Matthew Jackson

The Beast is a monster of a movie, one that will sink its claws into you, then ask you to contemplate the wounds it leaves. It’s not an easy watch, but it is a deeply rewarding one that you’ll be thinking about for days.

It’s solid, and at its best it’s an impishly entertaining little thriller. But all the talent in the world can’t overcome the feeling that there is more here to be mined, if only Humane had dug just a little deeper.

Abigail is a brutal, bloody blast.

Forget what you think you know about horror prequels. The First Omen gets it, goes for the throat, and never lets go.

Uneven and sometimes predictable though it is, it’s a film that knows how to push the buttons of its particular subgenre, and you get the sense that any number of stars might have been able to carry it in the right context. You also get the sense, from the very first moment she’s onscreen to the unforgettable final frame, that none of those other possible stars could have carried it quite as well as Sweeney.

Late Night With The Devil achieves that rare feat of feeling like something we were never supposed to see. But once we’ve seen it, we can’t look away.

It’s a warm, approachable movie that you’ll get blissfully lost in.

The film does not have easy answers, but rather than making it seem shallow, its lack of clear moral coding instead offers us something more primal and more powerful. It’s a film about the open-ended question of how much humanity we as a species have left in us, and that makes it a provocative, thrilling monster of a movie that will sear itself into your eyeballs.

Even with the action and stunt work operating at full throttle, what really makes The Fall Guy work is the partnership between Gosling and Blunt.

I Saw The TV Glow is a remarkable portrait of pop-culture obsession—how it can unite us, change us, and ripple down through our entire lives in ways both uplifting and unsettling.

Patel’s film may have found its greatest success in the way it seamlessly, powerfully translates the director’s pure, kinetic love of cinema into something bold, new, and unforgettable.

The aim is to deliver something that’s both a gripping throwback and a shockingly timeless exploration of human terror. Happily for horror fans, the film mostly hits the mark, and becomes a must-see genre film along the way.

If you’re not a slasher nerd, don’t worry, this entertaining, wicked little movie can still win you over, even if it might take you a little longer to find its particular groove.

An all-out assault on the senses that’s fun, funny, and still capable of making you a little queasy. That’s Destroy All Neighbors in a nutshell, but that’s also just the beginning.

Despite some choppy waters in the back half, this is a fun, funny, often genuinely unnerving horror movie experience, one that might make you think twice about that first swim of the year when summer rolls around.

This is a film that takes big swing after big swing, and leaves us filled up with spectacle, warmth, and a sense that the wait was probably worth it.

Everyone seems like they’re genuinely having fun, but they’re trapped in a less interesting movie than the one they could have made, the one just out of frame.

Packed with memorable kills, knowing winks, and a playful slasher whodunit plot, Thanksgiving is a horror feast worth sitting through, even if it never exactly pushes beyond the bounds of its central hook.

Totally Killer is a film full of great talent, great moments, and an infectious sense of fun, which means that even when it doesn’t quite work, it’s an entertaining balance of slasher tropes and time travel adventure.

Throw in a few fun set pieces, some dynamic creature designs, and a breezy narrative that zips by before your eyes, and Spy Kids: Armageddon comes away as a film that mostly works.

Satanic Hispanics, a horror anthology from a quintet of Latino filmmakers and an energetic ensemble cast of actors, embraces the versatility and sense of diversity that can work so well in this format.

By the time the credits roll, all the ingredients Reeder’s been carefully marshaling come together in surprising, satisfying ways, delivering a horror film that leaves the world a little bigger, a little stranger and a little scarier.

It might not be destined to join the ranks of teen comedy masterpieces, but in the short term, its ability to nail the right balance of emotional and comedic unpredictability makes it a very pleasant journey, and a must-see for teen movie aficionados.

Despite this unevenness, there’s a lot to love in The Last Voyage Of The Demeter for horror fans and casual moviegoers alike.

Fierce, fun, and steeped in youthful energy, it’s a film that’s willing to go to some truly dark places in its exploration of grief, death and what it means when we reach too far into the beyond, but it’s also never afraid to laugh along the way. That juxtaposition alone is enough to make it one of the year’s must-see horror films, an addictive thrill ride that never loses its own playful spin on some classic horror ideas.

For all this and more, Oppenheimer deserves the title of masterpiece. It’s Christopher Nolan’s best film so far, a step up to a new level for one of our finest filmmakers, and a movie that burns itself into your brain.

It’s sometimes buried under layers and layers of storytelling knots that the film never fully untangles, but the fun is there, and when the film is really working, that turns out to be enough.

Even when you might want more from its plot, and even when it’s sticking to quiet character drama over all-out monster assaults, The Boogeyman thrives on the implied thing that’s lurking in every corner, which makes it a very effective, intimate creepshow.