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. 

Abigail (2024)

Score: 3.5 / 5

I don't often get on this soapbox but today is the day. Marketing rarely matters to me personally, and I don't usually avoid spoilers because regardless of what "happens" in a film, in terms of plot, I'd rather focus on other elements. But for a film whose primary purpose seems to be its unique mashup of genres, a film that hinges on its own conceptual novelty, to broadcast its main point of interest -- and its only twist -- without room for doubt or speculation in its trailers, is a problem.

Everyone knows it by now, so it's no spoiler: Abigail features its titular character as its antagonist, a little girl whose desire to be a ballerina far exceeds her desire for blood. She's a vampire. This high-concept horror aspect of the film doesn't materialize until about halfway through, about the time when we need something to pick up the energy and raise the stakes. For the first half, though, the film is simply a home invasion thriller, a crime heist in which a needlessly large group of criminals kidnap Abigail, the daughter of a powerful underworld figure in NYC and hold her in an upstate mansion. Their goal is to hold her for 24 hours and they'll each get a massive payout.

Note: the money is laughably excessive and a general disregard for the specifics of any plot details makes even the start of this film difficult to swallow. You've got to give your audience a little more than "big money, easy target, some crime" to make your story compelling. And delightful as his presence is, it takes more than a spooky Giancarlo Esposito setting the scene to make for a chilling premise. It's as though the writers were so eager to get to the climactic encounter between vampire ballerina child and adult thugs that they didn't really care to set it up properly.

Thankfully, the cast are likable and interesting enough to help carry us over any initial misgivings. Not that any of them are written with depth or intrigue, mind. But Dan Stevens, Kevin Durand, Kathryn Newton, Will Catlett, and the late Angus Cloud are all compelling in their own ways, especially Stevens here, whose deliciously wicked streak of unpredictability carries most of the group scenes. Melissa Barrera is unfortunately slighted by the screenplay, which treats her character as a sort of anti-heroine, so thinly drawn she couldn't stand up to any analysis and so blandly delivered that I repeatedly forgot it was the otherwise skilled actress. To be fair, it's a thankless role, and I don't think she played it badly; there's just so little for her to work with or believably imbue into the role. 

Alisha Weir plays the title role with a confidence and charm that, frankly, shocked me. Reportedly doing most of her own stunts, she embodies a physical force of evil like I haven't seen in a film in years. People will surely compare this film to M3GAN, but the dancing and violent little girl are shallow comparison points; that film was a mess, but this one consistently knows what it's doing and why. By the time she's given the full monster treatment -- with some excellent makeup and special effects -- the film tips over the edge into a gorefest that makes its latter half infinitely more entertaining. Well-choreographed action scenes see Abigail chasing her prey through Gothic halls, and though frenetic editing makes for some truly hard-to-watch sequences (the editor should be slapped for repeatedly cutting right at the most interesting part or before the actor actually enters the frame of the shot where action is supposed to be occurring), at least it is a fun time to watch.

It just sucks that there is no further interest in the premise. Can we get mad at a film for giving us exactly what it promises us? Perhaps not, but when the trailer is essentially the entire story, what's the point of a 90-minute screening when a 90-second trailer will suffice? When the marketing spoils something as crucial as "hey, the girl you're about to kidnap is actually a vampire that will suck you dry one by one," you naturally expect there to be a further twist in the narrative, a point to be made, even a surprise character or additional plot to follow. Think about Don't Breathe, which has a somewhat similar opening premise. Hell, think about previous films from co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. They seem to have the most fun once Abigail is found out and the characters run amok through the mansion (which has more character than any of the characters) playing a vampiric version of Clue. Actually, there isn't any real mystery here, despite the film's determination to reference Agatha Christie multiple times. The writers don't even seem to care much about the characters they do have, referring to them not with their real names but with Rat Pack-inspired codenames.

It's hard to critique a film in which there was ultimately so little left to explore, because it felt like a rewatch despite it being a first viewing. It's hard to feel excitement or attachment for talented actors playing unbearably shallow characters, especially when you know they're just vampire fodder. It's hard to feel the intelligence of these filmmakers when you see every beat coming well in advance and it's all slowed down by tedious dialogue that should have been workshopped out. I don't understand why the marketing didn't focus on the first half of the film alone so that the delightful reveal of sweet Abigail with her monstrous teeth could come earlier and with more impact. I quite thoroughly enjoyed the film, especially as the B-movie it really is, but I do wish it had scrapped its own marketing budget and paid its writers better. For a horror-comedy, it's never very scary and prompts few laughs (I only really laughed each time a vampire dies, because they explode with a violence that took me completely by surprise), but it gets away with it by sheer bravura in its own conceit.

P.S.: I ran across an interview with the filmmakers that said Universal had planned for this project to be a remake of Dracula's Daughter (1936), and while that title would certainly not have worked for this film, it does add points of interest to note. That film, notoriously heavy with its lesbian subtext, has nothing in common with this film, and while a young vampiric ballerina will surely make for a popular Halloween costume this year, I'd have been much more interested in this film being willing to explore that dynamic more. Perhaps, like the many werewolf movies about young men growing into their monstrous selves, this could have been a coming-of-age story about Dracula's daughter, even with her ballet, learning to become herself. What we get instead is so utterly divergent from the source material that any latent sexuality, gender nonconformity, or even intergenerational connectivity is lost, sacrificed for spectacle and bleak humor.

P.P.S.: Another way to approach this that I'd have preferred: start the film with Stevens or Barrera getting bitten and infected by Abigail or her father. Let them choose to undergo the vampire transformation in order to become their enemy and try to hunt them down, kind of like Blade. If Barrera, we could reinforce some more of the lesbian content in the source material, and it would allow us to skip over the needlessly detailed exposition and excessive setup.

Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

Score: 3.5 / 5

What a delightful surprise. Pop horror and teen romance as a combo has been around for a while -- oddly enough, usually involving either zombies or vampires -- and it usually relies on references to classic literature like the teen characters would be reading in school. It was only a matter of time before another one materialized for us, and when I first heard of something called Lisa Frankenstein, I fast-tracked it into my "don't care, won't watch" lane. But as marketing started sharing names and dropping trailers, my interest piqued. So let's go step by step through why this film mesmerized me and won me over. Don't get me wrong, it's not something I'll recommend to everyone, nor is it something I'll eagerly rewatch often. But every time I thought it would zig, it zagged, and the strength of its aesthetic convictions make it far, far more than the sum of its parts. Kind of like its literary namesake.

First, and probably foremost on everyone's mind: this work was penned by Diablo Cody, the cult favorite writer of such titles as Jennifer's Body, Ricki and the Flash, Tully, Juno, and the Broadway musical Jagged Little Pill. If anyone was going to understand idiosyncratic punk-meets-princess female flavor grounded in harsh reality, it's Cody. Second, director Zelda Williams (daughter of the late Robin Williams) debuts here in stunning fashion. Literally. Her team and her vision feel perfectly suited, making the whole affair a neo-Gothic fever dream of thick stylizations and performative atmosphere (don't worry, we'll unpack that presently). Third, the cast was largely unknown to me, but their talent and dedication to the material far exceeds expectations, especially Kathryn Newton and Carla Gugino, who inject witchy energy into the funky '80s proceedings.

The combination of these elements -- and, truly, I'm not sure who to credit other than all of them working in tandem -- result in a nearly perfect example of the state of modern camp. I did not expect that, and I don't think anyone did. I'm not saying it's good camp, or even the best camp (you'd have to watch May December for that, but hold on to something), but Lisa Frankenstein manages to coalesce its various parts into a production more concerned with style than with substance, a style which strangely manages to improve its substance. Newton's Lisa is reclusive, fabulously donning Madonna-inspired getup, and her mannerisms share more in common with silent film actors, garishly melodramatic and fiendishly wanton. Her sassy descent into morbidity and sexual awakening feels borrowed from something akin to John Waters fanfiction (whose name, indeed, is used for other characters). Gugino's presence was perhaps the clearest indication of camp for me, her dark, troubling intensity belied by her candy-colored period garb and big hair. 

The plot itself leaves much to be desired, though it more or less balances its often cringey laughs with genuine insight into coming-of-age Goth womanhood. Lisa -- whose last name is Swallows, which the film conspicuously drops without much comment -- was traumatized while witnessing an axe murderer butcher her mother, and now spends her time wishing for a Victorian-era gentleman caller in an abandoned cemetery. She's not liked by her classmates, and when she shows up for a party, her lab partner takes his chance to finally score with a girl. I'll note that this sequence involves nonconsensual drugging and sexual assault, and without trying to get moralistic, it felt inappropriate (and more than a little exploitative) in context of this film. Once her dream man gets resurrected via lighting, it's up to Lisa to experiment on him to bring him closer to real life. Think something like if Twilight or Beautiful Creatures had a baby with Beetlejuice or Edward Scissorhands, and you'll see where this film fits in terms of both genre and aesthetic. It never gets as violent or graphic as it could, and while I'd have liked to see the depraved depths to which this material could be taken, it's also clearly not the filmmakers' intent. They stick to their vision of teen romance, coming to terms with death and sex, and frame it in the most fitting aesthetic possible.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

Score: 3 / 5

In the time since Endgame, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) have developed a happy little life together, and his memoir is modestly successful. Scott's teenage daughter Cassie (now played by Kathryn Newton) has become a political activist, which occasionally causes tension with her former thief of a father. She's been working secretly on a project to establish contact with the Quantum Realm, a place of noted existential danger in the previous films where the original Wasp, Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), had been trapped for many years. Janet tries to shut it down, but too late: the intergenerational family is pulled into the Quantum Realm and, as you may have guessed from the title, mayhem ensues.

The Ant-Man series has always held an odd place in the MCU; few people would say these are their favorites or even that the heroes themselves rank among their favorites, but Peyton Reed's offbeat and endlessly clever humor, tied with the immense likability of the cast, certainly make them lovely and unique entries in the franchise. Unfortunately, I think those qualities have just about exhausted themselves. Quantumania is, by comparison, a hot mess of CGI and annoyingly forced plot points meant to spark interest in yet another new phase of MCU storytelling. Though it's almost funny that this film puts Ant-Man and his compatriots into the smallest size they've ever been, it's easily the most eye-popping, sprawling, and surely expensive of his movies to date. It's also the least funny of them, which makes it all ring a bit too hollow for my taste.

What it lacks in humor and originality, Quantumania more than makes up for in visual flair. Reed and his team turn the Quantum Realm, which we've briefly explored in kaleidoscopic montages before, into a wholly fanciful universe unto itself. Psychedelic colors and shapes and patterns dazzle our eyes constantly in this film, and more than once I found myself gazing into the background art rather than tending to the characters and plot. It's like the creators dropped acid before designing the world, using Avatar's Pandora and Disney's Fantasia as references. While I could attempt to recall specifics of plot, I'd rather leave those bits to you to experience, because ultimately I doubt they matter much anyway, at least not yet.

Instead, I'll just trill on about other things, starting with the characters. The ones we already know and love are fine doing what they do, although Pfeiffer finally gets some solid screen time and a few scenes to really chew, while Michael Douglas all but twiddles his thumbs in a film where he's clearly utterly lost. Lilly is all but wasted, though Newton stakes a bold claim for her iteration of Cassie. A host of new characters is revealed in the Quantum Realm, although we're barely given enough time to appreciate -- much less remember -- them. There's a pink gelatinous creature who wishes more than anything to possess orifices like humans, a telepath who always hears the wacky, naughty thoughts of others, and even Bill Murray as a buffoonish local governor with a salacious history with Janet. It's all cute but ephemeral, only really existing to serve the weirdness of this new environment and the impending threat of a new Big Bad.

Enter Kang, ruler of the Quantum Realm, who apparently rose to power after Janet left previously. The film has to work overtime to explain their history together and why Janet never mentioned him before. He's a bit of a genocidal madman, hoping to conquer and destroy other timelines and alternate parts of the multiverse. He's also apparently one of many variants, and the one depicted in this film had been exiled by the others for mysterious reasons. Thankfully, all are played by Jonathan Majors, who is always excellent, though I hope future entries featuring Kang give him meatier material; here, he's broadly written and vaguely dangerous. More specificity -- like the kind Majors gives -- will help Kang feel like a real character and less of an idea. His greatest threat is as much a cliche as anything in this film: he threatens to murder Cassie and make Scott experience it infinitely if Scott doesn't successfully steal a certain power core (which inherently means nothing more than being the MacGuffin of this movie). It's not a great start for a character meant to lord over an entire phase of what is now a multimedia series.

Much as Ant-Man himself, his movies tend to not quite take themselves super seriously. Which is fine until it isn't, and this time it's hard to really care much about Kang or anything else because it's just not the kind of movie, tonally, to take any emotional or thematic risks. He's a second-tier superhero, and while this movie looks like a Marvel fever dream on drugs, thanks to cinematographer Bill Pope of The Matrix, several Sam Raimi and Edgar Wright movies, and Shang-Chi, and the visual artists, I couldn't quite shake the feeling that Pope seemed determined to disguise his own input. After all, how could a movie like this really be said to have a cinematographer of artistic integrity when every shot is so clearly pre-visualized to death by the effects artists and producers? I earnestly hope this isn't indicative of the aesthetic direction of the MCU's newest phase.

Freaky (2020)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

Christopher Landon nails another feature, this one a deliciously wicked follow-up to Happy Death Day. Instead of being trapped in the "Groundhog Day" of her untimely and brutal murder, this time Landon's heroine finds herself trapped in the body of her murderer. Built and billed as a sort of Freaky Friday homage, Freaky skillfully sidesteps its inherent pitfalls and ends up sticking the landing almost every beat of its 100-minute runtime. And it has a fabulous soundtrack.

Bullied high schooler Millie (Kathryn Newton) performs as the ridiculous Blissfield Valley mascot during their homecoming football game. As she anxiously waits for her ride home afterward, she is attacked by the Blissfield Butcher -- a sort of suburban legend of a serial killer -- who killed four teens the night before. He stabs her with a knife from his previous crime scene, but before he can finish the job, he is chased off by Millie's older sister, a police officer. But the ancient dagger has magic properties, and by morning Millie realizes she is stuck in the Butcher's body. So, naturally, she goes to school.

Perhaps the funniest sequence in the film takes place within the school, as Millie (trapped in Vince Vaughn's body) wanders the halls looking for her best friends Nyla and Josh. Of course, their fight-and-flight response is riotously funny -- "You're black! I'm gay! We are so dead!" -- but Millie convinces them of the switcheroo just in time for them to confront the Butcher. Unfortunately, by this time, the killer has already killed two other people (both of whom are, interestingly, Millie's enemies) and has learned that in his innocent new body he is utterly free from suspicion in his crimes. He shrieks for help and then calmly turns toward new victims as the heroes flee the school guards.

With the Butcher becoming a mounting threat -- and the bodies piling up, casting more suspicion on Millie -- the three heroes have to research the dagger and how to reverse its effects while planning ways to stop the killer. And they have until midnight to complete the ritual. The clock is ticking, and the film never lags a single beat. But, as Landon masterfully does, the scares never overcome the heart of the story, and Millie learns valuable lessons about inner strength, dealing with her anxiety and awkwardness, and taking pride in being different and an outsider. It sounds trite when spelled out like this, but it's remarkably effective in this rollicking, violent comedy that rarely stops to ask for logic or explanations. It helps, too, that the two leading actors are doing some eye-popping, ballsy work (Vaughn hasn't shown this delicious side of himself before, except in Psycho and Brawl in Cell Block 99, and Newton makes a case for herself as a young and badass new action movie star) and are supported by enthusiastic secondary players, including Misha Osherovich, one of the few non-binary actors in such a prominent role in a mainstream movie.

Ben is Back (2018)

Score: 4 / 5

Much like Beautiful Boy this film deals with the brutal effects of drug addiction on family life. The former reveals itself lyrically, moving me to tears almost instantly and unrelenting throughout its duration, crafting a warm and emotional tapestry of pain and love that transcends its senses of place and time. It's the kind of film that is so necessary and timely -- and thoughtfully constructed -- that it becomes important, which is far more powerful than any discussion of "good" or even entertaining. Ben is Back is no less stunning, beautiful, moving, or important, but it differs in some really interesting ways.

Rolling up her driveway on Christmas Eve, Holly sees her son Ben waiting for them in the cold. Though she tells her younger children to stay put with fear in her voice, we clearly see the joy as she approaches him and embraces her son. We quickly learn the context: Ben has been in rehab for drug addiction (and, it seems, several crimes that are unmentioned) for some time and should not have been released yet. He tries to assure his mother and stepfather that his sponsor encouraged him to be home for Christmas. After all, family always brings out the best in us during the holidays. Right?

And this is where Lucas Hedges shines. As an actor, he's proven adept -- to a brilliant degree -- at playing the misunderstood lone wolf who hides his sensitivity beneath a veneer of earnest curiosity and mild-mannered strength. While his acting chops have not always risen to the occasion (Boy Erased), his personality on screen seems to be more effective than not in the roles he takes on. Here, he is pitch perfect as the guilt-ridden son who is maybe and probably still an addict. He gives us (helped by a damn rich screenplay) moments of doubt and fear and anger that made me constantly wonder if he was still using or not; his gift is that he never lets us not love him. We never want him to fail in his efforts, and by the end, Ben is our hero as much as he is his mother's.

And what a mother. Julia Roberts can do no wrong, and here she delves deep into troubled motherhood (she knew all about it in August: Osage County, but from the receiving end). Her haunted visage is forced not only to confront the horrors of knowing and not knowing her son, but also of navigating her strained family. Courtney B. Vance plays her new husband, skeptical of Ben's sincerity and overprotective of the family he's cultivated; Kathryn Newton plays Ben's sister, apparently fighting between reconnecting with her brother and maintaining the role of more-or-less perfect daughter. These fine folks are even more strained by the stress brought on by the holidays and their forced public appearances at church and the mall. It's a small town. Everyone knows everything, and the stares and whispers are only so tolerable.

What surprised me with this film, though, that sets it apart from others in its genre is that it becomes almost completely plot-driven in the second half. We almost don't care any more whether or not Ben has licked his addiction. Once their house is broken into and their dog abducted, Ben and Holly go on an adventure through the nighttime criminality of their Christmas-lit town. The camera is often a little too clear and flat; I wonder how much might have been filmed with a low-budget device or even smart devices, as the visuals often reminded me of Unsane. The seedy approach makes the film compelling if exploitative, and though the ending is arguably unrealistic -- exceeding the film's sense of stark reality -- Ben is Back boasts the rare ability to be at once entertaining and challenging.