Dangerous Animals (2025)

Score: 2 / 5

Rarely, anymore, are entire films carried by a single performance, but Jai Courtney is the Atlas bearing up Dangerous Animals. A mildly clever combination of serial killer and killer shark narratives, the film needs a strong and memorable monster at its core, so we never quite know who might enter, revolve around him, and have to fend off his attacks. His character, Tucker, is the kind of killer we almost like; we can imagine, under the right circumstances, meeting this charismatic guy and wanting to grab a beer and hear his story. He's also a beast hiding in plain sight; unlike sharks -- his favorite animal, and his evidence disposal method -- Tucker selects his victims before there's any blood in the water, disappearing them with callous efficiency. In fact, even his method of reducing stress and putting his prey at ease, disarmed me right off the bat: getting his nervous tourists to breathe and chant, they end up singing "Baby Shark" in aware goofiness. The film opens with one such case in a pseudo-Pyscho-esque focal redirect that sets quite a brutal tone for the film to follow; we learn eventually it is only Tucker's most recent of a long string of crimes.

Courtney manages to evoke a hell of a lot while negotiating a screenplay that doesn't give him the meatiest material. Imposing and confident, Tucker is his own Ahab; despite channeling Robert Shaw in Jaws with some clear parallels, Courtney differentiates his character by making him slightly less articulate and more physical. Like Kathy Bates in Misery or Robert de Niro in Cape Fear, Courtney is truly charming despite -- or perhaps because of -- his brusque personality and quiet moments of internal conflict. Not conflict between right and wrong, no; conflict between self-awareness and masking. These are characters utterly convinced of their rightness in wrongness, yet aware that their murderous designs must be hidden. They use doublespeak and partial-truths, welcoming their prey into an invisible web where, once entangled, they can feast at leisure. On the actor's face, we see shivers that curl the edge of the mouth, that strain the corners of the eye, in those moments of transition between earnestness and deception by omission. The devil is indeed in the details.

Courtney isn't helped much by the rest of the film, however, which feels oddly inert and familiar. The high concept, if you haven't extrapolated, is that Tucker abducts tourists visiting the Gold Coast in Australia, taking them out to go shark cage diving and filming them while they're eaten alive. It's cool enough, and there's some novelty in the first time we see it happen: Tucker lowering the victim into the incarnadine ocean in a harness as sharks swarm. But once that's done, there's little to maintain interest the rest of the film's runtime beyond a few chase scenes around the boat and some consternation about handcuffs, a harpoon gun, a flare, and drugged food. I half-expected Tucker, as he checks on his captive females, to bring them lotion in a basket. Instead, he mostly waxes prosaic about his love of sharks, how he survived a shark attack as a boy, how he views sharks almost as gods; it never feels too talky in the sense of a villainous monologue, but most of it also never comes to fruition. That's because Tucker, no matter his relationship with the sharks, is just a sadist: he films his victims (seemingly mostly women) and cuts off a piece of their hair to keep in the videotapes of his little library. 

This isn't necessarily a knock on the film; familiarity doesn't determine a film's entertainment value or success. Sean Byrne is a capable enough director, with The Loved Ones and The Devil's Candy in his filmography, but he does tend toward more lurid material. In fact, he seems like the kind of guy most influenced by '80s and '90s thrillers, and that should have manifested just a bit more here. This story had the potential to lean more into Dead Calm than The Silence of the Lambs, and I wish Byrne had chosen that route. These characters aren't, however, sexualized much -- despite some suggestion -- and this film is less about a psychological war between spider and fly than it is about a series of cat-and-mouse action encounters. 

And this was my main problem with the film. Handsomely directed and shot, the film nevertheless falters in increasingly stupid decisions made by its protagonist. Hassie Harrison plays Zephyr, the Girl Who Fights Back, with admirable strength and physicality, certain enough; as written and directed, though, her character infuriates with her refusal to ensure Tucker is dead. She "escapes" several times during this movie, sneaking up on Tucker with various plans to overpower him, and even when she succeeds in an ambush, she then runs off so that he can come to and give chase again. Why does nobody double tap? Or at least tie him up, break his leg, make sure he's knocked out? He's actively torturing you, trying to kill you, and there is no chance someone else can help you. Why don't you fight back?

Its B-movie foundation is never quite shaken, and in that it finds its groove. As an action and/or erotic thriller, Dangerous Animals never quite matters beyond its central conceit; similarly, as a shark horror movie it all but fails. I'm a bit of a shark movie aficionado at this point, and this one mostly treats them with a less-is-more eye that undermines Tucker's worship of them. That fatal flaw in the film's internal logic spoiled it for me in a way it probably won't for most other viewers. Case in point: the climax, when a great white shark finally arrives in an admittedly chilling moment, turns when the shark, having been stabbed by Tucker, appears to choose to not eat Zephyr and opt instead for revenge on Tucker. It's silly and completely took me out of the moment, to say nothing of the rather poor CGI. On the other hand, during some of their chases, Byrne's team seamlessly integrate fight choreography, cinematography, and editing with a finesse and attention to earned violence that we don't even often see in action films. It may be nonsensical in design, but it's well-shot, and that makes it all at least watchable.

Keeper (2025)

Score: 2 / 5

Osgood Perkins has been the weird new kid on the block for a while now, and he's still doing weird new kid stuff. He plays around in various genres (fairy tale, haunted house, detective procedural, school kids) and makes them creepy, uncanny, and loaded with suggestive and subversive meaning. This time, it's a romantic drama at center, which I recently discussed a bit with this year's Together (so check out that review in the link). It's interesting that Perkins did not write this, though: penned by Nick Lepard it is, whose other notable work this year, Dangerous Animals, will be reviewed by yours truly presently, but suffice to say for now that it too has some really fucked up gender messaging. Protagonist Liz is visiting a private cabin in the woods with her boyfriend of one year for the weekend, and we know it won't end well. Part of the pleasure in these movies is to see just how and where things go wrong, as they inevitably will.

Liz and Malcolm are cute enough that I at least hoped they might work out. That's rare for me in a movie about heterosexuals. Tatiana Maslany is a capable actress, and this is one of the rarer instances of her doing some nice understated work. She's a bit mousy and slight, taking in her surroundings with a believable wide-eyed wonder, but too skittish for me to understand why she even trusts her beau enough to not be with him in public. But when things get scary -- and they indeed do -- she reminded me more than a little of Sally Hawkins, and that's where Maslany's skills really manifested. Rossif Sutherland (unknown to me) plays Malcolm, a gentle but firm bear of a man who seems to have ulterior motives and secrets while ingratiating his girlfriend to the large and luxurious cabin. While he has the challenging role of being an obvious bad guy, I was disappointed that Sutherland (and, to be fair, the way Malcolm is written) didn't work harder to complicate the character or at least breathe life into him. He channels the energy of an SNL parody of a sad dad during the holidays, which is decidedly not the vibe for this story. 

Thankfully, I was distracted from the [insert the antonym for chemistry] by the house itself. If you know my cinematic tastes at all, you should know I'm a sucker for the architecture in a horror film. And Perkins and cinematographer Jeremy Cox have the delicious pleasure of bringing this stunning house to life visually. And thanks to the house's designers and, I suspect, the editors (who do some really amazing and meaning-laden slow dissolves transitioning between scenes), it's almost impossible to understand the house's layout. There always seem to be too many doors and floors and windows. If the story calls for a house to literally lose oneself in, your production designers can't do much better than to make a physically impossible house! It's become all the rage, I daresay, since Danielewski's House of Leaves was published, but that's a different conversation. 

The enchanting house loses its fascination as the plot fails to keep up. Blatantly obvious in its thematic and narrative purpose, the film only remains watchable thanks to the qualities I've already mentioned. Beyond these, it's a terrible doldrums to endure. The couple has some serious issues when it comes to communication as well as personal esteem, and almost every line feels on the verge of an argument neither wants to have. They're both clumsily attempting to negotiate expectations and affection and hesitation in ways that feel like they're incapable of comprehending independently. Their borderline codependence is aggravating to witness in the same way sitcoms can be: if they would just communicate more honestly and openly, we wouldn't even be in this mess!

Yet in the mess is where Perkins wants us. Malcolm awkwardly insists on Liz eating a slice of chocolate cake apparently left for them by the housekeeper. Bizarre request notwithstanding -- he has a housekeeper? Who bakes? And just does this? For anyone? And we know nothing about ingredients or cleanliness or the kitchen itself for fuck's sake -- Liz objects because she simply dislikes chocolate cake. His passive aggression simmers until an equally bizarre and uncomfortable encounter occurs: Malcolm's obnoxious playboy cousin arrives with a model who supposedly can't speak English but warns Liz not to eat the cake. Yet, seemingly in defiance of the bimbo, Liz does. Lo, and behold that bad things ensue.

Yet this point is reached so early in the film that it can't ratchet up the tension slowly. The familiar premise devolves into familiar patterns of heavy genre tropes: Liz, often alone in tedium, hears a noise or sees a shadow, explores the house, finds nothing or gets scared by something banal, and then has a nightmare about it in which there is something horrific lunging at her. She awakes, certain that something is very wrong yet doing nothing sensical about it. Perhaps most interestingly, and thanks to Maslany more than to the screenplay, we witness Liz mostly nonverbally calculating the extent to which she loves Malcolm and herself in ways that suggest she knows it's a zero-sum game. She mysteriously keeps eating this disgusting cake in nauseating ways, seemingly beyond her own control; yet her waking self wavers on thinking it's an innocent price to pay for the man she loves and might actually want to "keep," as the title suggests.

So when the climax and denouement buckle down on our very correct first impression, this intriguing aspect of the title is also applied in various ways: Liz may be a "keeper" (one who is kept by a man) for Malcolm, but she's also a "keeper" of new charges. We double down on the men being cartoonish villains who systematically collect and use women in a nonsensical supernatural lore that is unceremoniously dumped in the film by a character who literally enters for the sole purpose of explaining this dumb plot to us. It makes no sense, not least because it's basically a Faustian bargains with a monstrous woman reproducing a la The Brood who needs to consume other women so the cousins can live forever. Thankfully, as by the halfway point of the film I was bored to distraction, the miserable second half of this film does benefit from the presence of monsters so cool in appearance that they captured my attention each time they graced the screen. Really fantastically creepy design, there guys.

And then there's the final scene, which I'm sure has layers of obscure symbolism, as in all Perkins films. It just doesn't make enough sense to feel satisfying, and I will spoil it here because its frustrating opacity is a prime fault of this film (and of its auteur). Having been accepted and possibly possessed by the monsters, Liz's eyes turn black like theirs while Malcolm, his bargain undone, ages rapidly. She hangs him upside-down from a tree and force-feeds him the drugged cake (I told you this crap wasn't subtle) while he insists that he loves her. Knowing full well his lies, she dunks him into a jar of honey to die (a symbol associated with his original victim, the mother of the monsters, who Liz resembles, hence her acceptance by the monsters). That's it. I understand the female revenge plot, but not if she's now part of a monstrous family or cult. The film's otherwise thoughtful spins on gender and norms fail utterly in the final scene, cementing the legacy of this film as one with some neat visuals and a compelling lead performance that is in no other way significant to the genre, the craft, or our memory; in other words, not a keeper.

Predator: Badlands (2025)

Score: 4 / 5

I was never a big fan of the Predator series, mostly because action flicks aren't to my taste. Knowing that Dan Trachtenberg was continuing his streak in the franchise, however, led me to watch all the damn movies. And I was right; the first has its notable plot and memorable imagery, and the second I actually quite liked. The third makes its lore a bit too explicit, but its casting makes for a fun time; the fourth similarly has a fabulous cast, but its writing and direction doubles down on the franchise's weakest points for no clear reason. When Trachtenberg released Prey three years ago, I was only able to see it on Hulu, and I was amazed. Beautiful and gritty and violent and smart, not to mention culturally fascinating while branching out the lore in exciting new ways, the film remains the high point of the franchise for me. 

Badlands is Trachtenberg's second outing in this franchise, and again he proves his astonishing ability to think outside the box of familiar territory and deliver something substantially fresh and innovative. Fans of the franchise will, doubtless, decry it for being "woke" or some such drivel; it seems any time a female becomes a main character in an action film that's the result from a vocal subset of obnoxious white men. And while there is tons of action to be had here, this entry is notable for its plot structure, which is more adventure than action. Here, we're treated to a Star Wars-like (or Star Trek, perhaps, especially with the Klingon comparison, though I'm not familiar enough with that franchise) excursion to a wonderfully realized alien world known in-universe as one of the most dangerous habitable planets. And, even apart from the considerable visual artistry that makes this film an eye-popping pleasure on a big screen, Trachtenberg and writer Patrick Aison have crafted a meticulously plotted screenplay that hinges on the nature of what makes humans human. Even though there are no humans in the film, it's a fascinating and thrilling ride that doesn't skimp on the violence or marginal scares while ratcheting up emotional tension the franchise has long failed to master.

I'll interject here with some geeky personal admiration. I remember an interview in which Trachtenberg claimed, while making Prey and his subsequent Predator films, that he was inspired by various kinds of filmmakers like Sergio Leone and Terrence Malick. And while I can certainly see that at work in these movies, it goes to show how intricately intertextual genre films so often are, and how liberally well-read quality filmmakers have to be to work in these genre films. So much of the Predator vibe, in general, is just about action and badassery. But when Trachtenberg steps in with these kinds of ideas and muses, he makes the stories as much about the nature of nature, and how sentient beings can/do/do not exist well in such environments, as about the nature of killers. That is so brilliant and refreshing in our age of endless sequels and reboots that rehash original ingredients without so much as care for new inspiration. Trachtenberg did this with 10 Cloverfield Lane as well: a film that works wonderfully as a psychological thriller between two terrifying people, and then reveals its shocking and weird place in what we didn't even know was a burgeoning franchise.

I won't labor in retelling the plot, because there's not a ton. Suffice it to say that this is -- to my admittedly recent knowledge -- the first time a titular Predator is the main character of one of these movies. And he's fabulous. Played with impressive physicality by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, protagonist Dek is a Yautja (the actual Predator species) who is called a runt. He's shorter and less accomplished than his own brother, much to the chagrin of his resentful and dismissive father. Preparing for a suicide mission to prove himself on the "death planet" Genna -- I wonder if this is a corruption of the hellish place Gehenna near Jerusalem -- his father suddenly orders his brother to kill him. Refusing, the brother sends Dek to space, but not before Dek witnesses his father summarily execute his kin. Thus, the story takes on the mythic proportions of a hero's revenge against a wicked clan leader.

His goal is to slay a Kalisk, supposedly unkillable, and return its skull to his father, as their culture deems their purpose to be. Yet once on Genna, he must first survive. A gauntlet of biological horrors, the planet is so hostile to Dek's presence that he gets a severe beating after his crash-landing. Thankfully, he soon encounters Thia, an android (like Ash in Alien), who helps him navigate the terrain and learn how to find the Kalisk. Elle Fanning plays Thia and her sister Tessa, who elsewhere plans to antagonize them; the dual role allows her lots of room for showcasing her considerable thespian skills. Not only can she be hilariously blunt as the only character who speaks English, but she can also be quite scary in her attempts to manipulate her way out of jams. She's legless, you see, from her own encounters on Genna, so Dek must carry her around like a humanoid backpack; it's outrageous and clever in equal doses. Genre movies so rarely laud actors with awards, and it's a real shame; Fanning unleashes her powers in a dazzling display of dynamism and insight and sheer fire-forged skill that should decorate her with many medals. 

While I've not yet seen the AvP flicks, and have no intention to, I appreciated the Weyland-Yutani Corporation subplot here, a clear connection to the Alien franchise. You know, I don't need crossovers between these IPs, but if the writers continue to hinge any connections as a problem of uber-capitalistic empires like this, then I'm all for it. While it's not the focus of this film, it does underscore the connection in what may be the most material way that we've yet seen. Thankfully, the film only uses that to excite the nerdy fans. Mass audiences are treated to the real feast of the film: the way it combines genres. Because for all my descriptors thus far here, I've yet to say that the entire midsection of this film is a delightful buddy adventure.

Thia and Dek collect a ragtag group of misfits to help them find and kill the Kalisk, and it's all very endearing and sweet. They discuss new meanings of words, like a heartwarming moment of Thia claiming Tessa as her sister after learning about the concept from Dek and his brother, and when Dek learns that emotions (the touchy-feely stuff real Predators eschew) not only help people become stronger but make success worth achieving. Through it all, moreover, Dek is never infantilized, feminized, or otherwise meaningfully different than a brutish, hulking warrior; the actor's amazing physical performance is often nonverbal, and he conveys essays of meaning with the subtlest of movements. For all the complaints I expect will be levelled at this film by dubious "alpha males," Dek remains one for the entire runtime, especially in his final battle against his father. And it goes a long way to show that a true alpha male isn't admirable because of superficial qualities of isolation, brusqueness, indifference and cruelty, or even violence. It's about thoughtful and caring leadership, integrity and perseverance, and resourcefulness cultivated from community-building.

Apparently Trachtenberg preceded this release with an animated feature on Hulu: Predator: Killer of Killers, which I'll eagerly be watching soon. My impression, based on its trailer, is that of separate vignettes of various times and places in Earth's history in which humans have clashed with Yautja hunters. We've already seen a jungle war a la Vietnam but in Central America, street fighting in downtown Los Angeles, the American frontier, and alien hunting grounds; it looks like we'll expand into Viking and samurai historical settings soon enough, and that's even more brilliant. With Trachtenberg at the helm, I have no doubt even an animated feature will satisfy me well. But there is little right now that can compare to the gorgeous visual effects of the films in live action, and if you get a chance to see this on a big screen, you've got to take that shot.

Together (2025)

Score: 4 / 5

Guilty pleasure. Schadenfreude. Sadistic indifference. Call it what you will, but I find immense pleasure in horror stories of heterosexual relationships. And no, I don't mean sentimental claptrap of realistic relationships falling apart, like in Marriage Story. I mean fantastic stories of what dating these days is really like (Fresh, Drop), Gothic spins on gender inequalities and microaggressions (Companion, Strange Darling), and brave interrogations of codependency (Midsommar). This last one actually helps inform my approach to Together, the feature debut of writer and director Michael Shanks, which was quietly released this past summer. I nearly missed it on my own radar due to my chaotic season and because of its rather niche subject matter; the marketing was minimal, and if it weren't for Neon distributing it -- and the considerable star power of its leads -- I might have missed it entirely.

As its title suggests, Together concerns Tim and Millie, a young man and woman who move to a rural cul-de-sac so that she can teach elementary English. Tim, an aspiring musician, has been despondent since his parents died; we don't get much information about the bulk of their apparently lengthy relationship, but it's clear the two love each other. So much, in fact, that their impending move spurs Millie on to propose to Tim in front of all their friends at a farewell party. He freezes -- a hesitation that at first seems bizarre but eventually makes sense when you start picking up on the really awkward passive-aggression and emotional manipulation that characterize their relationship -- and Millie is embarrassed and self-pitying. Which makes sense, even beyond the botched engagement; she's preparing to fully support his lazy ass, and his simpering personality seems put-on, likely after a long time of her demands and expectations. So when they go hiking through the forest around their new neighborhood in a rain storm, we know things won't end well. Even if you haven't seen Significant Other or Backcountry, you can expect this is the beginning of the end for our fair lovers.

They fall into a sinkhole together, filthy rainwater pouring down around them, not grievously injured but enough to stay put until they can climb out in a drier and safer way. Before settling down to rest, Tim drinks from still water deeper in the cave they've found, and this is really the one moment I almost lost the plot. Even Millie says something to the effect of do not drink from stagnant dark water in a random muddy cave you foolish suicide risk. Without spoiling things, the water here plays a part of the lore of the story -- which involves a defunct cult and its marriage rites -- that is interesting and fun while firmly making the story clear-cut supernatural horror. I wondered, while watching, why the filmmakers chose that route; sometimes, a film like this that is really about an abstract concept (in this case, romantic codependency) works best in its ambiguities. Think of The Night House or Relic: you can enjoy them as thoroughly straightforward supernatural horrors, or you can enjoy it as a deeply emotional parable in which the supernatural elements could just be generic trappings or even manifested by the protagonist's psyche. Not so in Together, where the point is still codependency, but it's exacerbated by explicit external forces. Indeed, the introductory sequence ends with a horrific yet split-second shot of two dogs becoming one in a grotesque image reminiscent of Carpenter's The Thing. And that's not even five minutes in.

It's not quite on the level of psychological thriller as those titles, though, and Together works best as a chamber piece between its two leads. Franco and Brie, who are married in real life and produced this project, must have had a wickedly good time playing these characters, though one shudders to think of the therapy and intimacy coordination the two surely underwent during this process. Love, as we know, is often both frightening and angry, and to play a relationship in which the separate parties are literally beginning to meld had to have broken open tons of fascinating and intensely private conversations. Oh, to be a fly on those walls....

For melding is the name of the game. In the cave, Tim and Millie wake to find their legs sticking together, with a gooey fleshy residue combining them. Later, the same -- and worse, much worse -- continues to happen at increasing intervals. Tim occasionally acts almost possessed (I thought of Night Swim more than once), and while that didn't make much sense to me, the film does continue to lean on the invisible forces at work. By the film's climax, the characters are literally being dragged toward each other from opposite ends of their driveway and hallway; the film's internal logic slyly evades who or what is acting upon them by making these sequences opportunities for the couple not to problem-solve but to trade jabs and provoke laughs more than screams. 

Yet it's not a rollicking comedy, either. In the plentiful scenes of their "merging," the couple are subjected to body horror like I haven't seen on screen in years. This is golden age Cronenbergian shit. A scene with their forearms and a reciprocating saw had me yelling into a pillow; the film's only sex scene in a bathroom stall had me clenching in a fetal position. These are the brilliantly devised scenes that make the film unfortunately memorable, but in the best way. Actually, the more I think on it, this film is quite a lot like Lars von Trier's Antichrist, and though I had once said I'd never revisit that nightmare of a film, I'm inspired to take some chill pills and give it another go with Together fresh on my mind. They're definitely cut from similar cloth.

What happens when you've finally got the relationship you've always thought you wanted, but the settling and renegotiation of that relationship reveals that you're probably better off alone? That seems to be what the film is getting at, and it's helped by an inscrutable and highly effective Damon Herriman as Jamie, the couple's closest neighbor and a perhaps too friendly coworker at Millie's school. He's sweet and a little creepy, and neither we nor the couple knows exactly what he's after. He helps us understand the couple's isolation and codependence by giving them someone to discuss and avoid, a counterpoint to their apparently large friend group in the city. And I will absolutely not spoil the end, which goes in perhaps the one direction I did not predict. That I will leave for you, dear reader, to discover, if you think you want to stomach the body horror that leads you there.

Frankenstein (2025)

Score: 1.5 / 5

Literary purists were going to hate this anyway. Frankenstein, for being one of the most-adapted works of English literature, has never had a film version lauded as faithful to Mary Shelley's Gothic nightmare of a vision. The material itself, sublime and terrible, has always seemed eager to have a life of its own, thus spawning so many takes and versions and interpretations and deconstructions and homages that "Frankenstein" has come to mean, for any generation of readers or viewers, whatever its artists want it to mean. Like the infamous monster it dramatizes, the story's meaning has become an amalgamation of sordid parts, wet connective tissue, and a spark of creative enthusiasm. Take anything from Young Frankenstein to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, with a lot in between (and since), and you'll see what I mean. Hell, pay the cost to watch Danny Boyle's theatrical production with the National Theatre Live company; in two parts, in which the two main actors switch roles as Victor and Creature, the production is gobsmackingly brilliant and deeply moving.

In fact, there's only one adaptation I've ever seen that feels truly faithful to the novel. And no, I don't mean Kenneth Branagh's pseudo-camp, very wet 1994 version, though that will probably now have to retain its deeply misleading and frustrating accolade of being the most faithful feature adaptation. Rather, I refer to the 2004 Hallmark made-for-tv film in two parts, which has its obvious budgetary restrictions but manages nevertheless to faithfully adapt the entire Shelley narrative (!!) with some notably impressive moments (their encounter in the ruined medieval castle is a brilliant scene, cinematographically) and a couple knockout performances, especially from a career-best Luke Goss as the monster. William Hurt's weird accent and flat performance notwithstanding, the production even features a score for days and a few scary images that will knock your socks off.

We all knew Guillermo del Toro would add his signature style to the material, and the trailers reinforced that idea. We all knew this would feature some obnoxious sci-fi imagery, with lots of beakers breaking and animated lighting zapping all over the place; it's annoying, from a purist's perspective, because almost none of the "science" in Shelley's work is like this, yet almost every adaptation uses these trappings to convey something about a very specific idea of (mad) science. And it never makes sense, especially the bizarre stitching patterns used on the creature. If Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs can make a prettier skin suit from girls in a dry well than can an actual surgeon (never mind the century), something is very wrong. Sadly, del Toro's monster follows the same path, offering more stylization than is good for it. The monster so rarely resembles a real dead body that it never feels as scary or gross as it should; its whole point is that it is incarnate abjection, a large living corpse. Do yourself a favor and reread Shelley's description of the monster, and think about what it would really look like. Just don't do it before bedtime!

I say all this because it's important to go into this film with basically no expectations regarding the material. Even a passing knowledge of the novel and its themes will lead you to disappointment. Del Toro has crafted, in his latest film, a travesty of aesthetics. What was so obviously a dream project reveals itself to us as an obsessive, forced mess that butchers its source material on the altar of autership, sacrificing any attempt at philosophical soundness, thematic imagination, and movingly dynamic characters to the false gods of beautiful but hollow imagery, and uninspired and derivative storytelling.

Do we have time for everything? This will be a long one, so gird your loins.

Broken into chapters as it is, I rather expected a more thematic approach. Either a new way of viewing the plot (a la The Last Duel, or Boyle's stage production), or perhaps something linking this more strongly with the Prometheus myth. But no, del Toro merely uses these arbitrary chapter divisions to clarify that the first half of the story is Victor's and the second half is the creature's, as if that wasn't already manifestly apparent in the narrative itself. Worse, despite some ham-fisted dialogue relating Victor to Prometheus -- almost all spoken by Christoph Waltz -- the film ambiguously provides the creature as much if not more imagery associated with the myth (his regeneration, his relationship with fire), so the blending of names and titles becomes functionally meaningless instead of meaningful.

Oscar Isaac plays Victor with his typically excellent craft, though more than once here his voice felt parodic of his own as the title character in X-Men: Apocalypse. Though Isaac has already played the Victor-character before, in the modernized Ex Machina, here del Toro has him set in 1857, several decades after Shelley's original setting, for no apparent reason except to lean farther into the sci-fi trappings of his laboratory. Changing the setting simply to have more reason to insert unnecessary effects sounds pretty artistically bankrupt to me, and it distracts from Isaac's otherwise committed performance. I'd have much preferred to see him going mad while lurking around churchyards and sweating in a lonely, Gothic attic lab. For no clear reason, del Toro has Victor prowling snowy battlefields of what I gather to be the Crimean War; in what world are these corpses of better use to a man looking for ideal, healthy body parts to cobble together a giant man? 

I just don't understand why, in adapting such a clearly and simply constructed story, you'd change so many details that cause you more problems in conveying ideas. Moving things from Regency England to Victorian England only seems justified if the point is to let Victor play with electricity, which isn't even the point of any of this. Worse, it's not even used medically appropriately. By the waking of the creature (and Jacob Elordi gives a fine performance, though his design is too weird and distracting), we quickly learn that he can heal from any wound almost instantly. Heck, in the opening sequence, he's given an animalistic roar and superhuman strength that allows him to singlehandedly move the entire icebound ship loaded with its crew. Imbuing the creature with such superhuman abilities makes him both more monstrous and potentially more heroic, pushing what could and should be a horrifying chamber piece into the realm of Disney-fied superhero flicks.

Del Toro retains the framing device of Victor's final chase through the Arctic and his encounter with sailors trapped there, but the minor theme of the captain's own obsessions is practically absent. In its place, he forces a few action scenes to showcase the supreme might of the creature and its The Terror-like ghostly presence in the frozen wastes. While beautiful, these scenes only confused me more, as they immediately reveal the creature to be immortal and immune to grievous injury. Yet the creature still loiters around, allowing Victor (who looks too healthy to be on death's door) to tell his full account to the captain (Lars Mikkelsen, with nothing to do) before intruding to share his own story. The timing just doesn't add up, even if the views of golden firelight flickering in the icy darkness are lovely on screen.

Victor's story -- told through rather obnoxious voiceover by Isaac -- launches into his childhood home life, quickly bypassed in favor of his days at university, Edinburgh rather than Ingolstadt for unexplained reasons, where he is the subject of an ethics tribunal. He's animating gory, half-corpses and getting them to politely catch and return objects. It's an insane change to the material, not least because it undercuts his entire tragic personality: the whole point is that Victor cannot and does not tell any other soul about his experiments or his eventual creation. His secrecy is wrapped up in his monomania and ego, but del Toro seems thrilled to showcase Victor's efforts to every single character in the film. Impressed by his grotesquerie, Christoph Waltz's original character of Henrich (an arms dealer, for no reason) generously offers to bankroll all of Victor's science, even relocating him to what appears to be an abandoned water treatment tower alongside a reservoir. It's beautiful, sure, but it's also an illogical and gratuitous move in order to force cheap Gothic imagery into the film. 

This reveals a central problem to del Toro's film: in attempting to force Gothicism, he ends up butchering it. How much scarier and more cinematic -- yes, even on a home screen via Netflix -- would Victor's lab have been had it remained true to Shelley's vision? A darkened, locked attic, shrouded in secrecy and night, with much of the body horror seen only by candlelight. Instead, the camera swoops around what might as well be a giant stone lighthouse with a gaping tiled hole running down through its center. Architecturally, it makes no sense at all, and adds a sort of Chekhovian bit of foreshadowing: someone will fall through this inviting hole without guardrails. And indeed, before long, the bizarre and totally extraneous character of Henrich does just that. I hoped we'd retain some of the academic and ethical debate so central to the novel through his character, even if he wasn't one of the iconic professors Victor studied under at university. Alas, he's just there to pay for an expensive and impractical setting.

After the creature is born, Victor is not repulsed or ashamed, but rather takes the creature by hand and walks him around, trying to communicate while teaching him to walk. He even has the creature, who seems shy or pained by sunlight, reach out as if to embrace the yellow rays. There's an impetus of kindness and fatherliness here that actually interested me, because it's so foreign to the material and character. Yet instead of building on this dynamic, del Toro has Victor promptly take the creature to a dungeon -- again, what exactly is this architecture?! -- and chains him up before walking away for the night. For some time after, Victor attempts to teach the creature various things by day before chaining him up again, though the creature only seems able to repeat the name "Victor." 

Until, that is, Victor's family arrives. I don't even know where to start with this. First, his younger brother William (the favorite of their father, played by Charles Dance, in a delicious casting choice for the bit part) is significantly older than he is in the book (so is Victor, to be fair), which changes their dynamic drastically. Worse, Elizabeth is in this version Henrich's niece and William's betrothed. Victor repeatedly makes advances on her, which she rejects; yet upon visiting the tower, Elizabeth immediately wanders into the dungeon and meets the creature, making physical contact without much ado, after which the creature is smitten with her. It's obvious, too, that she's smitten with the creature.

What the fuck, del Toro? I'm all for fresh interpretations of classic stories that aren't bound to purity. Look at Lisa Frankenstein. Look at James Whale's original film. Heck, look at Poor Things. These take a nugget or two and run with it into new and exciting directions. But to pass off your adaptation with integrity while bastardizing the material to suit your own oeuvre feels like the work of an amateur, not an auteur. I'm fine with a dark romance teased out of an ambiguous story: Robert Eggers just did that with his Nosferatu. Del Toro himself has done this! The Shape of Water takes our beloved Gillman from Creature from the Black Lagoon and moves him into a different setting with different themes attached, yet his story is still one of being a missing link and deciding to love a human woman who connects with him. If that's the story del Toro wanted to tell, why didn't he just write that? Why does he try to pass it off as a reasonable adaptation of Frankenstein? He could have taken the character and written a story around it finding romance, acceptance, and forgiveness, and he could have titled it The Shape of Flesh. 

A few moments do offer cool beats we don't always get in these adaptations. Most center around Elordi's creature, though I still think his design looks less like an animated corpse and more like an alien; in fact, he appears to have been visually inspired by Ridley Scott's Prometheus, which is an intriguing connection in genre intertextuality. Woodland creatures seem quite at ease with the monster, and we see him feeding elk and rats a few times. Elordi's physical performance and emotional conveyance is laudable, though I wish he was given more to do by the screenplay. His few scenes of real action are so drenched in CGI -- and yes, while I was at first excited for the wolf pack attack sequence, it quickly derailed into frantic, nonsensical animation -- that they made me lose respect for his performance. You just can't tell what's real or not, which hinders our ability to relate.

Speaking of which, del Toro takes such pains to equalize "monstrous" traits to both Victor and the creature that neither ends up being very dynamic. Victor has urges to be a kindly father or benevolent god, yet his lecherous attitude toward Elizabeth and cruel, almost blasé treatment of his child make him eminently unlikable. The creature is gentle and natural, yet does not hesitate to crush and eviscerate any potential physical threat. By changing the roster of characters in the story, and their ages, we lose several deaths enacted by the creature that increase our complex understanding of his monstrosity, and Victor's by extension. We don't get children being killed or maids being framed (justice for Justine!), and we lose the sorrow of Victor's best friend. There is almost no reason for us to care about Victor because he cares about no one; there is almost no reason for us to care about Elizabeth (and, frankly, Mia Goth's performance is flatter than a pancake in garish, unsightly costumes) because she has no trait of interest beyond liking bugs (so, she's a lay scientist?) and being unfaithful to her betrothed before being passed from brother to brother to child. 

After a messy final act, the film ends on a note that I took particular umbrage with. Having told their respective stories, Victor suddenly and inexplicably feels close to death, and begs the creature's forgiveness, apologizing for his cruelty and negligence. The creature immediately and tearfully accepts and forgives him, and Victor begs the creature not to perish but to "live." The creature disembarks the ship, pushes it out of the ice, and then tries to embrace the sunlight as Victor taught him. It's disgustingly sentimental and anti-Gothic, and profoundly stupid : what life does Victor think this creature could possibly have? He's greeted by horror in civilization. And without Victor, the creature will now forever be alone. Why would the creature want to live? It's a question Shelley asked and had an answer for: he doesn't! But in del Toro's vision, the creature seems fine with living a hermit's life in the Arctic circle, so he tries to affirm that bizarre choice with sunlight and flourish.

And what makes it all worse is that, however we want to define "monster," del Toro could have gone dark with this film. His Nightmare Alley is still on my list of almost-too-disturbing films due to its nihilism and garish theatricality. Can you imagine, here, an ending of the creature drifting away into the inky ether on an ice floe, perhaps holding a torch, slowly disappearing into the blizzard? A haunting chill of possibility, the kind of bleak frisson of the opening scene of Midsommar or that carriage scene in Nosferatu? For that matter, can you imagine an approach to Frankenstein in the style of The Lighthouse, vis-a-vis Robert Eggers?

I really wanted to love this movie, but it might be the first del Toro film I've actively disliked. Very few choices within it are elements I found engaging, thoughtful, or worthwhile. It's loud and bright and kinetic and pretty much everything I don't want from Frankenstein. Worse, his changes to the source material are unfounded, confusing, and detrimental to the story he himself is telling, causing what is a remarkably coherent literary work into a literary travesty without internal logic. Alexandre Desplat's score was lovely, and provided some nice atmosphere. The cinematography was beautiful, if often distracted; editing is more messy, with lots of redundancy, but it's not awful. David Bradley has a nice couple scenes as a rural blind man who becomes the creature's friend, and those might have been the best part of the film (until the giant wolves descend). But pairing my disappointment in the film with my disappointment in del Toro is a nasty shock that I wasn't prepared to handle as we hurtle into awards season.

Shelby Oaks (2025)

Score: 4 / 5

Much will be said of Chris Stuckmann's pedigree and history, yet apart from its inspiration, these things will be said to effectively limit Shelby Oaks, its scope, and its impact. I've yet to hear much response to his feature film debut that isn't couched in some kind of condescending tone that heavily references his years-long passion project and its troubled history or that hinges on something to the effect of "well, once Mike Flanagan joined the creative team and Neon picked it up, then it became a real movie." And I think that's a shameful approach to film criticism. Historicizing can be cool, and it can provide insight, but as soon as you use it to limit and control what the art does and what it means, that context ceases to be useful or believable. After all, a film made by a lifelong fan and critic is going to reference other movies. Most movies do, anyway, regardless of their maker. At least this one makes those references not only obvious and fun, but also crucial to the story being told.

Starting with a faux-documentary a la Lake Mungo or Noroi, Shelby Oaks details the rise of the Paranormal Paranoids, four young YouTubers investigating haunted places, who suddenly go missing in the titular ghost town. Bodies of three are found, along with some of their footage, but Riley Brennan and the second camera are nowhere to be found. As with The Blair Witch Project and its subsequent franchise, this story follows someone eager to find the missing person and learn what happened to the Paranoids. Riley's older sister Mia (Camille Sullivan) is convinced Riley is still alive somewhere, even now, twelve years after her disappearance. This seems wildly unlikely to me, but since that's the only serious jump I had to make to suspend my disbelief, I leapt and was better for it. Once we're in the film proper, Stuckmann has a hell of a story to spin, so you'd better get on board.

There is another version of this film that doesn't feel so dated and that engages in an earnest conversation about how found footage can operate in the twenty-first century and how we, as mindful viewers, should engage with videos of questionable authenticity. Media literacy is in crisis, and a film like this could bravely showcase a side of things we don't normally see while forcing us to grapple with social media algorithms, ever-listening phones, and the specter of artificial intelligence. That's very much not Stuckmann's project here, but I wonder what follow-ups might do in that regard, as the film seems to be breaching between the boundaries of urban legends and ghost towns and our dwindling post-millennial obsession with paranormal web series. Actually, it's not wholly unlike some of Flanagan's early work in that regard of suggestively reaching into a wider conceit without fully engaging, like in Absentia or Oculus.

I won't spoil any plot points here at all, because this film is a bona fide mystery, eager to suck you in and reveal itself in sinister turns. Needless to say, we will find out what happened to Riley -- and why -- and it's probably not what you're expecting. Stuckmann's premise, apart from the Blair Witch of it all, is quite original and hybridizes some key points that feel disparate until later. As Mia investigates, she eventually goes to a prison and an abandoned amusement park, both of which also refer to other iconic horror stories. There has obviously been a killer, and there may be a kidnapper, but beyond that, Stuckmann allows us to think there are ghosts, demons, monsters, and all manner of horrors before film's end, and some of those prove to be true. All predicated on a primary plot distinctly reminiscent of Prisoners or Barbarian, these things begin to take on fantastic lives of their own, so that just like Mia, we are searching through limited available evidence to establish a rational way out of this mystery.

To be fair, rationality may not be the key element of this film, and Stuckmann does sacrifice rich character development (or even realism) in favor of some rural Gothic adventuring. I don't mind that, generally, and Mia's nighttime escapades make the movie pretty amazing. It's just not reasonable for Mia to be this obsessed with her missing sister for over a decade; we're even told it has ruined her marriage and might have something to do with her inability to become pregnant (which she fervently wants or, perhaps, wanted). It's also not reasonable for her, after being scared out of her mind by the inciting incident of a crazed man delivering her the missing tape before fatally shooting himself on her porch, to not call for backup or even leave a note before launching into a nocturnal investigation at abandoned places that would be dangerous even in broad daylight, without demonic dogs hounding her steps.

And while Sullivan delivers what she needs, I couldn't help but wonder why the screenplay didn't let her do more. Or perhaps why she felt so one-note. She's just kind of always there, shuddering and grimacing and looking, rarely speaking or acting proactively. It's a stoic performance of a kind we almost never see leading a horror film, and it freezes us in place when it should mobilize us into reacting to the frisson. Indeed, I found myself reacting to Stuckmann's well-crafted and effectively employed scares more vocally and physically than Sullivan does. She just keeps her head swivel going, like an owl on an old clock, and it's up to us to search the shadowy surroundings for what might have made the alarming noise.

It might have been going for, simply, too much. The whole subplot of the prison is fascinating, and Keith David's bit part is really effective. But the film pivots again after this, and its final act is a frenetic experience in its own right, tonally led by a terrifying Robin Bartlett, veering close to what Ann Dowd provided in Hereditary. For a plot to take place in a single, hellish night, I'm glad this didn't become a shitty web miniseries; its episodic narrative needs dramatic unity to make sense, and in a single film, it does. It took me some time to get into the story, but by the climax and finale, I was locked in and on the edge of my seat. Stuckmann's technique as a filmmaker might be half-baked as of yet (I'm not sure this is fair of me, but it is a sometimes wonky film; that said, his visuals are stunning and occasionally beautiful, like Mia's foray into the prison block, which looks like something out of Bergman or Fulci, atmospheric and Gothic, as if the ruins itself breathes contagion), but his instincts as a storyteller are fabulous, carrying this material through to the glorious cinematic release it always needed. Seeing this on a big screen in the dark with surround sound is the only way to appreciate what he's done here, and it deserves to be appreciated.

Black Phone 2 (2025)

Score: 3.5 / 5

The Black Phone was, in my opinion, over-hyped and hasn't really stood the test of time, even in only four years. I liked it well enough, but repeat viewings have made its substantial plot holes increasingly difficult to swallow. Some movies are just meant to be seen once and enjoyed as such; Derrickson's mastery of suggestive suspense and brutal scares is too profound for him to make a mediocre cinematic experience. However, the story was simplistic, messy, and too vague for its own good. Perhaps that's why Ethan Hawke's villainous Grabber character has maintained its interest: he's enigmatic enough to be upsetting. I think of him the way I think of Michael Myers: sure, he's scary enough, but it's not until he should be dead and rises again anyway that we really lock into the horror Laurie Strode is up against.

When a sequel was announced, I blanched. Joe Hill only wrote a single short story, and that was adapted into the first film; what could happen next, with the Grabber dead? But I'm glad I reserved judgment, because Black Phone 2, despite its terrible title, took me on a wild ride that scared me, provoked my curiosity in refreshing ways, and eventually helped me think of its predecessor in a kinder light. That's pretty remarkable these days, with strung-along sequels and remakes that never try to do something really weird and make it work.

I won't recount much plot here, because piecing it together is part of the fun to be had, but Black Phone 2 relocates Finney and Gwen, now considerably older, to a Christian camp alongside a mountainous lake in their home state of Colorado. Led by Gwen's visions of their dead mother's time working there, the kids (and Gwen's new boyfriend) arrive amidst a terrible snowstorm, isolating them in cabins along with the four camp staffers stationed there. Gwen's visions worsen, and Finney receives calls via the camp's decommissioned payphone: the Grabber, long dead, has figured out a way to seek revenge on Finney for killing him. The logic is a bit unclear, but he's haunting a site of his own early murders, reinforcing the psychic connection between the Grabber and the kids through their mother, whose unwelcome visions allowed her to see his victims and eventually drove her mad (and to suicide, as was presumed in the previous film). 

Less like Michael Myers and more like Freddy Krueger, this film swings into directions I was not at all expecting, and Derrickson's aesthetic choices in the first film are doubled down on here, making his earlier choices make more sense. For example, the first film features intercuts of what appear to be Super 8mm footage indicating the abduction/murder scenes of what we know to be missing persons; it's utilizing a sort of mockumentary/found footage technique for no reason because of course no one was filming those crimes. Yet in this film, it's finally clear that that technique is simply a visual cue as to how Gwen's visions appear: grainy, blurry, awkwardly spliced together. Whereas I thought it was, before, a cheap ploy capitalizing on Derrickson's terrifying successes in Sinister (which it may well have been), now I see it as a suitably reasonable approach to non-anachronistic visual representation that the character herself would be familiar with.

Regardless, the Grabber's crimes are no longer so pedestrian, and here he's got a nasty axe to grind. Literally. The bloody violence of this film had me gagged, and I mean that literally as well, because it was not what I expected. Hawke returns, and this time he's not quite as chillingly spooky; nor is he as sexually suggestive, which I both liked and wish we had some closure about. His first outing was like Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates: performative and cerebral, rather femme and quietly disturbed. This time, he's full-on psycho, an edge of diabolic malevolence to his gravelly voice, launching headfirst into rooms from shadowy corners and taking broad swings with his weapons of choice. He's not going to trick or toy with his victims now. He's going to dismember them. 

Surreal nightmare logic won't work for everyone, but this movie worked for me on that front. I also liked that Gwen takes more of a leading role here, and the actors (excellent already in the first film) deliver shockingly mature performances yet again. Finney has the thankless position of trying to become a man with the only role model of his father (Jeremy Davies, who returns in a diminished capacity here), who is only tenuously no longer alcoholic and abusive. Naturally, Finney has some junk still to sort through mentally, and he's numbing his pain and his life as a result. Gwen's visions this time are more brutal, and so is her treatment by the Grabber, making the nature of violence in this film a really cool counterpoint to the first: then, it was suggestive, abductive, and sexual, whereas now, it's explicit, bodily, and psychic. 

This is still a big-budget slasher film, even with its ghostly elements, and it doesn't all cohere the way we might want. Rather than allowing the kids' dynamics to breathe naturally, they're forced into conversations that reveal key things laid out as breadcrumbs by the writers, building to a contrived climax that only works as the sum of these crumbs. The camp staffers, including Demian Bichir and Arianna Rivas, are mostly forgettable, only there to allow the kids chances to explain what's happening and to spur them on to make tough decisions and help with physical tasks, such as searching a frozen lake for bodies stashed there more than twenty years prior. 

Crazy? Yeah, and that's the kind of weird thing that a film like this should have worked out in, well, workshop. Derrickson is too good to let a weird screenplay get in his way, but this story (like the previous one) could have used some serious help in development. But if you're willing to let plot holes and strange logical jumps be what they are, Black Phone 2 has boons in store. Terrifyingly choreographed and edited sequences turn nightmarish visions into impossible realities, shifting between visual modes as we watch the Grabber viciously tearing apart his victims while, in waking cuts, bodies of teenagers are flung about with spurts of blood. Derrickson and his cinematographer milk the snowy, mountainous landscape for all its worth, often using window panes and ice as our actual frame into their world. And while Derrickson's penchant for religious content isn't gone here -- Gwen still talks to Jesus for help in her wonderfully crass way, and the Grabber's mask is about as demonic as you can get -- it does feel earned and grounded in ways we so rarely see (these are not idolatrous possession films bogged down in Catholic imagery or emotionally manipulative Warren-esque normative families). This works surprisingly well in a film that basically turns a one-off spooky story into a full-fledged supernatural slasher franchise. Where else has the Grabber killed kids? Will he go on to haunt those places, too?

Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025)

Score: 1 / 5

I still think the Fear Street trilogy from 2021 is one of the coolest original ideas from Netflix, though it's almost certainly Leigh Janiak who deserves the credit. The films were among my favorites that year, due to their content and aesthetics alike, and even their marketing and "distribution" on the streaming service within mere weeks of each other was experimental and brilliant. I never read R.L. Stine's young adult book series of the same name, but from what I understand, Janiak's stories were mostly original; regardless, I find them highly entertaining and deeply fascinating. So when I heard a new entry had been greenlit and that it would be based on one of the books, I was thrilled.

Sadly, Janiak has no credited presence in Fear Street: Prom Queen, the first attempt to expand her series into a franchise. And it's a palpable, consequential absence. Part of what made Janiak's trilogy so memorable and fun was her ability to synthesize relevant pop culture with genuinely upsetting scares, mixing genre conventions with keen attention to the time period of her chosen settings. Sometimes, horror just feels bespoke: this same aesthetic is why I so dearly love the Williamson/Craven Scream franchise and the Murphy/Falchuk AHS series. They just feel made for me. I wasn't too worried about a new creative in charge of Prom Queen, because Janiak's considerable foundation was sure to carry through, right? Bring in some '80s slasher vibes, pretty dresses, and solid rock music, and it's bound to be a good time, right?

Yet Matt Palmer's tepid film seems less inspired by Prom Night and Carrie and more scared of them. It doesn't even really feel like part of the Fear Street franchise, as almost nothing connects it to the previous trilogy. Sure, there's a lot of chitchat about Shadyside, the town's lamentable history, and its eternal tensions with neighboring Sunnyvale, but such dialogue is only barely enough connective tissue to suffice. This may as well have started as a draft for a rejected subplot of Riverdale on the CW, and one hewing far too close to generic high school melodrama to actually engage any of its own interesting ideas.

Everyone's a suspect? Randy's famed and mostly accurate accusation of Prom Night in Scream does help us view the 1980 cult classic differently than most of its slasher ilk in that there isn't a clearly identified (and/or identifiable) masked killer with possibly supernatural abilities. Yet there are also arguably too many characters and not enough interest in them to drum up any suspense here; we know there will be at least one killer, and it could be anyone, so we don't get attached to any characters at all. Attempts at dynamic queer characters? Lili Taylor pops in for a few scenes as a lesbian-coded vice principal a little too interested in the prom's success, but she's little more than the same kind of red herring than in any other prom movie (opportunistic, pitiful teacher wanting connection). Good music? At bare minimum, a prom movie should have killer beats, and this one

The acting is mostly passable, though the ensemble fails to mesh stylistically. The Regina George of school, Tiffany Falconer and her Wolfpack gang -- a name which simply does not fit, though I hoped for a moment we might get a supernatural Trick 'r Treat moment with them (if you know, you know) -- are written flatly and predictably, so Fina Strazza's pseudo-camp delivery feels forced and Sisyphean. Her foil, protagonist Lori Granger (India Fowler), is the underdog of the prom queen competition. One wonders how the mild-mannered, constantly bullied girl who shows no interest in her classmates or her hometown even got in the race, and Lori herself seems ambivalently annoyed and annoying about the whole affair. Does she want the crown just to spite her nemesis? Does she actually want Tiffany's boyfriend Tyler (David Iacono), who seems to have eyes only for Lori? By the time they dance off alone in front of their peers, I found myself kind of hoping they'd just brawl already; instead, we're treated to a curious inversion of the Ozdust dance in Wicked, whereby Lori dances strangely and endearingly while Tiffany is so desperate to be cool and popular that she makes a damn (and sweaty) fool of herself.

Oh, and while all this is happening, there's a killer on the rampage. In a striking slash of red, the killer emerges periodically wearing a mask and scarlet rain poncho that is almost interesting. Appearances aren't what make a killer memorable, but this one is lacking on all fronts. Palmer can't seem to construct a reasonably intelligent chase or even ramp up much by way of suspense, making the kill scenes random and clunky, forced and brief. He doesn't hold back on the gore, that's for sure, but then he doesn't even do anything interesting with the gore (maybe that could have painted the killer a la It's a Wonderful Knife, or the killer could have left blood-smeared notes on the lockers, or maybe if prom was a whiteout theme with red highlights so people made tie-dye dresses that looked bloody? I don't know, but there was room to play here, and instead the entire realm of possibility is left unexplored). 

Palmer's seeming desperation to force this story into the Fear Street aesthetic also leads him to pitfalls in other areas. Grotesque costumes and hair beg audiences to feel nostalgic, as if the only way Palmer thought this film could work was by making people want to relive prom night of forty years ago. The soundtrack includes some nice choices -- Laura Branigan's "Gloria" gets a lovely extended moment during the dance off that feels directly referencing the climax of Prom Night -- but they never stop, and rarely play enough of a song to get into it. The music isn't supporting story beats; it's forcing us into a headspace through what amount to slapdash sound bytes.

Katherine Waterston has fun with her part -- Tiffany's uptight and demanding mother -- and provides the only overt link to the previous trilogy that I caught (other than a character name or two, like Goode) during a spoiler-y final shot that raised more questions than it answered. Is Sarah Fier at work with this rash of killings, as usual? It didn't seem like it until that final shot, but if it's the old witch, her modus operandi is way off this time. Which is another reason why Fear Street: Prom Queen is ultimately merely disappointing. If you want a nostalgic slasher, why would you pick this instead of watching Jamie Lee Curtis disco dancing? If you want something interesting about Stine's young adult murder town, why would you pick this instead of Janiak's films? Palmer doesn't provide us with any reason to vote in his favor.

The Life of Chuck (2025)

Score: 3 / 5

Melancholic and sentimentally bittersweet, The Life of Chuck is not the kind of film I usually enjoy. Movies with oddly specific character actors in their ensemble cast based around a sort of "live, laugh, love" thematic premise don't do it for me in comedies or dramas. With rare exceptions, stories musing on the afterlife in order to reaffirm spiritual awareness in the present feel too manipulative and triggering for me to be either emotionally provocative or hope-inspiring. And while I've not yet read the eponymous novel by Stephen King, it's quite low on my list of his works for the same reason. King can do amazing spiritually-resounding stories -- just look at The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and Dolores Claiborne, among many more -- so it's not that I doubt his writerly craft. And I certainly didn't doubt Flanagan's extraordinary skills as director or writer. But this one worked for me, even if I doubt I'll revisit it anytime soon.

I should note here that, while I will avoid many spoilers, to discuss this movie is to spoil it. So if you're at all interested in a cozy, existentially curious speculative piece of date night vibes with the characteristics already mentioned, give The Life of Chuck a watch. It may not be your cuppa, but you'll be glad you tasted it. It's even a solid choice for your next family movie night, if you've got younger ones; they may get squirrelly or confused during a few lengthier scenes of heightened dialogue, but it'll offer cool opportunities to discuss the less tangible things in life with your loved ones.

While I've already named sentimentality as a pillar of this film, it would not do to ignore its resistance to wallowing. Indeed, the film staunchly refuses, in true Flanagan fashion, to condescend its messaging or cater to audiences in a way that feels dumbed down. We're engaged via multiple senses and cerebral appeals, Flanagan inviting us into his stylized world where one man's choice to live life to the fullest not only positively impacts the people around him but in fact melds him with the fabric of the universe. Over time -- the film is told in three sections presented in nonlinear narrative -- the titular Chuck navigates both childhood and adulthood, and his imminent death after a life well-lived seems to be bound up with the death of the universe. Weird? You bet. But cool as heck to think about? Also yes. And utterly horrifying when the stars start blinking out of existence? Trust and believe that that'll be my next nightmare.

Flanagan's approach to this film feels musical, both regarding the satisfying rhythms and movements of its thematic and dramatic beats and regarding its central scene of Chuck dancing to a busking drummer before pulling a young woman up and dancing with her. The extended scene is stunning and fun, riveting in its unbridled sense of joy, presented with considerable artistry from all departments involved. The film may never quite get us to a point of weeping -- which I say pointedly, as I cry in a lot of movies -- but I had a bigass smile on my face for most of its runtime. 

Its large ensemble cast is uniformly solid in what they do, but there's not a whole lot of featured moments for any of them to shine. Mark Hamill and Tom Hiddleston are excellent, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Karen Gillan have nice chemistry, and Carl Lumbly and Jacob Tremblay sell their scenes with gusto. I would add that Annalise Basso makes a case for herself as a leading actress in a big way, and I hope to see more of her on the big screen. Almost like those anthology holiday romances in which all the couples are somehow related to each other as everyone learns to love, actually, this film avoids integral or featured performances in favor of more or less meaningful encounters between characters. This helps provide some flesh to the film as folks like Matthew Lillard, Kate Siegel, Rahul Kohli, David Dastmalchian, Heather Langenkamp, Harvey Guillen, Violet McGraw, and Q'orianka Kilcher pop in for a scene or two each. 

Yet, for all this, it's hard to describe or even label the film. It pulls from the likes of affirming holiday classics like It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol, for sure, but it also pulls ideas from Being There and Amelie and Footloose and Nine Days while never feeling like anything else out there. In the first act, I was wildly excited to see what would happen; it felt like the kind of sci-fi drama that Denis Villeneuve or a younger Christopher Nolan might make. But each act has wildly shifting focal points and tones -- even within individual scenes -- and the film never recovers from the thrilling end of its first act. At least not for me. No amount of amazing dancing or stories about ghosts in the attic or Walt Whitman quotes was able to bring me back from distraction by that first act. So while I had fun dancing through The Life of Chuck (which, actually, is an odd title, since we only really see him as a kid and again as a middle-aged man before his death) along with its unequivocally beautiful spectacle, I still don't know quite what to do with it. And that seems to be very much not its intended effect.

The Last Showgirl (2025)

Score: 4 / 5

With a flair for the melancholy of yesteryear, Gia Coppola returns to the director's chair (after Palo Alto and Mainstream) in her best feature yet. I admit disliking her previous films, and feeling nervous heading into this one, not least because of the overblown and largely misunderstood nature of "showgirl" life in this year of Taylor Swift's shallow appropriation of the culture. Coppola hasn't yet handled much plot-driven storytelling, and that remains true here, as the film is more a character study than a narrative. So if you're looking for a dynamic story, glamorous energy, or the fantasy of theatrical burlesque, you might want to look elsewhere. But if you're used to Mrs Henderson Presents and Moulin Rouge and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Burlesque and want something with a bit more teeth, look no further than The Last Showgirl. 

Le Razzle Dazzle is a long-running French-style revue on the Vegas Strip, and Shelly has performed there for three decades. Now 57, she's blissfully (perhaps willfully) resilient and persistent, sure that she'll continue working as a showgirl until she dies. Shelly comes from a time when showgirls, to be employed and successful, worked tirelessly for their craft. Of course, the dancing is a major part, and keeping up one's health to maintain a certain body image that will garner tips, but she's also a seamstress, choreographer, props master, and even a sort of de facto manager of her costars, the significantly younger women who dance in her show. She's a motherly figure to the young women, counseling them through professional turmoil and family abandonment and bad relationships and unwanted pregnancies, all while maintaining a caring and gentle demeanor in an old-school professional sense. When a doorknob has been changed backstage and it rips a gown, Shelly is the kind of busybody mother hen who will repeat her disdain about it until she finds who's responsible and berate them for the inconvenient oversight. She can't wrap her mind around the fact that things can and do change.

She's told, quite suddenly, by her old friend/former lover/stage manager Eddie (Dave Bautista in a subtle and brave featured performance), that the show is finally closing in two weeks, due to poor ticket sales. Shelly's reaction to this crisis fuels what little story is left, which is basically Shelly auditioning for another show, being confronted with prejudice about her age, and dealing with a lack of legacy, a lack of retirement savings, and a lack of family. It's a bleak and depressing story to tell, yet Coppola, writer Kate Gersten, and star Pamela Anderson work in graceful tandem to make what could be a tragedy something approaching life-affirming sublimity. 

Anderson imbues Shelly with more than we might expect from the real-life Playboy Playmate who became an internationally regarded actress from Baywatch on television to Chicago on Broadway. The brilliance of her casting only establishes a foundation for her mystique here, as she presents a fully-realized and deeply flawed woman in the prime of her life who nobody believes is in the prime of her life. She knows the history of her craft and tries to impart it to her younger comrades in their cramped dressing room: their show honors "Parisian Lido culture," she preaches to the girls rolling their eyes and wishing she'd shut up so they can get onstage. Yet Shelly is also effete to a fault, a fey sort of person, delicate and immature-sounding, almost babyish in her sickly sweet affectation. She's also stubborn and weirdly attached to life as she imagines it, living life through distinctly rosy glasses as she chooses glitz and glamor over things that are messy and tarnished.

To that end, Shelly is estranged from her daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd, another inspired casting choice), who comes visiting. During their talks, we quickly gather that their relationship is strained to a breaking point. Shelly wants to have a relationship with her adult daughter, but Hannah won't have it. Furious that Shelly would give up her baby to a foster family -- details are vague on this arrangement -- to pursue her dreams of dancing in feather boas and rhinestone-bedazzled bikinis, Hannah is about to graduate college and seems to want some kind of closure with her mother. Or at least to give her one last chance to be the mother Hannah always wanted.

Spoiler alert: things don't go well. While we might easily blame Shelly for her ignorance about Hannah's life -- she forgets Hannah's age and major, right off the bat -- Hannah seems determined to make her mother miserable for effectively abandoning her. Hannah even attends Shelly's show for the first time, curious about what her mother gave her up to do instead; her excoriating review of the show is a highlight in this film, shattering Shelly's lifelong esteem and purpose while provoking real territoriality and anger from the woman who so clearly needs to express real, raw emotions. Life on the stage can so easily make someone disingenuous or even unemotional in real life, and Shelly has built her mask to last.

Shelly's life seems to be that of a hermit. Without much money and without any family, she hides away in her dark little home to watch Hollywood golden-age dancing videos with the likes of Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse, losing touch with reality and with her own future prospects. She has no concerns that her own show could close -- and indeed is closing -- and no real plans for what comes next; her nostalgia is a prison through which she is forced to reconsider her own legacy, purpose, capabilities, and of course the cost of having chased her dreams. Thankfully, we're not simply adrift in her fracturing sense of self; this isn't Black Swan, though it does share some connective tissue. Not least of note is that Shelly is also kind of nasty when things don't go her way, or when she feels slighted; she's more a petulant child than a professional showgirl, and most people tolerate or ignore her eccentricities. But she has a special friend who provides the film's best scenes of context and contrast.

Jamie Lee Curtis steals the whole movie as Annette, Shelly's longest friend who used to dance in the same show. Now a cocktail waitress in a casino, and gambling perhaps more than she should, Annette is a grotesque figure with a gorgeous personality. Chain-smoking and an alcoholic, she even loses her home in this brief story, and frankly I wanted to know a hell of a lot more about her character. When she, too, faces being laid off in favor of younger servers, she wades into the deep end, arriving at work anyway and dancing on a table (to "Total Eclipse of the Heart," and this is the single best use of that song I've ever witnessed) in a total haze. It wasn't until certain scenes with Curtis that I became aware that the grainy, oddly focused with a blurry periphery, dreamlike cinematography wasn't intended to put us into Shelly's headspace. Rather, it's simply the visual approach to people in this world. They're all the center of their own shows, and the camera frames them as if it were an unfocused spotlight practicing its movements.

I loved the simplicity of this film. Actually, it feels like Coppola is filming in a style similar to Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Anora) in its arthouse approach to a quiet character drama couched in a larger, stylized world slowly decaying. This approach has the effect of putting us at ease in the viewing experience, and it seems to put the performances at ease as well; this is some of the most naturalistic acting I've seen on screen all year, and that's saying a lot when these women are strutting around in their getups. We're given almost no direct (or reliable) information regarding the actual content of her show; the closest we get to her reality is her audition for another show, which is awkward and painful to watch, particularly due to Anderson's palpable joy and star-struck eyes. Around her, these realistic and grounded characters bounce off each other in naturalistic and believable ways. But make no mistake: Anderson and Curtis are alchemical in this tightly framed little window into the souls of struggling, aging women who bought into the American dream and now must face the cost.