Benjamin Lee

The off-brand, bought down the market quality of Skydance animation is initially less of a problem here without the poorly realised humans of Luck and Spellbound to distract but there’s still no immersion or sweep to the world being created, just bright colours which might be enough for some toddlers.

There are echoes of Happy Death Day, Back to the Future and The Final Girls in Amazon’s perky Halloween offering Totally Killer, echoes often loud enough to drown out the film entirely. Its time-travel slasher plot cribs elements from all and relies on enthusiasm over invention to keep us entertained, a gamble that only works in brief bursts.

[Colman] knows how to oscillate between broad comedy and heart-wrenching drama but the film around her isn’t as adept. Like the dream husband at its centre, Wicker looks the part but there’s nothing underneath.

It’s a film of people telling themselves they’re making a difference without really doing much of anything and it’s hard not to feel similarly unmoved by the time it’s all over.

A bafflingly botched misfire ... Quite what the film is and who it’s for remains a head-scratcher, a stilted jumble of somethings boiling down to nothing.

Watching all the tried-and-tested elements fail to coalesce just makes us nostalgic for the classics instead. Let us all wish Disney can find that magic again.

The writer-directors Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg really have no idea how to fill the gaps between deaths and even at 92 minutes, we’re left with something that feels so much longer.

Curiously flat ... From the opening few frames through to a clunky introductory sequence, there’s something frustratingly off-balance about Georgetown.

Thanks to the sorry state of the action comedy genre as is, Role Play isn’t a total loss but it’s still much too far from a win.

It never really feels like we’re on a journey anywhere we haven’t been before, with Spellbound far too bewitched with the past to create any of its own magic.

A silly and dated new attempt to transport the classic fighting game to the big screen is a late-night drunk watch at best.

It’s just about diverting enough for the most part but there’s something a little off about its pacing, French director Jean-François Richet (who peaked a while back with his propulsive Mesrine movies) struggling to corral his moving parts, suspense never really arriving as it should.

[Toby Meakins] doesn’t quite take enough advantage of his reality-shifting game sequences (the Englund voice cameo serves to remind us just how wild Wes Craven made those nightmares way back when) but it’s a cut above the average Netflix genre guff.

The Cloverfield Paradox is an unholy mess...As the film bumbles from one confusingly mounted scene to the next, disappointment turns to boredom. The eerie early scenes fade into standard space horror panic and given how crowded that particular subgenre is, The Cloverfield Paradox emerges as a pale imitation.

Even as glossy run-of-the-mill formula, it’s never even close to being as funny or romantic as it needs to be, devoid of fizzy one-liners and hampered by the pair struggling to muster up chemistry during phone conversations that never feel as lived-in as they would for friends with such extensive history.

While Dauberman manages a handful of effective moments (a morgue scramble with a homemade cross and a drive-in movie light trick are particularly good), he’s never able to capture the slow, escalating dread that a story such as this demands.

It’s slickly made but shoddily scripted, with sub-reality TV dialogue...and a range of unengaged, soapy performances. There is some fun to be had from the loud and nasty death scenes though, which allow us the pleasure of seeing self-absorbed Facebook addicts get gruesomely murdered.

It’s a very small mercy, given what he’s working with, but director Jim O’Hanlon is at least able to competently conjure enough Christmas spirit for the film to visually feel of the season, evocative enough to pierce through for those of us who’ve made the journey from London to the sticks for the holidays.

It’s a strange movie that can seem mildly interested in tackling bigger issues before swiftly backing down.

Kidman fearlessly commits to the filth of it all, whether it’s drunkenly fighting off her daughter’s sleazy boyfriend or jerking off a bed-ridden informant, but her radical transformation and some timeframe trickery can’t mask a plot that feels rather empty.

Laurent, to her credit as director, is less interested in how a shootout can work as an aphrodisiac, and more invested in how it would affect a female friendship.

There’s an extraordinary story to be told here. It’s just a shame it had to be told in such an ordinary way.

If The Blair Witch Project signalled a new dawn of horror, Blair Witch is the loud death rattle of a once exciting sub-genre, disappearing into the darkness.

Given the bizarro conceit, there’s something surprisingly, and frustratingly, safe about the film.

Even the fantastical elements don’t make that much sense, magic with rules that are loose and undefined, leaving us with an eye-roll of an ending we can see from a mile away.

Patti Cake$ is by no means a hopelessly bad movie, it’s just hampered by its desperate need to be a crowd-pleaser.

Without the garish excess, the script is rote and rickety, a ride to the wild side that’s all out of gas.

Red, White and Royal Blue just isn’t the fun, brain-disengaged romp it could have been, any praise going toward intention rather then execution.