Lena Wilson

The Strangers: Chapter 1 might freak you out if you aren’t old enough to remember The Strangers, but where its predecessor was subtle and interesting, Renny Harlin’s reboot chooses to be ridiculous and boring.

It’s difficult to imagine anyone watching Life Upside Down out of anything other than abject desperation.

The film focuses more on one character’s moral defects than the sketchy project overall, leading to a conclusion that feels unsatisfying at best and pompous at worst.

The Princess somehow manages to be both under-written and insultingly obvious.

Those poor viewers willing to take on this Freudian tale and its dialogue rivaling “The Room” must brave a ludicrous slog for crumbs.

Such a breezy, Instagram-friendly adaptation feels like a betrayal to Dessen’s original, neurotic protagonist, who has a more difficult journey from self-induced solitude to romance.

It plays as if the worst episodes of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” have all been processed in a blender and then stretched to nearly two hours long.

“Antichrist” may have been chauvinistic in its own right, but at least was interesting to watch. Barbarians doesn’t provide much excitement at all.

[A] soulless film.

Forget about hell, the emptiness these filmmakers must address lies primarily in their predominantly female cast of characters.

This mawkish plot might be tolerable if its characters were more likable; instead, they are pretension personified.

Unfortunately, its lesbian representation is so shoddy that its scares also suffer.

There is a clear through line of faithlessness in the script by Reece and John Selvidge, but it is otherwise so aimless and underdeveloped as to turn this 93-minute film into a plodding slog.

Don’t Breathe 2 is plenty lively, full of violence and action, but a rancid narrative (and some seriously terrible dialogue) overpowers the script.

Settlers purports to challenge violence against women and colonialism. Instead, the female protagonist wallows in powerlessness for most of the movie, and a boxy robot is ultimately presented as more sympathetic than a displaced brown man.

There is little here that was not already tackled in Rob Stewart’s 2007 documentary “Sharkwater,” nor in the more recent, less artful “Seaspiracy.” Though where Stewart painstakingly explained the beauty, intelligence and importance of sharks, Roth would rather that we love these animals simply because he does.

Words like “colonialism” and “the American dream” are thrown around, to little avail. This movie ultimately cares more about monotonous shootouts than making points about border relations

La Dosis harms itself by refusing lucidity. What should be a razor’s edge rivalry plays more like a hamstrung thriller.

The premise is disingenuous at best and, in a moment where scores of citizens are calling for widespread police reform, fearmongering at worst. Like Jigsaw offering one of his facile riddles, this film is not as clever as it thinks it is.

Sacca’s script is an exercise in poor plotting.

The problem is not that Cats makes no sense . . . nor that the performances are mediocre (most of them are quite good). The murder weapon is the galling CGI intended to cover the actors in head-to-toe feline fur. Instead, the animation detracts from the film’s capable performers and inventive surroundings, drawing the eye reluctantly in like the sight of a person vomiting in the middle of an amusement park. It makes for a slow death, so overwhelmingly grotesque that it ceases to be interesting at all.

Either this movie was made due to one of the most humongous creative blind spots in all of filmmaking, or it was made because in this, the year 2019, there are still people who believe that eroticized, lightened-up rape scenes are not only permissable – they are empowering.

A noir-ish melodrama so oversaturated with dourness that it borders on parody.

These characters are undoubtedly supposed to be parodies of themselves, but their collective unrepentant narcissism broods more resentment than laughter. By the end of the feature, it’s hard not to cringe every time somebody talks.

Unfortunately, while Set It Up sets up instances of subversion, it ultimately topples into a predictable mess of romantic noxiousness.

Though the film attempts to introduce a future laden with fascinating social implications, it maddeningly ignores them in favor of an overwrought, plodding, and inherently sexist romance.

Neither romantic nor comedic, When We First Met is almost too vapid to be aggravating. After watching it, you might be tempted to hunt down a time-traveling photo booth of your own so that you can undo your mistake. Luckily, this movie is so shallow you probably won’t even remember it after you wake up tomorrow