Tag: Horror

Bad Apples (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A stressed primary school teacher (Maria Spencer, played by Saoirse Ronan) accidentally imprisons her most disruptive student (Danny, played by Eddie Waller) in her basement.

I didn’t see a single trailer for this before booking my ticket. I hadn’t heard any pre-release chatter either. Basically, I knew nothing about it. Which, to be fair, is how I live my life most days anyway. In this case, though, that might actually be the best way to go into it. Bad Apples is weird, and the premise alone might be enough to put some people off. Weirdly, this is the second film I’ve reviewed this year about someone kidnapping a person in an attempt to improve their behaviour, after The Good Boy (as reviewed here). The two films are working with a surprisingly similar premise, but Bad Apples handles it far more elegantly. The biggest difference is the age of the person being abducted. In The Good Boy, Tommy is 19, which is an age where it’s a little harder to look at his behaviour and think, “Maybe he just needs to be loved and listened to.” In Bad Apples, Danny is around nine or ten, making the idea that his home life is contributing to his violent behaviour much more believable. There’s also a much stronger reason for why this particular child is targeted. In The Good Boy, the choice of Tommy always felt somewhat arbitrary; in Bad Apples, the abductors are his classmates and his teacher, giving the whole thing a much clearer motivation. More importantly, the kidnapping feels like a last resort, brought about by an increasingly absurd series of events that somehow makes the whole ridiculous situation feel almost inevitable.

The other advantage this has over The Good Boy is that it’s actually fun. Bad Apples has an incredibly dark sense of humour, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the final third, when the local parents discover that that Danny has been kidnapped by Maria and essentially decide to ignore it because it’s better for the school if he’s not there. It’s absurd, but in a way that feels weirdly plausible. There’s something incredibly satisfying about watching them make an objectively terrible moral decision for the sake of the wider community. Nobody’s pretending it’s the right thing to do; they’ve simply decided that, under the circumstances, it’s the most convenient thing to do. It gives the film a slightly heightened, almost satirical quality, without ever tipping over into outright comedy.

I feel like Saoirse Ronan’s comedy skills are underrated. She has such an endearing presence that she’s perfect for something like this. Her character has a tricky line to walk: she has to kidnap a child, yet still remain likeable and sympathetic. Somehow, the film pulls it off. She’s written so well that you never really question her logic, even when what she’s doing is obviously completely insane. The film also manages to stop Danny from becoming completely unbearable. He is a little shit, there’s no denying that, but once you start to unravel his history, you begin to understand why he behaves the way he does. There’s more to him than just, “All the little shits need is a firm hand. Less Pokémon, and for my wife to come back. I’m gonna go paint a roundabout.” There’s genuine nuance to his character, which makes it all the more frustrating when his progress is threatened by another character: Pauline.

Pauline is such an annoying little shit. She’s not quite a villain, but she’s definitely an antagonist. The clever thing is that it’s almost impossible to actively hate her. She’s a child who isn’t used to receiving praise or attention, and once you understand that, you can sympathise with her even when you absolutely do not like what she’s doing. The further the film goes, the more frustrating she becomes, but the more you understand where she’s coming from too. It’s a difficult balance for the script to pull off, and it does it remarkably well. Yes, she’s blackmailing her teacher, which is hardly the behaviour of a particularly well-adjusted child. But the teacher is unquestionably the one who has crossed the bigger line.

It’s a crime that threatens to unravel towards the end, and unfortunately, that’s where the film starts to lose me. The ending is kind of a letdown, because it initially gives us a brilliant conclusion: technically a downer ending, but also strangely sweet and heartwarming. It’s brave, unique and darkly funny, and honestly, I would have been perfectly happy if the film had ended there. Instead, it carries on for much longer than it needs to, before arriving at a series of final shots that I found disappointing. It reminded me of the original ending of the Mr Bean movie, where an earthquake reveals the deception but we never actually get to see the aftermath. It’s the worst of both worlds: we know everything is about to change, but we don’t get to see any of it. It feels like a sequel hook for a sequel that can never happen. By the time the credits roll, I half expected them to say, “If you’d like to see the true ending, pay £5 now.”

I have one other issue: the Bad Apples metaphor is so heavy-handed that it’s basically slapping you in the face. The film isn’t content to let the idea of a “bad apple” emerge naturally from the story; it keeps returning to it, explaining it and underlining the comparison until there’s very little left for the audience to work out for themselves. Danny is the obvious “bad apple”, but the film is also interested in the idea of whether you can simply remove one problem from a group and pretend everything else is fine. That’s a perfectly good metaphor, but the film keeps pointing at it and saying, “Look! This is what we’re talking about!” I got it the first time. You didn’t need to keep reminding me.

That’s a minor issue, though. Overall, I really enjoyed Bad Apples. It’s shocking, weird and wonderful. It’s not perfect, but it is different. It’s ambitious, it’s darkly funny and, most importantly, it’s fun.

Fall 2 (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A grieving woman and her late sister’s friend get trapped thousands of feet up on a dangerous mountain plank walk in Thailand after a rockslide destroys the path.

I absolutely loved Fall; it was probably the most tense film I’ve ever watched. I remember watching it, and at one particularly intense moment, a guy sitting nearby stood up, loudly proclaimed, “fuck this”, and walked out. Honestly, I get it. It was an unsettling watch that made my stomach jump constantly (although that could have been the sweet popcorn). So I was incredibly excited by the idea of a sequel.

I was a bit nervous that it was only a few months away from release and there still wasn’t a trailer. Then the trailer came out, and it was… fine. It didn’t blow me away, but mainly because it was so short that it didn’t really showcase much. I figured the finished film would be worth it.

It’s not. I’ll state that up front. It’s nowhere near as good as the first one; it feels like a cheap knock-off. Part of that is because I now have expectations. But part of it is because it’s simply not as good. There are moments where it’s incredible, where you finish a scene and realise just how tightly wound you were while watching it. So it’s not a terrible film, but it isn’t a good one either. There are three main issues: the script, the characters, and the visuals.

The script. The idea for Fall 2 is simple: two characters are trapped on a wooden bridge high up on a mountain. That’s it. Everything is there. It doesn’t need complicating. But it does it anyway. It tries to be clever, adding unnecessary twists and turns.

I’ll talk about one of them because it doesn’t really impact the script, so it’s not a spoiler. Who we thought was called Luce is actually called Billie. She claimed she was a friend of Shiloh (the woman from the first movie, and the sister of Fall 2 protagonist Jax), and it’s a shock to discover that she was actually just a fan. All shocking, all effective. Well, it would be, if any of this had actually mattered before. The fact that Luce is friends with Shiloh is mentioned in dialogue that is so ineffectual it’s basically homoeopathic. There are no conversations about “so what was my sister like at college?”, or discussions of their supposed friendship. There are so many dialogue-heavy scenes that it’s impossible to remember every single thing that was mentioned in passing.

It would be like if I suddenly said: “I absolutely detest sweet popcorn, much preferring salted.” It would mean nothing, because nobody reading this review is going to remember that I mentioned popcorn in the first paragraph. Why would you?

The characters. This was a slight issue in the first film: people taking reasonable decisions for their safety are labelled “not living life”, and standard things to make sure you don’t die are described as “letting fear run your life”. That’s taken to the extreme in this. Especially in a flashback sequence detailing the time Jax and Shiloh went skydiving, and Shiloh pretended to pass out mid-air. When they land, Shiloh does the whole “It was to teach you not to let fear run your life”. No, if you’re skydiving and the person you are trusting to keep you safe passes out, you have every right to be scared, and it’s not unreasonable to be pissed off if it turns out they’re faking it. It’s why parenting books don’t recommend breaking into your kid’s bedroom swinging a chainsaw to teach them about stranger danger. Also, Shiloh’s death doesn’t come up that much. At no point does Jax say, “Yes, I’m scared of falling from heights, but I have a good reason to be; my sister died falling from one”. They mention how her sister didn’t let fear rule her life, how she climbed tall structures with abandon, but don’t mention that it’s that fearlessness that killed her.

Fall 2 also has issues with pacing. It takes seemingly forever for them to actually get to the spot, so it doesn’t even feel like the main part of its own movie. For an idea of how long it takes to get there, the current plot section on the film’s Wikipedia page is 678 words long. It takes over 200 words before we get to “The two women are then left stranded.” The entire section describing the two of them alone is just 232 words.

Finally, the visuals. What worked about the first film was that it was set on a small radio tower. The tower itself was a constant visual reminder that there was nothing between them and the ground. Here, they’re on the edge of a mountain, so most of the shots are the two leads in the foreground, with a huge chunk of rock behind them. You don’t get that same constant reminder of the peril they’re in. There are a few moments where you do see just how high they are, but they’re few and far between.

I also felt the opening was overly stylised, shot more like an action movie than a survival thriller, which detracted from the realism somewhat.

This has all seemed pretty negative, much more so than this film deserves. On its own merits, it’s perfectly fine. It has some incredible shots, and the performances are all good too. My only criticism of the cast is how much Tom Brittney looks like a mix of Tom Ellis and Santino Fontana, but that’s not his fault; it’s just my brain looking for shortcuts.

Harriet Slater and Arsema Thomas are solid leads, only really let down by the script. I get the feeling that if they were scripted as friends, they’d be allowed to be much more natural with each other. As it is, they have to play two strangers, which means there’s only so much chemistry they can show.

In summary, I really wanted to like this. I’m still waiting for the obvious contender for my favourite film of the year, and I hoped Fall 2 would be the one to do it. Instead, it’s a clear favourite for “Most Disappointing”. If this had been released on its own, I’d be much warmer towards it. But when the original Fall had me genuinely considering whether I could stomach another minute of it, it’s hard not to feel let down by a sequel that never comes close to that level of tension.

The mountain in Fall 2 is MUCH higher than the tower from the first one, but the biggest difference in height is the difference in quality between the two. There’s a third movie on the way, featuring the leads from both films, and it looks like it’s set on a snowy mountain. If it follows the same approach as this one, I’m expecting much the same thing, but with added snow and clearer skies – which doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence that the visuals will be any more tense.

Deep Water (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A plane crashes in shark-infested waters. Well, not really infested; they live there.

This is the third film I’ve reviewed this year about sharks. That’s weird. The entire film is full of people who should be beyond this sort of film by now. Ben Kingsley and Aaron Eckhart onscreen, with Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2) directing. Downside, Gene Simmons is involved. Not entirely sure why, but he gives me the ick. The performances are fine. Aaron Eckhart constantly switches from being on the cusp of greatness to being a “straight-to-TV” actor. He’s definitely an actor who’s aided by a good script. Ben Kingsley is doing the standard “dramatic actor who dies early”—oh, spoilers, I guess. Molly Belle Wright is much better than a child actress without a Wikipedia page should be.

I said earlier that Eckhart is aided by a good script. He’s not helped here. It’s not that the script is bad; it’s just not that exciting. It’s not that well-crafted. You can see the strings too clearly. There’s a difference between foreshadowing and flat-out telling people what’s going to happen. Deep Water keeps presenting things that could be exciting, nay, should be exciting, but nope. Plane crash? Great premise. Sharks? Great premise. Survivors trapped together? Great premise. Conflicting personalities? Great premise. Limited resources? Great premise. Put all of those things together, and you should have a pretty reliable survival thriller.

Instead, it feels like the film has all the ingredients but hasn’t quite worked out the recipe. There are some good sequences, particularly the plane crash, and Harlin clearly knows how to stage large-scale action. There are moments where you can see the much better film hiding underneath this one. But every time it looks like it’s about to become that film, it pulls back and settles for something much more generic.

As I said, it’s not a bad movie. But there’s not a lot to recommend it for. It could have been made at any time over the last 20 years, and it would have been the same movie, probably with the same main cast too. The big change would be the portable batteries in the airline hold. It’s interesting that the plane crash isn’t caused by terrorists, but by customers not adhering to safety protocols. Just the kind of thing I want to see before I fly in a few weeks’ time; very comforting.

The plane crash itself is pretty damn good, and shows what Harlin is capable of. It’s dynamic, large-scale, and exactly the kind of thing a film like this needs. It is a little too long, though. It’s clearly the main centrepiece of the movie. So it’s baffling to see another crash near the end. We’ve already seen a really good plane crash; we don’t need a lesser one near the end. It feels like a studio note: there isn’t enough action here, so let’s have another crash. They can’t expect audiences to stay just for the characters.

The characters could only be flatter if they were two-dimensional. They’re introduced so quickly that you don’t really feel like you’ve met them. There’s a lot of shorthand characterisation, as if the script doesn’t realise you don’t need to get EVERY character trait in the opening scene. It has 106 minutes to show us who these people are. They’re not even characters; they’re archetypes.

This becomes a problem as the film goes on. People get in danger; people die. But you’d be hard-pressed to remember which ones. Obviously, people dying is bad. But we’re not told why we should care whether THESE particular people live or die. I genuinely can’t remember who died or how they died. There are a lot of opportunities for unique and fun deaths. Deep Water doesn’t take any of them.

Clearly, the sharks are the selling point. But they’re not a consistent enough presence. There are long stretches where the film seems to forget it has sharks in it. It’s not necessarily an issue to hold the sharks back sometimes; anticipation can be incredibly powerful (look at the first Alien movie or Jaws). But for that to work, the rest of the film has to be interesting, and this isn’t.

It would have been so easy with some small changes. Reduce the characters and flesh them out so that the relationships matter. Plot out the danger beats differently so it feels consistent, with no breathing room between them. It’s a shame because there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the basic idea. “People survive a plane crash only to discover they’re surrounded by sharks” is the kind of wonderfully stupid premise that I want to work. You don’t need to reinvent cinema. You just need to make the situation increasingly horrible and put some entertaining characters in the middle of it. It should be bombastic; it should be fun. What it shouldn’t be is what it ends up being: boring.

It would have been so easy with some small changes. Reduce the characters and flesh them out so that the relationships matter. Plot out the danger beats differently so the danger feels more consistent and keeps escalating. It’s a shame because there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the basic idea. “People survive a plane crash only to discover they’re surrounded by sharks” is the kind of wonderfully stupid premise that I want to work. You don’t need to reinvent cinema. You just need to make the situation increasingly horrible and put some entertaining characters in the middle of it. It should be bombastic; it should be fun. What it shouldn’t be is what it ends up being: boring.

As I said, it’s not poorly made; it’s just bland. And I feel like that’s worse.

The Devil’s Mouth (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A group of college friends on vacation in Thailand take a reckless detour into a remote underwater cave system and must fight for survival after becoming trapped with a ravenous bull shark.

I’m going to start this review with some praise. The opening does a fantastic job of establishing the characters very quickly. I haven’t seen such an effective introduction to a group of characters since the opening scene of Friends. I have many issues with that show, but go back and watch that opening scene: within minutes, you instantly understand EVERYBODY’s personality and sense of humour. It’s remarkably efficient.

I also like that this doesn’t immediately present itself as a survival thriller. It starts like a normal, fun movie. I love a good genre fake-out. People don’t live in genres, and I think films sometimes forget that. If you establish immediately that you’re watching a horror or survival thriller, audiences start questioning why characters are behaving like normal people. “Why’s she opening that door? There’s definitely a killer in there.” Whereas if you establish it as an ordinary day, you don’t question someone opening a door because, well, why would you? People open doors. That’s what doors are for.

Not gonna lie, I watched this almost entirely because of Kathryn Newton. She’s appeared in some of my favourite 7–8/10 movies of the last few years: Lady Bird, Three Billboards, Blockers, Freaky, Abigail and Ready Or Not 2. So I was pretty happy to see her attached. Then I looked at the director. Jeff Wadlow wrote Fantasy Island, Truth Or Dare, Imaginary and Bloodshot, and directed all of those except Bloodshot. The highest I regard any of those films is Imaginary, and even that is, at best, a 3/10 movie, with its biggest strength being that it doesn’t put enough effort into being actively shit.

The Devil’s Mouth (which is what preachers call a vagina) is not a bad movie. It’s definitely the strongest movie Wadlow has made in a while. But that’s damning with faint praise somewhat, because it’s not exactly good. It’s homoeopathic filmmaking; there’s nothing to it, and you’ll forget it soon after watching. Proof of this is that I watched it two weeks ago and yet it wasn’t even on my list of films to review. I just forgot to add it. I also made minimal notes while watching it; that’s how little there is to say about it.

The stuff I do remember? It’s not good. One moment in particular stands out. A character says, “That’s not the first time her tiny bladder has caused mayhem”, and then the film randomly cuts to a scene much later where people are fire dancing. Was the tiny bladder line really so necessary? It felt like a quippy on-set improvisation that somehow survived all the way through filming, editing and the final cut. Surely at some point, a seasoned director should have watched that back and thought, “We can probably lose the bit about the piss.”

As expected, Newton is fantastic; she always is. The score, composed by Bear McCreary, is better than this movie deserves. And the visuals are genuinely impressive. Wadlow knows how to shoot scenery in a way that makes you stop and admire it. The freshwater caves look incredible. Sadly, that’s the only fresh thing this film provides. Everything else is bland. The sharks have no aura around them whatsoever, to the point that you almost forget they’re even there for most of the movie.

And that’s a problem. There are sharks in this movie, but it never feels like you’re watching a shark movie. It feels like you’re watching a film where sharks occasionally make appearances. There’s no “holy shit, sharks!” It’s more “oh look, sharks again.” They never feel like they’re lurking somewhere, waiting for the opportunity to attack. It feels like they’re at home with their fins up, watching TV and waiting patiently for the film to tell them it’s time to come back.

The survival aspect doesn’t fare much better. There’s a decent premise buried underneath everything: people trapped in an underwater cave system while something very large and very hungry (a shark, not me) is swimming around them. That’s a concept that should basically write its own tension. But the film rarely does anything particularly interesting with it. The characters make the obvious decisions, encounter the obvious obstacles and survive the obvious near-deaths. It’s all perfectly functional, but nothing ever made me think, “Oh shit, how are they getting out of this?” More to the point, I didn’t particularly care if they didn’t.

And the characters, despite that excellent opening, don’t really get much more interesting once the film starts. That makes the opening almost frustrating in retrospect, because it proves the movie can establish characters efficiently. It just doesn’t do much with them afterwards. I knew who these people were within minutes, but by the end I didn’t particularly care about any of them beyond wanting them to survive because, well, they’re the characters in the movie.

There’s also a weird lack of escalation. A survival thriller should keep tightening the screws. Things should get progressively worse until you’re wondering how the hell anyone is going to get out. Here, the film feels strangely flat. It has danger, but it doesn’t really build dread. There’s a difference between “this is dangerous” and “I really don’t want to know what’s around that corner”, and The Devil’s Mouth rarely reaches the latter. Nothing ever feels like it leads to anything else. It’s not story progression, it’s just stuff happening.

Which is a shame, because there are flashes of a much better movie here. The caves genuinely look fantastic, the premise is solid, Newton is excellent, and that opening demonstrates that the writers know how to establish a group of characters without spending twenty minutes giving everyone tragic backstories. There are enough good ingredients here that I can understand why someone might have a good time with it. I just didn’t.

It’s not offensively bad. It’s not even particularly boring. It’s simply incredibly there. It’s a cinematic skirting board. You appreciate the craftsmanship, but it’s not something you pay attention to or remember once you’ve left the room. And considering this is a film about people trapped in a cave with sharks, “yeah, that was fine” is probably the least appropriate reaction it could possibly have inspired.

Kathryn Newton deserves better. Bear McCreary’s score deserves better. Those caves deserve better. The sharks deserve better. Jeff Wadlow deserves a mentor.

I suppose on the plus side, it is the best of the three shark movies I’ve seen this year (Thrash, reviewed here. And Deep Water, reviewed nowhere yet because I haven’t written it, I can’t review everything at once, get off my back). But again, that’s not saying much. Weirdly, all three have been direct-to-streaming. And there’s probably a reason for that.

Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Kris, a 29-year-old filmmaker, is hired to resurrect and reboot the tired Camp Miasma slasher franchise for modern audiences. Wanting to pay tribute to the original, she tracks down the actress from the original; shit gets weird.

I have a somewhat complex history with the work of Jane Schoenbrun. I think she’s one of the best filmmakers around today. Her use of colour is among the best in the business. The way she weaves metaphor and storytelling into the shots is a thing of wonder. I always leave her movies feeling slightly like I’ve been hypnotised and entranced. That being said, I’m not a fan of her scripts. They always start promising but end up just on the wrong side of incomprehensibility, although I suspect cohesion and understanding aren’t really the point. I’m aware that this, more than almost any other criticism, is deeply personal and subjective. Some people will love it BECAUSE of that, because the audience is constantly wrong-footed and left in a state of confusion. Personally, I don’t mind being confused; I just want a place in the narrative to ground myself

If you loved her previous work, Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma (TSADACM, pronounced Tee-Sad-At-Cam) won’t dissuade you from being a fan; if you don’t like it, this won’t change your mind. Everything that works about her previous films is now better in this. The shots are better, the music is incredible, and the performances are outstanding. Schoenbrun knows how to make a killer playlist, helped enormously by a returning Alex G. There’s a great selection of danceable synth pop for you to sink your teeth into. Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson have a chemistry that leaps off the screen. From the moment they first meet, there seems to be a magnetic pull between them, like the universe is begging them to kiss. They are helped by how unbelievably horny the script is. There’s an air of unashamed sexuality over the entire thing; arguably the sex is more important than the death. The supporting characters are all fine, but none are as fully fleshed out as those two, so the actors aren’t really given as much of a chance to shine.

It feels like a deeply personal story for Schoenbrun. Much like her previous work, this feels like she’s writing it as an exploration of her own personality, rather than worrying too much about whether the audience can follow along. It’s her examining her own sexual desires and feelings. And that’s fine, but if you do something like that, you have to be aware that it won’t fully land with everybody. Every time I felt I knew what was happening, the film was determined to throw me off. I’m still not sure whether the ending actually happened, was a fantasy, an alternate universe, or a dying thought. There’s a moment where the switch from “believable and understandable” to “confusion and oddness” happens, and it’s so abrupt that it becomes genuinely jarring.

So far, this review has probably seemed fairly negative, and it’s not meant to. There’s a lot to like about TSADACM. It has one of my favourite openings I’ve seen all year. The opening credits set up how Miasma is regarded in this world, complete with reviews, initial analysis, its place in pop culture, and how it’s viewed in modern society. There are multiple references to classic cinema, and problematic histories that a lot of long-running franchises have, especially when it came to how they treated characters who weren’t cisgender, straight white men. Fans of cinema and film theory will get a lot more out of some of the dialogue than casual viewers probably will.

So, is the in-universe movie believable? Kind of. Weirdly, Camp Miasma (the in-universe movie) has the exact opposite problem that Camp Miasma (the movie we’re watching, which I’ll refer to as TSADACM for clarity’s sake) has. The writing, characters and backstories of Camp Miasma feel convincingly rooted in the 80s. Yet the filmmaking itself definitely feels modern. If anything, Schoenbrun feels TOO good a director to make a believable, slightly terrible 80s slasher. Her use of camera movement and music is too advanced and slick for it to work. It pulled me out of the movie a little bit, despite the scene itself being incredible. If an 80s movie had used some of Schoenbrun’s techniques, it wouldn’t just have been good; it would have changed the genre. It’s the musical equivalent of Green Day attempting to make a ramshackle 70s punk record. Even without trying, they’d do things that wouldn’t have been done back then, either because the technology wasn’t available or because nobody had thought of doing them yet. Put all of that together on one album, and it would inevitably be too much

Gonna be honest, I’m still not entirely sure what genre this would fit into. It doesn’t really feel like horror so much as a video thesis ABOUT horror that uses horror scenes to illustrate its point. So you can’t really judge it like you would a traditional horror movie, by examining the villain, the scares, etc. I guess the closest I can think of would be *deep breath* Surrealsexual Romantic Psychological Thriller. It’s definitely unique, and for that alone it’s worth your time and money.

This is one of only two films I’ve paid to see in the last few years, and I watched it at the Curzon, which isn’t cheap. Plus it was on my birthday, and I was on my own. It had everything working against it, and I still want to see it again.

I should note that I’m not exactly the person these themes are aimed at. I love that films like this exist; it’s clearly going to be VERY important to someone, potentially even someone who feels seen by it in a way they haven’t felt seen before. But to me? I admire it and want to study it more than I like it. This wasn’t made with someone like me in mind, but it doesn’t need to be. It feels like it’s aimed at the confused teens (and adults) who need more films like this, and I think they’ll love it. Of course, I haven’t actually spoken to any people about this film, so for all I know, I’m woefully off the fucking mark.

Although there is one important thing to note, especially after what I just said. I don’t really feel comfortable explicitly stating what I’m about to say, so I’ll try to work around it. A few years ago, for my end-of-year awards, I noticed that EVERY film in the “most me” category had a female lead. It led me to ask myself a few questions about why that was, and whether those were questions I should actually talk to someone about. I did have a discussion with some friends, and they encouraged me to explore it further, many of them speaking from their own personal experiences. I never really got anywhere with those questions, but they haven’t entirely gone away either. So there’s something increasingly strange about the fact that TSADACM is almost certainly going to win the award this year. It’s another film that feels intensely, uncomfortably close to me in a way that I don’t entirely know how to explain. And every time that happens, I get a little closer to HAVING to ask myself those questions again.

The End Of Oak Street (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A family’s suburban neighbourhood has been transported from 1982 into the age of dinosaurs.

In 2014, David Mitchell (not that one) released It Follows. I consider it one of the finest horror movies of modern times. Not just because it’s tense and full of pitch-perfect scares, but because it inspired questions and debate: did she sleep with the people in the boat? If so, does that really make her any better than Hugh/Jeff? And if you moved abroad and just waited for it to cross the ocean, could you theoretically outrun it? With The End Of Oak Street (TEOOS), the big question I had was this: can Ewan McGregor act? I mean, he must be able to; it’s his job. He’s been in some really good films, usually alongside people who we know can act, without seeming like he’s out of place. And he’s not cheap, so if he couldn’t act, you’d think studios would eventually stop hiring him. Yet I can’t think of a memorable performance, one where he really sold the role. I only ask because he has some of the worst line delivery I’ve ever heard. One line, in particular, robbed the scene of any tension because I assumed he was being sarcastic.

Maybe that’s harsh. He is performing in an accent that’s not his. Evidently, the studio believes audiences will buy into a town disappearing through a wormhole into a prehistoric land, but having someone live in America and use a Scottish accent is a step too far. He’s also not helped by acting alongside Anne Hathaway, who is one of the best performers on the planet. Even the child actors are strong in this. Maisy Stella and Christian Convery both give performances beyond their years. So his performance looks weaker by comparison.

I’ve been accused of being too picky with my criticisms sometimes. If you believe that, you should probably avoid this, because I’m about to make one of my weirdest criticisms in a while. Here goes: this didn’t need to be set in the 80s. It felt like it was done like that because it was based on a book from the 80’s and they wanted to be accurate. But nope, original concept. This wasn’t hinted at in the trailer, and it doesn’t have much impact on the plot. The only change it would have made is the method Denise uses to do research. And I suppose the kids would have recorded videos of the dinosaur on their phones, but that wouldn’t have helped because they wouldn’t have had a signal to send them with. None of those changes would have been major. Did they do it because it’s slightly Spielberg-esque and they wanted to make the most of that? They don’t even make the most of the time period by filling the film with wave after wave of 80s bangers. I’m not saying every film set in 1982 needs to pay out for Under Pressure, but I can’t imagine Goody Two Shoes by Adam Ant would have taken a massive chunk out of the budget.

Thankfully, there is quite a lot to like about TEOOS. The dinosaurs look fantastic. I assume they took a lot of work and money to create, which is why the film cuts away from them at certain times. Or perhaps it was to stop the film getting an 18 because of the blood and violence. Either way, it’s frustrating. There’s never a point where you don’t buy them as real (unless you’re a palaeontologist, in which case you tear your hair out with frustration at the inaccuracies, none of which I know enough about dinosaurs to notice). They’re also constantly a threat. You can’t imagine someone throwing a saddle on one of the dinosaurs and using it to herd the others in like cattle. Usually, films like this treat the smaller creatures as mere nuisances, with only the bigger ones being a threat. TEOOS leaves you in no doubt that the smaller ones can still fuck your shit up.

It’s also weirdly funny, in a dark way. Believably so. Characters don’t sneak past a dinosaur, then say “do you think he saw us?” and wink at the camera because they just made a dinosaur pun. But there’s something oddly funny about some of the violence; people being killed should not be this funny. Yet the dinosaurs attack with expert comedic timing, akin to a Three Stooges skit with decapitations. That humour means that the characters feel like actual people rather than disposable bodies waiting to die or kill. They sometimes do stupid shit, but that can be explained by the fact that they don’t have much experience dealing with stuff like this. This means when characters are in danger, you want them to survive. At no point do you cheer the dinosaurs.

The core of TEOOS is the family dynamic. They’re not perfect; the relationship between the parents is strained, with alcoholism playing a role in the present and almost certain divorce in the future. These aren’t the “I will do anything to save you, my love” type; these are the “can barely stop arguing even when they might die soon” type. That being said, there’s one major death (that I won’t name for spoiler reasons) that isn’t really given enough time to breathe. They die, the plot immediately moves on, and we don’t get much time to experience the world without them. I get what they were going for, but it didn’t quite land with me. The same could be said for the mystery at the centre of the film. It doesn’t spend as much time exploring it as some people might want. It does provide an explanation, but it’s very quick and easy to miss.

There’s a good film hiding in here; play up the 80s nature or set it in modern day, aim for a higher age rating so you can show the blood, and let McGregor speak in his natural accent. Yes, they’re small problems. But together, they hamper the film more than they should. It’s a solid 7/10, and it annoys me that it’s not higher. Watch it at the cinema while you can, because I doubt the streaming services are going to be fighting over the rights.

Over Your Dead Body (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A married couple go to a remote cabin, both with plans to kill each other.

I like Samara Weaving. She’s developed a real reputation as a scream queen, but a very versatile one: being able to be both a villain and a final girl. It makes sense for her to be in this film. Jason Segel? Not so much. Best known for comedies such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Muppets, and HIMYM. The closest he’s got to something like this would be his bit part in Dead Man On Campus. He’s not someone you’d think about if you were casting this. That’s why it works. You expect him to play his usual role of “sad dog turned into sad human, with occasional bursts of excitement”, so when we see that he’s planned this holiday to kill his wife, it’s a genuine shock (unless you’ve read the synopsis or seen a trailer). The two have weirdly good chemistry. They make sense as a couple with the way they interact with each other, albeit a strained couple; both waiting for the other one to be the first one to instigate intimacy. It helps that they both take this film seriously; they’re not looking for laughs, mugging for the camera, and that’s what makes it funny.

As for the film itself. I’m slightly disappointed by it, but only because Jorma Taccone also directed MacGruber and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, and I love both of those movies. This is tonally different, and not quite as entertaining. That doesn’t mean it’s not good. It’s absolutely hilarious at times, not just the dialogue, but also the violence. The violence never feels cruel or gratuitous. The gore could be slightly better, looking slightly cheap and fake at times, but it kind of works. Over Your Dead Body (OYDB, pronounced Oi Deb!) knows that it is ridiculous. It doesn’t try to turn the relationship into some deeply serious examination of a marriage falling apart. Instead, it takes the petty frustrations and resentments between the two characters and pushes them to their most extreme conclusion. Every argument, awkward interaction and moment of suspicion has the potential to become a matter of life and death. The plot is pure farce, but OYDB is careful not to make it silly to the point of parody. The characters take the situation very seriously, so the threat feels real. So when the characters do slightly humorous things, it’s funnier because we buy into them as people.

The villains are probably where the film’s balancing act works best. They’re not just generic obstacles for Dan and Lisa to overcome; they all have their own personalities and quirks, which makes them feel like actual people rather than characters who exist solely to move the plot along. I’m not too familiar with Keith Jardine, but he’s a lot of fun here, bringing exactly the sort of physical presence you’d expect from someone with a history of getting paid for punching people in the face, while also showing a surprising amount of vulnerability. He’s basically a more vocal Lurch from Hot Fuzz (the “yar” guy). Timothy Olyphant continues to be Hollywood’s secret weapon, seemingly incapable of being anything other than entertaining even when he’s playing a relatively straight role. And it’s nice to see Juliette Lewis transition from hostage in From Dusk Till Dawn to hostage taker here.

I think that’s ultimately why I enjoyed OYDB more than I expected to, despite the slight disappointment. It isn’t as relentlessly funny as MacGruber or Popstar, and I don’t think it’s going to replace either of those in my list of favourite Jorma Taccone films. But it doesn’t need to. It’s doing something different, and for the most part it does it well. The mixture of relationship comedy, thriller and violence works surprisingly well. That premise has been done before in films like Keeping Up With The Joneses, Mr & Mrs Smith, and others that surely exist but I can’t be bothered to look up. Of course, there’s a more obvious comparison than either of those: this is a remake of the Norwegian film The Trip. I haven’t seen the original, so I can’t really comment on how the two compare, which is probably something I should have thought about before writing a review of a remake. But I suppose at least this way it means I’m judging OYDB on its own merits rather than making comparisons like, “In the original the person wore a blue t-shirt, in this they wear a red one. Film ruined!” The characters in Keeping Up With The Joneses and Mr & Mrs Smith were professional assassins. These characters aren’t. They’re an actress and a filmmaker who are both unsatisfied in their careers. It kind of reminded me of Game Night (damn, that was a fun movie).

That Game Night comparison is probably the best way of describing the action. There’s a similar satisfaction in watching relatively normal people get caught up in something completely ridiculous and having to improvise their way through it. Dan and Lisa aren’t Jason Bourne; they don’t have a special set of skills that makes them particularly well equipped for what they’re doing. They’re just two people who have decided that murder is the solution to their problems, much like how I deal with poor customer service in restaurants (my editor has told me to let you know that’s a joke; I don’t leave the house to go to restaurants). That amateurism makes the fights much more entertaining. There isn’t the slickness you’d get from a traditional action movie, but it would be weird if these untrained fighters suddenly became action heroes; this isn’t Shang-Chi. They’re grabbing whatever happens to be nearby, throwing themselves at each other and generally doing whatever they can to survive. It gives the violence a scrappy, unpredictable quality, and it also creates some of the film’s funniest moments. You can believe that these people are actually fighting for their lives rather than watching two stunt performers execute perfectly choreographed moves.

It also helps that the film never forgets that they’re an unhappily married couple. Even when they’re fighting for their lives against hostage-takers, they still argue and bicker, desperate to win points against the other. It’s childish, silly, and believable. When they start getting on with each other again, it’s weirdly sweet, much more than a film like this should be.

Not that OYDB is without its problems. It’s a solid 7/10, but it feels like it could be a 9 with some changes. But I’m not sure what. I can’t quite identify why I only really liked this rather than loved it. It’s not the reliance on flashbacks, which really bothered me in This Is Not A Test; I liked the way OYDB utilised flashbacks, as it provided us with setups to jokes where all we knew was the punchline. Maybe it’s just because it seems to lack visual ambition. Nothing really stands out as incredible or memorable. That’s fine with silly films like MacGruber or Popstar, but OYDB is slightly more serious, so standards are higher for it. If something looks cheap or fake in MacGruber, then you can get away with that being part of the joke. You can’t do that in OYDB; it needs to have a certain level of spectacle.

That’s not to sound too discouraging; OYDB is still definitely worth a watch. Prime hasn’t exactly been overflowing with great films this year, and this is definitely among the best they’ve done so far. And if nothing else, I now want to see Samara Weaving in more films where somebody spends two hours trying to kill her. She really does take a beating remarkably well. To make a wrestling comparison: she’s 90’s HBK, or 2010’s Dolph Ziggler, only she occasionally wins.

This Is Not A Test (2025) Review

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Quick synopsis: A teenage girl who has spent years enduring abuse finds herself trapped inside her high school with five other teenagers when a mysterious outbreak turns people into violent, flesh-eating monsters

This Is Not A Test (TINAT) is not a new idea. I’ve seen 2 full-on zombie movies this year (TINAT, and We Bury The Dead, as reviewed here), and two zombie-adjacent (Cold Storage, as reviewed here, and Evil Dead Burn, as reviewed here), that’s just this year. In my lifetime I’ve seen a multitude of movies about them; Zombieland, Shaun Of The Dead, Warm Bodies. I’ve seen every iteration; fast, slow, comedic, serious, dumb fun, sharp social commentary. When you see an idea that many times, you do get a bit familiar with the tropes and ideas. So it’s not enough to just do a zombie movie. It needs to stand out. Either by being overly stylized, or having a gimmick.

TINAT does none of those things. It has a few ideas but not enough to carry the film. The closing credits being presented like a high school yearbook is pretty clever, and genuinely inventive. But nothing else is as new as that. For most of the run-time, it’s just a movie that exists. For long periods of time, it doesn’t even feel like a zombie movie. And unlike my review of We Bury The Dead, I don’t mean that as a compliment. That movie used zombies as a way of exploring humanity. TINAT doesn’t do that, instead it uses zombies because the writer wanted to make a zombie movie.

Some of my reviews are very easy to write, the one for Minions And Monsters basically wrote itself. This is much harder to write because, at some point, I just stopped giving a shit

It’s not helped by the characters. We’re locked in with these people for quite a while, and it’s not a particularly pleasant experience. It’s not that they’re unlikeable or annoying, they’re just bland. There’s nothing about them that stands out. No unique traits, no hints that there’s unexplored backstory between them. They’re not people, they’re character outlines and sketches. They’re first drafts just waiting for an editor to expand them. This lack of characterisation makes it difficult to become invested in what happens to them. And then there’s the swearing. I love swear words in movies. But it feels like this film has too many of them, and uses them badly. They make the whole thing feel slightly immature. It’s not adult language being used as punctuation; it’s adult language being used as sprinkles on a narrative ice cream, sprinkled haphazardly without care or finesse.

The film also doesn’t seem to understand that there’s a difference between tension and simply being slow. A slow scene can build tension, but being slow doesn’t automatically create tension. There are stretches here where I was waiting for something to happen rather than feeling suspense about what was going to happen. And when there are dynamic scenes, TINAT turns to the handheld shaky-cam style. When that technique is used well, it helps showcase high energy and panic. When it’s used badly it makes everything confusing and makes it feel like the film is using it to hide something such as poor effects or the lead actor is actually in his 70s.

On the subject of action scenes, there’s also a strange inconsistency in what the film seems comfortable showing. It’s perfectly happy to show people being killed, but draws the line at a dad beating a teenager. Obviously, the latter is still horrible, but I’d argue death is worse.

Another example of the film utilising story-telling techniques but not in a way that really helps the story is the use of flashbacks. They didn’t feel like flashbacks, they felt like “and here’s what you missed before the commercial break” recaps from sports shows. Their placement in the narrative is ineffective, to the point where it feels like they were originally all at the start and then edited into later on because the film wanted to get to the main story quickly. It does kick off the story quickly, I’ll give it that. Another positive aspect is the cast. Olivia Holt is great as lead character Sloane, showcasing enough trauma to make her believable. Also, the make-up effects are spectacular for a low-budget movie. And I liked the character using temperature to gauge whether someone has been turned or not, very clever from that character.

Ultimately, TINAT isn’t terrible. There are some interesting ideas and a few clever touches, but I found it increasingly difficult to care about the story or its characters. For a zombie movie to stand out these days, it needs to give me a reason to care beyond the fact that there are zombies. Unfortunately, this one never quite found that reason. It’s not “the zombie movie told from the POV of the undead”, it’s not “the zombie movie with incredible action scenes”, it’s just “the zombie movie that has zombies in”. There’s nothing new. Nothing to convince you to watch THIS specific zombie movie over all the others.

Side note: For some reason, the opening scene made me think the film was set in England. Maybe that’s because I recently listened to the Anna and the Apocalypse soundtrack, but there was something about the opening that gave me that impression. Not at all relevant, just wanted to mention it.

Evil Dead Burn (2026) Review

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Quick Synopsis: After the loss of her husband, a grieving widow seeks solace with her in-laws in their remote family home, only to find them possessed one by one by Deadites, forcing her into a blood-soaked fight for survival against demonic evil.

I’ve not watched an Evil Dead film since Army Of Darkness. I like to watch series in order, and I didn’t see the original until Halloween 2024. So I’m two movies and a three-season television show behind. There’s quite a fair bit of lore in this franchise, so there was a chance I’d be lost.I was, briefly. At the start, I found myself wondering who certain people were, but truthfully, it didn’t actually matter. I didn’t need to know who it was; the important thing was WHAT they were: deadites.

The franchise is weirdly regarded as comedic, despite that comedy only really coming to the forefront in Army Of Darkness; the rest have had moments of comedy, but first and foremost, they have always been horror (unless you find the idea of a tree sexually assaulting a young woman funny, in which case, ew). In that sense, EDB (EBD, pronounced Ee-deeb) is a huge success. It’s incredibly disturbing. I worried it would mistake cruelty for horror in the same way some horror films have (hello Thanksgiving, and the work of Rob Zombie), but thankfully it doesn’t. For one thing, you never get the sense that you’re supposed to cheer or revel in the violence. It fills you with fear, which is what a horror film should do.

EDB isn’t just violence; it also brings tension to the table, specifically the dinner table, where one of the year’s most tense scenes takes place. I’ve not exactly been quiet in my love of dinner scenes in movies, and EDB has a great one. The tension builds beautifully. You know something will happen. There are too many shots of heavy and/or sharp objects for something not to happen. But what it will do is it will get close, then draw back. So you’re relieved; the nightmare is over. But then it starts again, getting more tense this time, then quiets down. It repeats this until your nerves are at their breaking point. By the time the inevitable explosion of violence arrives, the film has earned every second of it.

It’s helped by having believable characters. These aren’t characters; they feel like real people. You could easily imagine them existing outside of a horror movie. They clearly have a history together. This is great as it means there’s an emotional resonance to the actions. You’re not just watching people die and be physically harmed. You’re watching family relationships get broken, trust be shattered, moments where the emotional pain cuts almost as deep as the physical. When Alice (played brilliantly by Souheilia Yacoub) is being hunted at the end, you’re not bored; you’re nervous. You want her to stop suffering, you want her to survive, not just because she’s the protagonist and that’s what’s supposed to happen, but because you’ve grown so attached to her that she feels like a friend. That’s the case for everybody in this film. Even if you don’t like them (and some are truly despicable), you understand their motivations. They’re all played by good actors too. There’s not a single weak link; everybody is on top form. EDB benefits from an unusually small central cast. Yes, technically the cast list is much larger, but most of those characters only appear in the opening and closing scenes. The overwhelming majority of the film unfolds with just six people trapped inside a single house, giving it an intimate, claustrophobic quality that suits the story perfectly.

In fact, I think you could have set almost the entire film within the grounds of the house. You’d need a few flashbacks and some narrative adjustments to cover what happens around the funeral, but it would work. It would also strengthen the parallels with the original, replacing the isolated cabin with the isolated lakehouse.

Not everything works, though. Susan’s capitulation to Edgar doesn’t quite feel real. By that point, she’s already seen what he’s become, so she has every reason not to open the door. I understand what the film is trying to achieve dramatically, but it makes her seem inexplicably foolish. Narratively, she threw a bag full of knives out a window and expects us to believe she’s shocked that those knives stabbed someone.

That’s not my only criticism. I mentioned earlier how the dinner party kept pulling back the tension only to build it up further. It tries that again near the end of the film, but pushes it a bit too far. There are multiple times where we’re given the film language of “this will end soon”, only to have another scene start. The ending is not bad, but it does definitely feel like the end of a rollercoaster where the thrills are over, and you can feel the brakes being put on.

I was also less enthusiastic about some of the visual choices. None of them looks bad (in fact, the film is consistently gorgeous), but there are moments where it feels as though individual shots were designed to look striking in a trailer rather than serve the story as effectively as they could.

The score is similarly effective without ever becoming particularly memorable. The sound design, however, is exceptional. It works hand in hand with the visuals to make every injury feel revoltingly tangible. Weapons don’t pass silently through flesh; you hear skin tearing, bones cracking and bodies breaking. It’s deeply unpleasant in exactly the way the film intends.

Those are minor quibbles. It’s otherwise a damn solid horror movie. It’s not quite as good as Backrooms, which remains my horror film of the year, but it’s comfortably one of the best genre offerings I’ve seen in 2026. More importantly, it understands what horror is actually supposed to do. Too many modern horror films mistake cruelty for fear, or assume gallons of blood automatically make something intense. EDB knows that gore without context is just noise. Every gruesome moment works because it’s rooted in believable characters and emotionally grounded situations, however supernatural they become. The violence isn’t there to earn applause; it’s there to make you flinch.

Overall, I love it. Even coming into the film without all the intervening lore, EDB reminded me why Evil Dead has endured for over forty years: beneath all the blood and possession is an understanding that horror only works when you care who’s suffering. I’m already excited for the next one (and to catch up on the ones I’ve missed).

Dolly (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Macy, a young woman who fights for survival after she is abducted during a hike by a monstrous figure intent on raising her as its child.

I was looking forward to this. Max the Impaler is my kind of person, and I like horror movies, so this should be right up my street. It’s not; it definitely took a wrong turn and ended up on a street with the same name but in a different town. That said, it could be just that Dolly and I aren’t speaking the same horror language. I know that certain people will absolutely love this. Dolly has an 80’s throwback aesthetic. The colours and presentation make you feel like you’ve stumbled across a hidden 80’s slasher. Specifically, one on a cheap VHS that isn’t legally available in this country, so you had to get it from a dodgy tape trader, watched so often that the defects become part of the cinematography.

There are moments where Dolly has its creepy moments (the film, not the character. Wait, no, the character too). The trouble is that it isn’t quite good enough to sustain them. Several moments felt repetitive. Horror films often recycle scares, kills, or visual motifs; that’s part of the genre. But when you’re already feeling that sense of déjà vu before the protagonist and antagonist have even properly crossed paths, something has gone wrong in the script. At one point, I genuinely checked to make sure I hadn’t accidentally rewound the film. The overly artistic editing doesn’t help matters either. Rather than enhancing the experience, it often feels like it’s actively getting in the way.

The editing creates some practical problems, too. Characters reach for an object, and the cuts are so rapid that we don’t actually see what that object is. That’s an issue when the object is about to be used as a weapon. It’s difficult to fear someone being hit by an object if we don’t know what the object is. Is it a smoked haddock, in which case it will hurt but not likely kill the person (the fish, on the other hand, that’s probably gonna die). Or is it a wrench, in which case, yeah, that might kill a mofo.

That same uncertainty extends to Dolly as a character. The mask obscures so much of their face that we rarely get a clear read on what they’re thinking or feeling. This becomes particularly noticeable when the protagonist starts fighting back. Is Dolly frightened? Angry? Offended that somebody has stopped playing along? Excited because things have become more interesting? We don’t know. I know, similar horror films also have characters wear masks, such as Texas Chainsaw. But this isn’t Texas Chainsaw, no matter how much the ending desperately wants to make you think otherwise.

The good news is that when it comes to violence, the film absolutely commits. Rod Blackhurst understands gore and, more importantly, understands impact. The violence here isn’t stylish or glamorous. It’s ugly, messy and unpleasant in exactly the way real violence should be. The injuries look painful, the deaths feel convincing, and the kills strike that sweet spot between inventive and deeply uncomfortable. These aren’t deaths that the audience cheers or goes “woooo” to; they’re deaths that are made to sicken you.

I also found Dolly surprisingly compelling as a character. They’re simultaneously terrifying and tragic, which is a difficult balancing act to pull off. It’s the kind of horror villain that future sequels would almost certainly ruin by explaining too much. As they stand here, though, they’re fascinating. You could even imagine a sequel where Dolly somehow ends up becoming the protagonist. I hope not, but you can see it happening.

Ultimately, Dolly felt like a Rob Zombie movie, and that’s not a compliment.