he realizes he has to depend on her... just as she starts realizing that she is happier here and doesn't want to leave. To say more would be spoiler-y, but I will say that part of the fun of the movie is that we are constantly shifting our sympathies. No one in their right mind would be on Bradley's side for the first 45 minutes or so (maybe longer;? the office section feels a bit longer than necessary, but this might just be some "We know it's an island movie so GET TO THE ISLAND!" type impatience on my part), but once Linda does something that almost certainly delays their chances of being rescued, and Bradley admits he was abused by BOTH of his parents as a child, we get into more of a gray area. Right down to the end of the movie, I wasn't quite sure who would be the victor, as they were both villains in a way.

Naturally, their increasing antagonism is what gives us the Raimi splatter we hoped for once it was announced that the film would have an R rating. To be fair it's mostly for the language - honestly, the PG-13 Drag Me To Hell had far more violence, but the handful of moments that unleash his goo-happy tendencies are top notch, and it was great to see such things on the big screen again. I mean, it's not really a spoiler to say that these people who are on a deserted island eventually have to hunt an animal for food, but while we've seen this sort of thing in any number of island-set movies/shows, only Raimi would do it THIS way, which had me cackling and - yes! - even jumping a bit from a well-executed scare.

But it mostly plays out as a psychological thriller, meaning it's closer in tone to his movies like The Gift and Simple Plan, dipping into "Sam Raimi, the director of Evil Dead" territory at key moments almost as a diversion. Not saying this is a bad thing, to be clear, but I think the fans of those aforementioned grounded films will be more satisfied than those going in expecting Rachel McAdams to be the new Ash Williams. There are even a few moments of bodily damage that are played off-screen, something that would be unthinkable in an Evil Dead.

Honestly though, I didn't even think much of these omissions. The real draw was seeing McAdams and O'Brien having a blast playing against their type and playing mind games with the other. It was also interesting to have a dynamic where the female was older than the male; again, the "unappreciated female goes after her asshole male boss" scenario has been done a lot, so flipping the sexes but retaining the usual age gap made for an interesting pairing. I've been a fan of McAdams for decades now, but after Saturday Night I started really appreciating O'Brien's talents (say what you will about the movie itself, but he was SPOT ON as Dan Aykroyd) and he continues that streak here, finding humanity in what could have been a generic "bro" role. And both of them go for broke when it comes to the splattery stuff, particularly a scene where... well, again, no spoilers. But it comes after a raft breaks, that's all I'll give away.

Apparently this is in DBox, and converted to 3D as well... I'm sure it's fun for a few key moments, but I had a blast at a normal 2D screening, and rarely felt I was missing out on anything (the plane crash probably would have been fun in that capacity). I have yet to be convinced that 3D conversions can look as good as the real thing, so I never bother unless I have to (most recent attempt was another island movie in fact: Jurassic World Rebirth, and I forgot it was even in 3D half the time, if that gives you any impression), but Raimi seems tailor-made for the silliness that a good DBox presentation provides, so if you're not as picky about 3D as I am then by all means add to your enjoyment. But I just want to be clear: this movie would have worked even without the moments that were clearly designed for/by its director. The most anonymous filmmaker alive could have made a good movie out of watching Rachel McAdams go psycho on a desert island - Raimi just added some very sweet gravy to it, and the world is the better for it.

What say you?

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026)

2026-01-20T15:02:00.000-08:00

JANUARY 16, 2026

GENRE: ZOMBIE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Despite not loving 28 Years Later, I worked my morning schedule around making sure I could see its sequel, simply titled The Bone Temple on screen, on opening day. It's a busy month for the genre, with a new wide release every week, and since I can only get to one movie a weekend (at most!), this one would get lost in the shuffle if I wasn't proactive. Plus the word of mouth was strong, with many even naming it their favorite of the franchise, so I was quite curious to see how it played for me, someone whose favorite entry is the one most people don't even remember at all, let alone laud.

Anyway, Bone Temple is an improvement on its predecessor, thanks to a more focused narrative and better use of the key assets of the previous film, namely Ralph Fiennes' doctor Ian Kelson and his excellent taste in music. In a move that would make "Dr Frankenstein" proud, Kelson figures out a way to communicate with one of the zombies (and yes, the Z-word is used again) and perhaps even reverse the infection, which allows him to bond with Samson, the oft-naked "Alpha" we met in the last movie. Their scenes are the best in the film, and honestly I could happily just watch the two of them form their strange, wonderful friendship over the course of these two (and maybe three) films.

But we spend the other half of the runtime with the "Jimmies", a group of thugs led by Sir Jimmy Crystal, played by Jack O'Connell. We met them at the end of Years, and now Spike (the young protagonist of the previous film) is, through happenstance, part of their gang, though he certainly isn't fond of the predicament. These scenes, alas, grew tiresome for me - there's never any sense that Spike is being corrupted by Sir Jimmy or even in any serious danger from the other "Jimmies", and as with the last movie, it feels like this stuff would play best to someone who hadn't seen a single zombie movie since the original 28 Days in 2002. I mean, if seeing yet another evil human use the ongoing zombie threat as an excuse to invade someone's home before killing them for their supplies is still somehow novel to you, enjoy! But I've seen this sort of thing too many times, and considering how engaging the Kelson material was to me, every time it cut back to this group I found myself losing interest.

As with the last one, the last reel or so is where the movie really shines, because that's when Spike's two would-be father figures finally come face to face (his actual dad, played by Aaron Taylor Johnson, isn't seen this time around). It's a bit unfortunate that Kelson doesn't realize Spike is among their number until the very last moments of their encounter, but it's more than made up for with how Kelson introduces himself to the group. I won't spoil the particulars (though social media posts with a song attached have almost certainly clued you in to one aspect), but it's an electrifying sequence on par with the musical interlude in Sinners (which also co-starred Jack O'Connell, incidentally).

Oh, it reprises John Murphy's iconic "In The House" during the credits, so that made me happy as it was absent from Years.

It's also a better LOOKING movie, so that was a relief. I couldn't stand the iPhone photography (I cannot use the word "CINEMAtography" in that context without feeling some of my soul die) in Years, but this was thankfully shot with normal (digital) cameras, allowing the striking production design of its titular setting to shine through. And yes, this means you get better looks at the dongs on display - it's not just Samson that bares all for the audience this time around! (I know Samson's is a prosthetic, but semantics aside: what was the last major studio movie to offer lengthy shots of TWO male penises? In a movie with no female nudity of any sort, to boot? Like some alt-Bechdel test up in here.) There isn't a lot of action, but at least when there is, it's easier to follow thanks to the improved imagery it offers.

I also liked that it was hopeful. This genre, more than any other in horror, is often used as a subtle (or not subtle) commentary on what's going on in the world, and given the state of things now, it'd be easy to make something truly nihilistic and grim. But no; Kelson keeps hope alive for the good in the world (thanks in part to his music collection; the man has good taste) and the final line is worth cheering for, not just because it's a good character moment for the person saying it, but also because it's an attitude we need more of in the real world, where innocent people are being murdered by a fake police force for merely trying to stand up for their neighbors.

Basically, it's a really good movie that is burdened mainly by being a direct followup to one that I felt was uneven (and ugly!), leaving me less enticed about returning to its world. Even the ho-hum Jimmy stuff isn't BAD, per se - it just lacks the compelling and less common nature of the scenes with Samson and Ian, because even a casual fan could probably tell you how it will end up. Perhaps if Spike was able to convince his fellow "Jimmies" to rise up against their tyrannical (and full of crap) leader, there would be more gravy to these scenes, but Spike mostly just silently follows them around for most of his scenes, only becoming (slightly) proactive near the very end. O'Connell is great, but there's only so much that good acting can do with such an overused character archetype in this sort of thing.

As for the promised third part of this trilogy, I am curious what it will be like. Without spoiling things, it seems that the next entry will be a bit of an outlier for a trilogy closer, as a few of the plot threads from these two are pretty much tied up at the end of this one, and the setup for the next movie seems like it will be more tied into the very first film than these two. And then Bone Temple didn't open all that well, so with stiff genre competition over the next few weeks (Silent Hill, Send Help, The Bride!, etc.) there's no guarantee it'll be made anyway. If Sony decides not to pursue it any further, at least the setup isn't exactly a major cliffhanger; we've certainly been left hanging in worse situations (the Divergent series, perhaps even the last Fast & Furious, not to mention all the go-nowhere plot threads of the Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Texas Chain Saw franchises). But it'd be a shame for them not to see it through. Even though neither of them were exactly my favorite films of the year (well, I HOPE this doesn't end up being one of them for 2026), there's certainly enough good in both to warrant seeing how it all turns out.

What say you?

The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (2025)

2025-10-20T10:09:00.000-07:00

OCTOBER 16, 2025

GENRE: BLANK FROM HELL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREMIERE SCREENING)

I saw the original The Hand That Rocks The Cradle in theaters, but can't recall if I ever saw it a second time. If I did it had to have been right when it came to video, because before we watched this remake a friend noted Julianne Moore was in the original and I had no idea; I was only 12 when I saw it for the first (only?) time but by the mid 90s I had a mega crush on her and have been convinced for 30 years that the first time I saw her was via her bit part in The Fugitive. But even with my hazy memory, it didn't take long for me to realize that this version was, at least in theory, the right kind of remake, where it took the same basic plot but changed all the details, letting it succeed or fail on its own terms instead of just copying what someone else did thirty years ago.

So the two line pitch is the same: a career woman with two children decides to hire a nanny to help out, and after a few weeks of feeling the woman is the answer to all her problems, the mother starts to suspect that this "helper" might be dangerous. And she's right, as it turns out the nanny has a personal vendetta against the mom, and is seeking revenge. But this take changes all the details, and even weirdly hides the woman's agenda from us until the third act. In the original, we knew all along why the nanny (Rebecca DeMornay) targeted this family: the mom (Annabella Sciorra) had testified against DeMornay's rapey doctor husband, but here it's only revealed an hour or so into it.

Don't worry, it's not that new nanny Polly (Maika Monroe) hides her intentions until then. It's actually amusing how casual she is about some of her early transgressions, like poisoning one of mom's (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) dishes before a dinner party. But the switch means we never have the same kind of unnerving sympathy we felt for the DeMornay version, so she just comes off as another random psycho, and it's too late to fix the movie by the time we find out she actually has a good reason to want to go after Winstead and her family. Of course, since it's a third act reveal I can't get into it, but I can say it's very clunkily handled throughout, so it never quite works as (seemingly?) intended - despite her reason, we are never once sympathetic to her plight.

It doesn't help that the script is one of those ones where large chunks of the movie wouldn't even happen if people acted like normal human beings. Taking Moore's place as the meddling friend is Martin Starr, who goes through Monroe's trash and gets some of her DNA to run a background check on her. He finds out this tragic connection, but rather than call his best friend and tell her about it, he randomly has Monroe over and invites her in (to "explain herself") even though he's only doing this because she's already weirded them out enough to get suspicious. We also have to just roll with the idea that Winstead, who is overly protective to the extent that she won't even allow the family to have certain kinds of pesto sauce because of the oils in them, would settle for just one random reference by a complete stranger before allowing this woman to watch her children alone.

And then there's the stop sign. Early on, a neighbor speeds past their house and hits the baby stroller after it rolls out of their driveway (empty, thankfully), so Winstead says "There should be a stop sign there" as the scene continues, then repeats it in closeup. Then there's talk of a meeting about having one put up. Then there's a completely baffling scene where she's driving along and suddenly pulls over, gets out of her car, and inspects a different (busted) stop sign elsewhere. Later on her and Starr actually stand outside and watch the stop sign be installed, so by now they've clearly beaten us over the head enough that this stop sign is going to play a major part in the climax. But all it is is... someone misses the stop sign and causes an accident that dictates how the rest of the final fight goes. Personally, I think an ironic payoff, where the other driver DOES stop and Winstead realizes that her helicopter-y ways can be a detriment, or a running Monroe was able to get further away because the car stopped instead of plowing right into her, would have at least made this ridiculously blunt bit of foreshadowing pay off.

It's also simply not that suspenseful or tense. The highlight for such things is probably a scene where Winstead comes home and finds Monroe hanging with her husband and also her girlfriend, and that's only because we know in the original that DeMornay had designs on Sciorra's hubby so it stands to reason that this incarnation might follow suit. But nah, nothing really comes of it, nor do they explore the interesting idea that Monroe may actually be into Winstead's bisexual character (and vice versa). A goofy little bit where Winstead removes one of Monroe's socks while she sleeps is about as close as they get to having the women get intimate, which would have been at least a new dynamic to explore, especially since they establish her and her husband haven't had sex since the baby was born. Then again relationships aren't the movie's strong suit across the board; poor Riki Lindhome pops up as Starr's girlfriend in two scenes, the first of which has her lamenting that she wants a baby (with Starr saying that they'll discuss it later) but in the second we learn they don't even live together, making the idea that they're apparently talking about having a child a bit premature. Why they cast Lindhome to play this role, which would be thankless even for a first time performer, is beyond me.

(Without spoiling particulars, the movie perhaps inadvertently creates its best moment in this second scene. If you watch it, consider what Lindhome plans to do for Starr's sake, and what happens to him next.)

The score is also bizarrely ill-fitting, often sounding more like the soundtrack to a movie about a drug trip or maybe some kind of A24 drama. Not the end of the world, but adds to the feeling that this was a movie where a producer said "I have the rights to remake this movie!" and everyone that got involved after had a different idea of how to modernize this '90s staple. As with The Stepfather, modern technology makes a lot of these kind of plots harder to pull off, because you can just Google/check social media for anyone and learn more about them than Winstead does with her one (1) phone call to an unknown reference (who eventually re-enters the story and is yet another person in the movie who can't be bothered to act like a normal human being). So they side step that sort of thing and just hope we won't notice, despite (again) establishing Winstead as an overbearing worry wort.

Basically: it just doesn't work, man. The leads do their best and it's always nice to see a modern movie being shot in Los Angeles, but without any real thrills and a convoluted backstory, there's just nothing that justifies its existence, either. After a while the audience was laughing at it (it's not a comedy), so was at least an amusing experience to see this direct to streamer movie with a crowd, but that's not going to apply to you watching alone at home. I mean you can give it a shot I guess (bring a few friends over?), but if your Hulu subscription is about to expire, I certainly wouldn't renew it just to see it if I were you.

What say you?

Blu-Ray Review: Night of the Living Dead (1990)

2025-10-17T15:51:00.000-07:00

OCTOBER 13, 2025

GENRE: ZOMBIE
SOURCE: 4K UHD (OWN COLLECTION)

A while back during the glory days of HMAD, I spent a week on different versions of Night of the Living Dead, including this 1990 remake. (The others were the 3D one with Sid Haig, an animated one, and the godless "30th anniversary" recut version.) In my review of the original DVD, I noted that it surprisingly had some bonus features, considering the film was a flop and, being a library title, meant new features would have to be created (as opposed to modern films, which have EPK crews and commentaries recorded before the film is even released, so if it tanks, the stuff all exists already so they might as well put it on there). And thankfully, Sony has seen fit to carry them all over to this new 4K UHD set, along with other ones that were created for a standard Blu-ray in 2016.

But the main draw is that the film is presented in Tom Savini's preferred director's cut form, restoring the gore that the MPAA made him cut and also offering the first few minutes in black & white; an homage to the original that the studio wouldn't let him do at the time. So when Barbara (Patricia Tallman) and Johnny (Bill Moseley) are driving to the cemetery and doing the whole "They're coming to get you!" sequence, it's all in B&W like the original, with the color only showing up when the first zombie attacks Barbara few minutes later. It's a fun little gimmick, and I'm glad Savini was finally able to show us all how it would look (though I must admit I did momentarily worry that the entire film would be stripped of its color, a trend I do not have much patience for).

Unfortunately, if you're expecting other major changes, that's pretty much it - everything else is just a little bit of gore here and there. Apparently even in its "X rated" form, the film was pretty tame in that department, and I am willing to bet that if the film were shown to the censors even a few years later, it would have passed with an R easily as they got more lenient after their overly conservative approach to the '80s horror fare. The most overt restoration occurs when Barbara is trying to prove to the others (mostly the hysterical Judy) that the things attacking them are not human, shooting a zombie a few times in the chest before taking him out with the standard shot to the head. In the cut version we've had for 35 years, he is shot and goes down quick without any real splatter, but now a nice little geyser of blood explodes up from the top of his head before he drops. Again, if you just saw this uncut version for your first viewing, you'd never guess the MPAA ever had a problem with it, but for those who have watched it a bunch, it's sadly the highlight of such re-insertions.

The 4K transfer looks spectacular though, and for those who had the Twilight Time Blu, you can be relieved that the weird recoloring that they gave it for that release has been undone, and it looks like it should again. I know it's an overly bright film at times (even at night), but I never minded it all that much, and I'd take that look over the bizarre recoloring that we had to deal with if we wanted the film in high def. Even the B&W sequence (which, to be clear, was a normally filmed scene that had its color removed in post) looks really good to my eyes, and I had to chuckle that one scene actually made more sense to me now, as I never realized Sarah was laying on one of the doors that Ben wanted to board stuff up with, as the image was always too murky to really tell what she was laying on. When Harry says "You want this one too?" I always thought he was referring to the girl herself, like that Ben wanted to bring her up to the main floor as he did Tom and Judy Rose! I will happily junk my DVD, now.

As for bonus features, again Sony has brought back pretty much everything of note that I could find (thanks, DVDCompare.net!), including Savini's commentary and a retrospective documentary called "The Dead Walk!" from the DVD. They also included everything from the 2016 special edition Blu-ray, which mostly consists of new interviews with Tallman, the Optic Nerve FX guys, and Savini himself. That actually would have been plenty, but they really went all out and offer a bunch of brand new bonus features on top of the already generous assortment, making this a true ultimate edition.

The big one is a new commentary with Savini, moderated by Michael Felsher (whose Red Shirt Pictures produced all of the new features). I actually noted when I watched his original commentary that he might be better off with a partner, as he often went silent and just watched the movie, so I'm glad they listened! Felsher keeps him talking, with the only silences most likely being edits (Sony is notoriously cautious about potential "dirt" being spilled on their tracks). He also seems to remember the film better than its director; more than once Savini will say "OK now watch this" and then Felsher will have to remind him that the moment won't be coming for several more seconds. At any rate, it's a much better track than the older one.

Then there are several new interviews with Moseley, Bill Butler (Tom), McKee Anderson (Helen) and Heather Mazur (Sarah), who has the funniest recollection in that the FX team kept getting annoyed with her showing up in full "pretty girl" makeup (she was 13 and boy crazy at the time) because they had to spend time cleaning it all off before applying her zombie look. There's also one with editor Tom Dubensky, two of the guys who played zombies, and (sigh) John Russo along with Russ Streiner, who shouldn't be allowed within 50 yards of anything involving this franchise after their godawful 30th anniversary thing, but oh well. At least they have nice things to say about it. It's unfortunate that they couldn't have gotten this going before Tony Todd (or Tom Towles for that matter) passed away, as their absence is notable when it has thoughts from pretty much everyone else involved (sans Romero, but as it wasn't really his thing, it's not essential to hear from him and several of the interviews note that he did show up on set a few times and gave the editor some notes).

But really, while all the bonus features and the restored images are great, the best thing about rewatching this particular take on the story in the year 2025 is that it actually has a message of how we all need to calm down and listen to our fellow man. While Cooper is an even bigger jerk here than he was in the OG, at the end of the day he was not only right about the basement being safer, but if Ben had at least taken a few minutes to go down and see it for himself, he might have found the key to the gas that would have saved them all. Ben is also quick to assume Harry is stealing the TV, and throughout the movie Barbara has good ideas that are ignored. I feel a number of the problems in the world right now (both on a macro and micro level) are the result of everyone thinking they are right and everyone else is wrong, and this is a movie that could have had a much happier ending if people just took the time to hear someone else's perspective instead of stubbornly accepting only their own. Something to consider!

What say you?

The Long Walk (2025)

2025-09-05T08:40:00.000-07:00

AUGUST 29, 2025

GENRE: SURVIVAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (ADVANCED SCREENING)

I’ve never pinned down an all-time favorite book the way I have for movies (Halloween), albums (Bat out of Hell), sandwiches (Italian) and evil Canadian children (Cathy). But I have a rough idea of the contenders, and I have certainly *read* The Long Walk more than any other novel, so that tends to be my answer when pressed.* I read it for the first time when I was 15 or so, via the Bachman Books, then read it again about two years later, and then I read it several times when I adapted it into a screenplay along with my buddy JB, a bit of personal attachment that is relevant. Not exactly a bias, but I'm certainly invested in a "Hey, did they pull it off?" kind of way that I wouldn't be for any other novel I read before seeing the adaptation (it's usually the other way around for me).

I can't find the whole thing anymore (probably for the best!), but I do recall it was around 200 pages and was more or less a straight transcript in screenplay form, but we added some bits and condensed some of the dialogue exchanges into one chunk. I was only 19 (fitting!) at the time but I was aware that both the rigors of film production and also the demands of cinematic storytelling meant that the book would be hard to film *and* watch as presented on the page, because it’s just an endless walk down a road. Stephen King (né Richard Bachman) could write “hours passed, and three Walkers got their ticket” and then resume a conversation more or less where it had left off prior - that wouldn’t work on screen, so we tried to make it more movie-friendly without changing/losing all that much.

Did we succeed? I don’t know. Partly because all but a handful of pages have been lost to several moves since then, partly because... you know, it was never filmed, obviously. But while I can’t speak for JB, I know I am not as talented a filmmaker as either JT Mollner (Strange Darling) or Francis Lawrence, so it’s safe to say that their movie, while imperfect, almost certainly turned out better than ours would have. And again, while it didn’t all work for me, I know all too well from that experience that the book may be incredible, but it is not as easy to turn into a movie as some of King's others, so its few blemishes are eclipsed by the fact that it exists at all, and that it's pretty damn good on top of that.

For those uninitiated, the story centers on 100 teenaged boys who volunteer for an annual walk that starts in Maine and makes its way down through the rest of New England. But it’s no ordinary stroll; they have to maintain a speed of 4 MPH at all times, and if they drop below that speed they are warned. If they get three warnings, they get “a ticket,” which as we horrifically learn about seven miles down the road from the start line, means the young man will be executed on the spot. The walk continues until all but one Walker has been ticketed, at which point that literal last man standing will receive untold riches.

The novel is a grueling, harrowing journey, one of King’s darkest books in fact. The boys feel compelled to form friendships with their fellow Walkers, but of course, this just means making it harder when they are ticketed (or, as is often the case, trying to help them when they start slowing down even though it’s in their best interest to thin the ranks). Some die from sheer exhaustion, others from bad luck (one poor sod gets diarrhea and can’t pick up his speed fast enough after letting go, dying in his own excrement), and a handful go out in an act of defiance. But what really makes it unsettling, at least for me, is the fact that our heroes eventually grow numb to the violence, barely pausing in their conversations as unnamed Walkers around them meet their end.

The adaptation doesn't quite aim for that level of eventual indifference; outside of the ones that occur during time jumps (it takes place over several days) every death is reacted to with appropriate horror and shock. Presumably due to budgetary and logistic concerns, the number of Walkers is dropped to 50 here, so it makes sense that they treat the majority with the same impact as the first. There are still anonymous deaths, but the film skips a hefty number of them at a surprisingly early point, wiping out over a dozen during a sequence where they have to walk up a steep hill (a harrowing sequence from the book that occurs much earlier here). Then a later point has our hero Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) doze off while walking and learn of several more deaths that occurred as he slept. The movie isn’t even halfway over by the time there are only about a dozen boys left, which means every death always counts. Worse, they get a bit repetitive; several times we see Ray and Pete (David Jonsson from Alien: Romulus) right in front of the camera, trying to maintain their composure as someone is ticketed in the background. Somehow they never get used to it, which may be the point, but since it struck me as one of the most memorable things about the novel, it felt a weird thing to drop.

Here I will note, once again, that this is why I prefer to watch the movie before reading the book, because I stand a much better chance of fully enjoying both as the book will almost certainly be better, anyway. Perhaps this wouldn’t even have bugged me. But I would still take issue with Jonsson and a few others’ casting; not that they’re bad or anything (quite the opposite; on a performance level Jonsson is astounding) but they are all noticeably too old to be playing these teenaged characters. There’s a character named Curly who is barely old enough to qualify, and he’s pretty much the only one played by an actual teen. It’s weird to go from Hoffman playing NBC exec Dick Ebersol around this time last year to someone who is supposed to be 17, and Jonsson is over 30! As with the “numb to death” thing, part of what made the story so horrifying is that these are essentially children, some not even legally able to drive yet, but here they’re all played by adult actors, which diminishes that aspect.

Outside of those two choices, the only other thing that bugged me was the ending, which I won’t spoil other than to say it was changed from the book’s and not to its benefit. Well, not ALL to its benefit - one change legit worked great for me! But after that one change they do another thing that felt more like a studio note, and I dunno. I coulda done without it, is all I’ll say on that matter for now. But if you’re a fellow book fan, just prepare yourself.

Otherwise I think they did a terrific job with what is not an easy story to tell on screen. Watching the core group (Ray, Pete, Olson, Stebbins, etc. - except for Scramm and Percy, every notable character in the book is present here and more or less in line with their original counterparts) bond and hold each other up throughout the story worked like gangbusters, and their ball-busting and camaraderie evoked the best of Stand By Me and even a bit of Shawshank Redemption (think the library or lunch room scenes). And Jonsson isn’t the only one who gives a great performance; in fact they pretty much all do, despite the weird aging up casting they sell the fearlessness that only teenaged boys would still possess.

It also doesn’t hold back on the violence. Apparently King (listed as an executive producer, which isn’t always the case for his adaptations) demanded an R rating, and it is earned. While there are a number of backgrounded or off-screen deaths as mentioned, there are also plenty of them that occasionally seem like the MPA wasn’t really paying much attention. I can only imagine the directors of the Friday the 13th sequels watching this and thinking about their kills - some of which weren’t as graphic as these are to begin with! - being trimmed down to barely a drop while this goes out on a couple thousand screens with no argument. If you’ve read the book, you’ll probably remember a certain character’s throat being harmed? Happy to report its kept intact (albeit slightly modified to use a tool instead of a bare hand).

In fact pretty much everything we see is taken directly from the book, but they do that thing where it might depict an event that happened on the page, but have a different character do it (The Ruins did this brilliantly). So as on the page, someone rushes at the soldiers and tries to take them out, but not the same character who did it in King’s original depiction. And the character of Scramm is MIA, but the sad reveal that he is married and the winner should do something for his wife is handed over to one of the other primary characters. I like this approach, because it keeps veteran readers on their toes, but without going so far off the reservoir that it becomes something to get potentially angry about. Does it matter WHICH character had a wife back home? No, but it matters that these guys will continue looking out for each other even after all but one of them have been executed.

(They also drop the speed to 3 mph, which King has admitted was a mistake on his part the first time around. I actually listened to the book again earlier this year while taking my own daily walks, and I felt pretty slow as I was barely hitting 2 mph or so. I'd be dead instantly in the book, but I think I could last a bit in the movie!)

There’s also some humor. Not a lot (and my favorite crack from the book, when a character quips “OK everyone, take five!” is sadly missing), but the levity is dished out when needed, often in the form of the guys just joshing with one another. That said, Lawrence and Mollner never let you forget how grueling this marathon is; even with the necessary flash forwards (especially in the third act; where it jumps past several dozen miles at one point) you feel how tired and broken these guys are, with some gnarly foot trauma on display to remind you not to try this at home. I got the idea that Lawrence wished he coulda gone harder in his Hunger Games movies (which, as you know, also depict a dystopian world where teens have to kill each other) and was relishing the freedom he had here as opposed to those PG-13 blockbusters.

So overall it works, but fell short of being truly great due to a couple of decisions that sanded down the intensity and harshness of the book. I’m sure they were unable to cast actual teens because of labor laws (I doubt this was a fun shoot for anyone except maybe Mark Hamill as the Major, who gets to sit in a jeep and bark his lines while the rest of the actors are constantly walking alongside an endlessly moving camera that they needed to be mindful of), but certainly the casting folks could have tried a little harder to find ones that at least LOOKED like teens, no? Still, as an adaptation of what is a tough sell to both audiences and executives, it’s remarkably faithful and checks off most of the boxes, and considering how long it took to get to the screen (Romero, Darabont, Overdal, and probably more have all come and gone over 30 years) the fact that they even made it at all counts as a win. That it’s an upper tier example of a King adaptation is just icing on the cake.

What say you?

*other ones: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Dark Tower (as a whole), and Sphere. All of which became middling movies. Long Walk is the first one I didn't walk out somewhat or mostly crushed!

Weapons (2025)

2025-08-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

AUGUST 9, 2025

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I never wrote a review for Barbarian, because so much of that film’s strength relied on its constantly surprising, chronologically jumbled narrative. So writing about it seemed counterproductive - literally everything I said, despite how positive it would have been, would just weaken the reader’s experience (given that this site started as a way to discuss movies after seeing them, with no regard for spoilers, I find that evolution kind of amusing). But Weapons has a bigger marketing push behind it (since its studio actually believes in it, unlike Disney for Barbarian), so its premise is more widely known and in turn it’s easier to talk at least a LITTLE bit about how good it is.

(That said, if you haven’t seen a trailer yet, I’d still encourage seeing the movie first, with the knowledge that I am jealous of you! If you HAVE seen the trailer, I will only be sticking to things that they show, with one minor exception that I will be noting again when it comes up.)

But even if you're still unaware of any details whatsoever, the movie doesn't take long in spelling it out-the premise is explained through voiceover in the first scene, more or less the same as it is on its poster. One night, at 2:17 am, all but one of the children from a particular elementary school class walk out of their homes and run off into the night to some unknown destination. Naturally, given the only thing the kids all have in common, suspicion falls on both the teacher for their classroom (Julia Garner as Justine) and, to a lesser extent, the one child who kept on sleeping (Cary Christopher as Alex). As you might expect, the movie spends its remaining runtime (just over two hours, most of which races by) solving the mystery of a. Where they went and b. Why it happened in the first place.

Obviously you won’t get the answers to those questions from me. At least, not here. (I’ll tell you at the bar or something if you ask, sure.) What I WILL say is that writer/director Zach Cregger has publicly cited Magnolia as an influence on his story, and it’s pretty apt. The film is broken up into chapters that are titled after a particular character, including the two I mentioned along with Archer (Josh Brolin) as one of the fathers of the missing children, Paul (Alden Ehrenreich) as a local cop who had a previous relationship with Justine, etc. Each new segment usually answers a question about the previous one while adding new mysteries of its own, and occasionally we see events happen again with the new context that we didn’t have before.

It’s the sort of thing we’ve seen in other genre movies (Strange Darling comes to mind), and I love it because it seems to be a giant F U to the unfortunate trend of movies being written for people who are barely paying attention to them. Creator friends have told me about producers demanding they modify their scripts/edits to remind viewers (“viewers”) of information that was already explained in earlier scenes, so that the people who are only half watching while they look at their phones won’t get too lost, and it depresses me. But there’s no such hand holding here - it’s not exactly a complicated story, but if you’re not paying attention, you won’t understand why the movie works. Many of the reveals and payoffs aren’t even spoken aloud; there’s a shot of a paint can that explains an earlier scene without anyone actually commenting on it, and that’s the sort of thing that makes this movie such a rewarding experience.

I also loved how these characters aren’t bad people by any means, but all have some kind of flaw that makes them targets for those who love to criticize anyone who isn’t as perfect as they believe they are (kind of like Magnolia!). There’s an alcoholic, a cheater, a drug addict… the self righteous among us will deride these people as “unlikable” or “hard to root for” or whatever, but I didn’t see any of them that way. And the one that comes closest to being a traditional "bad person" is the same one who does more to help the missing kids than anyone else has up to that point in the narrative. Finally, a modern horror movie that doesn’t equate “trauma” with “interesting character” as so many others have done!

Another thing that worked in its favor, at least for me: it almost seemed like it could have been a period piece. The suburban setting (Pennsylvania somewhere) gives it an Amblin/Stephen King vibe, which of course speaks to the '80s and '90s, but a handful of Ring camera shots (of the kids running away) and a Fury Road poster clearly establish that it’s set in the modern day, more or less. Even cell phones barely appear; there’s a few texts between Justine and Paul and I think that’s about it for their usage. I can’t even remember any computers beyond scanning the Ring-cam videos; hell, Brolin’s character is an architect and uses a printed out map and a ruler to figure something out, same as anyone would have done in a 1987 film. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some version of this script that was indeed set 20-25 years ago and the subsequent rewrites simply failed to erase all of that DNA.

On the flip side, there are a few things that nagged at me a bit, and the second one is a spoiler concerning a character death, so please skip it if you haven’t seen/are sensitive to such things! One is that there are around 20 kids missing but we only meet the parents of two of them, and if you take away Brolin the others’ combined screen time is maybe four minutes. This might just be my own overactive protective parent gene talking, but it felt a little weird to me that the movie barely even mentions what is likely to be a group of very upset people. Since the King vibes were so strong, it almost felt like this was adapting a book that DID include all those other folks in supporting roles, and the movie version opted to trim them out to compress time. (SPOILER WARNING AGAIN!) I also found it somewhat unfortunate that the story introduced two gay characters and then gave them the most graphic deaths other than the villain or villains’ own demise(s). Not that the movie felt homophobic or anything, but it gave me that same feeling I get whenever I see a movie where the Black Guy does indeed die first, like “Can’t we do a little better, here?” Especially considering the body count wasn’t as high as the “lot of people die” trailer promised.

But neither of them were crippling flaws, and for the most part it got everything at right, at least for my sensibilities. It’s very funny at times (a reaction to a Willow DVD damn near killed me, and the climax is the sort of thing that will have revival audiences giving standing ovations for years to come) and the constant give and take of reveals kept it far more engaging than I’ve come to expect from a lot of modern horror. The actors are all great (always nice to see Ehrenreich; damn Solo for derailing what probably would have been a bigger career by now), there are a couple of jolts that got me good, and Cregger’s established “no one is safe” approach to his horror films meant it was tense down to the last moments. An ideal horror film, and another winner for WB, who hasn’t exactly been the favorite studio for filmmakers in the Zaslav era, but between this, Sinners, and FD6 are certainly on a roll with the scary stuff.

What say you?

Together (2025)

2025-07-31T12:02:00.000-07:00

JULY 21, 2025

GENRE: BODY HORROR
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREVIEW SCREENING)

If you saw the trailer for Together and thought it was giving too much away, I must admit I agreed... until I watched the movie. Yes, it spoils some of the best "body horror" gags, but not *all* (including the one that made me look away from the screen!), but there's more going on here than the highlight reel of shots that demonstrate the movie's concept. Which is, if you HAVEN'T seen the trailer, about a complacent couple (Alison Brie and Dave Franco, who are actually married in real life) who find themselves starting to actually meld together. And yes, the movie makes me, old school Born defender and Community fanatic, actually understand why the idea of being stuck to Ms. Brie all day long can actually be a bad thing. Nice work.

The trailer also doesn't give away the fact that (so, I guess, spoiler? But not really since we learn this instantly) this isn't just a metaphorical "What if?" scenario - there's actually an explanation for it, involving a strange pit that Brie and Franco find in the woods behind their new home. So despite it hitting the usual body horror tropes of a person being uncomfortable in their own skin and all that, it also pays tribute to things like Creepshow ("Jordy Verill" specifically), Slither, and Evil Dead, with someone ruining their life by investigating a weird thing they find in the woods. For me at least, this is preferable to things like Men, which has an equally fantastical concept but relies solely on the metaphorical pitch ("What if all men really were the same?") and asks you to just accept it at face value.

Not that it overly explains it either! The movie never gets bogged down in exposition; it just gives you a quick explanation for why it's happening for the people like me in the crowd that are like "Huh? What?" and then focuses on the good stuff. And it is really good! Brie and Franco are terrific and barely even have anyone else to play off of, which is always a gamble but it actually works well here. A friend of Brie's who talks over Facetime sometimes (probably why Men came to mind, now that I think of it) and another teacher at the school she works (played by Damon Herriman) are pretty much the only other characters in the movie we see more than once, allowing us to focus on the couple and, presumably for those who are in these type of codependent relationships or had one (raises hand), see yourself in one or both of the characters.

The script also wisely doesn't let either character come off as the "right" one. Franco is haunted by the death of his parents, but using it and his go-nowhere music career as an excuse not to be intimate with his girlfriend/fiance anymore, and she emasculates him in front of their friends and belittles his ambitions. There's a LOT of passive aggressiveness here on both sides, and it's almost kind of fun to be made to squirm whenever the movie hit a little too close to home (more than once I felt guilty hearing one of them make a putdown or snide comment that was similar to something I've said myself). There's a scene where they have Herriman over for dinner, and some of it borders on "Dinner Party" from The Office-levels of awkwardness as the two make their remarks at the others' expense as their guest gets increasingly uncomfortable.

And that's the other thing: it's a legitimately funny movie. Perhaps its improv thanks to starring a long-term married couple who have almost certainly gotten into arguments over the years, but that thing you do where instead of saying "Sorry" you just gently tease the other or make a little joke about yourself comes up throughout the movie (even when the body horror stuff really takes hold) and it always plays perfectly. I can't waste time explaining the context, but just know that "Remember when I found north?" had me cackling as much as anything in either actor's traditional comedy work, as well as a bit of advice involving crushing a pill.

Plus, as with this year's Companion (which you guys dropped the ball on! Boooo!!!), it got me thinking a lot about my old relationships (romantic and platonic) as well as a few friends who are "suffering by choice" in this kind of dynamic, which always makes a movie more appealing as I get older and a little more introspective. Don't get me wrong, I still love my meat n potatoes slashers, but they rarely give me anything to chew on. I rarely spend much time considering my own relationships when Jason spears a couple simultaneously. But I once had this actual discussion with a friend during what was an emotional "fight" of sorts:

Me: You'd be OK without me, I'd be a wreck.
Them: No, you'll be fine, I'd be the one who couldn't function without you.

Yeah, sounds sweet and all that, but looking back? It's dysfunctional af, and that sort of thing drives this movie. I still miss that friend from time to time, but clearly it's better for us both that we are no longer part of each others' lives, because when you say something like that to someone it puts too much pressure on them to be there for you 24/7, which isn't sustainable even in a marriage, let alone two friends with their own actual partners. Maybe they'll think of that conversation if they see the movie, maybe not. Either way, it'd definitely suck if we ended up falling into a weird pit and our legs started fusing together. We have very different sleep schedules, for starters.

But on that note, the movie also never really judges the characters either. Can't really get into it without spoiling, but as the "fusing" events get more pronounced, audience members will likely recoil and think "No, cut the parts apart!", but there is occasionally the sense that writer/director Michael Shanks (yes, I'm aware of the lawsuit; no, I don't have an opinion either way, only to say the other movie isn't a horror movie and we are only a couple years removed from people being forced to co-exist more than usual, so it's not totally out of the realm of possibility that two people had the same idea) is fine with people thinking "This actually doesn't sound so bad." If two broken people in a committed relationship really do find themselves whole only when together, and feel loved and at peace with it, who are we to say they're wrong? So that's another thing to discuss.

(I, for the record, never want to be glued to anyone. But if you told me you were undergoing surgery to do it with your partner, I'd support you. However, while I am always happy to splurge for a friend, I will not buy BOTH of your tickets when we go to the movies. If I'm going to be a third wheel I sure as hell ain't paying for the date!)

Anyway, yeah. Good film. Glad it's going wide, even if body horror is never really a big box office draw (and neither actor can be considered one either), because it's a good date movie. Maybe it'll help you realize your partner isn't so bad, or maybe you'll realize you're *spiritually* fusing yourself to someone else and it's best to get out before you drag each other down. Or maybe you'll shave all of your body hair off, since the movie offers not one but two nightmarish scenarios involving it. Both actors are fully committed and do some fantastic physical work, and yes, if you've heard about the lawsuit, you know there's a solid Spice Girls needledrop. So essentially it's an ideal movie in many ways.

What say you?

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)

2025-07-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

JULY 18, 2025

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Before I discuss the new I Know What You Did Last Summer, I should make something clear, since I never wrote a review of the original: I do not think the 1997 film is very good. There is a fantastic chase sequence with Sarah Michelle Gellar's character and I think Ryan Phillippe brings the movie to life whenever he's around, but otherwise I didn't think too much of it when I saw it on opening weekend, and time hasn't exactly helped. The mystery is a total wet fart (not to mention comes with a confusing motive: he's angry at them for thinking they killed the guy he actually killed?), the leads are as dull as you can find in one of these things (Gellar and Phillippe were the real draws, and they die while the blank slates live? Boooo), and it's just not all that fun, especially in rewatches. The best part of rewatching a good whodunit like Scream or My Bloody Valentine is seeing all the little clues you may have missed, something that's impossible with the OG I Know when the character isn't even mentioned until he shows up in the final reel.

Thankfully, this new one corrects that problem, and even adds a bit of unexpected ingenuity in its 3rd act that left me surprisingly finding it the better movie. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a "good" movie, but considering my not particularly high expectations and the fact that the mystery is actually more or less well constructed, I was legit stunned to walk out and think "I hope this is a hit so we can get another one that delivers on the teaser."

I'll get into that stuff later with a warning, but first, alas, I have to vent about a few issues. One is that the heroes bizarrely do NOTHING WRONG this time, which is a baffling choice for a script when you consider how the entire movie revolves around this one incident. This time around, our group (of five; there's basically a stand-in for each of the original characters plus another friend who tags along) has stopped on that same road to watch the fireworks, and the new Barry (Tyriq Withers as Teddy) walks out into the road to make a "I love you guys and here's to us!" kind of speech, only for a car to speed along the curve and go off the road when it swerves to avoid hitting him. Teddy and the others make every effort to pull the driver from the car before it falls off the cliff into the rocks below, but to no avail. It's a total freak accident that Teddy (and Teddy alone) could maybe feel guilty about, sure, but they certainly wouldn't be on the hook for "manslaughter" as one character shouts before they, as is the law, make a pact to never tell anyone about it... except for the cops that they call and see arriving just as they're driving away.

Anyway, we cut to a year later and the group dynamic has changed a bit: Teddy and Danica (Madelyn Cline/new Helen) are broken up and she's about to be married to another dude (rebound!), and her and Ava (Chase Sui Wonders/new Julie) aren't as close as they used to be, with that 5th friend, Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) taking up bestie role in her life. The new Ray is Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), who harbors a crush on Ava but doesn't seem to be able to pull the trigger. To the movie's credit, they do feel like a real friend group, but alas, none of them seem like folks I myself would want to hang out with. Well, maybe Stevie, since she works at a bar and thus could probably slip me a few free ones if I came in often enough.

But I'm an old! I'm here for Julie and Ray, right? Well, as anyone who has seen the trailer for this film can tell, they were clearly aping the structure (and thus hoping for the same success) as Scream 5, so it shouldn't surprise you that the legacy characters don't get introduced for a while. This is the correct move, to be clear, and a big part of why Scream 4 didn't really work for me: they let these new characters take center stage and make the movie their own *before* introducing our old friends. Scream 4 never let Jill, Kirby, etc. make this world their own before switching focus back to the people we already knew and (let's face it) wanted to be spending that time with, something they corrected with S5 and retained here. By the time Julie shows up (with Ray coming along a couple scenes later), we're already invested in this new group's plight, so it adds an extra level instead of feeling unfocused. And, again, I'm not a fan of their movie or them in particular, so honestly I didn't really care if they appeared or not, so I certainly wasn't getting impatient waiting for their appearance.

The main thrust here is that the town has become a big tourist destination, and Teddy's dad (the mayor or some other bigshot) has worked with the police to cover up these new things AND the original crimes from 1997, so that visitors wouldn't be scared of every fisherman that walks by. Julie has moved away and has put all this stuff behind her, but Ray still lives in Southpart, running a bar and annoyed that the town wants to forget the things that happened to him. I should note that in one of these conversations he says something like "This happened once before!" and I was annoyed that they were seemingly removing I Still Know from the canon (because it's happened *twice*), but thankfully I was wrong! Later on Ray makes a reference to it that almost seems more like a meta wink as opposed to actual acknowledgement, but without spoiling any particulars the film's events are brought up again later in a more concrete way, which delighted me since I also prefer THAT one to the original, thanks to its wacky cast (Jack Black! Jeffrey Combs! John Hawkes!) and faster pace.

As I mentioned, the mystery actually works this time. It's not hard to guess who the killer is, but that is certainly better than not being able to do so at all because they simply didn't exist in the story until they were revealed. I know Kevin Williamson was basically just riffing on Friday the 13th with the vengeful parent we never heard of thing (he couldn't copy the book's solution because the stalker there was two characters revealed to be one and the same to our non-seeing reader's eyes, which wouldn't work in a movie), so I get why he did it. But there's a crucial difference he didn't consider: in F13 no one is trying to figure out who the killer is, because they don't know there IS a killer until they're about to die anyway, so all the time we spend with Julie and Ray talking to Anne Heche and whoever else was all just useless padding and an unfair use of our detective brains. Here, the red herrings are fair game, something the OG never managed.

Plus many of them end up gruesomely murdered, so that's also a plus. AND they're spaced out evenly-ish, a vast improvement on the original which killed exactly one person in the first 70 minutes (Johnny Galecki) and then had the Fisherman wipe out the next (only other) four over a ten minute span. The body count here is, if my three day old memory is correct, eight (not including the car victim) and all but one of them are on-screen, which is a fair amount. Nothing overly spectacular, but there's a surprising viciousness to most that I appreciated, and unlike a certain other modern slasher, they commit to killing everyone - no unexplained epilogue "Oh they made it!" revivals.

Well, except for one, and now I gotta get into a spoiler. I don't really want to, but since it's kind of key to why I ended up giving the movie a pass I sort of have to. Skip the next paragraph if you don't want to know the reveal and also another weird thing about the movie's final scene!

OK, for those still here, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that there are two killers, since that's seemingly the law these days (at least it's ONLY two; Scream 6's *three* just seemed lazy to me). One is the one I said you can probably guess who it is, but the other was a legit surprise, because it was one of our two returning characters. And this worked great for me, a. because (once again!) I do not have any attachment to these people, so turning one of them into a killer is pretty much the only interesting thing about them as far as I'm concerned, and b. they were leaning so heavily into copying Scream 5's beats that having this kind of switcheroo legit worked as a shock to me, because I know that's something the Scream series will never have the stones to do. I know this choice has made die-hard fans furious, but that's the benefit of not being one! I thought it was great! But it also came with a bizarre choice, when this character said that the other killer (already dispatched) wasn't really dead. It seems like they're saying this to introduce that person returning with an explanation for how they lived, but they don't appear again. So it's just that OG character messing with our hero's head, right? Nope! In the very final scene, said hero tells another survivor "Oh, _____ is alive!" as casually as she might mention getting a new phone or something, and then the credits start! It's the weirdest goddamn thing, and my only guess is that they're just taking a shot at Scream's endless discussion of whether or not Stu actually survived.

Honestly if the whole movie had this weirdo/ballsy energy I would have been raving and trying to convince everyone to see it, but until that point it's merely fine (and yet, by default, the best of this four-film franchise, imo). It's got some funny lines here and there (a surprise nod to the AMC Nicole Kidman ad made me chuckle, and the aforementioned joke about I Still Know's plot left me practically wheezing) and decent slasher energy (the climax is set during the daylight too, which is pretty novel), but it's also got another group of mostly uninteresting kids, copying a few too many beats from not only Scream 5 (without which this movie wouldn't exist, let's face it) and its original, leaving it feeling more like a remake than a sequel. And the decision to stage their "crime" in such a way that would have left them with nothing more than a jaywalking ticket kept them from feeling guilty, which is part of the point of this kind of revenge story, so there's a disconnect as well. Maybe if they manage to get the promised sequel going (it'll make money, but nowhere near the levels of even the originals, let alone the new Screams) I'll check it out for sure, but honestly, I only really wanted this movie to be a hit so it would be more likely they'd revive my beloved Urban Legend as well. As amused as I was with the final reel of this one, I can't say I really NEED another trip to Southport in my lifetime.

What say you?

Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)

2025-07-08T14:01:00.000-07:00

JULY 4, 2025

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (3D SCREENING)

Of all the random words they could use instead of a number for a sequel, I'm not sure why they went with "Rebirth", because Jurassic World Rebirth is actually coming along in less time than most of the gaps between entries (only the stretch from Jurassic World to Fallen Kingdom is shorter, by a week or so). And also, it's mostly the same old stuff, borrowing plot points from most of the previous entries (with Jurassic Park III being the surprise biggest influence) and adding almost nothing new to the proceedings. Rebirth of what? It's all the same and we haven't had time to miss this property! It's the first one to have a female lead, I guess.

Not that Scarlett Johansson's femininity has much to do with anything, as her character is the most generic one here. She's a mercenary/tracker/whatever for hire who is tasked by health tycoon Krebs (Rupert Friend) to get blood samples from the three biggest dinosaurs in order to make a new heart medication (because relatively few dinosaurs ever died of heart disease, so they figure there's something in there that will help humans - it's not a bad scientific mumbo jumbo plot for this particular franchise, in all honesty). And where do they get these samples? Yet another secret InGen island, of course! Granted I've never memorized any of the sequels, but I can't recall a single scene in any of them where we are shown a complete topical/aerial shot of the entire islands we've already seen, so why they couldn't just say "They had another lab on Isla (Whatever) that we didn't know about!" instead of expanding their global reach yet again is beyond me.

Anyway, she needs a weary tough guy named Duncan (Mahershala Ali) and his boat to get them to this island, and they also need a handsome dorky guy (Jonathan Bailey as Dr. Loomis, which delighted me) to collect the samples, and then there's a few other people on the boat who might as well be named Fodder 1, 2, and 3 (one of them is played by Ed Skrein, so I like that this movie gives us the replacement Transporter AND the replacement Hitman). This group is fine and even fun to watch, but as we know, if a Jurassic Park movie is made and doesn't feature a 11ish character, everyone who was involved in the making of the movie will be put to death, so out of nowhere we meet a family of a dad/widow, a little kid, an older teen, and her dummy boyfriend, who are sailing across this particular body of water. They run afoul of the Mosasaurus (who is the same one from the World movies, still out on the open water - he's the only returning character from any of the others) and are rescued by ScarJo and her team, as the Mosa is their first target.

Surprising no one on the planet, their boat ends up wrecked and they become stranded on the island they were going to anyway. A helicopter will arrive in 24 hours, so they just need to get their other two samples and fly home. To be fair, as far as stories go, it's one of the better ones a Jurassic sequel has offered, and the script (by returning vet David Koepp) at least gives us a few memorable characters in Duncan, Loomis, and Krebs, which is an upgrade from any of the other "World" entries. But Koepp also makes a fatal blunder when it comes to the two groups: he keeps them separate but intact once they get to the island! The family of four remains together on their own, and ScarJo's team sticks together elsewhere, carrying out the plot. Therefore, every time they cut to this group of four definitely safe characters, all of the narrative drive AND tension goes out the window, because they are only trying to accomplish surviving, and we know they will. All of the wild card characters are also the only ones with a reason to be there, so their scenes deliver - honestly, without the family this might easily have been the best sequel. The scene where they get the sample from the Mosasaurus, set on the open sea, is the best this series has offered since the trailer/cliff bit in Lost World, but (as with that movie, which at least still had "Whoa, dinosaurs!" novelty going for it) we spend the next hour and change on a series of less exiting setpieces, most of which we've seen in the others. There's a convenience store scene that apes the kitchen scene from the original, pteranodon attacks swiped from JP3, and the final battle is pretty close to the one in Dominion, with the newest big beast (a "D-Rex") attacking everyone as they wait for rescue from a helicopter.

(Though given how much it feels like JP3, the fact that it *has* a climax is an improvement, I guess.)

Speaking of that lesser third entry (skip this paragraph if you don't want some mild spoilers) they also needlessly chicken out on killing off a character without showing HOW they survived, just as they did in 2001 with Allesandro Nivola's Billy. I won't say which one, but at a certain point one of them sacrifices himself to save the others, luring the D-Rex away so the others can get into a boat and make their way down river - it's a great, earned scene! But then a few minutes later they see a flare and find that the character is magically alive, with no explanation as to why the D-Rex suddenly ignored them. I don't know why these movies can't ever seem to commit to making these animals as dangerous as we are supposed to believe they are, but it takes on extra silliness here because the whole movie hinges on the facility being abandoned for 15 years because the D-Rex got out and everyone was so frightened, and yet it only manages to kill one major character, who we knew was going to die anyway because he was the film's obligatory evil human.

As for the 3D, it's pointless and I forgot it was there half the time. I only splurged because I had to; the AMC app glitched after I bought my tickets for a 2D showing, and by the time I realized my transaction didn't actually go through, the seats I chose were gone and all that remained were front row. And it was on the 4th, so we had barbecues and pool parties to get to, so it was either see it over a week later (my wife and son are currently visiting family; I stayed behind to watch the cats) or see it in a half empty 3D theater. It baffles me that they still bother with this, over a decade past the 3D heyday, but whatever. My kid was delighted a few times, so it was worth my extra six bucks or whatever the difference was.

Other than that, it at least looks spectacular, as Gareth Edwards does a much better job of directing than Trevorrow or Johnston (JA Bayona remains the champ in the "Well if it can't be Spielberg..." department). Some of them have been spoiled in the marketing, but he has a knack for fun shots where a character is oblivious to the dino action occurring behind them, and even with the needless back and forth between the two groups, he at least is able to keep track of his damn story from scene to scene, unlike his immediate predecessor. The movie is far from sloppy, and the dinos look great, but there's only so much Edwards can do with a script that shoots itself in the foot by keeping the two groups apart for the majority of their time on the island. If Ali's character had been stuck with the family, and maybe one of the kids with ScarJo, then it would keep the two groups invested in reuniting with the other, but at a certain point I started wondering why any of them would even care if they found the other team as long as they found their rescue ship.

Six sequels, and none of them better than "it was fine." I don't know why it seems so hard for them to even come close to the original's highs, but I also know that the movies still make a ton of money every time, so there's really no incentive for Universal/Amblin to try. It's a shame that they were really close to having something here with the main plot, only to torpedo all of its momentum every time they cut back to the dumb family, but that seems to be the series' main calling card: screwing up a can't miss pitch ("What if the park actually opened?" "What if the dinos got the mainland?" "What if we brought back Sam Neill and got you in and out of there in 90 minutes?") and coasting on a handful of decent scenes and our (by now) Pavlovian response to the John Williams theme. See you again in 2028, I guess.

What say you?

28 Years Later (2025)

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

JUNE 29, 2025

GENRE: ZOMBIE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

For a while there, it seemed like the 28 (something) Later franchise was done; Alex Garland and Danny Boyle seemed less enthused as time went on, while also noting that there were some issues with the rights holders (independent of the fact that they were put out by Fox, who no longer exists). But for whatever reason, the stars aligned to give us 28 Years Later (from Sony), which is kicking off a new trilogy of films, with the second due next year. Why they skipped 28 *Months* Later is a mystery, however, because the movie could have taken place simultaneously with Days for all it mattered.

Despite including some footage from Years in a montage, the movie’s ending of the virus spreading to Paris (and thus, presumably all of Europe, at the very least) is ignored – it’s still confined to the UK and the survivors all live on an island. And no one that survived the previous entries shows up, though apparently Cillian Murphy (who is listed as an executive producer here) will be in the next one. Instead, we focus on a kid named Spike, whose dad (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is basically the leader of their small island community and is eager to take his son to the mainland to find supplies, which is of course a dangerous mission that will involve him killing his first "infected." Through this process he realizes his dad is kind of a tool, and doesn't even seem to really want to help his sick wife/Spike's mom (Jodie Comer), so Spike takes it upon himself to seek aid for her sickness. So it's kind of a coming of age movie woith zombies, which is admirable!

But... you know, I was kind of excited to see the series continue getting bigger, and if anything this feels smaller and more contained than the original. And while they are free to ignore as much of the existing canon as they please to ignore Weeks' implications of a. further spread and b. a possible cure, they can *not* get around the fact that 28 Days was a breath of fresh air at the time for a mostly forgotten sub-genre, but in the 20+ years since, we’ve been inundated with zombie stuff. (And don’t give me crap about the use of “zombie” – they even refer to the “infected” with the Z-word *in the film.* They are and always have been zombie movies, despite pedantric claims to the contrary.) And so while the movie is perfectly fine, even great for a stretch in its final act, it’s also… not particularly interesting?

I mean, maybe I’m putting too much stock into the fact that Boyle and Garland returned after mostly sitting Weeks out (Garland took a pass at the script and Boyle directed a few sequences), assuming that their expanded filmographies since would have them bringing those bigger ideas to their old playground. But instead it’s mostly kind of anonymous, with the first hour or so feeling much like any number of undead movies (or episodes of Walking Dead and its infinite spinoffs) we’ve seen in the past two decades. There’s the religious nut who sees the whole thing as some kind of rapture, the supply runs that turn deadly, the should-be nailbiting scene where someone has to convince the person on the other side of a locked door that they’re not infected… we’ve seen all this stuff over and over, and there’s nothing to really distinguish it apart from (waves a hand at the “zombie” section on Shudder).

That is, except for the film’s photography, which is mostly trash. They shot the whole thing on iPhones, and at times it manages to actually look worse than the first film did. When they're outside and it's well lit, it looks fine, with the occasional image even striking depending on what's in it (the pile of skulls you've see in the poster is even more alluring in context), but whenever it switches to nighttime it's downright horrible to look at. There’s a scene where our hero Spike is talking to a village elder type in their dark kitchen, and I swear it’s the ugliest looking thing I’ve ever seen on a big screen. For the first film they said it had to be digital because they needed to get in and out of some of the locations quickly (using film would slow things down), but as this entire story is set in the woods and other isolated locales, I’m not sure what the excuse was. Digital photography has certainly gotten a lot better over the years, but you’d barely ever be able to know that from the evidence here.

So it’s pretty ho-hum and not much to look at for a while (unless you like zombie dong - by law I am required to mention that yes, this film has zombie dongs), with the scattered action seeming more obligatory than organic (a mid-film scene with a soldier unit comes in so abruptly I momentarily wondered if I had blacked out), but then Ralph Fiennes finally enters the narrative and things turn around. Without spoiling the particulars, he’s also a bit of a stock character for these things (the guy who turned his back on the group and went off to be alone/maybe go crazy) but the details – and Fiennes' performance – elevate it to the point that I stopped minding how meh the journey was to get to his sequence. It’s like those TV shows that take a few episodes to get going; you just need to sit through some pretty average (at best) stuff to get to the good stuff.

Of course that sucks for a reviewer, because the only thing really worth talking about is the movie’s third act, which I naturally do not want to spoil. And if you’re in the theater you probably aren’t going to just get up and leave – it’s not BAD, just not very interesting or involving if you’ve even kept half an eye on the genre since 2003. But if you’re reading this while watching it on streaming: stay the course! It gets better! And also sets up the next film, for which the people who survived this one will be returning along with Jim (the kids who supposedly held the key to a vaccine or cure from Weeks will presumably not be showing up). That one’s directed by Nia DaCosta, but thanks to the returning cast there will be some story continuity for the first time in this series, which is enough reason to seek it out. That said, for my money, Weeks remains the series’ high point. You can call it heresy; I know I'm in the minority there. But the first film's first act was its best before it petered out, and this one took forever to get to the part that I found most interesting. Weeks may be a little more "generic", but at least its tense (and better looking) all the way through, and consistency is always better to me than a series of highs and lows.

What say you?

Dangerous Animals (2025)

2025-06-06T10:50:00.000-07:00

MAY 27, 2025

GENRE: PREDATOR, SERIAL KILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (ADVANCED SCREENING)

With Jaws turning 50 this year, we’re gonna see a lot of shark related stuff; some tied to the film (there’s another documentary on the way!) while others will just be coasting on its success and popularity. Given the fickle nature of moviemaking and distribution, it’s almost impossible to believe that Sean Byrne and writer Nick Lepard knew that Dangerous Animals would end up being released almost 50 years to the day after Jaws’ debut, but I’m sure they’re relieved that they made one crucial choice along the way which will help avoid strict comparisons: this isn’t really a killer shark movie.

"But there's a shark on the poster and in the trailer!" you are saying, right? Yes, there are sharks in the movie and yes, at least one character is bitten by one. But the real menace of the film is a serial killer, Tucker, played by Jai Courtney. He runs a little service that takes people out on his boat and then lets them descend into the water in a shark cage so they can get some up close and personal time with the big fish. But I guess he’s already gotten enough Yelp reviews, because after they have their fun and they get back on board he cuts them up a bit to lure sharks over (less stinky than standard chum, I assume) and then tosses them into the water while videotaping the ensuing carnage.

But as he points out at a crucial moment in the film, the sharks are just doing what they do. This isn’t Jaws or any of its countless knockoffs; maybe it’s because it’s also an Australian movie but I honestly thought about Wolf Creek more than Amity Island as the film unfolded. Indeed, at one point the sharks actually ignore an easy victim Tucker has lowered into the water, as if to make sure the audience is fully aware that these animals aren’t inherently evil the way so many “killer shark” movies make them out to be (or else the title might be Evil Animals). Most die-hard Jaws fans probably know by now that Peter Benchley regretted his role in turning sharks into some kind of menace in our minds and spent the last few years of his life working on preservation and education about them, but it's rare to see a movie that makes the same point.

As for Tucker? He is indeed evil, and I’m happy to say Courtney is absolutely terrific in the role. Like most moviegoers, I didn’t care much for his early appearances in things like Die Hard 5 and Terminator Genisys (that they were also bad movies anyway didn’t help), finding him to be a rather bland presence. “Why do they keep pushing this guy on us?” I thought every time he popped up in something. But then he turned out to be one of the bright spots in Suicide Squad, and now with this it’s seemingly confirmed: this man is born to play wackos and bad guys, not action heroes. Don’t get me wrong, the film’s two heroes (Hassie Harrison as Zephyr and Josh Heuston as Moses) are also quite good and their chemistry is pretty charming. But this is Courtney’s show through and through; the type of showcase that had me momentarily wondering why I ever used to roll my eyes when I saw his name. He’s dialed up to 11 more often than not and is clearly just having FUN playing this role, and the movie actually loses energy sometimes when he’s been off screen for a while. If you told me ten years ago, walking out of that awful Terminator movie, that someday I'd be saying "I wish that movie had even more Jai Courtney!", I would have thought you were insane! And then you could have told me who would be elected President twice and I'd be like "Nope, the Jai thing is still harder to believe."

Back to the heroes – they’re no slouches, either. They have a rather inspired meetcute (Moses sees Zephyr stealing some ice cream and tells her he will report her to the store clerk unless she helps him get his car started) and hit it off rather (OK, fine) swimmingly, but as she is a commitmentphobe she bails on him (while he preps a breakfast for her! Heartbreaking!) and goes off to surf on her own, which is how she ends up running afoul of Tucker. So Moses spends a chunk of the movie just trying to find her, and while his biggest clue is a rather large leap in ultimately correct guesswork on his part, I forgave this bit of contrivance because it just meant they'd be reunited that much quicker. Honestly, while we're all here for the sharks and Jai, I wouldn't have minded watching a whole movie about these two figuring their stuff out to give love a chance!

This of course helps the back half immediately, because (again, with Wolf Creek on my mind) at no point was I convinced either of them would definitely survive the ordeal. There are no other major characters in the movie (the closest is an associate of Tucker's, and we aren't sure if he is aware of the murders which also adds a bit of suspense to the proceedings), so it really comes down to "OK, one of them will probably bite it, but WHICH one?" with the added bonus of not wanting either of them to die because I want them to get married someday, dammit! Lepard's script really nails that balance of racing through their meeting/falling for each other so we can get to the exciting stuff but not to the extent that I can't believe Moses is bothering to go through all this for someone he just met.

Also, the shark stuff looks good. Again, since this isn't a movie where they are the main threat, there's not a lot of traditional shark action, but at least it doesn't look like crap when it's time for them to make their mark. And the runtime is a tight 90 or so (bless you all, in the wake of the painfully long new Mission Impossible), with almost no real lulls to it (unless you hate LOVE, you monsters). Byrne knows what he's doing; it might not be the triumph that Loved Ones was, but it certainly proves he was no one hit wonder, and hopefully it won't take another decade for him to get another movie made (after Devil's Candy, which was decent but not exactly a must-see). And I'm glad IFC is giving it a decent push for its theatrical run, because it's the sort of big screen thriller we don't get to see often enough these days, and my man (yes, I'm calling him "my man" now, that's how good he is in it!*) Jai deserves to have a mass audience give him an apology.

What say you?

*OK he also sang along to Meat Loaf at the after-party, in a bar where they foolishly allow people like me to control the jukebox. He coulda won me over even if I just got out of Die Hard 5 with that move.

Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)

2025-05-16T10:23:00.000-07:00

APRIL 29, 2025

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (ADVANCED SCREENING)

When a franchise takes a considerable amount of time off, the results are often lacking; the initial excitement for a new entry tends to quickly fade as the runtime proceeds. Friday the 13th was at its best when they were just cranking them out, and it took THREE attempts at reviving Saw for them to come up with something that excited the fans as much as the once-annual entries managed. But no one told the makers of Final Destination: Bloodlines, which comes a whopping 14 years after the 5th film and is every bit as good as that one - possibly even better.

The subtitle isn’t just the usual “Let’s avoid numbers so we can get newcomers” gimmick, I’m happy to report (spoilers for the basic plot ahead!*). As opposed to the standard “someone has a premonition, saves a half dozen or so people, and then they proceed to die anyway” setup, this time around we open in the 1960s, with the opening of a skyview restaurant (between this and Drop, these things are having a cinematic moment!). The usual thing happens: we focus on a single person (Iris, played by Brec Bassinger) who watches as everyone around her begins to die in spectacular ways after a disaster, only for her to wake up after being killed herself, seeing it’s all a vision. But it’s not the girl in the sequence that wakes up! Turns out it’s her granddaughter, Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), who has been repeatedly plagued by this dream for the past couple months, wreaking havoc on her peace of mind. So Stefani grills her family about her (long-estranged) grandma and finds out what happened at the restaurant: Irish actually saved EVERYONE all those years ago, and then spent a life being so careful that she actually managed to have children, and those children eventually grew up and had their own children… Being a Final Destination movie, you should be able to figure out what happens now: Death is after them all, because they never should have been born in the first place! Iris has spent decades avoiding his tricks and spawned two children, each with multiple children of their own, giving the movie its usual assortment of victims but with the added wrinkle of none of them escaping death the first time around. Stefani's attempts to tell them what's going to happen has no benefit of the doubt, because they didn't witness firsthand her ability to see the future as the main characters in the five previous films managed to have. This is a great concept for two reasons. One is despite the subtitle’s attempts to make us forget, this is “Final Destination 6” after all, and the formula definitely got a bit repetitive (this is one franchise I would never want to marathon), especially without any returning characters (except Bludworth, more on him soon) to latch ourselves onto. The other is that it means every character only dies once, avoiding the occasional issue where someone’s premonition death was more interesting/fun than their actual one later.

We also get a fun twist to the standard “order”, in that they are dying in the order they were born, complete with a “wait, we had it wrong!” twist. It’s just enough of a tweak to the formula to give the film a freshness that the last couple entries lacked. I mean, I really liked FD5 a lot, but it was the ending doing a lot of that heavy lifting, as the rest was kind of more of the same (albeit with an improvement in quality over the two previous entries). Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a complete departure; we still get the Rube Goldberg sequences, the misdirects, and the gore, but the family dynamic and “bloodline” concept makes it feel just as unique as the first one did 25 years ago, giving the series a shot in the arm that another standard entry couldn't have managed after so much time has passed.

And it actually pays tribute to the other entries in some fun ways. A brief reprisal of the “If you kill someone you get their time” idea from 5 produces what may be the darkest joke in the entire franchise, and there’s a pretty good gag invoking one of the series’ earlier accidents. But it should go without saying that the film’s Bludworth scene is the highlight for such things, because as we know Tony Todd passed away last year shortly after completing his work here, forcing us to say goodbye to him after he utters his final line (if he has any other films in the can, we can be assured they won't be given IMAX releases). The scene itself is not much different than his others (popping up halfway through to offer cryptic remarks about death, mainly), but the weight the scene carries, knowing the actor’s time ran out in reality, makes it a true knockout. I’m not afraid to admit I actually teared up a bit, and the scene ended with a thunderous applause at my screening.

The characters are also more fun than they’ve been in the last few. 3-5 all focused on a group of younger friends, and they weren’t all that memorable on their own (I honestly can barely tell the male leads of 4 and 5 apart), but the family dynamic means we get the widest age range that we’ve seen since FD2, and the way they play off each other is also unique to the series. The standout is Richard Harmon as Erik, who featured heavily in the film’s first trailer (the tattoo parlor scene) and gets the most laughs as the obligatory skeptic character. But the drama of this somewhat estranged family was also compelling enough to keep my attention in between the death scenes; there’s a brief bit where one just holds out a spare key to his distant/not-well-off sibling that I found so sweet, which isn’t something I can remember feeling in the five other movies.

And the deaths! You'd think by now they'd run out of ways to kill these people, but nope. Each one is unique and has some kind of added bonus to it, with a healthy mix of the standard Goldberg sequences and what I guess we can call "Terry Deaths", after the shocking/amazing bus death in the first one. I don't want to spoil much of the particulars, except to say that the trailers have NOT spoiled as much as you might think, and that the movie will have you fearing a certain medical procedure in the same way the last one made us all weary (wearier?) of LASIK surgery. And there's a funny bit that almost comes off as a meta joke about the series' calling card, and it plays so perfectly I actually wanted to rewind the movie in the theater to see it play out again. Haven't had that kind of reaction in ages.

Long story short, they made it worth the wait, and it stands among the series’ best while also finding the most successful way to stand apart from the others. Even though it runs longer than any other one, it never really felt like that to me, and the death scenes are all terrific. It’s funny without going into FD4’s ridiculous territory (which I admit I liked on my first go around, but found less appealing on rewatches), and gives us a core cast of characters who we don’t necessarily WANT to die. Kudos to the new creative team for finding that balance and maintaining it throughout. Hopefully it won’t take another decade plus for a 7th film, but if Todd’s death has them deciding to maybe let it end here, at least it’ll be on an inarguable high.

What say you?

*I actually got yelled at for telling someone where the opening accident occurred, which made me think of the time someone (else) yelled at me for the phrase “a woman dies” (the context otherwise completely removed) in my review of the 4th one. People take spoilers very seriously with this series, I guess.

The Monkey (2025)

2025-02-24T18:30:00.000-08:00

FEBRUARY 23, 2025

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

As I find Osgood Perkins' output pretty hit or miss so far (and by that I mean the only one I've liked is Longlegs) and the original Stephen King short story left so little an impression on me that I can't even be fully sure I read it*, I wasn't exactly going to be first in line for The Monkey. But when I heard it had Final Destination vibes, I got a little more interested, and so carved out some time (and 45 bucks for the silly popcorn bucket) to check it out on opening weekend after all.

Interestingly, the movie ended up being a rumination on the randomness of death, which struck a little nerve with me considering the circumstances under which I first saw (well, "attended" might be more accurate) Longlegs. In the movie, a pair of 12 year old twin brothers named Hal and Bill find a strange monkey toy in their departed (perhaps dead) father's things, and quickly discover that winding the key on its back and letting it play its little drum solo will result in someone dying. However, they can't *control* it per se; winding the key while thinking about the bully at school or something doesn't mean the bully at school will be the one to suddenly die under freak circumstances. Once the kids figure this out (and we in the audience chuckle at a few outlandish deaths) after losing their mother and beloved babysitter, they dump it down a well in hopes that no one will ever find it.

That wouldn't make for much of a movie though. We flash forward 25 years and the now adult Hal (Theo James) lives a solitary life and works at a grocery store, not exactly making the most of his time. He is, however, about to spend a week with his estranged son before the boy's stepfather (played by a cameoing veteran actor who does a lot of genre work but somehow has never made a King movie before? ) takes full custody. Unfortunately, the bizarre murders start up again, and (spoiler I guess? If it's a "reveal" it occurs pretty early) it seems his twin brother Bill, also estranged, may be responsible. Can Hal put a stop to it again and keep his son safe?

Naturally I won't answer that question, but I will say that the film's strange tonal shift from "hahaha, these deaths are so wacky!" to "Hey, maybe you should learn to embrace life" didn't quite land for me. I enjoyed the movie overall, but the first half is notably more successful, and the attempt to impart a little life lesson seemed grafted in from a different/earlier draft of the screenplay. Frank Darabont wanted to make this movie for years, and while I'm sure his version wouldn't have had the Rube Goldbergian deaths (though some are merely insane, like a guy camping in a sleeping bag being trampled by so many horses that the remains aren't even recognizably human), I think the "live life to the fullest because you never know when your time is up" messaging would have felt more earned, maybe even poignant, in Frank's more (imo) dependable hands. As is, it came off a bit like someone saying "Hey that's not funny" after everyone else in the room enjoyed a good laugh at a dark joke.

And that's a shame, because Perkins is unusually qualified to make a movie about the randomness of death, especially in a tale about parents and their children. His father was HIV-positive and died of pneumonia, and his mother died in one of the planes on 9/11. That kind of covers the whole spectrum of death, from "a known disease with a common outcome" to "wtf, what are the odds?" But either in his attempt to make a slightly more commercial movie than even Longlegs (the film was produced by James Wan, whose audience-pleasing films makes this an unusual pairing) or just the usual pratfalls of expanding a short story in to a full feature, the film's strengths all come in the top half, buying enough goodwill to keep it in the "worth seeing" section while falling short of a full blown win.

But the thing I found most interesting was an inscription on the box that the monkey is found in: "like life." As Hal explains a bit later via voiceover, it's a bit of a warning that the monkey's actions are random, much like life itself. No matter how much they want a certain person to die, the monkey is just going to kill who he wants - he's not working for you, even if you were nice enough to turn his key and give him a little exercise. But—and maybe this is just the result of my way of thinking—when the message first appeared, prior to Hal explaining its meaning, I read it differently. To me, "like life" meant, simply "ENJOY life", because you do not indeed know when your time is up. In the past year alone I've had friends die from long illnesses and others drop dead while carrying out the most mundane tasks in their day to day, and yet there are certainly a few people out there who deserve the early grave and are thriving. And if you have a certain sense of humor about it (which I do, and it seems Perkins does as well, considering how silly the deaths here), there's no reason not to, well, LIKE your life. Do what makes you happy, and take the risks. Ask out your crush. Try a new restaurant. Ride a unicycle. Whatever you think you might enjoy, there's no reason to keep putting it off. The brain is far too random to risk seeing that bus coming for you with no time to get out of the way and have your last thought be "Damn, I never tried sushi."

And I can't help but think the movie might have been more successful in the back half if it actually went with this theme full throttle instead of just kind of tossing it in with moments left in the runtime. Instead, there's a very strange additional character named Ricky, played by Rohan Campbell from Halloween Ends, who is obsessed with the monkey and wants to keep it for himself. It seems like half of his role ended up being excised in order to keep focus on James' dual performance as Hal and Bill, especially when it comes to Ricky's own family, as he, like Hal and Bill, has a brother who doesn't seem to be a lot like him but also kind of completely spaced out. It felt like there might have been an attempt to draw parallels between Ricky's situation and Bill's (especially when you consider the similar physical appearance of their mother next to Bill and Hal's aunt, who raises them after their mother dies), but none of it really lands, and honestly they could have cut him out entirely and not really changed anything. Nothing against Campbell, to be clear, it's just a strange diversion to the narrative without much payoff, and coming at the expense of Hal and Bill's potential time together.

Third act blunders aside, it's a solidly entertaining way to kill 100 minutes, if nothing else. There's a laid back priest played by Nicco Del Rio who is almost worth the price of admission alone, and—if someone tracks these things—features the equivalent to Lawrence of Arabia's legendary match cut in terms of darkly funny reveals (if you've seen the movie, it involves a cut to a portrait of one of the male cast members). And even though a lot of the attempts at genuine emotion don't quite work, Tatiana Maslany does wonderful work with her role as the kids' mother, who seems to already be aware, without the monkey's unusual way of suggesting it, that life is too precious to waste. Maybe an extended cut (or at least a few deleted scenes) on the eventual Blu-ray will clear up some of its murkier narrative issues, but as is it's still worth seeing, and continues Perkins' current (and surprising!) transition into a guy who can keep his warped sensibilities while still telling a story that a general audience can get behind on the big screen.

What say you?

*I know I read "The Mist" before the movie came out, and remember a couple others in the same Skeleton Crew collection, so I must have read it all the way through x number of years ago as I'd have no reason to be skipping around. But I reread it after watching the movie and nothing rang a bell. At any rate, for those curious, beyond (most of) the characters and how they relate to each other, the story and movie are nothing alike. Even the title character is different; in the story he's got the cymbals and in the movie he's got a standard drum. Which worked out nicely for AMC, since the drum can double as a (tiny) popcorn bucket.

Heart Eyes (2025)

2025-02-10T10:06:00.000-08:00

FEBRUARY 4, 2025

GENRE: SLASHER (and ROMCOM!)
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREVIEW SCREENING)

If you’ve ever even taken as much as a cursory glance at this site before, you probably know how much I love slasher movies. But what you may NOT know is that I also harbor a similar soft spot for romcoms; I can’t recite them chapter and verse the way I can my favorite F13s and Halloweens, but I’m certainly just as easy a mark for a new one when it comes along. So needless to say, the elevator pitch for Heart Eyes-a romcom that revolves around a slasher killer-is about the most appealing one I’ve heard in ages. Like even if one side of the equation didn't work, I'd probably be happy with the other, you know?

Watching it unfold it actually dawned on me for the first time that the two genres offer a sort of comfort in their admittedly basic formula. Both have rules they need to live by in order for their respective fans to be won over; a deviation from that formula can lead to revolt. And that’s what makes Heart Eyes so impressive to me, because you can absolutely despite one of the genres but still feel pretty satisfied with it as an entry of the other type. This element was largely absent from the marketing so far; the few hints of the film’s romantic angle (leads Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding grabbing the same coffee, for example) were largely overshadowed by the slasher element, making it seem like it’s just another masked killer movie albeit one with a bit of romance thrown in (as opposed to the genre’s usual approach of just a general horniness among its core cast). But that isn’t really how the movie plays out at all-it really does function as a romantic comedy, perhaps even moreso than as a slasher in some ways.

So if you just heard the idea but thought it was going to cater more toward the slasher side of things: fear not! There’s a meet-cute, complete with accidental headbutt! There’s a mad dash to the airport! There’s the sassy friend who encourages our heroine to take her chance! Director Josh Ruben and the trio of screenwriters (Phillip Murphy, Michael Kennedy, and Christopher Landon) balance the needs of both formulas in an expert fashion, and honestly my one minor complaint concerns the slasher stuff. And given the relative dearth of such fare in theaters anymore (there was exactly ONE given a wide release in all of 2024, Fly Me To The Moon), I kind of wish the marketing had showcased the blend a little better, if only to assure potential romcom lovers that this would genuinely scratch that itch for them.

So how does it work? Well, after a cold open showing the killer (dubbed “HEK”) taking out a vapid influencer couple in a vineyard, a flurry of news reports tell us that this murderer has taken out a lot of couples in different cities (Boston and Philly) on the two previous Valentine’s Days, and now he seems to be in Seattle. Then we meet our leads: ad exec Ally (Holt) has turned in a dud campaign, and her boss has brought in an outside fixer to help come up with a new one. Said fixer? Why it’s Jay (Gooding), the handsome and charming guy she met in the coffee shop that morning! What are the odds???

Anyway, the two meet for dinner to figure out a new campaign, but his attempts to turn it into a date don’t go well. However, when Ally sees her ex with his new flame, she quickly retorts to the “We have to pretend to be a couple” tactic and kisses Jay so the ex can see and hopefully be jealous. Alas, the ex doesn’t really care, and worse: their kiss attracts the attention of HEK, who was staking out this fancy restaurant to find new victims. What follows is essentially a long chase scene as the killer stalks them throughout the city, with our heroes finding a way to check every romcom box along the way, allowing them to fall in love (awww) but with the killer never more than a few minutes behind them (ahh!!!).

At about the hour mark, the movie really nails how well this idea can work (and honestly, made me wonder why no one ever really tried it before that I can recall). HEK has chased our heroes to a drive-in, and they duck into a van, assuming its owners are elsewhere. Turns out they’re just in the back, fooling around, but the couple is kind of into having an audience and they continue enjoying the evening back there while Ally and Jay lay low to avoid detection from their hunter. While they do so, they have a heart to heart, briefly/softly interrupted by the sounds of the couple going at it in the back. It’s an incredibly funny scene, built around a tense situation, AND it’s giving the romcom formula the obligatory “This is why I get scared when I like someone” conversation, all at once. It’s a remarkable balancing act, and I spent the bulk of the scene just kind of in awe at how well it was working.

The balance goes a bit askew for the film’s finale, however (minor spoilers ahead!). Without getting into the details, I will say that the unmasking of HEK wasn’t particularly surprising. Part of the reason for that is that the film offered almost no other suspects to who it could be (honestly, I assumed it would be a Hell Fest-esque “He’s just some guy” kind of reveal, and I am leaning toward the idea that it might have been a better choice) due to its compact cast. The other is actually weirdly revealed in the film itself – a flashback sequence that includes a scene that was clearly cut. This scene explained where a character went during a previous major setpiece, and while I’m sure it was removed for pacing or something, it unfortunately left careful viewers wondering where that person was, and thus going by the law of slasher films, realizing this means also realizing that they’re the killer long before the film springs it on us as a surprise.

That’s why red herrings are so important, because you gotta have a few other characters as a buffer for these moments to really land. Take Scream: it seemingly comes down to “It’s either Stu or Randy!” but there’s still the sheriff or Sid’s dad to consider. Here? Well, I guess Ally’s boss could kind of count, but as she only appeared once before that (and is played by veteran comedian Michaela Watkins) I doubt that anyone on the planet would a. be thinking it might be her or b. would be satisfied if it was. To be clear, the identity of the killer isn’t the issue, and the actor is relishing getting to do the big “Why I do this” monologue, but without any other suspects, and a weird editing choice making it a foregone conclusion anyway, it didn’t quite pack the same punch the rest of the movie did.

Otherwise it’s a remarkably solid example of both of its genres. The leads have terrific chemistry and are both naturally engaging performers; I’m not as familiar with Holt but as for Gooding I actually kind of get why they let him survive certain death not once but twice in the Screams: it’d be silly to toss away the charisma (plus we let it slide for Dewey even more times). The kills are good and gory but without feeling like the filmmakers spent more time concerned with the punchline than the setup, an issue which plagues many modern slashers (so, yes, there are honest to god chase scenes here!). And one must give props to Gigi Zumbado for a late-movie monologue that I can’t explain without giving away the gag, but once it clicked I was cackling and cheering, and she delivers it perfectly. Everyone, as they say, understood the assignment, which is even more impressive when you consider how unusual that assignment was. Basically it’s just a damn good time at the movies. I’d even go again, which is about the highest praise I can give anything these days. Plus it’s an amazing litmus test if you are, like me, a horror fan with a not-so-secret love of seeing Sandra/Julia/etc do their thing: take a date, and if they’re equally enjoying both sides of the equation, you got yourself a keeper. I alas saw it with my slasher-loving buddy (who didn't put out, the prude) but I couldn't help but be amused at the irony: my wife is not exactly drooling at the prospect of an upcoming romantic comedy (I see most of them by myself) but does enjoy slashers as long as they're more in line with Scream and such than, say, Rob Zombie's Halloween (i.e. brutally violent and not "fun" in any way). So while there are some horror fans out there who might have to trick their partner into seeing this by saying it's a romantic comedy, when this hits Blu-ray I might have to try the reverse approach to get her on board.

Companion (2025)

2025-02-04T07:25:00.000-08:00

JANUARY 31, 2025

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

Fangoria's weekly newsletter came today and it was titled "See Companion with a companion" or something to that effect, but alas like 90% of the movies I see, I saw it by myself. I only live near two of friends, both of whom have wacky work schedules, and I myself tend to keep weird hours, so I've just gotten used to not bothering to coordinate schedules, opting to go off on my own when the showtimes are in my favor. It's not a bad thing, really; the only time I feel self conscious is if it's a comedy, because laughing alone just makes me think someone behind me is going to think I'm a budding Max Cady.

(SPOILERS AHEAD! Slightly more than even the trailer gives away! If you haven't seen the trailers, particularly the second one that they only released a few weeks ago, perhaps do not read until you've seen the movie or at least the trailers. Consider this a warning for the entire review, not just the next paragraph.)

But I, and probably a lot of people, have a friend who I kind of wish I saw it with, because the core of the movie is about Iris (Sophie Thatcher) finding her voice and standing up to her boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid) when she realizes he sees her as nothing more than an object to boss around and use for his own pleasure when he feels like it, never taking her own needs into account. And my own friend is in this kind of relationship, where their partner practically admits that their only use to them is to take care of them without giving a crap about being a true partner in return. Naturally it's none of my business and I know from experience that if I as much as hint that they deserve better, they go on the defensive and offer "No, they do love me, they just don't show it" kind of explanations, so I just keep my mouth shut, settling for a sigh when I see my friend getting ignored and even occasionally insulted in plain view of their mutuals. (I guess we're supposed to assume they're much nicer at home with no one around? Seems backwards.) But I also know that inspiration comes from unlikely places, so I just hope that they (not a big moviegoer) someday sit down to stream what looks like a fun genre movie with the girl from Yellowjackets, and then are surprised to get their wheels turning when they see a bit of their own predicament laid out on screen. Maybe they'll even get inspired to start taking the steps to stick up for themselves like Iris eventually does? A friend can dream.

Again if you've seen the trailer (or ideally, the movie itself in full!) then you know that Iris isn't a human being, but an AI companion (read: sexbot) for Josh, the tech bro douchebag. The reveal occurs fairly early in the proceedings (if it's even a full half hour I'd be surprised, though in a rarity for a modern movie, it actually felt a bit shorter than it was so I might be off), but even before then you could see how he treats her and think "It's like he doesn't even consider her a real person at all, let alone his girlfriend." There's a subtle bit early on, when they arrive at the isolated lake house that most of the movie takes place in, and we see him carrying his shoulder bag while Iris lugs both of their (much heavier) suitcases, and later during a bedroom scene we see him orgasm and then immediately roll over and go to sleep without as much as a final kiss (and, clearly, not making the effort to get her past the finish line). There's chivalry (carrying both bags/getting her an O first), and then there's equality (recognizing she is capable of carrying her own/use your imagination), and then there's whatever this is.

It's actually part of why I feel the trailer shouldn't have given the reveal away. If you go in knowing she's a robot, you might have a distance from his behavior, a sort of "Well who cares, it's her job to serve him!" But by spending 25-30 minutes with this person and seeing how hard they are trying to please their "perfect" boyfriend while he continues to belittle her with endless microaggressions, you're fully on her side by the time we find out she's not actually flesh and blood, and thus it doesn't matter. Robot or not, you deserve better, Iris!

Of course, Ex Machina already covered a lot of this material, but it branches off in a new direction thanks to Iris being reprogrammed to do ~something~ (THAT I won't spoil) and how this begins a chain reaction of... well, the sort of thing that makes this feel more like a horror movie than the earlier film. It's still firmly in thriller territory, but the deaths are far more gory than you'd see in your typical "people turn on each other" kind of story, and it has a Coen-esque spiral of violence that I couldn't help but appreciate. You will never look at an electric wine opener the same way again, I assure you.

But even through all the mayhem (and laughs; thanks to Harvey Guillén in particular the movie is very funny at times), first time director Drew Hancock-working from his own script-never loses focus on the core concept, which is that Iris may be a package of nuts and bolts tied together with programming, but she's still more empathetic and human than her narcissistic boyfriend. This is aided immensely by how good the two leads are. Quaid's charms (it's crazy how he inherited the absolute best qualities of his parents) are a perfect fit for this character, as we absolutely understand why she'd be drawn to him even before we learn she's actually programmed to. And even when we know what he's really like, there's still a sense of "I can fix him" that is unfortunately the reason so many people (not robots) are in these kinds of relationships in the real world. You WANT to like this guy, even though he repeatedly proves he's garbage.

And Thatcher is already genre royalty thanks to Heretic and Yellowjackets (not to mention Boogeyman, which is better than you'd expect for a PG13 King short story expansion), but this might be her best work yet. There's a scene where her programming has been switched to speaking German and she's desperately trying to communicate, and there's also some humor built into it because Iris is unable to lie (so when the cop asks her what's wrong, she answers truthfully, even though the situation would be better for her if she lied - but he can't understand her anyway!), and the way she toes that line where you feel sorry for her while also kind of chuckling at the irony of her answers is a marvel to watch.

Speaking of irony, it IS kind of a weird time to release a movie where we root for the AI robot, which is somewhat distracting. AI sucks, to be clear, and our government has been overrun with tech bros who want to go all in on it for whatever reason (well, money, duh, but it's very shortsighted even by their standards). At least when Ex Machina came out this stuff was still "in the future..." kind of material, but now it's killing the environment and threatening jobs *today*. Luckily they don't really even use the term "AI" all that much (if ever?), so you can kind of ignore it if you want to, but still. It's THERE, you know?

That said, the takeaway here has nothing to do with AI or robots. Maybe it's just because of my own personal connection to this sort of thing happening (though, again, I'm sure lots of people do), but as much as I was enjoying the movie I kept feeling a bit sad, wondering if my very human friend will ever learn to stand up for themselves the way Iris eventually does here, or if their own shitty partner will keep using them as a toy for their own amusement until they get bored and move on, having wasted the best years of my friend's life. It's a surprisingly hopeful movie in that respect, and another winner from the Barbarian team (Zach Cregger is one of the producers here, alongside his partners from that film). My only real issue? When Iris is delivered to Josh, he's listening to "Iris" from Goo Goo Dolls, and it's a good gag, but I woulda gone deeper with "Iris" from the band Live. Since the trailer is too spoilery and you should only be reading this if you've seen it, I'm gonna put that banger in the usual place.

What say you?

P.S. I know this is the first review in months. Don't get excited for a full return; I am, alas, still basically calling it a day here due to the fact that it no longer generates any income whatsoever and also I'm working on a new book which I'd rather focus my writing time on instead. But the whole "I wish _____ would see this!", something I never could have predicted before I sat down, kinda left me with a bunch of thoughts so I decided to put them down here instead of in a Bluesky thread. Plus it's kind of amusing that Lukas Gage is in this, because he was also in Smile 2, which is the last time I reviewed anything. I like a coincidence! From now on I vow to review any genre film he's in, at the very least.

Smile 2 (2024)

2024-10-25T09:08:00.002-07:00

OCTOBER 20, 2024

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL, SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

In just about every way that matters, Smile 2 actually improves on the original film, which is a pretty good feat for any horror sequel, let alone one that’s following a movie that was itself a winner to begin with (comparatively, the reviews praising Winnie the Pooh 2 as an improvement on the original are not exactly saying much). But obviously, the novelty of its central gimmick has worn off some, so if you haven’t seen it yet and plan to, I urge you not to make the same mistake I did and rewatch the original a day before, because the déjà vu won’t help.

And really, as long as you remember the concept, you don’t need a refresher anyway. The opening scene (presented as one long shot) gives us the only link the movie really has to the first one, with survivor Joel (Kyle Gallner) at the end of his 6-7 day curse and deciding to at least pass it on to someone who deserves to die (a meth dealer, in this case). Things go awry and the curse ends up passed to a guy who was at the meth dealer’s house to buy some for himself, and THAT dude passes it to our new hero: Skye Riley.

Skye is played by Naomi Scott, an actual pop star/actress, and her character is far more interesting than the original’s therapist, who was sympathetic enough but just not a particularly compelling character (the question to always ask is: would I watch a movie about this person even without the horror aspect?). Not the case here; Skye is a recovering addict who unfortunately messed up her back in a car accident that killed her famous actor boyfriend, and needs to go through shady local dealers to score Vicodin to deal with the pain, because she can’t get a prescription anymore. We spend a lot of time showing how draining it can be being a pop star; yes you’re rich and blah blah blah, but you also feel the weight of everyone who is relying on you to make their own living – if the back pain and, then, mental turmoil of being cursed by smiling ghost people no one else can see take enough of a toll that she has to cancel the tour, that puts so many people out of work, not to mention ruins her reputation within the business as a whole.

And similarly, the entire movie hinges on Scott, who (outside of Gallner’s opening) is in every scene and just about every shot within those scenes. There’s a brief exception that felt weird at the time and feels even weirder given a later reveal (more on that later) where she walks out of the room and her friend (Dylan Gelula) has a brief encounter with Skye’s mother/manager (Rosemarie DeWitt), but otherwise every single thing we see is from her POV. If she doesn’t hear it/witness it with her own eyes, we don’t see it either. This adds to the intensity immensely, so even though we are familiar with this demon’s tricks, it still manages to be quite effective in that department.

Those who are hoping to find out more about this entity will be disappointed, however. We don’t get anything new; if anything the script seems to be geared towards those who saw the original and have retained what little we learned there. At around an hour or so we meet a character whose brother was one of the previous victims that Rose and Joel tracked backwards from their own experience, and he just kind of quickly sums up the “After a week you kill yourself in front of someone and they will be cursed in turn” concept, but it’s a Cliffs Notes version that seems more of a quick reminder instead of a full explanation for those who might be newcomers. But that’s a good thing! Writer/director Parker Finn seems to understand that the more a monster is explained, the less scary it is, but there are always people out there who want those kind of explanations. So to them I say: stay home and be wrong there!

That said, the movie also lacks a moment as horrific as the cat scene in the original. For me, the most unnerving thing was a scene where Skye was in a hospital bed hooked up to an IV drip, and then the ghost thing showed up so she tried to escape. The repeated closeups of her tugging on the needle in her arm really icked me out, as not only am I petrified of embolisms, but when I was in the hospital the nurse messed up and caused some brief nerve damage in my arm for like a week, so the memories of that came flooding back as she yanked on this (apparently very secure!) needle in her own arm. Gah!

My other main issue requires a spoiler, so skip this and the next paragraph if you don’t want to know details about the movie’s ending. Before I get into it I will say that it mostly improves on the original’s ending (which borderline angered me), and the actual last shot is an all timer, so it’s not a total loss. However, it involves a reveal that a certain chunk of the movie was actually hallucinated, but doesn’t make it clear WHEN this switch occurred. And did none of it in that section actually happen, or just the more horrific parts? I’m fine with not explaining the demon’s origins, but I definitely would have appreciated a sort of Saw-esque montage explaining how things were really playing out all that time.

And (again, skip this one if you don’t want spoilers) as I mentioned earlier, this causes an odd thing with that earlier scene with Gelula and DeWitt, because one of the movie’s big reveals is that the former character was the entity in disguise the entire time, so it doesn’t make sense that she was able to interact with Skye’s mom, making it feel like a bit of a cheat on top the aforementioned disruption to the whole “all through Skye’s eyes” approach. Also, the reason Gelula’s BFF character isn’t actually around is because her and Skye had a major blowout a year or so before, and there’s never any real explanation for what caused their fight. Not that it’s essential to the proceedings, but it felt like something designed to be a reveal that never came. (That said, as someone who loves when old text messages actually show up on people’s phones in movies, their last messages to each other, capping off their fight, are HILARIOUS.)

Those quibbles aside, I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed it, not even noticing that it was over two hours long (something I grumbled about prior to my arrival at the theater). As the first film was compared to The Ring, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where this was a total disaster like that film’s sequel was, so the fact that it actually improved on it in several ways is remarkable. And that the climax recalled another recent genre film of note (can’t say which one without spoiling them both, though I can say I really liked that one too but got too busy to ever get around to reviewing it) was a delightful bonus. Furthermore, for whatever it’s worth: Skye Riley > Lady Raven.

What say you?

Terrifier 3 (2024)

2024-10-11T11:37:00.000-07:00

OCTOBER 10, 2024

GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREMIERE SCREENING)

Given their phenomenal success and my own status as an easy mark for slasher movies, it may surprise you to learn that I cannot count myself as a huge fan of the Terrifier franchise. There's a lot to appreciate in the first two, no doubt, but the tonal shifts, sluggish editing, and random plotting keep me at arm's length; I've never been the guy who watches a F13 just for the kills, but when I watch these films that's pretty much all I'm there for. But I also watched the first two films at home on Blu-ray instead of in theaters, so I figured that seeing Terrifier 3 with an excited opening night crowd, along with the series' biggest budget yet, would result in some "third time's the charm" kind of reaction.

Alas, it didn't make much of a difference. The tonal shifts have been reduced (Art is less torture-y this time around; no salt in the wound or cat o' nine tails action), but it's still got that "Are we watching the assembly cut or a final edit?" feeling. And while it's not too random with its plotting for the most part, the climax just goes way off the rails with nonsense; I don't want to spoil anything but I have to note that I was not expecting to suddenly be thinking about Return of the Living Dead and Passion of the Christ as this slasher movie reached its conclusion, not to mention an out of nowhere _____ (it's on the living room floor) tossed into the mix with seconds left in the runtime. Again, I didn't DISLIKE it, but I can't help but feel disappointed that the same issues were present yet again.

Part of the problem is that it takes forever to get going. In the first 20 minutes, we get an extended (and ultimately completely disconnected) kill sequence, a resolution of T2's epilogue shocker, and finally a scene that sets up the film's five year time jump. Then we catch up with Jonathan and Sienna, the former at college and the latter just being released from a facility where she has been presumably letting her mind heal. She's off to live with her mom's sister and her family, trying hard to be normal but still having flashes of her dead friends, and doing her best to be sisterly to her little cousin who is unaware of her past but keeps sneaking peeks at her diary.

But here's the thing: by the 45 minute mark we haven't really gotten much further than what I already said. Vicky is now immortal like Art, for some reason, and also more or less taking the place of The Little Pale Girl (who is MIA and never mentioned) but there's no discernible explanation for this suddent shift in her character. In fact, since she birthed Art's new head, having him be vulnerable now due to her inferior DNA or something would have maybe made more sense? To be fair she makes for a more interesting partner than LPG, but it felt more like a decision based around maybe that actress being unavailable and not wanting to recast, as opposed to a purely creative one.

And for a two hour movie, there really should be more to the plot than "Art's back and wants to finish the job by killing Sienna and Jonathan." A chance encounter with a drunk mall Santa gives him new duds for this adventure (this scene is probably the movie's best, thanks to fun turns from Daniel Roebuck as Santa and Clint Howard as his drinking buddy, plus Art's genuine excitement about meeting "Santa"), but the reveal is slightly underwhelming since we saw it already in the movie's cold open (which, again, never relates to anything else that happens, despite the sequence ending on a cliffhanger of its own). And he takes his sweet time getting to them; the film is actually about 15 minutes shorter than the previous one (thank you!) but at times it felt even longer due to Art having no real urgency to complete his mission and very little else to the narrative.

It also curiously leaves some scenes off-screen. Sienna returns to the Terrifer to find her sword, believing it can kill Art, but we don't see any of his occur; she just comes home with it along with some dirty hands to sell the idea. With so much of the movie set either on Jonathan's campus or Sienna's new house, the change in scenery would have been welcome. More troubling, however, is that two major kills occur offscreen entirely, one of which is done to try to delay a surprise, but it doesn't really land. Basically Vicky tells Sienna that a mangled head is ______'s, but after a couple minutes her and Art reveal that person is alive and the head is actually _____'s. But the issue is, their proof is still flimsy, so it feels like it's yet another ruse, only the person seemingly is really dead because they never return. Also the movie ends on the series' most abrupt cliffhanger yet a few minutes later, so it's just a completely ineffective way of sending this character off.

All that said, it's certainly firing on all cylinders when it comes to being a Christmas slasher; even though I didn't like it as much as I hoped I would, I'm sure I'll add it to my mix of holiday horror along with the three Black Christmases, the Silent Night Deadly Nights, Christmas Bloody Christmas, etc. In addition to Art's Santa suit, everywhere he goes is decked out in full force with lights and decor, the soundtrack's got a lot of the standards, and it's even got some snow, which puts it above every SNDN sequel (all of them were shot in LA and certainly didn't have the dough for fake stuff). I wish he had implemented some seasonally appropriate weaponry into the mix (come on, you know my man coulda done wonders with an icicle or even a fireplace poker) but it's hard to miss that sort of thing when he has brought a chainsaw, liquid nitrogen, and rats along this time around. The FX continue to impress, and there's a cameo from a certain makeup guru that feels like he's giving it his blessing, which must have been an amazing score for the creative team. And David Howard Thornton is giving a truly great performance as Art, who never makes a sound and yet has a complete and identifiable personality; his reactions and expressions rarely fail to amuse and his physicality is up there with Robert Englund in Freddy's heyday.

The acting from the supporting cast is also much better than the previous entries as well, thanks to having the budget for more professional actors. In addition to Roebuck and Howard, Jason Patric also pops in for a few scenes (don't want to say as who, it's kind of a reveal), and Bryce Johnson from Willow Creek does some nice work as Sienna's sympathetic uncle. Lauren Lavera has a lot more range to display this time around (it's actually surprising how little time she interacts with Art as they are basically in two different movies for the most part; it's akin to Halloween Ends on that level), dealing with her PTSD, being a surrogate big sister to her cousin, but also having some adult bonding time with her aunt (her mother's sister) and trying to keep close to Jonathan, who is away at school and just trying to live a normal life.

I honestly think that with some judicious editing that this could easily be the best of the three, thanks to all I mentioned in the last two paragraphs. With improved acting and character work, a more consistent tone, and the fact that I'm an easy mark for Xmas slashing, it's really just the at times interminable pacing that kept me from enjoying it as much as I probably would have if someone came in and got it down to 90 or even 100 minutes. Like, the opening scene is solid, but it also runs 10 minutes and without any connection to the rest, in retrospect you look back at it and realize it could have been cut in half, which would make it more effective in its job (which, as anyone can tell, is to give the movie an opening kill before a long chunk of getting the audience up to speed). With the film slated to maybe even top the weekend box office (which is insane and awesome) the 4th film is a guarantee, and I'll be there, but I will no longer hold out hope that the pacing (which has been an issue for all three films, even the mercifully-in-retrospect 84 minute original) will ever be more to my liking. Here's hoping they can at least keep coming up with good kills and funny stuff for Thornton to do to make up for it.

What say you?

P.S. The film was showing as part of an event to debut the new Ice Nine Kills video (which I thought was great but as their one time lawyer I'm a bit biased!). Since the T3 trailer spoils half the kills, I'm putting the video here instead, though you have to sign in to watch due to all the gore (!!!). Enjoy!

Salem's Lot (2024)

2024-10-03T11:45:00.000-07:00

SEPTEMBER 25, 2024

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREMIERE SCREENING)

It's amusing to me that Salem's Lot has been adapted three times, and while the first two were TV miniseries that got theatrical play*, this newest incarnation was meant for theatrical release only to be shipped off to streaming (Max, specifically). However, we were lucky enough to get a one-off showing here in LA as part of Beyond Fest, so we could appreciate the visuals and fine work from its cast on the big screen, without rebuffering issues or–if applicable–spending part of it looking at our phones if the movie failed to hold our attention. But in a weird way, maybe it'd be better to watch the movie that way, as we could assume all of the missing story beats occurred while we were doomscrolling.

For those who haven't read the novel or seen either of the other adaptations (Tobe Hooper's celebrated 1979 one, and Mikael Salomon's solid TNT take in 2004), the basic story is intact—no one's ever drastically overhauled King's 1975 novel. A writer named Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman this time around) returns to his small hometown in Maine to get inspiration for his next book, targeting the town's obligatory "haunted" house once owned by a gangster named Marsten. Upon his arrival he learns that the house has just been purchased by a pair of mysterious antique store owners named Barlow and Straker, with the former man never actually seen as the latter handles all of the operations. Not long after their arrival in town, a body count starts to rise, and after a pooling of information between Ben, a kid named Mark, a teacher named Matt, and a local woman/Ben's love interest Susan, they conclude that the town has a vampire problem, and they go about trying to end it.

All of that is intact here. Writer/director Gary Dauberman doesn't change much from the original novel (even the period setting is retained; the 2004 one updated it for modern day but this is actually set in the novel's publication time of 1975); the most significant diversion is that the town has a new drive-in, and the climax is set there instead of in/around the Marsten house, with the story concluding there instead of an epilogue set years later (if I'm being honest, the ending of King's book wasn't very satisfying, and all three versions have done their best to improve on it). But perhaps he should have made more changes, or followed the path of the predecessors and pushed for a two part movie, because seeing this familiar story being told again albeit on double speed does it no favors.

A friend of mine said he went to a test screening of the film that ran around three hours, and I do not doubt it (it's around 110 min now including both credit sequences). Not only are there names in the credits for characters who do not appear (such as Ruth Crockett, daughter of Larry the real estate guy, who himself is given far less screentime than he did in the two previous adaptations), but it seems like the entire second act of the movie occurs off-screen. There's a scene where Alfre Woodard's character, Dr Cody (usually a male named Jimmy) goes to see the sheriff (William Sadler, always a delight) to ask for his help, and he replies something like "Look around you, you see what they're doing to this town!?" - and I burst out laughing, because NO, we haven't seen any of it! Characters are constantly popping up as if we should have met them already; hell, when (spoiler) Barlow kills Mark's parents, it's in the same scene where we met them for the first time. Right from the start it felt like a movie that was being sped up in the edit, as there's zero buildup to Barlow and Straker being in town and the guys are moving the coffin into the Marsten house basement at like the five minute mark. And, to be clear, my friend didn't tell me about this until days later; it wasn't information I had in my head all along. He just confirmed that the "this was cut to the bone" sense I got from it was 100% apt.

In fact I almost feel bad writing a negative review, because there was probably a good movie in there before the re-editing robbed it of its soul. Dauberman has proven to be a dependable talent over the years, and again, the cast is great. I've always enjoyed Pullman's work since he was younger (he was the 18ish son in Strangers 2) and it's nice to see him ascend to leading man status here, and Bill Camp (as Burke) is one of those actors who seem to have been put on this earth to play folksy/endearing Stephen King characters. And while he didn't seem to be on the same page as everyone else tonally, I was delighted by Pilou Asbæk as Straker; the scene where he attempts to kidnap the Glick kids had me full on cackling as he just keeps staring at them after they turn down his offer to drive them home (and the subsequent scene where he does indeed capture one of them, played out in silhouette against a setting sun, is gorgeous). Barlow's design is a direct recycle of Reggie Nalder's from the Hooper version, which is a little disappointing, but it's still an effective visual.

Alas, the director is Gary Dauberman, not Zack Snyder, so I doubt there will be enough angry/petulant losers harassing HBO for years until they finally give him more money to complete his original vision just to shut the crybabies up. I'm sure a few years from now he will give an interview somewhere and talk about his longer cut and what was lost, but until then, all we have is this: a nice looking, well cast movie that tried to stay too faithful to a story that previous filmmakers couldn't even fully capture with nearly twice as much time to do so. Maybe those who are completely new to the story will find more to like, because those story beats won't be as familiar, but for me, who has seen/read this story before (three times, in fact!), it came across as too hollow to make much of an impact. And that's damning for a big screen showing (at Beyond Fest no less, where the crowd energy is always infectious). If I watched on Max, I can guarantee you I would have found some really funny memes on Instagram by the end of it.

What say you?

*Hooper's version was (irony alert) cut down and played theatrically in Europe. Both parts of the TNT one had a one night Fathom Events kind of theatrical exhibition the night before it premiered, which I remember because I went. And it played off a DVD at a time when 35mm was still the majority format, which tickled me: a dvd in a theater of a movie designed for broadcast.

Speak No Evil (2024)

2024-10-01T08:57:00.000-07:00

SEPTEMBER 23, 2024

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

If you’ve been to a movie in the past six months you’ve probably seen the trailer for Speak No Evil; if you go as often as I do you are probably more familiar with some of the film’s moments than you are with the faces of your own family members at this point. Which is kind of ironic, because it’s a remake of a film that isn’t all that old, and the film doesn’t really have much to it beyond its thrills, so the familiarity was a detriment to what was actually a solid nailbiter.

If you’ve somehow escaped the trailer (or, again, the original film – more on that soon), the plot is pretty simple: an American family (Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, and a daughter) makes the acquaintance of an English couple (James McAvoy and Aisling Franciosi) who has a single child of their own. They hit it off, the kids enjoy playing together, and everyone has a pretty good time. Then the Americans go home (to London, having moved for a job that ended up fizzling) and get an invite from Paddy (McAvoy) to join them for a weekend in their country home. Wanting a change of pace, they decide to go, despite some hesitations re: not really knowing them all that well. The first day goes smoothly enough, but Paddy and Louise (Davis) butt heads over their differing lifestyles (he hunts with a rifle, she’s a vegetarian, etc.), forcing Ben (McNairy) to constantly try to play peacekeeper. Eventually they cross a line that’s too much for Davis and she decides that they need to leave early, at which point it becomes clear why this film might end up on a site covering horror movies.

That said, as far as violence goes it’s still pretty tame even for a thriller. The order of the day here isn’t racking up a body count, but seeing how far writer/director James Watkins can push the tension BEFORE it erupts into violence. And thanks to McAvoy’s towering performance, it actually works quite well, as you get the idea he can suddenly kill any of them just as quickly and casually as he lets out an inappropriate comment or putdown. If you’ve seen the trailer you’re probably familiar with the “Cotton Eyed Joe” dance scene between the two kids, but the full version is truly terrifying as he gets angrier and angrier with his son’s inability to keep time. He's obviously played villains before, but he's in next-level mode here; the sort of role that might get name-checked among "great psychopath performances" down the road.

Honestly, the whole thing really hinges on McAvoy’s performance. Everyone’s good (Franciosi in particular has a tricky role in that you aren’t sure until very late if her Ciara is a true partner to her more outwardly evil husband or another of his victims), but this is all his show as he walks that fine line of being juuuuust weird enough to understand why Ben and Louise might not want to stay as long as originally planned but without going so far that they seem like idiots for not leaving even sooner. Of course, people have still decried the two for their actions, saying “Any normal person would have left already!” or whatever, but the script showcases how both of them are kind of afraid to do anything about anything (Louise won’t jump into the water with the rest, Ben won’t let her have it about a brief affair she had), so it tracks that they’d probably feel they were being rude by leaving.

Also, as a parent, I want to assure non-parents who have seen it that yes, we absolutely would go back for our child’s sacred “Lovey.” There’s a scene in the movie where they DO decide to finally leave due to something Ciara had done that unnerved them, only to turn back when they realize they forgot their daughter’s beloved stuffed bunny named Mr Hoppy. And then, after they discover Paddy’s true nature and try to make a calm escape so as not to enrage him, they see he has thrown the doll on the roof, forcing Ben to climb a rickety ladder to retrieve it. I’m sure childless audiences feel this is insane and they would just drive away, but nope. You wouldn’t believe how long I spent in the dark looking for my kid’s beloved Elmo doll when he dropped it during a walk many years back, so the idea of merely turning around to grab it from the bedroom of a house owned by some people I didn’t really gel with is certainly within the realm of possibility. And the ladder scene is Paddy trying to call their bluff; if Ben DIDN’T go out of his way to get the thing, now that it’s been established over and over how much the doll meant to their daughter, Paddy would have known right away that they knew his secret. So TLDR: it's not as dumb as critics would like you to believe.

Which brings us to the whole remake aspect, and you might want to skip the next two paragraphs if you haven’t seen either version, as there are spoilers for both! Yes, surprising no one, this version is much tamer than the Danish original, in which the bad guys won. That doesn’t happen here, but I didn’t mind it, because ultimately it’s a different kind of movie. The original was your typical dark/grim European thriller, most of which end on a downer, and while there’s nothing wrong with those, to me personally they often lack tension. Once we know how far they’ll go (in that case, the Paddy character kills his own son) there’s precious little reason to believe anyone else will make it out alive. Here, by repeatedly putting the heroes in danger, Watkins gives the movie a suspenseful edge that the original somewhat lacked, because there's simply more uncertainty.

That said (again we are still in spoiler territory here! Skip to next paragraph if you must!), Watkins maybe plays things a little TOO safe, in that the family not only escapes intact but barely even sustains any injuries (Ben hurts his foot a bit, that’s about as deep as it goes). Sure, this helps with the suspense element, because the husbands tend to die in these things and so you’re thinking it’s not a matter of if but when, but… you know, he doesn’t die. None of them do. I get not wanting to make it as bleak, but perhaps Watkins went a little too far in the other direction. It’s a good thing that McAvoy is so scary in the role just with his mannerisms and expressions, because the script curiously keeps him from doing all that much to our heroes, so a lesser actor/performance would have left the movie without any real threat at all for the most part.

Then again the script DOES let him angrily sing The Bangles’ “Eternal Flame” and it might be one of the best things I’ve seen in a theater all year, so forget what I said about its shortcomings. It is evened out!

For real though, this has been the only Blumhouse movie all year that I enjoyed without any real reservations. Sure, it could have retained at least SOME of the original’s darkness, but I can’t completely dismiss a movie that kept me fully engaged and gripping my armrest, anchored by an all timer performance by one of our more interesting modern actors. So without going so far as to say it’s an essential view, it’s another solid entry on Watkins’ filmography, and another chilling reminder of why we shouldn’t make friends with whoever we meet on vacation.

What say you?

P.S. You don't need the trailer again. Watch the Bangles video.

Afraid (2024)

2024-09-04T09:39:00.000-07:00

AUGUST 30, 2024

GENRE: TECHNOLOGY
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

The nicest thing I can say about Afraid (stylized as AFRAID) is that when I was laughing at American Pie 25 years ago, I couldn’t have imagined that the co-director (Chris Weitz) and the MILF guy (John Cho) would reunite to make a horror movie about technology that didn’t even really exist at that time. We’ve all come so far from those days! Except in quality. As dated/problematic as it is at times, rewatching American Pie for the 10th time would be a better use of your time than seeing this thing once.

To be fair I only have myself to blame for bothering to be curious, as the trailer didn’t even have enough exciting footage to suggest it would be anything but a snooze. After an OK enough opening that feels like a home invasion short film, we meet our core family (Cho, Katherine Waterston, and three kids), who are all dealing with the same generic problems every movie family has. The 10ish boy is glued to his iPad instead of making friends, the 17ish daughter is being asked for n00dz from her boyfriend, mom wants to go back to work instead of just being a mom… could a magical device help with all their problems?

Of course it can. Cho works for some kind of high end marketing agency and their new client is the company behind AIA, an Alexa/Siri type device that is programmed with the most advanced AI blah blah blah. In short, at first it’s doing things like ordering food boxes to help mom with dinner prep and letting the younger kid have a little extra screen time if he does his chores, but then it starts overstepping its boundaries. And (spoiler if you haven't seen the trailer) kills the daughter’s boyfriend when he leaks one of her explicit photos. That's pretty much the only "horror movie" thing it ever really does.

Seriously, those thinking it'd get into some HAL style shenanigans will be very disappointed (even more so considering they make HAL jokes early on. He actually did some stuff!). It never puts the family in any danger, it just basically weirds them out enough that they try to get rid of it. It barely even oversteps its boundaries; when the product arrives Waterston says she doesn't want its cameras upstairs, and... well, it never has cameras upstairs. Things in this movie aren't foreshadowed as much as they're mentioned, quickly resolved, and dropped entirely. You'd think as the movie proceeded it would grow in power, Lawnmower Man style, but nope. In fact, for the climax it’s not even AIA like, sending Teslas after them to run them over or anything like that - she just convinces the people from the opening scene that Cho has kidnapped her daughter. Which suggests a better movie, where an AI device turns everyone against each other, like The Thing where the monster is a “harmless” device on the counter, but it’s the only time it feels like something dangerous could happen (and it's riddled with confusion, such as where the daughter *actually* was). Even for a PG-13, there’s a shocking dearth of genuine terror in the movie, which barely hits an 80 minute runtime to boot.

It also bizarrely uses swatting in a positive manner. For those unaware, swatting is something mostly online gamers do when they get mad at another player or a developer who does something crazy like makes the main character a girl. They get the address of whoever they’re mad at, then call the cops and tell them that there’s a hostage situation or something going on at that address. So the cops/SWAT show up and scare the hell out of the people there, who are of course innocent of any real crime. Anyway, here the kid basically swats his own home in order to get the cops there and arrest the people threatening his family. So uh… yay swatting? I guess? Weird choice.

The only time the movie ever came to life, really, was when David Dastmalchian popped up on occasion as one of the owners of the AIA technology. His character was spaced out/weird enough to give the movie some zest in those fleeting moments he was on screen, and honestly they should have bulked up the role once he was hired. It’s never clear if he had evil intentions or just let the AI tech get away from him, which is another reason the movie doesn’t really work: it’s far too vague about the tech and the people behind it to make up for the fact that AIA herself is barely doing anything malicious. I mean, Demon Seed is nearly 50 years old at this point and it had plenty of scary stuff – how is this modern day movie, at a time where AI is becoming a genuine threat to certain jobs and our ability to believe what we see online, somehow far less terrifying or even interesting?

Anyway, I hope Cho and Waterston got nice paychecks.

What say you?