Thom Ernst

By the time the narrative decides where it’s going, the audience has already decided not to care.

For all its proclamations of authenticity, The Ritual feels no more grounded than a message from a Ouija board. And that, perhaps, is the real possession at work here: truth, struggling to be a spectacle.

Amsterdam is full of quips, cocked heads, characters peeking around doorway frames, and a cast of single-purpose characters. It’s a rapid-fire onslaught of scenes, dialogue, and characters. Russell fans will cling to the belief that there is something at the end of this mess; others will likely give up early on.

I imagine it's possible to enjoy Paradise Cove. Going in with low expectations is a good start. Accepting the film's dated approach to demonizing the less fortunate helps. Relinquishing any hopes of credibility in plot or character is essential. Manage that, and Paradise Cove might have a campy, if not tawdry, appeal.

No doubt Henrik Kauffmann (Ulrich Thomsen), the Danish ambassador to the United States during Nazi-occupied Denmark, was good. But The Good Traitor, the pseudo-docudrama depicting his life is sadly not.

Enter the Fat Dragon is thin on plot and without any real belly laughs.

There are enough dream sequences infiltrating the action to confuse even devoted fans, while Insidious newbies and part-time dabblers are left to wonder when Freddy Krueger might arrive on scene. Wilson’s first stab at direction is not entirely a failure, but neither does he push the franchise to any new heights.

Imaginary is far too long, at one hour, 44 minutes. The build-up has a few exciting moments. But the climax, intended as the film's centerpiece, is a dull repetition of hallways, locked doors, and unimpressive jump scares. Anyone who has toured a makeshift haunted house at a charitable event has experienced worse scares.

Push feels like a long joke waiting for a punchline that never lands. Or worse, one that makes you feel stupid for not getting it, even though the setup was never quite clear to begin with.

Yakuza Princess is a passable actioner with a few memorable scenes, the highlight of which is a fight in a karaoke bar (yes, MASUMI gets the chance to sing). But it’s unable to get beyond a level of mediocrity, and MASUMI’s performance fails to resonate with the sufficient conviction required of her role.

Plane is a mild diversion that carries more baggage than necessary, a forgettable thriller pieced together from a collage of other films and ideas.

As it is, Embryo is a routine alien abduction story repackaged as an experimental film.

Fast X dials in every living character (with some post-mortem appearances) to wrap up the decades-long franchise. If you’re not caught up on your F&F history, you are liable to find yourself reaching for a GPS to guide you through the plot.

Despite being top-heavy in themes, Whannell’s Wolf Man is a plodding, uninspired tale that discards folklore—there are no full moons or silver bullets—and squanders the talent of its cast.

Sadly, despite the film’s gallant efforts, I am forced to join the ranks of the naysayers. In the end, I did find that the CGI effects were as creepy as they are impressive, and there were more failed numbers than there were successful ones.

And though you can sense the influences of Mad Max, Escape from New York, and even a few influential forces from Walter Hill’s The Warriors, The Forever Purge remains an uncinematic thriller unworthy of breaking a lengthy stay away from the theatre.

Although Let Us In is billed as a science-fiction/horror for young adults, it’s hard to imagine anyone identifying as a teen or tween finding much interest beyond a rudimentary curiosity of an online urban myth getting the feature-length film treatment.

Despite a brief reprieve with films like Mandy (2018) and Color Out of Space (2019), both of which successfully harness Cage's outlier approach, he makes a swift and disappointing dip back onto Hollywood's B-list here.

Silent Night is not the second coming of Die Hard that we might have hoped.

There are many reasons why The Exorcist worked and still does, and why The Exorcist: Believer doesn’t and never will. But to explore the difference between the films too profoundly would be to legitimize Green’s film as a worthy successor to William Friedkin’s masterpiece. It isn’t.

Uncharted once again confirms my belief that video games make for bad to mediocre movies. At least Uncharted scrounges up enough fortitude to be mediocre.

I'll admit that The Strangers had me on the edge of my seat, mostly because I wasn't sure if I planned on staying.

Geremy Jasper’s O’dessa is a dystopian rock opera lacking the essential elements of soul, rhythm, and the rebellious spirit characteristic of rock ‘n’ roll. It’s a tone-deaf attempt at greatness that ultimately falls short.

Jenkins’ performance is the reason to see The Last Shift. But, not even a stellar performance from Jenkins can rescue The Last Shift entirely from its underdeveloped premise and an earnest need to be appreciated.

For all its hallowed movie references, and despite the pride Zeroville takes in its weirdness, it just might be a movie too strange for its good.

I saw Firestarter at a late-night screening. A person in the audience talked loudly on their phone for much of the film's second half. No one asked them to stop. No one cared.

And though Besson does salvage a reasonably entertaining tale, his unapologetic fetish for women who kill gives the movie an icky feeling of having stumbled across someone’s private web browser.

Despite an abundance of spent artillery, terrorists disguised as caterers, military strategizing, and filthy rich people in imminent danger, Attack on Finland achieves the level of a dry espionage drama with only a few surprises to elevate it from the mundane.

The humour is scattershot, the themes undercooked, and despite some high-tech window dressing, M3GAN 2.0 ultimately feels more refurbished than a technical evolution.

Despite some exemplary action sequences, including an impressive chase scene through the streets of Paris and into the subterranean tubes, The 355 fails to shed the tropes of male gaze and the kickass female fetishes of Kill Bill, Charlie's Angels, and every film Luc Besson has made with a female lead.

Night Swim is another title to add to the increasingly unreliable canon of films from Jason Blum and James Wan. Not every new project has to be greenlit, gentlemen.

Black Water is an entertaining enough film, although one based on an overused premise that’s been done better.

It’s not so much whether The Jesus Rolls fails. It does, but how much it fails depends on how amped up your expectations are going into the movie.

If Five Nights at Freddy’s has anything to offer in the way of entertainment, scares, and authentic memorabilia, it was buried beneath the determined pandering to those addicted to being on the inside of the joke.

The film settles for soft-peddling rehashed themes of belonging, where misunderstood mutants struggle once again to be accepted. We've been here before, and it was better the first time.

The film is blessedly short, which does allow for its quirky pace and oddball plotting to play out without exhausting the viewer’s curiosity, even if it is just a series of head-scratching WTF? scenes leading to nowhere.

The film is a confusing, rather than complex, series of threats and reveals and confessions that never successfully gel into a suitable resolve.

As flat and uncompelling as its title, Jiu Jitsu plays like a hybrid of rejected audition tapes from Predator with the outtakes from the fifth Highlander movie (and not the ones starring Christopher Lambert). But just how bad is Jiu Jitsu? Well, bad enough that the phrase “a waste of Nicolas Cage's talents” actually means something.

The movie attempts to strike a nerve and, in its efforts, occasionally demonstrates promise. A memorable death scene is accomplished with a blend of comedy, horror, and style. But it is a rare moment.