Verity (2026)

Score: 1.5 / 5

Synonymous with truth, verity dictates that I be honest about my feelings. I was crushed with disappointment by the time my screening of Verity ended last night. 

While Colleen Hoover has never held interest for me -- her novels, primarily immature romances, are not appealing, nor are the films based on them, despite starry casts -- I've been recommended her foray into mystery/thriller territory several times since its 2018 publication. So this past week, I tried reading it before this exciting new film released. Without meaning to yuck anyone's yum, it's simply not for me. Hoover's prose repeats itself ad nauseam, flirts with eroticism without actually containing any good sex, and rips shamelessly from better literature without twisting or adding anything of substance to the subgenera. In a rare move for me, I didn't even finish the book, and I'm better off for it. But I had hopes enough that the film would be diverting and entertaining, especially with its great cast.

Alas.

Paralyzed by a mysterious car accident, popular horror/thriller author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway, having an incredibly prolific year and clearly having a fun time with her insidious role in this film) is homebound at her remote, rural manse, cared for by a nursemaid and her attendant husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett) and her sole surviving child, Crew. We learn that their other child, Crew's twin, had sometime previously been pulled from the lake behind their house, though the specifics are kept mum until much later. Her multi-million-dollar bibliography is unfinished, though, and her agent and fans alike are eager to capitalize on what's left of her creative power, though she's been rendered pathetically catatonic.

Enter Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson, in the wide-eyed ingenue with an axe to grind role she's mastered), a fairly average writer in a similar genre. She's our protagonist and entry point into the world of writing fiction: we meet her in a bookshop reading for her latest title, with all of five people in attendance, one quickly leaving when their phone interrupts the event. Walking somewhat dejectedly to a meeting with her agent, she is splattered in gore when a pedestrian is brutally slain by accident at an intersection. A perhaps too-nice man notices her shock and escorts her to a nearby bathroom to clean up, literally lending her the shirt off his back so she can make her meeting. Lo, and behold: he's Jeremy, the man who she and her agent indeed meet with shortly, and he wants her to finish his invalid wife's high-stakes series.

But the arrangement comes with strings, of course. He inexplicably won't gather Verity's notes and send them to the writer or an agent. Instead, he requires that Lowen come live with the Crawfords to go through the notes herself and, presumably, get a feel for Verity's life, style, and perspective. It's perhaps the first insult to the audience's sensibilities. Especially if you've seen any of the numerous attempts at re-dramatizing this basic yet oft-repeated plot, perhaps most recently in last year's The Housemaid, which I criticized some too in similar ways, yet ideas and images from which will remain in my mind for some time yet, to its credit.

Not only is it laughable that a man who seemingly has it all (and I found myself wondering what, exactly, it is he does for a living, since he's apparently the world's best dad and most attentive husband) can't make heads nor tails of some literary notes, but the whole premise is a blatant rip-off of other, more exciting stories in which a young female servant enters a domestic arrangement designed to undo her. Whether we're talking The Turn of the Screw or Jane Eyre, it's one of the oldest Gothic tropes in Western literature, complete with the incapacitated cuckquean wife trapped inside to witness (spoiler, I guess, if you've never read a novel) her abusive husband's latest conquest. Hell, this even steals from Rebecca, with Lowen regularly imagining Verity speaking to her in ghostly voiceover, narrating her stories and the secrets of her life in tandem.

By film's end, nothing comes of this genre-bound exercise. I counted no fewer than three revelatory twists -- Verity's memoir as fictional, Verity's faking of paralysis, and Jeremy's revenge -- all of which we see coming a mile off. Sure, I figured more than once that Jeremy himself had penned her dubious, casually confessional memoir (which Lowen discovers on a flash drive in a box of cigs and sets up a parallel plot in which Verity's romance and motherhood are dramatized), but the ridiculous idea that it was a psychological tool meant to help her fiction by getting into the mind of her signature protagonists (apparently exclusively homicidal femme fatales) is so outrageous, it feels almost intentionally harmful and targeted at art therapists. That she's faking it is hinted at multiple times, including early moments where Lowen sees Verity walking around the house, but that's she's apparently convinced everyone else (including a husband who literally tried to kill her and cover it up) for so long is impossible. At one point, I was sure the nurse had to be in on her performance, but nothing is made of that, and that character is utterly wasted. And by the time Jeremy fakes his own shock and surprise at learning of Verity's false written confession and suffocates his pleading wife, I was frankly embarrassed at having come to see this movie.

Instead of leaning into interesting conversations at such moments of heightened melodrama, the film suggests its ideas and then forces action to derail us. It's never clear exactly what Verity's plan was or why she wouldn't immediately try to get help out of her situation from the several people with private access to her.: the nurse, her son (though apparently he knows she's at least partly functional and they play together), Lowen herself, or even Verity's own agent, the moron who suggested she create a false autobiography in front of her husband. Johnson plays her well, but the character is unbearably fatuous to read (hence my DNF choice) and somehow the film pulls off the same effect, even without her actual narration. It's never clear what Lowen wants, either: she lounges around the house for days, helping herself to copious coffee and booze, creepily trying to get Crew to like her, spying on the resident invalid and her hunky husband, but the only work we actually see her doing is laying out a few dozen index cards (apparently Verity's notes on the series, so crisp, clean, and well-organized that a kid could have gone through it all faster) and lying down between them. She snoops and discovers Verity's memoir, it's true, but then she spends days reading it. I'm sorry, but this isn't just an interesting bit of free-time reading, girlfriend; it is literally your job right now to get inside the mind of the woman for whom you are ghostwriting. Make haste! And stop fretting that the husband isn't paying you more attention.

And don't even get me started on the ending, when, (again, spoiler, I guess?) Jeremy and Lowen, now pregnant, move out of Verity's house yet not before Lowen discovers a handwritten letter from Verity that is so nonsensical as to have completely taken me out of the viewing experience. Thus, Lowen knows she's doomed herself to Verity's own fate. But I already hated Lowen, so her fate felt grimly satisfying to me.

Which brings us to what might have been my final straw: the "erotic" romance of this just doesn't work, unless you accept that they're all just terrible people. Especially Lowen. Once she finally decides to try and prove her host is faking her condition, a memorable scene has Lowen use a thumb tack to viciously stab Verity, insulting her and gloating about how she's taking Jeremy right under Verity's baleful gaze. Lowen is a monster, a parasite eager to suck up the things Verity has earned but that Lowen has only ever wished for. Including her husband, who is painted in such broad strokes as to be more of a caricature than a character, and I mean that in the screenplay, not as Hartnett capably plays him (always with that earnest, golden retriever energy calculatedly disguising an edge). It was he, we learn, not Verity, who had read Lowen's one successful previous title; he, not Verity, who liked her voice. He who had read Verity's fictional tale of murdering their child and chose to stage her suicide rather than, I don't know, talk to her about it or report it to the authorities. So by the time he and Lowen consummate their smut-coded yet disappointingly flaccid chemistry, I was just annoyed at everyone's annoying habit of making the stupidest choice available to them in any given moment.

If you like a basic story and want pretty things to look at, you could do worse than turning this on while working on a puzzle. The actors are all wonderful and add surprising and satisfying layers to their respective characters, especially Hathaway giving camp, doing a sort of upper class matron with sultry inflection. Gorgeous production design in costumes and the house seem to vibrate in some scenes, captured by warm light and some nicely balanced cinematography. The film draws us into its visual pleasures in all the ways the screenplay doesn't, and while Verity is far tamer and more prudish in practice than the erotic thriller of the late '80s/'90s it desperately wants to be, I'd still call it a sensual thriller for its alluring tactility. Its themes of truth and lies, fiction and reality, and obsession and control should have offered fertile ground for inventive, transgressive storytelling, but instead the pleasures of this source material stop there, forcing the filmmakers to, thankfully, improve at least the viewing experience if nothing else. I just wish someone in the creative team also improved what doesn't work about the source material.

And that's the truth.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)

Score: 4.5 / 5

The Mandalorian and Grogu is a magnificent Star Wars film. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Sure, there are no lightsabers, no large battlefields, and no overt connection to any previous films in the franchise. Sure, it's arguably the culmination of the so-called Mandoverse of streaming series (can we even call it television?) thus far. And sure, we follow a character whose face is almost never seen and his puppet sidekick in an endless parade of abundant CGI settings. But it's also a highly entertaining adventure, rife with riotous comedy (something SW is at its best, though rarely emphasized in its films) and weird sci-fi-isms, and a completely standalone pleasure to behold. You don't really need to know much lore to love this movie, and that's a rare thing these days. So if you want to know what I think, know that I loved this film and have now seen it several times.

But now, we plunge into nerd-dom, and I make no apologies for it. Proceed at risk of your own coolness.

Opening with excellent text for exposition, the film has the thankless task -- like its non-"episode" predecessors -- of bringing that SW sensation right off the bat. And it does! Between Ludwig Goransson's iconic score, here reorchestrated in multiple ways to feature more subtle sounds and prove flexible in liberal application to the runtime, and and some eye-popping visuals in its opening scene, this film grabs your attention, then earns it, then forces you to respect it. All before the title card and opening credits (yes, sadly, we do get opening credits here, for the first time in a SW film). While I wanted more context and story about the imperial remnant, it just wouldn't have been appropriate to introduce them in an otherwise independent film like this; really, they should be the focus of the next season of the show, if we get one.

So instead of learning about all the imperial (perhaps ex-imperial?) warlords roaming free, we zoom in on one who seems to have set up his base in a snowy mountain range on Maldo Kreis (one of two brand-new planets featured, along with Shakari, which seems to be an homage to something between Gotham City and Jazz Age Chicago). He's squeezing the locals for more than they can bleed until alarms start blaring. It sounds like an army is approaching quickly within the fortress itself. So when Mando, armor shining like a knight's, struts his way in amidst torrents from his wrist-mounted flamethrowers, you don't need to know about the three seasons of The Mandalorian or The Book of Boba Fett to know he's the baddest bitch in town. 

He takes out his enemies one by one, methodically stepping through impossible odds -- "never tell me the odds!" says another swashbuckler in this IP -- with surety, confidence, and grace. Apparently two different performers play the on-set physical manifestation of Mando, and their physicality determines our buying the core of believability and relatability in this film. They slay. Almost immediately after his indoor victory, Mando has to hurry outside to catch up with the Imp, chasing him down on a narrow mountain pass. The Imp is hiding in one of three AT-ATs, fearsome transports that Mando eliminates with something that resembles satisfaction, if not ease. But by this point, he's been joined by Grogu, his apprentice and adopted son, the puppet so long known as Baby Yoda due to his species remaining a mystery and rarity. 

The wee one's screen presence has arguably never been better, and that's really saying something. Each shot with the puppet is picture-perfect, so clearly calculated for maximum cuteness that it's a small miracle the rest of the film holds up. I haven't made so many noises in a theater in years, and by noises I mean shrieks, cries, whines, moans, sniggers, chuckles, cackles, sobs, chortles, whimpers, and yells. He just brings it out of you. Actually, he's not dissimilar in that way, for me, to Scrat, the squirrel from Ice Age, whose mere name has me breaking out in a goofy grin. Grogu is always moving, often lowkey scary (he implodes a mouse droid in his first onscreen moment), and hilariously eager to help. What can a nonverbal, foot-tall li'l guy do when danger approaches? Well, perched on Mando's shoulder as he is, Grogu knocks rapidly on the back of Mando's helmet. But the visual -- and the speed -- elicits a screech from my vocal cords every time. 

Thankfully, the two leads basically split the film's runtime as well as its narrative, which only seems fair given he titular double billing. The first half of the plot concerns a mission the pair are assigned by Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver in an underused but welcome appearance): to find and capture Commander Coin, the most elusive and mysterious remaining warlord. The Hutt Twins (featured in The Book of Boba Fett and introduced as the successors to Jabba's throne) have information they're willing to sell the New Republic in exchange for a mission of their own. As these things go, they task Mando to find and return Rotta the Hutt, Jabba's son (last seen as a wee slugy babe in The Clone Wars), ostensibly to free him from a captor but , secretly, really to kill him and eliminate any threat to their rule. 

Much of the first half, then belongs to Mando as he sleuths his way through Nal Hutta and Shakari to find Rotta. But Rotta, he learns soon enough, has no intention of going because he's a star. A self-made man who has escaped the shadow of his late father and made a legitimate name for himself as a gladiator-style warrior. He's a surprisingly insightful character, and an articulate one, and Jeremy Allen White's dulcet tones are a bit jarring heard from a hunk of a giant green blob before settling into an affected sonorous purr. He exemplifies the theme of complicated fathers and sons (a big SW theme, of course) that has been plaguing Mando and Grogu for so long now. And just when you think it couldn't get any more interesting or surprising, we, too, get thrown into a game. 

It's dejarik. Yes, that dejarik. The claymation sci-fi chess game we saw in the original film, which now we can only assume is the kid-friendly version of what is really a gladiatorial battle to the gory death. The rich criminals of this part of the galaxy -- run by local crime lord Janu -- pay big bucks to import deadly exotic monsters and thugs (oops, excuse, I meant animals and prisoners) and watch them slaughter each other in a truly brutal mess. And the crowds are eating it up. It's so easy to get on our moral high-horse in moments like this, but think on it: the masses of Geonosians cheering on the spies' demise in ep2, the decadent and wicked gamblers in ep8, the general "scum and villainy" (ep4) of the galaxy are most of the populace in a time of fighting against fascism. And watching these ones cheer on a vicious melee would be disturbing if it wasn't a dream come true for those of us who grew up wondering about those dejarik beasts on that holotable in the Millennium Falcon all those years ago.

This half of the plot gets wrapped up rather easily -- spoiler alert, but Janu is Coin, so once Rotta spills them beans, Mando's job is basically done. Well, there's a chase and a raid to be had yet, and those are thrilling action sequences laced with pitch-perfect comedy. The mystery dissipates too fast in that convenient double identity, so what's left is extraction. But's is all a muscly, nerdy fun series of set pieces that never lets up its sense of awe and pleasure in itself. That's the best kind of franchise film: one that just enjoys itself for what it is, on its own. Rather like Rotta, actually. 

The second half of the film is quite tonally different. If we didn't know that director and co-writer Jon Favreau wrote this film as a film, I'd swear it was two slightly expanded episodes of the show. Maybe he means it to feel that way. Embo (a mysterious bounty hunter seen in The Clone Wars) and his frightening pet dog (or perhaps partner?) catch and grab Mando to take him to the Twins for satisfaction on their deal. This leaves Grogu with a team of Anzellans (the cutest, most darling and equally noise-provoking little puppet aliens who speak in a heavily accented pidgin) to follow and rescue Mando from the Twins' stronghold. They do, and the story leans into rather thick sentiment when, once rescued, a wounded Mando must be attended by Grogu as his nursemaid, stuck as they are in the swamps of Nal Hutta with no available ship to flee. 

I must confess that, the first time I saw this film, I must have gotten some fatigue from pure joy, because it has only been in more recent viewings that I've found new things to laugh at and tear up about in the second half. It slows its pace, to be sure, even in its more action-y scenes, but now I feel it's a nice offbeat vibe to the film that fits its spacefaring gunslinging Western hero's genre-bending essence. And while I always want more SW stories about non-Jedi, this film's use of Grogu's connection to the Force is mercifully restrained, often to the point of only being used for comedy and expediency, which is better. And right around the time I was feeling ready to wrap it all up -- in a contented way more than in a distracted way -- we get a climactic sky battle with a squadron of X-wings bombing the shit out of the Twins' stronghold. Oh, and did I mention that this film features the Droid Gotra as the Hutt security team? We've gotten so little information about the Gotra, and I just love learning more about the various businesses and organizations and syndicates in the galaxy far, far away. The more, the merrier.

But this battle enraptured me right in time for a swift ending. It's exactly the uplift needed after a slightly more burdened second act, which is curiously the exact problem faced by Broadway musicals (is it a problem, though?). We even get Sigourney Weaver in one of those orange and white flight suits, which is a vision I'm thrilled to see. While I perhaps expected too much of this movie -- thinking, logically, that this would be time for a big character appearance or name drop or plot twist to launch us into the next season of Ahsoka and Dave Filoni's impending film climax to the series (it's all about Thrawn, which we simply do not have time to discuss here) -- I am now grateful that it resolutely and firmly does not make any overt connections to its own series. Sure, it connects characters, places, themes, and references from all eras of SW, and that's amazing and so satisfying for fans. But you don't even need to have seen all of the live-action series to thoroughly enjoy this film, and that's exactly what a franchise film needs to be if we're going to survive burnout. Look at what happened with the MCU (which so few of us keep up with anymore).

The Mandalorian and Grogu is how we keep this franchise alive and fresh.

Resident Evil (2026)

Score: 4 / 5

I am not the target audience for this franchise, but damn, that was one of the most entertaining cinematic experiences of my year. 

Never have I ever played a Resident Evil game, and though I think I saw one of the seven (?) previous films once in college, its memory does not burden me. I don't need excessively violent, gory horror that much. Thankfully, writer and director Zach Cregger (Barbarian, Weapons) makes his foray into this world accessible to even such an audience as me. Starting from scratch, he brilliantly crafts his own story in the world of the franchise, meaning that we don't need to know anything about its lore to fully enjoy this movie. 

While its title's meaning remains mysterious to me, this is the story of Bryan, an average young guy trying to do his job and get by. Austin Abrams (a breakout in Cregger's previous Weapons) imbues Bryan with a delicious sense of misery that allows him to be at once earnest and hilarious. A courier between medical facilities, he starts the film in a hospital and is tasked with taking a medical case with unknown contents to another hospital (one in Raccoon City, as fans of the series apparently know full well, meaning that the apocalyptic disaster plaguing the franchise hasn't yet begun). It's late at night and snowing heavily, so he declines the job before taking it for double pay. He's also on the phone with his girlfriend as they argue about what to do regarding her recent pregnancy, which really seems like the conversation one shouldn't be having while navigating a wintry mountain road. 

After striking a lone woman who runs in front of his car, Bryan's night goes from disastrous to hellish quickly. I hope a working title for this project was Bryan and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Night, because this kid cannot catch a break. Following Murphy's Law, the events of his night cascade into ever-deteriorating gauntlets and puzzles and chases he must survive. The woman survives and becomes violent, a cop pulls him over, his car fails, a dog chases him, he's attacked by randoms in a farmhouse, and so on. We learn soon enough that some kind of biological agent is spreading, turning people into vicious zombie-like monsters; once dead, they're usually still "alive," returning with decomposing skin and vicious tentacles and sometimes melding with other bodies. They're really more like John Carpenter's The Thing or del Toro's The Strain than any real zombies out there. Bryan still hasn't even gotten to Raccoon City, which we learn is overrun with the monsters; his goal of the top of the medical center's tower feels exactly like the goal of the video game we're playing.

Cregger and his team force us into the game-playing experience the film is clearly meant to provoke. We know nothing of the film's world beyond what Bryan knows. If he sees something, we also get to see it, and that's all. The camera is consistently -- and effectively -- hovering somewhere around his shoulders, and sometimes in his POV down the barrel of a gun. Cinematographer Darius Wolski (who often works with Ridley Scott, among other notable artists) also drowns the film in realistic, palpable darkness; sometimes only a gentle moonlight reflecting off the snow allows us to see the scene. Speaking of guns, a major concern throughout this film is how he will arm himself with weapons and ammo, yet they always tend to appear right before he needs them again. Gates often bar his path, armed with padlocks impervious to gunfire, which intensifies the remarkably sophisticated game-related humor this film exhibits. Set pieces are episodic, moving us from location to location with clarity of pace and purpose, propelling us forward with a classic grace. Actually, it might be better to say the screenplay is broken into missions, and there are fairly reliable "bosses" to overcome in each one. 

It's also notable here that Shay Hatten co-wrote this film with Cregger, and that his previous work was on John Wick Chapter 3 and Chapter Four, which also include video game-like obstacle courses through parades of never-ending enemies.

I can't say whether this is a suitable Resident Evil title, but I can say it's an astonishing work of entertainment and action horror. Sure, its climax was a bit too CGI-heavy for my taste and its ending was so unspeakably bleak and cruel that I'm not sure I liked its nihilism, but up to that point, it had me gasping for air. Beautifully crafted humor emanates from Abrams, whose Bryan carries the film as a fresh kind of horror film protagonist: an unwillingly violent young man whose moments of profound tenderness (pay attention to how he treats his entrusted package) are rivaled by his unbelievably capable physicality, which never gets to rest in this film. He's literally a gamer whose knowledge of video games helps him survive by using the cop's gun, the farmhouse's shotgun, and various real-time puzzle strategies. This movie might well earn the world record for number of spoken "fuck"s, because it's pretty much all he says in scenes only populated by himself and something that is trying to kill him. It's insane, and Cregger wants us to feel insane, too, which he does by so rooting our senses (visual and aural, of course, though more than once I wondered what Smell-O-Vision would do to a film with this much rotting flesh?) in Bryan's visceral experience. That way, the girl with a Lovecraftian leg and the Harkonnen substitute in the sewers feel so much scarier than anything we'd have imagined in an average zombie flick.

Practical Magic 2 (2026)

Score 2 / 5

Yet another legacy sequel graces us this month, unceremoniously opening the door to spooky season by reminding us why the '90s were better. Y'all know I'm no enemy of this endless new genre, but at some point audiences must surely come together to stop revisiting pre-millennium material to line the pockets of studio executives, right?

The 1998 cult classic Practical Magic carved a curious niche for many of us. A causally feminist comfort film that's a bit too sexy and scary for kids but too simple for mindful, invested viewing, the film manages to appeal and repulse simultaneously. Its gentle and memorable charms seem to be what has remained in fans' minds: midnight margaritas, self-stirring teaspoons in idyllic suburban homes, and needle drops so pointed that even nonsensical ones (yes, "Coconut" has a reprise here) feel like blunt-force trauma to the head. A film so mainstream and artistically parched it needs to tell viewers how to feel at each significant moment is not one meant to be taken seriously.

Yet here we are, almost thirty years later, returning to the Owens sisters. Akiva Goldsman inexplicably adapts this sequel to the original (from a novel by Alice Hoffman) and seems more interested in rehashing familiar ground than in capitalizing on new moments of comfort, joy, or inspiration. Yet he curiously also insults the memory of that first film more than once, begging the question why this film even exists.

Sandra Bullock's Sally ended the first film with happiness (and with Aidan Quinn, arguably synonymously), yet at the start of this one we learn he's been dead for decades. Apparently shortly after their wedding, Sally was forced to reckon with the Owens family curse yet again, denying her the life with him she fought for that whole movie. Oh well, Goldsman says, too bad. Let's try again!

Sally is determined to protect her daughters from similar heartbreak, so she swears off romance and enchants her children to forget they are even witches. The story proper begins with her now-adult daughters (though their ages and mannerisms are wildly confusing on that front) discovering that they are, in fact, witches and that their love lives carry a curse in real time. Bullock is immensely unlikable in this role. Not only is her character pretty awful in constantly attempting to control others by not communicating healthily, but she's also doing her Bullock thing: a sort of arch, dry caustic wit leveled at everyone around her but coming from a place of obvious and obnoxious self-repression. While surely most fans want to see Bullock being Bullock, I'd have rather watched a movie about Sally Owens. Sue me. 

Thankfully, Nicole Kidman swoops in to carry us through when we need her most. Her Gillian is a sort of Steve Nicks-esque sunflower who blooms on screen, never featured as she deserves but graciously nudging along key characters on their own paths. Director Susanne Bier (of too many titles to name, though I was both surprised and pleased to see her name attached to this feature) thankfully softens the blows of this film, making it perhaps less intense than it could have been. In her hands, the film is a patented love-letter to the original, evidenced by its early focus on the home life of the Owens women. Aunts Jet and Frances -- who I always thought were lesbian but are apparently actually really sisters? -- are shown providing for their community in peace and respect, which is nice. 

But then, instead of leaning into that dynamic and crafting a theme of community-building and intergenerational bonding, Practical Magic 2 dives into a fresh attempt to undo the Owens women's curse by its newest generation. Promptly doing away with Jet, the film aggressively says "goodbye" to its aged cast members in a way that feels both perfunctory and genuinely honorable. I'm not sure why Dianne Wiest had to be the one to go, but at least we get an underused Stockard Channing for the rest of the runtime. And Jet's plot is as bewilderingly awful as Sally's: these women's secrets are what is really cursing their family! Maybe the real practical magic in this world is simply telling the truth. Alas, Bier and Goldsman focus their time not on such ripe opportunities but on a convoluted new plot about a book and a raven and another book and a seer living in England and the whole thing is just absurd in the worst way. 

Characters don't communicate with each other well, resulting in annoyingly avoidable problems that render the film's runtime -- about half an hour longer than its predecessor -- an egregious slog. Two men show up to tempt the younger two generations of characters, including Lee Pace in a smoldering sort of role, and you probably don't need a crystal ball to guess where their plots will end up. I still couldn't tell you all the ins and outs of this tangled mess of a movie, even though Gillian and Sally are the exact same characters as before and people constantly act against their own interests.

Hope (2026)

Score: 3.5 / 5

The latest South Korean genre-mixing epic, Hope springs from the creative mind of Na Hong-jin, whose last feature film was an excellent horror titled The Wailing, a full decade ago.

Police chief Bum-seok watches over Hope Harbor, a small rural village near the Demilitarized Zone. Called out by a cousin to investigate some mutilated cattle outside town, Bum-seok returns to discover his town under attack. Bodies of townspeople litter the bloody street and buildings lie in wreckage that could have come from a tornado. He follows its path through town, finding friends alive and dead alike, none of whom seem able to understand the sudden violence visited upon them. Yet every time he slows to take a breather, another explosion, crash, or scream pierces the atmosphere, spurring him on to its source.

This takes almost an hour, nearly half the film. And it's magnificent. Na's command of suspense and production design make it an absorbing story indeed, as we learn tidbits of the chief's life and of those around him even as we follow him into danger. Na makes sure we never know more than the hero, and even the cinematography rarely lets us see more than what Bum-seok can see. We weave amongst dense sets and dressing, always in disastrous mess, often splattered with blood, each shot of which could be frozen and dissected for more information than we need. With each new crime scene, we're left wondering what on earth could cause such calamity? And can we trust the townsfolk, some of whom are intentionally painted as antagonistic.

Bum-seok's journey through his suddenly, mysteriously apocalyptic town is paralleled, in the plot, by that of his cousin in the forested mountainside nearby. He and his hunting friends search for answers to their original question in the woods before coming across... well, let's just say an answer to the film's central question of who or what is slaughtering the countryside. If you have any interest in seeing this film, I strongly recommend that you go in cold. There are moments of the viewing experience that can only be earned through your ignorance. You've been warned. 

Suffice to say that, even when the direct cause of the chaos is revealed at the end of act one, it's not really explained until later. Long tracking shots (the cinematography is utterly magical and transportive here; I was gasping as much by the action as by how they pulled off some of these shots) force us ever further into a treacherous, violent landscape, still smoking from its destruction. My mind jockeyed between possibilities in various genres before this one solidified itself. And while the journey to that revelation is more than worth a screening, I have to confess some dissatisfaction with the film's climactic ending. After the big reveal halfway through, the film levels up into a frenzied action flick, centered around an extended car chase through the ruined town that had me consistently on the edge of my seat. This sequence, CGI and all, gives any action scene coming out of Hollywood a run for its money and then some.

Yet by the time I was finally starting to feel some action weariness, the film's climax started. While I won't spoil it here, I think it's important to convey that the ending is wildly unsatisfying to this viewer. It riffs on a classic Western structure, of course, but in its final moments, the film swings us around to its surprise antagonists' perspective in a bizarre and wholly unexpected way. Thus the film's B-plot -- what I think of as its adventurous creature feature half, led by the hunting party and their discovery -- overwhelms its A-plot -- the riveting action of Bum-seok trying to save his home -- and ends itself right on the cusp of what, really, seems to be a missing second half. Not that I could endure more of this after two and a half hours of continuous action.

I could have, instead, used a bit more of the film's heart. A fellow cop shows up who is miraculously trained in field hospitals, offering some help to our hero and having his back in a big way. A couple locals provide ominous foreshadowing about what they know and what they've seen. But we don't really get to know or care about any secondary or tertiary characters, and that causes the film to feel more forgettable than it should. Arguably there's some drama towards the end, hinging on our understanding of the antagonists, but I found it unwelcome and nonsensical. Arguably, it's meant to complicate our viewerly desire for revenge and equilibrium, but I'm not sure the screenplay provides enough for that to be a convincing rhetorical move. And after the first half of the film visually sets up Bum-seok as its unlikely hero, the second half withdraws from this, making him feel weak and afraid in disingenuous ways to the film itself.

I wonder if there's a reading of this film in which Na is undermining and reversing the typical Western tropes of a hometown hero fighting off invaders. Here, that's how things start, but certainly not how they end. Characters become greedy and bloodthirsty, almost monstrous themselves, devolving before our eyes and under pressure from the calamity unfolding around them. And by the end, we're invited to consider the perspective of the invaders instead as being more righteous. Or at least more entertaining, which may also be the point. If so, Na is a genius who should be slapped for not finishing his commentary here and instead seeming to point at the need for a continuation of the story. 

Buddy (2026)

Score: 4 / 5

You've heard of the recent spate of gory horror flicks based on children's tales now in the public domain, yes? While I haven't yet experienced the guaranteed atrocities -- Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare, Bambi: The Reckoning, and Pinocchio Unstrung -- the trailers for Buddy had me worried about something similar. The titular figure, an anthropomorphic giant orange unicorn manifesting as a man in an oversized mascot costume, is a clear analogy to a figure like Barney or Big Bird, hosting an "educational" children's show teaching morals like telling the truth, being a friend, and cleaning up our messes. He snaps, going on a rampage with an axe, butchering the other characters trapped in his world.

But the film was -- to my surprise -- a psychological thrill ride loaded with deep questions about nostalgia, identity, and the dangerous ways we interact with both. Combining themes of absurdist entrapment from Severance and The Truman Show with Samuel Beckett's plays might be a lot to say of this film, but it certainly had me making those associations over its brief but effective 90-ish minutes. Actually, the best analogue to this film would be creator Casper Kelly's short film entitled Too Many Cooks, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in nightmare scenarios around childhood television shows. Actually, this might make for a cool double feature with Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow for the same reason. That which is comforting and fun becomes darker and dangerous as we sense its sinister reality bleeding into our own. 

The films' first act was my favorite: a Groundhog Day-esque series of truncated "episodes" of It's Buddy are strung together, end-to-end, as we meet the various child actors and their puppet-like friends who inhabit the television world. The mail carrier and nurse are human adults, but there's also a talking train engine, mailbox, backpack, flowers, and a giant friendly rabbit. The show is knowingly creepy -- Kelly clearly had a lot of demented fun riffing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" into a cult chant with adoring lyrics to the orange unicorn --and is designed to prey on millennial discomfort with knowledge of who inhabited those beloved yet inherently uncanny characters. Kelly slows things down with an incredibly deliberate pace, stretching out the film while packing in details and philosophic musings with gobsmacking economy. I think I counted at least three "episodes" before our first possible break from the show's usual format, and it feels like it, though I'm sure barely half an hour had passed by first bloodshed.

Because, dear reader, blood indeed flows. This is no gorefest like I feared, which makes Buddy's chosen moments of violence particularly nasty. No spoilers, but things start fairly tame and mysterious, but when Kelly decides to fuck with us, he doesn't hold back. Buddy himself -- voiced by Keegan-Michael Key -- is patently unhinged, a sort of charismatic and aggressively intimidating cult leader who demands everyone listen and adhere to his sense of how things should be in his world. His purported wisdom gets shallower and more desperate over time, and when he resorts to violence to maintain his control, he does so with a detached, almost cheerful inevitability. With cheerful voice he metes out both instructions and punishments in the style of Mr. Milchick in Severance, a sort of forcedly sweet hierarchical superior's tone that chuckles even as it tells you to obey.

The child actors are all excellent, and the featured adult roles -- especially by Cristin Milioti and Topher Grace -- added a wholly unexpected parallel dimension to the film when they're introduced in its second act. I can't spoil any more about the film's plot or structure because this truly is an experience you need to enter cold. With sly references to things like Beau is Afraid, Poltergeist, and even The Wizard of Oz, Buddy works on several levels simultaneously, engaging your mind and spirit with its twisted sense of what disturbs and unsettles us. While its ending left a bit to be desired from me -- it's shockingly bleak, and seems to want to open the door for a sequel I'm not sure we need -- this one will haunt my waking brain for some time yet.

Pressure (2026)

Score: 4.5 / 5

If you had told me that a surprise favorite film of the year would be a war movie wherein violence is only expressed in words and the battlefield is meteorology, I might have told you you were thinking of the wrong decade. Something like a mix between Eye in the Sky and a golden-era The Weinstein Company dramas, Pressure takes as its setting the planning headquarters for D-Day in the days leading up to that pivotal offensive in WWII. Allied leaders gathered in a large country estate in England are busy strategizing in secret, frenetically wiring various officers and logistics agents in preparation for the massive amounts of boats, planes, soldiers, and weapons that will be needed in what might well be the most complex and dangerous invasion in Western history. And they need the weather to cooperate. 

Opening with the "practice run" of sorts to D-Day, we see General Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser, playing the future US President with a grim and fierce edge) horrified by the catastrophe. Exercise Tiger resulted in over 700 fatalities due to breakdowns in communication and shortsighted planning. The US General and his British and Naval counterparts remain determined that their invasion will continue as scheduled, though this time they're bringing in extra hands to help strategize. Every detail will be accounted for. Nothing can be left to chance, not even the tides, waves, or sunshine. Unfortunately, those are the precise things that can never, truly, be predicted.

Summoning James Stagg, named by Winston Churchill as the best meteorologist in the world, Eisenhower sets him up in Southwick House. Stagg (played by a prickly and immensely unlikable Andrew Scott to great effect) is immediately antagonistic toward the office. Brought in last, he is short-tempered and austere with the other scientists and soldiers. He has no patience for their piano-playing in headquarters. He shouts at a construction worker in front of everyone. He kicks out his own liaison to the General so he can have a laughably large office space to himself, privately. He forces his team to recheck every bit of data and to collect ever more. He may have only limited knowledge of how to be a decent coworker, but he doesn't care; that's not why he's there. He's there to do his job and to save lives. 

Because, as the film unravels itself as a chamber piece, the real drama isn't how D-Day will unfold. It's when. A storm is brewing over the Atlantic, and Stagg's awareness of the jet stream and the chaotic nature of weather in and around the UK makes the proposed invasion day unlikely to the point of foolhardiness. Troops will be swamped in boats unable to reach the coast of Normandy if they approach at the wrong time during the storm. Unfortunately, Stagg is also up against an unexpected rival: the American meteorologist in the same office (an always reliable Chris Messina) is certain that the Allies will have clear skies on the planned date. When asked about it, he uses maps of atmospheric pressure -- note the double play on the title, which also describes the immense psychological and social pressures for the event planners -- from previous years to demonstrate the reliability of his forecast. Yet, as we know, 1940s meteorological science was a far cry from what it is today, and only Stagg seems aware that the jet stream is a real phenomenon. He's also the only one who seems to care that the other general's prior experience was in North Africa, a far cry atmospherically from coastal Western Europe. It's the kind of curious footnote in the film that makes me want to learn about the scientific history of such things. Alas, our homework is never complete.

Adapted from the play of the same name by David Haig (yes, the actor! Who knew he is also a playwright?), who co-wrote this adaptation with director Anthony Maras (Hotel Mumbai), Pressure is a thrilling and psychologically taxing viewing experience. Apart from a brief prologue -- the aforementioned bloodbath that opens the film in garish, candy-colored horror -- and an introduction and conclusion that give some emotional context to Stagg's character, the entire film takes place in and around Southwick House less than a week before the planned invasion. Meanwhile, Stagg is under additional pressure, worried that his pregnant wife in hospital could be bombed by Axis planes blitzing the nation. The whole thing is written to within an inch of its own life, and yet it works magnificently, partially thanks to inventive and vivid cinematography that never makes it feel theatrical. Kerry Condon delivers an unexpected but brilliant performance as Stagg's liaison to the General, the latter's secretary Kay Summersby, who acts as a sort of humanistic lynchpin between the male egos. In fact, all the performances rely on her to become more sympathetic as the film continues, until you're inching toward the edge of your seat in hopes that they'll succeed in their endeavors. 

The film's opening text says "This is a true story," not based on or inspired by, and yet by the film's halfway point, I was chewing my tongue in worry that their efforts may fail. That's how powerfully written, acted, and designed this film is.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026)

Score: 5 / 5

Jane Schoenbrun does it again, and this time, in a film that feels tailor-made for me personally. Have you ever felt that way about a film? Scholar and writer Pierre Bayard suggests that we all have a book inside ourselves that is always looking for its perfect match from an external artist, and that our preferences in art are shaped by how well (or not) new art "fits" our mold. I don't know how they did it, but Schoenbrun did that for me here.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma concerns, like their previous work, the power of pop culture/art to inform and even determine the identities of young people who consume it. Specifically, it targets fans of '80s slasher franchises who grew up with endless sequels in which Jason and Freddie and Michael are illogically killed and resurrected ad nauseam, roving the American landscape to slaughter sinners from rural Texas to suburban Illinois to Manhattan itself. During this film's opening credits, we're treated to dated and merchandised material related to a fictional version of such IPs, the Camp Miasma franchise, which clearly owned a major stake in the cultural milieu of the in-film world.

Yet, in Schoenbrun's hands, the film is not merely an homage or satire of Friday the 13th. It knowingly and explicitly recalls so many pop horror references -- including name drops like Neve Campbell and Heather Langenkamp, among others, that felt surprising and perhaps even a bit unethical considering their lives and continued careers -- that it often feels less like a fictional film and more like a film student's capstone project. There are also constant overt references to noir and queer films, the most obvious being Sunset Blvd and Sleepaway Camp, which add to the heady mix of cerebral and sensual pleasures offered once the story gets going.

And while I won't get into the plot much here -- it's perhaps the single element that might pull the uninitiated through the otherwise queer horror fever dream -- I do want to recognize that, despite its flamboyance and metatextual fictionality, this might be Schoenbrun's most grounded and accessible feature film yet. Their previous two films -- both excellent, if more understated and quietly disturbing -- premiered at Sundance as experimental and off-kilter entries, garnering cult praise and status as a result. Similarly, in this film, the main character (played by Hannah Einbinder, fresh off Hacks) has just debuted her film at Sundance; we're told it was basically Psycho from the perspective of the shower head, which had me cackling aloud. She's now been tasked with reviving an old, problematic slasher franchise for a studio hoping to capitalize on the queer and progressive niche-to-fringe audience market. After all, you get enough of the weirdos and freaks onboard, and suddenly the niche is mainstream.

In doing so, she becomes obsessed with the original star of the first Camp Miasma film to the point of tracking down the recluse, who has bought and currently lives isolated in the setting of that original film. Enter Gillian Anderson as the unbelievably erotic and insane glamazon who challenges the young filmmaker at every step while inviting her to be more human, less idealistic, and to create real meaning in her art. I was reminded more than once, too, of Chuck Tingle's Bury Your Gays in this film's unabashed lampooning of what happens when big business attempts to dictate new art. Frankly, that the slasher villain of this franchise is a queer mess of a person who wears a sort of camera obscura on their head that is at once vaguely vaginal and reminiscent of characters in Silent Hill; the killer is also called "Little Death," which leads us to lots of potential conversations about violence, orgasms, and one of the most articulate artistic explorations I've ever seen about how and why queer women might especially love these kinds of "unwoke" horror series.

Schoenbrun's direction and writing here is unparalleled in its constantly multiplying layers of meaning. Taking inspiration from classical art, they even manage to pull off an embedded story by showing much of the original "Camp Miasma" film that made Anderson's character a star (and a Norma Desmond wraith haunting the site of her own peak and rot). Humor abounds, especially in the first act, including a few sequences with excess of food -- both candy and fried chicken in gluttonous quantities each -- that had me attempting to stifle my laughter in the chillingly quiet theater. Much like the cartoonishly stylized violence we'll be subjected to in the film, these moments indicate for me that Schoenbrun is adding even more themes here about the consumables that plague artists seeking satisfaction. When in the throes of writer's block or creative drought, we so often gorge on unhealthy sensory things that feel instantly gratifying but never quite fulfill. 

And this is all just the tip of the iceberg. The backgrounds of many scenes are painted in matte style, almost glaringly obvious. A vibrant and emphasized color palette keeps things gay and dreamy. Offbeat needle drops imbue a semi-nostalgic sense of calm and comfortable unease throughout. This film will have many more screenings in my living room, so if you missed it in its limited theatrical release, please know that I'll literally never not want to watch this with you. It's very possibly my favorite film of the year. Let's get into it.

Coyote vs. Acme (2026)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Much like other films of its ilk -- Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Space Jam come readily to mind -- Coyote vs. Acme manages to straddle the age gap with aplomb, offering plentiful laughs and thoughtful cleverness suited for all ages. That this film was shelved for so long and almost scrapped entirely by the studio is a chilling reminder that our presence and financial support of titles at the box office matters and is consequential in terms of what gets produced and distributed!

Opening with a bizarre and delightful notice that the film is "based on a true story," we begin with a prologue indicating that a crime caper is underfoot. An animated Dr. Lorre (modeled after the late great character actor) flees armed Acme agents in his lab, using all kinds of strange company products to deter and stall his pursuers. He's leaked intel to a mysterious contact, but he's caught before he himself can escape. This plot will pick up again later, and while it's not the main focus of this film, it does inform the eventual climax, in which a massive company seeking ever greater profits in order to monopolize and rule the world is brought low by underdogs who have finally had enough of its abuse and exploitation. Hmm... perhaps it's no surprise Warner Bros. nearly axed it for a fucking write-off.

Anyway, screenwriter Samy Burch (whose magnificent work in May December feels like a far cry from her work here, yet she's clearly one of the most capable and insightful new voices we have) masterfully crafts a fun, silly story that should appeal to all ages. After a thrilling opening, she shifts us to a classic setup that feels equally nostalgic and hilarious: Wile E. Coyote, the famous emaciated and nonverbal predator, uses an endless supply of Acme products to attempt to catch and kill his nemesis, the impossibly fast-moving Road Runner. Visual and aural gags abound in this raucous sequence that had some of the loudest laughter I've ever heard in a cinema, and I was easily the youngest person present. 

There's a purity of purpose and of joy in a film like this, thanks to Burch as well as director Dave Green, that doesn't hinge on franchise continuity or on product placement. This movie isn't trying to get kids to buy new action figures or lunch boxes, and there's no annoying music or slapdash action. To be sure: there is action here, but it doesn't have the frenetic editing and obnoxious score that plagues most animated fare for kids these days. This movie knows its primary audience may well be millennials and older generations who could bring their kids or grandkids to appreciate something a bit more mature in nature.

Which sounds weird when so much of the film involves an animated homicidal canine attempting to use rocket shoes to catch his prey, but it works surprisingly well.

The story proper, as indicated by the title, concerns Coyote's ennui about constantly failing in his compulsion. He turns to legal action against Acme after seeing an ad for Will Forte's legal firm. I don't remember Forte's character's name, but it doesn't really matter. He's the "nice guy" lawyer who probably started with a sense of purpose and has been so battered by life that he really only exists to settle cases now. His settlements, moreover, are almost always in favor of Acme itself, who pays pittance to cartoon characters with grievances. In this world -- a strange one that perhaps other films in the IP have addressed, but that depicts cartoon characters living in tandem with the real world, despite having a fairly tertiary role as entertainers instead of fully-fledged citizens -- nobody else seems to care what happens to cartoons as long as they're funny and fairly inconsequential.

At first annoyed and then begrudgingly inspired by Coyote's determination to bring Acme to task, Forte -- along with the audience -- gets swept up into a hybrid mystery-action courtroom drama saga and eventually decides to go for Acme's jugular. They're making, he discovers, intentionally flawed products for cartoons as test subjects, so they can refine their products for much larger and more devious purposes in the "real" world, for humans. Of course, Foghorn Leghorn is the owner of Acme, but he's basically untouchable behind his cadre of sycophants and bullies, led by John Cena and Tweety Bird. Forte is the film's everyman: a down-and-out guy who finally finds a calling, a purpose, and whose earnest efforts to that end are a foil to the rambunctious and often self-sabotaging efforts of Coyote and the other cartoon characters. Even the other humans are a bit ridiculous, but fittingly so. Lana Condor plays the other emotionally affecting role as Forte's assistant (and niece), and their paired performances are so well attuned to each other that it's remarkable to think they're often sharing the screen with invisible scene partners.

Some people might take umbrage with the oft-reiterated mystery plot line, and some might balk at a somewhat inflated runtime. But those are small potatoes when the film's boons keep returning on our investment. I can't even begin to recount the sheer joy of cameos by some of our favorite animated characters in unexpected ways, including Taz, Daffy, and of course Bugs himself. Luis Guzman's strait-laced judge is an absolute pleasure, as is Martha Kelly's deadpan legal partner. There's a car chase, an insane asylum, a tunnel with a train, Goldbergian machines, vaudevillian slapstick, clever puns and adult humor, and a surprisingly touching theme that coalesces in the denouement about the duality of friendship and purpose. We're all chasing our roadrunners, but what do our roadrunners think of us?

Passenger (2026)

Score: 2 / 5

So... hope that your car doesn't get scratched, or you'll be haunted to death?

Andre Ovredal is a solid filmmaker, as evidenced by his remarkable streak of horror films, including Trollhunter, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, and of course The Autopsy of Jane Doe, which is a perennial favorite of mine. But even the best practitioners don't land every attempt, and while Passengers has its moments of terror and technical prowess, this was a miss for me. It doesn't even feel like an Ovredal film, and it often gave me the impression it was rushed through production and maybe even had a mix-up of behind-the-scenes folks, because some of its elements simply don't follow through or make sense in retrospect. I'm not even sure I remember enough of it to offer a useful review, but do let's try.

Paramount chose to release Ovredal's latest without much advertising and on a mischosen weekend based on other releases. We might wonder if they did so to "bury" it and push it out of their queue. Even without much public interest (things like Scary Stories and the Dracula chapter can drum up their own audiences just by virtue of their title, whereas this one is generic to a fault -- yes, even in its title), the film should still excite fans of Ovredal in general. It's a low-budget scarefest with only Melissa Leo as a known star in a bit part, and its plot is the kind of B-movie shlock we love to see at midnight screenings and drive-ins.

Belonging to the odd subgenre of "car horror," the film concerns young people driving out in the boonies as they're haunted and hunted by a mysterious and deadly titular hitchhiker. Yet this one is not quite like Duel, The Hitcher, or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, doubtless because its big bad is -- you guessed it -- a nonhuman, malevolent entity. It pulls more from the likes of Jeepers Creepers in that regard, so if you like that vibe, definitely give this one a try. Ovredal drowns the film in palpable darkness and almost vicious attention to things like headlights and turning signals, so it's a visual feast for anyone eager to peer into the darkness to see that which they probably don't want to see.

There's a suitably spooky opening scene about two young men getting attacked by said ghoul, but the real story -- if "story" is a reasonable word for a road trip through hell -- starts when a young couple (Jacob Scipio and Lou Llobell) move into their renovated van and flee the city to live on the road. This nomadic lifestyle is gaining popularity these days of unaffordable life in conventional settings, but it's obvious these kids are in for trouble. Despite initial excitement, the two aren't really feeling great about such a life six weeks into their new routine; rather, she's not, and it seems less likely that they'll revert to another plan than that they'll break up due to their different expectations and dissatisfactions. Yet before we get into the Nomadland of it all, they come across the boys from the first scene -- what's left of them -- and unwittingly pick up the demonic spirit that caused the horror.

Unfortunately, we get a lot of time spent on the main couple, and they just didn't work for me. We learn a lot about their past, their proclivities, their interests and activities; I just didn't care about any of this wdrldbuildling. We need it (otherwise they're just flesh to become carnage), but I'd have liked more substance to them, and ideally that they'd match attempts at theming once the horror kicks in. Thankfully, the film avoids needless exposition on the Passenger himself, allowing the mystery and horror to take over. That does make some plot points feel underbaked, as we're never quite sure what the "rules" are for him, but I think that helps with the tension in this instance. The plot's premise is too basic and derivative for me to care much about "lore" it might try to build. Think of this kind of film like a ghost story around a campfire; we don't need logic, we need scares.

That is something Ovredal handles well, as always, alongside his cinematographer and editor. There's a scene where the female lead walks across a large empty parking lot at night to her van, and my skin was crawling as the camera spun around her, each time revealing something just wrong in her vicinity. Like the distance between herself, the store, and the van, or the approaching figure of the Passenger himself. Another memorable sequence takes place as the couple camps out to watch Roman Holiday in the woods with their projector, which they end up using to try and light the forest in their attempts to ward off their attacker. These moments will stick with me, even if I don't remember most of the rest of the film. It also -- and this surely sacrificed my pleasure -- often results to intentional comedy, which sapped the film of much of its horror. One-liners, often admittedly clever, are dropped a little too often, and at least one soundtrack choice heading into an important scene made it feel more like a rock concert than a climactic confrontation. 

Nothing wrong with a fun little thrill ride like this, and frankly it's a fine piece of filmmaking. It just doesn't carry much heft or offer anything original, feeling a little too derivative and a little too simple. On the other hand, I'd happily pop this in on a low-stakes date night or Halloween party, especially if it was outside or in a drive-in. Not everything needs to be hyped or promoted to be worthwhile, and many fine films offer serviceable entertainment for those of us who just enjoy squirming in our seats once in a while.