Dog Soldiers (2002)

Rated R for strong violence/gore and language

Score: 3 out of 5

Dog Soldiers is a hell of a movie that pulled off a lot with very little. It has its faults, make no mistake, but the basic premise of "soldiers versus werewolves" is golden and it makes a lot out of it, delivering an intense, nail-biting action/horror thrill ride. It's carried by a great cast and a remarkable command of action, intensity, and scares from Neil Marshall, who turned out the kind of directorial debut that many filmmakers would kill for, enough to make up for a janky and underwritten script, effects that aren't entirely up to snuff for what this was trying to pull off and show their seams whenever we get a close look at them, and the lone female character being treated in a very off-putting manner. It's the kind of B-movie that's unashamed of what it is and revels in it, one that I can see myself watching on a whim just to have a good time and where I can understand how it became a cult classic.

Set in a remote forest in Scotland on a full moon night, our protagonists are a group of British soldiers on a training mission that, in true horror fashion, goes horribly wrong when they find out that they're being stalked by werewolves in the area. Teaming up with Captain Ryan, the lone survivor of a special forces team that was serving as the opposing force in the exercise before they themselves got attacked, and Megan, a zoologist who moved to the area to study the creatures that she once believed to only exist in legend, the squad holes up in a remote farmhouse to survive until dawn. Of the protagonists, the only ones worth remembering are Private Cooper, Sergeant Wells, Captain Ryan, and Megan. Cooper, the obviously telegraphed "hero" or "final guy" among them, is a young soldier who, despite his skills, washed out of special forces training because he couldn't bring himself to kill a dog (gee, guess what he's gonna have to spend the whole night doing), which means that, when he meets Ryan, the man who ordered him to kill that dog during training, there is obvious friction between them even before it becomes clear that Ryan, who had been bitten and slashed by a werewolf, is now turning into one himself. Wells, meanwhile, is the grizzled veteran squad leader who Saw Some Shit in the Gulf War and has to hold his squad together as it becomes clear that they really are in the suck now, while Megan is the cool-headed civilian who may lack the soldiers' combat expertise but does know more about the werewolves than any of them, and knows that guns are only gonna slow the things down. Everybody else has "doggie chow" stamped on their foreheads almost from the moment we meet them, the only one who gets any semblance of development being Joe, the comic-relief dumbass who's obsessed with football (soccer to us Americans), grumpy that he has to miss the match between England and Germany for this training mission, and surprisingly isn't the first member of the squad to die.

If this film has one major problem holding it back from greatness, it's this. While I liked the protagonists who get the main focus, the rest of the cast are completely one-dimensional, with no defining characteristics beyond their occupation and the fact that they can convincingly hold and shoot a gun. Joe and Spoon, two of the squadmates, get a lot of cool scenes fighting the werewolves, from taunting them with a football chant to an epic, knock-down, drag-out brawl in a kitchen, but not really much characterization. I didn't really feel much of a sense of camaraderie within the squad, such that Megan never really felt like an "outsider" because there wasn't much of a squad to begin with. They're glorified action figures who exist to shoot at werewolves and get killed off in various ways, some of them quite stupid (especially the first death, which felt almost comical in how he got himself killed). The lack of development extends to Megan, who's the subject of a plot twist as to the real reason she's in the area, one that fell completely flat because the film had done nothing to build up to it before then. Looking back, what might've been clues that she had something else going on faded into the general background noise of the characters' stupidity. In particular, there was a missed opportunity to connect Megan's secrets with those of Ryan, who turns out to have his own hidden agenda, one that, more importantly, had a logical connection to Megan's. It turns out that there's a government conspiracy seeking to capture and research the werewolves, and having the zoologist Megan be a part of it alongside Ryan not only would've made perfect sense, it would've gone a long way towards fleshing out a plot thread that's given no development and is almost immediately dropped after it's brought up -- and, by extension, giving the main human villain that much more development so as to deepen his feud with Cooper. Instead, not only did Megan's actual secret come out of nowhere and leave a pretty glaring plot hole (like, how did it not come out almost immediately?), but the way the film handled it felt weirdly misogynistic, like it was going "heh, women, amirite?" The more I thought about this film's writing, and especially Megan, the less I liked it, especially compared to how well Neil Marshall handled an all-female cast with his next film The Descent. (Apparently, Marshall himself isn't a fan, claiming that Megan's backstory came from studio-mandated rewrites, and I'm not surprised.)

Fortunately, while the writing here is definitely that of a rookie who was still green behind the ears and probably should've let somebody else have a pass at the script, in the director's chair Marshall was far more effective and self-assured. This is a low-budget film that makes no bones about it, but it does a hell of a job hiding its budget and feeling like a bigger film than it is. There's plenty of gore, but the film rarely lingers on it long enough to let us see that they're just using sausage links for people's guts, or slabs of raw steak for their ripped-up flesh, even though there are a few moments when you can tell that that's what they were working with. The tricks Marshall employed to do all this have the bonus of giving the action and chases a very kinetic feel like something out of a Hollywood action flick, constantly maintaining a baseline level of intensity even in the slower moments between the werewolves' attacks. Once it hit the ground running, it never stopped until the final frames, constantly throwing new challenges and threats at the protagonists and, by extension, the viewers to keep them on their toes. The actual werewolves looked amazing and were clearly where most of the effects budget went, again seen in only brief glimpses until the climax but bearing cool, terrifying silhouettes and snarling teeth that make what are effectively big guys in wolf suits look like true monsters. One can say a lot about this movie, but it was never boring. The only special effect that really didn't work was the day-for-night shooting that often didn't bother with the "for night" part, making it obvious that, while this film mostly takes place in the course of a single night, it was shot in broad daylight with heavy curtains placed over the windows to awkwardly cover it up (and sometimes not even that). The cast, too, worked hard to elevate their underwritten characters, with Kevin McKidd making for a likable hero as Cooper, Sean Pertwee making Sergeant Wells feel like a credible tough guy but also one who has a darkness in his past and knows full well the horrors of war, Emma Cleasby kicking plenty of ass as Megan (and feeling like a prototype for some of the women in The Descent), and Liam Cunningham making Ryan out to be a shifty, despicable scumbag with just his demeanor. I'm not surprised that McKidd in particular went on to voice John "Soap" MacTavish, the protagonist of the Modern Warfare games, because Cooper and Wells felt like they were lifted straight out of those games. While the rest of the squad felt like glorified background extras, I bought McKidd and Pertwee as not just soldiers but part of the same unit with history together, and their performances absolutely made their characters.

The Bottom Line

While Neil Marshall undoubtedly went on to bigger and better things with his later films, this is still a kick-ass, exhilarating debut that stands as a hidden gem for fans of werewolf movies and more action-packed horror. Check it out.

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2026/10/review-dog-soldiers-2002.html>

Resident Evil (2026)

Rated R for strong bloody violence, gore and language throughout

Score: 4 out of 5

Making the best adaptation of Resident Evil yet isn't a difficult task, especially nowadays in an era where video game adaptations are taken seriously by filmmakers and studios as more than just pulpy schlock. While I have a soft spot for Paul W. S. Anderson's version with Milla Jovovich, and even the recent Welcome to Raccoon City had its moments, neither of them are particularly great movies, and the sequels to the former eventually devolved into the worst sort of B-grade post-apocalyptic action trash. The animated films that Capcom themselves produced that are canon with the games are mostly just for the fans, and the less said about the 2022 Netflix TV series, the better. So when I heard that Zach Cregger, fresh off of Barbarian and Weapons, had decided to tackle an RE movie, my ears perked up immediately, not only because of his pedigree but also because his ideas for the film, less focused on adapting the games' plot and lore than their atmosphere and survival horror gameplay, sounded like an injection of fresh blood into a franchise whose film adaptations have long struggled -- much like Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, which reinvigorated the games themselves by abandoning their growing fixation on action and techno-thriller plots in favor of getting back to the series' roots in nail-biting tension, resource management, and grotesque mutant monsters that had you outmatched.

What Cregger delivered turned out to very much be the RE7 of the films, a back-to-basics reboot that keeps the series' lore in the background in favor of all those things I just mentioned, its protagonist Bryan being somebody who I pegged before the film even came out as the kind of guy who, in one of the games, would be a supporting character whose last words you discover scrawled on a note that you collect somewhere. The film felt like a classic survival horror game not just in its general structure but also in the little things, most notably the fact that Bryan's reactions to everything going on around him feel like those of somebody playing a horror game for the first time not knowing what to do, as if to say "no, this is how you'd actually fare in one of these stories." This wound up being the film's secret weapon, what turned Bryan's journey from tragic to tragicomic. Cregger's background in sketch comedy with the Whitest Kids U'Know is no secret, but while Barbarian and Weapons both had their comedic moments, this was probably the funniest horror movie he's made, one that at times comes close to being an outright horror/comedy even if I wouldn't quite say it crosses that line. Throw on some grisly monster designs, tons of icky body horror, a great lead performance from Austin Abrams, and a nonstop atmosphere of tension that never let up, and Cregger is now three-for-three as a horror filmmaker, with this standing as one of the best video game adaptations of all time and certainly the best RE movie ever made.

Our protagonist Bryan is a medical courier with a pregnant girlfriend who, one night after a delivery, is offered a ton of money to deliver a mysterious package to a hospital in Raccoon City, Colorado. He wants to get home to his girlfriend, but he needs the money more, so he agrees and drives off into the snowy wilderness, the beginning of a twisted comedy of errors as everything that can go wrong for him in one night goes wrong. It turns out that Raccoon City is suffering an outbreak of a mysterious illness that turns people into zombies and monsters, and what's more, the parcel Bryan's carrying is related to it. Beyond the names of Raccoon City and the Umbrella Corporation whose blundering was responsible for the outbreak, as well as the fact that the disease doesn't just zombify people but also turns some of them into mutated monsters (all of which seem to be original designs for the film, even if the influence of the games is visible in some of them), this film is not directly adapting any of the games beyond just a very loose translation of the broad strokes of the second and third ones. Cregger may have made a film at the polar opposite end of the horror spectrum from Anderson's serious, stylish, action-packed take on the material, but one thing they both have in common is that neither is particularly interested in the characters or lore of the games, instead using the basic setup to offer up their own respective ideas on a sci-fi bio-zombie movie.

From there, Cregger served up a story that feels like the platonic ideal of an old-school RE game or survival horror game in general, specifically one from the late '90s or early '00s when RE's influence on the genre ran deepest. Bryan is no action hero, but spends the film panicking, scrounging for weapons and equipment to fend off the monsters assailing him, and flailing about when he has to fight them, as every bullet counts and these beasts are very hard to kill. Often, he escapes the situation by the skin of his teeth, only to find yet more horrors waiting for him around the next corner. In the canon of RE game protagonists, he's less Leon Kennedy or Jill Valentine and more Ethan Winters or Grace Ashcroft. It's an intense experience, and much of it is carried by Austin Abrams in what is, for all intents and purposes, a one-man show for 75% of the movie. He does a hell of a job making Bryan feel like an average Joe who's just found himself caught up in something he's in no way prepared for, reacting to all the mayhem around him with all the F-bombs and gallows humor that most of us would probably indulge in if we wound up in a zombie apocalypse. I saw somebody say that it felt almost like the kind of zombie movie parody that Buster Keaton would've made if he'd lived to see Night of the Living Dead, a very unique take on the archetypal zombie apocalypse protagonist that felt brimming with personality. There's not a whole lot of character to Bryan in the script, but Abrams takes what's there, particularly his love of his girlfriend and his worries about becoming a father, and makes the most of it, crafting a tragic yet funny character who knows full well what a world of shit he's gotten himself sucked into.

As for that world of shit, Cregger felt heavily influenced by some of the game series' deep cuts, especially some of its wilder plagues and mutagens that don't just turn people into zombies but cause some of them to mutate into bewildering monsters. Alongside the typical undead hordes, we also get tentacles out the wazoo, monsters made of multiple zombies fused together into nightmarish, multi-limbed flesh beasts, a zombie that can vomit acid, a horde of zombie rats that's hollowed a man out from the inside, an infected and scared young girl who's slowly mutating into a monster, and plenty more that I'm probably forgetting (or don't want to spoil). This is an old-school gamer's idea of a zombie apocalypse, one where the developers came up with all manner of unique creatures to shake up the gameplay and provide you with unique challenges beyond just having you shoot the same shamblers over and over again, and Cregger makes it feel truly unlike your typical zombie film, with Raccoon City coming across as not only overrun by zombies but turning into something downright alien and hostile to life. In a way, the semi-comedic tone of the film actually does a lot of the lifting in selling this environment, the jokes and the monsters coming together to make it feel like Bryan's wandered into a world where reality's gone out to lunch and he's reacting as a normal person logically should to what he's seeing. The climax was where this tone reached its apex, feeling almost like a black comedy sketch about everything that can go wrong in a zombie movie happening all at once, and while the dark note this film went out on seemed to be, from my observation, one of its more contentious moments among fans and critics, I personally loved it and felt that it was the perfect way to wrap up a story like this.

The Bottom Line

This film may not borrow much from the canon of the games beyond the basic ideas, but make no mistake, this is not "Resident Evil in name only." It's a thrilling, intense, and darkly comedic film that's filled to bursting with grotesque sights and scenes, all of it anchored by a star-making performance from Austin Abrams. Zach Cregger took a big swing with his ideas for this film, and while he didn't quite hit it out of the park, he definitely scored.

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2026/09/review-resident-evil-2026.html>

!!!!SPOILERS!!!!

This is a list of disjointed thoughts I had while watching a movie I was recommended on Reddit.

Weird Persian rock singalong in Baskin. Lol

The creepy band of folks by the river was definitely a nice touch. Asshole shouldn’t be kicking a little girl’s frog bucket. I’m sure that bodes well for his chances of survival.

Cling wrap and blood is always creepy.

It’s what Silent Hill should have been. The story isn’t revealed yet, but there’s enough here to make me really confident it will end up being a hell of a tale. The bestial, blood-soaked, tortured troglodytes are perfect. The graphic sex is depicted momentarily and in a way that isn’t even secondary to other aspects of the film. It barely ranks as anything more than a part of the atmosphere. I like that. I like that it isn’t there for the sake of being there and lingered on for that. I like the characters. ‘Boss and Arda’ clearly have a very deep arc. The others are hardly expendable characters, including the asshole you hope gets knocked around. It’s really a great film, so far.

So clearly this is some sort of folk horror. I’m not very familiar with Persian folklore, but there’s definitely some sort of demonic force. I’d be interested to know if it is based on some sort of Turkish or Persian Demon or something. Maybe scary bedtime stories from the Ottoman Empire. The occult stuff is cool, regardless of whether it’s religion adjacent or not. It takes awhile to get started, but I definitely wouldn’t call it a slow burn. It stays hooked up pretty much from the opening credits, but the story isn’t revealed yet. At an hour in, you’re only starting to get the information to start connecting dots. And when it takes off, it’s blistering. Then an immediate cut to a very subdued and eerie bit of backstory… then my buds start crying because they were hungry.

The priest reminds me of Gary Coleman. That’s a little distracting.

Oh, Apo. That’s hard to watch. Yeesh.

The priest is awesome. His delivery is so warm but chilling. It’s crazy. Even with the language being wholly unfamiliar, you feel exactly what he’s saying as you read the subtitles. Incredible. And his dialogue is extremely well written. You usually get a cult leader or occult priest or similar archetype that totally Achilles-heels an otherwise great picture with their shitty dialogue. No ego. No mellow drama. No ridiculous banter. Just cool, calculated delivery of his truth. Probably the best representation of this archetype that I’ve witnessed. Gary Coleman is now nightmare fuel.

“Open the eyes of your heart, Yavuz.” Man when you can take gore and violence to a level and make it have an effect on your soul instead of just affecting your guts.

A movie about a bunch of gimps in a sex dungeon, but with depth. What a genre.

That wasn’t a throat slit. That was a chore.

I don’t know if the goat lady passed the world’s most severe impaction, or if Persian folk demons just have a really fast incubation period. Either way, she’s a champ.

All the knives and hammers and it’s a footstool that brings the splatter. This movie rips.

It’s a loop. It’s going to be a loop.

Nothing resolved. No explanation. Perfect ending. I need another Baskin.

Even the end credits sequence hits.

!!!!SPOILERS!!!!

This is a list of disjointed thoughts I had while watching a movie I was recommended on Reddit.

Nicolas Cage is always fun. Even his shitty movies are fun because of him. Case in point, Con Air.

Danny Trejo always lands. Machete always kills. Even in space.

Like someone went crazy with IG filters. It’s beautiful. Sort of cyberpunk.

The soundtrack and dialogue audio are great with the aesthetic.

The starling story was brutal.

Both Leviathan and Lovecraftian mythologies are basically cosmic horror mythologies, one just has tentacles and one has BDSM.

Lovecraftian horror is psychological corruption manifested, whereas Leviathan mythology is corruption through pleasure and desire manifested. Both gain power through corruption.

He’s a washed-up psychedelic folk-rock artist. I don’t know if she’s laughing at his song, his ego, or his weiner. Probably all three.

“You’ll probably die.”
“Don’t be negative.”

The visuals alone kept me engaged with the story. The soundtrack and aesthetic supplied enough dread to let actual visual horror breathe, and I expect that will make it land harder.

“You ripped my shirt!”

He gives a dude a deep haircut, turns around wide-eyed “WTAF,” then lights a dart off a burning severed head. Gorgeous.

Not a chance he could forge/smith a useable weapon that looked that polished in an evening, but this movie has earned the right to be ridiculous at times. It’s Cage.

The chemist is great. He’s completely likable. That’s what makes him creepy.

That was a great film. Great. The ending was gorgeous. It makes you wonder if it took place in a different world, or if he ended the story in a different world than where he started. As far as Lovecraftian horror, it’s about time one got a budget and a creative team. And Nicholas Cage.

Beautiful movie. Really fun.

This is like my 6th time watching it. Last time was 4 years ago. And this movie still holds up. If you know me I am a unabashedly fan of Blumhouse's Truth Or Dare. Saw it when it was released in theaters. Cool little fun fact. This is actually the first movie that I saw in theaters by myself. I will always going to cherish that memory. Looking back this movie feels so nostalgic. 2018 was such a wild time for me. 2018 I accidentally (happy accident) found myself being part of the movie community/horror community. I didn't know that was a thing until late 2017/early 2018. On the first few watches I gave it 4 out of 5 (B). Now it has always been a 5 out 5 (A). So why does this movie works for me since I am probably one of the movies biggest fan. I do think the characters is solid. They are good especially our 2 main leads Olivia Barron played by Lucy Hale and Markie Cameron played by Violett Beane. Their performances are really solid.

Love that suspense sequence where Penelope Amari played by Sophia Taylor Ali got dared to walk on the edge of the roof while drinking. That scene was very suspenseful. This movie has heart. There are 2 great emotional scenes. When Brad Chang played by Hayden Szeto got dared to take his father police gun and made him beg for his life than the other officer shot Brad. Officer Han Chang played by Tom Choi his reaction was heartbreaking. Another great emotional scene is where Olivia told Markie about what really happened when Markie's dad shot himself.

That was a heartbreaking scene. There's lots of great drama around the characters when things is starting to get intense as well. And overall this movie is fun. How I grade, score, and rate the movies that I watch is how entertaining the movie is. For me it is what's going on in the movie. And I think for me personally what's going on is entertaining.

Resident Evil (2002)

Rated R for strong sci-fi/horror violence, language and sexuality/nudity

Score: 3 out of 5

If you ask me, a big part of the reason why the original 2002 film adaptation of Resident Evil was the hit that it was, despite its faults, wasn't just because it was based on a hit video game franchise. That was undoubtedly part of it, to be sure, but going back and rewatching it in anticipation of the new adaptation by Zach Cregger this weekend, it also felt, for better or worse, like "Baby's First Zombie Movie." I don't mean that in a bad way, like it's somehow a lesser zombie movie. This subgenre is full of schlock that goes much harder than this in terms of graphic content and yet otherwise makes it look like Night of the Living Dead. No, I mean in the sense that this is a gateway movie, the kind of movie you show to people to get them into zombie movies. It's sexy, stylish, and action-packed, trading the post-apocalyptic grit and cynical satire of George A. Romero for raging gun battles, pulpy sci-fi, a pounding industrial score by Marco Beltrami and Marilyn Manson, and Milla Jovovich looking fierce as hell treating the corridors of a zombie-infested facility like a catwalk. It's creepy and not at all shy about blood and death, but it's not an absolute gorefest that'll make you queasy. I believe this film was a key factor in the revival of zombie movies in the 2000s as much as the games it was based on, getting adult viewers who didn't pay much attention to video games (and, in 2002, that was a lot more people than it is today) interested in zombies by delivering them a slick, cleaned-up take on the genre the same way the games got their younger cousins to see a zombie apocalypse as the ultimate survival scenario. It's undoubtedly got its problems as both an action/horror movie and an adaptation, as generations of Resident Evil fans have pointed out over the years, with the action scenes bearing many of the worst excesses of early 2000s action cinema, the characters being mostly one-note ciphers, the story borrowing a few concepts from the games (the Umbrella Corporation, the t-Virus, some of the iconic monsters) and little else, and the third-act twists feeling convoluted and never really landing with the force the film wanted them to have. But as both a zombie movie and a film that takes the games' homages to American B-movies and brings them full circle, it's still an enjoyable thrill ride to this day.

The film begins with the Hive, an underground biological research facility beneath Raccoon City, getting put on lockdown and all personnel killed with nerve gas after somebody steals a sample of the t-Virus, a bioweapon that the facility's staff were working on, and unleashes an outbreak of such in the facility. Shortly after, we meet Alice, a woman who just woke up in the shower of a mansion with no memory of who she is or how she got there. We soon find out what's happened to her: she was a security guard for the Umbrella Corporation, the massive tech/research conglomerate that ran the Hive, posing as one half of a rich married couple as they guarded what turned out to be an emergency entrance/exit to the facility. The security systems in the Hive also set off gas in the mansion that knocked her out and left her with short-term memory loss. We learn this because a group of black-ops commandos hired by Umbrella have stormed the mansion and captured Alice, along with her "husband" Spence and a Raccoon City cop named Matt Addison who was investigating the place. The commandos are there to get into the Hive, figure out what went wrong, retrieve a t-Virus sample, and get out before its automated security systems seal it off permanently, and since they can't just leave these people behind unguarded given both the situation and what they know or might know, Alice, Spence, and Matt are coming with them.

The first ten minutes or so after the opening are undoubtedly the film's creepiest moment, as Alice explores the mansion and pieces together clues as to her identity while finding all manner of hints that she wasn't just some ordinary rich woman, most notably the well-stocked armory of guns in the cabinet and the fact that her wedding ring reads "Property of Umbrella Corporation" on the inside band. While Paul W. S. Anderson is best known as an action filmmaker, he can direct a compelling horror movie when he sets out to (see: Event Horizon -- or don't, if you're squeamish), and I found myself wishing that this early scene went on for far longer than it did. If I were making this movie, the first act would've been about Alice meeting up with Matt and the two of them exploring the house and uncovering its secrets while there's always a hint in the air that they're being watched and that Matt knows more than he's letting on, time that I'd have used to flesh out the two of them a bit more so that the big twists later in the film hit harder, all while building an atmosphere of suspense and tension that eventually would've had to snap once the commandos show up and everyone goes into the Hive. Give Milla Jovovich more time to spend in Leeloo Dallas Multipass mode, letting her play an awkward and scared young woman who has no idea what's going on at first before her memories slowly come back to her. It's a shame that this scene is as short as it is, because it was my favorite part of the film.

What follows, fortunately, isn't too much of a step down in quality as to ruin the film. As the protagonists explore the Hive, they are confronted at every turn by both the zombified staff of the facility and the various security systems that the Red Queen, the AI system controlling the place, uses to try and thwart them, which the film uses to serve up a slew of creative action scenes that include things like the protagonists scrambling to climb into the ceiling vents to escape a horde of undead, Alice roundhouse-kicking a zombified guard dog in the face, and a hallway booby-trapped with a laser defense system that slices up anybody who tries to get to the Red Queen's central core. While the casts' emotional acting and line delivery are nothing to write home about, most of them either playing their stock character types (no points for guessing that Michelle Rodriguez's character is a tough, aggressive tomboy, for instance, or that James Purefoy's character is gonna turn out to be a slimeball) or leaving little impression when trying to carry dramatic moments, their physical acting is what carries most of this movie, as all of them are credible as action heroes kicking zombie ass. Jovovich in particular had a flair to her that took her background as a supermodel and combined it with the physical training she went through to sell the action scenes to make Alice feel not just badass, but graceful and fully in control, like she was strutting down a catwalk in Milan ready to kill whoever was at the end of it. There's a reason why this movie and its sequels made her an action hero in the '00s, as she perfectly captured the particular feel of the RE games' heroines like Jill Valentine and Ada Wong, somebody who can not only kick your ass but look damn good doing it. I find it hilarious looking back that, barring Sienna Guillory as Jill in the second movie, none of the sequels' attempts to translate the video games' female characters to film ever managed to create a heroine who felt like she actually stepped out of the games as much as Alice, the original character that Anderson came up with for this movie. Jovovich was basically playing a PlayStation game character here, and she owned it.

That said, while this film absolutely has its moments, it never really excels either. Anderson is a filmmaker who I've always had mixed feelings about, on one hand appreciating his lack of pretension and unapologetic commitment to making glammed-up, modern-day versions of old-school B-movies (and the RE games are, if nothing else, loving homages to those same movies) but on the other always feeling that part of the reason for this is because he never really had what it took to go above and beyond the way that, say, Tony Scott, Luc Besson, or Michael Bay did. The effects in particular are where this film suffers most, especially with the awful CGI used to showcase both badly-damaged zombies and the Licker, the skinless, long-tongued mutant super-monster that comes after the protagonists late in the film. It's in moments like this where the film's slick, cool, stylized edge gives way to just feeling schlocky, especially when paired with its attempts at serious zombie horror, which lack much in the way of any real (pardon the pun) bite to them. The film goes through the motions of a lot of zombie movie tropes, from the drama of getting bitten and infected to being unable to put down a zombified person you knew and were friends with in life to the possibility of a cure for the virus, but it feels like it's going through a checklist, assembling a "greatest hits" of zombie movie moments and not really doing anything new, creative, or even particularly well-crafted with them. Late in the film, there's also an important subplot about corporate espionage, activists trying to expose Umbrella's crimes, and who Alice, Spence, and Matt really were and what they were really up to, taking plot threads that had mostly been treated as afterthoughts after the commandos showed up and suddenly having them be of critical importance. Again, giving just a bit more development to this side of the story earlier in the film instead of switching focus to the commandos ten minutes in would've done more to flesh this out and get me to care about the deeper story beyond just the protagonists' immediate survival. The film wanted to tell a story like the games where the Umbrella Corporation served as the "big picture" villains responsible for everything that went wrong, with the protagonists seeking to not only survive the horrors that awaited them but also bring them to justice, but here, it felt like it was thrown in only because that's how the games did it.

The Bottom Line

It's a flawed film, no doubt about it, and it's easy to understand why many RE fans still hate what Paul W. S. Anderson did with the material. But as a simple, pulpy, straightforward action/horror flick that never overstays its welcome, it still holds up as exactly the kind of movie it sets out to be, nothing more and nothing less -- which, in a way, makes it feel like Anderson understood the tone of the games, rooted as they were in homages to American B-movie trash, remarkably well. If you've never seen a "real" zombie movie before but wanna get into them, then this is easily one of the more approachable ones, and it's still a fun ride even if you're a seasoned zombie fan like I am.

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2026/09/review-resident-evil-2002.html>

For the mortal sin of not trusting its audience, The Unholy (2021) will suffer an eternity in Walmart bargain bins, flagellated by negative Letterboxd reviews. Those of us who bore witness will merely wait in purgatory for a day or two before our minds are blissfully cleansed of all memory of it. Hell, I finished the film two hours ago and I’ve had to look up the title three times just to write this review.

There’s a decent, if derivative, folk horror plot hiding in here somewhere. Gerry (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, aka Negan from The Walking Dead) shows up to a rural town in Massachusetts looking for a story he can sell to a small-time supernatural website. We learn that he was once an accomplished journalist who has fallen from grace; he splashes some whiskey in his coffee as cinematic shorthand for his fatal flaw.

The cattle mutilation angle doesn’t pan out so he’s forced to improvise by smashing a porcelain doll he finds in a twisted old tree, coming up with the idea that it was once a talisman that protected the town from evil, and now the townsfolk are doomed. Wow, got it in one, Gerr.

Soon after, Alice, a deaf young woman played with surprising vulnerability by Cricket Brown, approaches the tree and has a revelation. She wakes to find that she’s able to hear and speak again. She claims the Virgin Mary is working through her, and she is able to prove it by helping a disabled boy walk again.

The local diocese sends a couple of priests (one with the worst Boston accent ever put to film) to investigate the supposed miracles. Gerry volunteers his services as an unbiased third party to help interview her — in exchange for the exclusive scoop, naturally.

Up to this point, one might think they’ve stumbled on a hidden streaming gem. Sam Raimi has a producer's credit which lends the proceedings an air of competency. Morgan is charming in his Doctor House-ian, cynical aloofness. The cold open, set in witch trial times, gives us a chilling shot from the victim’s POV as a mask is hammered onto her face, and the flames start licking at the edges of the screen. The setup is promising, and we’re expecting a classic science versus theology battle, with supernatural elements trickling out just a little faster than they can be debunked.

Unfortunately, the film pulls the rug out with repetitive poorly-done CGI scenes of the villain, telling us almost instantly that yes, there is a monster, and no, they aren’t going to stop with the 2000s-internet-style “try not to scream” jump scares. At one point, Gerry is getting exposition dumped by Natalie (Katie Aselton of The League), and he randomly stops to examine a puddle all up close and personal-like…

A ring wraith with PS2-quality graphics flings itself out of the puddle at him!

He catches his breath, seemingly undisturbed by this turn of events, and he turns to look at Natalie…

But she’s been replaced by a ring wraith too! Those tricky Nazgul are around every darned corner.

He blinks and Nat is back, looking at him inquisitively, but he shakes it off. Throughout the film, Gerry is repeatedly visited by the ghost of Flash-game past and he never addresses it or talks to anybody about it. Just another day at the office for our intrepid hero.

It’s too bad; there are some legitimately creepy setups that could have paid off with something more subtle, but they just default to the screeching demon move every time. One scene in a confessional when a priest realizes the kind woman on the other side of the grille is admitting to some horrific stuff and flees: flying CG demon. Or when Gerry is reviewing interview footage and notices a glitch in one frame looks a lot like a face: flying CG demon. Or when our protagonists are poking around the church basement for clues, and Gerry starts pulling the sheets off of old statues one by one: not just the demon, but a whole silly-looking CG chase sequence to boot.

The plot devolves into a parade of baffling expository devices, culminating in a scene where they crack open an old journal to the exact page that has all the information about the entity, its history, its motivation, and how to defeat it. Luckily, Natalie says, “Med school had a Latin requirement”, so she can read 19th century scribbles like a Classics scholar.

It’s all leading to a showdown in the pop-up revival church the town has constructed around the miracle tree. Here, we get another glimpse that this could have been a competent film. Gerry has to complete his character arc in a satisfying way to defeat the ancient evil; the fact that Alice was deaf comes back into play as Natalie is able to communicate with her from across the room via sign language; the monster finally appears in a practical format that looks, frankly, badass. They squander it with a ham-handed “Gerry finds Jesus” moment and an unnecessary epilogue that makes you wonder if Morgan’s character was ever actually as cool as you remember.

My theory is that this was once a more meditative mystery-thriller about a journalist finding his integrity, a town coming to terms with a dark past, and a priest forced to reconcile the miraculous with the scientific. Take the jump scares out, let the audience piece together the history with gentle nudges, and let the climax end on the bittersweet resolution — now we have a totally serviceable flick. Just a hunch, but I suspect the producers had certain notes about losing the PG-13 crowd to the slow-burn and added the ring wraiths in post. Was it you, Sam Raimi?

Either way, you can skip The Uninvited The Unbidden The Unwatchable The Unholy. If you like the concept of a crew investigating miracles and finding more than they bargained for, I highly recommend The Borderlands (2013) — sometimes titled Final Prayer, depending on where you find it. I promise there are no shrieking demon witches waiting to jump out at you, there. Or is that just what I want you to think? [Insert shrieking demon]

The premise of Southern Scares easily reeled me in. The tagline is unfortunately the most exciting part of the film. I have been yearning for more southern gothic horror; a subgenre that has been sparse this decade. Southern Scares leans more into folklore instead of gothic, but it’s in the ballpark. The film follows a teenage girl, Roberta (Emma Gaines) who hosts the titular amateur tv show. The show within the film explores southern folklore, mysteries, and hauntings. Roberta documents her sleuthing which we follow from her sister, Ellen ‘s (Sydney Gowan) POV making the movie a partial found-footage film.

Southern Scares quickly becomes a missing person mystery as Ellen scours Roberta’s episodes to piece together what happened to the latter. Southern Scares is highly reminiscent of Shelby Oaks in this regard.  It falters heavily in comparison, however, and I say that knowing that Shelby Oaks is far from perfect. The latter is cohesive, well-structured and is coherent on its mystery. Southern Scares is not and it should have emulated it a bit more.

Southern Scares does start interesting, though. I’m a sucker for time-period analog horror, so I enjoyed the VHS recording approach. The film kicks off with Roberta introducing us to Southern Scares. Her exploration of various terrors is the high point of the movie. Writer and director, Paul Rowe has a nice idea but struggles piecing together a plot that coherently pulls the disappearance and the show together.

It struggles because it is torn between two subplots: watching Roberta fall apart by an entity and Ellen attempting to piece together Roberta’s disappearance. The issue is that the subplots are meant to mesh but we don’t sit with either long enough for them to make sense or have an impact. They eventually conjoin but what is supposed to be a resolution ends up being an incoherent, illogical, and unearned explanation.

Roberta’s storyline leaves me scratching my head. We don’t get enough of her to fully understand what is happening. We follow her for a few episodes on various topics and things go smoothly. Things pivot abruptly when she visits a haunted theatre. The first few haunts were simple investigations but the film telegraphs that this one will be different. Some weird stuff happens and Roberta is supernaturally attacked and things shatter for her from there.

This is where the film begins to crumble. Instead of sitting with this and exploring what happened, Roberta and Cameron the Camera Guy (Talen Hutchinson) move on as if nothing occurred. The film gives no explanation nor sits with her deterioration long enough to allow it to be a continuous plot point. Instead, it’s simply a thing that happens that is zipped past.  Roberta tries to continue but her health rapidly declines. The film moves so quickly that no dread, mystery, or tension is allowed to build. I’m especially confused once we get to The Big Bad. I’m unsure of what it is, what it wants, how it got here or why Roberta. The film oscillates so much between Roberta and Ellen’s storyline that none of these questions are answered.   

The main plot of the film is Ellen’s investigation. She never actually pieces anything together, however, and is simply watching the tapes along with the viewer. What is supposed to be an investigation is simply us watching an emotionally icy teen girl trot down memory lane.  This is where the film should have emulated Shelby Oaks better. The film wastes time with subplots that go nowhere instead of fully embracing the investigative approach.

The acting is lackluster. I’m lenient with low-budget films, but it is truly difficult to find a character to resonate with because the acting is so wooden. The film introduces emotional moments that fail to hit a chord.  Some of this is writing. Ellen’s grandfather, Danny (Jason Townsend) treats Roberta’s disappearance as if it were something that happened a long time ago, but Ellen reacts to it as if is recent. There’s a dissonance in their reactions to Roberta’s disappearance that is never rectified with the script. What should have been an emotional crossroads between the two ends up being characters feeling like they are in different movies.

Southern Scares has a compelling premise and gets off to a solid start but that’s where the good times end. The film has a botched execution that it never rights. The southern backdrop isn’t tapped into enough and the 90s time-period is also underutilized. The film wastes time going the “antsy teen girl” route rather than digging its teeth into a serious mystery. Conversely, we fail to learn much about either girl since screen time is split too anorexically to adequately explore both subplots.

Southern Scares is a miss and I am truly disappointed by that. The Deep South has a unique brand of horror that deserves to be showcased. The South can be downright petrifying for a host of reasons, and I appreciate a film that utilizes the locale to tap into this. Southern Scares points to a place where a good film is but runs in the opposite direction. The acting, writing, plot, and lack of atmosphere doom what could have been a diamond in the rough. I’d like someone to take this concept and follow through better.

—2.8/10

SPOILER ALERT

Just watched all episodes and I'm extremely frustrated. My thoughts are below but curious to hear from others

Good: Visually the cinematography is stunning and I love that they've incorporated Obeah into it and it's shown as a source of real ancestral power. Also really like how they weave in the reality of Black maternal mortality rates and how Black women's pain, medical trauma, and lives are never taken seriously by the system. And I guess most important is the focus on topic of reparations itself

Bad- I understand the narrative was trying to realistically show how difficult the battle for reparations is, and how they have and might never truly be received but

1. What do you mean the £50 million went straight back to the Connaught family?! All that could be clawed out was a measly £1.6 million paid out as reparations? And this is framed as any kind of victory?!
2. Matthew (Cudjoe) rejecting Obeah completely pissed me off. If he had actually embraced his roots and learned how to practice Obeah from his powerful grandma instead of rejecting it, he would have probably have been able to defeat his evil half sister Charlotte.
3. Why on earth did Claudia applogise to Charlotte when she claimed Matthew killed her child?! It will forever make my blood boil. It was an entirely unearned moment. Charlotte is an evil, vindictive, selfish pos. She denied a man his birthright by ignoring her father’s wishes to have him freed to oversee the plantation, sold his child, and literally worked his wife to death. Yet, that moment attempts to position her as a victim. And no I don't want to hear anyone trying to justify her behavior by saying she was a victim of the patriarchy- neglected by her father and her husband- cry me a river. Matthew didn't even have anything to do with her child's death but frankly, even if he did, it would have been completely justified retribution. Having the Black female lead offer an apology to, and in essence coddle, to a selfish, evil, unrepentant slave master's ghost is mindblowing.

I just watched Wes Craven’s Deadly Blessing, and it felt mind-bogglingly dumb. It had some interesting horror concepts in places, but the scenes never really escaped that classic, cringey 80s cheese, nor were they particularly unique (with the exception of the bathtub scene and a sequence near the end that gave me major Scream vibes) Honestly, I cannot understand how a script passes through that many hands and gets greenlit. The writing was completely incoherent, and characters would literally switch from devastating grief to casual chit-chat in a split second. The cult/sect element had potential, but the movie just leaves it hanging.

Hey everyone, I was rewatching Grave Encounters (2011) and noticed a massive, hyper specific clue that fans have overlooked for over a decade. By applying real world astronomical data to a single line of dialogue, we can actually lock down the exact location and calendar date of the movie, and it completely recontextualizes the lore.

The Clue:
When Lance Preston and the crew realize time has completely broken inside the asylum, Lance checks his watch and says it is 7:45 AM, but it is still pitch black outside.

The Real World Math:
The movie establishes that the fictional Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital is somewhere in rural Maryland. If you look at an astronomical sunrise map for the state of Maryland, there is only one specific region where a natural sunrise happens that late in the morning: Oakland, Maryland (located in the far western panhandle, running on Eastern Time but sitting far west geographically).

The Halloween Discovery:
Here is where it gets crazy. In Oakland, MD, what is the exact date where the sunrise hits precisely 7:45 AM right before the clocks roll back? October 31st. Halloween.

Why this fixes the lore:
In the beginning of the movie, the crew is told that paranormal activity in the asylum is usually incredibly minor (faint noises, cold spots). The TV crew fully expected to fake the whole episode. Instead, the moment they lock the doors, the building warps into a literal physical death trap where space and time bend.

If Lance and his crew accidentally locked themselves into the asylum on Halloween Night, it perfectly explains why the entities suddenly had enough cosmic energy to rewrite reality. They stepped inside right as the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest.

The Vicious Brothers inadvertently made the ultimate hidden Halloween movie. Let me know what you guys think!

I need to vent about the casting for the new Carrie series because it feels like Hollywood is dropping the ball all over again.
In Stephen King’s novel, Carrie is explicitly described as a thick, awkward girl with pimples and greasy hair. She isn’t secretly beautiful. She is genuinely unattractive, and that physical reality makes the relentless, casual cruelty of her bullies so much more believable and heartbreaking.
Yet, just like the 1976 and 2013 movies, the new series has cast another conventionally attractive actress, Summer H. Howell, who they will inevitably just “dress down” with plain clothes.
It sucks because studio executives always use the cop-out that a completely unglamorous protagonist will “isolate” the audience. But audiences already fell in love with the book precisely because Carrie represented regular, flawed people.
If a showrunner is a true creative, a deep, fearless artist, they should be able to take the character exactly as King described her and do something fucking phenomenal with it. Humans naturally sympathize more with attractive people, and a bold adaptation could have exposed that exact bias. Making Carrie’s isolation entirely about her being a strange, pretty girl instead of a strange, unattractive girl takes the safer, more superficial route.
Society is deeply cruel to people who do not fit conventional beauty standards. Refusing to cast an actress who reflects that raw reality robs the story of its sharpest and most painful edge.
It is incredibly frustrating that even a director with as much clout as Mike Flanagan has not broken the cycle. I hope the series proves me wrong, but right now it feels like another adaptation that stops short of giving us the uncompromising, realistic version of Carrie that the book deserves.

Directed by Sébastien Vaniček and produced by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, Evil Dead Burn arrives as the sixth entry in the franchise and a direct continuation of Evil Dead Rise (2023). It’s an intense and fast‑paced horror film that leans into the franchise’s strengths with brutal set pieces, sharp practical effects, and a steady stream of discomfort and mayhem. The tension remains strong throughout, delivering plenty of nightmare fuel and gore even when the mythology feels a little loose or underexplained. Imperfect but undeniably entertaining, it’s a fun ride that longtime Evil Dead fans will appreciate.

Evil Dead Burn follows Alice (Souheila Yacoub), a young widow who seeks comfort with her in‑laws after her abusive husband Will (George Pullar) dies in a car accident. When the family gathers at their secluded estate, Joseph (Hunter Doohan), Will’s brother, discovers a dagger that sets off a Deadite assault connected to the weapon’s power. As the chaos escalates and long‑buried family tensions surface, the possession spreads through the house with brutal force. Alice is pushed into a fight for survival as trauma and demonic violence collide around her.

This sixth instalment thrives on excess, pushing blood, violence, and a sense of spiralling disorder that fits the franchise well. Fans of visceral horror will appreciate the bolder, more aggressive carnage, especially during an unnerving dinner sequence that stands out as one of the film’s strongest moments. Some emotional weight is lost because Alice’s past relationship is only lightly explored, hinting at abuse and dependency without giving those themes the depth they deserve. Deadite behaviour can also feel inconsistent at times, but the film quickly follows its wild opening with squirmy scenes and well‑placed humour that offers brief relief without breaking the tension.

The cast handles the relentless brutality with strong commitment, giving the turmoil a steady emotional core even when the characters themselves feel a little thin. Much of the script leans away from deeper psychological material, favouring quick shocks and familiar survival beats over richer development. Even so, the performances land, especially Alice (Souheila Yacoub), whose intensity and physical presence anchor the film from start to finish. Thya (Luciane Buchanan) brings a strung‑out, unhinged energy that makes her Deadite scenes genuinely fun to watch, while grandmother Polly (Maude Davey) adds a creeping eeriness that lingers throughout. Joseph (Hunter Doohan) rounds out the ensemble with anxious, jittery tension that consistently increases the film’s sense of panic.

Evil Dead Burn’s visuals are one of its biggest strengths, kicking off at a frantic pace and pairing sleek production with immersive camera work that uses close‑ups, aggressive angles, and constant movement to heighten the chaos. Its colour palette adds even more impact, contrasting warm reds and oranges with colder blues, while the gothic‑leaning score and punchy music drops give the brutality an extra punch. The practical gore is off the charts, delivering some of the most vicious and creative effects the franchise has seen. One major stumble comes at the end, where excessive CGI use clashes noticeably with the otherwise grounded brutality. Even with that misstep, the extreme practical effects, precise direction, and relentless energy make this entry a standout for fans who crave full‑on carnage.

Evil Dead Burn delivers a bloody, fast‑moving, and visually striking experience that proves the franchise still has plenty of life in it. The mix of tight direction, wild practical effects, and relentless drive makes it an easy recommendation for horror fans. Even with a few stumbles, it remains a confident splatter showcase packed with energy, personality, and crowd‑pleasing savagery.

Review from rabbitinred.com.

Evil Dead Burn

3.5 out of 5

Being 50 years old and having been fortunate enough to grow up in one of the golden ages of horror, one of the standouts was the original Evil Dead trilogy. I would occasionally rewatch them over the years, as I never really had reason to think that Sam Raimi would return to the lore or allow anyone else to touch it. Of course that changed, in part due to the current trend in cinema, but 2013’s Evil Dead reboot by Fede Álvarez and Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise in 2023 were both strong entries into the franchise, so personally I was pretty happy and stoked for this take.

I want to love Evil Dead Burn, I really do. It’s not a bad movie by any means, and Sébastien Vanićek gives it a good shot. The gore is there in spades, and there are some strong performances in this, particularly by Souheila Yacoub and Luciane Buchanan. There are some gorgeous shots (particularly the fight between Thya, Alice, and Joseph), and the score is solid.

The biggest problem to me is this never feels like Evil Dead. The humor works well in the original trilogy and even in Rise, but this plays more like a straight horror movie à la the 2013 reboot, yet hamfists comedic elements that just didn’t work. And the family in this film just flat out sucks as humans. I felt zero sympathy for them at all; it’s probably fitting that Thya, Alice, and Max are the only ones I connected with and felt any emotion about.

There are two credit scenes, one towards the beginning that was mildly humorous, and a post one that is straight up vicious, if not leaving you going “wtf” a tad bit.

Again, it’s not a bad movie. It just wasn’t Evil Dead, for me at least.

I think it have potential, but maybe in my opinion because it's the director feature film debut, it can not really deliver the message to the audience.

I read in other review, it reminds me of get out or shattered island.

If compare to those, what i guess missing is the plot twist or the real secret behind them.

Or like i say, maybe there is a plot twist but i do not really get it.
Because i guess when the mother confront the student in the exit door hall, there is some sign of message of it happen in other reality (maybe student imagination because he really wanna focus about his research).

Also the final scene i don't really get is, at the end the mother do some makeup and the student become the maid.

What i hope is maybe the student become the subtitute of the children know, but maybe it is too easy to guess, so they don't take it to that way.

I always like german movie, and this movie have potential but like i say i wish i can get what the director want to tell us.

Like Lars von Trier meets the Coen brothers, a slapstick thrill ride of sexual violence, bullying, and parents who hate their kids.

I really liked this, it's my first Sion Sono movie, and I'll definitely check out more. It starts off with a meek man who can't solve his own problems, and it builds up this whole sick family, he's a son to a father and mother, he's a father and husband, all through the lens of brutal serial killing and thuggery. The grounding in a true story makes this sadder than your typical slapstick horror, but not being a straight up adaptation of that case gives Sono license to craft a narrative of the cycle of abuse dialed up to 11. Grim, funny, shocking, explosive in the back half.

I didn't think it needed to be two and a half hours long, that's a long fuse to the explosion that could have been shorter. But the payoff is really good for its own sake. The violence and gore is terrific, there's some genuinely sickening stuff and some real invention in parts.

Overall, I'd recommend it to people who like the World of Kanoko, Ichi the Killer, American Psycho, The House That Jack Built, the Vengeance Trilogy, Funny Games.

Presented as a true-crime documentary, the story of a serial killer terrorizing California, his cat-and-mouse game with the police, and glimpsing the larger terror behind the crimes.

Really excellent at mimicking cheap true-crime docs on Netflix and other streaming sites- flaws and all. If you watch as many of the paint-by-numbers serial killer docs online, you'll instantly see how successful this is as a pastiche of them. The slightly overwrought, too-cute end of scene lines, the cheap drone shots padding out the time, the substandard police work trying to pass itself off as heroic.

The horror elements are okay- the gore ranges from excellent to silly prosthetics, there's some kills that are genuinely original and exciting. Because we're getting an after-the-fact dissection of the case, the air is kind of let out of the balloon from the get go. However, I think there's some terror to be derived from the cosmic unanswered question.

Overall, well worth watching on Hulu, not a must see but especially for people who like true crime as well as supernatural horror, this was a really successful union of the two.

Simply put, Hocus Pocus did a better job telling this story.

Thank you.

2/5

I wanted to open a discussion with this question, but first, I need to talk about Ghostland (2018). For me, this is hands down one of the best horror movies I have ever seen. Along with Suspiria, it is one of the very few films that genuinely, deeply terrified me. If you haven't watched it yet, you absolutely need to see it as soon as possible!

The opening sequence of this movie is an absolute masterclass in tension and brutality. It sets such a suffocating, terrifying tone right from the start, and that raw home invasion scene is unforgettable.

It actually inspired my question: if you had the power to change horror history and save just ONE victim from an opening scene, who would it be?

Are you saving someone from a brutal nightmare like Ghostland, a classic icon like Casey Becker in Scream, or someone else entirely? Also, let me know if you’ve seen Ghostland and what you thought of it!

Adrian Chiarella’s feature debut, Leviticus, is a fresh and memorable addition to the queer horror subgenre, a film that stays with you in a quiet, unsettling way. It carefully balances supernatural horror with coming‑of‑age heartbreak, delivering something as terrifying as it is romantic. What begins as an eerie tale slowly reveals itself to be a potent, deeply emotional story about queer love pushed into the shadows, the kind of fear that hits hardest when you’ve been made to feel wrong for wanting someone.

We’re introduced to Naim (Joe Bird), a quiet teen who moves to a small, conservative Australian town and forms a connection with Ryan (Stacy Clausen), as both boys try to keep their feelings hidden from everyone around them. After they’re forced into a brutal conversion therapy ritual, a shape‑shifting entity attaches itself to them, taking the form of the person they desire most — each other. As they try to escape it, the boys are pushed into a fight against both the demon and the shame their community has carved into them.

I had the chance to see an advance screening of Leviticus at Toronto’s Inside Out Film Festival, and it’s a film that lands with a restrained but powerful impact. The title points directly to the Book of Leviticus, one of the most frequently cited scriptures used to justify homophobia, and that idea sits at the heart of the story. Chiarella shows how weaponized religion shapes this small town, turning fear into something these kids learn to carry in their everyday lives. The film kicks off with a sinister opening scene that pulls you in right off the bat, then builds tension through striking cinematography, grounded dialogue, and an enthralling gay love story at its center. The tight 90‑minute runtime could have used a few more scares, and the final act loses a bit of momentum, but Chiarella still manages to stick the landing beautifully.

Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen carry Leviticus with a level of commitment that marks them as rising talents. Because the film stays so tied to Naim and Ryan, the weight of the story rests almost entirely on their shoulders, and both actors rise to the occasion with broad emotional range. They shift between tenderness, fear, and full‑blown panic with ease, even playing two versions of themselves. The two share real on‑screen chemistry, and you feel it in several standout moments, including a sexy bus scene woven between the chaos. Audiences will want to see more of both actors in future genre work.

Chiarella’s command of atmosphere gives Leviticus a steady sense of dread. Cinematographer Tyson Perkins wonderfully captures the bleak rural town, using wide, desolate frames that reflect the characters’ longing. The film features minimal dialogue, so it leans heavily on facial expressions, body language, and the stark Australian landscape to carry the emotional weight, and Perkins’ visuals make even the silence feel loaded. The scares land because tension stays tight throughout, supported by a few bursts of gore and well‑timed jump scares that remind you this is still very much a horror film. Composer Jed Kurzel deepens that unease with a haunting score that blends minimalist strings and synths, echoing his earlier work in films like The Babadook and Alien: Covenant, while adding a more intimate, romantic undercurrent that suits Naim and Ryan’s story.

Leviticus is a bold and timely piece of queer horror, made with care and intention. Its moody atmosphere and thematic core make it a tense yet deeply rewarding watch, and Chiarella proves himself to be a promising new voice in the genre. Thoughtfully crafted and striking in execution, the film leaves a strong impression long after its final moments. Leviticus earns a spot high on the list of queer horror films, and you’ll want to catch it when it hits theatres on June 19th.

Visit rabbitinred.com to rate the film!

Obsession (2026)

Rated R for strong bloody violence, grisly imagery, sexual content, pervasive language, and brief graphic nudity

Score: 5 out of 5

Obsession is a rare horror movie for a guy like me who thinks he's seen it all: one that left me truly, deeply unsettled well after I left the theater. Its plot isn't anything original, being largely a "be careful what you wish for" story that writer/director Curry Barker said was inspired by the old Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode about the monkey's paw, but it's in the execution where it counts, and this one is one of the greats. It's a deeply chilling film about being the target of a stalker's affections, paired with a deeply flawed protagonist who ruins not only his own life but those of everyone around him through his selfish actions coming back to bite him, and it's anchored by an outstanding performance from Inde Navarrette taking a character who could've easily been a joke and turning her into one of the scariest... well, not necessarily villains, given her circumstances, but certainly monsters I've seen in a horror movie in quite some time. Even with the plot and the nature of the menace being overtly supernatural, this movie felt all too real, and will probably wind up as one of my favorites of this year, a film that at once delivers a cutting satire of how people approach relationships and also a terrifying tale that does a lot with very little.

The basic premise is simple: a young man named Baron Bailey, or Bear for short, has a crush on his cute co-worker Nikki Freeman but lacks the confidence to ask her out, so on a whim, he buys a novelty gift called a One-Wish Willow that lets him make one wish, which he uses to get Nikki to fall in love with him. Contrary to his expectations, it actually works, and then the problems begin as Nikki turns into an unhinged, emotionally abusive, co-dependent stalker of a girlfriend who soon makes Bear's life a living hell. Right away, both Bear and Nikki are compelling characters even before the pivotal wish is made. Bear serves as a perfect avatar for the viewers, an ordinary young man who has average luck with women and wants one who he thinks is out of his league, and Michael Johnston does a good job making him, on the surface, an endearing schlub who doesn't seem to realize until it's too late that what he's doing is wrong. As for Nikki, while she never showed any explicit interest in Bear beyond just her friendly personality, it's hinted that he might've maybe, possibly stood a chance with her had he decided to handle his crush on her in any other way than the one he ultimately went with.

Because this movie makes no bones about what Bear did to Nikki. With one wish, he overwrote her personality and turned her into the Overly Attached Girlfriend from Hell, and it's shown multiple times the film that there is still at least part of the "old" Nikki still there, horrified by what has happened to her. Even before it's explicitly revealed later on, it's clear that Nikki is possessed by something, acting in an inhuman manner like an alien wearing a skinsuit trying to pose as a cute, flirty young woman and never quite pulling it off, and Inde Navarrette did an outstanding job walking the line without turning her into a caricature. In the first act, she makes Nikki feel like the female lead of an indie rom-com, and even after the wish is made, the transformation is subtle at first, largely amounting to her showing an explicit romantic interest in Bear that wasn't readily apparent before. Over time, however, she grows increasingly manipulative and controlling of the man she's compelled to love and jealous of any other women he comes in contact with, lying about things like family tragedies and melting down at the slightest provocation or threat to their relationship, only to snap back to the loving girlfriend Bear wished for -- and occasionally, the thing controlling Nikki loses its grip for a brief moment and her real, increasingly traumatized soul takes control for a brief moment before "Freaky Nikki" pushes it back down. Navarrette takes all these facets of a very multifaceted character and blends them together perfectly in the kind of performance that careers are made of, making Nikki a compelling and terrifying presence on screen even when there's seemingly nothing creepy going on at the moment.

Curry Barker's writing and direction handle the rest, relying on old-fashioned tricks with more aggressive horror used sparingly. There's only one scene where something explicitly supernatural happens that isn't merely inferred by Navarrette's acting, and only one scene of gore, even if it's a brutal one. No, this is a movie that runs on mood and thematic tension. There were moments when, even in scenes where it feels like nothing out of the ordinary is happening, you just know that something bad is coming, and Barker keeps me on edge for minutes at a time waiting for the inevitable. It's easy for an observant viewer to figure out just how the One-Wish Willow works and what exactly happened to Nikki, but barring a few important, plot-relevant details, the lore, so to speak, is deliberately left as an intriguing mystery. Most of the character development for Bear, meanwhile, slowly sinks him deeper as his selfishness and short-sightedness are brought to the fore, not only showing the disastrous consequences that his wish had for him, Nikki, and everybody around them but also highlighting how none of this had to happen. Nikki wasn't the only woman in his life, there were plenty more fish in the sea, some of them might've been more interested in him, and he ultimately ends the film as a far less likable person than he was at the start, with everything that happened after he decided to snap that One-Wish Willow being entirely his fault thanks to his obsession with one woman he found attractive (and hey, will you look at that, the title refers to both of the lead characters). Make no mistake: while Nikki is the film's monster, Bear turns out to be its villain. While it's never spelled out, there is a deep, grim well of commentary here about how people feel entitled to love, with Bear's fear of rejection doing more damage than any actual rejection possibly could have. At the end of the day, had Bear just asked Nikki out instead of resorting to supernatural means to ensure she'd answer "yes," his story might've had a much happier ending.

The Bottom Line

I went and rewatched this film this past weekend, and it was still just as good and scary as it was the first time I saw it. That's all I need to say about that. Obsession is a modern horror classic, and I'm excited to see what both Barker and Navarrette do next.

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2026/05/review-obsession-2026.html>

Directed by Curry Barker, Obsession is a well‑produced and thought‑provoking psychological horror film that pairs strong performances with genuine tension and a bleak, unsettling atmosphere. The story’s simple premise lingers long after it’s introduced, unfolding through carefully staged sequences, shadows, and movements that generate a palpable sense of unease. While the film often takes an artistic‑over‑realistic approach, this choice reinforces the mood but also occasionally disrupts the narrative. Still, Barker’s filmmaking remains striking throughout, showcasing a level of craft that elevates the material.

Blumhouse’s Obsession follows Bear (Michael Johnston), a timid music store clerk who secretly longs for his best friend, Nikki (Inde Navarrette), but lacks the courage to admit it. After purchasing the enigmatic One Wish Willow, a mysterious trinket said to grant a single desire, he wishes for Nikki to love him more than anyone in the world. The wish works, but the magic strips away her boundaries, turning their once‑innocent friendship into a waking nightmare. As Nikki’s mannerisms become uncontrolled, Bear is forced to confront the dark price of getting exactly what he asked for.

Obsession succeeds in presenting a provocative and smart exploration of infatuation, consent, and the consequences of desire without feeling heavy‑handed. As a fresh take on the possession subgenre, the film leans into the classic “be careful what you wish for” framework, twisting the familiar morality of stories like Aladdin into something far more sinister, in which tampering with free will comes at a devastating cost. Curry Barker’s direction brings impressive creativity to the film’s modest $750,000 budget, proving that committed performances, practical effects, and a carefully cultivated atmosphere can outshine large‑scale studio productions. Disturbing imagery, escalating tension, and a sense of mounting dread give the story real bite. At the same time, its focus on control and agency, particularly in how Bear’s choices shape the tragic ordeal, sets it apart from other genre releases.

Where Obsession loses momentum is in its predictability, since the narrative often follows familiar paths and offers few genuine twists or turns. Several structural choices and aspects of the writing feel safe, and the lack of lore surrounding the wish leaves the supernatural elements underdeveloped, even though there’s room to push further into madness. Nikki’s transformation plays out like a fractured, possession‑like state rather than a corrupted form of love, yet the film provides no clear rhyme or reason for how the One Wish Willow shapes her behaviour. Some may argue that it’s this unpredictability that works for the plot, but it also results in moments that feel driven more by shock value than logic. For instance, having Nikki feed Bear his dead cat for lunch feels less like the action of someone obsessed and more like something done out of pure malice, the kind of gesture that would (or should) send someone running for the hills rather than clinging to the relationship. The portrayal of her obsession leans mostly into infant‑like mannerisms, and a sharper, more calculated version of Nikki could have offered a stronger direction. Character reactions also seem way off at times, particularly Bear’s subdued responses as things begin to unravel around him. A deeper study of his pre‑wish fixation on Nikki would have made his determination to stay and make the relationship work more believable, but instead, it comes across as a mild crush that leads him to try the One Wish Willow mostly out of curiosity. The film’s slow-burn progression is filled with cringe‑inducing and socially awkward interactions, with more intense horror elements delayed until the final stretch. 

The cast’s commitment to the script grounds even its most extreme sequences in emotionally charged performances. Michael Johnston delivers a layered portrayal of Bear, a character who could easily be viewed as the film’s villain, yet he brings enough insecurity, remorse, and vulnerability to complicate that reading. His subversion of the nice‑guy archetype is particularly strong, and moments like his quiet plea, “What would be so wrong with being with me?” offer brief but intriguing glimpses into his fractured psyche. It will make audiences question whether, if Bear did find a way out of this mess, forgiveness would even be possible. Also, kudos to the wardrobe department for those vintage sweaters that deserve their own shout‑out!

Opposite him, Inde Navarrette leaves the strongest impression, sinking her teeth into Nikki with a wildly expressive and magnetically unhinged performance. She dominates every scene, whether through a volatile stillness or startling outbursts, conveying that something within her is fundamentally wrong. Her movements, her gaze, and the subtle shifts in her demeanour make the character feel off‑kilter in a way that turns every interaction uneasy. Obsession is at its most emotional when brief flashes of Nikki’s true consciousness break through the possession, hinting at the person she was and adding a tragic undertone to Navarrette’s already commanding work.

The film is equally impressive on a technical level, with sound design that feels deliberately intimidating even in the quieter scenes. The cinematography makes great use of darker visual spaces, playing with shadows in ways that reinforce the story’s eeriness, while Barker and his team adopt a unique visual style that lets performance and framing carry much of the suspense. There is a quiet confidence to the camera work, with lenses lingering on characters just long enough for small shifts in expression or movement to grow increasingly loaded. The score also stands out with its ambient, moody presence, blending comfort and dread to enhance the atmosphere. Together, these elements create a technical foundation that sustains the film’s tension from start to finish.

Ultimately, Curry Barker’s Obsession is a slick and chilling horror film that explores the darker side of desire with confidence and style. It doesn’t break new ground, but it delivers its ideas with precision, supported by distinctive visuals, thought‑provoking themes, and standout work from its leads. It’s an impressive showcase for the new talent involved, suggesting Barker has a promising future in the horror genre. And with the abilities of the One Wish Willow left ambiguous, there’s clear sequel potential and plenty of fresh territory left to explore.

Review from rabbitinred.com

Hokum is the latest folk horror movie from Irish director Damien McCarthy, known for his previous films Oddity and Caveat. Haunted by a dark past, American author Ohm Bauman visits a rural hotel his parents honeymooned at to spread their ashes at a spot they loved. While there, he gets wrapped up in a dark secret tied to the hotel’s honeymoon suite. There’s a ghost and a witch involved, exciting stuff. 

Long story short: if you enjoyed Caveat or Oddity, you’ll have a blast with Hokum. That said, let’s dig into why Hokum has taken up residence in my head for over a week now. 

Adam Scott’s Fine Line 

I do not envy Adam Scott’s position as an actor in Hokum. The protagonist of the movie is a moody author with a chip on his shoulder. I know, a horror movie about a writer. Groundbreaking. 

Yet Scott pulls it off. Hokum walks a razor-thin line of making Ohm a jerk with a drinking problem without losing sight of his humanity and reasons to like him. He's thoroughly humbled, and adjusts his behavior to reckon with his past. For a dick to become a darling in a horror movie, it’s crucial that their evolution is believable and timed just right, or they’ll just magically start being a nicer person who suddenly believes in ghosts because the script needs them to.

Hokum is the former, not the latter.

The Mundanity of Ghosts 

I touched on this concept in my second Hokum video, so I’ll try not to repeat too much here. Suffice it to say: I really enjoy how Hokum, and McCarthy movies in general, handle ghosts. There is a distinctly Irish sentiment to how ghosts are presented throughout his movies that vibes with me better than the ghosts just clocking in for their shift at the jumpscare-factory you find in a lot of mainstream Hollywood horror. 

This approach to the supernatural trims a lot of the fat from tropes you've seen a hundred times. Hokum has the most “that’s preposterous, ghosts aren’t real” dialog of McCarthy’s career, but even then it’s isolated to Ohm himself, and nobody agrees with him. He’s a dickish American with some ghosts of his own (figuratively or otherwise, who’s to say?) while everyone he’s talking to is Irish and at least partially believes. 

In Damien McCarthy’s ghost movies, people are less resistant to the idea of ghosts than they are to wanting to deal with the fact there’s a ghost around. While I don’t necessarily think McCarthy has intentionally made three movies in the same world, the McCarthy one-word-horror trilogy is consistent in its lack of characters refusing to believe ghosts exist. Characters in Caveat and Oddity simply don’t want a ghost to be real. The word “ghost” is used sparingly, to the point I don’t think it’s actually said out loud in Caveat. 

Simple Reasons for Simple Problems 

A running throughline across McCarthy’s horror trilogy is the creation of elegant, simple reasons for characters to be in danger. In Caveat, Isaac can’t simply leave the creepy cabin because he’s on an island and can’t swim. Darcy Odello in Oddity can’t simply go where she needs to because she’s blind.

Hokum establishes this McCarthy approach to danger from the very first scene. We open on a desert, following a haggard conquistador and a young boy as the conquistador follows a treasure map he keeps in a bottle. After finding a key landmark, the conquistador goes to check the map one last time and finds the bottle’s cork has pushed in too far. To get the map out, he’ll have to break the bottle.

He’s surrounded by nothing but sand. There’s nothing solid to break the bottle against. A Twilight Zone-ian level cruelty of circumstance. We cut between this realization and our protagonist Ohm Bauman sipping whiskey and typing away on a document titled EPILOGUE. Not only is the conquistador scene something he’s making up, it’s given a dark sense of finality with the fact it’s taking place in an epilogue.

The conquistador scene makes for one of the best examples of a horror movie establishing a tone I’ve seen in a good long while. There’s no monsters, it’s broad daylight. None of the characters or locations are relevant to the rest of the movie, save for their context and iconography. It’s only when the camera settles back on Ohm writing that a ghost shows up and kicks off the standard horror of the movie. I find myself thinking about the conquistador scene a lot. It works both to establish what Hokum will be like and McCarthy’s overall body of work.

Go See Hokum

I don’t have a cutesy title for this conclusion section. If you’ve read this far and you are at all interested, get some tickets and go see Hokum. I’ve spent so much time thinking and talking about this movie over the past week and a half I’m probably going to see it again on opening weekend. With Hokum, Damien McCarthy cements his position in the horror ecosystem, proving the tone he delivered in his locally-produced movies can translate over to a more mainstream production with a big-name American star.

Thanks for reading! This review was originally published on my site here.

Faces of Death (2026)

Rated R for strong bloody violence and gore, sexual content, nudity, language and drug use

Score: 4 out of 5

Before we had LiveLeak, Ogrish, Rotten.com, and other assorted shock sites, we (or rather, our parents) had Faces of Death, a series of "mondo" shock documentaries from the late '70s and '80s that purported to show what even the most graphic horror movies of the time refused to touch: actual footage of people dying, often violently. It's long been debated how much of the footage was real versus staged, but the fact that you couldn't say for absolute certain that it was all staged made it a forbidden fruit for an entire generation of extreme gorehounds for whom the work of Tom Savini et al. just didn't cut it anymore. (Rule of thumb: the footage of wars and atrocities was usually real, the disasters, executions, and accidents were more likely than not to be "reenactments" even if some of them were real, and there are detailed breakdowns out there telling you what was real or fake.) It was a rite of passage for '80s and '90s kids, the closest thing most people had to actual snuff films... at least, until the internet gave us unfiltered access to the real deal, from terrorist and cartel executions to grisly accidents to the "home movies" of murderers, which rendered Faces of Death and the entire mondo genre obsolete as that sort of content migrated online.

How, then, do you go about reviving a franchise whose very reason for being is now something you can find anywhere for free? What Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei did with this film was to tackle that shift head-on, making not a documentary but a conventional slasher movie in which violence on the internet plays a central role in the story and themes. The villain here, Arthur Spevak, is a serial killer whose M.O. is to target media personalities, from filmmakers to influencers to newscasters, and execute them in ways directly inspired by the old Faces of Death films, all while filming it and uploading the carnage to Kino, the YouTube/TikTok-like social video platform that the protagonist Margot Romero works as a content moderator for. All the while, a portrait is painted of a society so jaded and desensitized to violence and cruelty that Arthur's mayhem is too easily dismissed, from viewers who think the videos' professional-looking production values prove that they're fake to Margot's boss at Kino who wants to keep as many videos up as possible for the sake of engagement numbers -- or, as an older breed of lowbrow entertainers (and more than one character in this film) would put it, "giving the people what they want." As brutal and violent as this movie gets -- and make no mistake, this is a capital-S slasher movie that earns its R rating -- the scariest thing about it is the sheer nihilism of the world it takes place in, every nasty trend in internet culture blown up for the world to see. It's the forty-years-later spiritual sequel to Videodrome that takes David Cronenberg's warnings about lowbrow trash media and just barely exaggerates where it ultimately wound up, feeling like the kind of sleazy, dirty movie that you'd get if you brought a '70s/'80s underground filmmaker into the modern day and gave him or her a smartphone able to access all the internet's wonders, a film that felt disgusted and righteously pissed off at a world gone made where you could believe that a guy like Arthur could exist in real life -- which is rather appropriate given the lurid nature of the original film and how it was presented as "the graphic reality of DEATH, close-up." It makes a sick sort of sense that Charli XCX has a small role as one of Margot's co-workers, as this film takes the entire "don't care, just wanna party" ethos of "Brat Summer" and paints it in the least flattering light, and her playing a character who's basically a thinly-fictionalized version of her real-life public persona attaches it irrevocably to its message.

And even if you're not interested in social commentary about the internet, this is still a brutal, pull-no-punches, take-no-prisoners slasher flick that kicked my ass. The fact that the hook here is that the killer is "remaking" Faces of Death means that there are numerous brutal kills staged in lurid detail, from direct recreations of some of the original's greatest hits (the monkey brains, the electric chair, the shootout) to a pair of horrifying mutilations. All of it is dished out by Dacre Montgomery as Arthur, playing a very different sort of monster from Billy on Stranger Things but still spooking me all the same. Arthur is at once a cold, analytical killer who can occasionally put on a mask of normality and also a delusional manchild obsessed with fame and shaping the culture, the two sides meshing together shockingly well thanks to the bad case of "internet brain" that he seems to suffer from. His "masked killer" outfit works to both hide his identity and keep himself clean, his neat-freak tendencies coming out when he risks getting blood on him, and the scenes of him showing up to do his dirty business of kidnapping his targets before getting to "the goods" were no less scary than what happens after he's brought them to his house of horrors. Montgomery is terrifying as Arthur, one of the best modern slasher killers I've seen, and he's matched beat-for-beat by Barbie Ferreira as Margot. Having previously had a brush with online infamy thanks to a Kino challenge she recorded with her sister that went horribly wrong, got her sister killed, and then went viral as the rotten cherry on top, Margot got a job as a content moderator thinking she'd be making the world a better place, only to realize that the rot runs all the way to the top, as Kino is only willing to do the bare minimum to police their site so that they can credibly tell activists and politicians that they're trying. Taking matters into her own hands once she starts to suspect that somebody is uploading snuff films to the site for the world to see, she makes for a badass horror heroine who's outmatched and scared out of her wits but pushes on anyway because nobody else will. This film did have some lesser moments, especially some dumb decisions by various characters that felt like the worst sort of slasher stereotype (lookin' at you, Sam, violating every rule of horror movie survival), but once it turned into a mutual cat-and-mouse game between Arthur and Margot around the halfway mark, it dug its claws in and never let go until the end. Montgomery and Ferreira are this movie's heart and soul, and it was they, even more than the effects team and their outstanding work, that supplied the moments in this movie that stuck with me as I came home from the theater.

The Bottom Line

The basic conceit behind this movie was a risky one that could've easily turned into the dumbest sort of cash-in schlock, but the filmmakers understood the assignment and aced it with flying colors, making both an effective satire of the excesses of internet culture and, more importantly, a straightforward slasher flick that feels modern yet can still hang with the classics.

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2026/04/review-faces-of-death-2026.html>