Tag: Reviews

The Toxic Avenger (2023) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A janitor is turned into a superhero when he’s dumped in toxic waste.

Gonna get this out of the way now; I was not a fan of this movie. I know quite a few people are, and the reasons they like it are likely to be the same reasons I don’t: the tone, the shoddy quality of the filmmaking, the feeling that it’s outdated. That’s fine, there is no right or wrong when it comes to liking a movie; it’s entirely subjective (unless you like the Ice Cube version of War Of The Worlds, which was objectively bad).

I’ve always been interested in works made by Troma, ever since I heard about Tromeo and Juliet, but this is the first time I’ve actually watched one, and I have to believe the others are different from this. My main problem is that it feels deliberate. It feels like the cinematic equivalent of buying pre-torn clothes; a lot of effort put in to seem low effort. Some of the editing choices are a bit weird, and I feel like the soundtrack could have been better (with two notable musical choices which are pretty damn perfect).

It has a unique look, but I can’t quite figure out how. It doesn’t look like it’s been heavily altered in post-production, but there’s something weirdly crystal clear about the visuals; everything looks sharp and real, with great focus work. There are good performances too; you can tell that everybody is having a lot of fun, and while I do criticise this film, there is a small part of me that is jealous of the obvious camaraderie that everybody involved in it has.

This film is gory as hell, kind of. Heads get chopped off, guts are displayed, there’s so much blood that even track 8 of AC/DC’s 1979 album Highway To Hell would say “yeah, we get the point”. Mostly, there are times when it feels weirdly restrained; when it cuts away from violence that is in no way more violent than what we just saw. There’s also one death that I think should have been more violent. When Winston kills a band onstage, almost every death is violent and brutal, full of blood and gore. But then he kills the only female member of the band by electrocution. It’s hard to believe that that was an accident; it feels like the director made a conscious decision to shy away from showing extreme violence against women, even if they have been responsible for deaths. For a film based around chaos and gore, it feels weirdly conservative and politically correct. It is consistent with the tone, though, all of the deaths happen to truly terrible people. There’s no attempt to humanise the villains, which is refreshing. If someone is dumping toxic waste into lakes, they shouldn’t be humanised because they are vile, evil scum who deserve life in prison. No matter how violent and gory this movie is, it does have heart. Not just in the film itself, but the fact that the studio has declared it will wipe out (at a minimum) $5 million of medical debt. That is admirable.

As I said, there is quite a bit to like about this. And I’m glad it was made. I saw it in a cinema with (at most) 8 other people in, on a cold, damp Saturday night after a 6-day run at work which left me exhausted both physically and mentally. That’s not the right place to watch this. You want to watch it either at home with your friends while you’re drunk/high as fuck, or in a room full of people who are excited and audibly reacting. So yes, this is a negative review, but with caveats.

War Of The Worlds (2025) Review

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Quick synopsis: Aliens attack! But this time, we witness it all through computer screens.

To fill you in on my non-film-watching life, I work retail. A few weeks ago, I was putting some clothes up and turned around, where I witnessed someone facing away from the store, pants around his ankles, pissing in the doorway. It was disgusting, vile, and rude. Yet I would rather have that happen once every hour of my working life than ever watch this film again. Trust me, that’s being kind. This is the worst thing I’ve seen all year, and I’ve seen the news.

First off, War Of The Worlds is timeless; its themes and messages are still relevant today. Updating it adds nothing. I should clarify, it’s not “updated” in a “same basic story, but takes place in modern times”, I mean, they completely change the themes. The aliens no longer invade Earth for colonialistic reasons; they invade for food. This could still work and possibly tie into the themes. Have the humans discover that they are to aliens what animals are to us; nothing but food and sustenance. You could even have a scene of a character discovering humans being harvested. WOTW (What-wah) doesn’t do this. Instead, the aliens eat, actually, I’m going to need to pause here to gather my thoughts because it’s so damn stupid. The aliens eat data. Because aliens must know my search history.

The other change is that the aliens are no longer defeated by a common virus, which means that it was only luck that the humans won in the book. Here, they’re defeated by a computer virus; so it’s not luck; it’s intentional defence, which, again, destroys the very point of the source material. It’s so stupid, and it’s not even original; it’s the same as Independence Day, one of the biggest films of all time.

The notion of “destroyed by a computer virus” isn’t even the stupidest part of how they’re defeated. Essentially, the world is saved by someone ordering something on Amazon Prime. By sheer coincidence, this movie is available on Amazon Prime. Side note, for this to work, we have to believe that the NSA don’t allow thumb drives, but they do allow random drones to enter their airspace. Although it’s not as though anybody can stop him from using a thumb drive anyway, as there seems to be nobody else in his building. A whole building with one person fighting cyber terrorism doesn’t feel safe. I imagine that would make it very easy for people to infiltrate and blackmail that person.

The idea of an alien invasion being witnessed on a computer screen is intriguing and opens up a lot of possibilities. But it doesn’t work. Part of that is because the film is so low-budget can’t show us what it wants to. Although I guess it’s nice to know that “filming yourself instead of the actual interesting thing” is something that even trained NSA agents do. Not as though filming the actual threat could prove useful, just keep filming your face as you run. That’s definitely what trained professionals would do.

When you see stuff like that, it really takes you out of it. As do the terrible effects. The weather effects, in particular, are reminiscent of something from a PS2 game rather than a modern feature. The news reports also feel incredibly fake. It’s hard to clarify exactly why, but none of them feel genuine. It’s not the logos or the people, it’s the general feel of them; they feel very amateur.

The characters? Terrible. The lead character of Will may actually be an idiot, and the way he cyberstalks his daughter is weird. This is actual dialogue:

His son (certified computer genius): “I have information you might want to know”

Ice Cube: “Not now!”

If, in the middle of a serious event that is mysterious, someone says, “I have information you might want to know”, it would be a good idea to actually listen to them to see if it’s helpful, and to make the film at least 30 minutes shorter.

The characters might work if the performances were good. Spoilers, they’re not. Ice Cube just scowls, with less depth than the shallow end of a baby’s swimming pool. It feels like he wasn’t actually told what he was supposed to be reacting to, just told to make generic faces. It’s not just him; Michael O Neil looks bored, giving a truly terrible performance.

You may be morbidly curious about watching this. Don’t. Don’t watch it, watch good movies instead. Watch films you want to see more of. Don’t watch badly made pieces of shit. Don’t watch movies which pretend to be warning against the dangers of government surveillance, but then also praise Amazon and Facebook, if their data handling methods are squeaky clean. This movie is terrible, and it breaks Prime’s positive review streak on this website.

Nobody 2 (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: An assassin goes on holiday, and people die.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first Nobody. It was action-packed, it was fun, and it was short enough that it didn’t outstay its welcome. In that aspect, Nobody 2 succeeds. It does all the important stuff well, and carries on the legacy of the first movie.

There are some aspects in which it’s not quite as successful. The action scenes aren’t as memorable as those in the first one; none of them come close to the bus scene. It’s also slightly overstuffed, particularly in the villain department. There is one definite BIG bad, but they’re introduced after we’ve already had issues with everybody else, so they’re not given as much focus. This may seem like sacrilege, but I didn’t like Sharon Stone in this. Her performance felt so hammy that I witnessed a little felt frog marry it. It felt like she was giving a performance, not that she got lost in the role. The background characters aren’t as well-written as they could be. With some aspects of them feeling overpowered and unrealistic, especially when they hold their own in fights with people they really shouldn’t.

Now, onto the upside, very little of that previous paragraph actually matters. You’ll be entertained throughout anyway. The action scenes, like I said, aren’t quite as good as the first one, but they are still very good. They’re set up beautifully. Things are mentioned throughout the film that later become relevant in a later scene when they are used to kill people. There are some great music choices, varied too. Cliff Richard’s songs fit alongside Celine Dion and The Offspring; all the choices make sense, although it would be an incredibly weird soundtrack if you played all of them together.

What Nobody 2 does better than the first one is set up a potential future. There are so many plot threads that are just waiting for a future film to unravel them. It also avoids the trap that people think John Wick fell into: becoming overly long and too steeped in lore. Nobody 2 is a quick 90 minutes, meaning it never overstays its welcome. For people who like the action of the John Wick movies (which you should, they’re awesome) but actually have social lives, which means they can’t spend an entire day watching a franchise, Nobody 2 is the perfect substitute. When the film ends, you want more. On the one hand, that’s delightful. On the other hand, there is a small part of you that feels unsatisfied, like you’ve had a delicious burger, but you’re still hungry.

Happy Gilmore 2 (2025) Review

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Quick synopsis: Gilmore returns to the sport of golf since his retirement after winning his first Tour Championship, to finance his daughter’s ballet classes

I will admit, I loved Adam Sandler’s movies as a teen. But as I’ve grown up, I’ve come to find his characters a bit petulant and annoying. Plus, his films have a weird attitude to women; with most of the love interests being more like mothers than lovers. His characters are kind of embarrassing to watch, especially since they all share the same flaws, and the lesson they learn is normally “everyone else is the problem, you shouldn’t change”. Nowhere is this more evident than in the opening of this movie; where he kills his wife accidentally, then his life falls apart; not because of grief, not because of trauma (in fact, the idea that he killed his wife playing golf doesn’t play into the narrative as much as it should, there’s no “but I can’t play golf, golf killed my wife” moments), but because he sucks as an adult and has no idea how to pay bills.

If you can still watch ’90s Sandler and enjoy it, then you will like this. There are a lot of callbacks to the original, which fans will appreciate. On the downside, the movie doesn’t trust you to remember the first film, so a lot of callbacks are prefaced by flashbacks to what is about to be referenced. That’s to be expected from a modern Sandler film; as are the other main faults: the narrative stopping so a character can make a joke, repetitiveness, and the insistence of Sandler putting his friends and family in major roles.

It’s when it’s not traditional Sandler that HG2 shows its best. The message of “no, tradition should be upheld instead of being ignored for something new and flashy” is unexpected. Also unexpected is the redemption arc of Shooter. It feels very in-character, though. Part of the reason he was the villain in the first movie was that he hated how Happy treated the game. So there’s zero reason for him to go along with a plan to change the game to the extent the villain in this movie suggests. The tributes to the cast members who have passed are genuinely sweet whilst remaining tonally consistent with the franchise. I also enjoyed one of the early golf games, where Happy is a drunken mess. That moment is helped by the people he’s playing with, who are played by Eric Andre and Margaret Qualley. It does kind of suck that those characters are never seen again. There are multiple moments where I feel they could have belonged. The villains’ super team of golfers are also an interesting group of characters, who are less developed than an improv comics stand-up set.

In summary, if this came out 20 years ago, I’d have loved it. As it is? It’s just kind of sad. Especially when it shows hints of being a much better movie.

The Naked Gun (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Frank Drebin Jr. attempts to stop a fiendish billionaire (is there any other kind?) from activating their P.L.O.T device.

This is the dumbest movie I’ve ever seen (editor’s note: this review was written before I watched the 2025 Ice Cube-led War Of The Worlds), it’s ridiculous, it’s cliche, and it’s over the top. It’s also f*cking brilliant. I’m a huge fan of the original trilogy (and the TV show, which is sorely underrated), so I went into this with a mixture of excitement and nervousness. Excited because I love movies like this – dumb, funny, and weird oddness. Studios and general audiences don’t feel the same way, so they’re not made as much as they should. The last film I can remember which even came close to that chaotic energy was probably Bottoms. But nervous because I was concerned it would be less like the original movies, and more like the execrable “[WORD] Movie” parodies that plagued the 2000s. Movies which forgot to have jokes, and instead had references, or if they did have jokes, they were jokes that they didn’t realise were in the thing they were mocking.

Also, there was a chance I could love this movie and still have it be a bad cinema experience. What if I were in a busy screening and it’s met with silence? Something like that is made much better by being in a room with others who are laughing. If I were the only one who enjoyed it, it would definitely sour me somewhat.

Not to worry, the audience I was with found it hilarious, as has everybody else I know who has seen it. It seems to be liked by both audiences and critics, which is always a good sign. It helps that everybody involved clearly loves the project. The core cast is almost perfect; Liam Neeson is much better at comedy than many people assume he is. He’s not a “My dogs got no nose, how does he smell? Terrible” type comedic actor; he’s a “I am serious in the face of the ridiculous” comedy actor, much like Leslie Nielsen was back in the day. Pamela Anderson is great as the sex symbol female lead made famous by Priscilla Presley (who makes a cameo). Paul Walter Hauser feels somewhat underused, and I was disappointed that the O.J. Simpson reference in the trailer was the only appearance of that character (named Not Nordberg Jr.).

Now, is it as funny as the originals? Kind of. When it’s funny, it does match the original. But it’s not as funny as often. That’s not me saying it’s not packed with jokes, it is. But the original was like being shot with a machine gun of jokes of various types, where it felt like every sign or prop was a joke. There are multiple moments where it feels like there’s a comedic gap, normal dialogue or backgrounds in which the writers could have squeezed more jokes in. Compared to most movies? It’s full. But compared to Naked Gun? You can definitely see opportunities, especially with some jokes that don’t have payoffs. There’s a prison break scene (which was in the trailer) that’s never followed up on. There’s a violent fight at the end, which would have been perfect for some of the escaped convicts to make a re-appearance. They could have squeezed in some cameos to make sure you remember those who broke out. That’s not a major criticism, but it definitely feels like a wasted opportunity.

The major loss between this and the original is the credits. The opening credits of the original are iconic, to the point where they’re used in the ending credits here. There’s no attempt to do a version here. If they did, yes, it would have come off as pandering. But it’s not replaced by anything either. There’s a very quick “title won’t fit on screen” gag, but no attempt to make the opening credits set the tone. Even the first two Deadpool movies had more suitable opening credits.

Like I said, those are all very minor issues, though. This film is great and I already miss it.

The Bad Guys 2 (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Reformed criminals are forced to return to a life of crime.

I have to be honest, I can’t really remember that much from the first one. I know I’ve seen it, and I know I reviewed it. But none of the characters really stuck with me. My main memory of it is how it had the bad luck to be released very close to Zootopia/Zootropolis whilst exploring familiar themes.

The sequel has the advantage of being released roughly 4 months before the Zootopia sequel, so it doesn’t have the same comparison issues. It’s also much better paced, starting with a heist instead of a conversation. The initial heist is surprisingly well written. Not just in terms of the action making sense in terms of physics and geography, but it also showcases all of the gang’s talents. It could easily get away with “this is Ms. Tarantula, expert computer hacker”, but instead it just shows her expertly hacking. This is incredibly smart as it means that people who watched the first one recently won’t feel like it’s repeating itself, but people who haven’t watched it recently still get to know their personalities and skills. I admire the scriptwriting that goes into that.

I admire other parts of the script less. It feels very episodic, it doesn’t flow from one scene to the next, instead it feels like there’s a definite STOP at certain points, seemingly destined for a theme tune and a “How will our fishy friend find his way out of this aquarium of agony? Find out next week!” voiceover. Some of those moments are better than others. The section at the Lucha Libre show is a particular lowlight. If you’ve been on the internet, you may have seen people point out how impossible one of the Fast and Furious movies is because it has a scene that takes place on a runway, and for it to work in the film, it would need to be miles long because of how long the scene is. This has a similar issue. Characters run for far too long in a small ring without hitting the ropes. It’s a minor issue, but once I noticed it, it was impossible to ignore.

It’s a shame, as that moment could have been brilliant. The space-bound sections are much better, and it’s clear that the writers did their research on how rocket launches occur in stages. Yes, it’s incredibly unrealistic in parts, but mainly for the rule of fun. The action scenes on the space station make tremendous use of the situation, and it’s genuinely difficult to see how they’re going to top that in the sequel.

Overall, I liked this more than the first one. The first was too obviously indebted to its influences; this feels like its own movie; it has an identity that the first one didn’t. The bringing back of Professor Marmalade felt weird, though. Had some funny moments, but it felt needless. Also, there were moments where it felt like this was trying to appeal to furries, especially with the way they portray Kitty Kat. A bit uncomfortable, not gonna lie.

Freaky Tales (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: An NBA star, a corrupt cop, a female rap duo, teenage punks, neo-Nazis and a debt collector embark on a collision course in 1987 Oakland.

I think this is the first anthology film I’ve reviewed. I have to be honest, it’s difficult to figure out how to review a film like this. Do I review each one individually, or take it as a whole? I’ve decided to try to do each segment in turn. If it were something like the VHS series, where there’s A LOT of segments, I’d do it as a whole (or just not watch it), but with only four segments? That seems doable. This will be more stream-of-consciousness than most of my reviews, so fair warning for that.

Strength In Numbers: The Gilman Strikes Back

Ah, this really made me wish we had a local music community. There’s so much togetherness displayed among the characters. Jack Champion has played the worst character in at least two movies (Avatar: The Way Of Water and Scream VI), but his performance in this shows that it was ALL due to bad writing. He is charming and sweet in this. I love Tina, though. Ji-Young Yoo is full of energy and repressed anger.

I appreciate that in an age where “don’t be a dick” is taken as “woke political correctness”, I appreciate how this segment (the entire film, in fact) is not subtle. This is not subtle, one character outright says “the rules don’t apply to nazis” when they discuss their “no hate” rule. But when we have politicians outwardly saying they want to put the unemployed in concentration camps, we can’t afford to be subtle. I have seen one person say that the portrayal of nazi’s in this segment made them “cartoonishly evil”, especially when they beat up someone on crutches. Got news for ya, that’s far from the worst thing Nazi’s did to people.

The fight itself is brutal. Doesn’t shy away from the blood and anger. It plays up some of it by making it slightly comic booky, but you are left in no doubt that these are real people (and nazi’s). The message here, “You can’t afford to be a pacifist if you’re being attacked”, is vital in 2025 (and yes, that is depressing). The relevance and importance of the message wouldn’t matter if the other components weren’t good. Obviously, the soundtrack is brilliant, with tracks from Operation Ivy and Black Flag suiting both the tone and the time. The visuals are pretty fun too, a standard conversation between the two characters is made visually interesting with animated overlays (very similar to Ninjababy, if you ever saw that). There’s some great stuff with aspect ratio too, with the frame pushing in at the start, making the whole thing seem like an 80’s VHS tape (that’s helped by the slight grain to the footage too). On the downside, the grainy nature of the visuals does make it difficult to see things at times. But I suppose it’s in a dark room, everybody is wearing black, so if you combine that with the 80’s filter, it’s difficult to see how it could be brighter without looking fake.

My other problem was a singular scene just before the chaos started. There’s a conversation between two punks outside when the nazi’s arrive, it feels stilted and is the only part that doesn’t feel real. If I were told “these two actors won a competition/are the crew”, I’d believe it.

Don’t Fight The Feeling

It’s certainly a choice that the nazi story was followed by a story about two black women. Just to showcase how shitty the 80s were, there wasn’t just racism, there was also sexism. Their race never drives the narrative, though, I suppose if it did, then it would have risked repeating the lessons from the first section.

It’s not just the themes; tonally, this is completely different. That’s what you want from a film like this. You want to showcase the diverse group of characters, and it’s no point doing that if every section feels the same. There are connecting themes and settings, but they’re not even in the same genre or sharing a visual technique. The soundtrack is also completely different, with this section taking on more of a hip-hop slant.

It’s not as satisfying an end, though. They defeat a battle rapper who only hired them to humiliate them. His rhymes are hateful and sexist as fuck, and he deserves to be beaten. But, you don’t get the feeling that he’s learned his lesson. He’s still going to be misogynistic as fuck, just not to these two particular women.

Born To Mack

After the youth-oriented previous chapters, it’s a surprise that the opening of this consists of Tom Hanks and Pedro Pascal. I knew Pedro was in this, genuinely had no idea Tom Hanks was. Explains all the references to the previous segments made to him.

There’s a “but you’re the owner, you’ve always been the owner” spooky fake-out was brilliant and I loved it. This is a much more deliberate and slower story than the previous two. It’s strange, it has the most story, more happens (and it’s certainly the only one so far that you could imagine becoming a feature on its own), but it somehow feels like it stagnates more. In the previous sections, not much happened, but it happened quickly. If the previous two were sprints, this is a marathon. It’s not quite as entertaining, but ot is much more fascinating.

The Legend Of Sleepy Floyd

And we’re back with the nazi cunts (fuck off). This is an excellent culmination of everything we’ve seen. The sci-fi undertones become more obvious, with the references to telekinesis finally becoming meaningful. This is how the final section of an anthology should be; the previous scenes all crashing together in a magnificently meaningful coda.

I can see why people would hate this movie. I found it oddly charming. The opening leads you to think that the science-fiction elements may be more prevalent than they actually are, but that’s a minor issue. If you take it with no expectations, it’s a collection of stories which you’ll love to watch.

All Happy Families (2024) Review

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Synopsis: A family gathers to renovate their home. Truths are unearthed and memories dug up.

Josh Radnor appears to be following the Zach Braff career path of being the lead in a sitcom, which everyone eventually comes to hate, thinking the lead character is creepy and weird, to low-budget indie films, the only difference being that he’s starring in them instead of directing them. Braff’s films are weird. It felt like everyone loved Garden State, then watched it again and changed their mind. Josh Radnor is yet to even approach anything like Garden State, casting agents seem reluctant to cast him in feature films for some reason.

All Happy Families (AHF, pronounced Arth) isn’t going to change their mind. He plays the same put-upon character we’ve seen him play before. It feels like he was cast because he played a similar character, not because they wanted to give him a chance to spread his thespian abilities. That’s not saying he gives a bad performance. But you are going to compare his character to Ted Mosbey, who, love him or hate him, is a character audiences are familiar with and have notions about. His character here is never given enough to distance himself from that comparison. The closest he gets from stepping away from that character is when he’s interacting with his family members and the chaos they bring; and that’s only because that entire dynamic makes you think of the Bluths from Arrested Development (only in this case, it’s the brother character that is accused of sexual misconduct, not the actor who plays the father. Seriously, fuck Jeffrey Tambor, and the way the entire male cast talked over Jessica Walters’ experiences.) If you thought being compared to How I Met Your Mother is bad, try being compared to Arrested Development.

This may seem like I disliked it. The truth is, I didn’t. It’s a difficult film to dislike, mainly because it’s a difficult film to feel any powerful emotion towards. It’s sauceless pasta. Bland, dull, and everybody has tried similar stuff that’s better.

There are glimpses of what this movie could be. The scene on the boat is fun, and it displays the characters’ personalities very well. The mum (Sue, played by Becky Ann Baker) is the type of person who corrects a tour guide, Will (his brother, played by Rob Huebel) is famous and kind of smug, Graham feels overshadowed, and their dad, Roy (John Ashton,) just goes along with it. If the writers tweaked the narrative and put this scene first, it would have made a fantastic opening scene.

The moment where his mother has a discussion with his trans daughter is incredibly sweet, and the kind of scene which feels modern and like it has something to say. Other narratives are running throughout, every character going through their own trials: Sue has been groped by her boss, Roy has a gambling addiction that threatens to rear its head, his brother Will has been accused of sexual misconduct on the set of his TV show, and Graham is going through a personal crisis. All of these are very worthy plots, and all are narrative fruits that are ripe for picking. However, they’re so underdeveloped that the audience only gets a brief glimpse of each narrative before it is disposed of. This approach can work in real life; not every story gets an ending, sometimes it’s just that things happen. But it’s handled really badly here, especially in the closing section.

The end feels really rushed. You have all this drama colliding together, and you expect it to lead to something. Instead, it just kind of becomes nothing. I mean, stuff happens, but it doesn’t FEEL big. The payoffs are incredibly flat, and there’s zero intensity. It feels like a 10-episode TV show which skips episodes 7,8, and 9. Or the writer HAD to keep it under 90 minutes and wasn’t allowed to delete stuff they’d already done.

In summary, it’s cosy, sweet, and very heartfelt at times, with good performances throughout. But it’s nowhere near as good as what’s already out there. In a world of exquisite dining, this is toast.

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. 

Renner (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Tech genius Renner (hey, that’s the title of the movie) has developed an AI tool to help develop confidence. A tool that’s unwittingly influenced by his domineering mother

I went into this expecting to be impressed. I knew who was in it, and I knew roughly what it was about; that was it. I don’t say this often, but if I had read more about it, I’m not sure I would have bothered. It actually annoyed me that I didn’t like it, because I know what the next two films I have to review are, and I would have liked if I had at least one positive review this week.

It’s not just that this wasn’t for me; at times, I actively disliked it. The lead character’s romance arc reminds me of Y2K, the film, not the year. He invites a neighbour to his house for an introduction. She brings a guy, and he is visibly annoyed to the point of rudeness. He’s then visibly elated when it turns out to be her brother. So, he comes across as a little bit entitled. Sentences like “I feel as if I’m being friend-zoned, this is like a horror movie” back up my viewpoint on that. You can’t be annoyed if a woman you’ve just met is wary of being at your home alone.

The other characters? They follow the same pathway of “the performances being better than the writing”. Violett Beane is incredibly charming and likeable in her performance, but that impact is lessened by the stuff the script makes her character say (You don’t get to say “it feels like my mouth had an orgasm” and then get surprised when someone turns it sexual). Her character feels like wish fulfilment; there’s not much reason for her to be into Renner. Look at it from her POV; she meets a guy who gets visibly angry at her for knowing a male. We don’t really get a reason for her to like him. Yes, you can say that part of that is due to (spoilers) her pretending to be into him so she can steal his shit. But it turns out that she does actually like him, but with no demonstration as to why. You can definitely tell this is written by a guy. The only character of the three who seems genuine is Chad, and that’s because he’s one of the few who calls characters out on their bullshit. In a lot of films, that might come off as annoying. But in something like Renner, it’s actually refreshing.

There’s some really interesting stuff done with colours. It is sometimes flat, garish, and ugly, but there are moments where it works, particularly after the monopoly conversation, where they move through colours. It’s incredibly minimalist, and when the visuals work, they really work. They look sparse, like the character is emotionally hollow. When they don’t work, they look cheap and like a student film.

I said earlier that this was clearly written by a man. That was wrong. It was written by four guys, one less than it takes to build a burger chain. This obviously wasn’t how it was done, but if you told me each writer took a scene and they never consulted with each other, I’d believe you. There are some inconsistencies between scenes that are harder to swallow than a burger van burger the next day. In particular, there’s a genre switch which doesn’t really work because it doesn’t feel right for the characters. It’s jarring, but not in a shocking Sinners way, but in a “yeah that didn’t work AT ALL” way. It doesn’t help that the key scene for this moment is shot in such a way that it appears to be a dream/fantasy sequence. It has a “looks like a dream but is reality” a few times, but the genre switch moment is the most egregious. It’s not to do with the way it’s shot, it’s entirely down to the way it’s edited.

Essentially, the problem with Renner (besides the title, which is difficult to Google) is that it has no idea what it wants to be. One of the best bits of scriptwriting I’ve ever been told was “do more with less”. Essentially, cut out unnecessary twists, plot points, and themes. It may suck as you may love them, but it improves the narrative if you cut out the fluff and focus on the essentials. I know that goes against my usual preference for ambitious failures over safe successes. But the ambitious failures I like are when I see something new. Nothing in Renner is new or original; it’s just unfocused, and the multiple attempted plotpoints all stumble over each other. If it cut out the bullshit, streamlined the narrative, DEFINITELY changed the ending, then you’d have something impressive. As it is? I can’t even be bothered to watch the trailer again, let alone go near the movie.

I do like that the film ended with a “made by humans” note. Very cute.