Benjamin Lee

Even die-hard De Palma completists would be better served by forgetting this one exists – a tedious, ugly thriller devoid of anything to say that will serve as a regrettable footnote for a distinguished film-maker who is capable of so much more.

Films such as The 355 live and die by the quality of their action set pieces and while there’s a propulsive pace to the proceedings, there’s never quite enough genuine excitement.

It’s all so rushed and half-assed, like it was cobbled together on the fly rather than intricately plotted out, stupidly written and worst of all increasingly dull, a fitting end to a rotten pile of guts that’s less book of Saw and more novelisation. Game over.

The uplift of a woman triumphing in a male-dominated Stem world isn’t enough to get us through a mess of grindingly unfunny dialogue, too-broad performances and an utter, movie-killing lack of charm.

The streak of perversity at Intrusion’s centre nudges it above the norm, briefly waking us up before we sleepily click on something else.

For a film about living, Here is a remarkably lifeless endeavour.

While it’s far from the firestarter it could have been, there’s more to this than its release would suggest, an angry, slickly directed thriller that still manages to generate enough of a spark.

Like with his Halloween reinvention, the film is trapped between the serious and the silly, a thinly etched tale of a father dealing with grief and faith jarring next to scenes of a demonic child screaming the C-word while spitting slime. It’s better when it leans into the latter, a schlocky night out at the movies made with more competence than most recent horrors but one that is unlikely to make a believer out of die-hard fans.

The Intruder isn’t bringing much that’s new to the table but what it does, it does well, and there’s something to admire about its stark efficiency, dragging us along with full force, even if we know exactly where we’re going.

It’s a slight cut above just how very bad these things can get, but not enough to edge it toward something that would deserve your full attention. So errand away, Mother of the Bride will be just fine playing in the background.

It’s all boringly plain sailing until it suddenly isn’t and the film takes a turn from romcom into something more dramatic.

There won’t be many viewers who’ll remember it by this time next month but within its swift running time, it just about fits the brief, zipping along at speed buoyed by the charm of its leads, like almost guaranteed instead.

There’s a cinematic slickness to the film (it was intended to be released theatrically until the pandemic) that separates it from its more noticeably shoddier fright night competitors but it’s mostly a familiar, if not entirely fruitless, trudge down a well-trodden path, one that takes us into, at times, questionable territory.

There’s something to be admired about a film that can gracefully defy simple genre categorization but Submergence feels like a clumsy melange, a confused adaptation made by people who don’t seem quite sure what they have on their hands.

It’s a film that should have been a major disaster but ends up being just a minor one instead, watchable enough in parts, with the lowest of expectations, but not enough to warrant the time and money that’s been funnelled into it.

The bar was low after the first, a half-assed waste of actors who deserve better, but the sequel is somehow even worse, a maddeningly unfunny string of bad decisions, the worst of which was deciding to make it in the first place.

Nothing can distract us from a script that just doesn’t work, family dynamics we don’t believe, jokes we don’t laugh at and characters we don’t care about. Oh. What. Fun. is anything but.

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.

A surprisingly nimble summer comedy that finds both Aniston and Sandler at their most charming.

Without the franchise pull behind it, Next of Kin is a rather anonymous horror of demonic possession, competently made and with decent acting but indistinguishable from the pack, where predictability wins over personality.

Its undemanding nature and flat aesthetic making it an adequate background watch at best. Yet there’s also just enough here to make me wish it had been that bit better, a serviceable watch with a frustrating throughline teasing what could have been.

Sheridan’s take on the material is solidly made but sorely lacking in subtlety.

For a film that wants us to stop worrying and love big tech, Atlas does an awfully good job of showing us why we should still be wary of it.

There’s something so soulless and ineffectual about the aggressively unnecessary Red Notice that it almost plays like a pastiche of a Hollywood blockbuster, like a bot consumed the last 20 years of studio fare and spat out a facsimile as an experiment.

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.

Alba hasn’t always made the strongest impression as an actor but this mode works well for her, convincing both in her many hand-to-hand combat scenes (her weapon of choice is a knife rather than a gun) and as an old-fashioned movie star, light on emotional depth but heavy on charisma.

If the devil did exist then surely he’d have the power to destroy films as dull as this.

The lack of tension, innovative kills or atmosphere is far more of an issue, the film looking every bit as tinny and flat as the very worst that streaming has to offer.

Gilroy avoids the ghoulish extremes of Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals and offers up a believably pretentious battleground. He’s as invested in crafting a fully fleshed art world as he is in creating a full-on horror film and while the two often blend well, at other times, his concoction is far less effective.

The film is just a machine, slick but soulless and with parts in need of a touch-up. Not broken exactly, but more, ahem, fractured.

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.

The director, Jeff Wadlow, has a puppyish eagerness to impress, shock and entertain and as silly as the film might get, it’s never dull.

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

It’s all torturously uninteresting, a plodding retread that never once explains or justifies why it made the leap from “what if?” to actual full-length movie.

There’s an admirable sense of pluck to the film, as if those involved know very well they’re making something that doesn’t need to exist but they’re making the most of it anyway.

The Kitchen, a late summer, female-led adaptation of a little-known DC comic, is the worst kind of bad movie. That’s because it has all the ingredients of a good movie, from a juicy premise to a stellar cast, yet it’s assembled with such staggering incompetency that from the very first scene it boils over into one star territory, all promise evaporating from the screen. The boredom and confusion that then follows is backgrounded by an almost angry frustration that someone could get something so potentially thrilling so very, very wrong.

Before things go south, there’s an effectively clammy escalation of panic as Watts leaps from call to call . . . But the script, from Chris Sparling . . . isn’t quite ingenious enough to find ways to involve her in the drama.

There’s just about enough here to show signs of life...but Williamson often feels like he’s treading water when he should be drawing blood.

The Last Thing He Wanted is a thing that no one wanted.

At less than 80 minutes, it’s barely even a movie, more one long montage of bits that never run on long enough to be defined as scenes.

Every single decision made by Hill is bad.

It’s a very minor victory to report that rather than being bad, it’s merely bland, an adequate milquetoast time-waster for a very young and very undiscerning audience.

Ghosted is content dictated by algorithm at its absolute, industry-shaming worst, so carelessly and lifelessly cobbled together that we’re inclined to believe it’s the first film created entirely by AI.

Dear Santa is like watching Bad Santa slowly turn into Elf, an unsatisfying attempt to be both naughty and nice, ending up as nothing instead.

The stakes here are too low and so is the entertainment value.

Aiming for more fun is no bad thing but Imaginary is far too dumb and ungainly to move at the pace required and bring the thrills it should, a theme park ride that should be closed for repairs.

Against considerable odds, a very, very low bar has been met and then shuffled over with this mostly effective and incredibly nasty update, a jolting little slasher that should repulse and satisfy those with a suitably depraved idea of what they are clicking into.

There are no left turns or bumps along the way, just a smooth straightforward journey from cliche to cliche, boredom setting in fast.

A competently made yet maddeningly dull attempt to bring the hit video game to the big screen makes for an instantly forgettable night at the movies.

The stupidity of it all is certainly diverting but it’s all too scattershot and at times stiflingly portentous to cross over into pure camp.

A dull and predictable sunshine noir that wastes the time of those involved as well as ours.

It’s a film of remarkable idiocy, most notably in the portrayal of the local police who are so incredibly unhelpful that it borders on parody.

No one here seems to know what they’re doing and, more importantly, why. A strong contender for 2022’s most pointless movie.

There’s zero, nay negative, fun to be had here, a potentially interesting, if not exactly original, sub-Manchurian Candidate idea (pre-programmed victims/accomplices are activated by a phone call) taken nowhere of interest.

Very young kids might find some enjoyment in the brightly hued, fast-paced mania of it all, but those with any real affection for the pair of violently opposed animals will leave unimpressed.

This is carelessly made trash but worse, it’s carelessly made trash that thinks it will spawn not just a franchise but a cinematic universe.

It’s mostly kind of tolerable in a low stakes, rosé-wine-swigging way, inoffensively middling rather than rotten, an easy, undemanding afternoon watch with nothing of note other than a few laughably dumb moments..

As usual it’s left entirely up to the beleaguered Johnson to make any of it even remotely watchable. She remains a compelling presence, trying her darnedest with lifeless words, but, again, she’s stranded by the energy-sucking vortex of nothingness that is Jamie Dornan. He’s better than this...but he knows it and his boredom is lazily apparent throughout.

Rather than screaming for them to go the other way, you'll be urging them to accept fate and die instead.

It’s competently acted and made – her direction easily trumps her writing – and while there’s nothing close to suspense, there are some effectively visceral moments of gore.

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 genuinely startling just how utterly wretched the finished product is and how unfit it is for a wide release.

A handsomely made return to form for a series that had been showing signs of fatigue.

It’s so punishingly dull to watch, filled with dry, perfunctory dialogue from Stacey Menear’s consistently uninventive script and shot without even a glimmer of style, that even at a brisk 86 minutes, it feels like unending torture.

It’s too sloppily written and edited for even the least discerning of horror fans to really enjoy, a patchwork of nonsense confusingly stitched together by someone, who at one point, knew better.

It’s the worst kind of soulless committee-made product, lazy and risk-free, that need never and will never be thought of again. Infinite? Not even close.

None of it rings remotely true and his insistence on playing out so many scenes at such a high level can make it an excruciating watch.

It’s ultimately a miracle that despite the tortured production process, Dolittle can most generously be described as passable for young, undiscerning viewers. It won’t charm or amuse you particularly but it’s not a catastrophe, the highest praise I can muster.

There is nothing gritty or believable about any of it. The film is as dumb and schlocky as the worst of the genre, with lousy network TV effects, uninvolving action and unfunny and inelegant dialogue, its characters drowning in poorly written exposition (even if the much-memed viral line from the trailer is sadly not in the movie itself).

There might be just about enough competence to Polone’s film-making to ensure this won’t be the worst horror film of the year, but it’ll probably be the least necessary.

Films like Bride Hard, proudly recycling well-known popcorn plots without any attempt at originality, rely on heavy-lifting star power but there’s just none of that here.

An odd attempt at genre-surfing that ends up well out of its depth.

Nothing about the film comes close to authenticity and it’s largely down to Penn’s remarkably amateurish direction.

What propels us past the cliches of Intuition is a desire to see just how it all ties together, an assumption that a story as busily plotted as this must have an ace up its sleeve. But the last act is all fizzle, played out predictably with a mundanity that no amount of sweeping aerial shots can disguise.

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 exists in Netflix festive movie world, an ever-expanding place of ever-diminishing returns, and while this won’t be a film someone would consider returning to next Christmas, it’ll just about do for now.

There’s really nothing to see here, just another synthetic simulation of a film and a genre we used to love, less maintenance required and more complete overhaul.