Pillion (2026)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Come for the kinky sex. Stay for a transcendent and challenging story of self-discovery and learning how to take the reins of your own life.

Pillion, the feature film debut of writer and director Harry Lighton, is adapted from a 2020 novel of a different name. The title, tellingly, refers to the secondary seat on a motorcycle, for a passenger along for the ride instead of doing any driving. Appropriately, the film dramatizes a sexual relationship between an eminently dominant man and a profoundly submissive one, quite literally one who drives a motorcycle and one hanging on for dear life. As is true in most comedy, it works best as a mirror for ourselves: most of us, at least at some point, chose to be merely a passenger (or spectator, if you rather) in our own lives, allowing someone else undue influence and power to the point of control, and we were happy to do so. It can be easier, can't it, to let someone else care for us?

In this case, it might also feel better to let someone abuse us. That's where the film gets interesting. It doesn't really articulate its own psychological justification, but it does offer a clear-eyed window into the steamy, sexy, raw, and often awkward life of two men engaging in a somewhat taboo sexual relationship. Colin (a compelling and brilliant Harry Melling) lives with his aging parents and sings with his barbershop quartet, the picture image of an incel who means well, too shy and sheltered to pursue any kind of individuality or even his own dreams. So when a leather-clad biker named Ray (an effortlessly sexy Alexander Skarsgard, clearly having a blast in the role) gruffly invites and controls a fast, fierce fellatio in the alley, Colin is completely enraptured at a new horizon of opportunity. He's also a little smitten by the mystery man of his dreams.

Lighton's approach to their budding relationship isn't salacious or sleazy, which might affect your mileage with the film. Sure, it's sexy, but mostly in a heartwarming, even funny way. Lighton frames his characters -- especially the giant-sized Skarsgard -- in knowingly witty ways, ensuring that we never forget the wild mismatching of these stars and their star-crossed characters. He's often in focus and on a plane with more power than other characters, but he occasionally also offers stability and comfort simply due to his blocking and placement in the frame. Thankfully, Lighton also avoids what might be an expected pitfall by carefully not making either man an antagonist, or even really a villain at all. Sure, Ray does some bad things, but for most of their relationship, Colin actively seeks that out. 

Colin wants to experience a wilder side of life, so he abandons himself to the whims of a man willing and able to make those calls. Melling tactfully and carefully delivers a performance that's best when he's nonverbal, nervously gazing at his dom for approval and assurance, or studying the other biker gang members to see just how he fits in and how he might improve himself in their eyes. Lighton doesn't quite detail the dynamics of these lifestyles, so don't expect an education on BDSM relationships in this film. But he does underscore that this particular dynamic is neither sustainable nor ultimately healthy for these two men, and it's painted in colors we can all understand. We all want love, and might allow undesirable things to happen to us when we're swept up in the excitement of something new.

Not to get too personal, but I found this film's exploration of the life-affirming process of learning not to accept what you think you want and instead pursuing greater self-awareness and sustainable relationships to be deeply cathartic and healing. And by film's end (spoiler alert), when Colin learns that perhaps his relationship with Ray -- while having taught him valuable lifelong lessons -- needs to end, I was a blubbering mess in scenes that most people would probably find simply nice. That's part of the beauty of film in general, and especially from a studio that empowers its artists to do the weird, personal art: some will hit us unexpectedly hard. Hopefully we can all be adults about it.

The Drama (2026)

Score: 3 / 5

After his genre-bending humorous nightmare Dream Scenario, writer and director Kristoffer Borgli dives into the fraught world of romantic comedies. As we should surmise from the title, this is not the meet-cute leading to courtship that ends with marriage; there will indeed be drama along the way. The Drama is nominally about revelations: due to a stupid dare among friends who clearly don't know each other as well as they should, two couples each share their individual shame. Go around the circle, and tell everyone the worst thing you've done in your life. Sounds fun, right? 

Of course, everything goes horribly wrong. Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson) are engaged, and her revelation that, as a teen, she planned a school shooting nearly destroys their relationship. She's drunk when she reveals this, and is sure to emphasize that she did not actually follow through or hurt anyone. But Charlie reels, wondering who this woman is and if he really wants to get married. Could she snap at any moment? Is the woman he's sleeping with and planning the rest of his life with capable of cold-blooded murder of kids? Even their friends (the other couple, played by Mamoudou Athie and Alana Haim) serving as best man and maid of honor are so horrified by this revelation that they withdraw from socializing in the week leading up to the wedding. 

Did I not mention? The timeframe of this film is literally the week before the wedding. Disturbing as this secret might feel to Charlie, we have to wonder why they haven't discussed deep, dark things before. Or, for that matter, why they don't have a therapeutic outlet for such disruptions to their relationship. Surely an emergency couples' therapy moment isn't out of the question, but instead the characters -- as in any rom-com or sitcom -- resort to shutting down and acting out in increasingly unhealthy ways. Emma apologizes endlessly, explicitly requesting "starting over" with any conversation that leaves her cornered and under the microscope, as of course they all do. Charlie, on the other hand, interrogates her at every opportunity, asking for more details, more justification, more reassurance. It's exhausting, even though Borgli has carefully paced things to avoid doldrums.

What is clear, even before Emma's revelation, is that Charlie is a sniveling coward of a man, riddled with crippling anxiety and so locked in his mind that he can barely engage for a full conversation. The opening sequence includes crosscut flashbacks to his meeting with Emma two years prior, and frankly it's a creepy introduction for us to his character. Thus, immediately, Borgli sets an unsettling tone not unlike any of a number of romantic thrillers of late: Charlie, spotting Emma reading in a cafe, hovers nearby to stare until Emma steps away so that he can hurry over and snap a pic of the book she's reading so he can look it up and say something clever about it. In this already semi-subversive moment, Borgli turns the screw yet farther by then having Charlie approach Emma not once but twice in an awkward exchange because, as she reveals, she's partially deaf and didn't hear him the first time.

Unfortunately, it's mostly downhill from here in terms of character interest. Sure, Emma's revelation is fascinating, but so are those of the others. One used his ex-girlfriend as a human shield against a dog attack, one locked her "slow" neighbor in an abandoned trailer overnight. Charlie himself admits to cyberbullying a kid who ended up having to move away. All committed actual violence on another person, yet when Emma describes her bullying and thinking about taking her father's rifle to school, they are so horrified they lose the ability to communicate humanely with her. Their self-righteous hypocrisy fuels the film, or at least it did for me: any time they showed up with their smug (and juvenile) piety, a veil of red descended over my mind until something else groan-inducing happened. 

In case you can't tell, the film juggles several thematic balls, and I'm not convinced any are brought to fruition, except perhaps Charlie's psychic violence being physically realized upon him before film's end. And he fully deserves it at that point, especially considering how he treats a co-worker. But it's hard to fully buy -- at any point in the film -- that Emma and Charlie even have much substance to their relationship. Perhaps it doesn't matter, but there's a hollowness baked into it. Perhaps her cute "why don't we start over?" suggestion at their initial encounter set a bad precedent for their relationship, wherein any time they argue they can just wipe it clean and disregard the real issues at the core of their dynamic. 

I do think it's a bit suspect that Borgli almost glaringly skirts the issues of Emma's gender and race while demonizing (and, arguably, redeeming) her in this story. Zendaya is performing a very different kind of character than we've seen from her of late; internalized and demure, apologetic and submissive in calculated ways. We wonder how much is real and how much is an act, perhaps intended to protect her from further accusations of being an "angry" Black woman or mentally ill, etc. So she listens and weeps and collapses her body to seem small, remorseful, and penitent. But she never really indicates if it's intentional or not, and I have to wonder if that's a result of the role being race-neutral; having the added layers simply as a result of casting becomes icky, though, as moments of her Louisiana background come to the fore and we see Charlie attempting to care for her as a violent madwoman of color.

But that's just my musing; the film itself sidesteps all these concerns, and I'm still not sure if that's for the better or not. It doesn't seem that Borgli is interested in us empathizing with these characters in the same way many romantic dramas are (I'm thinking of films about the dissolution of a marriage), preferring rather to make us feel uncomfortable and anxious. And in that, he succeeds magnificently. We're often treated to a warped sound mix, layering tidbits of conversation over each other into and out of scenes and montages, blurring the lines of reality and time. He sometimes saps the film of sound, putting us in Emma's aural perspective or, at least twice, in Charlie's stressed head. 

As a sensory experience and a conversation-starter, The Drama is more than worth a watch, preferably loud and with a group of intimate, hopefully married friends. As a story, and as messaging conveyed by the filmmakers, it doesn't quite satisfy. Kind of like its central relationship. Which makes the film's denouement especially complicated and uncomfortable, depending on how invested you become in these characters. 

The Mummy (2026)

Score: 3 / 5

Lee Cronin's big-budget bloodbath has more in common with the Evil Dead franchise than anything related to Universal's property, but that doesn't make it any less entertaining and disgusting.

In developing his original take on curses involving mummified bodies, Cronin crafts a strange story that removes any sentimental ideas about a pharaoh-mummy looking for his ancient lost love (like in the 1932 original or any of its sequels and remakes) or even one seeking global domination. Instead Cronin gives us a family grieving its daughter, abducted in Cairo with no trace. Moving on in Albuquerque, they're shocked to receive a call eight years later that Katie, their eldest, has been inexplicably found, having been tortured and malnourished to the point of catatonia, despite being in otherwise reasonable health. She's brought home and brings an unspeakable horror with her, threatening to tear the family apart, and I do mean bodily.

Our filmmaker pulls from what he learned in his previous directorial feature, Evil Dead Rise, in how to be as gross and wet as possible on screen. Actually, once Katie is home and the real horrors commence, the story could just as well be about the chaotic Deadites; people are violated, mutilated, and possessed in rapid, often random sequence. Cronin does seem to have some trouble pacing the film in a consistent manner, and I think that has to do with these competing impulses of what defines a mummy movie and what makes torture porn. He has to often pause the onslaught of violence to explain a fairly complex plot involving a demon that consumes family units; any previous Mummy movie is almost exclusively about its plot, whereas no Evil Dead movie is about its plot (at least, none of the ones worth watching). But when we get back to the violence, it can be pretty hard to stomach.

Part of the problem with these gross-out horror films with big budgets -- I'm also thinking of Evil Dead Burn, this summer -- is that there's only so much they can do that hasn't been done before. While there's always room for simple stylistic differences, some of these franchises push things perhaps too far. I had trouble, during the climax of this film, stomaching some of the abject cruelty it was projecting from the screen. I can handle a lot, but watching extended sequences of a child being terrorized and tortured was simply unpleasant, made much worse intercut with her parents' helpless reaction to seeing it all graphically recorded on VHS. After an entire -- and too lengthy, really -- film that made us wonder about how Katie had been tormented into the monster we see, they finally decide to show us in gratuitous manner without justifying the need for us to see it. Hearing it is almost unbearable enough.

Cronin's skills at crafting nasty scares don't entirely make up for this screenplay, which also features a few too many holes for my liking. Much like the Deadites, there don't seem to be any rules as to what the demon inside Katie can do, so she can conveniently perform telekinesis or telepathy at certain moments. The characters simply do not behave rationally around this consistently violent and profane presence in their house, like the grandmother who repeatedly prays over Katie and gets attacked each time. And don't get me started on the plane crash scene that inexplicably reveals Katie to the authorities.

But then, who comes to a movie like this (meaning like torture porn, not a cute '90s adventure-comedy-romance about ancient curses and librarians) for the plot? It's all about the big set pieces covered in gore, and Cronin does that effectively. A notable scene that felt ripped from Sam Raimi himself features lots of bodily fluids being splashed all over plates of food and wine at a funeral service, and it's a moment like that when you can see why an auteur decides to pursue certain material. He's helped in pursuing his vision by a dedicated cast, including wide-eyed Jack Reynor and a fierce Laia Costa, whose scenes together (usually terrified, always weeping) must have been simply exhausting to shoot.

Evil Dead Burn (2026)

Score: 3.5 / 5

In a year marked by waves of viral attention for "elevated" horror in Backrooms and Obsession, it seemed that the inevitable kickback would be brutal. Indeed, the Deadites arise to wreak havoc in our summer, pouring gore into our eyes just when we thought we were safe. 

If a film can be a bully, this is it. Mean-spirited and cruel in a calculated way, Evil Dead Burn delivers a knockout experience. The franchise tilts again into full-blown torture porn as it did in 2013; instead of dealing with addiction, though, this time we're dealing with domestic abuse. You know, because horror films these days have to be about something. I had rather hoped that with the success of Evil Dead Rise the franchise would continue to lean into its uniquely macabre sense of humor, but this one is so bleak I had to literally shake it off as I left the cinema. Rare is the film that makes me feel evil as a palpable presence (Infinity Pool comes to mind), yet in this screening, I had to avert my eyes to remind myself to breathe.

Rather than eliciting joyful frisson, this film works hard to make you feel its carnage. Though I didn't recognize a single actor in the film, and the characters were generally unlikable, I nevertheless found myself groaning along with their screams. Something between the editing and sound design worked really well to craft an experience of being in pain along with the character, adding a sense of weight and wetness we feel more than see; frankly, it reminded me of The Passion of the Christ in that way. It didn't help that the film also bravely steps into full taboo territory by deliberately choosing to exploit the mutilation of an animal by a human. As someone who can stomach a lot, I wish I had known in advance of this screening that the family dog would be brutally killed no fewer than three separate times during this film. Consider this your warning. You're welcome.

An exhausting film, Burn takes you through a gauntlet course for your endurance. Once the violence starts -- was it three minutes? Five, maybe, into the film? -- it does not let up, relentlessly assaulting your eyes with unspeakable horrors. There was a plot, I think, because I remember not quite following it. Of course, a long time fan, I can catch up pretty quick when the characters talk about a Kandarian dagger and the Necronomicon, but the entire opening sequence of this film could only make sense if you saw Evil Dead Rise. And then there's the post-credits scene, which I'm not even going to try to understand now, but I'm annoyed anyway because we don't need more franchises with endless interconnected stories. We just don't, and Evil Dead works best as standalone bloodbaths with imaginative violence and a sick comedic bent.

But even in the bulk of the film, which is I suppose more standalone, the plot is at once painfully simple and needlessly complicated. What is taking Will so long, when the possessed keep saying he's coming? Can Deadites now reassemble their burned, drowned, dismembered, and even cremated bodies? And don't get me started on the final girl, who is immediately recognizable as the eventual survivor of an abusive husband and his enabling family. What carried me through, instead, were some of the amazing cinematography and fight choreography, which make the ever-increasing violence watchable if not always palatable. One distinct memory is a fight in a car as Edgar, the family father, becomes possessed and uses every conceivable part of the inside of the car as a weapon; it's so brilliant I had to remind myself to breathe (have I mentioned that I was breathless for most of this movie?).

The filmmakers embrace the titular idea of burning in the ashy palette of this production in lighting and color grading, much like the conceptual high-rise of Evil Dead Rise. It does make the affair more visually solemn, which could feel like a bit of a downer for some audiences who prefer humor with their blood. This is as nihilistic as they come (though with a few nice laughs, especially during the funeral scene and later from the grandmother), so when we dip into slow-motion during particularly nasty moments, I wanted to stand and cry, "Why? Why??" because it would at least release the pressure in the room.

Sebastien Vanicek was clearly the effective choice here as director. While stylistically very different from Lee Cronin, Fede Alvarez, and of course Sam Raimi, Vanicek has already proven his talents with Infested, one of the most upsetting spider horror flicks I've endured. Here he continues turning the screws, pushing his singularly nasty vision into a bold new frontier for the franchise as he makes us wriggle in our seats. Call it part of the French extreme horror canon or not, that this film is bringing that sensibility to an American cult phenomenon is remarkable and pretty cool. 

Hoppers (2026)

Score: 2 / 5

Too little too late, the latest Pixar film reminds me of its sad decline in novelty and style. Hoppers takes as its story that of a young activist. Mabel Tanaka (Piper Curda), a Japanese-American college student, loves a glade filled with animals near her late grandmother's house. The two had bonded there, with Mabel learning to appreciate the quiet stillness of nature, and now the location holds great sentimental value. So when Mayor Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm) announces his plan to build a beltway right through the glade, Mabel takes it upon herself to protest.

Anger defines Mabel. In the opening scene, she's trying to "rescue" classroom pets from her elementary school, angry that they're captive; when she's stopped, she gets even more angry. It's not until her grandmother invites her to the edge of her secret pond and to sit in silence that Mabel begins to calm down. "I used to get angry," the grandmother muses, saying that it's hard to stay angry when you become aware of the web of life around you. It feels quite zen, like Yoda telling Luke to reach out with his feelings in a hostile swamp. So, years later, when we see Mabel angry at Jerry, it feels more personal than straightforward environmental activism. Her anger stems from fear, but she hasn't clearly worked out what that means or how to deal with it. Instead, she lashes out (as also indicated by the cast on her arm, no doubt from reckless skateboarding), only making herself seem crazed, undermining her own goals.

Mabel connects with her biology professor, Dr. Sam (Kathy Najimy), whose research is far more practical than we might at first expect. She's developed a technology she calls "hopping," which is basically transferring one's consciousness into a 3D-printed robot animal in order to better study animal behavior. Mabel recognizes this for what it is -- "Like Avatar!" -- despite Dr. Sam's chagrin, and impulsively uses it on herself. She becomes a beaver, for all intents and purposes, and goes out to the glade to investigate the disappearance of its resident beaver. The "keystone species" is what dammed the creek, making the pond a haven for all kinds of wildlife; without the beaver, Jerry is justified in saying they can bulldoze the glade because there aren't animals there to displace.

The problem is that there's nothing original about this film. Indeed a ripoff of Avatar, it also pulls heavily from other recent films, notably The Wild Robot in its interest in the interconnectedness of nature in the face of increased urbanization. More damagingly, the film features too many plot holes that seem designed to upset whatever pro-environmentalism it offers: Mabel can inexplicably immediately understand verbal communication between all the animals, regardless of species. She's befriended and welcomed by these creatures (like in Elio) and given immediate audience with an array of animal royalty (which, though mostly unrecognizable in the film, include A-listers like you wouldn't believe in the film's credits, from Meryl Streep to Isiah Whitlock Jr.). So why doesn't Dr. Sam know more about the animals and their plight, if she's been moonlighting as a beaver herself?

Thick sci-fi/fantasy jargon ensues, with much hubbub about "Pond Rules," wherein predators will eat prey in the great circle of life and so forth. Species usually at odds must confabulate to fight back, though still oddly territorial a la Zootopia, with similar attention to animal-based humor. And it all distracts from what could have been an insightful and galvanizing drama about how a young person can and should go about environmental activism in their community. I think, too, of Strange World, one of Disney's most progressive and moving films of this decade, which handled these exact matters and more with stronger rhetoric and a better story, despite its similarly derivative inspiration. Several subplots coalesce into a frenetic climax so uninspired that I found myself wishing for the film to end. 

Admittedly, it's also simply not my preferred artistic style. The animation feels cartoonish and inflated, like something shiny and waxy from DreamWorks rather than Disney. Editing and "performance style" (if we can call character animation that) feel more reminiscent of anime -- much like Pixar's Turning Red, which I also disliked visually -- and shoves what might have been organic character interest into a parade of explosive exaggerations and jerky mannerisms. Thankfully, the film redeems itself slightly in its quieter moments, focusing on Mabel's grief (spoiler alert: she has to deal with the grief, because anger is its manifestation) and even Jerry's internal commitment to genuine community-building. So, in the bizarre and overwrought climax, a new villain materializes (Dave Franco, and that's all I'll say about that delightful addition) and the whole thing goes up in flame and smoke. Much like my hopes that this film would steal my heart like most Disney fare.

The Bride (2026)

Score: 4 / 5

Having rewatched Maggie Gyllenhaal's sophomore directorial feature thrice, I can now say with certainty it's a favorite. Her follow-up to The Lost Daughter continues her unexpected and artful approach to new feminist cinema, yet does radically, offensively different things than we might expect or even want. While it's not out to garner her many new fans -- except maybe those interested in classical horror -- anyone who buckles in for this insane, ballsy ride will experience a thrill unlike many others. 

Nominally inspired by Bride of Frankenstein (1935), the classic Universal comedy-horror sequel to its 1931 flagship cinematic phenomenon, The Bride harnesses its metafictional take on the story to great postmodern effect. We open with an onscreen narrator, seemingly the ghost of Mary Shelley. Jessie Buckley, in her commanding dual performance, stares balefully into the camera out of a black-and-white limbo with low-key lighting that shifts unexpectedly around her, droning on in a thick character voice about her torment. As a writer, she cannot rest, burdened by another story she meant to tell before her untimely death. How to tell it? Well, naturally, she'll possess a vulnerable woman -- apparently one in a similar state of mind and/or danger as she was in life -- and enact the story herself. 

Enter Ida (also played by Buckley), a young woman caught among the higher-ups of an organized crime boss in Chicago, 1936. She seems a flamboyant nightclub performer and likely escort for these dangerous men, and in her introductory scene she's being assaulted by lascivious older men. Taking her opportunity, Mary Shelley inserts herself, forcing Ida into a full trance-like possession state in which she moves twitchily and spills the beans of the crime boss's sins. Trying to rush her out of the stunned nightclub, two henchman end up cornering her on the stairs as they try to figure out what's wrong with her, and soon enough Ida falls down the stairs to her death. The violent sequence -- from verbal altercation to broken bones -- is stylized to the point of alienation, I suspect, from some viewers. But it's proof that Gyllenhaal is a true artist, making bold swings and risky choices rarely allowed to female artists; I wish more directors followed their passions and tried weird things.

That's not to say the material couldn't have used a bit more workshopping. The screenplay, penned by Gyllenhaal, inconsistently plots itself through lurching steps, much like the monsters it dramatizes. After this lengthy prologue, we shift suddenly to Frank (Christian Bale), the original Frankenstein's monster, now in Chicago himself and looking for a deeper human connection than any he's had in his long, lonely life. He approaches Dr. Cornelia Euphronius (Annette Bening, working fabulously from what could have been a miserably flat part to electrify her scenes) to request that she expand her work on reanimation to a full -- recently deceased -- human corpse. He only stipulates that the corpse be female. Thanks to Ida's recent demise, she's carted in and successfully returned to life.

Or whatever passes for life, anyway. She's still possessed by Shelley and, as we might expect, has her brain fried during her resurrection. Buckley has the seemingly impossible task of playing an English woman from 1818 possessing a very different Chicago woman in 1936 who has amnesia and thus a new persona: essentially three different characters in one, constantly shifting throughout her often incoherent monologues. As is thankfully becoming vogue in cinema, Buckley glories in her unrepentant, deliberately defiant character, a feminist icon who isn't afraid to be nasty and crude and lusty and rebellious against any constraints. A favorite moment is at her first meal, when she begins smashing tableware in an almost bored state, waiting for demands on her to cease.

One can only imagine how much physical therapy Buckley had to undergo, both for her voice -- her verbal athletics are olympian in scope and fervor -- and for her body, which moves in contorted, angular patterns even when she's not putting her weight on a shattered shin. After an initial rebellion, Ida accedes to Frank and the two embark on a hedonistic, criminal spree not unlike Bonnie and Clyde, finding solace in their isolation. More touching moments occur as they go from cinema to cinema, absorbing old Ginger Rogers movies. Frank especially loves Ronnie Reed, a Fred Astaire riff played by a slick and debonair Jake Gyllenhaal. Yet all is not well in paradise, and the couple is being investigated by two detectives in the form of Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz in what might the film's weakest subplot despite its eminent charm. 

This is a maximalist's movie, a cinephile's movie, and a movie for anyone who values excess of style. Building more from films noir than classic, theatrical cinema, Gyllenhaal injects rage into her humor and sickness into her sexiness, meshing candy-colored sin with grayscale grime in every shot. If Poor Things told this story in a surrealist fashion, and Joker (and Folie a Deux in particular) told it in realistic fashion, The Bride camps it up, making mockery of deadly serious matters while acknowledging its own absurdity. And then there's the ending, which after a countrywide chase, resolves things in an unexpected and perhaps unearned happy way. I loved it. By film's end, I was exhausted from sheer imaginative joy and did not want a tragic denouement. And Gyllenhaal knowingly gives us what we need more than what we deserve in the film's final moments. It may not ring true to the world she's so painstakingly built up to that point, but it feels damn good. 

Good for her.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026)

Score: 3.5 / 5

The unpleasantness of Danny Boyle's usual style is mitigated here by a daringly beautiful attempt by Mia DaCosta to inject artistry and -- dare I say -- beauty into a world overrun by zombies. There was no way the titular set would have been built for Boyle's 2025 return to the franchise if more wasn't to come. The bone temple, a glorious and instantly iconic memento mori for the characters of 28 Years Later, deserved a film of its own, rife with arcane rituals, demonic drag, and deeper thematic merit than this franchise has ever had. And, thankfully, DaCosta was exactly the right person for the job.

Pitfalls and all, this material has never been my favorite, even within the fairly specific genre of post-apocalyptic zombie horror. The Rage virus, groundbreaking in its 2002 debut, is now so familiar in conceit that writer Alex Garland and the creators have needed to add new kinds of zombies and start categorizing them by mutation, yet another typical problem in this subgenre. With its attempt at edgy immediacy through shaky camerawork and more or less natural lighting, the series has never quite managed to achieve visual artistry on par with its occasionally sophisticated themes. DaCosta, approaching the whole affair almost as a dark fantasy, helps us view the world with more awe. Which is unexpected and a bit jarring, as this is the first entry to be temporally connected to the setting of its predecessor. How many franchises do you know of in which the third entry is, itself, a planned trilogy?

That's not to say this film isn't as gratuitously, viscerally cruel as the others. The story concerns young Spike (Alfie Williams), who starts in a bad place immediately following the events of the previous film. If you recall, a grotesque group of parkour thugs under command of "Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal," a seemingly sociopathic cult leader (Jack O'Connell), saved Spike from a group of the infected, inviting the wee lad to join them. It does not bode well, and the opening of The Bone Temple solidifies our fears as Jimmy orders Spike to fight to the death against his Fingers (the name he gives his tracksuit-wearing followers, who individually have variations of the same name like "Jimmima" and "Jimmy Shite"). It is revealed to us that they believe Jimmy's father is "Old Nick," the Devil, and this blood sacrifice merely a regular occurrence in their lives together. Spike survives and is inducted into their order as a new Jimmy, but his life gets more violent and less safe by the day. Even when he cautiously befriends Jimmy Ink (Erin Kellyman), who tries to help shield Spike from their most barbaric acts and from Jimmy Crystal's wrath, it's a far cry from safety.

Thankfully, the film crosscuts Spike's journey with that of Dr. Ian Kelson, played again by Ralph Fiennes in full command of his considerable craft. His introductory scene is a montage of him collecting rotten corpses in what appears to be an eccentric routine to continually improve the bone temple he's constructed; he goes about the macabre affair while absentmindedly singing hits from Duran Duran (the opening is "Girls on Film," which when I finally recognized nearly slayed me dead). Kelson lives in a bunker beneath his temple and spends the remainder of his time studying Samson, a giant of a zombie who apparently craves the sedation from Rage provided by drug darts Kelson uses. While under the influence, Samson is placid and Kelson develops what amounts to a friendship with him. Whether through teaching Samson language or dancing to the music, Kelson will make the connection.

Fiennes is magnetic in this role: a crazed humanist, a generous and hospitable mad scientist, an artist in every way yet alone and humble, the character he has constructed is impossible to nail down, and he constantly surprises us in his demeanor. He's also the saving grace of the film, which spends far too long tormenting young Spike (and us, by extension). When one of the Fingers spot Kelson and Samson chumming it up one day, he's sure he's seen Old Nick and demands an audience from Jimmy Crystal, who suddenly knows he's made quite a pickle for himself. Thus intersect the two plotlines of the film just in time for its magnificent climax.

This was never meant to be a character study, so the snippets of flashbacks to the "before times" of Kelson and Samson didn't really work for me, though we definitely needed more ways to connect with them. But even with these, none of the characters really feel fleshed-out by the screenplay or in performance. Other than Kelson. Fiennes takes a mostly nonverbal character and turns him into a fountain of stimulation. When, in the climax, Kelson performs as Old Nick in order to satisfy his unwelcome, threatening audience of Fingers, Fiennes is dressed in some kind of demonic drag (a cross between War Boys in Mad Max and the Cenobites from Hellraiser) performing Iron Maiden's "The Number of the Beast" in a drug-induced rave replete with mosh pit and pyrotechnics. It's electrifying to behold. It also introduces a wholly unexpected theme of religious theatrics into consideration, one that deconstructs the artifice even as it elicited audible laughs from me, mostly due to Fiennes's otherwise deadpan, quietly monotonous delivery of his lines out of character. Though he so often plays the villain, we must never forsake his profound gift for comedy.

By film's end, DaCosta has done something rare in film. She crafts a visual and aural experience meant to push us along to the point of questioning, earnestly, how and why God would allow such horrors on earth. That's a dark place to go, even with fun and scares along the way. But the sensation I had, upon a recent rewatch, was not that of nihilism or despair. And, no, I'm not talking about the ending, which offers yet another obnoxiously optimistic little cliffhanger ending reminding us that there's another installment yet to come; that just pissed me off, yet again. No, the hope I felt was far more spiritual and human. In a cast of characters basically rendered dead inside from their hopeless, interminable existence, we're made to feel that Kelson actually made a difference. No spoilers here, but the film's proper finale (before that inexcusable stinger) validates and valorizes his life as an ethical doctor in this hellscape and offers encouragement to viewers feeling a similarly bleak outlook on a world gone mad.

Moana (2026)

Score: 2.5 / 5

I've long been an apologist for Disney's live action remakes, for reasons shared elsewhere on this blog. And despite not liking a handful of them, I find myself of a new opinion entirely when it comes to the new Moana: utter ambivalence.

While it's patently silly for Disney to remake something only a decade old, this is the kind of material they should be adapting. Human-centered narratives, in my apparently controversial opinion, should center the human element, so I tend to prefer such stories in live action. Why we haven't, then, gotten the likes of Hercules or The Hunchback of Notre Dame is beyond my comprehension, while Lady and the Tramp and its ilk fill up Disney+ with nightmare fuel. Animation is exactly for stories that cannot be told by real people in front of real cameras: stories like The Little Mermaid or Treasure Planet that would be almost entirely animated anyway. Yet in this expensive-looking production, I could not help but find myself annoyed that so much appeared to be CGI, and not much of it of more realistic quality than in the animated original.

Yet director Thomas Kail (mostly a theatre director, but whose Fosse/Verdon is still criminally underappreciated) and his extensive production team (including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Dwayne Johnson, returning to his role as Maui, and Auli'i Cravalho, who does not appear but who sings a new song during the credits) take great pains to make this film an almost shot-for-shot remake. One wonders why. The history of "The Long Pause" is intriguing, and surely within the past ten years there has been sufficient research into Polynesian history and interest in culture in general to have improved the storytelling of this otherwise simple plot and its straightforward themes. And in a year when The Odyssey will surely sweep the summer (and yearly) "best of" lists, it feels odd that Moana couldn't expand her horizons and seek out any new adventures.

The material literally sings for an inexplicable compulsion, a call from beyond the familiar to prove oneself and save one's home. Why, then, are we locked into the exact same screenplay with the exact same adventures? Only two years ago, Moana 2 gave us more options to play with -- though we can certainly debate the value of those options -- so this feels like a disappointing return to basics. Apart from a couple new guffaw-inducing jibes from Johnson's narcissist demigod, even the laughs are exactly the same, down to precisely timed beats involving the braindead google-eyed sidekick Heihei. 

Thankfully, it's all very fun and very pretty, much like the original. The ocean, delightfully animated in its fantasy, pseudo-anthropomorphized form, is wonderfully rendered, and I certainly don't tire of the tropical vistas of thickly jungled islands. Rena Owen is the pulsing heart of the film as Moana's grandmother who sets her on her quest and returns like a Force-ghost in Moana's climactic turn; her gravitas and whimsy combine in an effective characterization that wrung tears from my eyes more than once. Jemaine Clement returns, too, as Tamatoa, the monstrous crab who hoards shiny things, in a replicated scene of the original film's standout moment, but his voice does feel tired and uninspired this time around. Too bad he wasn't given some fresh material to crack open and masticate.

The strength of this movie lies almost solely in its human element. To that end, the film's first act is easily its strongest, as Moana is chosen by the ocean as a child and as she grows into her father's daughter, a chief-in-training to lead her island's people. The first big musical number is magnificent, and I found myself repeatedly wishing that Kail leaned even more into his theatre background and away from the original film. How much more satisfying it would be to have long takes of masses of Motunui islanders harvesting coconuts and fish while dancing and singing, instead of cartoon-esque choppy edits and eye-popping set pieces! Yet in seeing real people in gorgeous production design, we are nevertheless transported into an escapist fantasy as Disney does best. Alas, we must settle for what we've been given, and its mediocrity and redundancy won't work for everyone, though I had a lovely time singing along in my otherwise empty cinema.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Opening immediately after the end of the first film, the film centers on Grace as her horrors continue. In a nice long take focused on Samara Weaving's face as she collapses and is carried into an ambulance, Grace blacks out but is resuscitated, each jolt reminding us of key flashbacks to the traumatic night she's just endured. The Le Domas family is no more -- well, apart from her now bearing their surname, legally -- and in case you missed the first one and for some reason started with the sequel, we're given some nice exposition early on. Grace's estranged sister Faith (yes, there's a jab about Catholic names) is her emergency contact and arrives as Grace is handcuffed to her bed, under suspicion of unspeakable things to the Le Domas family and estate.

But, as they do in all things, directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and writer Guy Busick handle the our return to this world with wit and style. Even exposition dumps are riddled with humor and nihilism, earned by what they know fans loved about the first film. Swiftly, a new plan is hatched as the young women are attacked in the hospital and spirited away. We're shown a new assemblage of wealthy assholes, representatives of various families associated with the diabolic Mr. Le Bail (apparently literally the Devil), gathering at a remote estate; these new characters have been summoned to partake in a new "game" of sorts: a battle to vie for the High Seat of "the Council," a group of elites who have made Faustian deals and who now secretly control the world. One (played by David Cronenberg himself) is introduced to us as watching news footage of a war and calling someone privately to have a ceasefire, which is immediately enacted on screen. 

Unfortunately, this means that it's double or nothing. The Council families will each send a representative at a time to kill the young women, and they'll be replaced by their own reserves. It's shockingly bleak for our heroines, one of whom is still quite injured from the previous day's exploits, the other of whom has to suddenly believe all this capitalistic, satanic insanity and simultaneously try to survive it. One imagines with agony the kind of physical stress these women underwent to make this film; they capably pull off what was surely a grueling shoot of goopy, sticky, slimy special effects and tons of fight choreography, to say nothing of all the running they do. 

Their deadly game board this time is a sizable, rural estate of many acres. What, in the first film, was a sort of flip on the Gothic whodunnit, is here a Grand Guignol vision of The Most Dangerous Game or The Hunt from a few years ago. Things seem even less fair this time around, even lorded over as they are by a delightfully perky Elijah Wood as a sort of cabal secretary or consigliere to these evil families. Their representatives are bizarre and hilarious as they arm themselves and prepare for the chase, especially Kevin Durand doing what he does and Nestor Carbonell with a caricatured Spanish accent through what seem to be exaggeratedly false teeth. 

While the filmmakers are never less than inventive, engrossing, and wildly entertaining, they do expand the scope of what's happening in a big way. That's normal for sequels, of course, and in a lot of ways this literally doubles the good stuff from before. But if you, like me, liked the restrictions in the first film with its limited cast and setting, you might find yourself both overwhelmed and numb to the much-expanded proceedings. There are too many characters for any to have much presence beyond an initial impression or superlative characteristic. Each has a spectacular death as well, which begin to feel camp as things get messy. Spontaneous bloody combustions happen fairly frequently this time around. The expanded mythology, too, is well-designed and sure to lead to yet more installments, but the lack of mystery does make things less intellectually stimulating. We already know Mr. Le Bail is not to be trifled with and that all the conspiracy is true, and so apparently does everyone else; whereas the Le Domases were torn on their belief, everyone in this film knows what's at stake.

Yet the film takes a few steps that are so intense and upsetting that I hesitate labeling it camp or even macabre satire. First, there's the rather shocking treatment of violence against women. Obviously that was a central theme in the first film -- the iconic bloody wedding dress is evidence enough -- but here, for the first time, I got uncomfortable to the point of squirming distraction as the two leading women were so viciously tortured on screen. There's one scene in particular when Faith (a wonderful Kathryn Newton, by the by) is beaten so brutally I had to avert my eyes, something I almost never do, because the camera and edit just lingers on it so long. The other is the wicked twin pair of Shawn Hatosy and Sarah Michelle Gellar, who are lovably nasty and almost sympathetic until a crucial climactic moment when Hatosy reveals that his evil is real. Without spoilers, suffice to say that his Patrick Bateman-like quirks are indeed fueled by hellish motivation, and when he shows his true face, he's quite scary.

While I'm still angry they haven't yet followed up with more Scream, I guess I can be happy that they chose to continue work on this material over something like Abigail. 

The Invite (2026)

Score: 4.5 / 5

The surprise of the summer! 

An unhappy married couple host their upstairs neighbors for a dinner party that devolves into a nightmarish spiral of social and sexual anxieties. This is exactly my kind of story, its roots deep in theatrical chamber pieces like God of Carnage and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in a certain absurdist lambasting of bourgeois niceties. 

Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogen play the primary couple, and their winsomeness is carefully calculated to fracture and tear at key early moments. Each plays their part with energetic conviction, adding rich layers to characters that could be played quite straight. Trapped at home for years in a life that clearly doesn't satisfy, she's been buying expensive (and, frankly, a bit gaudy) materials to spruce up their large and expensive apartment while walking naked by her single-pane window on her community courtyard to catch the eye of a neighbor. He's a miserable band teacher who has lost touch with any inspiration (he was once a promising musician) and hides from the world at home while complaining about a bad back and doing nothing to help himself. They live in wholly separate worlds, and have clearly each attempted therapy without following through; within moments of him returning home on this day, they're hurling passive-aggressive jabs while deflecting with half-baked psychobabble. As they scream at each other in the kitchen, one wonders if their upstairs neighbors who are expected momentarily can hear them.

Which is funny, because half of the fight is about them. Edward Norton and Penelope Cruz, a sexy, worldly couple who have caught the eyes of both Wilde and Rogen separately, are apparently not quiet about their sex life. As the main couple fester in a sexless, loveless hell of their own making, Norton and Cruz have vivacious and very loud sex regularly in the dead of night. Rogen wants to confront them about the noise and establish some sort of dominance; Wilde seems eager to know more about what's happening up there and maybe compete or join. Once the dinner party commences -- which is an unmitigated disaster, for several increasingly hilarious reasons including dietary restrictions, a lack of wine, and the ultimate carnal purpose for the entire evening -- it's clear that the bohemians upstairs are in fact a little too perfect an opportunity for their repressed downstairs neighbors. Not all is well in their world of seemingly unbridled pleasure. 

Without having seen the 2020 Spanish film on which this is based, I admire writers Will McCormack and Rashida Jones for their incisive, kinetic screenplay that keenly and knowingly dives into the darker and more graphic subtext found in most sex-adjacent sitcoms. These jokes aren't salacious in nature or mean-spirited about who deserves pleasure and fulfillment in any kind of puritanical schema; rather, they take a frank look at people being genuinely curious while also being riddled with anxiety and demonstrate the inherent humor of being forced to reckon with oneself while trying something new in a nonjudgmental way. This refreshing approach is bolstered by four top-notch performances, each of which deserves an award.

Wilde herself directs this venture, which is saying a lot because her performance was the standout for me, with an aesthetic visually more in line with a thriller. Somewhat drab lighting in frames upon frames -- doorways and windows constantly restrict movement of these characters in their starkly artificial world -- makes the film appear a little jaundiced in its sickly amber pools of light. Her pacing is fast and I found myself cackling aloud in the cinema while sometimes chiding myself for laughing at certain moments of insults and cruelties. It's apparent that this is originally based on a play, and I'd love to see it live. Wilde succeeds, in making it a film, by deftly and artfully controlling the scope of our reactions to every beat -- awkward, horny, and hilarious -- as they come. The first act might throw some viewers off because of the forceful directorial approach (by which I mean the cinematography and editing, both firing on all cylinders from the first scene), but once you settle in to her style, you can start collecting boons. When the music starts interjecting slasher-movie stings in the middle of a particularly funny and tense scene, I found myself thinking that Wilde was parodying Hitchcock in a clever blend of Psycho and The Trouble with Harry. 

By the second half, things calm down a bit visually and aurally, and the actors rise to the occasion to carry us through the climax and denouement with some career-best work. Where she started the film encouraging us to judge the characters, she opens up in the final act with a more mature approach, allowing the film and actors to breathe, and us by extension. This is a slice of life; strange, funny, and earnest, meant to remind us that what connects us all isn't necessarily money or sex but something a bit more mysterious and satisfying. Purpose and communication, negotiation and patience, kindness and hospitality; these things should matter more than they do in 2026 America, and films like this help us cut through the confusion to find our profound shared humanity. The laughter and sex just help us swallow the pill.