Blog Archives
Scary Movie (2026)
The Wayans brothers birthed the original Scary Movie spoof and then after one mixed sequel in 2001 they were ditched by the studio. There were three more Scary Movie sequels that became less and less popular. The Wayans stuck by their raunchy satirical playbook, making two A Haunted House spoofs and even a parody of Fifty Shades of Grey. Now the Wayans brothers are back, along with Scary Movie alums Anna Faris and Regina Hall, the real MVPs of the franchise. It’s a homecoming, a nostalgic throwback for fans of the original Scary Movie, and a hopeful upswing for big-screen studio comedy to make a comeback. If only the movie were funnier.
Since the last Scary Movie sequel in 2013, horror movies have flourished. There’s the Conjuring franchise, which has made over a billion dollars, the miraculous ascendancy of Jordan Peele as an Oscar-winning horror maven, as well as the rise in elevated “A24-style” horror, movies heavy in atmosphere and layered metaphors, by the likes of Ari Aster, Osgood Perkins, Robert Eggers, and Zach Cregger. Coralie Fargeat was even nominated for Best Director for making The Substance, generally unheard of in Academy Award history. There is so much that can be satirized about horror since 2013, especially how it compares to horror from the 1980s and 1990s. Instead of tackling any of these new perspectives and movements in a meaningfully satirical manner, Scary Movie 2026 is, much like the Scream franchise itself, stuck in the past. This movie could have even covered the evolution of modern slashers into grueling gore endurance contests, like the Terrifier films, or the more experimental genre deep dives like Ti West’s Pearl trilogy with Mia Goth and In a Violent Nature. That would require more effort, so since Scary Movie 2026 is setting itself up as a reboot/legacy sequel, there is a logic for it to attach itself to the plots of Halloween 2018 and Scream 5 (it’s shocking how much plot is pulled from Scream 5). However, any satirical derision over the nature of cash-grab franchise reboots is reserved for the very last ten minutes, which happens to be the best part. Instead, there are too many moments where the same joke is run into the ground (like Ray being closeted, which doesn’t make as much sense in 2026 America), or the end result is just somebody getting hurt. Personally, I chuckled maybe about five times, so my entertainment output was not high. The best joke is a visual gag that goes unspoken about the very disastrous Final Destination amusement park.
The spoof pacing requires a lot of material to burn through, and as a result everything gets sucked into the comedy cauldron whether it seems related to horror or not. There’s a parody of the Michael Jackson movie, most likely because it’s popular and not because there are new jokes to be had about one of the most famous celebrities who’s been dead for over 15 years. I’ll save you the time: the punchline is that a man moonwalks and falls down the stairs. Why is there an animated sequence parodying K-Pop Demon Hunters? Why is there an extended John Wick parody? The answer is simple: because they made money. Like the Friedberg/Seltzer (Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans) playbook, anything that has some minute draft of pop-culture cache gets thrown into the mix, sometimes references that have a perishable shelf life that will be considered old only in a matter of months. I wouldn’t ever advise it, but if you go back and watch any of the Friedberg/Seltzer spoofs of old, you probably won’t be able to remember a quarter of the references. This is because the filmmakers are sacrificing the integrity of their comedy for the quick dopamine hits of timely pop-culture recognition. Is anyone in five years going to remember that the Meagan robot became meme-famous from her weird dance? That’s all the Wayans seem to remember about M3agan, so that’s all you’re getting, folks. It all feels like swimming through someone else’s half-forgotten memories of pop-culture relics.
There’s also a string of jokes that I’ll call “these kids today don’t get it” observations from an older generation feeling rapidly out of place and thus resentful. Look, Gen-Z culture is ripe for satirizing and mockery, but when your targets are pronoun preferences and a trans character just… existing, then it certainly feels like your satire is regurgitating the same grievance points as most hacky Boomer comics. Every rendition of this felt like an example of the “old man yells at cloud” Simpsons meme. If they really wanted to hone in on this generational misunderstanding, they could have really gone further in the different perspectives from Cindy (Faris) and her teenage daughter, but that doesn’t really happen. It all makes the comic perspective feel not just out of touch but grasping and desperate. Why include a trans kid if the only joke is going to be a tedious series of misgendering them? These jokes are meant to act as a comedic heat shield, proposing the Wayans as no-holds-barred comics, unafraid to tackle whatever modern taboos we may have across politics. Except the fact that these jokes are so thin and obvious and disposable creates the unmistakable impression that these are sops for a commercial demographic, the same people that would get excited by seeing a character on the poster with a “woke is broke” sign.
Let’s analyze just one example of the creative rut here. Weapons was a popular movie from 2025 and Amy Madigan’s Aunt Gladys character instantly became iconic. There’s plenty you can do with this character and the modern-day scenario of a wicked witch absconding with children (sample: Kristi Noem as Aunt Gladys as she cruelly sets up child abductions as part of ICE – the makeup preferences between the two could also cement the connection). The only thing Scary Movie 2026 does with this Oscar-winning horror movie is so thoroughly lazy and half-hearted. The joke is that the Trick or Treat kids received weed gummies and are running around high. That’s at least a starting point, and you could see where there could be comedic misunderstandings and mischief. However, that setup is just it. There isn’t anything else. We watch kids running like they did in Weapons and they have offhand ADR lines along the likes of, “I’m so high.” The worst example is a kid just saying the “six seven” meme. That’s it, like the utterance of the meme is the joke, another lowly example of the reference being misunderstood as a joke. Then one of the kids gets hit by a car (ha ha). Do we feature the driver freaking out thinking they’ve killed a kid? The kid protected thanks to the weed gummies? The driver mistaking the inebriated child for a dangerous tool for killing like, you know, in Weapons? Anything? The car hitting the kid, bouncing them high into the air like a trampoline, is the end of the scene. That’s it. It’s practically an admission that the writers didn’t know how to end their scene, and there are many, many examples of this throughout where scenes just abruptly end, lacking larger punchlines and escalation. It’s just weak.
The funniest thing might be the unintended poor timing on Scary Movie’s part. Had this movie waited maybe four months or longer, it could have incorporated the summer horror resurgence happening presently at the box-office. Backrooms is slated to become A24’s highest grossing movie of all time, opening at an eye-popping $80 million. That’s superhero movie numbers. Then there’s Obsession, which has grown and grown from its wide release and is now slated to become Focus Features’ highest grossing movie of all time. Obsession is a phenomenon we haven’t seen in decades. It made more money in its second weekend than its opening weekend, and then it made more money in its third weekend than its second, and then in its fourth weekend of release it STILL amazingly made $25 million. This is a genuine word-of-mouth sensation. I don’t want to overload you on box-office numbers, but as of this writing, Obsession has been released for a total of 24 days and only one of those days did it gross less than $3 million, and that was its fourth day of release. This just doesn’t happen, let alone to a movie that cost under a million dollars to make (we’re talking Paranormal Activity-levels of success here, where a $15,000 budget indie grossed nearly $200 million worldwide, and that was in 2009 dollars too).
I bring this up because horror movies are clearly a force to be reckoned with in the larger culture, and with the success and critical accolades for movies like Get Out, Sinners, The Substance, and Weapons, there is plenty of material available to satirize this new ascendant horror movement. That’s why Scary Movie 2026 is even more disappointing and dispiriting, tying itself back to teen slasher movies that haven’t been relevant for decades. There was so much this movie could have critiqued about horror as it is today, and instead we get sketches without punchlines, fleeting reference-based humor, and lazy jokes that settle for easy vulgarity without a wisp of cleverness. With any comedy, especially spoofs, your mileage will vary on the hit-to-miss ratio, and it’s hard to be really mad at the Wayans for doing their same schtick for decades, but Scary Movie 2026 feels less transgressive and edgy and more tired and dated and, sadly, lost. It feels like the Wayans have lost hold of the cultural zeitgeist or the ability to recognize it, and as such Scary Movie 2026 isn’t any better than any other Scary Movie sequel slop. It’s all exaggeration and mugging with the same old scatological punchlines (when there are punchlines) and further diminishing results.
Nate’s Grade: C-
Share this:
Backrooms (2026)
I’ve been a fan of horror movies since my high school days. I’ve literally watched hundreds of them over the decades and find myself more drawn to them of late, perhaps a reflection of the horrors we seem to be processing in our daily lives from the deluge of current events, scandals, and moral failures. I will often feel discomfort, dread, and tension from horror and suspense movies, but it’s rare for me to feel genuine terror, to be afraid to the point where I could be haunted afterwards with the threat of nightmares. It takes a lot to get to me. It’s been maybe ten years since a horror movie really unnerved me and got under my skin. Backrooms is that movie. I was deeply affected and jarred from this little liminal horror movie. That’s the highest praise I can offer, and the fact that a 20-year-old director is responsible for that is amazing. Even if you have no knowledge of the popular YouTube series, dive into Backrooms.
Based on the creepy pasta Web series, Backrooms is set in 1990 and primarily follows two characters. Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is the owner of a failing furniture store with plenty of personal baggage over his failed marriage and unrealized career as an architect. His therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), has her own parental trauma she’s trying to work through. One day Clark discovers a strange doorway to another dimension in the basement of his furniture store. It’s a seemingly endless hallway reminiscent of an open-spaced office building, and Clark decides he needs to explore this strange new space, but can he make it back, will he hold onto his sanity, and are there malevolent forces inside this space to avoid?
The strength of Backrooms, as a concept as well as a feature film, is how it taps directly into your limbic system to communicate that everything is just inescapably wrong. Everything looks wrong, everything sounds wrong, you worry that another turn of another hallway is only going to bring about further ruin, and so every additional second in this inter-dimensional space makes you want to retreat. It has the living contours of a nightmare world where there is a lack of concrete details, where things are approximating real-life but just a means off, little uncanny differences or limitations that alert your brain that things are not as they should be. There are small examples, like a chair with five legs instead of four or a stop sign with its writing backwards, and then there are more arresting imagery, like chairs sinking into the floor like sand, or a series of telephone poles increasingly bending forward like a splayed rib cage. Exploring a world of these distortions leads to deeply fascinating and also unsettling imagery that can lead to a suffocating atmosphere of unease. It makes for a rather entrancing experience of analogue, dead mall aesthetics that have a subliminal pull that draws you innately while making you feel off-balance. Like the definition of the uncanny, it takes the familiar and mundane and distorts it into something truly eerie.
But this is more than just a 100-minute extension of the short-form YouTube videos. Director Kane Parsons has certainly leveled up his craft in his film debut. This is a weird world he’s intimately familiar with, but the big-screen jaunt is carefully made to be inclusive and adapted like an actual movie. There’s work here on characters using the Backrooms as an exploration of their unresolved personal traumas, for Clark his rage against a world and the people he felt have failed him, for Dr. Kline her oppressive and mentally ill mother. I like that it’s never clarified whether or not Dr. Kline’s mother was just crazy or whether she too became aware of the Backrooms dimension and was trying to protect her daughter. There are hints of larger lore but the movie isn’t drowning in it, just like there’s some basic explanation given to this dimension and its rules, just enough to satisfy without going into too much explanation. This was my main issue with 2019’s Us, Jordan Peele’s creepy and thrilling nightmare about dopplegangers revolting, and also a movie that shattered its own credulity once it attempted to provide a logical explanation. Not everything that’s strange in a movie needs a thorough explanation. We can readily accept the unbelievable on its own terms. There are more traditional horror movie elements, like jump scares, frantic chases, and the Big Scary Something Coming to Get You, but Parsons makes them all work. There’s a jump scare in this movie that didn’t just make me jump but made me gurgle something unintelligibly in response. There are several agonizing setups of characters contemplating journeying through tight or slanted or altogether ominous spaces and I was shrinking in my theater chair, dissolving in the simmering anxiety, and repeating “no” a lot. The use of found footage is perhaps the best in any movie in a decade. Even at the young age of twenty, Parsons shows not just a knack for creepy imagery but on how to craft and escalate suspense set pieces, how to build and punctuate a suffocating atmosphere, while also balancing characters, story arcs (learning acceptance and accountability!), and metaphors (a concrete hand print she carries with her from childhood!) and themes without losing sight of the core scares and their appeal. Parsons has already proven that he’s the real deal and he’s not even old enough to legally drink in the U.S. yet.
There’s an interesting meta commentary here about the junky iterative process of generative A.I., though this is speculation on my part, though I find it founded in logic within the movie. We’re told repeatedly that the Backrooms doesn’t create things as much as it recreates from its surroundings and the memories of its participants. There’s a reason most of what is explored is a reflection of the furniture store it’s attached to. Except it cannot get things exactly right. Clark explains it like describing a dog to an alien that’s never seen or known the reference and then having the alien create what it thinks a dog would be; the larger shape and idea might be there but the details are inexact or incorrect. For me, this corresponds with the rise of generative A.I., where it tries to replicate real-life but is often prone to strange hallucinations, like human bodies with peculiar joint hinges, extra fingers, or smoothly elastic skin. There’s also very Backrooms-esque visuals of furniture being eaten by walls and floors. Generative A.I. is limited to only replicating what it has been fed, and it often spits back something that looks alien, missing those crucial details to seem real. There’s a memorable tracking shot in the movie that descends floor after floor, and we witness the same room layout go through round after round of regeneration and distortion, getting further and further from the original source with each iteration. What begins with a recliner and windows becomes chairs sinking into the floor, the outlines of windows against solid walls, and finally nothing. Parsons doesn’t have to be explicit but the pointed commentary can be found on A.I.’s limits.
I don’t know about you but if I discovered a portal to another dimension, I don’t think I’d take it upon myself to go exploring. I understand why the movie does so because, well, we need a movie, and that discovery is where the horror lies, and it makes sense for Clark since it’s a reflection of his own memories and unfulfilled ambitions. I get it. However, if this was real-life, I would immediately retreat after confirming that, yes, this strange doorway indeed exists. Perhaps I’ve seen enough spooky movies or it’s just an overabundance of caution in my nature, but I would definitely stay home and let someone else become the latest lost entity to the siren song of human curiosity. Somebody else can be monster chow.
The origins of the Backrooms predates Parsons and his popular YouTube experimental shorts, but it was he who really popularized it and took it to another level, and now with his film debut, Parsons has done something remarkable. It’s not just the bold announcement of a new cinematic voice. It really feels like this movie could be the start of something monumental, a tide-changer along the lines of John Carpenter’s Halloween. He’s not the first filmmaker to explore liminal imagery and dream logic, as we’ve seen from Severance, to The Stanley Parable, to the entire career of David Lynch. I can already hear some Hollywood studio exec saying, “Gen-Z kids, they love them their liminal spaces,” or some kind of erroneous lesson from the runaway success of Backrooms. Get ready for a flood of imitators exploring minimalIst abandoned spaces. I was entranced and deeply disturbed by this movie to the point where I kept shuddering even after the credits rolled. It’s not because of shock value or emotional manipulation, it was because Backrooms got to me, unnerved me, and shook me up, in a way no movie has for a long time.
Nate’s Grade: A
Share this:
28 Years Later (2025)/ The Bone Temple (2026)
While not officially 28 years after its release in 2003, you’ll have to settle for only 23, comes a sequel to the zombie outbreak that kicked off a resurgence in zombie media in the 2000s. 28 Years Later is a far more experimental and meditative and genuinely surprising and surprisingly poignant sequel than I think many fans were expecting. They thought it was going to be more like a father/son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Alfie Williams) coming-of-age zombie hunt and weekend of survival. It is that, but it’s also a meditation on life, death, family, nature, and how we respond to grief. Director Danny Boyle returns, for his first film since 2019’s Yesterday, and screenwriter Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Civil War) returns, and together they provide a sequel that attempts to answer what society might be like growing up in this new dystopian world. The movie can get weird, with old movies and archival footage thematically mixed into scenes, Boyle’s camera in constant nervous anticipation, an active member of the hunt, and the use of an iPhone rig to provide Matrix-esque bullet time effects for zombie head shot splatter. Garland has also come up with some interesting zombie evolution over those ensuing three decades of development (granted I thought since the “zombies” were infected living people that you just had to wait them all out to die from dehydration). It seems like a father/son adventure thriller, and it’s quite good at being that, but then it transforms into something unexpected, giving mom (Jodie Comer) the spotlight as she confronts the reality of her physical and mental maladies. From there, the movie becomes this beguiling and thoughtful examination on grace and grief, on processing loss and finding a sense of stability in an unstable world. Ralph Fiennes appears late as a former doctor who seems a little crazy, the grave-keeper to an impressive monument built from thousands of human bones. It’s such a welcomed surprise for a movie replete with them, a movie that refuses easy categorization and wants to do something meaningful than just being a zombie action/thriller.
Even more unexpected was an immediate sequel and continuation a mere six months removed from 28 Years Later‘s wide release. The Bone Temple is divided into two stories, both holdovers from the prior film. Spike (Alfie Williams), the son going on his own journey of self, has been conscripted into a weird and violent gang, The Jimmies, lead by Sir Lord Jimmy (Jack O’Connell), the twisted grown-up version of the child seen in the harrowing prologue to 28 Years Later. He’s a sadistic leader who also tells his followers he’s the son of Satan. Then there’s Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) who we initially thought of as menacing but becomes the most humane caretaker in this post-apocalyptic landscape. The two male figures serve as competing responses to unmitigated tragedy, one retreating to religion as a tool for meaning but it’s really exploitation and manipulation through violence and fear, and the other devoting himself to science and making the world just a little more liveable through empathy and trial and error. Dr. Kelson develops an unexpected friendship with one of the big Alpha zombies, “Samson” (Chi Lewis-Parry), after he discovers this behemoth, who was ripping spines out in rage fits in the previous movie, is seeking out relief through the doc’s morphine darts. Dr. Kelson ponders whether or not there is a chemical compound that could bring back the humanity to the infected. The difficulties with communication do not deter the good doctor, and these paths cross in a climax where the Jimmies come to think of Dr. Kelson as the Dark Lord himself. The movie is consistently interesting, further building out this new damaged world began in 28 Years Later. Nia DaCosta (Candyman, The Marvels) takes over as director and offers a more patient camera, forcing us to dwell in the moments, both horrific and moving. There are torture sequences, long demented monologuing, and questions over the tenacity of human connection despite incredible obstacles, and yet the movie is both more a straightforward horror-thriller than its predecessor and a more focused human drama about loss and holding onto one’s sense of dignity and empathy. It lacks the visual fireworks of Boyle’s style, and I found Sir Lord Jimmy to be more tiresome than interesting, but The Bone Temple is an effectively engrossing lateral sequel that slowly builds Garland’s world a little wider. Now I’ll actually have a third 28 Years movie to look forward to that hopefully won’t take 28 (or 23) years..
Nate’s Grades:
28 Years Later: B+
The Bone Temple: B
Share this:
Slanted (2026)
It’s The Substance meets Mean Girls and it’s a frustrating execution of a provocative concept. Writer/director Amy Wang follows Chinese-American teenager Joan Huang (Shirley Chen) as she struggles to be accepted in her predominantly white, middle class, suburban school system. She sets her sights on being accepted by the popular girls, so she abandons her Chinese heritage, food, and looks to better adopt the habits of the very blonde popular clique, but bleaching her hair isn’t good enough to get what she wants. She discovers a mysterious company promising a scientific solution: they will genetically alter you to the race that you desire. What a fantastic plot device to explore racial identity, assimilation, prejudice, stereotypes, and more. It’s a crying shame then for this premise to be completely shackled to a high school cliques storyline. It’s so boring for our protagonist to be completely consumed with being prom queen when she’s just undergone an amazing and ethically questionable procedure. I kept waiting and wanting Slanted to do something more, to better explore the social commentary at stake but it’s really no different than your familiar story of non-popular girl sacrifices her personality and old friends to be popular only for them to remark, “You’ve changed!” This is such a crushing waste of such a promising premise. There’s not even memorable body horror; at one point we do get droopy face. Slanted is less a horror movie and more a middling drama too timid to better explore the rich implications of its concept. This is the kind of idea calling for surreal and excoriating satire, something along the likes of Boots Riley (Sorry to Bother You). To narrowly frame this story as an outsider wanting to be popular in high school is just terribly limited and disappointing and ultimately dull.
Nate’s Grade: C
Share this:
Obsession (2026)
It seems like the world has become obsessed with the new indie horror film, Obsession. It’s the gruesome brainchild of writer/director Curry Barker, a 26-year-old debut filmmaker best known for sketch comedy on his YouTube channel, That’s a Bad Idea. With RackaRacka’s Talk to Me, Chris Stuckmann’s Shelby Oaks, Mark Iplier’s Ironlung, and now Barker’s Obsession, it appears we’re heading into a renaissance of YouTube creators blossoming as indie horror mavens, and this is days away from 20-year-old Kane Parsons’ release of Backrooms, a feature based on his experimental liminal nightmare YouTube video. It’s probably inevitable for Mr. Beast to eventually make a horror movie, isn’t it? That’s scary.
Baron “Bear” Bailey (Michael Johnston) has been nursing a crush on his friend and co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarrette) for years. He’s never had the courage to just tell her how he feels.Then one night Nikki just point-blank asks him: do you have feelings for me? He stammers and says, “I think we’re good as friends.” Immediately afterwards in his humiliation, he breaks a novelty One Wish Willow stick and says, “I wish Nikki loved me more than anyone in the world.” From that moment forward, Nikki changes. She’s ferociously devoted to Bear and incredibly needy and volatile. She takes clingy to another level.
We’ve seen plenty of iterations of the “be careful what you wish for” tale of horror and irony, but Barker makes it his own with such confidence. There’s a prevailing sense of dread throughout the movie that just sits in your gut, miring every post-wish scene in discomfort. It can be greatly entertaining to anticipate just how things will go wrong with each scene. Barker demonstrates a tremendous sense of restraint and dedication, favoring to tease out the audience discomfort. I appreciate how much of the movie’s focus is on building unease over jump scares. There are moments where Barker’s camera forces you to study Nikki’s face draped in shadows as she stands upright in a corner, and it’s far more unsettling than if she had just popped around a corner to startle the audience. There’s a certain dark enjoyment to watching a character get in over their head, especially when they have robbed another character of agency, the whole reaping the consequences of their actions. Watching Bear get punished is a sort of cosmic reward as well as a test to see how far he will go to try and make this “relationship” work. Barker’s background in comedy is evident through his skill with pacing scenes and as a whole, and the film benefits from the mordant tone often dipping into cringe comedy and nervous laughter. This man clearly has an affinity for horror and the chops to make a compelling movie connect with an audience and leave a mark.
Obsession wouldn’t be nearly as worthy of obsession without the captivating and shifty lead performance of Navarette (Superman & Lois). I initially thought it was a mistake we see so little of the Before Wish Nikki, but limiting our exposure means we’re trapped in defining Nikki through Bear’s perceptions and projections, and I think that’s smart. The majority of her performance is after the wish, and Navarrette is just as terrifying as she is unexpectedly hilarious. She contorts her face into exaggerated, almost Jim Carrey-esque expressions. When she’s trying to be the blithely happy girlfriend, she scrunches her face into a pained smile that approaches a grimace, a mockery of how women might be expected to look when given the unhelpful advice to smile more. Her juvenile meltdowns and tantrums remind us that Nikki has degenerated into a sickening distortion. Navarratte’s performance has layers to it, finding little physical tricks to cue us about the Nikki imprisoned inside her own body. It’s amazing the flickers of “help me” she can manifest through her eyes alone while the rest of her face is pretending to be a different person. Some of the greatest acting performances of our modern era come from overlooked actresses in unfairly underrated horror movies. In a just universe, Florence Pugh would have been nominated for an Oscar for 2019’s Midsommar, Naomi Scott would have been nominated for 2024’s Smile 2, Sophie Thatcher would have been nominated for 2025’s Companion, and Inde Navarrette would be nominated for Obsession.
Obsession has such a great premise and direction, which is why it’s a shame that there are plot turns that feel disconnected from the rules and characterization Barker has established. Having a super obsessive significant other leads to obvious disadvantages, like being dangerously possessive, paranoid, and losing one’s sense of having an independent identity. Having Nikki make awkward scenes in public, test her partner’s love and devotion, and get easily jealous to the point of madness all makes sense as an extreme encapsulation of Bear’s wish for unparalleled love. Having Nikki stand literally in place for hours and wait for Bear to return from work, to the point that she even pees down her own legs, is quite effective at communicating just how much this woman is losing herself under this spell. Those decisions refine and perfectly demonstrate the disturbing outcomes of Bear’s wish. However, not all of her decision-making has this same identifiable logic. Early in the film, Bear’s cat dies from ingesting a bunch of his prescription drugs. How the cat got into the medicine cabinet or broke the child-proof seal without thumbs is never fully explained except for the implicit assumption that Bear had his pill bottles open and accessible (this guy really shouldn’t be trusted with anyone’s care, human or animal). Afterwards, when Nikki is fully under the wish’s evil power, she does two things with this dead cat. The first might be explained as a means of memorializing the pet, but the second one is just inexplicable and feels more like a cruel prank. It’s hard for me to connect this action to the film’s extension of obsessive love. It broke me from the movie, the same as when during a party game, Nikki recites a twisted retelling of Hansel and Gretel that devolves into incestuous role play. Does she think this little performance will impress Bear? If she’s purposely trying to just be oft-putting to the others, why even indulge the game? The problem for me is that Obsession has just enough of these questionable little turns that felt outside the bounds of its rules. The impulsive self-harm as misguided devotion or flagrant emotional manipulation makes sense. Looming over Bear while he sleeps to watch can even make sense. But not every crazy action has the same logic. Now, you could just wave away every crazy act as, “Well, it’s unexplainable magic,” but I find that an unsatisfying excuse for plot developments that feel more arbitrary than organic extensions.
The other area that nagged at me was the ending and how I felt it conflicts with not just the characterization of our protagonist but also the social commentary against Bear. In order to really delve into this, I’ll have to invoke spoilers, so skip ahead TWO paragraphs dear reader if you wish to remain pure. Earlier, when Bear is on the phone with the One Wish Willow customer support, a fabulous scene by the by, we learn that the wish will remain in gruesome effect until either the recipient or the wish-maker is deceased. Barker has set up the possibility for ending this nightmare but it involves permanent death. Late in the film, the “real Nikki” manages to speak to Bear while Nikki sleeps, like a ventriloquist voice sneaking out undetected. In this fleeting moment of communication, she begs for death to end her torment. Bear is aghast at the request but he’s also offended; would a romance with Bear be so intolerable to prefer death? That’s because Bear is a bad person. He shrouds himself in the armor of being the unassuming “nice guy” and yet his ensuing behavior seems far more selfish and entitled. It’s evident to everyone who knows Nikki that, post-wish, this version of her is not the real Nikki. She’s a completely different person. They’re justifiably worried. It’s purposely incredulous for Bear to think that Nikki has just come around and her sudden and very intense fixation is her genuine choice. He’s not that stupid. However, this Nikki is a scary, crazed cartoon version, with her personality, humor, and ambition hollowed out. For all intents and purposes, it’s like Bear has lobotomized his crush. He takes his time before getting physically intimate with her despite her begging, but it still doesn’t stop him. He finally got the girl and he doesn’t want to let go of her even if it means trapping her in a unique hell.
Now, after some unfortunate and bloody consequences, Bear locks himself in his bathroom with the determination to finally take account and end his life. He thinks about putting a gun in his mouth but doesn’t have the resolve for that. Instead, he takes the same prescription drugs his cat overdosed on and swallows the bottle’s contents. From everything I’ve witnessed of this character, I do not believe he would be the kind of person who would accept accountability and sacrifice himself. He’s too selfish and cowardly. He’s also just too meek and incapable of making hard choices. I could believe him wanting to be brave and noble and make the sacrifice to save Nikki but then, after swallowing the pills, he immediately regrets this decision and throws them up. I don’t buy Bear learning from his grave error. I can believe him having to live with it and being consumed by guilt, and yet he’ll grow numb and accept his new normal eventually, with the guilt likely leveling out over time. The pointed commentary is against the toxic entitlement that men feel in possession of women, especially those denigrating being “friend-zoned” as if platonic friendship is itself a worthless compensatory prize from a woman. It’s sizing up guys like Bear who think of themselves as the guy who just wants a break from the universe who also happens to be completely ignorant to those other opportunities within reach. He’s too fixated on what he doesn’t have to the point that it’s become his identity. He wouldn’t know what to do with Nikki if he got her, which is evident by the rest of the movie. God help this guy if he actually decided to work on himself or calibrate his insecurities and projections. This guy sucks and that’s the point. Horror movies typically end with a would-be solution to the dilemma that proves false, ultimately dooming the protagonist to misery. For Obsession to revive the real Nikki through Bear’s ultimate sacrifice feels completely wrong. It’s giving this loser character a chance at unearned redemption as well as harming its critical message.
While not quite living up to its momentous hype, Obsession is still an unnerving and memorably uncomfortable film experience, from its compounding dread, to its macabre laughs, to its provocative performances, chiefly our chief victim. I have some issues with the iffy internal logic too often feeling arbitrary, and the ending feels both rushed and wrong, sabotaging the larger commentary against men like our self-pitying protagonist. Some might complain that much of the movie could have been resolved had the four main characters just had one honest conversation, but that’s what makes the movie tragic. We see the many detours that could have avoided the worst. I know the majority of my review is me assessing my gripes, but Obsession is a good and very disquieting movie. I just felt like it could have been a great film. Still, this is quite a promising debut for Barker, who has now been tapped by A24 to remake none other than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. While I might not be as smitten, Obsession is a creepy and entertaining modern update on an old cautionary adage.
Nate’s Grade: B
Share this:
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026)/ They Will Kill You (2026)
It’s not uncommon for Hollywood to have similar movies. It’s not even that uncommon for them to be released months apart, like the great 1998 dualities of Antz/A Bug’s Life and Deep Impact/Armageddon. However, I don’t know if I’ve ever witnessed two movies with such similar plots and tones being released on the exact same day. Well, if you’re a diehard fan of Satanic cults hunting down a rebellious sacrifice who is trying to save her sister amid locked-in locations and lots of explosions of ruby-red blood, then you’ll be in luck with a splatterific double-feature of Ready or Not 2 and They Will Kill You.
2019’s eat-the-rich predecessor, Ready or Not, was one of the best movies that year with one of the most joyously memorable endings. It didn’t need a sequel because it felt complete and satisfying. Even with the same returning directors and writers, it can’t help but feel like a contrived retread. Instead of one family hunting down a target over the course of one night now we have five families hunting down the same target over the course of a day. There are new rules like only one hunter from each family at a time, and they’re not allowed to kill the other hunters lest they and their entire bloodline explode as punishment. The extra rules and moving pieces cannot hide the fact that it feels more of the same. This time it’s not just Samara Weaving as our bloodied bride Grace but now Kathryn Newton as her reluctant and estranged sister, Faith. Their bickering dynamic never really evolves into something more interesting or genuine. It feels like the filmmakers roped the sister into the plot but then didn’t know what to do with her besides as someone Grace could talk to throughout the ordeal. I wish more was done to reveal their history than the old staples, “You were never there. You run when things get tough. You’re selfish.” The nature of the family-versus-family competition could have been sharply satirical in so many different aims, from intra-class warfare to generational relatability difficulties to even demented summer camps. I wanted to know how and why each family got into this pact with the Devil, but alas. Due to the rules, you know each family rep is only going to be onscreen for so long, which means we’re briskly running members of this cast into a meat grinder. It admittedly keeps things fresh but also means few if any of these supporting characters are going to leave an impression (beyond a stain on the wall). The best part of the sequel is Elijah Wood as a hilariously nonplussed keeper of the arcane bylaws and rules. Too often Ready or Not 2 feels like a less developed, less thoughtful, less entertaining knockoff of its original. If there is a Ready or Not 3, I hope it breaks free from the franchise constraints stifling its ongoing creative longevity.
The sensationally stylized and enormously entertaining They Will Kill You is certainly not subtle about its genre influences, from Rosemary’s Baby to Kill Bill and even Wes Anderson’s formalized dollhouse presentation. It’s about a co-op building filled with Satanists who make human sacrifices to their “boss,” and Zazie Beetz (Deadpool 2) just so happens to be a newly hired maid they’ve set their sights on. Too bad for them that this underestimated maid is a scrapper fresh out of prison. The first big fight sets the stage for the glorious entertainment that follows, with Beetz taking on a team of over-confident garbage bag-slicker-wearing cultists. The limbs go flying, the blood spurts in gallons, and the fight choreography is fun and demented even before a supernatural twist complicates later bouts. They Will Kill You doesn’t offer much on characterization or themes. Its story is spare. It doesn’t offer much on world-building (the building is designed so each floor caters to a different vice, though this gets unfortunately forgotten after the orgy floor). What the movie offers is copious bloodshed, inventive violence, and a celebration of carnage and spectacle. Its fiendish mayhem and superb choreography are the primary selling points, like the John Wick franchise. The results can be exhilarating when executed at such high levels of craft. There’s a standout sequence where Beetz is attacking multiple people in a dark dining room. She wields a flaming axe and every vicious strike ignites the victims, accumulating more light in the dim room. I was grinning and cackling so hard (then I unexpectedly teared up because I knew, deep in my soul, that my father would have loved this). Beetz is terrific as our ferocious fighting force, and the long takes and creative ingenuity allow us to appreciate her efforts even more. She deserves more action roles. I don’t know if the final boss is worth the buildup but it is different, and the climax follows the established rules in clever fashion. The un-reality of the movie, which often feels like a stage, becomes yet another charm in a movie that feels beholden to absurd style. It never takes itself too seriously and delivers the goods when it comes to fun, funny, ridiculous, and ridiculously cool action.
Grades:
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come: C+
They Will Kill You: B+
Share this:
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (2025)
I wasn’t a fan of the original 2023 movie based upon the insanely popular video game series that serves as an entry point into horror for kids. It didn’t work for me but I thought fans of the series would have fun watching the characters come to life in live-action. Now with the sequel, I don’t know anyone that could enjoy this dreck except for the most diehard of the Freddy’s fanbase. I’ve watched the movie and I couldn’t understand it. I read the Wikipedia summary and that didn’t clear it up. So much hinges on so many characters having peculiar responses and relationships to what are… killer animatronics powered by the spirits and literal corpses of murdered children. Why is this pizza parlor even still standing? These robots went on a killing spree in the first movie, and yet this lonely little girl misses her “friends” and runs away to see them again. This isn’t E.T. here, it’s a weird killer robot horror movie that seems to be making up its lore and rules as it goes, like one unending “yes and?’ improv game you’re desperate to tap out from. I guess there’s more killer robots this time, and some unintelligible distinction between the good bad robots and the really bad robots. I don’t know. I gave up trying to comprehend what was happening and felt like maybe I could just try and enjoy the minimal PG-13 scares and tension. The animatronic designs are solid. Wayne Knight (Seinfeld) appears as a villainous robotics teacher. There’s a marionette character that’s kind of sinister to watch. That’s about it, folks. It’s a fairly nonsensical waste of 100 minutes, and unless you’re steeped in the lore and history of the series, you too will wish that this town would just set fire to the whole parlor.
Nate’s Grade: D+
Share this:
HIM (2025)
Setting a horror movie in the world of competitive sports, especially American football with its fandoms akin to dangerous cults of zealots, is a smart concept that could have so much possible commentary, from the sacrifices and exploitation of the players for the blood-lust of the fans, to the conspiracy of a cadre of white owners profiting from the labor of black athletes, to even the blinding psychopathy of extreme tribalism as an identity and dividing line. HIM does little to none of this, and being produced by Jordan Peele, I expected so much more than what I got. We follow a college phenom quarterback who wants to be the greatest, so he accepts an offer to train with a famous champion (Marlon Wayans) who puts him through a series of intense trials to prove whether he has what it takes. The horror elements are more confusing and surreal than unsettling, often crashing into unintentional comedy, like watching mascots with sledgehammers. This is one of those movies that seems to shift from scene to scene, with murky elements meant to keep the main character guessing but really just keeps the viewer guessing if this will ever come to something meaningful. The horror grew tiresome and repetitive. I was hoping for more scenes like where our young QB’s misses in practice lead to other players being physically abused, but mostly HIM hinges on tired occultly leftover furnishings, including an ending that is simultaneously underwhelming and predictable, a shrug meant as catharsis. An electrifying horror movie can certainly be made about the world of football. HIM isn’t it, let alone the possible GOAT.
Nate’s Grade: D
Share this:
He’s Coming to Get You! (2025)
Kyle Rayburn might just be one of the nicest human beings you’ll ever meet, and he’s admirably unafraid of pursuing his dreams, whether it’s starting a chicken wing food truck or making micro-budget horror comedies in central Ohio. The man has gusto, and it shines through the seams of his hardscrabble yet charming earlier cinematic efforts, Night Work and Satanic Soccer Mom from Ohio. Each of Rayburn’s movies is filmed for under $5000 and shot on an iPhone. He’s in a production groove, promising the next adventure during the credits of his latest completed movie (coming up next: Slam Hounds), and his latest cinematic salvo is the evocatively-titled He’s Coming to Get You!, a title that William Castle surely would have nodded in solemn approval. It’s more or less The Crow by way of Sam Raimi, who even gets name-checked in the movie, a supernatural-fueled revenge thriller with goofy slapstick and self-aware references. It’s a fairly entertaining beginning and ending to a movie that, unfortunately, at just an emaciated 51 minutes in length before end credits, lacks the development for a satisfying exploration between start and finish.
George Russo (Scott Baker, Sulphur for Leviathan) is turning thirty-three and looking forward to a night of cavorting with his long-time girlfriend, Aja (Alyss Winkler, Space Babes From Outer Space). A team of sex traffickers (Jason Crowe, Seth McGuffin – yes, that is his real last name) is determined to capture Aja for their boss. They mug the happy couple and shoot George in his face, killing him and kidnapping Aja. An occult bookstore owner (Grace Plazolles-Hayes) resurrects George through the power of voodoo. He’ll be alive for the remainder of the night, enough time to track and rescue Aja. He’s also a “pain sponge,” meaning that he can take lots of physical punishment and keeps on going, the Energizer Bunny of vengeance, if you will. Can he rescue his beloved before it’s time once again to shuffle from the mortal coil? Will he be able to inflict maximum justice while also trying out some long-sought kung-fu moves?
From that description, you can see how the premise would suffice as a movie for He’s Coming to Get You! (it’s never going to be normal in my brain to type a period after the punctuation in the title). There’s something inherently appealing about revenge stories, and you add a supernatural element that doesn’t just level the playing field for our undead underdog but gives them a key advantage, and we’re hooked. It really is The Crow with a better sense of humor, or, well, any sense of humor. Along those lines, giving our avenging crusader a sense of humor that would fit into Army of Darkness is a great boon. The heavier aspects of the movie like murder, assault, and trafficking are mitigated by having a main character who has definite Bugs Bunny by way of Bruce Campbell energy. It’s the filmmakers way of saying to the audience not to get too worried because the results will be more like an amiable, goofy hangout.
After three movies, I can say that Rayburn and his co-writer/producer Ben Reger love making movies that are, first and foremost, concerned with imparting good times no matter the twisted material. I laughed out loud a few times, like when a thug, seconds before his imminent death, replies forlornly, “I never saw Pari.” I laughed at George attempting a kung-fu move and then berating himself, “Nope, felt wrong the second I tried.” There’s a pair of bumbling cops (played by Rayburn and Reger) that you can tell they have such affection over, even if they seem like the most incompetent cops on the beat. It all encapsulates a certain teenage boy ethos of rock and roll, scatological humor, babes, and cartoonish violence. The infectious vibes of the movie are back and appealing, a feature that can elevate low-budget movies with obvious limitations. It’s the same with the mumblecore movies of the 2010s, low-budget slice-of-life movies buoyed by strong characters and sense of place. There is no budget on engaging storytelling. It’s the same with Rayburn and Reger’s collaborations. Whatever the premise, theirs is a universe you’ll want to make pit stops for the irreverent good times and weirdness.
And that brings me to my biggest hesitation with He’s Coming to Get You!, mainly that in its final form it comes across more of a proof of concept for a bigger movie than feeling like a complete feature. This is primarily because of its length and the rushed development skipped over for an abbreviated Act Two. The total running time before end credits is 51 minutes, but if you subtract the opening credits that play over the montage of George getting up for the morning, that’s an additional three and a half minutes, taking the running time to a paltry 48 minutes or so, fitting an hour of network TV rather than a feature-length film. From a structural standpoint, George is killed at the 21-minute mark, resurrected and sent on his mission at the 31-minute mark, foils the bad guys by the 46-minute mark, and then the movie ends at minute 51. That’s it. It’s hard not to feel a little cheated; the “coming to get you” part of the title is only 15 minutes. Imagine The House on Haunted Hill but you’re only on Haunted Hill for all of ten minutes.
The movie is sprinting through potential plot and further world-building that would help to make its storytelling feel more original and engrossing. Once George is resurrected, he is given great powers but there aren’t any notable rules on the powers besides the fact that they, and he, will expire upon morning. The villains never really have a chance to even process their new adversary as he just shows up, kills them, and then wins the day on his first attempt. The absent struggle and creative development hampers some of the fun, like the movie was in a rush to call it quits over practical considerations. After George is resurrected, there’s one other group he gets to test his new powers on before it’s already time to eliminate the people who killed him. In The Crow, the main character targeted the gang of killers one-by-one, with them learning about this new threat gradually and planning counter-moves. The way it plays out in this movie is all too easy. It’s like an acknowledgement that an audience won’t want to watch a full movie of a supernatural hero getting everything he wants too easily, but the answer isn’t to just shorten the movie, it’s to better develop the premise and ensuing conflicts and challenges and unique world-building. I’d rather watch a version of this movie where George has to figure out his powers and has certain rules and limits than a speed-run to the finish without any interesting challenges, organic complications, or surprises.
There is one moment toward the very end of He’s Coming to Get You! that I feel is emblematic of the positives and drawbacks of the development, but it involves some mild spoilers since it concerns the conclusion, so be advised, dear reader. Aja and George are reunited and finally get some privacy in the bedroom. Aja has been promising quite a bevy of sexual activity for George’s birthday. They’re finally alone, she performs a strip tease, then she crawls into bed and the movie cuts to them just talking and laughing. I thought that was a nice subversion. They have one final night together, so why spend it on physical copulation when you could wile away the hours talking to your favorite person, hearing their laugh, reminding yourself why you love them before they’re gone for good? Besides, having sex with a resurrected dead body, who has been stabbed and beaten throughout the movie, might make for an extremely upsetting final memory of your lover. Plus there’s the whole possible joke of being unable to control blood flow since, you know, blood doesn’t flow anymore anyway. I thought this was clever and sweet. Then it’s revealed that George and Aja did indeed have their sex off-screen and this is just post-coital pillow talk rather than a subversive replacement. Oh? Oh well then.
After three movies, I can start to catalogue the Kyle Rayburn film experience: silly comedy cul-de-sacs, low stakes regardless of circumstance, celebration of schlock, amiable vibes, actors having fun regardless of experience, lo-fi visuals, minimal if any coverage beyond shot-reverse shot edits, and underdeveloped stories. This has been my chief criticism with each of Rayburn’s previous movies, that they benefit from fun ensembles and intriguing premises but that more work could have been done to better realize the potential of each. I often walk away from these movies thinking we got the first draft onscreen. He’s Coming to Get You! is the most real world setting in a Rayburn vehicle, so there aren’t as many interesting characters or details to the world to cover some of those plotting shortcomings, so the vacancy becomes more notable and damaging to the entertainment. It’s easy to graft onto the relaxed, schlocky wavelength of the movie but by the end I felt a little shortchanged in creativity and execution, missing a movie middle. I’m happy Rayburn is following his dreams and has built a staple of returning players. He’s Coming to Get You! has enough going for it that I wish the team had dug in more. I only wish that whatever the next three or four projects prove to be, that Rayburn and his team take more time to really work through their particular story conventions to make them the best version they can be, not just completed.
Nate’s Grade: C+
Share this:
The Black Phone 2 (2025)
The original 2022 Black Phone was a relatively entertaining contained thriller where a kid was relying upon the ghosts of victims to escape the clutches of an evil kidnapper. It had other elements to fill it out as a movie, like a psychic sister, but the central conceit and execution worked well, especially a disturbing performance by Ethan Hawke as The Grabber, the aforementioned grabber and locker-away-er of unfortunate children. Then it was popular enough to demand a sequel, but where do you go when the villain has been killed and the source material, a short story by Joe Hill, has been exhausted? The answer is to turn the very-human Grabber into a Freddy Krueger-style supernatural predator terrorizing our survivors in their dreams. The kids from the first film are now teenagers and really the psychic sis is the main character. She’s the one most affected by the Grabber’s supernatural vengeance. Most of the movie is watching the sister get tossed around invisibly in the real world and talking to irritable ghost kids. There’s a mystery about uncovering the truth about what happened to their deceased mother, who too could have a personal connection to the Grabber from a Christian summer camp located in the far mountains. The snowy locale makes for a visually distinctive setting, though once you see the Grabber ghost ice skating it does take a little of the mystique away from the overall menace. The Black Phone 2 just didn’t work for me, feeling like another “let’s help these dead kids be at peace” adventure like a weekly TV series, but the scenario just didn’t have the draw and satisfaction of the original. I suppose the returning filmmakers wanted to expand their universe and its mythology, Dream Children-style, but the material doesn’t seem there to build a franchise foundation. The first film was simple and complete (makes me think of a variation on a line at the end of Bioshock Infinite: “There’s always a Grabber. There’s always a black phone. There’s always a ghost”). The sequel cannot compensate for that, and so it feels overstretched, underdeveloped, and goofy. At least they tried something different than just a straight replica of the original but it would have been best to leave the Grabber and us at rest.
Nate’s Grade: C
nathanzoebl 
You must be logged in to post a comment.