Yet for all the boring set pieces, bad exposition, and faulty universe expansion, Johnson, Sweeney, Merced, and O’Connor still manage to find tiny spaces where their charisma can peek through.

Between the confusing plot elements, the middling horror, and the dodgy acting, Five Nights at Freddy's 2 is a step backward from the first movie. It’s a disappointment: While there are moments in the movie that fans may enjoy, and plenty of robots causing chaos, the story is a mess if you don't already know the ins and outs of the series.

While a lot of modern kids’ movies (especially those based on toys or apps) feel crass and cheap, Playmobil is heartfelt and earnest. It doesn’t have much to offer childfree moviegoers, and it does mostly feel like The Lego Movie with the serial numbers filed off. But it’s the sort of film that will keep kids entertained without driving their parents crazy.

While it isn’t the worst film the franchise has to offer, that’s only because the competition is so weak.

Fantasy Island isn’t especially scary, but scares don’t usually seem like the point of a Blumhouse horror gimmick. At their best, these movies have the energy and shamelessness of a carnival ride, where the enthusiasm means more than the atmosphere. Fantasy Island knowingly steals from everywhere, and sometimes cleverly incorporates its derivativeness into the filmmaking.

The pacing is leaden, the visuals are murky, and there’s pretty much no reason to care about anyone on the screen, except to idly wonder how they’re going to die, and what their innards will look like when they do.

There are no stakes, and there’s little that’s offensive, except to the art and craft of cinema. It’s funny. It’s glossy. It’s a fantasy. It’s safe. It’s soft.

The only redeeming quality: Ice Cube now has a place on Mount Razziemore in a movie I can only hope earns its own Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode.

It’s equal parts modern fairy tale, time-travel movie that’s meant to make people understand and appreciate their own era, and Christmas magic movie, and the creators don’t do anything meaningful to refresh those genre trappings, or play with their conventions.

Even as a low-key Netflix time-waster, Fearless isn’t that much fun, except for people who really, really like the idea of super-babies.

The charisma that was fully on display in Goggins’ previous work is firing on all cylinders in John Bronco — the role demands grins, winks, and whoops, and Goggins is a master at them all.

Without spoiling either Max Cloud’s action or its comedy, Owen makes the running gag about Max’s macho bluster into some of the sharpest gaming criticism released this year.

It comes across more like a showreel than a stand-alone film, like, a confusingly edited sizzle teaser for a much more in-depth Doors drama series.

Ultimately, everything about Arlo the Alligator Boy feels like a setup for something yet to come. That isn’t an inherently bad thing, but it does shift the audience’s expectations for the movie.

For all the eye-popping battles and fast-moving action, it’s an emotional story that takes the time to explore what its protagonist really wants out of life, and why god-tier power may be as much of a burden as a benefit.

Untitled Horror Movie is the kind of finely tuned exercise that benefits from the chemistry of its cast, the managed-expectations feel of its storytelling, and a firm awareness of the kind of low-stakes entertainment so many of us might appreciate right now.

Some of it is sophisticated and more of it is silly, but Behemoth is jarringly effective more often than not.

The film is an excellent feature-length Hilda episode, but the 84-minute runtime also allows it to raise the stakes of the low-key series appropriately, tackling some of the enduring mysteries at the core of Trolberg.

A brutal and bleak movie, Hell Hath No Fury delivers a mean, hard-hitting punch in a 90-minute package. Ultimately, there are no heroes in this story, only survivors.

Though it’s packed with remixes of and callbacks to Eve’s history, it’s a dazzling, surprisingly accessible summation of his visual and sonic styles.

It unfolds with a fascinating specificity that goes well beyond the Batman details, and unlocks a lot of conversation-starting thoughts about the various ways and reasons people associate with different fandoms.

What’s supposed to resemble a smart, unnerving sci-fi movie looks more like a lecture about male dominance and deception that keeps foregrounding its least interesting characters.

Given how unnecessary Rise Of the Damned is, Leyden’s choice to pare down the original RIPD’s summer-movie bombast into an agreeable, swiftly paced supernatural Western qualifies as a rousing success. On the other hand, anyone working in the RIPD universe should also understand the value of just staying dead.

The First Kiss That Never Ends feels like a grand finale, but the interesting thing about Kaguya-sama is how it implies that romance is continuous work, rather than simply fated.

Fist of the Condor is the Marko Zaror show. And boy, does he deliver. The movie is at its best when it is a series of jaw-dropping fights, one after another, leaning on his incredible star power.

AKA is at its best when it showcases Alban Lenoir, Action Star, rather than its own status as a less stylish Man on Fire. It’s still worth watching if you’re interested in the new wave of French action cinema, and one of its most intriguing stars. But if you haven’t seen the Lost Bullet movies yet, definitely prioritize those for excellent Lenoir action.

Mielants is too tough-minded to be caught, it turns out, but that’s bad news for the rest of us. Will nurses a glimmer of hope in the darkness, only to snuff it out completely. This is a bleak, bleak movie.

With all these elements working in dreadful harmony, Kurosawa has made far and away one of the best horror movies of the year so far, and he sets a more complete and frightening tone in less than half the run time of most of those movies.