Jai Courtney Is A Great Villain, But I Was Otherwise Unimpressed By This Cat & Mouse (& Shark) Thriller
Dangerous Animals was a particularly intriguing movie for me as a Jai Courtney apologist. When Hollywood was testing Courtney as a leading man, he was let down by the vehicles designed for this purpose, mainly the poorly reviewed legacy sequels…
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How the Hell Did Al Pacino and Dan Stevens Get Trapped in This Mess of a Horror Movie?
2017's The Ritual, directed by David Bruckner, is one of the best horror films of the last decade. 2025's The Ritual, co-written and directed by David Midell, and starring the likes of Al Pacino and Dan Stevens, is the exact…
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The Life of Chuck Review
From Gerald’s Game to Doctor Sleep, few modern filmmakers have a better grasp on Stephen King than Mike Flanagan. Even with an original story like Midnight Mass, you can see the influence that Flanagan drew from King. The Life of…
Read more![Award-Winning Thai Horror Comedy Deftly Navigates The Supernatural, Personal & Political [Cannes]](jpg/award-winning-thai-horror-comedy-deftly-navigates-the-supernatural-personal.jpg)
Award-Winning Thai Horror Comedy Deftly Navigates The Supernatural, Personal & Political [Cannes]
By the midpoint of “A Useful Ghost,” when a refrigerator and a vacuum cleaner throw down in an all-out brawl, audiences should be well attuned to its kooky, droll wavelength. Thai cinema might be best known to festival audiences through…
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A Punk Band Descends Into a Classic Horror Setup in This Cool, Compelling New Road Trip Movie
I'm a sucker for those doomed road trip horror movies. A gang of friends, a pair of siblings, a couple on the brink of the next, or last, step in their relationship, loading up the van and seeing where the…
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Negan Plays Both Sides and Maggie Has a Brush With Death
Editor's note: The below recap contains spoilers for The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 2 Episode 5. Season 2 of The Walking Dead: The Dead City has been a bit of a slog to get through this time around. After…
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I Could Not Get Into This Well-Meaning But Poorly Constructed Western Starring Rumer Willis
A revenge Western about a woman on a bloody, violent mission will always garner interest, so it is quite tragic when a film with such a simple story crumbles. Trail of Vengeance is based on true tales from the Old…
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John Maclean’s Period Thriller Underwhelms In Spite of Inspired Visuals, & Cast Including Tim Roth, Jack Lowden & More
There’s a scene with a puppet show in “Tornado” where the storyteller narrates the thematic underpinning of his story, explaining his villain’s motivation for his murderous deeds as “the most evil of all reasons: no reason at all.” It’s an…
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A Weak Visit To Shadyside
As a devoted fan of the Fear Street trilogy—a trilogy that delivered a fresh, blood-soaked revival of R.L. Stine’s teen horror for a new generation—I approached Fear Street: Prom Queen with genuine anticipation. The 2021 Netflix trilogy (1994, 1978, and…
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Re-Emerged, Reconstituted Documentary Finds Beauty In The Chaos Of Broken Social Scene
“You can’t break up something that’s already broken. The only way to destroy it is to actually fix it,” Emily Haines of Metric and Broken Social Scene says in the new music rock doc about BSS, “It’s All Gonna Break.”…
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Ivana Baquero Lives a Double Life in Netflix’s Underwhelming Whodunnit Based on a True Story
In August 2017, Antonio Navarro Cerdán was stabbed multiple times near his car in a garage in Valencia, Spain. When his widow, better known as Maje, became the primary suspect behind his death, the case made headlines. Netflix's latest Spanish…
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Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Review: A Thrilling Farewell
In Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, director Christopher McQuarrie and star-producer Tom Cruise bring the long-running action franchise to a close with astonishing intensity, narrative ambition, and a surprising amount of heart. The eighth and final installment in the…
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