Tag: Horror

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) Review

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Quick synopsis: Five friends cause a death and decide to lie about it.

For whatever reason, this is the only ’90s teen slasher franchise I have no history with. I’ve even watched the first two Urban Legends, and I’m fairly certain that more people are in those films than have actually watched them. I’m aware of what happens, so I wasn’t lost when watching IKWYDLS (eye-cue-ya-doo-les), I got the references and recurring characters. Some of the references were so heavily signposted that I’m pretty sure babies born during the pre-movie trailers would understand they were callbacks. The “what are you waiting for?” callback is particularly obvious; the character would not say that at that moment, and only does so because it was accidentally iconic in the original. The fact that she repeats it here makes it seem like she actually says it all the time, and it just happened that one of those times was during the events of the first movie.

Wow. I thought I’d hold out longer before saying how much I disliked this movie. If it came out in 2017, I might have enjoyed it more. But the release of the new Scream and Halloween movies means this suffers by comparison. They are the most unfortunate franchises to be compared to, because they both excelled at what this movie fails at: displaying societal trauma. They both did a great job at showing how towns cope with being the site of a horrific event.

IKWYDLS tries to excuse that by saying “rich person covered it up” (which turns into a motive for one of the killers), but that doesn’t wash, for multiple reasons. One, there’s a podcast about the murders, so it’s not THAT covered up. Two, and it’s the same problem I had with Five Nights At Freddy’s; if a group of people were murdered horrifically by a serial killer, the town would not forget about it. If someone said, “Don’t talk about those murders”, people would assume the person saying it had something to do with it. Legends aren’t fire, they don’t die without the oxygen of publicity; they grow. They’d be new falsehoods attached to it “I heard the killer came back years later as a zombie, and for some reason, despite being a fisherman, killed people in a completely landlocked state”. Fuck, that third movie was so stupid.

It’s not just on an “if you think about it for a while” level that the script has issues. There are some serious tonal issues. Nowhere is this more evident than in the final scene. Two of the surviving characters talk about how one of the killers is still alive. But they do it in such a casual way that it has no impact. I think that may have been because the writers were attempting to make the teen characters cool and quippy, but it just makes them seem like they’re not taking the situation seriously. The characters are far, far too quippy, unnaturally so. The comments don’t even make sense. “None of this would have happened if men went to therapy” is an especially stupid line in a movie where one of the killers is female. Did the writers forget the villain reveal?

Maybe I’d be more forgiving of the quippy nature of the script if the characters weren’t so, so, soooooo annoying. It’s not even “learn to despise these characters”, they’re instantly annoying. They come off as the type of people who would respond to a global pandemic by singing a John Lennon cover, and while I’m somewhat glad to end that joke there, I don’t think Gal Gadot’s lawyers would be, as my planned next sentence would have been an easy libel win for them.

The thing is, I’m fairly sure we’re supposed to like this group of characters. The inciting incident is a lot less blameless than the original. There’s no chance of them being legally culpable; it’s built up to make them as innocent as possible. Although now I’ve just realised something. One of the killers is someone who was very close to the person who died in the original accident. Would the gang not have noticed that in any of the newspaper pictures after the event? Damn, this movie gets dumber the longer I think about it.

It’s not all negative; there are some fun kills. The death of Wyatt is brutal and brilliant. The character arc of Teddy is pretty interesting, and they really could have done more with it. Sarah Pidgeon gives a truly great and sympathetic performance. The use of Julie James from the first two is the perfect use of her. The way they use Ray is……inconsistent. I don’t hate the character, I’m not a Ray-cist, but his character does feel wasted at times.

In summary, actually, do I need to summarise? You can tell I didn’t like this movie. It’s not among the worst 5 films of the year, but it’s possibly in the worst 10. Still, it’s better than the third one (no, haven’t seen it, but I’m still aware of its shitness).

Bring Her Back (2025) Review

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Quick synopsis: A brother and sister are placed with a new foster mother; she’s a bit weird.

Sally Hawkins can do anything, can’t she? At no point during Bring Her Back do you think she’s English; she slips into her performance perfectly. The supporting cast also gives performances beyond their years, especially Billy Barratt, who gives a near-perfect performance of someone haunted by trauma but trying to stay strong. It’s also clear that the Philippou brothers are tremendous directors, with a real flair for understanding what makes certain visuals work.

I thought I’d start with that so I could move onto the negatives, as I really didn’t like this film. It’s not that I actively hated it; I just wasn’t impressed with it, at all. It tries so hard to matter, to be important, to deal with themes of grief and guilt, but does so far too unsubtly to the point of repetitiveness. It makes its points, then a few minutes later says the exact same thing again (a bit like I just did with the previous two sentences).

It is possible I just don’t like their stories, as I also wasn’t fond of their previous film, Talk To Me. Reading that review again (posted here), I have many of the same issues; it didn’t live up to its potential, a lot of scenes were needless, and it was a few tweaks away from being great.

BHB (pronounced Bah-haaab) isn’t sure whether its audience is comprised of geniuses or idiots. So it veers between “now to just make sure, we’re going to have this character explain this again” and “because f*ck you! that’s why that happened”. So watching it is akin to trying to do a kids crossword and a cryptic crossword on the same board.

As much as I love how the brothers create horror, I think BHB may have been better if it weren’t a horror movie. If they instead focused on the themes of grief and loss. Keep the possession angles, just dial down the “scares” back a bit. The cult interludes feel forced, and like they are just there to get creepy moments in. That’s a shame, as if we didn’t see those moments, then when we see her attempt to do it later, it would have more of an impact. At the moment, the cult videos are more disturbing than the main product. To put it in wrestling terms, it would be like starting a card with a match full of barbed wire baseball bats to the face, and then having the main event end with a single baseball bat to the back, and the person is knocked out for 10 minutes and taken to the hospital. If you’ve already seen something more devastating, it dilutes the payoff you’re looking for.

Cutting down on the horror would mean leaving out some of the deaths, but that’s no great loss, as the moment where two characters die has all the impact of a single raindrop on a swimming pool. They feel particularly mean-spirited and pointless. If you cut them from the script entirely, it would only require a 20-second scene to fix the hole that’s left. The deaths don’t cause any lasting trauma to the characters, don’t drive the story forward, and are pretty inconsequential. So either delete them, or make them have a purpose.

In summary, I’m going to end this with the exact quote I ended my review of Talk To Me.

It’s a shame as with a few tweaks this could have been among my favourite films of the year. But I sense that everything could have been better. 

M3gan 2.0 (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: M3gan comes back, this time as a hero.

This is a terrible horror movie. That’s mainly because it’s not a horror movie. I’m used to horror franchises delving more into action or comedy, but it’s usually a few minutes in and it’s a sign of decline. I can’t remember a time it’s been so drastic as this. There’s no traditional horror movie beats, no shots that fill you with dread or keep you awake at night. What there is, is quips, fights, and weirdness.

On the one hand, the genre switch means that M3gan 2.0 is fun to watch and will appeal to a wide audience while still keeping true to the spirit of the original. On the downside, from the first trailer, where it was made clear that this time she’ll be more heroic and will be teaming up with those who defeated her in the first movie, comparisons have been made to Terminator 2. Those comparisons are much harder to ignore when the change of genre makes the movies even closer. It’s almost begging you to make those comparisons, and when it does, it doesn’t hold up.

On its own merits? It’s a lot of fun. It’s violent, funny, and kind of sweet. It has really good characterisation. Making M3gan a hero could have backfired, but it works wonderfully. That’s helped by the fact that even when she was a villain in the first movie, her entire motivation was doing what she felt she should do to protect a child. So she could easily turn them into heroes without changing their motivation. It feels like the next logical step. Her introduction is a lot of fun, with her controlling the aspects of a smart house to defeat an invading police force, who burst into a house all guns blazing to arrest an unarmed woman and a child, but because this isn’t real life, nobody got shot.

The performances are also key, the main characters from the first film return, and it’s clear they all love playing these characters. There aren’t too many new characters, but those who are introduced fit in perfectly.

Now onto the downsides. There are a few minor ones in terms of tone and consistency, and some moments are just a little bit too much like a video game for my liking. The major issue for me is the villain reveal. I live quite near a 12th-century castle. A castle, which is a crucial part of local and national history. A castle, which is vital to tourism and is a visual centrepiece of the local area. If you visit this town, you kind of HAVE to visit the castle.

That castle isn’t as clearly signposted as the villain reveal in this movie. I guessed it from the character introduction, not only that they would turn out to be the villain, but also their motivations and reasoning. It felt so obvious as the film went on, with a few “but nobody could have known this” about things which he would have known about. It’s so clear that I felt it was a red herring; I didn’t think a movie in 2025 could be this obvious with its twist. I haven’t seen a reveal this obvious since, well, every superhero movie where a character named something like “Evil Von Murderface” turned out to be the bad guy.

In summary, don’t go in expecting scares, and you’ll have one hell of a good time. It has a lot to say about AI, specifically about the role of humanity in controlling it. It’s much smarter than it needs to be, and I will always love that. I will also always love it when, in the final product, an editor takes out a really creepy moment from the trailer.

Y2K (2024) Review

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Quick Review: Remember that Simpsons Halloween episode where all electrical appliances start killing people because of the Y2K bug? Yeah, that.

Streaming services, even with the movies they acquire rather than what they make, tend to have a certain connective vibe. Taskmaster would be weird on Disney+, just wouldn’t work, whereas something like Miranda would slip in perfectly. I’m just clearing that up before I summarise my thoughts on this in one sentence: This feels like a Netflix movie.

I mean that in a good and a bad way. It’s slick, well-produced, and with a killer soundtrack. But it’s also forgettable. It feels tailor-made to have ridiculous AI-generated adverts running through it. It’s not all bad; the opening gives so much nostalgia. Although that’s part of the problem. It feels like it’s designed to appeal to 90’s kids, but hasn’t realised that people who grew up in the 90s are now adults, and realise that a lot of stuff from the 90s was fucking stupid and terrible. It’s a brave move for a film to have a target audience of “people who have been in a coma for 25 years”, and judging by the reviews, it hasn’t paid off.

Don’t get me wrong, I do have a soft spot for dumb, stupid things (except myself), but Y2K is pushing it. It’s a little “too” dumb. How exactly does a VHS player eject a tape at such high speed that it kills someone? How did the blender end up on someones dick? It’s cartoon physics in the real world, so it’s hard to actually feel scared at any point.

I also have a problem with the script. Eli’s friend dies WAY too early. Which means he doesn’t have anyone to bounce off. We have no grounding for what he’s like as a person, as once his friend dies, we only see him in a “nervous around his crush” state. On the subject of Eli, he also feels from the 90s, and not in a good way; there are major “nice guy” vibes. In a different movie, his character would turn out to be a date rapist who is angry that the female lead wouldn’t give him a handjob to thank him for holding the door open for him.

On the plus side, it is better than the other “robots vs. humans” film of the year, The Electric State (as reviewed here). Mainly because there are moments where Y2K is an enjoyable movie, with glimpses of the 90s throwback it could have been. They are just glimpses, though; shooting stars in the night sky of stupidity that is Y2K. The Fred Durst cameo is entertaining and actually contributes to the story.

The performances are mostly fine, but it’s difficult to tell under the script. I will always like Rachel Zegler in things; she’s a great talent to watch. Mason Gooding brings the dramatic chops when the film needs it. Other than that? Mostly okay but not outstanding.

In summary: a good idea, let down by a piss-poor execution.

Dangerous Animals (2025) Review

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Quick synopsis: A surfer is trapped on a boat with a serial killer intent on feeding her to sharks.

It may seem counterproductive to say so, but sometimes it can be counterproductive for a sitcom to be given more episodes or a new season. Not all sitcoms, but there are some sitcoms which have a definitive endpoint (think How I Met Your Mother), or a story arc that the series is based around (Ted Lasso). These things are normally planned meticulously in terms of timing, so it can be weird to have new episodes jammed into the middle, it forces writers to unnaturally extend things. If it’s a sitcom based around a relationship, that usually involves knocking the relationship status back a bit. This can be frustrating as an audience member because it can make you feel like there’s no progress being made.

It may seem weird to start a review of a horror movie with a paragraph about sitcoms, but there’s a reason. That elastic nature of storytelling, pulling characters back to the same position again and again, is my biggest issue with Dangerous Animals. I’m going to tell you about a scene:

The character tries to escape.

They manage to get out of the restraints and make their way to freedom.

JUST before the final hurdle, they’re stopped, and they wake up tied to the bed again.

That happens multiple times. The majority of this film is that scene repeated. As good as it is at times, Dangerous Animals suffers from having no idea how to fill its runtime. To be honest, I’m not sure how you could do it either. Two characters on a boat, one trying to kill the other? There’s very little you can do with that to fill 98 minutes.

None of that is the fault of the performers. Hassie Harrison is as fun to watch as her name is to say. Jai Courtney is delightfully unhinged. When they’re together, it’s magic. Courtney’s maniacal terror meshes well with Harrison’s innocent yet determined nature. Their characters are fun to watch, especially when Zephyr is in full-on flirtation mode with Josh Heuston’s character. I liked the moments where she was safe; it really helped flesh her out and make her seem like an actual human. It could be argued that the two do fall in love too easily; maybe it would have been better if they were a couple at the start of the movie, or had at least started dating.

This is Sean Byrne’s third film as a director, but the first one he hasn’t written. Thankfully, there’s not a huge disconnect between the script and the directing. He makes the most of the setting, with the open sea providing some gorgeous shots, while also helping to emphasise the isolation. The script really should play up the isolation aspect more. The boat comes back to land far too often. It’s difficult to really FEEL the isolation Zephyr is going through when she’s constantly so close to land. Technically, you could argue that’s the point. That she’s always so close to freedom and society, but never quite able to reach it. If that was the aim, then it could just as well have all taken place in a basement or an abandoned factory. Part of the USP of Dangerous Animals is it takes place on a boat. So the terror comes from knowing that even if she escapes the room, getting off the boat wouldn’t help because she has no way of getting back to land.

It is probably not helped by the fact that it was released in the same year as Last Breath, which, while not a horror movie, was also a tense movie about someone out at sea, so used similar techniques to emphasise distance from civilisation.

This is all coming off very negatively, but it’s unintentional. I did enjoy Dangerous Animals. When it works, it’s tense as hell. The music choices are first class, and it’s a unique idea, I can’t do deny that. Also, a lot of it takes place in daylight, which I will always appreciate. It’s not overly bloody or gory, coming off as more of a tense thriller than a full-on horror. Compared to other recent shark-based movies, this is the best one I’ve seen since 47 Meters Down, 8 years ago. It does well with highlighting how, when sharks kill, it’s not based on anger or hatred, it’s food. It points out how sharks kill fewer people than mosquitoes, but are considered scarier (let’s face it, saying sharks aren’t that dangerous is a risky move in a film designed to make sharks an element of fear). It also points out how tourist boats that pour food into the ocean to attract sharks so people can swim with them lead to sharks associating those boats with food. It’s incredibly clever in how it approaches the creatures. It is a good movie, but I know it could have been great

Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025) Review

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Quick synopsis: Shadyside High’s 1988 prom queen election becomes deadly for underdog Lori as candidates are targeted.

A few years ago, I changed the focus of this site from “write an article twice a week, which will sometimes consist of reviews” to “review every film I see that’s a new release”. Despite that new policy, I didn’t review the Fear Street trilogy. I’ve reviewed Netflix exclusives before, so that wasn’t the reason. It was because I couldn’t figure out whether to review them as separate entities or count them as one. If there was a bigger break between them, I would have done them separately, because I would have watched them separately. But the way they were released almost made it seem like they wanted you to binge-watch all three. So they felt too interconnected for me to treat them as separate entities.

If I had, I would have been kinder than I am towards Fear Street: Prom Queen (FS: PQ, Fish Pee-queue). I have issues with the original trilogy, but it felt better than this. Prom Queen’s biggest problem is one of horror identity. It doesn’t seem to know whether it’s dumb fun, where you’re supposed to watch and cheer the chaos, or if its supposed to scare and shock you. So it ties itself up in knots trying to serve both.

It’s not necessarily a bad film; it’s just incredibly forgettable. I watched it three days ago, and I’ve already forgotten every character’s name. I remember being incredibly 80s. In fact, it’s so 80s that it’s trying to ban the promotion of homosexuality in British schools using the EXACT same methods that people in the 2020s would use to spread hate against trans people.

The main negatives lie with the script. Most of the events happen over the course of one night, but part of the charm comes from the juxtaposition between the violent deaths and the joyful prom. Which means the prom characters need to be ignorant of the deaths. The script needs to be clever to do it, and Prom Queen isn’t smart enough. Characters split up from the prom scenes just so they can be killed off, and it doesn’t feel natural the way they do it.

On the upside, when it decides to let loose, it’s spectacular. The massacre in the actual prom is wonderfully violent and slick. It’s pure chaos and bloodshed. It’s here where the movie soars, when we see it at its best. It’s bloody, funny, and bloody funny. It also leads into the final scene at the house, which had one of my favourite deaths I’ve seen in a horror movie in a while. I’ll try to keep it vague to avoid spoilers; a character hits the villain over the head with a statue. They don’t die instantly; they don’t even die in that scene. There is no overabundance of blood or screaming. There’s just a character speaking in such a way that you can tell that their brain is fucked, and even if they don’t die, they won’t be able to live unassisted ever again. That moment is too good for a film like this.

Now, onto the three-hundred-pound question: do you need to watch the original trilogy for this to make sense? Thankfully, no. It’s stand stand-alone. It is a richer movie if you remember the others, I assume, the other films were just as forgettable as this one, so whilst I recognised there were some references, such as names, I couldn’t remember the significance of them. There’s a mid-credits scene that’s much more explicit in its reference, but feels more tacked on than the connections in the last Cloverfield movie.

From my few memories of the previous films, this does feel the weakest. That’s a shame as the performances are the best. I’ve long spoken of my love for Katherine Waterston; she’s not always in good films, but she’s always good in whatever she acts in. India Fowler leads the cast admirably, especially when you consider that she’s performing in an accent that’s not her natural one. Actually, all of the performances are good, and I’d have loved to have seen what these performers could do with a better script.

I probably will end up live-blogging the franchise at some point. But I don’t really have any love for the franchise. It exists, and I’ve watched them, that’s as far as my love for it goes. On the plus side; it is probably the best film I’ve seen on Netflix this year, but that says more about the lacklustre offerings they’ve had in 2025.

Final Destination Bloodlines (2025) Review

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Synopsis: Have you seen any of the other Final Destination movies? It’s that.

The Final Destination series will always have a place in my heart. It’s the only horror franchise that I’ve been able to watch progress along with everybody else. The first Chucky movie I watched was Bride, so already needed to catch up on three of them, Nightmare On Elm Street had pretty much finished (except for Freddy Vs. Jason) by the time I got to it, Scream is the closest, but I didn’t see that until the second one was out. But Final Destination? I hired the first one from a local video shop, then was able to watch the rest as they came out, some on TV on the movie channels, some on DVDS. I am a genuine fan of them (as can be proven here) I hadn’t watched any at the cinema, though, until now. *overly dramatic music*

Genuinely disappointed with my cinema experience for this. I booked for a subtitled screening (I loves me some subtitles), but it was changed to a standard screening 2 hours before. So those who don’t like subtitles wouldn’t have booked because by the time it was no longer subtitled, it was too late, and those who like subtitles would have cancelled when they got the e-mail saying it’s no longer subtitled. So it was an almost empty screen. That’s a shame, as Final Destination Bloodlines (FDB, pronounced Thud-ob) deserves to be seen with a group of people. As I was watching it, I imagined friends and family nearby watching it with me, reacting to the tense moments and visual foreshadowing.

The deaths in this franchise have always been a mixed bag. Sometimes they’ve caused people to react with “well I can’t even get behind a log truck again”, and sometimes they’re so silly that they’re almost comical. Before you think that’s just me shitting on the sequels, the first movie had “death sucks the liquid back into the toilet”, which is still one of the dumbest moments in the franchise. I can’t think of any deaths in FDB which I’d count among the series lowlights (although the obligatory “final scene death” is shit, but that’s mainly because of the narrative of it, rather than the nature of the death itself), and there are a few which I’d count among the most gruesome (that’s one involving an MRI machine which is haunting).

The opening disaster is probably the best in the franchise and the longest. It sets the tone perfectly and features one of the funniest child deaths in cinema history (it’s fine, the kid deserved it). The deaths are unique and harrowing. On the downside, it takes up a huge stretch of the runtime, considering they’re not the main characters. Traditionally, the inciting incidents have involved the characters we’re going to spend the rest of the film with, so we get to spend time with them, learn their personalities and quirks. FDB has the disaster happen to a group of people we never see again. It does feature the main character’s grandmother, but we only really spend 5 minutes with her once the main story begins. That character is interesting, she’s one who’s spent her whole life writing notes on how to avoid death, decades of research and observation. She’s one of two people from the original incident who are still alive at the start (along with Bludworth, played by Tony Freaking Todd, explaining how his character has been so knowledgeable). It would have been interesting to see some more of those characters, even if it was just in quick cuts.

That’s my big issue with FDB, as good as it is (and it is very good), you can’t fight the feeling that there’s a much better movie hidden in the narrative floorboards. Decades of strange deaths, Iris compiling the book, whether THEY knew anything about the disasters. It would have been fascinating to see a movie like this set in the ’60s or ’70s. Imagine the amount of carnage you could have teased by setting a scene at Woodstock, a Sex Pistols gig, etc. It would have allowed us to see characters who didn’t have the internet to research anything, could have had flash forwards to the future, maybe of them giving birth to a character from the first film. Instead, the 60’s prologue is just that, a prologue.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the characters we have. They’re all likeable, so when they die, we actually feel sadness and terror instead of the desire to cheer. They are still entertaining, though. There’s one in particular (involving a football) which is darkly hilarious. Personally, I would have liked to have seen some returning characters (of which, let’s face it, there are very few). FDB comes off as a finale, the sky restaurant was the catalyst for the events of every movie, and now all the survivors (and their bloodlines, heeeeey, that’s why it’s called that) have been killed, so what’s left? The other thing that gives it an air of finality is the final appearance of Tony Todd, who sadly passed away in 2024 of stomach cancer. Watching Bloodlines, you can tell he’s not got long (he passed six months after filming), and he knows it. It’s genuinely heartbreaking to see, but I’m not sure he could have asked for a better farewell. He revealed his condition to the filmmakers, who allowed him to write his final lines.

“I intend to enjoy… the time I have left. And I suggest you do the same. Life is precious. Enjoy every single second”

I genuinely didn’t expect to cry during a Final Destination movie, but that part damn near got me. It’s clear that Todd meant that as a goodbye to his fans, and it speaks volumes to his character that he did so. He will be missed, but damn, what a way to go.

The Ugly Stepsister (2025) aka Den Stygge Stesøsteren Review

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Quick synopsis: Cinderella, but from one of the stepsisters’ POV, and with added body horror.

“Dark versions of fairy tales” will always be intriguing. Although it’s a bit weird to think about because really, we’re not seeing dark versions of them; we’re seeing versions that are “more accurate to the original books than the Disney adaptations were”. Whether we like it or not, though, the Disney versions are the ones in the public consciousness. When people dress as Cinderella, they dress as the Disney version. So a film like The Ugly Stepsister will always be welcome. That being said, this is possibly the worst time to release it. The last few years have seen multiple copyrights expire, which has led to shit horror movies based on characters who are now in the public domain such as Winnie The Pooh and the original Mickey Mouse design. So you’d be forgiven for being a bit sceptical of a “horror reimagining of what most people see as a Disney property”.

TUS is better than those others, for a start, it focuses on the correct character, the titular stepsister. Secondly, it takes it seriously. It starts off like a normal costume drama. This is great as it allows you to adjust the universe. If a movie starts with blood and gore, you assume that’s normal for that universe, so later violence isn’t as shocking. Whereas if you start from a grounded position, the violence hits hard. There is a small hint of horror with the cruelty, which is then amped up when he coughs up blood. This interesting “not a costume drama but looks like one” approach is also represented in the opening credits, which are a weird mix of horror and regency.

When TUS gets brutal, it is horrific. The nose being broken by a chisel is horrendous. It’s not overly gory, there’s a tiny bit of blood, and no other visible damage. But the screaming? Oh my god the screaming, that sells it. I’m trying to think how to say this without coming off as creepy, but Lea Myren is one heck of a screamer. Her anguished howls of pain will reach deep inside you and claw at your guts.

I loved some of the music, but it doesn’t always work. I know that sounds contradictory but it is possible to recognise something as great but not appropriate. O Fortuna is a magnificent piece of music, but you wouldn’t use it to score a porno. There are so many music choices here which don’t work because the disconnect between the music and the visuals are too large to ignore.

In terms of visuals? It’s artfully shot, a bit too much at times. There are a few moments where a scene starts with a soft fade from someone’s face, and it would be lit in a somewhat “fuzzy” way, making you think it was a dream sequence. Nope, actual thing that happened, so halfway through the scene, you need to adjust your mindset. It’s a small thing, but it KEPT happening, to the point where there are a few shots of which I’m still not entirely sure if they were dream sequences or not.

That all may be a bit mean. Whilst TUS isn’t the best movie of the year, it is still interesting. You may not want to watch it again, but it won’t be one you regret. It’s the kind of movie that would have KILLED back in the days of VHS. The body horror aspects are PAINFUL! The tapeworm moment does look a bit ridiculous, but only towards the end, most of that scene works. The foot chopping scene is one of the most viscerally disgusting things I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen Piers Morgan’s face. It’s a smart choice to not have the step-sisters be completely terrible people. They’re not necessarily nice, but the Cinderella expy isn’t nice either; she starts off snooty and condescending. Every character is relatable and believable (although the other step sister would have benefited from being on screen more), except for the step mother, who is fucking awful, in a cinematically appealing way.

What is clear is that Emilie Blichfeldt is one hell of a talent, and couldn’t ask for a better debut feature than this. The world is set up for her to place her name alongside the likes of David Cronenberg and David Lynch. Now she just needs the opportunity, and a studio that trusts her vision.

The Rule Of Jenny Pen (2024) Review

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Quick synopsis: Recovering from a stroke at an assisted living facility, a judge encounters a psychopathic patient who uses a hand puppet to abuse fellow residents.

There are not many horror films focused on the elderly. On the rare occasions those films exist, they tend to come in the same two flavours. One, the elderly as the villains. These generally boil down to “ewwww, old people”. The others are with the elderly as a victim, these are usually more interesting (so are rarer, because Hollywood hates interesting), and show the elderly as trying to survive. At the same time, they struggle against not only the villain, but also their limitations brought on by age. The Rule of Jenny Pen (TROJP, trow-jop) attempts both.

It mostly manages it. The director is good at shock. The death of Howie is particularly shocking, especially since it happens so early on and occurs mostly in the background of a scene. I imagine it was mainly done that way so that we wouldn’t focus on it, so it would be easier to do the effects for as you wouldn’t notice it’s actually a model being set on fire. It helps the scene, though. It makes it seem shocking and realistic.

It’s not always realistic. There are a few moments which make you wonder if the staff have had any training whatsoever in terms of safeguarding. It would be acceptable for one or two of them to not notice things, but none of them? It’s not as if they appear overworked or like they don’t care. Most of the staff seem like they genuinely give a shit and want to do their best; so it’s baffling to try and figure out how they can miss signs of abuse.

The lack of realistic safeguarding is not my main issue; that would be the pacing. TROJP is fifteen minutes shy of 2 hours, and it only has enough story for about half of that runtime. I know the characters are physically slow, but that doesn’t mean the film has to be. I’m not asking for an exhilarating action film, but I don’t want the film to pause because it doesn’t have a clue what it’s supposed to do. This would be a fascinating short, there’s no doubt about it. It has ambition, creativity, and solid performances.

More than solid, actually. Lithgow is a tremendous actor, and I’m sure he’ll be a fantastic Dumbledore in a tv show that I will actively try to avoid. He’s positively unhinged in his role as Dave Crealy; utterly menacing and creepy. Geoffrey Rush is great going toe to toe with him. The best moments are when the two of them share a scene and try to outperform each other.

There is one thing I absolutely loved about TROJP. Whereas most films would approach a story like this with a “Is it really happening, or is he just mad?” Jenny Penn takes a “why not both?” strategy, which is much scarier. He isn’t in full control of his mental abilities, so he (and the audience) has trouble working out exactly what is real. But some of it IS real. That mixture is terrifying to think about and to watch unfold.

As I said, there are moments where TROJP isn’t a fascinating watch. But there are also times when it’s (and there’s no other way of saying this), fucking dull. And the dull moments are just not good enough to get you through the rest of it.

Until Dawn (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Clover is on a road trip to find out what happened to her missing sister, she finds out. Her and her friends get trapped in a repetitive nightmare.

I’ve never played Until Dawn, but I have played some games by the same studio, which follow the same principles and guidelines. I genuinely love them, not just because I’m a fan of story-based games, but also because they’re interesting and have great accessibility options. A key part of those games is the notion that choices have consequences. Something as simple as “look at this poster” could be the difference between life and death. Importantly, you, as a player, have to live with the consequences of your actions. So it’s baffling that the main gimmick of the movie is that choices don’t matter because once you die, you reset into your original position.

Annoyingly, it doesn’t even do anything entertaining with that premise. When this has been done before, the characters die because of their mistakes, and learn from them to help them survive. Here, it feels like they’re being controlled to die, and there’s nothing they can do. For example, at one point, a character gets picked up by an invisible force and dragged into a building. What’s the lesson there? What can a character learn from that to avoid it? Similarly, there’s one set of deaths which is essentially “don’t drink tap water, you’ll explode”, which feels ridiculously unfair to the characters.

It feels like the movie itself gets bored of its own premise halfway through, with the characters waking up and realising they’ve died multiple times and can’t remember a lot of them (conveniently, the characters all forget the exact same ones). Why? How does this serve the plot? It seems like they only did that as an excuse to watch videos of previous deaths on someones phone, and cram in horror movie moments.

Which is another issue; this isn’t a story, it’s a series of moments from other horror movies that the filmmakers wanted to put in. It doesn’t settle on a tone or style that’s consistent throughout. It reminded me of Cabin In The Woods, but badly written.

The characters? They’re funny, I’ll give them that. But there are so many moments where they feel like movie characters instead of actual people. Some sentences uttered are only uttered by characters who are written; nobody responds as an actual human would respond. There’s also a weird sense of detachment. The characters quickly get used to the idea of dying and coming back, despite not knowing when their last life will be, so really, they could die at any point. There’s a moment when a character disappears, and I thought they were going to announce that she had died died, which would lead to everybody becoming less flippant with death, but nope, she’s just elsewhere. I’m not exaggerating when I say the characters treat death flippantly, at times they seem to welcome it. “fuck, stubbed my toe, guess I’ll die”. At one point, one of the characters flat-out murders one of her friends. That murder is never brought up again. If a friend drove a pickax into my stomach, I would find it hard to forgive them. Plus, can you imagine what it would be like if THAT life was the person’s final life? So their friend properly killed them and has to live with that knowledge, whilst also learning that their lives are finite.

Until Dawn is not completely terrible, though. The performances are fine, although it is hard to get past the feeling that they are discount versions of other actors; specifically, Rachel Weisz, Jenny Slate, Johnny Depp, and James McAvoy. It is weird how the film has objectively lesser-known actors than the game. The game had Remi Malek and Hayden Panettiere. Okay, this was before Bo Rhap, so Malek wasn’t a big name then, but it’s still strange.

Some of the kills are fun, and as much as I hated the explosion scene for what it did to the narrative, out of context, it was entertaining. There is a basis for a good idea here. But it needed more thought than it was given. I was really looking forward to this, and I can’t feel anything except disappointed.