Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: A teenage girl who has been missing for 8 years is suddenly found. But she’s come back a bit more possessed and nonverbal than they remember.

It’s really hard to make a Mummy movie (and in the case of the 2017 version, it can be difficult to watch, too). I think it’s because, well, essentially, what do they do? Especially compared to other similar properties. Look at the intended movies in Universal’s attempted Dark Universe. Dracula. He can fly, bite people, slight hypnotic powers. Wolf Man, animalistically bites and mauls. Invisible Man? His powers are pretty much stated in his name. The Mummy? The powers there depend entirely on who’s writing them. Sometimes they control undead armies, sometimes they have magical powers, and sometimes they’re basically zombies with toilet paper. Also, they’re fairly localised. Vampires can travel, werewolves are usually attached to woods and villages, but there are a lot of them in the world. The mummified corpse of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh? They’re usually only found in Egypt or the British Museum. You’re highly unlikely to see one in Berwick-Upon-Tweed. To the general public, if asked to define a Mummy, they will go to the 1999 Stephen Sommers film. That’s kind of scary, but it’s mostly a fun adventure movie.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (LCTM, pronounced Lick-toom) is DEFINITELY a horror, unashamedly so. But is it a mummy movie? I have no idea. It just feels like an Evil Dead movie with added sand. It’s absolutely disgusting, in the best possible way. There’s a sequence involving a toenail which still makes me wince when I think back to it. The body horror is off the charts and will make you feel uneasy. Cronin is great at making stuff seem like it actually hurts: the sound design, the make-up, etc., it’s all perfectly crafted for maximum efficiency.

The editing? Not so much. At times, it feels like the horror movie version of the Bourne shaky action cam. There’s a moment near the end which is near incomprehensible due to the way it’s edited. I know some people like that; they like the sense of unease that it creates, and how energetic and jumpy it is. I’m not a fan; I like to actually see what’s happening during scenes. Not in a “no, light everything like daylight so I can see the monster before it jumps out”, but if I can’t tell whether a character is on top during an action scene, am I supposed to be pleased the good person is winning, or scared because the villain is? We can’t tell. I had a similar issue with the Transformers movies, which often just felt like car parts rolling around.

It doesn’t feel like a Mummy movie, though. The moments which make it so feel incredibly tacked on. There’s a subplot involving a local expert that could be excised completely, as most of the information provided is given to us by someone else later on. I also felt the ending dragged. The closing moment has to be the shortest part of a film that’s ever dragged. I’d estimate it’s roughly 90 seconds long; it should be 10. I’m not saying every scene has to be quick, but there are so many moments which aren’t necessary, just dragging any momentum to a halt.

Lee Cronin is very good at making you disgusted and freaked out, but what he’s not so great at is giving those moments a reason. The powers are inconsistent, at times seeming only to exist to serve the plot. Characters are possessed, but only to call the teacher a cunt, not to do anything that would be useful. The grandmother’s wake is expertly crafted in terms of horror, but never followed up on. Did none of the people there feel the need to alert the authorities of a feral child bursting through a ceiling and biting a corpse? There’s not really any indication that the events of this movie affect the characters’ day-to-day lives. There’s no intense media pressure on the return of the child. Yes, the police in Egypt didn’t release that information, but SOMEONE would have noticed. Can you imagine if Madeline McCann turned up at her parents’ house? That news would be released VERY quickly, and the fact that the parents hadn’t announced it would then be seen as suspicious. There’s no way the events in this movie happen without some form of media intrusion. The dad works for the local news; you’d think that would be relevant to the plot at some point.

The parents act a bit weird in this. Leaving it WAY too long to attempt to get help or figure out what’s wrong. It wouldn’t take as long as it takes for the parents to question whether the child is possessed. I mean, they’re American, they’d call for an exorcist if their child is left-handed. The hospital staff are a bit weird, too. Sending her home WAY too early. And I’m not sure the police would SHOW parents a video of their child being tortured.

Personally, I don’t think the opening section of them in Egypt before she gets kidnapped was necessary. The kidnapping itself is brilliantly creepy. Okay, when I say “I don’t think it was necessary”, I mean the way it’s done. If it were the pre-credits scene, it would be great. It would also help sell the timeskip. We’re told it’s 8 years she’s been missing, but it never feels like it. Because we go straight from “she is missing” to “8 years later”, we don’t feel the torment and pain the family have gone through, because the audience has only just seen her, and the mother and father look exactly the same. If it were pre-credits, that pause would allow the time jump to sink in. The actual pre-credits scene is a scene of a family coming home and finding out their bird is dead, which leads to the dad dying. It adds NOTHING to the story and is seemingly only there under the misguided notion that every horror pre-credits scene must feature a death. Out of the 4 characters in the opening, only 2 of them are seen or referenced again, and one of them is completely different, so her inclusion in the opening didn’t influence how you saw her later. This also has the effect of making the unseen mummy the focus, when it should be the family. Imagine if The Shining opened with Charles Grady (the former caretaker) murdering his family. Think how that would change the audience’s reactions to Jack, Wendy and Danny.

In summary: a film I didn’t hate, because I respect that Lee Cronin was trying something. It just feels like a waste of an IP. That being said, if anybody ever makes an Eternal Darkness movie (and they should), Cronin is the person I’d want directing it. Also, the people complaining because it’s not the same movie as the 1999 one are stupid.

Pretty Lethal (2026) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick synopsis: A group of ballerinas tries to escape from a remote inn after their bus breaks down on the way to a dance competition.

Action movies are better in the cinema: that’s not an opinion: the bigger screen, the atmosphere, everything about it makes it perfect. That being said, Amazon has released some fairly decent ones in the last few years: Deep Cover, Heads Of State, and surely there’s a third one? That being said, they’ve also given us the My Spy sequel, War Of The Worlds, and they were the service that landed Bride Hard, so it’s hit and miss.

Pretty Lethal isn’t as bad as Bride Hard. But it’s nowhere near as good as Deep Cover. On the bright side, PL knows its gimmick. It never lets you forget that it’s an action film about ballerinas. There are times that the reliance on the gimmick works against it, where the characters do something physically complicated when something simple would have done. It doesn’t happen enough to ruin it, but there are times when they add a random twirl just because that’s what they would do in a dance.

I’m split on how I feel about the fight scenes. On the positive side: the hits themselves have an impact. When characters bleed, it makes sense, and it feels suitably distressing. But the choreography? It’s somewhat lacking. It’s the opposite of They Will Kill You. Whilst that was a horror movie that seemingly was made by a director more suited to action, this is a horror movie made by someone seemingly more suited to horror. If Vicky Jewson made They Will Kill You, and Kirill Sokolov made Pretty Lethal, I feel it would have improved both films. Rest assured, if Jewson were to make either a horror movie or an action movie focused on brutality rather than finesse, I’ll be second in line to watch it (not first, I’m not that eager). I’m trying to think how to phrase this without sounding creepy: I like that the women involved in this breathe heavily after and during intense scenes: it’s a little thing, but it really helps sell how physically taxing the fights are.

Even if the fights were better, it would be hard to see this as something incredible. There’s an issue with tone. At times it seems like it wants to be serious, then at other times it has something that sounds like a swanee whistle accompany someone ducking behind a table. I’ve yet to see anything to convince me that Iris Apatow gets cast based purely on merit. I’m not saying she gives bad performances, but her screentime is far beyond what her performance deserves. On the subject of casting, Michael Culkin doesn’t quite have the presence needed to carry off the role. Physically, he’s fine. But he’s missing that indescribable “it” factor that the character deserves. That’s not a slight, like I said, it’s hard to define and even harder to find, but when it happens, you know. The best way to explain it is professional wrestlers: show someone a clip of Hulk Hogan in his prime, even with the audio muted, you can tell that he is someone. Now play a clip of the Brooklyn Brawler, you’ll see the difference.

Millicent Simmonds is great, though (although I do question why the villains find it so hard to kill a deaf woman who’s lost her hearing aid). Uma Thurman is her standard, brilliant self. Avantika is so good that it almost made me forget she was in Tarot. Almost. Maddie Ziegler is the true star, though, with the perfect blend of physicality and facial performance.

In summary, only about 4 steps away from being great, but those steps are huge. Also, just once, I want to see someone attempt a Molotov cocktail and just have the glass bottle bounce.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick synopsis: Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Bowser travel across the galaxy to rescue a princess.

At the time of writing, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (TSMGM, pronounced Tis-mah-gum) is the second-highest-grossing movie of 2026, and the highest-grossing western movie. It has the biggest global opening at the box office in 2026, and has the fifth-biggest global opening for an animated movie of all time. That sounds incredible, and I don’t want to demean the work involved, but TSMGM does not deserve it. The biggest positive is that it makes the first film seem better by comparison. This is just more of the same, the good, and the bad.

The visual and audio references? They’ve increased, and are superb. The animators clearly love the franchise, with small references hidden everywhere; some more obvious than others. The story is somehow more generic than the ones in the video games, which is somewhat surprising considering the games aren’t exactly known for excellent stories. That’s the trouble with adapting video games to movies; often, it’s not the stories people enjoy. People often say there should be a Grand Theft Auto movie, but what would the point be? The fun in GTA is the stuff YOU do, the story, etc., is mostly inconsequential. A movie adaptation would just be a Guy Ritchie movie, and the world has enough of those. Mario game stories are simple, though: someone (usually Bowser) kidnaps someone, and Mario has to stop them.

Yes, it’s very basic. But there’s a lot you can do within that basic framework. But you have to do it well. This doesn’t really do it well. There’s no flow between one scene and the next: it’s just setpiece after setpiece. It doesn’t feel cohesive; it literally feels like they’re going from one level to the next. There are multiple moments which break when you think about them for more than a second. Particularly near the end, where the film makes references to the old 2D games, but in a manner you quickly realise is pointless in a world where high-tech cameras exist.

Other ways it’s similar to the first: the plot-based references to the franchise are too heavily shoe-horned in. The first one had the Karts, which felt unnecessary and more like an exercise in time-wasting than part of a narrative. This has baby Luigi/Mario. It feels like the writers said, “Okay, remember Super Mario World 2? When Mario was a baby? How do we fit that into this movie?” rather than writing a script and thinking “, Hang on, if we turn them into babies for this section, it fixes this plot problem we’ve been having”. One issue this plot has is how it handles Bowser. The character has said they’ve changed their ways and spends most of the film’s runtime trying to prove that. Until he meets his son, in which case he turns heel again. But that turn only happens in the final section. It’s obvious it’s going to happen, so the time with good Bowser feels wasted. It doesn’t allow the character to be any fun. The writers needed to either turn him much earlier, keep him good, or have him turn at the VERY end after his son has been defeated. Would it have been too much to ask for a bigger villain? Imagine how much fun a film adaptation of Wario could be. Would be much more dynamic and threatening than a kid with a magical paintbrush. Yeah, there’s also a world-destroying cannon, but weirdly, it always feels like the paintbrush is a bigger threat to the characters.

Of course, it’s not just the Mario franchise; Galaxy has started incorporating the wider Nintendo franchise with the introduction of Fox McCloud. Those hoping for an Infinity War-style crossover will be disappointed. There’s no Captain Falcon, Samus, Link, Kirby, etc. Don’t worry, we still have Minions, because Illumination will never let you forget those yellow fuckers. There’s also Pikmin, but they are placed in such a “hey look, this is a thing!” way that it’s actually kind of annoying. There’s a moment near the end which feels like it’s calling out for a surprise cameo of a character that will get everyone excited, but instead, it’s just the nihilistic star from the first movie. I enjoyed that character, but having him be the reveal of a build-up feels like a waste, especially in a world where much bigger villains still exist.

On the plus side: it looks absolutely gorgeous. The cast (except Chris Pratt) has improved their vocal work, especially Anya Taylor-Joy. The way they display the power of Rosalina is an almost perfect way to showcase her character. The introduction of Yoshi is a lot of fun. Evidently, kids will like it. And I appreciate how the filmmakers have gone out so strongly against AI. Ultimately, I love the original franchise. And if I were the kind of person who had hope and joy in his life, I’d have been looking forward to this and expecting greatness, so I would have been disappointed. Long-term fans deserve something better than this. They deserve something that will fill you with passion. Instead, they get something worse than bad: they get something mediocre. A film that is so scared of standing up for itself that it ends up attempting nothing. At least it succeeds in that aspect, I guess. I was so tempted to just repost the review of the first movie. I checked, and I would have needed to delete the paragraph about Bowser singing, and I would have had to change the “highest-grossing film of 2023” bit, and it would have meant neglecting specific issues I had with this movie. But it would have still worked. All of the criticisms are the same. The fact that I didn’t do that, that I instead wrote something original, means I put more effort in than the writers of this movie did.

California Schemin’ (2025) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: The true story of how two men from Scotland convinced the music industry they were American.

This is unfortunate. If I reviewed California Schemin the same day I saw it, or even the next day, it would have been highly praised. It’s now been 3 days, and my feelings towards it have lessened. It’s not that I now dislike it; I’ve suddenly thought of things I hated about it, or it turns out someone involved is a sex pest. I don’t harbour any dislike towards it, but the warmth I have towards it is no longer at the same level.

It’s still good, though. It’s incredibly funny. It’s a concept that is ridiculous, but it leans into it. There’s a general air of “I can’t believe this happened” The music industry does not come off well. It comes off as shallow, stupid, and callous. I’m not exactly sure what is real, though. There are some parts I know happened differently due to extensive research (I quickly looked at the band’s Wikipedia page), but I’m not sure about the truth of everything. There is a documentary available on Netflix that I’ll watch, and then use that to ascertain where this film ranks at the end of the year.

But that’s viewing it as an adaptation of the truth; on its own merits, it stands up. Key to this is the relationship between Billy, Gavin, and Mary. The relationship between the three feels very honest; their reactions with each other all ring true. It helps that they have tremendous chemistry. You can sense the closeness between the characters. Seamus McLean Ross has one of the most difficult jobs: making the journey from a nervous, likeable wannabe to egomaniacal douche, but staying consistent throughout. You can easily see how this character makes that transition, looking back, all of the character traits that become visible later on, the jealousy, the anger, the entitled nature? The seeds are planted very early on, so his descent into darkness actually makes sense. Even when he’s at his worst, you still feel sympathy for him because you know that under all that bravado is still the scared, insecure person we saw at the start of the movie. For some reason, the whole thing reminded me of a wrestling angle, and I still have no idea why. But now I want to start a project where I rewrite classic films as wrestling angles.

On the downside, it could do us more to sell the illusion. We see how the band responds to it, we see how Mary responds to it, we don’t see how others do. It would have been nice to see media attention; journalists writing about them, fans saying how excited they were by the gig. John Malkovich’s character in Opus felt more real than the characters do in this. I know they didn’t exactly get front-page headlines and number-one singles, but enough people were fooled to make it notable.

I also feel it ended a bit suddenly. One of the characters attempts suicide near the end, and it’s never really touched upon. His former manager comes to see him, but his former best friend (and his sister) never acknowledges it. Are they aware? We don’t know. They only see each other once afterwards, and no words are spoken; they just stay whilst he sings a song apologising. It feels like there was a heart-to-heart between the characters that’s missing from the script.

In summary, this is delightful. More than anything else, it will make you want to know more about the real story. As a director, it won’t be enough for James McAvoy to be known as one of the best directors in the world, but it is a remarkably solid base for him to build a career on. He’s not going to be handed the reins to a new blockbuster franchise, but it will put him in the discussion when it comes to dramas and comedies.

The Drama (2026) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: A happily engaged couple get put to the test when an unexpected revelation sends their wedding week off the rails.

I don’t want to, but I feel I have to give spoilers for The Drama to discuss how I feel about it. Since I’m not a complete dick and don’t want to spoil for people who just click and have wandering eyes that briefly look over the whole page, I’ll add a certain amount of preamble, and won’t spoil anything until I say the words BUTTERED PARSNIPS.

I’m only doing that because it’s clear that a part of the marketing was based on curiosity about what the worst thing she ever did was. It’s a simple strategy: “You want to see what the conflict is about? Buy a ticket”. I was unfortunate enough to accidentally glance at a news headline about it, specifically how controversial it is. To be even more specific, they named the groups opposed to it, which automatically gave a pretty big clue as to what it was. It wasn’t this, but if the article header was “9/11 survivors object to The Drama”, you’d know it was something to do with 9/11.

The Drama was written and directed by Kristffer Borgli, who also made Dream Scenario, a film which I loved the concept of, but felt the execution was deeply flawed. After watching this, I have come to the conclusion that Borgli loves writing arguments and having characters scream and yell at the leads. The Drama has a lot of that, and unlike in Dream Scenario, those moments make sense. It helps that The Drama is much more grounded and has a more focused narrative. It does occasionally veer into dream sequences and imagine spots, which veer from the useless to the great. There are some moments which I’m still not sure if they were real or not, and if they were dreams, to whom did they belong? These moments will put people off.

Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. From the reveal (which I will get to), to the editing, to the scenes of characters loudly talking over each other, The Drama feels designed to make you uncomfortable. It’s not designed to be a lovely life-affirming watch. Sometimes that worked for me, sometimes it didn’t. The way it was edited did feel like it was building towards something huge. Shots of people who were clearly stressed out, staff at the wedding who are angry at being fired, the partner of a woman that Charlie kissed is at the wedding, etc. It all feels like it’s building towards a huge, explosive event that will scar you. Nope. Rude comments are made at the wedding, and Charlie gets headbutted. That’s it. Narratively, it’s like being promised a fireworks display and ending up with a sparkler.

BUTTERED PARSNIPS

The terrible thing she did? She planned a school shooting. She had a gun, trained with it, made videos online that she planned to be released after the event, etc. Truly horrible and unexpected. But pretty brilliant. It allows the film to ask questions about morality: is planning something that’s a 9/10 on a shithead scale worse than actually doing something that’s a 6/10 (locking a mentally challenged boy in a strange vehicle in the woods and not telling people he’s there)? It also talks about America’s obsession with guns, to the point it almost sexualises them (the random cuts of Zendaya posing with guns are artsy as hell). America (and yes, it is a uniquely American problem) focuses so heavily on guns as aspirational things to own, then acts surprised when kids shoot each other.

I mostly liked The Drama. When it was funny, it was laugh-out-loud hilarious. The fact that the thing that stopped her from carrying out the shooting was that another one happened nearby is funnier than it should be. The humour is darker than the POV of someone wearing a blindfold at midnight in a locked casket. I’m someone who has said multiple times that genocide is bad, and racism is the preserve of dickheads, so obviously I’m an easily offended snowflake, but I didn’t find this movie offensive in the slightest. It’s not making light of school shootings. The entire conflict is based on the notion that it’s a terrible thing to do. It’s obvious she’s haunted by her almost actions. All things considered, it’s actually handled relatively tastefully.

Now onto the downside: I didn’t think Alana Haim’s performance was at the level of everybody else’s. Charlie’s characterisation is a bit inconsistent, especially in the final third, where his actions seem to be stuff that drives the plot forward rather than stuff that the character would do. It also has far too many inconsequential moments; it’s as if the film is throwing as many moments at the screen and seeing what sticks. Personally, I don’t think the relationship between them is quite sweet enough for the ending to land. It’s sweet at the start, but they spend a lot of the film’s runtime in conflict with each other, so that’s our main impression of them as a couple. A buildup to a wedding is the perfect opportunity to explore characters’ pasts, so it would have been easy for them to have flashbacks to better times, so we could feel more of the love between the two of them. If the love felt genuine, the ending would have worked. It’s also so heavily tied to the reveal that if you happened to find it out before you watch, it won’t be as good an experience.

In summary, a truly divisive film that I kind of loved. People who love it, will really love it. People who hate it will consider it one of the worst films of the year. It’s 1-2 out of 10, or 8-10 out of 10. Nobody will give this a meh.

Crazy Old Lady a.k.a Vieja Loca (2025) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: A man is asked by his ex-girlfriend to care temporarily for her senile mother, Alicia. But Alicia won’t let him leave,

Okay, this is the second film I’ve reviewed in a row which starts with a male character running over a dog. I hope the next film I watch, “Man Runs Over Dog At The Start Of The Movie”, doesn’t start the same way. It’s not even a genre trope as the films have been two different genres. Not localised either, as from two different countries, continents, in fact.

Crazy Old Lady (COL) is a strange watch. For one, it doesn’t open like a horror movie. I love that. It means that people react believably, as real-life people, as opposed to characters in a horror movie. It contextualises actions and behaviours. As it goes on, it does become a more traditional horror movie, but that’s excused because it takes place at night, so of course it’s going to be dark. Otherwise, it is shot in a pretty standard way; there are no shaky-cam jump scares or weird walking towards the camera.

The downside to the traditional horror nature (when it becomes one), it’s sooooo dark. Not tonally (okay, slightly yes tonally), but visually. It makes it difficult to actually see anything. I don’t need to see clearly enough to make out the book titles in the background (I wouldn’t be able to read them anyway, what with them likely being in Spanish), but it would be good to be able to see characters facial expressions, or know where they are in relation to each other, rather than straining to work it out through the shadows.

Alicia is an interesting villain. You get the idea that she’s always been a little of a sociopathic monster; the things she says certainly allude to a past that’s darker than this movie’s visuals. There is always the question about whether her memory is accurate, though. So how much of her actions are due solely to her senility, and how much of it is just her senility leaving her unable to mask her true nature? It’s an interesting question which will leave audiences with their own opinions. The other interesting part is that it’s difficult to see how you personally would escape. Yes, she’s an old woman, so you could just punch her in the face. But she’s also an old woman suffering from senility, so it would be a bit weird to just punch her in the face without it feeling a bit weird. And even if you did, there’s not a Facebook group around that wouldn’t crucify you. The other nice thing about the villain is she’s so out of her mind with random non-sequiturs, blatant falsehoods, and overly sexual creepiness that I feel I don’t need to watch the Melania documentary now.

I respect Crazy Old Lady for having a sexual assault scene as skillfully done as it is, and for having a female-on-male one, which is very rare. The last one I remember is the first Black Christmas remake. This is certainly the first time I’ve seen it where it’s not a villain origin story, so kudos for that. Surprisingly, that’s not the most shocking moment. When Alicia stabs her daughter, it genuinely stuns you despite you somehow knowing it’s coming. It feels like she should have some sort of familial defence clause. “Yes, she’s stabbing this random man, but surely she’d recognise her daughter, and that will bring her back to normality?” Nope.

The performances are fine. Carmen Maura definitely gives a stronger performance. Daniel Hendler occasionally veers into comedic territory with how he portrays fear. It would have been nice to see footage of Alicia when she was a bit younger, maybe in family videos of BBQ’s and Christmases, etc., just to get a taste of what her actual personality is like.

Now for the negative. The ending feels lethargic. There’s a definite sense of “is that it?” It looks like it is intending to end with her getting deliberately hit by a train because she realises what she’s done. Nope, she just walks away as a train rolls nearby, leaving her Granddaughter alone in an unlocked car at night. It’s incredibly anticlimactic. It’s possibly the only moment where the fact it doesn’t feel like a horror movie lets it be down. Because it’s shot and feels like a drama, there’s no tension or fear in that scene. You don’t have that “is she going to now kill a child?” worry. It’s just, I dunno, nothing. It’s as if a rollercoaster ended with a slow, gradual descent into an empty room.

“Crazy Old Lady” is currently available for streaming on Shudder

It Was Just An Accident (2025) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: An unassuming mechanic is reminded of his time in an Iranian prison when he encounters a man he suspects to be his sadistic jailhouse captor

I had a tiny amount of knowledge about the story of It Was Just An Accident (IWJAA, pronounced Eye-woo-jah). I knew it was about a man who comes face-to-face with his former torturer. So when we were introduced to a happy family accidentally running over a dog, I thought that the father might be the innocent person tortured, and he stumbles across his former enemy, who is hiding out as a mechanic. Nope, the mechanic is the victim. Not sure if that makes me an idiot or if it’s just clever writing. Possibly a mixture of both. That being said, we don’t have enough of the torturer (Eghbal) as a normal person to really feel it. We get a very brief moment of him as a normal family man. I feel that if it somehow intercuts it with his domestic life, it would help highlight the notion that the people committing these terrible acts weren’t cartoon villains, they were everyday people, they were neighbours, fathers, people who are known as kind pillars of their community. That being said, it does do a good job of building him up as a symbol of fear. The way characters speak of him, you can tell they’re traumatised by him. The group all responds in different ways too; some are angry and want to kill him, some never want to see him again, and it all feels very realistic.

IWJAA is an interesting watch. This is a story of pain, of trauma, of PTSD, the likes of which most people will never know. How do you cope with coming face-to-face with someone who tortured you? Do you want revenge? Or do you want closure? It’s that inner argument that drives the movie. Really, Eghbal is not a character in this, not really. He’s a story device. It’s not “the group against Eghbal”, it’s “the group against themselves”. It’s akin to other “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves” works, like The Count of Monte Cristo. But it’s about so much more than that; it’s about oppressive governments and the impact they have on their citizens.

Now’s a better time than any to speak about the writer/director, Jafar Panahi. Panahi is badass. He’s been arrested multiple times. He broke the law multiple times whilst making this film, and not in a Victor Salva way (not really relevant, I just think it’s important to recognise that the director of Jeepers Creepers raped a 12-year-old, so fuck that entire franchise). The women involved broke the law by not wearing the hijab in public. Fun fact: Iran isn’t the only country that’s mistreated him; he was also detained by the police in another dystopian hellcape: JFK airport. He’s probably one of the best modern examples of film as protest, and I love him for it.

So how is the film on its own merits, outside of political contexts? It’s pretty impressive. It was nominated for best screenplay at the last Academy Awards. Which is a pretty big deal considering it’s not only not American, it’s not even in English. In terms of narrative, it does lose momentum slightly once they’ve tied him a tree, but it pulls it back for a phenomenally unsettling closing. There’s some interesting shots, with a lot of dialogue happening with the characters backs to the camera. It works, though. It means we’re focusing on the reaction those words are having, and the words being said.

Judging performers in a second language is always difficult because it sometimes feels like you’re not getting the full experience in terms of delivery etc. Mohammad Ali Elyashmeher veers a bit too close to cartoonish overreaction at times, but I feel that behaviour is natural for someone who has suffered like that character has, so it’s difficult to criticise it too harshly. I have to single out Mariam Afshari for her performance. Even in a second language, she has presence that’s difficult to ignore.

In summary: this will not be for everyone, but it was for me. Openly political, and very much needed in modern times. It would be a bit bleak if every film was like this, but I am glad it exists.

They Will Kill You (2026) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: Asia Reaves (Zazie Beetz) infiltrates a high-rise building in New York in an attempt to find her sister.

As anybody who has played The Executive – Movie Industry Tycoon can attest, release dates can drastically affect how a movie is received. Some are simple: don’t release Christmas movies in April, for example. But some are more unpredictable: can you imagine how badly an anti-military film would have been received after opening weekend if it were released on September 7, 2001? It’s not quite that unlucky, but my view of They Will Kill You (TWKY, pronounced Twick-ey) has certainly been negatively affected by its release date. 7 days. That’s the difference; if I had watched it 7 days earlier, I’d have liked it more. So what happened in those 7 days? Did I also get a job in a shady building to save my sister, only to find out that the building is full of immortal satanists that pray to a pig’s head? No, nothing like that (the ones I had to kill prayed to a hippo). What happened was I watched Ready Or Not 2. In some ways, there are no similarities at all. This doesn’t involve a game of hide and seek, the villains don’t rule the world, and the racial component of TWKY does add another layer to the satire. But there are spiritual similarities.

When you compare the two, TWKY is found lacking. The characters aren’t as compelling, the satire isn’t as sharp, and it doesn’t look anywhere near as good. The action sequences are fun, with some great fight scenes. But it’s when people get hurt that it doesn’t impress. Limbs are sliced off far too easily; there’s almost no impact to dismemberments and decapitations. It all feels a bit too rubbery for my taste. It’s not helped by not having any memorable music, so the scenes aren’t quite as good as they should be: to be perfectly honest, some of them feel unfinished.

I don’t think it realises how good some of the ideas it introduces are. A character says that each floor is tailored to a different vice, then only shows us two floors. It doesn’t even do the most with the floors it gives us. I remember Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, which had a fantastic action scene that incorporated sex toys; despite having a floor based around sex, this doesn’t attempt anything similar. It also seems to waste the emotional potential of that being the floor where Asia finds her younger sister. I don’t think every female character in fiction has to have sexual assault as a backstory, but if you find a young woman working on a floor dedicated to sex, that question does have to be asked. But again, think of all the fun they could have had with Asia working through multiple floors all dedicated to different vices: her fighting a group of drugged up psychopaths, against people who are much larger than they should be because they spend their entire days eating. To be honest, with the satanic themes, it could have been very unsubtle and have floor be a deadly sin. I’m not sure how you could have action scenes based on Envy, maybe a hall of mirrors, or people focused on destroying the face? I dunno.

It’s a shame, as this could have been great. It’s really just a mix of bad timing in terms of release date, and too low a budget (or a director who doesn’t know how to utilise the budget). On its own, it is pretty fun. Asia is a great character. It’s nice to see Paterson Joseph on the big screen. It is odd that Tom Felton is in a film based around satanists sacrificing people, and it’s still not the most evil franchise he’s been involved in. There’s not a single weak link in the case, and the characters they portray all make sense and are entertaining.

In summary: a solid 6.5/10, that had the misfortune to follow an 8. The scene where Asia sets an axe on fire and attacks a room full of people in the dark is fantastic, and if it kept that energy and invention up, it would have been a 9/10.

Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come (2026) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: After surviving a deadly game of hide-and-seek, Grace is forced into a repeat, this time with her sister.

Sadly, I missed out on the first movie. Not because I didn’t want to see it, but because every year, no matter how many films I watch, I always get a bit burnt out in Autumn, so I end up missing stuff I otherwise would have seen. I am aware of what happened in the first film due to watching the trailer and the Kill Count. Truth be told, I’m not sure you NEED to have seen the first one for this to make sense: it does a pretty good job of catching you up on the essentials, and the stuff it doesn’t tell you is stuff you can figure out yourself. I’m sure there is stuff that I missed or didn’t appreciate fully because I hadn’t seen the first one, but I was never lost, and that’s what you want from a sequel.

But how is it as a film? I loved it. Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come (RON2: HIC, pronounced Ron-two-hick) is ridiculous, but it leans into it so you never sit there thinking “well that’s not realistic”. It’s also much more fun than mass death should be. Everybody is clearly having a blast. Samara Weaving is quickly becoming an icon of modern horror, and she’s joined by someone else who is gaining a similar reputation: Kathryn Newton. The two work well together, but it would be nice if their characters had a few more differences in their personalities. They’re joined by Sarah Michelle Gellar, who seems more comfortable lately going back to horror, and she’s always welcome, especially when she’s chewing the scenery as gleefully as she is here. The weirdest casting choice is David Cronenberg: he’s known for directing incredibly bleak fare like Maps To The Stars, Scanners, and Eastern Promises. So it’s strange he’d be in something as fun as this.

Cronenberg has stated in the past that he views all art as inherently political, and it’s easy to see RON2: HIC as political, it’s not even subtle about it: a group of rich people control the world and kill poor people to increase their power? Too believable. It’s notable that the rich dickheads are forbidden from killing each other, only targeting unwitting players in their game. They’re all deeply unlikeable, but on the bright side, they suffer. The deaths and injuries are brutal. Much like Jaws made people afraid of going in the water, Psycho made people afraid of showers, and 2024’s The Crow made people afraid of watching movies, RON2: HIC could keep you afraid of washing machines: at least that’s what I’m using as an excuse anyway.

It’s not just the deaths; the fights are great too. A lot of films lately are using Bonnie Tyler songs to score action sequences, to the point where it’s almost becoming a cliche. As someone who has openly declared how much he wants to see a car cash set to Total Eclipse Of The Heart, it’s a cliche I very much welcome. The other thing that’s notable about that particular scene is that both characters are blinded for a large portion of it. I love how this film does things like that, adding creative twists to scenes that render them different from what we’ve seen before.

Now for the negative: the split between the two sisters feels fake. The longer the film goes on, the less their relationship feels real. Their relationship with each other isn’t consistent; if it were The Sims, then their relationship meter would be going from 20 to 70 and back again on a whim.

That’s a minor complaint. RON2: HIC is a highly enjoyable way to spend 2 hours. It’s funny, fun, with a great soundtrack. It also features one of my favourite endings in a long time for pure batshit insanity. It could have slightly more memorable needle drops, and it does feel a bit more like the second in a trilogy rather than a finished narrative.

Final note: this will sound weird, but Samara Weaving and Kathryn Newton suit the blood-soaked look.

The Bride! (2026) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: Frankenstein is fed up with being lonely, so he asks a doctor to give him a bride. A corpse that just so happens to be possessed by Mary Shelley is chosen.

I’m writing this review less than a week removed from Jessie Buckley winning best actress at the Academy Awards for her performance in Hamnet. Personally, I didn’t love that film as much as everybody else seemed to, but I’m glad to see she won because she’s one of my favourite performers at the moment. Her performance as the titular character in this is one of the highlights. Her manic energy is exhilarating and makes you want to see her let loose in films a bit more, rather than being restrained to emotional and high-art pieces; give her the villain role in a slasher movie, and she’ll kill it. Without her in this movie, it would be a lot worse, and that’s saying something.

I should have liked The Bride. I want to look at it and see something lovingly crafted, feminist as fuck, and batshit insane. It is all of those things, but it’s also messy. Not in a “blood and guts everywhere” way, In a “this needs to be better” way. It’s telling that the film it most reminds me of is Joker: Folie A Deux. But whilst that felt like a musical that didn’t want to be a musical, this feels like a film that wants to be a musical but isn’t. It’s horrifically anachronistic, and it feels deliberately so. A film set in 1930’s Chicago that features references to astronauts, and a club that plays modern techno music support the theory that it’s deliberate, but it’s also incredibly annoying as a viewer to have the story break like that in completely inconsequential ways. It would be like if the Starbucks cup in Game Of Thrones was a deliberate choice.

Let’s be honest, though, a lot of the film is inconsequential. The Bride inspires a feminist uprising, where women across the country mimic her style in a show of defiance. Guess how that plays into the plot? The women torture a mobster during the closing credits, or to put it another way, it doesn’t tie into the plot in an important way. It should have. How can you have a Frankenstein movie that involves an angry mob and NOT have a “villagers storming the castle by torchlight” scene? It should have been a big part. Frank and The Bride should have had an argument which led to her leading the group to his home. Maybe not that, but something. The Bride leading a group of women would be an incredibly powerful scene to witness, but we don’t get it.

The Bride! has so many good ideas contained within: the allusions to Old Hollywood, the isolation that the monster feels, a wronged woman seeking revenge against an uncaring society. All of them are perfect ideas for a story like this, yet it tries to do all three and has no idea how to connect the differing threads. So it doesn’t bother to try; instead, it just has the two characters lurch (lol, Addams Family reference) from one scene to the next like two characters in a video game.

The characters don’t even feel consistent. We’re never given a reason for The Bride to like Frank. At one point, she even decries the name Bride of Frankenstein, saying she just wants to be known as The Bride. She is her own person, she is independent, and she doesn’t need to be tied to a man for happiness and fulfilment. Then, a few minutes later, they’re portrayed as soulmates who will spend eternity together. No matter how cool the moments are on their own, there’s no cohesion between them.

Before seeing this, I had one of my friends tell me she thought it was “the worst film of the 2020’s”. Personally, I feel that that’s War Of The Worlds erasure. It’s not quite the worst film of the decade, it’s not even the worst of the year, but it’s probably the biggest gap between potential and result that I’ve seen in a long time. Like I said, it has some great moments, and the story being told is interesting, but it doesn’t make for a good final product. Ultimately, it’s like a really drunk person retelling Paddington 2 who keeps getting distracted by the football results: you can tell there’s a good story underneath the bullshit, but you don’t have a shovel big enough, and all you want to do is tell them to focus the fuck up.