Chase Hutchinson

Sting is a horror movie about a killer spider from outer space that somehow falls short of the fun potential of such a premise.

Giving life to a horror vision that would not have nearly the same power and potency without her at the forefront of it, Sweeney has never been better than she is here. What a darkly beautiful yet brutal, bloody and bold film this is for her to wield.

It doesn’t deliver a knockout like some of Miike’s other films, but it still manages to beat all it has working against it into submission. One can only hope it manages to beat the odds again and find the audience it deserves.

This supposed breakout strains to be edgy while remaining painfully inert. It initially makes for a sporadically fun game to play before revealing how little it has on its mind.

As Alpha’s family becomes increasingly isolated, the film’s ambition widens. Though the rhythms of this can take some getting used to, the resulting emotional payoff is more than worth your patience.

It may not always come alive in the way Heller, or us, would entirely hope for, but one can still be glad “Nightbitch” exists, especially with Adams there to lead the way. In every facet of her performance, she paints a full portrait of a character herself figuring out who she now is.

Even as Dillon is the one with more to do and dialogue to speak, it’s an outstanding De Bankolé who holds the camera with such intensity that you don’t dare look away for even a second.

Even with a more gleeful performance by Kate Hudson, Shell is merely a fine film that’s far too tame to completely pay off.

For all its many structural flaws that could doom a lesser work, it manages to break free when it counts. Though Hunt won’t become a paragon of action cinema, the moments where it lets loose still pack plenty of potent hits.

The Boogeyman is at its best when it strips away all the excess to draw us deeper into darkness.

All through the scattered experience, Page is a shining light. Every move he makes gives the film something greater that it is never able to grasp.

Much like the city being built in the film, it’s all more interesting in theory than it ever is in actuality. Now that we will all have the chance to take it in for ourselves, the greatest revelation is that there just isn’t that much there to see.

That this is Bonilla’s feature directorial debut makes one only hope she keeps making comedies like this, as every escalation, cutaway, and lighting cue is perfectly executed. Doug may be a terrible director, but she proves to be a great one.

Without talking about how, why, or in what manner, it is Acken who emerges as the darkly delightful standout of The Sacrifice Game.

A sporadically interesting though ultimately superficial exploration of online connection, video games, and modern alienation, writer-director Flora Lau’s Luz is a film in search of something greater than it is never quite able to grab hold of.

Another Simple Favor is a sequel that never makes a case for its existence. It’s many of the same jokes that serve less as callbacks and more as reminders of how much more fun the first film was.

All the clear love the film has for the references it is throwing out is never molded into anything memorable of its own.

The cast is sufficiently fun and the remote location a proper backdrop for the offbeat story to play out. It just never brings all its pieces together, revealing that the greatest paranormal force haunting the entire affair is the ghost of a better film.

As "M3GAN 2.0" drags on, it's impossible to shake the sense that Cooper's voice was the key to the original.

The film may have begun with a joke on one man, but with the cutthroat world we’re increasingly building for ourselves, it may soon be on all of us.

For being based on such a memorable story, it's incredible how forgettable The Boys in the Boat is. Clooney's direction is so empty and the writing so trite that it leaves the committed cast stranded out on the water with nowhere meaningful to go.

Pearce does have a good sense of how to direct actors and give the story something closer to genuine tension in how patient he can be in the focused dialogue scenes, though the story itself is too shaky for him to hold it together.

The pieces still come together to reveal a thorny portrait of how little a push it takes to create a villain.

There is a good film in here that could be made more present if the story itself was punched up as much as the enemies are. This is unfortunate as every dynamic moment of deadly destruction is undercut by ones that are ultimately uneventful.

Playing out almost like a spoof of various genres with both macabre horror and mumblecore misdirects, it's an odd film that's often as lost as the charming characters themselves before settling into a strange groove that starts to cast a spell of its own.

When creative directors are given the chance to take big swings and actually do so, the result can bring about nightmarish experiences unlike anything out there. The glimpses of this in V/H/S/85 serve as a reminder of the value of the series and the visions it can ultimately provide a home for.

Neither wacky enough to be a winning comedy nor clever enough to be a horror sendup, We Have a Ghost is a film that leaves little to grasp onto as it all just ends up slipping through your fingers.

It’s a meandering experience defined by the broadest of narrative strokes, cardboard cutout characters and musical numbers that start fun before growing more oddly obligatory in nature.

As Finley manages a last unassuming gut punch, it strikes painfully true. It provides one final drop of mundane dread that reveals how the most comprehensively exploitative of systems can become terrifyingly normal. Good thing that’s only science fiction.

When all the pieces come together, it is a work that proves to be one of the more well-rounded experiences from Rodriguez in quite some time.

It’s honest about the deception that is inherent to celebrity, confronting us with one compromise after another, building to a pitch-perfect finale needle-drop over a captivating monologue that elevates the comedy into a work of grand, messy ambition.

More a forced, one-note farce than the sharp satire it’s trying to be, Atropia is almost impressive in how it manages to allude to so many complicated subjects surrounding U.S. militarism without authentically skewering or even poking at any of them.

There is something occasionally charming about Outlaw Posse. Alas, charm can only get you so far when a film resembles more of a scattered work of cosplay than a robust cinematic work.

None of the action scenes have any passion to them and, even worse, they can feel downright contrived. That it then pretends to have something more to say strains credulity.

While Snook does all she can to give the experience some heft, Run Rabbit Run is a horror film in search of something greater others have already achieved that it is never able to find.

Amelia's Children is a horror film that has moments of unintentional humor, but is ultimately dull rather than some sort of clever dark comedy.

It seems like Over Your Dead Body is caught between deconstructing itself and just going through the motions.

For all the ways Botet and company put their hearts into giving it some life, the film is persistently defined by death of not just its characters, but of creativity itself.

A familiar underdog story made engaging by the flashes of patience with which it approaches its material, Sanaa Lathan’s On the Come Up doesn’t reinvent the wheel as much as it tries to roll along with it.

Heimann is so focused on the spectacle of it all that he forgets to do anything with it emotionally or formally, dragging everything to a close, as we return back to the beginning with little of anything meaningful or engaging occurring over the film’s running time.

Slingshot is more of a murky mystery where the big revelations don't hold up under scrutiny.

If written well and with the same care as its direction, this could have conveyed a sense of more genuine tragedy. Regrettably, for all the ways the performances try to eschew convention for a bit more substance, it is a losing battle from start to finish.

There are masterful works of horror that have proven less can be more. Despite some of its promise, Baghead is not one of them.

There is a tension that comes from the humor clashing with the tragedy, but it’s a worthwhile one. Life is full of sudden loss and then also ridiculously funny moments. Capturing that authentically is no small feat, but Duplass does so with delicate care.

It all makes for a clever, measured, mirthful, and joyous film with the real potential to be a modern monster movie classic whose legs could easily see it sprinting into being a routine rewatch every single year.

Each empty bump in the night lands with a dull thud. Even a terrifying dog that becomes crucial to the film has a bark that’s worse than its bite.

For all the ways that Darby and the Dead tries to give its abundantly safe story some life, it can’t break free of a narrative hellbent on dragging it to the grave.

In the end, “Rhythm Is A Dancer” remains a classic banger, but Pretty Lethal never finds any remotely memorable rhythms of its own.

While it takes a while to get there after dancing around its premise, when Run Sweetheart Run hits its stride it is more than worth running along with it.

Whatever joy you get in individual moments is lost in the shuffle of a film that far overstays its welcome.

They Will Kill You is a modern action gem with a knockout leading performance by Zazie Beetz, who more than cements her status as a star of the genre we ought to see more of.

It’s a cute premise that ultimately gets wrung so dry that you’re left waiting for it to finally stop. The majority of its jokes either land flat or are run into the ground. Even worse, it pulls on the heartstrings with such force and impatience that the audience manipulation is palpable in every painfully predictable scene.

It is as if Pugh is having to push her way through narrative waters that threaten to wash away her performance. No matter how she continues to rise to the challenge, the film’s cascading of contrivances drown her out.

The characters are consistently charming, the humor sufficiently silly, and the animation often beautiful, though the standard path it takes holds it back from fully exploring the potential lurking just beneath the surface. When it all bursts free towards the end is when the film is at its best.

For all the anticipation about this being a star turn for Styles, the lack of depth in his performance and of the film itself ensures it won’t leave nearly the impression it set out to.

There are moments of terror near the beginning, but it gets far too tangled up in a generic narrative that drowns out any sense of vision. Even with some striking visual moments and excellent sound design, it is all in service of regrettably very little.

This void of a movie has plenty of the right pieces to work with at hand, but continually arranges them in the most blunt, least interesting manner possible. It’s a film that bolds, underlines and then shouts at you what it’s about, though never authentically earns your emotional investment.

By the time it all eventually wraps up with some lackluster lessons conveyed via a painfully sappy final scene, you’ll wish the film had taken the chance to go on a journey with Keaton and Paige instead of whatever this all was.

Even at just over 90 minutes, it quickly runs out of steam and can only coast along.

Daniela Forever is afraid to ever dream big, leaving nothing more than a banal nightmare.

It is a slog of epic proportions that utterly wastes the talents of all involved. Completely lacking in cleverness and without any sense of direction, it is a cinematic drought of entertainment that only has any intrigue in how baffling an artifact it remains. It may not be the worst movie of the year, but it is certainly the most annoying.

A lot is going on all at once, but little of it coheres into anything substantive, let alone actually memorable or meaningful.

It is mostly a drag with some potentially sharper small details never coming together to outweigh the dullness at its core. For those who may come to the film wanting to understand more of who Golda was and her role in history via a well-written character study, they’ll only end up departing it with all of those questions still lingering.

When all the dust settles, The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die is a flawed yet fitting finale that serves as a send-off to Uhtred of Bebbanburg and the bloody life he did everything to find a way clear of.

Credit where credit is due, Sacrifice ultimately made me seriously consider the prospect of death while watching it. However, this mostly came from a desire for it all to end so we no longer had to keep enduring the inescapably vapid and shallow film unraveling before us.

While Ridley gives her all to a more thoughtful and nuanced performance, The Marsh King's Daughter remains a film on a directionless journey to nowhere. Even with the commitment of its lead, it just gets lost in the woods before falling flat on its face.

The result is a film that’s not just incisive and compassionate, but fully attuned to the rhythms of this modern family.

Rather than come away feeling like you’ve watched something truly daring or inventive, it all feels derivative. It is a film that is too mundane to even get mad at.

There is real passion in DeBose’s vocal performance as she tries to elevate the rote music. I just wish she were in a better movie.

Benjamin provides just the right balance of sincerity and snark to hold this dark action-comedy together. When combined with bloody good action choreography, the film mostly knocks any flaws aside.

It’s a film in search of a character whose sole saving grace may be that it leads its audience to read Sapienza’s work for themselves — because the movie doesn’t do her or her legacy justice.

Until Dawn is more disappointing than deadly, leaving all the promise of the horror game behind for a jumble of horror-movie re-creations.

There are plenty of silly recurring jokes and a collection of quirky characters, but it all exists to cover up just how empty the film itself is at its core.

I see dead people in this film, but their cause of death is simply boredom.

More than the bursts of visceral violence, it’s Refn’s vibrant command of visuals that proves most exhilarating. Even if there was less plot, the consistently dark beauty of the film would be enough to carry it forward.

It can be said the film does indeed provide a full summary of Foreman’s recounting of the major events in his life where he comes out looking pretty great, but that hardly makes for a compelling work of cinema.

Even as Paulson is putting her all into the film and can firmly grab hold of you at some moments as her strong-willed matriarch comes undone, much like the dust that is floating around the confined setting, it all slips through her fingers.

When it then shifts into being about the case itself with the characters trying to get to the bottom of it all, the humor feels like it is mostly coasting off of the chemistry of Sandler and Aniston. This can hold things together for a while as both bounce off each other effectively, but the film soon is revealed to just be a recycling of jokes the first film already did better.

Foe, the beautifully shot yet scattered lo-fi sci-fi mystery thriller starring Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal, is not a good movie. However, it is an interesting one.

Last Days is a film that is so contrived, superficial and misconceived, it does a disservice to the story with every choice it makes.

There is never a sense that Collette is phoning it in, but the entire narrative around her is just too flimsy to hold together for a full feature. In isolation, there are some solid gags and throwaway jokes that connect. The trouble is that they are just increasingly few and far between. It all makes for a film that oddly feels like it is playing it safe, relying on the charisma of its lead and offering little else beyond that.

Though this film does gesture towards urgent issues, like misogyny being endemic to the modern tech industry, and is genuine in how it seeks to talk about them in a more crowd-pleasing package, it never amounts to being more than one note.

It is her performance that ensures every tonal shift lands as it goes from playfully comedic to delightfully dark and back again. Despite how overstuffed and unwieldy it gets, seeing Kidman work her magic at every turn will never not be a joy to see.

In a world that often rewards mediocrity where true artistic greatness is hard to come by, a work like Opus had the potential to be a defining movie of our current moment, but the film’s half-hearted swipes at celebrity culture are never sharp or incisive enough to get under the skin.

It isn’t the worst shark movie out there, but that’s not saying much. By the time we get to the “big final confrontation,” it loses a handle on what it was going for.

The funniest element of what vaguely gestures toward dark comedy is how poorly written this story about writers is.

Though there are movies that are worse than 65, it is part of a select few that manage to utterly and completely squander their own potential.

What could’ve been a fun little sci-fi horror transforms into something that deflates any remaining tension and engagement in one fell swoop.

For every moment where it seems like it’s getting somewhere more thoughtful, it will dance away into something else, lacking focus even as it remains faithful to the rather short source material.

The problem just keeps coming back to Harlow. Not only is he just out of his depth in hitting the necessary comedic notes, but the hollowness of his performance also becomes impossible to overlook when his character goes through a rough patch and must find redemption.

Andra Day delivers a commendable performance as matriarch Ebony Jackson, but the entire experience is neither scary enough as a horror film nor insightful enough as a drama to leave a mark.

For all the promising threads it pulls on surrounding a variety of faith traditions, The Exorcist: Believer doesn't earn your belief or your fear. Where Friedkin's classic will endure forever, this superficial sequel remains stuck in the past. It may try to speak all the same verses, but it doesn't add new life to any of them.

It certainly is a throwback, but it not only stops far short of being a comedy touchdown, it barely feels like it brings anything new to the field.

It wants you to buy into the heart and the humor without earning either.

Even as all the comedy to be found within this setup had already run dry a full movie ago, The Family Plan 2 keeps going back to the well in the desperate hope that there are still a few drops left.

The problem is The Curse of Bridge Hollow isn’t clever enough to carve out a niche of its own and is defined by the diminishing returns of derivative genre riffs from start to finish.

Though it doesn’t have the audacity to close when it should with its characters at their very lowest, The Estate is still proper fun in seeing a deeply improper family tear each other apart.

In the Blink of an Eye is a disaster of its own making, living in the shadow of far better sci-fi films of old, and never doing anything interesting with any of the ideas it throws out.