While there's a randomizer sense to everything, frights abound, and there's a mercilessness that bites down hard. Execution may slip and slide, but Daniels doesn't waste his first crack at the ghoulishness of this Earth or deep below.

For all the promising threads it pulls on surrounding a variety of faith traditions, The Exorcist: Believer doesn't earn your belief or your fear. Where Friedkin's classic will endure forever, this superficial sequel remains stuck in the past. It may try to speak all the same verses, but it doesn't add new life to any of them.

Its dialogue is constructed in a way that would sound unnatural even in a daytime soap opera, and Kruger works her best to save it, but there’s only so much she can do. The story is so poorly developed it feels like an outline of a script, all in favor of a final plot twist that would be jaw-dropping…in the 1930s.

At the center of this mess sits a set of performances that are, beyond some writing oddities, pretty good.

It certainly is a throwback, but it not only stops far short of being a comedy touchdown, it barely feels like it brings anything new to the field.

Michael may not rewrite the musical biopic, but it does just enough to set itself apart and inject a bit of new life into the genre by leaning into the family drama at its core. The performances are top-tier across the board, with Valdi and Jackson immediately becoming stars to watch and Domingo and Long proving once again why they’re considered two of the best in the business. The level of craftsmanship — from the hair and makeup to the costumes and production design — is unmatched, helping to compensate for a weaker screenplay and inconsistent direction.

It wants you to buy into the heart and the humor without earning either.

Instead of burrowing into their differing ideas about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and how they differ based on class and background, Anna and Jamie’s romance is based entirely on them exchanging progressively earnest platitudes, quotes taken from centuries-old poetry that the script dumbs down and shoehorns into every moment between the couple.

If the 1940 Pinocchio showed that any wish your heart desires could come true, this remake shows what happens when your nightmares come to life.

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.

The vibe of Him is trying to make the audience unnerved, but the story and imagery being presented are too goofy to take this attempt seriously.

Unfortunately, Bubble & Squeak far more often embraces the ridiculous more than the realistic, and ultimately struggles to combine these two into a whole that works.

Eddie Murphy's The Pickup is a dull and lifeless action-comedy that provides neither laughs nor thrills.

Some elements and moments are effective, but they're layered with subplot details, character performances, and related choices that don't work as well as intended, firmly grounding an otherwise promising concept.

More often than not, we can ignore the message if we’d like and just enjoy a scary movie. Prey for the Devil, however, seems to have been developed as deliberate propaganda.

While its predecessor proved to be a goofy and satisfying watch, the sequel is never able to fully recapture the charm. You're much better off rewatching the first film.

Tyler Spindel's latest directorial effort might falter when it comes to its approach to physical comedy, but it still deserves some appreciation for what it does well: make you laugh and feel.

Michelle Pfeiffer is reason alone to watch 'Oh. What. Fun.' even if the film never fully reaches its potential.

There's nothing about The Family Plan 2 that particularly stands out aside from the European Christmas setting. Despite having a slightly different premise from the original, much of the film plays out like a sitcom. Yes, it's an improvement over the first movie, that's not saying much when your predecessor was already lackluster.

The problem is The Curse of Bridge Hollow isn’t clever enough to carve out a niche of its own and is defined by the diminishing returns of derivative genre riffs from start to finish.

Dominion isn’t just the worst film in this frequently disappointing franchise, it’s also one of the worst major blockbusters in recent memory.

It’s non-stop drama, and the way the story plays out, it’s like Vance took every crazy episode from his life and played them back-to-back without pausing for a single pleasant memory or character defined beyond a single dimension.

Though it doesn’t have the audacity to close when it should with its characters at their very lowest, The Estate is still proper fun in seeing a deeply improper family tear each other apart.

With Garner at the helm of a film that fires up some endearing energy from start to finish, Family Switch is not a perfect film, but it’s glossy, humble, and good-natured enough for an easy watch this holiday season.

It’s moderately entertaining thanks to its VFX but falls short on its performances and story as the overall idea exceeds the final product.

While it's always a pleasure to see Yeoh kick butt and take names among the stars, Section 31 wastes her talents as well as its own premise on a middling heist movie devoid of anything that might actually identify it as a Star Trek movie.

Outcome is clearly coming from a personal place for Hill. It doesn't come across as too bitter or full of self-pity, but the point of the movie is never made fully clear. It moves at too quick a pace to leave much of an impact, and it's a bit of a tonal nightmare.

Stanton has done truly incredible, groundbreaking things in animation, and he’s almost certainly got a great live-action film in him, but In the Blink of an Eye makes one wonder if Stanton should go a bit smaller and work his way up to such grandiose concepts like this.