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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
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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
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Mortal Kombat II (2026)
The 2021 Mortal Kombat movie was a mostly successful kick-start for the franchise to, at long last, stretch its legs on the big screen as a reverent representation of the appeal of the popular video game series. It was the first R-rated movie that showcased the inventively disgusting gore that is the hallmark of the bone-crunching series. It wasn’t a huge hit at the box-office so soon after the COVID shutdowns but it proved to be popular on HBO Max’s streaming network, and so now we have Mortal Kombat II, not strictly a straight adaptation of the game Mortal Kombat II, which was my favorite as a 90s kid when I had all the fighter moves and fatalities memorized. This time there is an actual fighting tournament germane to the story, and we’ve got the inclusion of movie star-turned-Kombatant Johnny Cage (Karl Urban). Can it escape the doomed fate of other Kombat movie adaptations and actually be good?
Early on, there’s an extended clip from one of Cage’s cheesy 90s action movies. It’s bad, goofy, and unintentionally funny as Cage fights his way through a warehouse of goons and does a jumping split kick over an incoming RPG. It’s a fitting send-up of the bombastic excesses of 90s action movies while demonstrating Cage’s limited real-life martial arts application. I wasn’t expecting Mortal Kombat II to essentially transform into that self-parody of 90s action movies. Watching the movie and trying to make sense of its runaway plot and throwaway explanations, I was reminded of the story modes in the newer games, how convoluted and ridiculous they are, bridging timelines and reincarnations and multiple iterations of characters and how it lacks excitement and engagement. For a fighting game, an okay story can be enough to connect between the different playable matches because the point is the hands-on fighting. This feels more like I’m watching someone else play the lousy story mode of the video game. It doesn’t feel like a movie to the point that I’m re-evaluating the 2021 movie on a higher level.
That at least felt like an adaptation that intended to exist as a film story, streamlining certain elements and making others accessible. This movie feels like it’s just made for diehard Kombat fans, not because it’s heavy in lore complexity and intrigue but because the fans will be the most easily forgiving. With Cage being the fish out of water, you would think his arc would take center stage. He’s the washed-up actor living off his fading reputation. He’s seen by the Outworld as a tremendous and worthy fighter but he’s just an actor. This misconception from his movies could have provided a more intriguing, grounded, and funny story along the lines of Galaxy Quest, where an actor has to keep up the ruse. This plays into the best scene of the movie, where Cage has to challenge the dentally-challenged blade-armed Baraka (CJ Bloomfield) among his community of angler fish-mouthed working class monster-people. Cage has to lean into his persona to become intimidating and then to escape the threat of his opponent. It’s the best fight in the movie because it has more setup and makes actual use of its geography. There’s also a fun dynamic of Cage having to live up to the reputation his running mouth has presented. This could have been the whole movie. Cage’s character arc is a dull zero-to-hero transformation, where I guess he has to believe in himself enough and then he’ll become a legendary fighter. Why this makes sense I do not know. It would make better sense if he was tapping into the muscle memory of his old fighting routines, like we watched him mirror those moves we saw in that introductory film clip. That would produce a setup and payoff. Instead, Cage becomes a deus ex machina fighter through his unshaken belief he can kick real good. His protagonist status is split evenly with Kitana (Adeline Rudolph), who is a familiar and boring archetype of the overthrown princess training to avenge her fallen father and restore her kingdom. For a supposed double agent, it never feels like Kitana is in any danger, especially as she travels back and forth between secret bases in broad daylight without bothering to cover her tracks beyond obscuring her special magic necklace. Because her character arc is so stock, we could have pared down her screen-time considerably and gotten the same effect, giving those precious minutes over to Cage for a fuller arc.
Not that you were coming to Mortal Kombat II for a story, but it’s plenty bad. We have a second entry point character to learn the ways of inter-dimensional combat between gods and monsters, after the 2021 movie gave us… an entry point character. Seems rather redundant to go through this again, right? Do you even remember that character’s name? Do you remember what his special power was once he became fully self-actualized? I didn’t either, so when he appeared briefly in this sequel, it wasn’t until it was long over that I thought to myself, “Oh wait, that was that guy?” Even the protagonist of the first movie is a discarded afterthought. The story elements from the first movie are tacked on like calling upon support at the last moment, akin to hailing Godzilla to come out and fight the big monster terrorizing Japan for the first two acts of the movie. “Hey, remember the spirit of the Scorpion warrior? Well now he’s back to once again kill the spirit of Sub-Zero who is now Smoke with different powers, I think.” The entire universe-defining inter-galactic tournament feels so underrepresented and insignificant. There’s a culminating fight that requires not one energy beam blast, not two energy beam blasts, but three different energy beam blasts and a very special kick, and every moment feels as arbitrary and airless as the last. Even if you’re not expecting much from a movie that spells “combat” with a K, it should still follow the expectations of a movie, namely that the characters are meaningful and there’s an internal connectivity. Once you start introducing the mechanic that we can bring fighters back from the dead, or just stroll into the Netherworld to hang out with the dead and ask them favors, the stakes lessen dramatically. If death in the fight-to-the-death tournament is just a transitory phase, then why even stress about the tournament?
I know this sequel has a bigger budget than its 2021 predecessor but it looks so much worse visually. The increased number of special effects look dodgier and all of the sets look like big empty green screen stages. Too much of this world looks dim and fake. The fighting stages (acid pit, spike pit) are faithfully recreated from the video games but at a cost. There’s so little that feels tactile or even interactive with the actors onscreen. The environments feel empty and vast and often visually unfinished. There’s one stage surrounded by what looks like a screen saver of old with glowing stars moving like in Star Wars hyperspace. It’s not just that it looks phony, it’s that it doesn’t even appear to look otherwise. There are some gruesome deaths but even they are limited by the range of attacks from the primary villains. Having a big guy wield a big hammer limits what can be done. Often people are just being impaled, and I hate to sound like a jaded Spanish Inquisition flunkey, but you see one bloody impaling, you’ve seen most. Even by the standards of its memorable gore and intensity of its brawls, Mortal Kombat II falls flat. It’s too goofy to be as serious as it is, and it’s too serious to really generate a passing sense of fun.
By most accounts, Mortal Kombat II is going to be a movie that most viewers have a sliding scale of expectations for because it’s based on a fighting video game, because it’s a sequel, and because it’s populated with silly characters in colorful regalia. Is it my fault that I was expecting better? I don’t think so. The results of the 2021 movie show what could be possible, especially with its thoughtful and terrifying opening flashback to 1600s Japan establishing the deadly prowess of Sub-Zero. That’s what a Kombat movie could be like, elevated and cinematic and devastating. It doesn’t have to be junk. Mortal Kombat II doesn’t aspire to be anything other than tasty, disposable junk, and it’s not even good at that.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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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+
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Dust Bunny (2025)
Bryan Fuller is one of those names in television that is spoken of like an institution, at least for geeks. The man is responsible for short-lived but beloved TV series like Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, Hannibal, and launching the new Star Trek Discovery universe as well as cracking the “un-adaptable” Neil Gaiman novel, American Gods, at least for its brilliant first season before he and co-creator Michael Green were jettisoned for cheaper alternatives. That’s the other thing about Bryan Fuller, he tends to wear out his welcome fast for such an eponymous show-starter. Whether it’s work habits or ego, or just butting heads with foolhardy execs, Fuller tends to get pushed out on his projects. That’s why a movie written and directed by Fuller has immediate and immense appeal. Here’s a singular vision from one of TV’s most unique creators, and he doesn’t have to fret about having to craft a season of storytelling. He just has to concern himself with 100 minutes of hopeful entertainment. Dust Bunny has a crackerjack premise, a great leading man, and some stylish flourishes and fun, and yet I walked away, after eight years removed from seeing a Fuller project, not feeling particularly swept away.
A ittle girl, Aurora (Sophie Sloan), hires a hitman (Mads Mikkelsen) to kill the monster hiding under her bed. Boom. Sold. Naturally, the jaded hitman who’s seen it all doesn’t believe the little girl. Now not only will he have to defend the little girl from a potential monster, he’ll have to fend off other hired guns and assassins trying to take out this kid because she “knows too much.”
Given that hook, I thought that Dust Bunny was going to be a monster movie by way of a hitman movie, but really it’s much more of a glib and exhausting hitman movie with the idea of a monster until the final fifteen minutes of chaotic culmination. I thought there was going to be a much more compelling and charming relationship between the two characters, possibly forming a surrogate father/daughter relationship as they descend into a realm of danger even an experienced man of action is ill-equipped for. I thought Dust Bunny was going to be more of a Guilermo del Toro-style fantasia and instead it’s far more akin to those Tarantino ripoffs with a stilted attitude in place of stakes and originality. This is much more akin to flimsy style-over-substance dross like Gunpowder Milkshake or Polar (also starring Mikkelsen) than del Toro. This is far more of a hitman movie that occasionally remembers, oh yeah, there’s this whole fantasy/horror element that could make it stand out. There’s so much about our lead hitman having to worry about this little girl because she saw his face and can identify him. There are teams of other hitmen that want to bump her off, sent by his own handler, Laverne (Sigourney Weaver). As a hitman movie, it’s pretty dull because our hero is overpowered and under matched. At no point will you worry for his own sake, and plus, just sending disposable humans into the same apartment night after night is boring. I’ve seen those kinds of movies before, even the ones that are just self-infatuated style orgies of violence. What makes this movie unique is the freaking monster, and it doesn’t really take hold until the very end of the movie, not coincidentally the best part. At that point, Dust Bunny becomes a whimsical variation on Tremors, where the unwitting participants cannot touch the floor, lest they be eaten by a monster under the floorboards. It’s a lot harder to have your shootouts and fights while balancing on scarce end tables (what if the fantasy monster could really transform the floor into lava? Oh, the nasty possibilities).
If Dust Bunny was just an exercise in vacuous style, I might find some fleeting pleasures from it, but the whimsical tone takes the premise of an unorthodox fable and mutates it under insufferable irony. It’s the kind of movie that knows you’ve seen glib hitman movies before, and it’s playing into those expectations with an attempted ironic distance but instead it just comes across as annoyingly circuitous conversations. The pained banter became baffling as characters attempted to take what the previous character said and nothing while just pushing the conversation forward a millimeter. These are not funny exchanges. These are not examples of cutesy dialogue. It’s just maddening nonsense that runs in circles, and I found myself mentally tuning out whenever it kept repeating. For me, the dialogue was too irreverent for its own good.
There’s a really engaging and imaginative movie on the outskirts trying to push on through. Having a little girl with a monster following her begs for further world-building and examination, let alone integrating the monster’s unique abilities and dangers. As it stands, all one has to do is stay off the floor during nightfall (a reintroduction of bedpans is an unfortunate must). Early on, it feels like the little girl is in real danger, as the monster literally lifts her bed off the floor and seems to try and shake her loose. Although throughout the daytime she still canoes around her lonely apartment on a giant hippo on wheels. I guess it’s a precaution or maybe she just wants to get better at apartment canoeing before nighttime when she really needs to make sure she can paddle. This is the last time you’ll feel she’s in actual danger. I wanted far less of the overtly stylish hitman antics and more of the perspective of a hitman thrust into a fantasy. Dust Bunny is a disappointing inverse, turned inside out, with a hitman movie with a different Big Bad. I’m not saying Fuller had to rely on staid fantasy storylines, like the girl is really some long-lost royalty to a hidden realm, never knowing her true identity and inheritance, and under attack from otherworldly forces wanting to usurp her throne. I mean I probably would have enjoyed that more, pushing our flinty hitman into entertaining fish-out-of-water fantasia rather than more hitman shootouts on repeat.
Dust Bunny was a frustrating experience for me from a creator that I frankly expected more from. Fuller’s always had a penchant for twee whimsy, genre blending, dark humor and the macabre, but I didn’t find his film debut nearly as cute and quirky as his television output. I found much of the tone grating and overly stylized, and while I’m sure the mannered directing is meant to better convey a fable, I impatiently grew tired of the minimalist sets, the repetitive deadpan dialogue, and the surprising lack of imagination. I wish the last act had been the whole movie. I can see fans of more malevolent 1980s children’s movies finding something to enjoy here, and over decades Fuller has certainly established enough of a fanbase to declare any entity a possible burgeoning cult movie. There are moments that made me reminisce about Jean-Pierre Jenuet (Amelie, City of Lost Children), but then I wondered what he would have done with this same premise and the comparison wasn’t so favorable any longer. I’m coming across too harsh because I wanted Dust Bunny to be much more given its premise and creative voice. There’s enough here that will qualify as passing entertainment for most viewers, especially for fans of twisted fairy tales. There’s just not enough here in execution to make me as eager for Fuller’s next feature film.
Nate’s Grade: C
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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+
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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+
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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
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Good Boy (2025)
This is the first movie I can think of that might have a vested interest in opening its title with something usually reserved at the very very end of credits: the animal cruelty disclaimer. It seems barbaric now, but decades ago, film productions didn’t give much care for the care of their animal actors. In the old days, especially at the height of Westerns, horses would just die by the dozens and sometimes be literal cannon fodder like in 1980’s Heaven’s Gate. Nowadays, productions are monitored for animal cruelty and make every effort to tell their stories without harming anyone, human and animal. Good Boy is a novel take on a familiar horror concept. It’s a haunted house movie about a nefarious life-sucking specter. It’s also completely told from the point of view of the family pet. It’s a common horror trope to have the animals sensing supernatural danger before their respective owners finally wise up, it’s another to base your entire movie on that perspective. That’s what director/co-writer Ben Loenberg put together over the course of three years, training his dog Indy to be the star of his debut feature film. While the film feels more like an empathy experiment than a fully developed movie, it’s an interesting twist that made me rethink familiar horror movie staples. Here’s a helpful spoiler to set your minds at ease: the dog lives, folks.
Indy is a golden retriever and just the bestest boy. His owner, Todd (Shane Jensen), is going through a lot. Todd is suffering from a fatal illness and has returned to his grandfather’s home in the country. Todd’s sister is worried over his deteriorating mental and physical state and also believes that the old family home is haunted by a sinister presence that contributed to their grandfather’s demise. What’s a dog to do?
It’s an interesting choice to have a dog as our main character because it’s both limiting as well as coursing with dramatic irony. Firstly, we know it’s a movie, and the dog is just a dog and doesn’t know its owners are making art by being purposely weird. So many animal performances are like candid camera exercises (cue think pieces arguing that the dog could not really give consent to being terrorized for art). Telling your story from only what a dog is privy to will naturally limit the extent of the story. We can overhear snippets of conversations to draw inferences but the movie is making a value judgement that its audience will fill in the blanks of its familiar ghost story. This is the filmmakers at peace with their story being hazy and familiar and underdeveloped. They’re sacrificing clarity for adhering to their artistic vision, but because it’s the whole relevant sticking point of the movie, I think they made the right call.
Alas, the dog is a limited perspective to tell a realistic story. However, the sense of dramatic irony is what helps add layers to the viewing. We see the dog know more but also simultaneously less than the humans. It senses the ghostly presence that the humans are ignorant of, but it doesn’t know why humans do their human things any more than any other non-human creature (we are puzzling). It makes for an experience where we are aware of what the dog knows but also simultaneously aware of what the dog doesn’t know. It makes for an interesting experience allowing the audience to empathize with our poor pooch but also recognize the dangers that it doesn’t and recognize the dangers that it’s trying to warn its owner over.
The perspective is a gimmick, sure, but it reminds me of last year’s In a Violent Nature, another indie horror project that took a familiar premise and turned it on its head through a canny choice of point of view. In that movie, we were presented the teenage slasher movie but from the beleaguered perspective of the zombified behemoth stalking the woods and trying to run into those mischievous teens. It was an experimental turn for a sub-genre that had been done to death by the conclusion of the 1980s, and that choice of perspective made it more reflective and contemplative as the viewer was forced to reconsider our relationship with these kinds of movies during the extended walks. Good Boy doesn’t go that philosophical distance, but its change of perspective refreshes the old tropes of the haunted house story.
Is Good Boy scary? Not really, but I actually don’t think that’s the point of the exercise either. The purposely underdeveloped story rests on familiar tropes, which cues the audience to place their attention less on the plot, rules, and explanations and more on empathizing with the dog. Because of this creative choice it can create tension whenever we feel like the dog is confused, alarmed, or threatened. While the filmmakers do a decent job of crafting a potent sense of mood with such a low-budget, I doubt few will characterize the movie as genuinely scary. However, what’s scary is what might happen to this good boy and his own emotional fragility trying to understand forces and choices beyond his capacity. I will say to the horror aficionados who also happen to be ardent animal lovers, there is another ghost dog that used to belong to the dead grandfather who met a tragic end, but other than that, Indy isn’t truly harmed. Still, I found the resolution to the movie, including the very final image, unexpectedly poignant and a reminder that dogs are so inherently loyal that we honestly don’t deserve them as a species.
Dogs are inherently empathetic beings, just ask any dog owner, so it’s easy to sympathize with this little guy trying to do his best to be the good boy he is. He just wants some pets and to cuddle with his human. He doesn’t know his owner is suffering from a chronic lung condition. He doesn’t know the strange man in black ooze creeping along the shadows isn’t another strange person. Our dog just knows things aren’t right. Naturally, without narration, our protagonist is going to be limited by what he can emote, and yet the filmmakers do a superlative job of getting the best performance out of their four-legged star. Through the judicious editing and planning, it really feels like this little guy is giving a performance, enough so that animal lovers might squirm occasionally in their seats. When the ghost is taking over Todd and he’s mean to Indy, I felt so bad for this little guy (he doesn’t know it’s all pretend). There are some wonderfully expressive close-ups, and while it’s entirely the Kulushov effect and I’m projecting meaning into a performance that isn’t actually there, that’s also the intention of the filmmakers. They are cajoling their non-verbal star and creating the performance through carefully crafted setups and edits, and it works.
Good Boy isn’t the first movie with “man’s best friend” as its lead (Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, Benji, etc.) nor is it the first movie asking us to think from a non-human perspective. Its familiarity is the point, and it asks us to think of the tried ghost story but from the perspective of the curious canine. The movie is probably as long as it can be at 70 minutes without feeling truly punishing or significantly complicating its world building. I can’t fault people for viewing Good Boy as more of a gimmick or experiment than a fully engaging movie. It’s not going to be for everyone by the nature of its limited perspective and development; not everyone is going to be captivated watching a dog react to things for an hour. It didn’t fascinate me like In a Violent Nature but it did make me rethink the familiar, and to that end it’s an overall success and confirmation that you should always trust the animals when they sense something hinky.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Death of a Unicorn (2025)
Unfortunately, this never became the glorious B-movie its premise promises, a monster movie with ghastly gore that also satirizes the rich business elites. Death of a Unicorn has enough appealing elements, from the father/daughter relationship between Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega, to some ridiculous gore and kills, to impressive creature prosthetics to bring the unicorn to life (and death). The setup has Rudd and Ortega run over a unicorn in a secluded nature reserve on their way to meet dad’s boss. They discover the unicorn blood can be miraculously healing, which is a fortuitous discovery considering Rudd’s boss runs a pharmaceutical company. You can see where this goes, especially when you learn that there are more unicorns out there and they are not happy. It becomes a wily creature feature from there, with unicorns picking off the characters one-by-one as they try and escape. The satirical broadsides are a bit too broad, thus only really glancing in their pointed attacks that the people in charge of medical care are themselves venal and selfish. Got it. Much of the humor is related directly to the absurdity of watching a unicorn as a blood-thirsty monster. If you replaced the unicorn with, say, a yeti, would the situation still be amusing? Maybe, but I seriously doubt it. Death of a Unicorn could have been a little scarier, funnier, even freakier, and maybe carried through on the courage of its convictions.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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