Happy holidays!
Silent Night, Deadly Night, 2025 (**)
The protagonist's inner voice narrating throughout is annoying beyond belief, destroying all tension and thus rendering an otherwise decently produced horror remake almost unwatchable. The brilliant original is very much still top of the Christmas tree.
Frankenstein, 2025 (**)
Its cinematography is often beautiful and Jacob Elordi is absolutely fantastic as the monster. That's the good because the film, like so many iterations of the classic original novel by Mary Shelley (or Percy? I'm not so sure), plays fast and loose with critical elements of the story and with barely any meaningful character development.
My Daughter Is A Zombie, 2025 (*****)
Heart unexpectedly, and absolutely, stolen by this beautifully moving (and funny) film from Korea. Choi Yoo-Ri as the young zombie daughter in question, refreshingly not played by an actor in their 30s, is performance of the year! Highly recommended.
Bone Lake, 2025 (**)
After an explosive prologue this indie horror turns unforgivably coy thus over-promising and under-delivering in what could have been a minor classic.
Keeper, 2025 (*)
The utterly obnoxious Liz and her phenomenally boring boyfriend Malcolm can't meet a grisly fate soon enough in this amateurish Hollywood nepo baby extravaganza, unfortunately film meanders incoherently from scene to scene with absolutely no resolution or enjoyment to be had.
Dollhouse, 2025 (***)
This creepy doll psychological horror from Japan is superb for its initial hour or so before completely pointlessly introducing new characters and plot devices thus spoiling its hitherto perfectly nuanced tone. Well worth seeing nonetheless!
The Jester, 2023 (*)
Decent villain on paper but the execution is unfortunately just too poor to make it enjoyable on any level.
The Jester 2, 2025 (*)
The teen magician returns and once again disappointingly falls flat as, like the original, it feels like there's some unrealised Terrifier-like potential here.
Landmine Goes Click, 2015 (***)
Despite its tiny budget and overall amateurishness the movie's dark narrative and often unexpected turns draw you in all the way to an incredibly bleak lingering conclusion.
Shelby Oaks, 2025 (*)
An absolutely shambolic hotch-potch of genres incoherently stitched together proving that not everyone can be a movie director.
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