Matt Donato

The corroded mineral walls, dehydrated trees, and all of nature’s other décor are wonderfully shot, and the performances aren’t to blame, but The Seeding just doesn’t have the storytelling mindset to protect its characters from looking like fools instead of victims of horrific circumstances.

Despicable Me 3 hits a supervillain high with Balthazar Bratt, but also a franchise low as far as Gru and Dru's brotherly reunion is concerned.

Tom Cruise is as muscly and bland as heroes come, restrained by the burden of two dead-weight companion pawns. Jack Reacher is a man who thrives on working alone, and this dull tale of backstabbing militant leeches proves that fact tenfold.

Bugonia is a film that tries to balance barbed sci-fi themes and conspiracy looniness funneled through Lanthimos’ trademark quirks, but it slips off the pommel horse on the dismount.

Underworld: Blood Wars is the kind of mainstream horror I want to champion, but lackluster technical aspects nullify Kate Beckinsale's kick-ass performance.

The Abandoned is a steadfast and creepy haunted flick, until the final five minutes sink the entire production. It'll work for some, but sadly not for most.

Jack Goes Home is a swirling storm of emotional ravaging that’s eventually personified by action, but it never comes together as wicked, cohesive storytelling. Give this one a watch, but just know the risks going in.

Allegoria uses an anthology format to unleash the evils behind a writer’s insecurities, an actor’s doubts and a painter’s perfectionist ego, but struggles as most anthologies do to find meaning behind shorts that begin and end before any substantial climax.

Why Him? plays a fairly one-note game that gets tiresome halfway through, which is sadly still better than most comedies put out this year.

Jigsaw feels like a forced hodgepodge of previous franchise entries that never carves its own identity, making you question what prompted such an expected reboot these few years later.

Daddio is a repetitive and reductive experiment in dialogue-driven storytelling.

James Franco is a stand-out in I Am Michael, but the film's specific story struggles to relate on a broader scale.

We Bury The Dead is a sprawling but sparse zombie remix that's too far removed from the genre it's exploiting.

Justice League is a sloppy team-up film that doesn't even take time to properly introduce pivotal members of its titular team, but when you're playing a dangerous (also ill-advised) game of catch up, these are the risks.

A few images sear with the burning sensation of undead terror, but that only accounts for a few short minutes of an otherwise more-daunting-than-it-should-be cinematic exploration of death.

It’s more than just a failure of a remake — it’s disappointing on its own standalone merits, too.

Bambi: The Reckoning is an audaciously bloody but distractingly humorless creature feature.

Terminator: Dark Fate is a good Terminator franchise entry by comparison, but still falls into many of the pitfalls that modern reboots/remakes/sequels struggle to sidestep when balancing nostalgia with hyper-CGI action.

Power Rangers doesn't completely fail as an origin story, but it's too familiar with its new-age reboot mentality that repurposes instead of recreates.

It’s a remake that lacks identity, urgency and enthusiasm—such a shame after Keith Thomas’ outstanding horror debut.

Gaztelu-Urrutia’s expansion feels redundant and over-explained, but also sludgy and disjointed. It’s like being served a second dinner after you’re uncomfortably full; the flavors taste the same, but the experience is far less fulfilling.

Mileage will vary, dictated by your appreciation for methodical avalanches of sorrow driven by puritanical pressures. Everything is minimalistic, punctuated by the devastating context found in the research that helped shape Franz and Fiala’s screenplay. Some viewers will recognize dedication, others will have their patience tested.

Here, genre hybridization is a losing battle, sacrificing scares and intensity in favor of corny jokes about Instagram not yet being invented.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey is noteworthy only for its name, as it turns out that blending slasher blood with Pooh’s honey together is like oil and water: it just doesn’t mix.

Bay's latest Transformer title is a daunting behemoth of a film and you can feel every ounce of dead weight, as sins of the past are committed without any signs of stopping.

Quite simply, it’s impossible to “enjoy” a film that makes you feel even worse about the society we live in – especially when it’s so gobsmackingly unaware itself.

Meg 2: The Trench has all the excitement of fishing solo for two hours without a single bite. Wheatley is a shell of himself behind the camera, devoid of personality and originality.

A Dog's Purpose goes the Collateral Beauty route by preying on sadness and not earning its emotional reactions.

Hellraiser: Judgment is a stuffy police procedural masquerading as a torturous Pinhead franchise entry.

It's a Frankenstein'ed monstrosity made of different horror approaches, except instead of bringing something to life, unrevivable ideas remain limp and useless.

Plainly put, Last Girl Standing explores a unique horror convention from a fresh angle, but can’t execute when it counts.

This year's Inside remake swaps Bustillo and Maury's brutalization levels for beyond-generic thrills that are more frustrating than fierce - whatever that's worth.

There’s not a single character worth caring about, and even less artistic licence to appreciate. This is a dirty, depraved love-letter to horror that’s written in a bunch of different colored crayons to mask such simple words with distracting colors.

The Boss Baby is a movie made for few audiences, inconceivably inept in its ability to blend adult references with children's immaturity.

One or two jokes might cause a titter, but the other ninety-eight percent of this unfunny deflation has nothing to offer but hormonal awkwardness without the gut-busting payoff.

On the 3rd Day never coheres, it’s just Halloween Mad Libs trying to fake its way through an actual start-to-finish storyline.

Inferno feels every bit like the second sequel in an exhausted franchise, stunted by unfocused storytelling and a blandness that's almost sleep-inducing.

The First Purge doubles-down on bloody opposition against true-to-life societal fears, but abandons the subtlety needed to prevent Gerard McMurray’s prequel from becoming anything more than hateful retribution.

Leatherface is an origin story that attempts to carve new mythos for one of horror's mightiest legends, but ends up leaning on franchise references and bleakness to an unnecessary fault.

It’s not that Soisson created a terrible movie, but Cam2Cam is late to the party, brings absolutely nothing notable, and sits in the corner without making a peep.

Despite Winslet's stunning cowgirl fashionista, The Dressmaker is a whole lot of weirdness packed into a story that stumbles around like an emotionally-inept drunk.

Like a flashlight that's running low on juice, you can feel the life oozing out of Nightlight with every faint flicker.

No lies; there are a handful of moments that strike a smile. That said, enjoyment is fleeting like the glee of biting into candy only to find, seconds later, that it's black licorice flavor.

Desierto is one of those movies that's nasty without reason, and never really finds its stride by way of tone or message.

Rodriguez’s transformation is hackneyed and ham-fisted, Hill’s action lacks excitement, unnecessary comic-book panel swipes add “character” – there’s nothing noteworthy about this hunt for retribution.

Storks is momentarily funny when it’s not boorishly and exhaustively begging for your attention.

Quicksand swings and misses as the next buzzy nature-born thriller. Beltrán can never decide if he’s making an upscale SYFY B-movie or an overserious examination of marriages so stale that self-destruction seems the only answer.

Detroit is, for lack of a better term, a pornographic echo chamber of resentment. Trying to put out a fire with ten more tankers full of gasoline.

Franck Khalfoun’s often-rethought Amityville: The Awakening is sleepover background noise at its best, traceable genre road-mapping at its worst.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is two-plus overstuffed hours worth of too many characters fighting for screen time that no enchantment can salvage.

Murnion and Milott’s Bushwick feels like a John Carpenter film without the societal skewering. A nasty, hate-filled movie with shaky detailing.

Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets is a fantasy adventure that’s nowhere near as adventurous or fantastical as it should be.

825 Forest Road is a stodgy paranormal thriller that doesn’t boast enough character or intensity to reach the heights of its director’s Hell House LLC movies.

If you’re laughing at all throughout Masterminds, it’s probably because of Jason Sudeikis.

Incarnate is just another buried Blumhouse special, and I assure you its neglect is with good reason.

Martyrs is the exact movie we feared it'd be - a forgettable remake of a far more prolific foreign success story.

Excitement is fleeting, dialogue rambles and Jude Law’s tyrant-approved throne slouch pretty much sums the film’s overall attitude – a hearty “meh,” worthy of no diamond-studded crown.

Collateral Beauty is a Hallmark tear-jerker in the worst way, so out of tune with human emotion that it almost becomes satire.

The Garfield Movie is silly to a fault, feels seventeen hours long, and lacks any pulse of life.

Varley's talents as a director are evident for the first half at least, but after that, The Astronaut becomes a head-scratcher.

Pierre Morel's uninspired work behind the camera goes hand in hand with the film’s nondescript title, dragging viewers through a moodless, toothless action hybrid that, at its best, plays as forgettably inept even with ammunition flying in all directions.

Wish Upon is a Final Destination redux that pulls too many punches.

The Frontier is a stale film from another era, with an unfortunate story that's about as frail as a tumbleweed.

Rupture is the kind of ill-conceived film that gives Michael Chiklis the campy role while keeping Peter Stormare on background duty.

Duchess is a flat and forgettable riff on Guy Ritchie classics that doesn't have an ounce of the wit, charm, or glorious mayhem.

The Long Night’s understanding of horror genre fulfillment is nonexistent, no more satisfying than rice cakes with a little red food coloring splashed on to mimic spooky decorations.

Never does Soderbergh’s projection strike me as B-movieness or popcorn entertainment. His mix of arthouse iPhone Hollywood and downplayed character accentuation (by way of misrepresented screen shrinkage) makes for a thriller that fails to spike excitement via a villain who’s always right where he has to be.

Abattoir feels like it should still have an "Under Construction" sign warning viewers of the unfinished business to come.

Hellboy feels editorially chopped to bits, tonally disjointed and created from clashing perspectives that make for the type of "dark, gritty" reboot that misunderstands why certain "dark, gritty" reboots end up working.

Anaconda is a disappointing follow-up for Gormican, who cannot crack the code on Sony's bewildering aquatic not-really-horror reboot. A cast of proven funny people are lost in a thick brush of hacky bits and ineffective storytelling, unable to machete their way through to a redeeming climax. There are brief bursts of creature-feature excitement and belly-tickling humor, but way more stretches of bafflingly unclear ambitions that feel like they're struggling to keep the "movie within a movie" gimmick afloat. It's Anaconda without the aqua-horror chills, throwback practical effects, and midnight-movie entertainment—what an odd choice.

Dark Phoenix takes arguably the most heavily thematic X-Men comic arc and delivers the most dully procedural, chopped-to-bits cinematic franchise entry in Fox’s mutant canon.

Ghost In The Shell is exactly the high-fi cyber shooter you feared it’d be, drenched in digital paranoia and concerns of network privacy. Visual fancies overload the senses early and often, only to hope the kaleidoscope artistry lingers long enough to overcompensate for back-end dullness.

Bravo’s abundance of inexplicable details makes for an interesting conundrum at first, but mystery soon fades.

The Black Demon barely makes a splash in a pool filled with better shark attack movies, falling victim to a small body count, a grating protagonist, and disappointing digital effects.

From start to finish, Fantasy Island is lacking wicked wonderment and poignant reboot vocality. You'd be best off skipping it.