Review Category: Movie

“In the year 2025, the best men don’t run for president, they run for their lives.”

Edgar Wright takes that line from Stephen King’s The Running Man and runs with it – at full sprint, grinning, bleeding, and jabbing us in the ribs the whole way. His version isn’t a remake so much as a reclamation, gleefully stripping away the 1987 film’s gold-spandex camp to reveal something grimier, angrier, and unnervingly familiar.

It’s pure Wright from the opening beat: camera moves that fizz with energy, razor-cut edits timed to the pounding soundtrack (and to the rhythm of our hero’s panic), and humour that teeters between laugh and scream. The result is both dystopian and absurd – Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face is literally printed on the currency – but Wright balances his trademark wit with genuine fury. This is a film about media manipulation, systemic cruelty, and the commodification of suffering, and it lands its punches hard.

The world he builds is grotesquely believable. Skyscrapers glint above slums; reality TV distracts the masses while megacorps own the news, the government, and probably the oxygen. The line between entertainment and exploitation has never been thinner. Even the editing mirrors the chaos – relentless yet somehow humane, breathless but never heartless. Wright toys with perception so thoroughly that both our protagonist, Ben Richards, and the audience soon question what’s real, what’s staged, and who to believe. It’s a paranoid fever dream that somehow coheres into something cathartic.

At its centre is Glen Powell, shedding his golden-boy sheen for something raw and riveting. As Richards — a working-class father forced into the state-sanctioned death game to buy medicine for his daughter — he’s all coiled rage and bruised tenderness, a man trapped in systems he can’t outpace. Powell plays him like a live wire, equal parts desperation and defiance, confirming what many suspected: he’s far more than a pretty face; he’s a shapeshifter.

Colman Domingo steals every scene as the game’s host, a smarmy, snake-charming cocktail of Caesar Flickerman and a Fox News anchor. Michael Cera gets a deliriously unhinged Home Alone-style sequence that injects manic comedy into the dread, and Lee Pace appears as a towering foil to Powell’s reluctant hero – to say more would spoil the fun, but suffice it to say he’s excellent.

The pacing never falters. Even the moments of calm hum with danger, every pause another chance for the system to close in. Wright weaponises paranoia, turning it into rhythm; the film’s meta-structure, where the rules of the game mirror the rules of storytelling, gives the whole thing a sly, self-aware snap. It’s as if the movie knows it’s being watched, and doesn’t quite trust us either.

If there’s a flaw, it’s that Wright sometimes can’t resist showing off, tipsy as he is on his own riotous energy. But honestly, that’s half the fun. The tonal lurches aren’t missteps, they’re pirouettes at full speed. After all, better a film that burns out in a sprint than one that politely paces itself to the finish line.

The Running Man is furious, funny, and frightening and, like the best works of film, it makes you laugh just long enough to realise you’re the punchline.

The Running Man releases in cinemas from November 12th. Watch the trailer here.

If director Dan Trachtenberg took a back-to-basics approach to the franchise with 2022’s Prey, then Predator: Badlands does the opposite of that. Skirting dangerously close to where they lost us with 2010’s Predators, this stand-alone prequel follows a tough yet out-of-their-depth badass struggling to survive on a remote planet – the most dangerous planet in the universe, to be precise. The difference this time? Dek (Dimitrius Koloamatangi) is a young Yautja, out to prove himself by hunting the biggest, baddest creature he can find.

While Trachtenberg could have coasted off the success of Prey, delivering another period Predator film (which the animated anthology Hunter of Killers did plenty of anyway), Badlands once again reinvents the wheel, in the franchise’s first Yautja-centric entry. It almost doesn’t need chirpy android Thia (Elle Fanning), although we’re glad she’s there. Giving the series its first buddy comedy is an inspired move, and Fanning is a delight as Dek’s blabbermouth companion. She and Dek have wonderful chemistry, and the story is a clever riff on Naru’s coming-of-age arc in the previous film. You’d never think a Predator could be particularly emotive, but Koloamatangi gives a tremendous performance as the firebrand Yautja, blending CGI and prosthetics in a way that looks and works far better than the trailers might have you believe.

Some of the more cutesy comic moments might rub the Predator faithful the wrong way (hey, at least its not 2018’s The Predator), but Trachtenberg and co-writer Patrick Aison are successful in blending this with big, bombastic action and surprisingly emotional character beats. Once again, they’re resist the urge to lean too hard into the “get to the choppa” schtick, but there are some intriguing connections to a wider universe which feel more organic to the plot than you might expect from the sixth, eighth or ninth (depending on where you count Alien crossovers and an animated tie-ins) entry in a long-running series.

A bold action film with charm, grace and a strong emotional throughline, Badlands is perhaps the most human Predator yet. Not bad, considering there’s not a single one in the whole film.

PREDATOR: BADLANDS is out in UK cinemas

Two conspiracy nuts abduct a high-powered CEO in this black comedy thriller from Poor Things and The Lobster director Yorgos Lanthimos. Convinced that pharmaceutical boss Michelle (Emma Stone) is an alien from the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy, Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Don (Aidan Delbis) stash her away in the hope of brokering a meeting with her Martian overlords. Can the pair save the green planet? Or is their demented mission a product of Teddy’s traumatised, Internet-rotted brain?

On paper, Bugonia is Lanthimos’s most accessible film yet. An Americanised remake of a South Korean cult classic, it plays things relatively straight, following the tone and structure of many a kidnap thriller which preceded it. Everybody speaks like a relatively normal person, and no-one eats spaghetti like a weirdo (although some spaghetti is eaten) – by Lanthimos’s standards, it’s positively mainstream, and far less peculiar than the work upon which it’s based. Coming over twenty years after director Jang Joon-hwan’s original version, Bugonia feels more timely than ever – and uniquely American in its depiction of a fucked-up, fucked-over society doomed by bonkers conspiracy theories, buzzword-blabbering CEOs and dying honey bees.

Lanthimos’s fourth feature collaboration with Stone reaps the rewards of their shared familiarity and dedication to the ethos. Stone is a champ about the whole thing, spending most of the film strapped to a cot in Teddy and Don’s stinky dungeon, and forced to undergo all manner of torture – including a forced head shave, creamed-up face, and electroshock torture. Still, she’s no whimpering damsel in distress, and remains a fierce opponent to an increasingly frustrated Teddy, even in her most helpless moments. Stone and Plemons are, of course, phenomenal, but the whole cast are firing on all cylinders. This includes Excess Baggage star Alicia Silverstone, here making millennial audiences feel thoroughly ancient by playing, uh, Jesse Plemons’ mother. It’s newcomer Aidan Delbis who shines brightest of all though – bringing a sense of warmth and humanity to a film that’s otherwise cold and quite cruel.

That said, Bugonia is Lanthimos’s funniest film yet, particularly in its savage interplay between Michelle and Teddy. While writer Will Tracy’s screenplay may be too conformist for the Lanthimos faithful, it’s also more challenging than the popcorn crowd might have expected, relishing in its moments of extreme gore and grim torture sequences. Yes, it’s a departure from form, but it’s an uncompromising vision, set on a path that’s both deviously unexpected, but also pure and distilled Yorgos Lanthimos.

BUGONIA is out now in UK cinemas.

J-horror tropes are turned on their head in this gleefully subversive comedy-horror from director and comedian Yuriyan Retriever. A dark-haired female spirit of vengeance, the sinister Mag Mag follows in the hallowed, damp footsteps of Ringu’s Sadako, Ju-On’s Kayako and so many more. You know the ritual – Mag Mag appears to the afflicted shortly before their death, offering a horrific vision of eyeball-sucking terror during their final moments. What happens next, however, is like something out of a fevered Junji Ito dream.

When Mag Mag takes her beloved, Sanae (Sara Minami) vows to seek revenge against this, uh, spirit of vengeance. But, as her quest takes her deeper into Mag Mag’s true nature, she comes to learn that there’s more to her man’s fate than meets the eye(ball). It’s a familiar setup. But what separates Mag Mag from the rest is its vicious sense of humour, brought to life by first-time director Retriever and screenwriter Eisuke Naitô.

Mag Mag is broken down into a vignette-like structure, following each of the ghoul’s victims in the short time before their death. As such, it’s successful in building an air of mystery around Mag Mag and her motives – with some really good red herrings and twists thrown in there toward the end – although it does get a tad repetitive once the first few asshole men have come and gone in similar fashion. Running at nearly two hours, the occasionally clumsy pacing betrays Retriever’s novice status as a director. Still, the next big scare or laugh is never far away, and the fractured structure does pay off when Sanae’s story is revealed in full.

Led by a wonderfully off-the-wall performance from Minami, Mag Mag is a treat for fans of the subgenre and its tropes. Possessing a bonkers energy (think Drag Me to Hell by way of Takashi Miike), it pays tribute to the best of J-horror while very much marching to the beat of its own drum.

MAG MAG premiered at FrightFest Halloween on November 1st, 2025.

Coyotes attack in this creature feature from director – and one half of the Vicious Brothers – Colin Minihan. Subject to this series of grave encounters are Scott, Liv and daughter Chloe (Justin Long, Kate Bosworth and Mila Harris). Caught between the raging wildfires outside and the pack of bloodthirsty coyotes trying to get into their Beverly Hills home, the family face a desperate fight for survival. As local sex worker Julie (Brittany Allen) points out, it’s like that film with the birds. Except with coyotes.

Featuring appropriately broad performances from reliable hams Long, Bosworth and Allen, Coyotes is an entertaining enough horror-comedy, showcasing some occasionally amusing back-and-forth and a warm sense of chemistry between the cast. It’s gratifyingly mean-spirited at times too (get yourself on doesthedogdie.com before digging in), featuring an alarmingly cruel kill before the opening credits have even begun rolling. Set against the backdrop of the LA Wildfires, the stage is set for a gruesome showdown between man and beast. Had they been able to pull off the actual killer coyotes in their killer coyote film, then we’d be in solid three-star territory here.

Unfortunately, to address the elephant in the room… well, the elephant in the room looks like it’s been generated from A.I. Quite how much (if any) was employed in making these coyotes ugly is unclear, but there’s an undeniable sheen of the uncanny valley to the whole pack – floating, shape-shifting blobs of fur which seem as though they’re about to burst at the digitally-generated seams at any given moment. Not only do they look bad, but they feel like they’ve drifted in from a different film to everyone else, hovering in to menace Justin Long for a bit before drifting back off to your mom’s Facebook feed where they belong.

Minihan and his game-for-it cast do their best with the material given, but these monstrosities drag us, kicking and screaming, not just out of the film, but the whole cinema.

COYOTES is available now on digital platforms.

A horror film I swore I would never watch again finds its way back under the skin in this all-too faithful remake by Baskin director Can Evrenol. Anyone unlucky enough to have seen Caye Casas’s feel-bad masterpiece will likely have its imagery seared into the brain for the rest of their lives. With the cat already out of the bag (or the head under the chair, as it were), Evrenol’s The Turkish Coffee Table finds itself in a sticky situation – that scene is a once-in-a-lifetime shock. How on earth could Evrenol ever hope to replicate it?

The director’s approach is to go bigger, broader and madder, showing a bit more and twisting the knife far harder. The Coffee Table wasn’t exactly subtle in its black farce, but what it chose not to show was ultimately more disturbing than what it did depict. In contrast, Evrenol doesn’t shy away from many of the gorier details, stomping good taste and cinematic taboos into a bloody mulch on the rug.

It doesn’t always work (there’s one shot near the end where it really doesn’t work), but it’s a valid difference in approach which makes The Turkish Coffee Table stand out from the original edition. In terms of structure and story, much remains the same, as Ibrahim (Alper Kul) goes to increasingly ridiculous lengths to keep a lid on what he’s done. There’s an awkward family lunch to sit through and an obsessed downstairs neighbour making things more difficult. However, Evrenol seems less interested in basking in Ibrahim’s discomfort, instead amping up the surrealism and gruesome imagery until the black comedy of the situation becomes unignorable.

For the uninitiated, The Turkish Coffee Table will likely hit all the same buttons as its predecessor, scarring its audience for the very first time. That grisly shock doesn’t quite hit the same the second time around though, even if Evrenol does have fun (if ‘fun’ is the right word) in the build-up to that accident; toying with a futile sense of hope that things will play out differently this time around. And it’s in these flourishes where it’s at its most alive, playing up Ibrahim’s delirious guilt, or wife Zehra’s (Algi Eke) fiendish glee at his busted coffee table. Oh, if only she knew.

In Evrenol’s hands, The Turkish Coffee Table is the same horrifying beast, repackaged in a slicker, slightly shinier box. Where Casas’s version felt ugly and gritty, this one is bigger and more cinematic. If it struggles to hit all the same notes as the original film, that’s fine – I never want to feel the way that The Coffee Table made me feel for the first time again, anyway.

THE TURKISH COFFEE TABLE premiered at UK FrightFest Halloween on November 1, 2025.

Pulverising The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and early ’00s French extremity into a bloody mincemeat until they become one and the same, Rod Blackhurst’s Dolly makes no attempt to hide its influences. Feeding Frontier(s) and Calvaire into the sausage-maker along with Tobe Hooper’s genre-defining classic, it makes up with intense flavour what it lacks in originality. Yes, it’s yet another Grindhouse wannabe about a mute masked killer, but there’s plenty of life in the old dog yet. Or doll, as it were.

Loved-up Macy (a fierce Fabianne Therese) and Chase (Seann William Scott!) are vacationing in remote Tennessee when they encounter the titular Dolly (wrestler Max the Impaler), an overgrown woman-child on the lookout for a new toy dolly. Disposing of Chase, Dolly kidnaps Macy, dragging her back to the family home where all manner of indignities and torment await. Yes, it’s yet another Grindhouse wannabe about a woman being tied up and brutalised all over the house, but Macy can more than handle her own.

Shot on gritty, down-and-dirty 16mm, Dolly perfectly emulates the look and feel of a lost Grindhouse classic. Don’t let the presence of big (ish) names like William Scott and Ethan Suplee (unrecognisable to the point where I had to rewind the film to double-check) fool you – Dolly is as gnarly as they come. While it doesn’t go quite as far as those it was influenced by, it stands shoulder-to-shoulder with fellow homage merchants Hatchet and In A Violent Nature as a future cult favourite. Slasher cinema may not have needed another silent masked monster, but it could do far worse than the oddly sympathetic Dolly, who boasts an original look and a mean shovel arm, along with the whole Livin’ Doll thing.

Dolly doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but nor does it seek to. Instead, it’ll tear that wheel straight off the truck and clobber you over the head with it, until you too have had your brain turned into mushy headcheese.

 DOLLY premiered at FrightFest Halloween on November 1, 2025

A milquetoast advert seller for an online periodical finds himself embroiled in a serial killer’s sinister game when he stumbles across his latest bloody murder. Terrified into silence and complicity, genial Joe (Josh Fadem) is thrust into a surprisingly far-reaching conspiracy, growing increasingly compromised as William Shaffer (James Urbaniak) continues to target women in moody and dangerous Hightown City.

So far so Zodiac, but this crime thriller takes a vastly different approach to the road taken by Fincher, Mann et al. When not wallowing in its neo-noir trappings, Every Heavy Thing deftly blends black comedy with vivid 80s and early 90s-era surrealism, employing the grit and texture of a De Palma, Lynch or Cronenberg along with its more modern influences. Those hoping for a more conventional sort of serial killer thriller may come away disappointed, but those who enjoyed (my) recent FrightFest favourite Dead Mail should appreciate its similarly unconventional approach to the genre.

One never knows quite what to expect from a Mickey Reece joint, and the writer-director’s latest feature is no different. Every Heavy Thing is part serial killer thriller, yes, but it’s also a slacker comedy and absurdist hangout movie. Thrown into this dark and unpredictable odyssey, Fadem makes for a charmingly befuddled protagonist, while the colourful supporting cast (which includes a welcome cameo from genre icon Barbara Crampton!) bring vibrancy and warmth to Reece’s deliberately disordered world. Yes, it’s yet another crime thriller about a serial killer targeting women, but Every Heavy Thing is rich in strong, well-written female characters – including Tipper Newton as Josh’s wife, Lux, and Kaylene Snarsky as the plucky Cheyenne. Heavy topics are tackled – including transphobia and corruption in the police and media – but the film is light on its feet, moving from one dizzying sequence to the next with a confidently brisk step.

Not to all tastes, perhaps, but a delectable surprise for fans of the quirky and the offbeat.

EVERY HEAVY THING premiered at UK FrightFest Halloween on October 31, 2025

 

With his 2015 comedy-horror film Deathgasm, director Jason Lei Howden perfectly captured the listlessness of the teenage misfit. Yes, it was primarily a coming-of-age story about a young metalhead, but its themes were applicable to anyone who’s ever felt a little alone and misunderstood. With this belated sequel, the New Zealand filmmaker just-as-accurately paints a target on (almost) middle-aged ennui and wasted potential.

Following the events of Deathgasm, Brodie (Milo Cawthorne) is in a rut. His relationship with Medina (Kimberley Crossman) has fallen apart. His music career is non-existent. And his only friend in the world is Giles (Daniel Cresswell). Hoping to recapture his youth, Brodie decides to resurrect his old bandmates, harnessing The Black Myth to bring back Dion (Sam Berkley) and Zakk (James Blake). Needless to say, it doesn’t go well, and the pair return as braindead zombies – only gaining sentience and a semblance of their former selves when they indulge in the pleasures of the flesh. Eating it, that is.

If Deathgasm was a heavy-metal infused tribute to The Evil Dead series, then this sequel is more Ash vs Evil Dead than Evil Dead 2 or Army of Darkness. The decision to pick up with Brodie as an ageing failure is a canny one on Howden’s part, and will resonate with those of us who have also aged disappointingly over the last ten years. Age isn’t the same thing as maturity though, and Goremageddon is just as gleefully juvenile as its predecessor, and rammed to the hilt with blood, guts and dismembered schlongs.

While it lacks some of the first film’s edge, Howden certainly brings the violence, unleashing all manner of inventive, colourful bloodshed over the course of 102 splatter-filled minutes. The film’s $300,000 crowdfunding campaign has been put to good use – Goremageddon looks incredible, and the action is delightfully staged. If the scale is smaller, Howden only ramps the rest up, making it a sillier, spunkier experience, but one that’s no less metal than the first film.

A beautifully bonkers encore performance.

DEATHGASM II: GOREMAGEDDON premiered at FrightFest Halloween on October 31, 2025

Astronaut Apollo (Drew Van Acker) has been recovered from his crashed ship. His fellow travellers are all dead, and he has amnesia. Jim (Andrew McCarthy) is tasked with helping him regain his memory and get to the bottom of who – or what – killed his crew. As Apollo slowly begins to recall more, it becomes clear that Jim isn’t being entirely honest with him, and he knows more than he lets on. Apollo’s recollections become clearer, and he reveals that they had discovered an intelligent life form that he can converse with using music and sounds created on an instrument he had developed.

For the most part, Orion is a taut two-hander between the veteran McCarthy and Pretty Little Liars’ Acker. The latter is particularly impressive as he transitions from confusion to control. Deftly directed by Jaco Bouwer, utilising a minimal approach that grows as it develops. As with Arrival, Orion deals with the major difficulty we’ll face when it comes to first contact with an alien species: communication. Anne Vithayathil’s smart script handles this well, touching on human nature and the government’s predictable urge to weaponise any alien technology or intelligence.

Orion is a neat piece of semi-hard sci-fi, which doesn’t rely on flashy effects (although there are some that impress) that will reward repeat viewing.

ORION had its world premiere at FilmQuest 2025 and has its international premiere at Trieste Science+Fiction Festival on November 1st.