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 The site is no longer updated daily (see HERE for the story). But it's still kicking a few times a month, 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 End of Oak Street (2026)
AUGUST 16, 2026
GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
Not that it matters, but I never really loved It Follows as much as most of my peers, to the extent that I never even bothered to see David Robert Mitchell's followup, Under the Silver Lake. It's fine, but it's one of those movies where once the concept was explained it kind of just repeated the same moves until a runtime was met instead of getting more interesting. And outside of whatever he contributed to Armageddon (he's one of the few of its dozens of writers that actually got credited) I can't say I love JJ Abrams' movie work all that much either. But somehow, this unlikely pairing paid off with The End of Oak Street, which combines Mitchell's off kilter sense of humor and almost preternatural ability to get the set/prop details right in his settings with Abrams'... well, his obsession with ripping off Spielberg.
Now, the plot, about a normal suburban neighborhood being overrun by dinosaurs that were sucked in through a wormhole (or was the neighborhood itself sucked into dinosaur times?) naturally lends itself to a lot of shots of people looking at something terrifying and/or awe-inspiring off screen, which is a standard Spielberg move but doesn't necessarily *belong* to him. But even the setting of the film lets you know it's intentional, as its set in 1982, the year of Poltergeist and ET. Our hero family, led by Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, live in a suburban town that might as well feature the Freelings or Taylors living next door*, and they even have the same kind of semicircle breakfast nook the latter family had. Plus there's some dad issues stuff (McGregor is depicted as a bit of a loser; Hathaway's character even writes a novel to work out her fantasies of leaving him), and since any dinosaur movie will undoubtedly evoke memories of Jurassic Park, you are left with a movie that might even inspire a young child to read the credits carefully to see if this was indeed an Amblin project.
(Some minor spoilers follow!)
But you know what we never saw in any of the seven Jurassic Park movies? DINO SEX! About an hour into the film, Hathaway and McGregor are sneaking their way through the neighborhood looking for their kids (who ran off in search of the family dog, and given how much shit poor Evil Dead Burn took, I assure you that the pooch makes it, but some cats do not) when they see two brachiosaurs (or something along those lines; Alan Grant I am not) mating up against a house. Since they're distracted and not carnivores anyway, Hathaway finds it funny enough to insist McGregor poses for a Polaroid, in a moment that helps kickstart them reigniting their fading love for one another. It's a very silly moment, but I loved it. Normally they'd just have one save the other and boom, problems are solved, but the idea that two people on the verge of divorce could reconnect again over a dinosaur getting railed against their (dead?) neighbor's house is incredibly funny and weirdly touching.
The other thing that won me over is how R rated this PG-13 movie is. In addition to two F-bombs (one being hilarious, the other in an emotional outburst from Hathaway to her kid that kind of broke my heart as a parent), there are a lot of brutal deaths and gory injuries, including a major character having half their leg bitten off. The Jurassics usually have one (1) pretty gnarly death (shoutout to the babysitter in Jurassic World!) and keep the rest rather tame but there's quite a few here that are seen in all the glory you'd want. It's also kind of genuinely scary in spots? There's a sequence involving a Titanoboa (giant ass snake) slithering its way through the family home, and it is a legitimately terrifying moment when it makes its first strike. And since we see (random) kids killed early on, there's a genuine sense of "no one is fully safe" that is missing from the Jurassics and similar films that helped keep this one engaging throughout its (hallelujah!) 1:40 runtime.
On the other hand, it can be very stupid at times. The characters frequently seem to forget about the dangers all around them and have heart to heart conversations (or arguments) without looking around, and for some reason despite the availability of cars everywhere, after their own is destroyed they seem to assume driving is a bad idea and they keep running around in open areas where a dino could get them. Even when they see a potential rescue point in the distance, they decide to proceed on foot, despite knowing from a previous encounter that there's a time limit on the thing (explaining what would be too spoilery). Hathaway's character can be abrasive as well; when McGregor tries to calm his children down by telling them it'll be OK, she gets angry at him for giving them hope? And it happens multiple times! I'm not one of those people who need the characters to be honorable and good for 100% of their screen time, but I feel she goes a bit too far into "unpleasant" mode on too many occasions, and it's only my affinity for the actor that kept me from rooting for the dinos. If it was Sarah Paulson or some reality star playing the role, I'd be BEGGING for her gruesome exit.
Otherwise it's just a good, breezy time at the movies, perfect for August when you're probably just there to get some A grade air conditioning and don't want to think too much. The plot could have been an Asylum movie but Mitchell and Abrams, along with the cast, gave it the A-grade treatment. Plus it functions as the sequel to Jurassic Park Fallen Kingdom that the woeful Dominion failed to deliver (re: dinosaurs being on the mainland, specifically suburbia), so I appreciated that. I also appreciated that it teased out the appearance of the dinos (going in blind would be kind of awesome, because at first it's just "something big"), especially since they have feathers and such so if they showed up right away it might look kind of silly since we are so used to the JP versions (and in turn, if they delayed the appearance just to show us what we've seen before, it'd be like "Why?"). So some script stuff aside - and the weirdest continuity error I've ever seen involving McGregor's pizza delivery sign on the car - it's exactly what I hoped for when I heard the premise, and something I'll happily throw on from time to time just to enjoy the spectacle of Anne Hathaway stabbing a dinosaur repeatedly. Bonus: my kid really liked it!
What say you?
*honestly, the movie has so many random background characters being chased and/or eaten by dinos that I'm kind of stunned the VFX guys didn't intentionally style a group of their virtual dummies to look like either family as a gag.
PLEASE, GO ON...Evil Dead Burn (2026)
JULY 10, 2026
GENRE: POSSESSION, SPLATTER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
As this review of Evil Dead Burn is one of the increasingly rare updates here, here's a fun little bit of HMAD lore: the 2013 remake was the first movie I reviewed after "retiring" five days before its theatrical release. The 13 years and change in between is more than double the amount of time the original "daily" run of the site lasted, and any review I post now could very easily be the last one I ever write here. Do I PLAN for that to happen? Of course not, I'll never give it up for good by design - it's just that life gets in the way, and it certainly doesn't generate income anymore, so I pretty much only post when I really want to get my thoughts out about a movie that got me thinking (like Obsession, or last year's Companion) or it's a franchise entry, because I'm a completist. If someone decides to kill a lunch break seeing what I thought about a certain franchise, I won't disappoint them by skipping one!
But even if this was an original, I feel I'd probably be inclined to write something, because I thought it was a damn good time at the movies despite two bad decisions (one franchise related, the other not) that threatened to leave me cold and indifferent. The "bad for Evil Dead" one was at the very end and I'll get into that later, but the other I feel I need to get out of the way early to save you time reading the review and also seeing the movie if it's a dealbreaker. So, SPOILER FOR FIRST 30 MINUTE STUFF: a possessed person kills the family dog. And while it's nowhere near as gratuitous as all the human violence we see throughout (which no one ever minds), there are a few quick shots of the poor pooch being stabbed, along with its whimpers as he takes the hits. If it makes you feel better he gets to come back as a Deadite, but it's still a pretty tough moment. However, I was warned about it beforehand, so it didn't play as much as a (negative) shock as it might to someone going in cold, especially someone who may have lost their own furry friend recently. So I feel it's one of those necessary spoilers, because it could seriously affect your ability to enjoy the rest of the movie and maybe if you're warned about it, as I was, it'll go down easier.
Because otherwise this is a solid addition to this series, and renewed my interest after the last two. While not without their high points, I felt both the 2013 remake and 2023's Evil Dead Rise suffered from a curious lack of escalation, instead offering a series of gnarly moments that were largely interchangeable and (especially in Rise's case) weirdly ignored after they happened. The heroes in that film would see something creepy, get hurt and/or run away, and then somehow sort of calm down and approach the NEXT creepy moment as if it was the first weird thing they saw. It kept the movies from ever really taking off for me; I found myself bored because there was no buildup or increasing intensity, instead offering the "and then this happens" kind of plotting that wore me out. That doesn't happen here; director Sébastien Vanicek (who cowrote with Florent Bernard) rarely lets the pace drag at all, and is constantly building up the threat and (naturally, since this is an Evil Dead movie) the amount of bodily harm our heroes endure as they try to stay alive.
It helps that, for a change, the Deadites actually have a clearly defined goal. The protagonists are the surviving family members of a guy named Ben Price who researched the Book of the Dead and Kandarian Demons and all that other lore stuff I barely pay attention to (which is to say I don't know if this guy was mentioned before. but the name didn't ring a bell), and apparently he found a dagger that could actually kill them. The Deadites, naturally, don't want such a thing to exist in the world, so they're basically trying to drive his grandson Joseph (Hunter Doohan from Wednesday) insane by killing off his family until he gives up the location of the dagger, which they all assume to be in their big isolated house somewhere. Is it the most complicated story? Hell no, but it's *something*, and gives the movie an energy the last two lacked, as the makers of those entries were seemingly more concerned with finding as many different ways to make trailer-worthy injuries as they could, without caring much about momentum.
Not that it lacks injuries. There's a moment involving an ear that I actually had to look away from for a second, due to my own ear issues (they get clogged super easy and I had numerous ear infections as a kid; to this day I almost never go underwater), and Vanicek has a particular love of having sharp things go through jaws, cheeks, etc. No one is completely covered in blood this time, but they all get tossed around, through walls, smashed on mirrors, etc throughout the film's slightly overlong 110 minutes. I also thoroughly enjoyed when he demonstrated what passes for restraint in a film like this; there's a terrific one take sequence where our protagonist makes their way around the house looking for a hiding spot as we see (sometimes not even in complete focus) three of the family members beating the hell out of each other in the background. And when a character is making their way down a chimney only to be caught, instead of watching yet another dismemberment (as we've seen plenty), the director cuts to the fireplace, letting us use our imagination a little as blood and viscera pour down over the logs below.
He tosses in a lot of great details like that throughout, more than making up for the occasional Raimi wannabe stuff (closeup shots of a dinner being prepared in the same quick-cut style of Ash preparing himself for battle, for example). I particularly liked when a Deadite stepped a bit on a corpse who had just been boiled alive, with their foot dragging away some of the skin and exposing the bone underneath (it's basically like when you step in dog poo and it smears a bit). And there's a mirror gag that is more of an homage to Contact than anything in Evil Dead 2. In fact fan service is incredibly/thankfully brief - there's a "Dead by dawn!" shoutout of course, but the only other big one is a picture of Bruce Campbell on the wall of family photos, which you could even say is more of a possible storytelling hint (is Ash part of this family?) than something that's there for no other reason than to make us nerds happy. Hell, they even successfully fake us out at one point, showing a chainsaw and then using a different construction item instead.
On that note, Vanicek is a big fan of payoffs! There's a Chekov's gun, a Chekov's pocket knife, a Chekov's prosthetic foot... it felt like a well constructed movie as opposed to a series of highlights, as everything is set up beforehand and put to use later. But my favorite had to be a gold pen, given as a gift to Joseph in the film's early moments when we're meeting everyone. The payoff is good, but it also made me chuckle, because anytime someone gives a character a fancy pen in a movie, my mind instantly drifts to Jason Takes Manhattan, when heroine Rennie is given what is apparently Stephen King's old pen. But that usual thought took on extra weight here, because this is an Evil Dead, and many a fan in the early '80s was inspired to check out this little independent feature because of King's infamous blurb in the marketing: "The most ferociously original horror film of the year!" And if Vanicek is a Friday fan, he is also probably aware that according to Jason Goes to Hell, the big lug is actually powered by the same Necronomicon that gave us the Deadites, so it all kinda ties together. Or it's just a pen that'll be used to harm someone. One of those.
Joseph is one of the movie's two main protagonists, with the other being Souheila Yacoub as Alice, Joseph's sister-in-law. His brother/her husband Will dies early on, which is why the family is together (another nice bit of Vacinek's: blood splattering the TV showing their wedding video as she fights his possessed parents for her life in the background), and it's clear early on that Will wasn't exactly the most loving and caring husband, nor did his mother approve of her. Being that this is an Evil Dead movie, it's not a spoiler to say she lives out the dreams of every woman who ever got put down by her mother-in-law by using more than words to fight back. But unlike the previous movie's rather dull "I don't want to be a mom but now I have to be" character arc, here we have an abused woman who is somehow seen as the real problem by his family, who believe him to be perfect. A dinner scene prior to everything going to hell via Deadites is just as tense as the horror stuff, honestly, as Alice butts heads with Will's parents and Joseph tries to keep the peace - it's like the dinner scene in Hereditary, which isn't the vibe these movies tend to offer and the film is the better for it. Over time we get the extent of what he put her through, and possessed family members even taunt her for being too weak to leave him, which gives extra weight to her standing up for herself in the here and now. And I like how the French filmmaker (he made the enjoyable killer spider movie Infested) paid tribute to his origins; Alice is French and in moments of extreme stress she (realistically) speaks in her native tongue, which again is just a nice touch that proves they were putting together a real movie here, not stringing together a bunch of "moments" that make it much less interesting to revisit.
Bonus: there's also a senile grandmother in the mix, who gives the movie most of its rare but mostly on point touches of humor. Yes it can feel a little Ready or Not-y at times (there's even a runner about Alice wanting a smoke, and a comment about her footwear that almost seems like an INTENTIONAL nod to RoN), but the movie I kept thinking of was Final Destination Bloodlines, which also offered a woman who was outcast from her dysfunctional family and a curse that has followed them for generations. I used to hold the impression that watching a family all get killed was too much of a bummer (as opposed to a group of friends, which is what the first film offered), but here it worked (except for the dog) just fine. And by giving equal weight to Joseph and Alice, there's a bit of "OK but who is our "Ash"? suspense that was also lacking from previous revivals.
But as mentioned, there is one blunder that I found just as hard to forgive as the dog, and the one that I felt was conduct unbecoming an Evil Dead movie. While digital effects are hardly a stranger to the series by this point, the entire climax revolves around a guy that is clearly aided more by computers than practical makeup, which bummed me out. It also committed the sin of leaving the house for a new location in the final fifteen minutes, something that always irks me as it deflates a lot of the buildup and makes the movie seem longer (which, again, at 110 minutes, it already WAS a bit too long). Maybe if this sequence took place at the house without a little break in between as they made their way from one location to the next, or if they left to give us a practical showcase that could have been cool even if they suddenly went to the moon, I could have been more forgiving. But having both seemed like a bad call to my eyes, and there's just no way I can accept such a CGI-heavy "final boss" in an Evil Dead. Indeed, I am convinced most of Rise's inflated good rep is because of its glorious chainsaw vs latex monster finale, so I can't help but think if they confined this junk to the first half I might have forgotten it entirely by the end if they putting their best foot forward right before the credits rolled.
Speaking of the credits, there are two extra scenes; one a little gag for this story, the other tying it into Rise (which is also how the movie starts, with that blonde girl at the lake). Since the 2013 one never got a followup, even though I didn't care much for Rise I'm glad they're finally trying to give this series some kind of continuity as opposed to just slapping the brand name on random stand-alone stories. Since this is literally the first time in the franchise's history I've liked one more than the installment before (honestly, since I never took much of a shine to Army of Darkness, it's my favorite since ED2), I'm kind of interested to see where it goes from here, as opposed to seeing it just because of the same obligation that has me still seeing Jurassic Park or Crow sequels. Well done, new team! Just leave animals out of it next time, please.
What say you?
PLEASE, GO ON...Scary Movie (2026)
JUNE 6, 2026
GENRE: COMEDIC, SLASHER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
A few years back I revisited Scary Movie for the first time since 2000 and was mildly surprised to discover it actually held up better than expected. Airplane! it is not, but as so many of these types of films (including most of SM's sequels, some of which made by actual Airplane veterans) are just spoof scenes strung together with no real story, it was nice to see one with an actual script holding all the fart and weed jokes together. The inevitable revival, also called Scary Movie (it would be Scary Movie 6, for those counting) lands somewhere in between; there are still a lot of Family Guy-esque cutaways to parody scenes with no bearing on anything (the Weapons, Terrifier 3, and Get Out spoofs could all be removed with zero effect), but for the most part it's telling an actual story.
Well, it's telling Scream 5's story. They throw in some stuff from 6 too, but for the most part it sticks to aping scenes from that successful 2022 revival of the series this one was spoofing to begin with (and hasn't touched since, if memory serves? 2-5 all tackled more supernatural stuff as far as I recall). Our new hero Sarah is the daughter of Anna Faris' Cindy, and after her sister Tuesday (yes, a dumb joke about Jenna Ortega's other big character) is attacked by a Ghostface she goes to Woodswhatever (Woodsville, maybe?) and the killer starts offing people connected to the first movie. A number of Scream 5's scenes - even smaller ones like Dewey (Doofy) and Gale (Gail) reuniting outside the house of the now dead sheriff and their child - are recreated here, and the beats are pretty much the same.
(If you recall that the first Scary Movie also spoofed I Know What You Did Last Summer, which itself was revived recently - the not-so-coincidence gives the movie one of its better laughs.)
As for Faris, her arc is swiped from Halloween (2018), living in seclusion in case Ghostface comes back. Faris is as perfect as always with what sadly amounts to an extended cameo - I am pretty sure Regina Hall as her BFF Brenda has more screentime, playing a Ma-type character while also being the mom to this movie's version of Chad and Mindy. The script only gives Faris a little bit of the physical comedy she excels at, but she earns a laugh every time she appears with her deliveries and expressions, making me sigh that she spent so many of her prime years on a sitcom when she could have been keeping big screen comedy alive almost singlehandedly.
Unfortunately, at least for me, the person who is on screen the most is probably Marlon Wayans' Shorty, and his shtick has never been exactly a selling point for me. In an era where marijuana is legal, is seeing a guy repeatedly get high still funny? The writers sure hope so! While Keenan Ivory Wayans returned to contribute to the script, directing chores are left to Michael Tiddes, who helmed Marlon's awful Haunted House movies, so it's not too much of a surprise he's the one with the most screentime (and the most extraneous scenes, incidentally). I was actually entertained whenever it was focusing on Cindy or her daughters, but then we'd be forced to endure another lengthy, pointless scene of Shorty getting high. Similarly, if you thought there might be something new to Shawn Wayans' character of Ray beyond being gay, you're going to be let down. Every time he appears, his dialogue and actions revolve around the fact that he is gay. It's not even "one-note" anymore since it was done to death in the first two, and I kept waiting for a payoff that never came. On the other hand, despite the ads daring us to be offensive, Doofy's mentally challenged antics are toned down, though in his and a few other returning co-stars' case, he's not in it all that much. I don't know if the word "spoiler" can really apply in this sort of thing, but everyone of note (save Shannon Elizabeth) is back, but only the "core four" of Faris, Hall, and the two Wayanses are lead characters, and the rest... well, it's a slasher movie at the end of the day. Use your imagination.
The new cast members are fine; I was quite impressed with Olivia Rose Keegan's performance as Cindy's daughter, as she nails Faris' voice and has some of her same go for broke spark. Savannah Lee Nassif as half-sister Tuesday (her dad is never explained, but given Cindy's continued appearances in the other films without a child that I can recall, I guess we shouldn't put too much thought into it) is also fun, though as with most of the new cast seems to disappear for large stretches to focus on Shorty's dumb antics. They also apparently got a note from some producer (or test screening) demanding Chris Elliott return as the small handed guy from Scary Movie 2, because we are treated to a couple scenes of him (as Longlegs) that are so flimsily connected to the rest they might as well have used a "Poochie had to return to his home planet" style sendoff when they're over with. Though at least these largely unfunny bits give a bit role to the great Heidi Gardner (playing the Maika Monroe character), who is always welcome.
Anyway, I laughed more than I thought I would, and despite the pointless diversions, it's somewhat well made at least; at one point Shorty gets his hand cut by Candyman (a drug dealer), and later he has a bandage on the wound, which is the sort of attention to detail I'd expect them not to even bother with. And since "Did I laugh?" is really the only qualifier that matters, I was indeed chuckling at something every few minutes, with a few good laugh out loud bits (one of my favorites being an out of nowhere slam on Ballerina) and a genuinely funny reveal for the mystery, one that will play better if you've followed the production history of this franchise (quick recap: the Wayans were kind of forced out after Scary Movie 2). Is it high art? No, it's not even a must-see if I'm being honest. But it was an amusing enough time killer, and per the box office reports it's going to be a big hit. Since big screen comedies are so rare, I'll take any tickets sold to one as a positive thing. Doing it for a film that gives Faris and Hall a chance to do their thing together again? Bonus points.
What say you?
PLEASE, GO ON...Passenger (2026)
MAY 22, 2026
GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
If you’ve been to a single horror movie in the past few months and early enough for the trailers, you’ve probably been intrigued by Passenger, which shows a single sequence from the film and nothing else. Now it’s finally here and… well, I can see why they opted to showcase this bit and not the main characters or story or anything like that, because this five minute sequence is pretty much as good as it gets. And, unsurprisingly, it’s also the opening scene, so the following 90 minutes are all downhill.
This particular ad isn't available on Youtube for some reason (just a more traditional trailer, which I actually never saw until now), so accept my brief synopsis: a guy pulls over to let his passenger pee. Peeing guy hears a honk. He thinks it’s his impatient friend, but when he returns to the car his friend is gone. He gets in the car and then the friend’s body smashes through the windshield. He drives off and keeps seeing the same scary person on the side of the road, as if he’s driving in circles. Then the scary guy goes RAWR! And that’s it. It’s an effective little short film, something you’d watch on Youtube or at a festival and then roll your eyes when the director says he wants to expand it to a feature.
At least in most of those cases they never make it (and sometimes they do and it turns out pretty good! Like Smile or Lights Out, though weirdly both of those examples have some problematic takes on how to deal with mental health issues). In this case, we get a worst case scenario kind of thing, because the rest of the movie is about two OTHER people being menaced by the same thing over and over, with the apparition inexplicably taking a lot longer to get the job done that he did with our opening folks. Our heroes are a young couple who have - in the year 2026, mind you - decided to quit their jobs and live the “van life,” which is an actual thing that people do. They decide to live in their vans forever, park in 24 hour gym lots and such so they don’t get towed, drive around the country using funds that are apparently unlimited, and basically ensure the audience will never identify with them.
Anyway, these two people (Maddie and… her boyfriend. I want to say Tyler? Let’s go with Tyler) come across the guy who kept driving past the ghosty dude, as he races past them and then crashes further up the road. So they stop to help, and as a result now they are haunted by the ghost (“The Passenger”), who proceeds to do something scary every five minutes, often accompanied by a loud sound, until a feature length is reached and they do some nonsense to get rid of it. It’s one of those movies that is seemingly written by committee, designed for people to half watch with the other eye on their cell phone, and probably most effective on easily startled cats.
And if you’re a scholar of such things, then you must be thinking “OK, but surely some veteran actor will slum through a few scenes to provide exposition, right?” You are correct! Melissa Leo gets the “honor” here, and also the movie’s best line by far when she bellows that the Passenger is a “Highwayman from hell!” Along with the opening, and a decent scene about midway through where they use a projector (showing Roman Holiday!) as a light to look around for the villain, it’s the rare time in the movie I was actually entertained.
The rest of the time? Oof. I mean, if you’re a longtime reader here you know these kind of jump scare fests don’t exactly set my heart racing, but even if I’m not reacting to the BOO! moments I can usually still enjoy the movie as long as the characters are interesting to watch or the backstory is in some way intriguing. Neither is the case here; the lore behind the ghost seems stolen from a particularly uninspired episode of Supernatural, like one of those ones maybe 2/3 through a season where they have to fill some time and Dean would say “There’s nothing on Angel Radio, let’s work a case!” And Sam would be like “OK, so in Missouri three people have been killed on I-whatever in the past month…” But at least that would be over with in half the time.
And then the characters are as bland as they come. She’s not sure she wants to live a life on the road, and he just wants to get married. That’s about all we get out of them, and since they are our only actual characters (Leo only appears in two scenes) there’s precious little suspense in the repetitive scare scenes, because we know they’ll be fine until the conclusion, so with every single appearance the Passenger becomes a less effective villain. So we have an incompetent ghost chasing two people who are the movie equivalent of the couples in the picture that comes with the photo frame. It’d be disappointing under any circumstances, but I pity the poor sods who chose this over Obsession or even Scream 7 if it’s still playing anywhere. At least that one started off strong for an hour or so.
Given that Paramount has a struggling streaming channel, I’m kind of shocked they didn’t just send it straight there, where the LOUD NOISES! would probably generate a few decent letterboxd ratings from people who weren’t really paying attention to it (and/or actual van life people, who perhaps a. don’t see a lot of horror movies to know better and B. don’t go out to the movies too much but almost assuredly have access to a friend’s streaming account). It’s just sad that it’s another letdown from André Øvredal, who made the terrific Autopsy of Jane Doe but has proven less effective with each subsequent genre movie (the decent but uneven Scary Stories, the disappointing Last Voyage of the Demeter, and now this, an actual chore). It’s not even worth making the effort, but why not: feel free to skip this and the first 55 sequels and go straight to Snipes.
What say you?
PLEASE, GO ON...Obsession (2025)
MAY 14, 2026
GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
Focus paid $15m for Obsession (which only cost about a million to make), so I assume they are betting that it’ll be a decent sized hit. And if so, that means that the crowds will almost certainly include a few misguided young (and not so young) men who will see absolutely nothing wrong with what the lead character does, and probably think “Sucks that this guy had to resort to making a wish just so that ungrateful b---- would see how good he was for her.” (We call these guys incels, just to be clear.) I would love to read their reviews.
But for now you’re reading mine, and I am here to tell you that this is a solid, if imperfect genre film that once again proves (as Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger have done to even greater extent) that comedians are really, really good at coming up with outside the box horror movies, even more impressive when you consider that at its core, Obsession is merely another "Monkey’s Paw" variant. A shy, mumbly guy ironically named Bear (Michael Johnston) is hopelessly in love with Nikki (Inde Navarrette) his coworker at a music shop, and can’t gather the courage to ask her out, even when she asks him point blank if he likes her (he denies it, the coward). So he does the next best thing, making a wish on a toy shop novelty item called a One Wish Willow, only to be surprised and then increasingly horrified when the wish comes true.
His wish, specifically, is “I wish Nikki would love me more than anyone else in the world,” setting up the poor phrasing that tends to be the undoing of anyone who makes these sort of genie/wishbone/penny in a fountain kind of movie wishes. Because by loving him more than "anyone else in the world” he inadvertently (we hope?) includes herself in that mix, and quickly realizes that she is now so attached to him that she has no agency of her own. At first he's a bit freaked out at her sudden change of tune, but then she insists to come over and they kiss a little, and then via montage we see that she practically moves in right away, and they do lots of cutesy things together in what looks like the montage from any romcom. But as we quickly learn, she also can’t function without him. Even a trip to the bathroom causes her to freak out, sounding like a dying tape recorder as she scream/shouts “Why don’t you looooove meeeee” kind of desperate pleas. In one terrifying/sad moment (which Navarrette nails; she is almost supernaturally good at the sudden physical/vocal shifts her character needs to take) he goes to work on her day off and she just stands motionless, wetting herself (and worse), unable to do anything until he returns.
It covers some of the same ground as Companion, actually, but with one key difference: the entire movie unfolds through Bear’s perspective. In fact we know almost nothing about Nikki, or her friendship with Bear prior to the film’s events. Mostly through inference we can tell a few things: she’s probably aware of his feelings but does not share them (early on he offers to buy her a drink and she quickly covers it herself), and also feels stuck, wanting to quit her job so she can focus on something she feels more passionate about (only for her well meaning but clueless Romeo to make her even more stuck than she already was). And Bear doesn't fill in those blanks; when his friend Ian asks why he "loves" her so much, he says "She's beautiful..." and then trails off before he can name another trait. It's a telling aspect to the script, and something that'll probably be lost on the MRA dorks in the crowd.
It’s also clear that his feelings keeps him from having the same kind of easy rapport with her that he has with the other two people he works with, Ian and cool girl Sarah, who we learn has her own crush on Bear himself. It’s not that he’s an awkward guy *all the time*, he just gets that way around her. It’s one of the story’s great ironies that he inadvertently makes her lose herself when he makes his wish, because he essentially loses *himself* around her to begin with. In the movie’s first five minutes his cat dies, which understandably upsets him, but he is unable to even tell her as much when she calls later asking about when he’s getting to their weekly trivia game. At first he lies about why he’s not going (saying he's busy with work instead of just admitting he’s upset about his cat) and then he goes anyway, despite not wanting to.
He is able to tell Sarah easily though, so you might wonder why he doesn’t just date her, if you’re still not getting the point. You can’t control how you feel (or don’t feel) about someone any more than you can control how they feel about you in return. Take away the silly “I made a wish” premise and you’re left with the answer to “What happens when you get what you wanted from someone who didn’t actually want it back?” Again, we don’t see much of the story from Nikki’s perspective, but on occasion her actual feelings come to the surface and she understandably freaks out, only to snap back to the lovesick version he wished for. You know when you’re starting to fall asleep and you have a thought that doesn’t make any sense at all and came out of nowhere, and you then kind of wake up and go “Wait what the hell was that?” Well that’s basically what Nikki is like throughout the film, only it’s inverted; her momentary “dream brain” is actually the real her, struggling to get back out only for the one controlled by the wish stick to take over again. It’s heartbreaking and terrifying to watch, and a sex scene where she lies there motionless (and he doesn't seem to notice/care) is the moment where you should realize that, despite his nice guy, puppy dog crush on her, he ultimately doesn't really give a crap about her feelings. Hell, even the stupid willow stick was supposed to be a gift for her, only for him to use it himself, the jerk.
Ultimately, the only reason he seems to be aware he did something wrong is because she starts acting scary and upsetting him. She watches him sleep, moves in a jerky, robotic pattern when stressed, and… well, without spoiling things, the movie’s R rating is well earned with a terrifying (yes, I actually jumped) attack scene that reportedly had the MPAA in an ‘80s style “Cut this back a bit or you’re getting an NC-17” tizzy. Writer/director Curry Barker did a great job with his script, letting us uncomfortably sympathize with Bear at first and gradually turn on him as he keeps merely hoping she will settle into her new role instead of recognizing how hard she is fighting it. I’m sure everyone in the audience (myself included) has had a "I wish they liked me back" thought on a birthday candle or when the clock struck 11:11, because, well, why not? The worst that can happen is nothing changes, right? The movie isn’t demonizing people who have unrequited desires, it’s just deftly (and occasionally, violently) explaining why it’s a thoughtless thing to do. Stick to wishing to win the lottery!
Barker is less effective as an editor, however. For example, at one point a character doesn’t believe that the Wish Willow is real and, in jest, wishes for a billion dollars, which promptly begin to rain down on both him and Bear. It’s a good sight gag, but later the character tells Bear “Hey it worked, I have a billion dollars!” as if Bear wasn’t there when it happened? And sometimes a thing happens that should have prompted action from the other characters, but he just cuts to later (to be fair, given the movie's low budget, it's possible he didn't get to film everything in the script and just did his best). It’s also occasionally hard to tell how much time has passed; the love montage suggests they have now been together for a while but the other characters react as if it’s only been like a day or two. Nothing deal breaking, but definitely had me scratching my head more than once, making me wonder if I had momentarily blacked out and missed a connecting scene.
Otherwise it’s kind of a knockout, and I’m glad I put up with seeing it with a Thursday night crowd (not sure if it’s the same everywhere, but around here they tend to be the worst) to get to it before anything got spoiled. Barker has been saying some dumb stuff about Texas Chainsaw Massacre (he has been hired to be the, what, 7th guy to “go back to the first one” with yet another reboot) but he has already shot another movie, so hopefully that one is of equal value and I can give him the benefit of the doubt for whatever he’s doing with Leatherface (not like the bar is set high for that franchise, as there hasn’t been a good one in 20 years). And I say that even though I'm still embarrassed about the little yelp I made during the aforementioned attack scene!
What say you?
PLEASE, GO ON...The Mummy (2026)
APRIL 26, 2026
GENRE: POSSESSION
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)
While a lot of folks flipped their lids for Evil Dead Rise, I found it to be disappointing. There was no real progression to the madness, the setting was wasted, and the central “woman who doesn’t want to be a mom but is forced into the role” motif has been done to death over the years. But the thing that really killed it for me was that the characters seemed incapable of reacting normally to their obviously possessed mother/sister - scene after scene had them see her do something creepy and they would react as if it was the first time she had displayed such behavior. Sadly, Lee Cronin does the same damn thing in The Mummy (full title, and stop encouraging him), albeit in a movie that runs much longer, which means it generated even MORE instances of me saying “Does this character have amnesia?”
You can tell it’s gonna be one of those movies that runs too long right from the start, as we are treated to a lengthy epilogue with characters who are not speaking English. Being that this is a major studio horror movie, we know damn well that they will not be important characters, and therefore we should not be spending more than 3-4 minutes tops with them to set up whatever they’re there to set up and be on their way. But it just keeps going and going, and yet still leaves us with questions that won’t be answered until much later. After what seems like 15 minutes we finally meet our actual main characters, and before long the plot kicks in: their daughter disappears and eight years later, as they’ve more or less finally moved on, she is found. But she’s not right…
Now, if she APPEARED to be right and gradually got all creepy and possessed, it’d be one thing. Exorcist works because Regan seems perfectly normal at first, even after displaying a few odd behaviors. Here, she is clearly, you know, the possessed little monster girl from a horror movie. She contorts in strange positions, has weird liquids oozing from around her body, makes clicking noises… it’d be like if the “Let Jesus f— you!” version of Regan was the one that Ellen Burstyn started being a little hesitant around. And yet, the parents (Jack Reynor and Laia Costa) act as if she’s merely a little quiet or something. They take her home and she starts doing horror movie things almost instantly, yet they never call a doctor or bring her to one, and even when Reynor starts to express concern that something might be wrong, it’s treated like a “You’re an uncaring dad!” kind of moment as opposed to, you know, a guy being perfectly rational.
And this sort of thing continues over and over throughout the movie! Both parents just sort of shrug off extreme behavior; even when her antics clearly cause the death of someone, they basically forget about it a scene later. Since Exorcist is just as much of an influence here as any Mummy movie I’ve ever seen (there is SOME Mummy esque stuff here, technically - though it’s basically Exorcist mixed with the same bag of tricks he used in Evil Dead), I started getting the impression that the first version of Friedkin’s masterpiece that Cronin watched was the 2000 recut/expanded one, and the stupid and pointless spider-walk scene unlocked something within him. “Yes!” a young Cronin presumably thought. “Real horror is a technically scary and creepy scene with zero followup whatsoever, never mentioned again!” Crazy things happen in this movie - many of them fun on their own! - but then there is no followup to them, making them feel weightless, not to mention continuing to increase my belief that the parents were brain damaged. Any time Cronin comes up with an idea that would force the plot to change gears, he simply cuts to black and picks up a day later, as if it never happened.
It certainly doesn’t help that the movie runs an unforgivable 135 minutes (longer than the actual Exorcist!), and not because of its complicated plot or wealth of well-developed characters. No, it’s just that every scene goes on much longer than it should, and it’s riddled with pointless subplots like Reynor visiting a professor to have some markings translated. Not only do we get a bit of the guy’s class, suggesting maybe he will be an important character (he isn’t), but there’s a whole other character (a cop who investigated the girl’s disappearance in the first place) whose point in the movie is to find answers, so this information could have been discovered by her. Instead we just have the father leaving his family behind with a clearly dangerous person to go talk to some guy he’s never met, all to get information he then does nothing with.
All of that is a shame, because at 85 minutes or so, this could have at least been a fun little Halloween time “spook a blast” type movie. Cronin uses diopters to an almost comical degree, but on the other hand he has a penchant for gnarly gore and bodily harm that serves him well here (the death via falling out a window has a very cruel/funny button to it), and the makeup for the possessed Katie is quite good. And she starts mind-controlling her siblings, resulting in some fun profanity from a little girl, always an easy way to win me over. But when the movie runs damn near an hour longer than necessary, by the halfway point it’s hard to remain engaged when the parents are so bafflingly inept. Like I understand the idea that they finally got their daughter back and don’t want to give her up again, but when she’s clearly posing a threat to their OTHER children, it just comes off as insane behavior. At least in Cathy’s Curse (a movie I would never defend for its strong character work) they establish that the mom has mental problems before she nonchalantly ignores her daughter teleporting around the house. I legit started cackling when the mom responded to the dad’s (EXTREMELY JUSTIFIABLE) concerns with the same face my own wife gives me when I tell her I don’t feel like taking our kid to his swim class or something.
Oh well. Despite the title, it’s technically an original R rated horror movie and it’s doing fairly well at the box office, so that’s always a good thing. But between this and Rise, I feel that - much like Fede Alvarez, weirdly enough since he made Evil Dead (2013) - despite their popularity with a lot of fans, I just don’t connect with this filmmaker’s particular brand of horror, so I can’t say I’ll be too excited for whatever he makes next. And that’s OK! There are probably people out there who couldn’t ever see what the big deal is with Carpenter or Romero. Just sucks when you can’t have the same fun others are having, though at least here even the people who overall liked it agree it was too long, so that’s not just me being an old grouch.
What say you?
PLEASE, GO ON...Faces Of Death (2026)
APRIL 6, 2026
GENRE: SERIAL KILLER, TECHNOLOGY
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (PREMIERE SCREENING)
Lots of movies feel dated due to changing attitudes, or focusing on technology that was almost outdated by the time the movie came out, let alone decades later (The Net is a real laugh riot now). But the original Faces of Death is an unusual example in that it’s dated simply because its “appeal” (for lack of a better word) has since been outpaced by our everyday life. Sure, in 1978 and for the first few years of VHS supremacy, the idea of watching an alleged snuff film carried a certain taboo thrill, but now we get people live streaming their murders and/or suicides, sometimes seeing these things without even looking for them thanks to autoplay and “suggested” reels on social media.
So on one hand, on paper it’s the exact kind of movie that should be remade, because the original almost feels pointless now (that it’s a somewhat boring movie is another benefit; I DARE someone to come out and say that they’re “violating my childhood!” or whatever). On the other hand, how can this new Faces of Death possibly compete with what we see on any given day when scrolling through Twitter?
The relatively genius answer from the team of Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei is to take things into a meta direction. Our hero Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at some kind of TikTok-like social media channel as a content moderator, occasionally flagging things that are too extreme while allowing pretty much most others to get through. (In what I assume is a joke about America’s puritan ways, she is fine with pretty much every violent video she comes across, but when she sees a clip of a woman demonstrating how to put a condom on by using a banana, she flags it as “sexually graphic.”) One day she sees a clip of a man being executed in the electric chair and is somewhat unsure if it’s real or not, tentatively allowing it to go through. Then the next day, she sees another one that’s seemingly even MORE realistic, and starts getting concerned.
Eventually she breaks a work rule and reposts one of the clips on Reddit, asking the forum if they think it’s real or not, and someone points out that it "looks like a scene in Faces of Death." She can’t find it on streaming (A+ joke that was probably true when the movie was shot three years ago; it's on Roku and Amazon now) but luckily her roommate has a VHS copy and she checks it out, coming to the conclusion that YES these videos are legitimately snuff films and the culprit is intentionally restaging scenes from the original movie. But the movie is actually a two-hander, because rather than treat this as some kind of 8MM-style mystery, we spend half our runtime with the actual killer, played by Dacre Montgomery (Billy (RIP) from Stranger Things). He’s a tech whiz who can find someone’s location in seconds and goes after pseudo-celebrities (an influencer, a TV news host, etc) as the unwilling actors in his recreations, and naturally gets alarmed when Margot figures out what he’s up to and posts about it, tries to get the cops to help, etc.
I know that’s more of a summary than I usually bother with here, but I want to make sure it’s clear that unlike the original, this is a traditional thriller with suspense and cat and mouse sequences and all that good stuff, not a series of random clips like the original. Some might cry foul that making what essentially amounts to a modern-day, tech driven Seven-type thriller is a waste of the branding (no one will “dare” you to watch this, in other words), but as I have zero affinity for the IP I just took it as a perfectly decent serial killer thriller with a few good jokes at the expense of influencer culture. The movie could have been titled anything (it was shot under the title Home Movies) and just used the original film as a point of reference in the same way that Scream used Halloween or Prom Night or whatever.
Another smart move was to have the killer drug and kidnap his victims to bring them back to his home / “studio” for his recreations (which are otherwise populated with mannequins , a creepy visual). This allows Margot a chance to save some of them as he gets everything ready for the next video, giving the movie more suspense than it might have if it was just a series of straightforward killings. At one point he DOES kill someone instantly and it was actually a bit of a shock, as so far he hadn’t been so direct and it stood to reason that he wouldn’t bother anyone that wasn’t going to be the star of one of his clips.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not some minor masterpiece or anything. It gets a bit draggy at times despite a mere 95 min runtime, and there’s a brief turn from Charlie XCX that exists only for the producers to say that Charlie XCX is in the movie, which is the sort of thing that tends to annoy me (especially given the occasional flab in the runtime; both of her scenes could be deleted entirely without a single effect on the rest of the movie). And there’s a tragic backstory for Margot that rings false; she herself was inadvertently in a viral video in which her “co-star” was killed, but is mocked in public for it as if she was the “Boom Goes the Dynamite” guy or something. And when we learn this bit of history, her actions at her job make less sense to me - you’d think she’d be flagging pretty much everything as too graphic, instead of being so lenient on other violent images.
But again, the original isn’t something I hold dear, and I was worried a modern one would attempt to “top” it in some way, so using it as a springboard for something a little more involving (if not particularly groundbreaking) was a relief. I should also note that I had a little bit of personal attachment to the concept that I wouldn’t have gotten if I just watched the movie on streaming or even a day later. As I was walking from the parking garage to the theater, I saw a police car barreling down the street and suddenly swerve into a gas station where I had just been walking not 15 seconds before. The cops got out of the car, guns drawn, screaming at someone to get down, as two other officers (also guns drawn) made their way around the building from the other side to join them.
I couldn’t see the suspect from where I was now standing, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wonder if I should pull out my cell phone and start filming in case they ended up opening fire (from my position, they’d have to be wildly terrible shots for me to be in any danger from them OR whoever they were about to arrest. Luckily, the suspect surrendered without a shot fired and I just continued on my way to the theater, but it was that very “dare you to watch” kind of thing that drove interest in the original, and (not a spoiler, it’s in the trailer) gave the killer his motive in this new take. I was almost part of the problem!
(Alas, as is almost always the case, I can’t find anything online about the incident. If someone savvier than me wants to look, it was at about 615pm on Monday, April 6, at the VP Racing Fuels gas station at Hollywood & Highland.)
So, I dunno. YMMV. A friend said it was the worst movie he’s seen in over a decade, so clearly it’s not a universal crowd pleaser. And even though I enjoyed it, I can’t say for sure I’d ever watch it again, though I’d probably check out a commentary if offered (the filmmakers were there for Q&A and were worth listening to; they also made CAM, if you liked that one). But for a movie that’s been on the shelf for almost three years and was (technically) a remake of a film I considered a complete waste of my time, that it was even watchable is kind of a minor miracle. That it held my attention and made me chuckle a few times at the expense of influencers (I also liked the score a lot, reminded me of Rob’s for Maniac) is a win, in my book.
What say you?
PLEASE, GO ON...Scream 7 Spoilers!
MARCH 5, 2026
GENRE: SLASHER
SOURCE: MY OWN THOUGHTS!
As I did for the last one, I thought I would write a second "review" of sorts for Scream 7 where I go in detail about my issues with the film's third act, since (also like S6) I think the film is really good until the reveals start coming in, at which point the movie nosedives. I don't think it's AS crippling as the last one, because the reveal there was not only weak but also once again revealed the characters to be idiots (as I mentioned in my traditional review: the fact that it was Richie's entire family means that Sam, Kirby, AND Gale all managed to somehow remain ignorant of their existence, despite dating, investigating, and writing about him, respectively), and this one is merely just weak. But considering this was Kevin Williamson's grand return to the series, I can't help but feel more disappointed that the screenwriter's big unmasking was the least surprising in this entire franchise.
Spoilers begin... NOW!
OK, so if you're still here you either know or simply don't care that the mastermind was Jessica (Anna Camp), with Marco (Ethan Embry) as her muscle/right-hand man. They also had another guy helping them earlier whose name I already forgot, but seeing a Ghostface killed 40 minutes in was a great surprise (as was the reveal of who was driving the van that hit him) and his anonymity was part of the point, so there's nothing to complain about there. But in Camp and Embry's case, I can't imagine there's a person alive who would be surprised to see their faces under the masks, given that they are both recognizable actors who were playing absolute nothing roles. Especially Embry, whose sole purpose (and *only* scene prior) is to show up and try to convince Sid (read: the audience) that Stu is still alive, a concept I never believed for a second.
Camp at least has a little more to do, as Sid's neighbor/BFF who Williamson and Guy Busick thankfully bothered to give I think three scenes sprinkled into the narrative. But they make the same dumb mistake that they did in 6, which is to have Camp shoehorn in some backstory about their past that is too extraneous to buy as traditional character development, and merely points a big arrow at their head reading "KILLER!" As soon as she says something about having an abusive ex (just as Quinn randomly dropped the fact that she had a dead brother), we know that's going to be crucial information, and it's a shame to recall that Williamson used to be so much better at this. When Billy mentioned his mother leaving in the original, it never once came off as a clue - it played exactly as it was meant to; a clunky attempt at sympathizing with Sid re: her own mother's death, with few being being tipped off that there was any more to it.
And really, they could have fixed it easily by simply having Jessica say that she first "met" Sid when the latter was posing as Laura for her crisis hotline stint in Scream 3. Even if it wasn't the same guy, we (sadly) know how many women tend to leave one abusive partner only to end up with another (the one she refers to here is also the father of her teen son, so unless she stuck with him for a decade or so, the time wouldn't work), so it still could have played as a "how they met" thing without raising any alarms. Bonus: it would have made Jessica's grand plan a little tragic on top of everything else. She's apparently upset that Sid gave up being a Final Girl (by sitting out of New York, a recurring theme in the movie) and wants Tatum (Sid's daughter) to take over as America's premiere survivor, which is kind of silly even for these things, but at least could have been a bit sad if Jessica had spent the past 25 years worshiping Sid for helping her with her own struggles only to be crushed by the latter's decision to live a normal life instead of continuing to fight Ghostfaces.
All that said, I can forgive the "why" if the "who" is at least satisfying. As stupid as the whole "Stu survived!" thing was to me, it would honestly be better to do a repeat killer than have two people we've barely met take off the masks, with their recognizable faces ("It's the Pitch Perfect girl!") doing the majority of the work for whoever in the audience might not have figured it out long before that. I didn't exactly take a stopwatch to the screening, but I'd bet $63.6m that no previous Ghostface has had less screentime than either of the main culprits here (again, the other guy was anonymous by design so I don't care about him). It just baffles me that no one involved thought to say "Hey, fans love going back and figuring out which killer performed which kill, and that can't happen here because neither killer had enough involvement with the story for their whereabouts to be determined at any given time." Again, Embry is in ONE SCENE! Who could possibly be satisfied with that reveal?
As for Stu, as I mentioned in my main review, Matthew Lillard is clearly having a good time reprising his role, and he hasn't lost any of that manic energy (if you've followed his later work, he's actually a solid and fairly subtle dramatic actor, so it's fun to see him go big again). It's a shame that pre-release casting news spoiled most of the other cameos from now-dead cast members (there was one they didn't, and it was a great little "Whoa!" moment for me), because it basically answered the movie's central mystery of "Is Stu really alive or is this AI?" right from the start. We know without a doubt that Dewey, Roman, etc. are dead (Stu is, I think, the only GF with the slightest chance of having survived) but thanks to pre-release publicity we also know they're going to be in it, and this isn't a supernatural series. So therefore, AI/deep-fake nonsense will be coming into play, and in turn Stu is clearly among the killer's pixelated creations. Without their casting known (David Arquette even has his name on the poster!), if Stu was the only returning "dead" person, the mystery could have actually worked to some degree. For a series that started as a commentary on horror films and their fans, it's weird that Scream 7 would actually work best if you watched it in a total vaccuum and (re: the two killers) without having seen any other movies besides the previous Screams, so that Embry and Camp wouldn't be any more recognizable to you than the handful of newcomer actors playing Tatum's friends.
Speaking of them, I will give the movie this much of a win over S6: at least the deaths are all of named characters. Yes, Ghostface is once again incapable of killing anyone we really like (Joel McHale, welcome to the "Somehow survived several brutal stabbings" club!), but I was surprised that literally ALL of Tatum's friends get killed off. The body count is a little lower than the last one, but I'll always take 5-6 named characters over a dozen randos. It's a little weird how they're spaced out though; after the surprisingly early death of Hannah (McKenna Grace's character) - which was far and away the best designed one, very Argento-y - no one dies for a bit and then he wipes out the rest of her friends in a matter of minutes right as the third act kicks into gear. Paying homage to The Burning, maybe? (On the subject of the body count: once we get the motive, we then realize the opening kill is pointless. Why would Sid care about that?)
Like I said in the main review, the movie mainly won me over thanks to the Sid and Gale stuff, but the more I think about the whole Ghostface plot, the sloppier it feels, so it might end up slipping back under 6 over time. I was happy to see a scarier and more stalker-y version of the guy again, but when it's all in service of such a weak killer plot, with absolutely ZERO tension to the mystery of who was behind it, I suspect that stuff won't be as fun on repeat viewings, especially when (again) there's no possible way to determine which one was responsible for this or that kill. The monster opening weekend practically guarantees another one, so I hope when that day comes that they really take their time to come up with a solid mystery again. Give us the red herrings! Give us a scene where one killer is trying to convince Sid (or whoever) that the other person is the killer! GIVE US A REASON TO REWATCH THE DAMN THING!!!
What say you?
PLEASE, GO ON...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Horror Fans