If you're just coming here for the first time, uh... you're late. The site is no longer updated daily (see HERE for the story) and even my "a few times a month" attempt has largely been abandoned. But it's still updated from time to time, and it's better late than never! Most reviews nowadays are labeled "FTP:" and you should read THIS PRIMER to understand why. Also, while they're marked nowadays, many of the site's older reviews (i.e. 2010 or older) do contain unannounced spoilers, so tread carefully! Thanks for coming by and be sure to leave comments, play nice, and as always, watch Cathy's Curse.
PLEASE, GO ON...
The Cycle (2026)
OCTOBER 17, 2026
GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: FESTIVAL (TELLURIDE HORROR SHOW)
Since I was hosting most of the movies I saw at Telluride Horror Show (a great fest, I highly recommend if you've never gone!) I had to some research beforehand to prepare myself for the Q&As and such. But for The Cycle I went in totally blind, only knowing that a friend saw it earlier and told me to keep it on my radar. But before I wrote this review I did my due diligence and made sure that the big halfway reveal was out in the open, so don't yell at me if you're unaware what kind of movie it is and kept reading beyond this first paragraph! I have kept it out of the genre tags (you're welcome) but I will be talking about it as if it was something we all knew going in. If you're in the dark and want to stay that way, all I'll say here is that this is a good, if slightly undercooked at times, entry in the "What if an X-Files episode became a feature length film?" sub-genre, one I hope finds its audience and generates even bigger and better things for writer/director Jordan Downey.
Like an X-Files episode, we have a case that sounds simple and becomes more complicated (and, given the nature of the series, perhaps can't be explained "rationally" as Scully might put it) as it goes. Our protagonist is Meg (Deborah Ann Woll), who works at a "Body Farm", where they can tell how long a body has been dead, exposed to the elements, etc. just by the number of maggots that are on them and things like that. She is approached by a young police officer named Ian (Will Hochman) after he discovers the body of her long-missing father, wondering if she can put aside her personal issues to help him solve the case since she's the expert on such things. Given her lengthy estrangement from the man, she refers to him by his name Peter instead of "Dad", so it's just another dead body to her. However as her and Ian (and his father, played by Jeffrey Donovan) dig deeper into the case, they learn that not only was this not a simple murder, but may directly relate to the reasons he up and left Meg and her mother (Gretchen Corbett from Let's Scare Jessica to Death!) all those years ago.
So if you're an actual X-Files fan, think of it as "Beyond the Sea" crossed with (we're gonna get into spoilers here, so last warning) "Shapes", since it turns out - if the title didn't clue you in - that we are dealing with a werewolf. Personally I had no idea it was coming, figuring the title was referring to the bugs that Meg studies so much, but as it turns out, Downey (along with his co-writer Kevin Stewart) gave the title a few meanings. Yes, it's about the bugs, but also (because werewolf) the cycle of the moon, and also the cycle of abuse and neglect. Meg and Ian both have extreme father issues, and it informs what they do for a living and how capable they are at those jobs. The best X-Files episodes (the "monster of the week" ones anyway), like "Beyond the Sea", found a way to tap further into our heroes' backstories and psychological makeup as they proceeded to work the case of the vampire or ghost or whatever the hell, and that's what Downey and Stewart have largely pulled off here.
I say "largely" because there's a very odd chunk of the film where I was sort of left confused by what happened to a major character. It appears as if they died, but the person closest to that character doesn't seem all that much affected by it. I don't know if it was an actor decision or something just missing from the text (or perhaps an unfortunate byproduct of pages being trimmed; always a risk when there's an ambitious, character driven story and producers who just want to get to the next scare), but I started wondering if the character maybe survived after all until their death was briefly mentioned in dialogue 15 minutes later. And then they're never brought up again! It was very weird, and left me kind of distracted for a bit, to the extent that I kind of had to mentally reset myself to re-engage with the movie after spending so much time being puzzled by the vague way someone was removed from the narrative. Not quite "Poochie went back to his home planet", but pretty close.
Part of what helped me get back on board was - YES! - the transformation scene! It's a total love letter to the iconic one from American Werewolf in London, and seeing that kind of practical artistry again on the big screen again after so many years of terrible CGI versions made me so happy. The claws, the snout extending, the rippling along the back... everything you'd want to see from such sequences is accounted for, and we get some great carnage after the fact. The climax drags some, but I didn't even mind all that much because I was still riding the high of seeing this sort of thing done right again. And that's why I assume the trailers won't be hiding the nature of this movie - it's too good of a selling point for horror fans to not show off for a few seconds and lure them in.
Another thing for horror fans: Don "Charlie" Opper from the Critters movies is in it! If the IMDB is correct he hasn't been on screen in over 25 years (thanks to a couple episodes of The Division), so you'd be forgiven if you, like me, didn't even recognize him at first. It's only a small role, playing the owner of a diner that Meg is eating at when we meet her, but along with Corbett's casting it told me that Downey (or at least, his casting team) knows their horror and wants to do right by the fans who have seen so many of these things. We want the familiar actors from our cult faves, we want the practical FX... but we also want characters to invest in, who we don't mind taking that journey with. So when there are a few narrative blunders here and there (nothing crippling, to be clear), it's easy to forgive. We know their hearts are in the right place and they're doing far more right than wrong, so it's all good. It'll be on Shudder by the time you read this, so give it a look!
What say you?
PLEASE, GO ON...Resident Evil (2026)
SEPTEMBER 25, 2026
GENRE: MAD SCIENTIST, MONSTER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
Despite buying both a Playstation and Playstation 2 specifically to play Resident Evil games (the first one and Code Veronica, respectively), I can't say I am a die-hard devotee of the franchise. At this point there are as many entries that I haven't played as those I have (and that's just the mainline series; if we include spinoffs I'm essentially a n00b), and while the OG character names are familiar enough to me, if you show me a picture of Grace or Ethan I wouldn't be able to recognize them. I've fallen off, in other words, so perhaps to the hardcore fans it won't mean much that I enjoyed Zach Cregger's Resident Evil and found the lack of game tie-ins to be refreshing, not a flaw.
In fact, it seems to me that the least interesting RE movie to date was 2021's Welcome to Raccoon City, which essentially told a Cliff's Notes version of the story of the first two games. Granted it was a pandemic release, but even if it was released nowadays I don't think it would do particularly well at the box office - it was telling a story that we not already knew, but LIVED to a degree. These games are all about the experience of playing them; the story itself is a mix between generic mad science stuff and bland action heroics, revolving around monsters that don't seem dictated by any sense of rules or consistency to tie themselves to. Not saying it as a complaint, but that's what makes the games fun - YOU'RE the one who has to turn a corner and hope there isn't a giant spider or one of those damn dogs ready to jump out at you. The most skilled horror filmmaker in the world can't give that same sort of thrill, so if they're also copying the beats of a story you already know? That's why such attempts rarely work out.
So what Cregger and Shay Hatten did with their script was the right call, I think. Instead of bringing in Leon or Claire or whoever, they create a new character named Bryan (damn, so close!), played by Austin Abrams, himself not someone audiences have much in the way of preconceived notions. He's the sort of guy you might have to rescue in one of the games (and who would then die a cut-scene later) instead of an action hero, but the plot is very game-y, as the movie focuses on him and what amounts to a practically realtime 90 minute fetch quest. Bryan is a hospital courier, delivering organs around for people who are about to go into surgery, and he accepts a late night, overtime pay job to deliver something to a hospital in Raccoon City. Not long into his journey he accidentally hits a woman (clearly - to us anyway - a zombie) and from there things just get worse and crazier, as he runs from location to location, collecting weapons to defend himself while encountering bigger and more disgusting monsters. So it's basically the experience of any game in the series, but happening to someone we don't have any preconceived notions of or nostalgia for their actions in this or that entry.
Instead, Cregger and his team pepper the movie with little nods to the games' iconography, but in a way that will never feel distracting to a non-gamer. A couple of bottles of health spray can be seen in a corner of one room, Bryan needs a key with a diamond shape on it, and (yes!) he finds a shotgun mounted on a wall but the ammo is found elsewhere for no reason. These in-joke references made me smile (OK, the health spray made me full on cackle, because it's a silly enough concept in a video game without seeing it in a live action "real" setting, though to be fair it's not used), but had I never played a single entry in the series, I can't imagine any scenario where I would feel like I was being left behind by the story because of my ignorance. Even the Paul WS Anderson movies, which sort of split the difference between this movie's "newcomers welcome" approach and Raccoon City's attempt at bringing the games to live action, often felt like they were bringing in game characters just for the sake of making an audience cheer, which would understandably be annoying to the less astute audience members. This? It could be the first pop culture thing you've ever experienced in your life and you'd be able to follow (and hopefully enjoy) just as easily as the nerdy dork dressed as Barry Burton next to you.
It helps that Bryan is the sort of hero we don't see often in horror: a guy a lot of us can identify with. He's average in every way, he does some stupid things in a panic but he's also a genuinely good guy (when he hits the zombie woman, he stops to help instead of hoping no one saw), and knows he's in way over his head. It's like a cross between Ash from earlier Evil Dead adventures and your standard dork character from a Friday the 13th; like imagine Crispin Glover's character from Final Chapter going through the relatively simple plot of the first game and you'll have a basic idea of how it plays out. The script gives him a little bit of backstory/pathos via a phone call with his girlfriend letting us know she's pregnant and he's not sure if he wants to be a father (very similar to Exit 8, another surprisingly good video game movie from this year), but for the most part he just spends the entire movie running, shooting, swearing, and scrambling.
Which is to say that I'm not sure if it's the sort of movie that will lend itself to repeat viewings (at least, not focused ones; it'll make for great background noise at a Halloween party or something), for the same reason it's often not all that fun to replay a game unless you're allowed to make different choices that change the outcome. Again, it's all about that experience and discovery, as opposed to an engaging story, and that's hard to replicate with repetition. While Umbrella is briefly mentioned, there isn't much in the way of a narrative here - Bryan just has to make his way through the monsters to get to the hospital and give them the Macguffin. Even a ticking clock element barely factors into things until the closing minutes, and since our hero/only real character rarely encounters any living people along the way, some of the suspense you'd get from the games is absent. YOU, playing the game, could fail at any moment, but Bryan will get to the 90 minute mark, because there's no one else to pick up the story from there. It's not a crippling flaw or anything, but it did kind of keep me at a bit of a distance from it.
As for the creatures, they're pretty great! Like the games, zombies aren't really a major factor after a while, as big disgusting monsters and mutant dogs take over. I don't know if any of them are taken directly from one of the games, but they certainly feel like they belong in that world, particularly a disgusting hybrid human/monster that factors into the movie's climax. Carpenter's The Thing seems to have influenced some of the designs, and for the most part they look really good to boot, so if you're a fan of seeing monsters, the movie certainly delivers on that front. The score is quite good too; it's got a little bit of Carpenter to it as well, but Carter Burwell and Thomas Newman kind of came to mind too? It's a nice blend at any rate.
Long story short I'm glad it's doing well, both for Cregger's sake and for the landscape of video game movies, because I'd like to see this type of approach more often. I understand wanting to see a Leon movie or whatever, but there's simply no way to make everyone happy if you go that route, because half the audience will hate who they cast, and others will whine about how it should have been Chris, or whatever. But we all got to go into the theater with a blank slate for Bryan the organ courier, and take that ride together. If you didn't like it, that's OK! But at least you're not liking it for reasons that have nothing to do with your 30 year old memory of trying to take down the Tyrant with only four shells and a useless red herb at your disposal. Here's hoping they can figure that out next time they want to try to do Silent Hill or (if they ever do it at all) Bloodborne.
What say you?
PLEASE, GO ON...
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