News of the World is a film of dangerously naïve messaging, erratic pacing, limited stakes, and little formal or technical craft to otherwise distract from…
Hunter Hunter begins as a simple look at a family living off-the-grid, but quickly develops into a gory thriller that isn’t for the faint of heart.…
Greenland does well to focus on its human center rather than CGI spectacle, but its pleasures remain mostly minor. The disaster film is a genre as…
Songbird is a well-directed but otherwise bland, opportunistic bit of pablum. The press materials for the new COVID thriller Songbird spill a lot of ink on…
Don’t Click is an outdated, ineptly made film in the running for Worst of the Year honors. In 1997, Michael Haneke unleashed Funny Games onto an…
Anything for Jackson successfully manages the tricky balancing act of melding early comedy into outright terror. As festival season has gone mostly digital this year, we…
Mosul nails its action spectacle and kinetic foundation, but it is ultimately only able to conceive of its subject matter in war movie clichés. Yet another…
Make Up brings a welcome horror twinge and unsettling tenor to an otherwise familiar kitchen sink drama. There’s no shortage of coming-of-age stories out there, so…
Vanguard worships at the feet of CGI and grievously wrongs the past and present of action cinema in the process. Stanley Tong was at best a…
His House is a formally confident and unsettling debut that fully impresses even as it falls just short of greatness. The new Netflix horror film His…
The Mortuary Collection is a gothic, expressionistic, and winning riff on a number of horror influences. Ryan Spindell’s The Mortuary Collection is an absolute blast, a…
May the Devil Take You Too is a Raimi-esque bloodbath, gore-fest, and goop-show that understands how to set up and execute its thrillingly gnarly set pieces. …
The Antenna is a strange amalgam that might hold some intrigue for horror fans but is otherwise just another drab, generic Eastern Bloc allegory. Director Orcun…
Death of Me begins on a promising note, but lacks any follow-through or unique experience to warrant its making. There’s a scene early on in…
Beasts Clawing at Straws is a derivative, charmless bit of Tarantino-aping nonsense. The new Korean crime thriller Beasts Clawing at Straws is a derivative, charmless bit…
Rose: A Love Story is yet another example of art-house horror that plays coy with its genre elements. It’s the kind of film that wants…
Nocturne, while imperfect and visually deficient, nonetheless represents the best yet of Amazon’s Welcome to the Blumhouse collab. Part of the second batch of Blumhouse…
The third part of Ben Rivers’ so-called “sci-fi” trilogy, following Slow Action (2011) and Urth (2016), Look Then Below gives the unique impression of being…
The Projectionist is a lovely elegy for the glory days of film exhibition, one that 2020 has brought into surprising focus. Since getting clean a few…
The Lie is a generic, inauspicious inauguration for Amazon’s Welcome to the Blumhouse collaboration. Just in time for Halloween, uber-producer Jason Blum (and his Blumhouse Pictures)…