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.