So you like dinosaur movies but you’re a bit disillusioned by the creative ennui of the Jurassic World series and you’d rather go extinct than watch one of the endless stream of straight to streaming/DVD rip-offs with titles like Jurassic Games, Jurassic Planet and Jurassic Hunt (Steady – Ed)? We feel your pain.
But brave heart – David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street is here to restore your faith in cinematic creature features. While it’s undoubtedly big and barmy (and quite bonkers), it’s also gloriously entertaining and quite possibly the best dinosaur delight since 1993’s Jurassic Park itself. Seriously.
It’s 1982 and the Platt family live in one of those wholesome, always sunny neighbourhoods so beloved of 1980s Spielberg and, more recently, Stranger Things (although here we’re not exactly in Hawkins, more like Roar-kins…sorry). All is not well with this nuclear unit though: mum Denise (Anne Hathaway) is frustrated and unfulfilled and has secretly written a work of fiction that reflects her own disillusionment; dad Greg (Ewan McGregor) is feckless and directionless and has had to resort to bit-money jobs to help support the family; and their two teen kids Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery) are dealing with their own adolescence woes and are worried that their parents are heading for divorce.
But all their familial concerns are set aside when, after a couple of nights of strange lights illuminating the sky, the family discover that the whole neighbourhood has somehow been transported back in time and found itself deposited in the middle of a primeval jungle. Inevitably, vicious prehistoric predators are now on the loose, and as locals and neighbours succumb to the jaws of the most dangerous creatures to ever walk the Earth, the family have to work together to stay alive.
The End of Oak Street is an absolute blast, because that’s all it was ever intended to be. Dinosaurs in suburbia is an irresistible premise and the film does a lot with it. After a slow-burn first half-hour that sets up our characters and their dynamic, we’re pitched into a non-stop, breathless adventure romp that is intentionally Spielbergian but without the sickly saccharine that has so often bedevilled even his best-loved movies.
This is full of genuine peril, real surprises, and a few laughs, and the dinosaur violence is nasty and brutal and surprisingly graphic. There are a handful of edge-of-the-seat set pieces involving prehistoric alligators, pterodactyls, raptor-type things, and, of course, yer actual T Rex – the dinosaurs are all, incidentally, anatomically correct with fur and feathers.
Hathaway leads the charge as the resourceful Denise, and while McGregor’s Greg, dodgy American accent and all, occasionally appears weak-willed and inferior to his more dynamic wife, he steps up to the plate when he has to and does his best to protect his brood. There are a couple of missteps – Brian’s gang of friends are never seen again after a sequence that establishes their existence, a bullying storyline involving Brian goes nowhere, and the explanation for the phenomenon that has taken Oak Street and its environs back in time is a bit “will this do?” although it’s clearly open-ended and ambiguous enough to allow for a sequel.
But ultimately, this is just great madcap fun as a one-and-done end-of-summer-season mid-level blockbuster that does everything and more promised by its tantalising trailers. It is, dare we suggest, monstrously good.
Since becoming a worldwide sensation with his Human Centipede films, director Tom Six has revelled in his role as provocateur and cause célèbre. When his follow-up to his Centipede series, The Onania Club, couldn’t find a distributor courageous enough to release it – despite high praise from those who’d seen it (us included) – Six seemingly disappeared from public view. It turns out he’d been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and has been battling the symptoms for six years.
Which brings us to this self-released documentary, which sees the artist bow out of public life with a characteristic F-U to his haters and giving his fans one last chance to revel in his own particular brand of satire.
It’s filmed as an oral retrospective of his own career, with Six chain-smoking hand-rolled Cuban cigars (“Like an angel pissing in your mouth”) while recounting his thoughts and achievements. Tom himself plays the doc’s director, barking orders, keeping things moving, and adding extra commentary (“Success is a snooze-fest for a documentary!”).
His wife Marci (Maartje Willems) acts as the acid-mouthed producer; the camera and sound are played by ‘dwarfs’; the editor is a child (Oliver Julius Willems); the assistant director (Damian Kurosa) is heavily tattooed, speaking through an electronic voice box; and there’s a constant – literal – Censor Nazi (Servaes Nelissen). The latter interjects with trigger warnings and protestations on the content. Offence is the name of the game, and it’s never been done in such an entertaining way.
When explaining his physical condition, Six gets serious. The description of what he’s going through cuts like a knife. Even then, though, he has a brilliant way with words. When revealing his passion for movies still remains, and he spends his time watching sleazy thrillers from the forties and fifties – “When the cameraman didn’t have Parkinson’s and the editors didn’t have epilepsy”.
If this is how Tom Six bows out of the movie world, it’s a fitting and poignant way to go: in his own terms and done in the worst possible taste. Release The Onania Club!
THE END OF TOM SIX is available on YouTube with a pay-what-you-want model (check out the hilarious levels!) and on signed DVD from theendoftomsix.com
Julia (Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott) is trying to get her life back after surviving an attack from her former lover, Henry Decker (Peter Woodward), who turned out to be a serial killer who dabbled in black magic. She’s approached by Mike (Gary Webster), the pompous host of TV show Spectre Investigates. He offers a large amount of money to return to her former home and test for any psychic energy. She reluctantly agrees but once in the house, things begin to get strained. Resident psychic Neal (Tony Sands, whose hat should receive a credit of its own) reveals the Harbinger – the centrepiece of Decker’s collection. It’s a fortune-telling machine with an automaton figure, similar to those found at fairgrounds, only this one has a more sinister appearance and – unbeknownst to the team – is possessed by the spirit of Decker.
Director James Crow (Curse of the Witching Tree) makes the most of the low-budget thrills here, particularly with the film’s main location, a rather impressive mansion. It gives the set pieces some gravitas and elevates the production values. The Harbinger design is straight out of Doctor Who, which is by no means a negative point! (Who fans will be happy to see the first companion, Carol Ann Ford, in a small role here.) It’s genuinely creepy, if a little clichéd.
The script – by Harry Boxley and Simon Cluett – is packed with the kind of dialogue you only hear in the movies, delivered by a variable cast, but it’s the horror that fans will be here for. These moments are handled really well, from shots bathed in red light to a kill that goes further than you’d expect.
Harbinger is a fun indie flick, which you’ll enjoy if you go in with the right mind-set.
HARBINGER is on UK digital August 10th and US digital August 11th from Miracle Media.
The deterioration of the Marvel Cinematic Universe evokes the process of what comic collectors call ‘Marvel chipping’. The term refers to a defect specific to Marvel comics printed during the Silver Age, a frayed, chipped right-hand edge courtesy of the era’s printing presses. While not the tidiest description of the MCU’s degradation, the comparison illuminates the special manner in which its stories have depreciated, accounting for the shoddy construction, the disintegrating integrity, the assembly-line-esque sameness that cheapen these stories and their novelty.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is both condemnation and confirmation of this decline. Director Destin Daniel Cretton, whose MCU credits include Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Disney+’s fabulous Wonder Man series, somehow feels both free of and chained to the corporate trappings of the Marvel Machine. Two of the movie’s selling points – the respective returns of Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk and Jon Bernthal’s Punisher – are more a by-product of insistent branding than narrative necessity, though Bernthal’s onscreen rapport with Holland injects colour and levity into this otherwise drab entry.
Its plot, however busy it gets, bursts with potential. Brand New Day pits Spider-Man against his most insidious foe yet: loneliness. As he lugs himself from fight to fight, tit to tat, he mourns the life he forfeited to keep his friends safe. He grieves the fact that he’s not at MIT, experiencing college with ex-girlfriend MJ (Zendaya, as grounded, sweet, and relatable as ever) and best friend Ned (the eternally goofy Jacob Batalon), and that even if he did, they wouldn’t know him. To make life even more stressful, his spider-powers have begun to evolve beyond his control, just as a terrifying new threat emerges.
Like so many MCU films before it, Brand New Day runs too long, takes too few risks, and feels too beholden to fan service to stand out as a moviegoing experience, but it isn’t without its charms. Cretton captures the grand and the quotidian, framing Spidey’s crusade as everyday charity rather than some noble, hero-specific calling and reminding us why the character resonates. Peter Parker is remarkable, yes, but he’s also just a guy.
Tom Holland understands this, and it shows. The guy drips with a charisma that only accompanies unfailing, uncompromising, reckless goodness, the kind of everyday purity that magnetises anyone nurturing this quality. Zendaya mirrors this intrinsic gentleness, bringing to MJ an authenticity that makes her every bit as lovable as Holland is as Peter.
The villains aren’t nearly as fun or compelling. Tramell Tillman’s Bill Metzger commands every moment he graces, but the script can’t keep up with him. Michael Mando, reprising his role as Mac Gargan/Scorpion, only resurfaces to set up a bigger threat, further crowding a story that already feels too cluttered, too busy.
Ruffalo’s Hulk proves similarly superfluous, showing up only so he can dispense advice, set up a lame Avengers joke, and position Spidey and the Punisher for a team-up. The ensuing fight – a three-way brawl in and around the Department for Damage Control headquarters – never transcends its purpose, which of course involves shoving its MCU-ness down our throats.
Brand New Day may be a marvellous showcase for Holland, Batalon, and Zendaya, but for most of the cast, it’s treated as little more than a contract stipulation, an obligatory pop-in that simply checks a box. Cretton pulls off a handful of inventive action sequences, and the script presents a more mature and self-actualised Spidey, but it isn’t quite enough to save the final product. Here’s hoping Peter Parker’s next adventure packs more of a punch.
One of the most accomplished special effects makeup artists, Steve Johnson, doesn’t get the credit he deserves, but this documentary, while being brutally honest, highlights his superb work.
Director Nick Taylor begins his doc with Johnson feeling quite bitter about the way the film world doesn’t utilise practical effects as much as they used to. A promised job with Fright Night director Tom Holland has fallen through. He’s had many more highs, though – quite literally too.
Johnson chronologically recounts his entry into the makeup business, from his passion at an early age to working with Rob Bottin and Rick Baker on the classics The Howling and An American Werewolf in London, respectively. This led to him getting the jobs on Fright Night and Ghostbusters.
One particularly interesting section involves his work on Predator. It’s not the version that eventually hit the screen, but he’s engrossing when telling the story of his tribulations.
The downside of his life isn’t shied away from. The drugs, the annoyances (although times like clashing with James Cameron on The Abyss work out well in the end), and the bad business decisions are all fascinating and told in a very personable manner, albeit with an air of resignation.
Taylor puts together the numerous interviews with Johnson and those involved with his various ventures so that his story moves along at great pace. The tragedy of his career slump – caused by the onset of CGI and his ballooning drug problem – isn’t presented in a self-pitying way, but could be seen as a cautionary tale.
Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson is a love letter to practical special effect makeup artistry as well as Johnson’s life itself and carries with it a wicked sense of humour, just like the subject.
RUBBERHEAD: THE LIFE & MONSTERS OF STEVE JOHNSON screened at Fantasia International Film Festival and will be at Tubi FrightFest on August 28th and August 30th.
After a tortuous renewal process, the truncated finale of Heartstopper has finally landed on Netflix. Now a film, and titled Heartstopper Forever, presumably to try to differentiate it from the preceding three full television seasons, this made-for-tv movie attempts to adapt creator Alice Oseman’s final volume of their graphic novel into a running time of just under two hours. Given that the primary source material – Volume Six of the graphic novels – runs to some 438 pages, this is quite an ask.
Both Nick (Kit Connor: The Wild Robot; Slaughterhouse Rulez) and Charlie (Joe Locke: Marvel’s Agatha All Along; Kevin) are growing up fast, and thoughts are inevitably turning to their futures – as individuals, and as one half of a couple. Nick’s stressing about university choices, and has no idea what he wants to do with his life. Charlie is stressing about his relationship with Nick, and what “long distance” (in UK terms), might mean for them. And that’s where we left our characters at the end of season three: facing the prospect of Nick going to university in Leeds, a solid five hours away from the fictional Kent town of Truham where Charlie will still be for his final year of school.That sense of time moving quickly is present within the film, and the episodic nature of Oseman’s original comic becomes apparent. We quickly jump through the seasons, with small moments given prominence where they relate to the over-arcing story.
Nima Taleghani as Mr Farouk (C), with Alan Turkington as Mr Lange (R)
We open back at Truham School, in the autumn term, with Charlie one of the four candidates for Head Boy. It’s plain that Nick and Charlie’s friends group has become a strong support system, with Isaac Henderson (Toby Donovan) and Tao Xu (William Gao) in particular acting as Charlie’s cheer squad. After Charlie’s inevitable victory, we quickly jump to ‘Winter’ as Nick continues to fall apart emotionally. A weekend of self-destructive behaviour reaches its inevitable, and inevitably messy conclusion, with Nick in the local Accident & Emergency department.
From here, Nick bucks himself up through the medium of volunteering at a local dog shelter, and, eventually, after some cheerleading by their friends, they sit and talk about their futures, and how their relationship is actually going to work when they’re at university.
Charlie and Nick (Joe Locke (L) and Kit Connor (R))
Whilst Nick and Charlie have been riding their emotional rollercoaster, they’ve also been having sex that’s rather more grown up than we’ve seen before. It’s worth remembering that these are teenagers, and that they are, canonically, very horny for each other. It’s not a surprise that the sex scenes have become more involved. Camera angles have still been carefully considered, and you don’t see anything more than either Locke or Connor without their t-shirt on, but the work of Intimacy Co-Ordinator Robbie Taylor-Hunt (Lesbian Space Crime; Count Dykula; Red, White & Royal Blue) has heightened the emotional intensity of these scenes beyond anything we saw in season three.
The supporting characters are facing their own futures, and Oseman, together with show runner Pat Walters (Sweetpea; The Essex Serpent) have had a lot of ongoing character arcs to try to wrap up neatly. Because this is known to be the finale, there’s also a lot of call-backs to previous moments, and on more than one occasion, flashbacks to scenes from the previous seasons, especially season one.
In ‘Spring’ we start to see slightly more of the other characters, but the scenes move rapidly, and if you haven’t either seen the previous television series, or read the comics and the in-universe novellas, this is all going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to fully follow and understand.
We get snippets of possible futures for Isaac, Tao, Tara (Corinna Brown), Darcy (Kizzy Edgell), and Sahar (Leila Khan), whilst Tori (Jenny Walser) and Michael (Darragh Hand) pass on some life-advice to Charlie, as Tori also delivers an ‘Asexuality and Queer Platonic Relationships 101’ to both Charlie and the audience.
Joe Locke (L) and Jenny Walser (R) as Charlie Spring and Tori Spring
Indeed, it’s hard at times to avoid the ‘very special episode’ nature of some of the scenes. Locke has an important moment with Connor, as Charlie tries to get Nick to open up about what it is that’s bothering him. And Yasmin Finney as Elle Argent has a genuinely important speech about the importance of Pride, and how government actions are making life more dangerous and difficult for her, and every other trans person. That speech is framed in a UK context, but it’s all too easy to see how that relates to current government actions in the US too.
The fact that the graphic novel includes an epilogue, and that the source material for this film also includes the novella Nick & Charlie, means that there were always going to be problems with the adaptation – especially because Oseman wrote the novella so long ago that the characters, and their story, have changed significantly since then. This has led to an attempted ‘fix’ for the novella in the comics, and here the film chooses a third path to try to resolve that particular plot strand.
Overall, it’s a spirited attempt at adaptation, although given the starting point for this story, and the overall focus of Oseman’s webcomic original, we do spend most of our time following Nick and Charlie through their fast-flowing year. It tends to leave the whole thing feeling dis-jointed at times, as if there are events which must be happening off-screen and which could have been included in a full television season, which have had to be deleted due to time constraints. There is, at times, a strong feeling that there must be things we’ve missed.
There’s been criticism in the past that there’s very little jeopardy in Heartstopper. Whilst that may seem true from the point of view of older members of the audience, it has to be remembered that the intended audience for Heartstopper is teenagers. We can all surely recall those final years at school, when we were trying to figure out who we wanted to be, what our next steps after GCSEs or A Levels should be, and what our friends would be doing. Those last months of Sixth Form / Year 13 feel like the end of an era. Friends will go to different universities, all over the country. Some will stay in whatever town or city you grew up in. Friendship groups will fracture, and you may rarely, if ever, see again some of the people who have until now been your closest and deepest friends for most of your life. In that context, these characters are dealing with a lot, and Oseman and director Wash Westmoreland (Colette) have managed to strongly present the fear and anxiety which form a backdrop to this period of life.
We end, of course, on a joyful note – that is the point of Heartstopper, and of Oseman’s story here. And so we leave Nick, Charlie and their friends. We’ve seen the choices they make, and we’ve had a glimpse of their futures. As an audience, we get to experience some queer joy, which is still an all too rare occurrence in screen media. We’ve also managed to complete a story – in an era when Netflix is all too keen to cancel shows featuring queer characters, this is a rarity, even if there’s an awareness amongst the followers of Oseman’s Patreon that this was supposed to be a fourth and final television season.
As the curtain falls on the teenagers of Truham, it’s appropriate to consider the legacy of Heartstopper as a screen text. The first season surpassed even the wildest expectations of producers See-Saw (The King’s Speech, Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth), and distributors Netflix. Viewing figures were reported to be in the tens of millions, and the show has been a regular feature of Netflix’s “Top Ten Most Watched” as each season has been released.
The show has also propelled its (mostly) teenage cast into a level of stardom that they’ve all stated none of them imagined.
Kit Connor, who already had a strong pedigree as a child actor prior to season one, has successfully transitioned to being an adult actor. Voice over work in The Wild Robot has supplemented on-screen appearances in Alex Garland’s Warfare, and the currently still in production Elden Ring. He’s appeared on stage on Broadway, in a critically acclaimed revival of Romeo + Juliet. Several other screen roles are, per industry reports, in the pipeline.
Joe Locke, the infamously undiscovered Manx talent, plucked from “over 10,000 auditionees”, and literally flown from the Isle of Man to chemistry read with Connor in a school hall in Windsor in early 2021, has similarly seen his career sky rocket. A stage appearance in an, again, critically acclaimed production of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, revealed an angelic yet powerful singing voice, which allowed him to hold his own when performing with Broadway icon Patti LuPone in 2024’s Agatha All Along, Marvel’s “sort of sequel” to 2021’s WandaVision. Promised psychological thriller Black Church Bay (set and filmed in Wales), and body horror Baby, are in post-production and awaiting release. Other roles have also been filmed. Both Connor and Locke are only 22 years old, but their step up to be Executive Producers on Heartstopper Forever shows their already impressive advances in this most notoriously turbulent of industries.
Kit Connor as Nick Nelson (L) and Joe Locke as Charlie Spring (R)
The rest of the cast have also had success. Yasmin Finney (Elle) has had a number of screen roles, including notably playing Rose in 2023’s Anniversary Special Doctor Who episode The Star Beast, as well as other Who-niverse episodes. Toby Donovan (Isaac) has had a slower start, but made a spine-tingling appearance as a featured guest in an episode of the recently rebooted Lindley. Rhea Norwood (Imogen) has appeared in Cabaret in the West End, where she gave a powerful and emotionally intense performance as Sally Bowles, the role made famous by Liza Minelli (or Dame Judi Dench, depending on your favoured medium). Forthcoming appearances in a new screen adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, and Only Murders in the Building are next on Norwood’s radar. Corinna Brown has appeared in The Summer I Turned Pretty, and was well received in the lead role of Sephy in Noughts and Crosses at Regents Park Open Air Theatre.
Sebastian Croft, who appeared in seasons one and two of Heartstopper as Charlie’s terrible ex-boyfriend and bully, Ben Hope, has split his attention between screen work, and a developing music career. Appearances in comedy horror film Get Away and post-WW1 drama Dope Girls have been complemented with the release of several apparently memoir-based singles. William Gao (Tao), and his real life sister Olivia Hardy have taken the world of melancholic, soft rock jazz-inspired fusion music by storm. Their band Wasia Project continues to have great success on the touring and festival circuit, and their new singles regularly feature as “songs of the week” on radio stations. Other cast members are carving their own niches.
It is staggering that a show with this small of a budget, and little initial marketing push, has punched above its weight in this way. Occasionally, such a show does emerge. We’re reminded of the 1996 epic television production Our Friends In The North. That show solidified the careers of Christopher Eccleston (later The Doctor in Doctor Who), Gina McKee, Mark Strong, and Daniel Craig, who went on to portray James Bond. Kit Connor is already being talked of as a ‘future-Bond’, and it would be truly refreshing for that character to be played by an openly queer man.
That a small, queer show, based on a web comic, has brought to public and industry figures an awareness of this breadth and depth of talent is remarkable. If the cast of Heartstopper go on to have careers even half as stellar as those of the cast of ‘Our Friends’, then the legacy of this show will be considerable.
As it is, the immediate impact remains significant: a queer story line, produced by an overwhelmingly queer group of actors and creatives, has brought to the world queer joy, optimism, and, overwhelmingly, kindness. That all the characters get to experience their own interpretations of a happy ending may feel unrealistic, but is long overdue. Far too often, in far too many books, films and television shows, we get too much doom and gloom, with queer characters being thrown under the metaphorical (and often literal) bus in what has always appeared as a moralistic admonishment designed to prevent queer people living their lives joyously and authentically. As Elle (Yasmin Finney) states, ‘I just want to be myself. To be free. To be happy’. Queer people are entitled to stories which are, ultimately happy, and Heartstopper Forever wraps up the Heartstopper story in a happy way, with our characters going off into a world where they are accepted and loved. We can only hope that the real world becomes a better reflection of this imagined happiness.
Heartstopper Forever is available on Netflix now, rated 15.
Robbie Banfitch became a name on genre fans’ lips with his 2022 surrealist found-footage horror The Outwaters. The terrifying, reality-bending nightmare starkly divided viewers, but wherever you fall on the love it or hate it scale, it’s impossible to deny the sheer passion that went into the vicious, unforgettable tale. Banfitch has followed the psychedelic chiller with the far more stripped-back Tinsman Road, a slow-burn found footage film following in the footsteps of his earlier work, championing atmospheric terror and emotional depth over balls-to-the-wall scares.
Tinsman Road follows Robbie (Banfitch), who, after his sister Noelle goes missing, returns to his childhood home in New Jersey to live with his mother, Leslie (Leslie-Ann Banfitch). Leslie copes with the devastating loss by turning to spiritualism, believing Noelle’s spirit is still in the house and that she can communicate with her. Robbie, on the other hand, channels his grief into creating a documentary about their lives and solving the mystery surrounding Noelle’s disappearance.
Far from the aggressive cosmic horror of The Outwaters, Tinsman Road’s most fear-inducing moments come from the raw grief and trauma the family face. Tinsman Road benefits from the genuine performances by Banfitch and his real-life mother, whose exchanges provide some of the film’s most sobering, spine-chilling, and tear-jerking moments.
They deal with their loss in wildly different ways – Robbie desperately tries to find answers, whereas Leslie retreats into the spiritual realm. Their contrasting ways of coping and the devastating mental effect this has on themselves and each other is harrowing to watch. Tinsman Road is a haunting ghost story that focuses on those left behind when someone is gone and the wreckage in the wake of life-altering events.
The realism of the film is compounded in the way it is shot entirely on a camcorder from the 2000s and edited to place us straight into the nostalgia of watching family home videos. The framing, performance, writing, and direction all work in tandem to create an atmosphere laden with fear and sadness, making the audience feel just as much a part of this family and dealing with the same loss. Every little detail in the family home highlights Robbie and Leslie’s adoration for Noelle and the suffering they are enduring, with shots lingering on photographs just long enough to personify the longing they face every single day. The film’s music, featuring vocals from Salem Belladonna (who also worked on The Outwaters), is the cherry on top in terms of creating an eerie, sombre atmosphere.
Where Tinsman Road falls flat is in its pacing, feeling at times like a bloated 90-minute feature pushed to an eye-watering 159 minutes. What starts strong and gripping often wanes, meaning its emotional impact flounders as the narrative winds on. Though Banfitch somewhat reins it back in at the film’s powerful and wild third act, Tinsman Road is sure to lose many viewers along the way.
Despite its issues, Tinsman Road is a deeply intimate character study of grief, loss, and devotion that rewards the audience’s patience with a surreal, powerful climax that is as unforgettable as Banfitch’s previous work.
TINSMAN ROAD will be available on UK digital platforms from 3rd August.
The tale of a man who got so lost that his story is named after just how lost he got. An epic myth that launched a thousand writers, each describing their slightly weird journeys in the years that followed as an ‘Odyssey’. This is territory director Christopher Nolan has breached before, with Interstellar, although his take on Homer serves more as a companion piece to 2023’s Oppenheimer.
It’s been a decade since the siege of Troy, and a tactical decision from warrior King Odysseus (Matt Damon) which turned the tide of war… nay, history. In that time, he’s disappeared, lost at sea with a cohort of his most trusty men. Back home in Ithaca, wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) holds the throne, although the many suitors she’s accrued over the years are growing impatient…
The Odyssey is a story about stories. Nolan uses the film’s structure to transcend time, telling Odysseus’ story through the accounts of others and – as told to Charlize Theron’s sea nymph – in his own confused words. The film tracks Odysseus’ arduous journey home, although Nolan is more concerned with what he’s left behind – in the ashes of Troy, and the wife and son waiting at home.
It’s a film that only Christopher Nolan could have made. It’s a world of gods and monsters which eschews the colourful mythology in favour of horror-infused vignettes and gritty battle sequences. These encounters are tantalisingly brief. Not to spoil a 2700-year-old text, but the travellers’ encounter with a certain-one eyed shepherd and a hut-dwelling Samantha Morton gives viewers a glimpse of what a Christopher Nolan horror film might look like. It’s an approach that won’t please everybody, stripping away much of the magic from a world that should be brimming with it.
This is claustrophobic viewing, never giving the action space to breathe in spite of the grand scale. Two decades on from Batman Begins, and the man still can’t choreograph a fight sequence without inducing a dizzy spell in his viewers. And then there are the other criticisms. The accents and modern parlances. The so-called ‘iPhone’ faces of certain cast members. Every time Tom Holland says ‘mom’ or ‘dad’, I found myself dragged from ancient Greece all the way back to 2026.
And yet there’s no denying The Odyssey‘s power. The score by composer Ludwig Göransson throbs with intensity. The performances are raw and vulnerable – particularly Elliot Page, John Leguizamo, and Himesh Patel (hasn’t he come a long way since EastEnders!). The latter’s difficult relationship to Odysseus becomes lost in the fray. Character work has never been Nolan’s strong point, and The Odyssey will do little to silence his critics. Still, the emotion is there, particularly during the triumphant home stretch. Should it become too solemn, then there’s Robert Pattinson, giving the film its enjoyably smug villain.
The Odyssey is perhaps the most Christopher Nolan film to date. Everything he’s done so far has led to this. The gruelling battle sequences of Dunkirk. The epic journey of Interstellar. The grounded realism of his Dark Knight trilogy. The timey-wimey-wibbly-wobbly of… well, most of his work. The emotional turmoil and regret of Oppenheimer in its lead character. It’s no one thing, but it’s definitely a Christopher Nolan film. It’s the Christopher Nolan film.
It’s a work of indelible power and horror from a modern mythmaker so at the top of his game that he risks losing sight of the humans at his stories’ core.
Real talk – there’s not been a bad Evil Dead thing yet. In the wake of the beloved trilogy by Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Rob Tapert, there followed a surprisingly effective remake and groovy television series, offering two very distinct variations on the three stooges’ original work. The franchise then turned over a new page in its Book (of the Dead) with the alarmingly effective Evil Dead Rise. As of 2026, it remains the most consistent horror series ever made. No pressure on director Sébastien Vaniček, then.
The French filmmaker (of icky spider-’em-up Infested) joins the series soon after it found a renewed sense of spirit (and level of violence) in Lee Cronin’s 2023 sequel. With Cronin having moved on to pastures not-so-new with his Mummy film, this leaves Vaniček to steer the ship. And steer it he does, straight into a land of French Extreme Cinema.
The gruelling violence of Inside and Martyrs is a clean fit for the Evil Dead universe, and Burn feels both new and also comfortingly familiar. ‘Comforting’ is a strange word for a film with this level of brutality, but it fits like a glove prosthetic chainsaw, hitting the franchise’s usual beats to deliver all the shock and gore one expects from an Evil Dead joint. At the same time, it’s quite unlike anything the franchise has done before.
Evil Dead Burn concerns another family – although they couldn’t be more different from the close-knit clan of Rise. Adjusting to the recent loss of her husband (George Pullar), Frenchwoman Alice (Souheila Yacoub) feels the pressure as her in-laws gather at their remote holiday home to mourn as a family. Between the passive aggression of mother-in-law Susan (Tandi Wright) and more straightforward, uh, aggression of father-in-law Edgar (Erroll Shand) it’s a fractious affair long before the Deadites come a-knocking.
When they do so, it’s with unexpected purpose. Picking up where Rise left off, the arrival of Vaniček’s Deadites is no coincidence. They’re after a certain something, and they’ll stop at nothing to get it. Not that they’ve ever been in the habit of holding back before. These, however, are Deadites with purpose – torturing for a reason, rather than for the usual shits and giggles. This is Evil Dead at its most malicious, turning the screw at every opportunity. Everything you see here is to set up future bodily trauma. Never mind Chekhov’s gun – here’s his dishwasher, pen, false teeth and kitchen sink. That dishwasher sequence, by the way? Somehow it’s even longer and more upsetting than the overly spoiler-y trailer ever indicated.
The screenplay by Vaniček and Florent Bernard is perhaps a little too concerned with setting up its upcoming prequel (Evil Dead Wrath, coming 2028), but it’s an otherwise relentless experience, barrelling from one outrageous set-piece to the next.
Evil Dead Burn is another success story for the 45-year-old horror franchise. Blending obscene levels of violence with a surprisingly deep emotional throughline, it’s an emotional and physical gut punch, anchored by a devastatingly vulnerable performance from Yacoub.
‘Groovy’ is probably the wrong descriptor for a film as thoroughly punishing as this one, but it’s another top-notch entry in a series which is only getting better with age.
EVIL DEAD BURN is out in UK cinemas on July 9th, 2026.
As technology continues to evolve, so horror cinema has its work cut out keeping up with the times. As cursed books were transferred to audio recordings, so raven-haired dead women went on to possess VHS tapes and e-mail. J-horror went ‘viral’ in that sense of the word years ago, but director Kenichi Ugana’s The Curse commits to the cause as though it’s making The Ring or The Grudge for the very first time.
Growing concerned after her friend begins sharing a series of alarming posts online, beauty salon receptionist Riko (Yukino Kaizu) attempts to intervene. However, her involvement comes too late, and Riko is left traumatised when her pal suffers a particularly grisly death thanks to the influence of a jet-haired, alabaster-skinned spirit. More than that though, Riko has fallen victim to the same terrible curse which afflicted her friend. Hoping to dig deeper into this mystery, she travels to Tawian, where the chilling truth awaits.
This satirical take on the J-horror film is packed with familiar elements, from a terrifying death curse to the uniquely nasty deaths its characters suffer. It opens in spectacularly hard fashion, with a brutal kill sequence that Ugana struggles to top for the next 90-odd minutes. It’s unfortunate that The Curse comes so soon after Yuriyan Retriever’s Mag Mag, which told a similar story in a much more subversive fashion.
Still, it has fun trying, and some of the imagery conjured will stick with the viewer long after the end credits roll. Any qualms about its clunky pacing and more wooden performances will be forgotten once the film gets into its bonkers final act, where it’s at its most brutal and original. The Curse might spend more time buffering around than it does delivering the actual goods, but it’s a fun modernisation of J-horror tropes.
THE CURSE is on UK and Irish digital platforms from July 13th.
