Natalia Keogan

While the film’s social commentary isn’t radically incisive, it does manage to capture the nature of a true party game: excitement initially abounds, but you can’t play along forever.

While Nightbitch certainly achieves relatability, it also presents a generic treatise on womanhood that reinforces more gendered conventions than it refutes.

Overlong and undersexed, Fennell’s version of Wuthering Heights betrays her audience of edgelords and perverts. Even stranger, those who have fostered a distaste for the filmmaker’s sensibility will similarly find themselves disappointed. It’s one thing to make art that can be read as indulgent, ill-conceived, and tasteless—it’s another to turn around and make something that’s just boring in comparison.

As recent horror offerings disproportionately lean toward disappointing remakes and tepid commentary on our modern way of life, it’s refreshing to encounter genre fare that is equal parts original and entertaining.

Honestly, though, Along for the Ride is perfectly cozy, in part due to its formulaic nature. It might not be the most visually stunning work—at times, certain shots feel amateurishly disorienting—but it possesses an undeniable artistic heart.

Yet in spite of this promising narrative foundation, the film’s gruesome effects and the compelling performance from Blumm, Son seriously suffers from assorted perils of predictability and protractedness.

Unfortunately, even False Positive’s shortcomings are uncharacteristically boring, generic and empty.

While this suspension of narrative convention is a welcome deviation from the cut-and-dry formula of many coming-of-age films, Giants Being Lonely stops just short of actually saying something salient.

The script is nowhere near as tight and the characters nowhere near as well-rounded as in Dunham’s previous efforts, yet this unpolished quality is what allows the film to exist in a realm of messiness that feels alluringly unfamiliar. In fact, the ideological murkiness of Sharp Stick is one of the most rewarding things about it.

Without a tangible connection to the material—most notably to Iraq and its people—Gates’ viewpoint feels unguided, doomed to be influenced by the same pervasive prejudices that Atropia ostensibly attempts to combat.

While still leagues beneath the slacker-inspired brilliance of his early career works, The 4:30 Movie does at least concertedly cement itself in Smith’s prose and perspective.

Equal parts captivating and cringey, writer/director Nathalie Biancheri’s Wolf flounders in the face of articulating its own thesis.

The remake features riveting tension, assured performances, and hallmarks of an exciting new director’s narrative fascinations, all while the politics of its central dynamic continue to cry out for examination.

Despite clearly aiming to craft an intentional aesthetic, writer/director duo Manuel Crosby and Darren Knapp’s film is inundated with tributes to irreverent indie crime film staples without bothering to carve out a unique voice of its own.

Leave it to Collet-Serra to deliver a trim, serviceable product—something almost impressive when compared to some of Blumhouse’s other recent original efforts.

Though Smith’s charisma and charm are appreciable, it simply adds an artificial sense of pleasantness by way of steering clear of thornier issues. The end result feels less like a documentary film and more like a devotional favor.

The gritty, glowing neon textures of the ‘80s cover practically every frame of director Cody Calahan’s Vicious Fun, a horror-comedy caper that lovingly sends up the era’s genre tropes while never breaching egregious self-indulgence.

Clerks III is far from a perfect film. Absolutely drenched in masturbatory nostalgia and teeming with timely Marvel references, it milks the last drop of creative potential these nearly 30-year-old characters are capable of providing. Yet, somehow, these marked setbacks don’t completely bog the film down.

Though the premise is gripping and the acting overwhelmingly solid, Here Are the Young Men falls short when it comes to communicating the raw emotional essence of preemptively coping for a future in decline.

Musings on motherhood, performance, and power are never fully articulated, leaving a flurry of concepts up in the air without resolve.

Aside from the one chilling scene grafted straight from The Ten Steps and its gorgeous, historic filming location, The Cellar just isn’t that deep.

As opposed to relishing in the eerie yet widely disputed history of the creepy old house (re-dubbed the Morley Rectory), the film steeps itself in awkwardly placed commentary on fascism and feminism, effectively diminishing any ambiance invoked through the otherwise alluring 1930s set dressing.

Void of righteousness, indignation, or even straight-up nihilism, Sacrifice won’t cause even the most malleable of worldviews to waver.

Lake of Death would have been better off talking less, and scaring more.

What could have been a cogent critique of the parasitic nature between the uber-wealthy and the labor they exploit is instead an overly muted (and eventually weakly meta) version of a tale that’s been told a thousand times before.

Even with intense performances from Anna Gunn (Breaking Bad) and Linus Roache (Law & Order) guiding the action, the film would be far more effective as a taut short than a filled-out feature.

Though Sound of Violence marks a strong first leading role for Brown (who is cast in the forthcoming Scream reboot), it ultimately fails to impart anything more significant than the raw power of what one good actor with a brain-melting theremin can do for an otherwise underwhelming product.

For all of the horror subgenres crammed into Hold Your Breath, it never conjures sufficient scares.