2020’s Teacher’s Shortage starts off with a genuinely disturbing suicide scene.
In a high school classroom, the teacher hands out the yearbooks. Everyone, including the teacher, has a good laugh when they see that one of their classmates has been labeled an “ugly skank,” in her class photo. The only person who doesn’t laugh is the victim of the prank. She runs from the classroom, hides in a bathroom stall, and eventually smashes a mirror and slits her wrists.
It’s disturbing because this is something that actually does happen. This is especially true in the age of social media, when it’s so important to fit in and say the right thing and have a certain number of people following you and liking whatever it is that you’re offering up. With the rise of AI and the increase of people stupid enough to fall for AI, this is something that is only going to get worse. In our efforts to create a better and more connected world, we’ve actually created a world where there’s even more incentive to be a bully.
The rest of the film never quite duplicates the power of its opening. It’s a slasher film in which the killer is tracking down and murdering teachers from the high school. The film was directed by Troy Escamilla, who also did Party Night.Party Night was a not-bad homage to the slasher films of the 80s. The main thing that made Party Night work was Escamilla’s obvious love for the genre and it should be noted that the kills in Teacher Shortage are effectively done. I could have done without the red-tint that the film uses whenever the killer attacks but I can understand what Escamilla was going for. In those scenes, his love for the genre comes through.
Unfortunately, the non-kill scenes are extremely slow. I have no doubt that the film is accurate in its portrayal of burned-out veteran teachers and overly earnest rookies but, whenever there’s any scene featuring more than three or four lines of dialogue, the viewer will probably find themselves checking the clock. This is one of those films that felt far longer than its 86 minutes, largely because the editing (with the exception of the kill scenes) was so poorly realized that every scene just seemed to drag on for an eternity.
The other problem with the film is that I wasn’t particularly shocked by the identity of the killer. In the best giallo tradition, Escamilla attempts to generate some suspense about who is actually underneath the killer’s mask but it’s not hard to figure out. By process of elimination, it’s easy to note who is accounted for and who isn’t during each kill. There was really only one suspect. I guessed the killer after about 15 minutes of watching and I was hoping that I was wrong. I was hoping there would be some sort of out-of-nowhere, totally bonkers twist that wouldn’t make any sense but which would at least add some life to the movie. Unfortunately, there was not.
For horror fans, there’s a lot of blood and there’s also Brinke Stevens. That said, there’s not a lot of suspense. This is ultimately a pretty forgettable slasher film.
Today is the second Friday the 13th of 2026! (We’ve got another one coming up in November.) Some people consider Friday the 13th to be unlucky but those people have obviously never been the only “good girl” at a weekend party up at Camp Crystal Lake. Ask any of them and they can tell you just how lucky Friday the 13th can be.
To our readers who are currently struggling today, we make the following suggestion: Sit back and enjoy the antics of those fun-loving kids up at Camp Crystal Lake. It’s a lot safer to watch them than to be them!
In fact, in case you need help picking which movie to watch, I have reviewed every single Friday the 13th! here on the Shattered Lens! I personally recommend that you watch parts 1, 2, and 4 but it’s totally up to you! Here’s some links to my reviews:
The world will still be here when you get back, I promise. Tonight, I will be hosting #FridayNightFlix and I’ll be showing a classic Charles Bronson film to everyone who survives the day. The details will be posted soon. (In about 15 minutes, in fact….)
“What you started here today? About to get a whole lot worse.” — Nomada
Hellfire is the kind of mid-budget, throwback action-thriller that knows exactly which bar it’s aiming for—and then mostly clears it with room to spare. Set in 1988 and built around a classic “mysterious drifter wanders into a rotten town” premise, it leans hard into familiar tropes but finds some personality in its cast, pacing, and sense of place. It’s not a game-changer for the genre, but if you’re in the mood for a lean, old-school small-town showdown, it gets the job done more often than not.
The setup is comfort food for action fans. A nameless drifter, played by Stephen Lang, rolls into the dying Southern town of Rondo, where the locals are quietly suffocating under the control of drug boss Jeremiah Whitfield, a politician-connected crime lord who pretty much owns the place. The bar owner Owen gives the drifter some work and a meal, the sheriff shows up to strongly suggest he move along, and you can basically feel the town holding its breath, waiting for somebody—anybody—to push back. That somebody, obviously, is this guy, who’s soon nicknamed Nomada and revealed to be an ex–Green Beret with a messy past and a higher capacity for violence than his weathered demeanor suggests. The story is straightforward to the point of being telegraphed, but that simplicity is part of its appeal; you always know what lane Hellfire is driving in.
Performance-wise, the movie’s biggest asset is Lang. At this point, watching him settle into the “old guy you really shouldn’t mess with” archetype is half the fun, and Hellfire plays that card well. He doesn’t oversell the trauma angle, but the film gives him just enough flashbacks and quiet beats—like those bath-time war memories—to suggest a guy who’s been stuck in fight mode for decades and doesn’t know what to do with peace. His physicality is still convincing, and director Isaac Florentine is smart about staging the action around what Lang does well, letting him move with purpose instead of pretending he’s 30 years younger. He’s not reinventing the “wandering warrior” type, but he grounds Nomada enough that you buy people trusting him even when they’re terrified. There’s a warmth under the stubble and scars that gives the character a little more dimension than the script strictly requires.
The supporting cast is a mixed bag, but the core players are solid. Harvey Keitel’s Jeremiah Whitfield is exactly the kind of villain you expect in this setup: soft-spoken, smug, and insulated by money and enforcers. He doesn’t get a ton of screen time, but there’s something appropriately gross about how casual he is with other people’s lives, like he’s already factored their suffering into his monthly budget. Dolph Lundgren shows up as the corrupt sheriff Wiley, playing the heavy who’s technically the law but functionally just another thug with a badge. Lundgren brings some weary menace to the role, and there’s a nice little tension in how much he’s genuinely bought into Jeremiah’s world versus how much he’s just too compromised to get out. Scottie Thompson’s Lena, Owen’s daughter, is the emotional anchor; she’s the one with something real to lose, and while the film doesn’t push her arc especially far, she’s likable enough that you care when things go sideways.
On the weaker end, Michael Sirow turns in a caricature performance as Spencer, the entitled and whiny son of Jeremiah, all sneers and petulance that feels like it stepped straight out of a ’80s cartoon villain playbook without any nuance to back it up. Similarly, Johnny Yong Bosch as enforcer Zeke sleepwalks through every scene that isn’t action, delivering a by-the-numbers performance for a character supposed to be the crime boss’ dangerous right-hand man; even in the fights, it’s rote and uninspired, missing the edge that could’ve made Zeke a real threat.
On the character side, Hellfire actually does a bit more groundwork than you might expect from what is essentially a B-movie revenge Western in modern dress. The early stretch spends time letting you feel the town’s exhaustion and fear—bars that are half-empty, people looking over their shoulders, everyone resigned to Jeremiah’s stranglehold. That world-building pays off once the violence kicks in, because it’s clear what’s at stake beyond simple body count or spectacle. The film also tries to deepen Nomada’s backstory, hinting at survivor’s guilt and a lingering sense that he’s been wandering from one moral debt to another, but it never quite connects those dots in a satisfying way. By the time the movie starts circling around for a full-circle emotional payoff, you can see what it’s going for, yet the groundwork feels a little thin, like pages were cut or ideas left half-developed.
Pacing-wise, Hellfire is tighter than its 95-ish-minute runtime might imply, and that’s mostly a compliment. The first half is surprisingly light on action, preferring to simmer instead of boil; you get a few scuffles and tense stand-offs, but Florentine holds back on the big fireworks. When things finally explode—hostages, ambushes, warehouses, the works—the film shifts into a mode that feels like controlled chaos, mixing gunfights, hand-to-hand scraps, and vehicle beats with a clarity that’s increasingly rare in this budget range. The trade-off is that the final act feels a bit rushed, like the movie suddenly remembered it had to tie off multiple arcs and body the main villains within a fairly strict time limit. The last stretch does what you expect it to do, including Jeremiah’s fiery fate, but it doesn’t linger long enough to fully earn the emotional weight it’s shooting for.
The action itself sits in that “serviceable to occasionally inspired” space. Florentine, coming from a background in stunt-heavy genre work, keeps things clean and legible; you always know who’s shooting at whom and from where. The shootouts can get cheesy—there’s a bit of that “nobody can hit anyone until the plot needs it” energy—but there are also flashes where staging and geography line up to deliver genuinely satisfying beats. A warehouse sequence where Nomada protects Lena while taking out multiple attackers is a standout, capturing both his tactical skill and the desperation of the situation. The film clearly favors quality over volume; genre die-hards who want wall-to-wall mayhem might wish for more set pieces, but the ones you get mostly land. If anything, some of the tonal shifts—bouncing from grim brutality to borderline goofy machismo—don’t always mesh perfectly, though that’s also kind of baked into the retro B-movie DNA.
Visually, Hellfire doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it looks better than a lot of its DTV-adjacent peers. Shot in Arkansas and set in the late ’80s, it leans into dusty small-town Americana: sun-faded storefronts, weathered bars, lonely roads. Ross W. Clarkson’s cinematography keeps things grounded, with an emphasis on practical locations and natural light that makes the town feel like an actual lived-in place rather than a backlot abstraction. The period setting isn’t showy—you’re not constantly being smacked with nostalgia props—but it subtly shapes the world, especially in how isolated and cut-off Rondo feels without modern communication and surveillance everywhere. The score by Stephen Edwards does what it needs to do, nudging tension along without ever becoming a character in its own right.
Where the film stumbles is mostly in how predictable and occasionally clumsy it can be. You can see many of the beats coming from miles away: the town’s breaking point, the betrayals, who will die to motivate whom. There is one darker turn that genuinely catches you off guard, and it helps shake the movie out of its comfort zone for a bit, but the script overall is content to color inside the genre lines. Some dialogue leans on cliché, and a few supporting characters feel like they wandered in from a rougher first draft—the kind of broad sketches you’ve seen a dozen times before. It’s never bad enough to sink things, but it does cap how high Hellfire can climb; this is a movie that’s satisfied with solid rather than special.
Still, taken on its own terms, Hellfire works. It gives Stephen Lang a solid platform to do what he does best, surrounds him with a fun mix of seasoned character actors, and delivers enough muscular, clearly shot action to justify the ticket or rental. The town feels real enough that you actually care whether Nomada cleans it up, and the film respects the basics: clear stakes, likable underdogs, villains you’re happy to see go down in flames. If you go in expecting a tight, modest, R-rated throwback with a few rough edges and a couple of standout moments rather than a new genre benchmark, you’ll probably come away satisfied. It’s generic, sure—but it’s the kind of generic that remembers to give you characters to root for, action you can actually see, and just enough personality to make the ride worth taking.
Who Killed The Montreal Expos? is a documentary about the first major league baseball franchise to be located outside of the United States. From 1969 to 2004, the Expos played in Montreal, Canada. The documentary shows how the Expos became a source of pride for the people of Montreal and how it also became a source of one of their greatest heartbreaks when, after years of financial mismanagement, it relocated and became the Washington Nationals.
I guess one reason why I could relate to this documentary was because, before they got the Nationals, Washington had two baseball teams known as the Senators. The first Senators moved to Milwaukee in 1961 and became the Twins. The second team to be known as the Senators relocated in 1971 and became my team, the Texas Rangers. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to believe that my beloved Rangers once had a different name and played for a different city. I can’t imagine how much it would hurt if the Rangers ever announced that they were leaving Texas. But, as the Expos showed in 2004 and as the Chicago Bears are showing right now, even the most storied of franchises can relocate.
Who Killed The Montreal Expos? offers a lot of theories of what led to Montreal’s team leaving from Washington D.C. A players strike in 1994 ended a season that could have taken the Expos to the World Series. In 1995, several bad trades led to the Expos going from being the best team in the league to the worst. The team was in need of a new stadium but could never seem to raise the funds to build one. The documentary puts most of the blame on the second-to-last owner, an American who a lot of people think was planning to move the team all along. In the end, it doesn’t seem like there was just one reason for the Expos leaving Montreal. It was a perfect storm of hardships and mistakes and, unfortunately, it was the baseball fans of Montreal who suffered.
I don’t know who’s to blame. I just know it hurts when your team leaves. Montreal, I hope your Expos return soon! And I pray my Rangers never leave Texas.
“It’s not about us anymore. It’s warning everybody that thing’s coming.” — Staff Sergeant 81
War Machine is a slick, mid-budget sci-fi actioner that mostly does exactly what it promises: put Alan Ritchson in a killbox with something inhuman and let the cameras roll. It is also a film that keeps bumping up against more interesting ideas than it has time—or maybe courage—to fully explore.
Set around a Ranger Assessment and Selection Program (RASP) training exercise, War Machine drops a squad of U.S. Army candidates into what should be a controlled simulation and then twists the dial from “routine” to “existential threat” in a single, nasty turn. Patrick Hughes uses the military-training frame as a clean, modular structure: we get the briefing, the banter, the march into the woods, and then the sense that something is just off before the real problem reveals itself. That problem, teased heavily in marketing, is a non-human adversary that pushes the movie from grounded war-games thriller into full-on sci-fi horror-action.
On a pure premise level, the film is almost aggressively simple: what if you locked a handful of Rangers-in-the-making in with an advanced, alien threat and watched them improvise their way out? The script never strays far from that line. It moves briskly from beat to beat—contact, casualties, regroup, “this isn’t part of the exercise,” reveal—without a lot of digressions. That tightness keeps the pacing snappy, but it also means character work often comes in shorthand: a line about a family here, a rivalry there, enough to suggest depth without really digging for it.
Ritchson is easily the film’s biggest asset, and the filmmakers know it. Coming off Reacher, he arrives with a built-in persona: the big, capable, slightly sardonic soldier who you just instinctively trust to solve violent problems. War Machine leans into that, but it also asks him to play a little more vulnerability than his Amazon series typically allows. There are moments—usually between set-pieces—where you see the strain and confusion creeping in, and the performance keeps the movie from turning into a pure pose-fest.
Most of the supporting cast is drawn in broad strokes but works well enough in the moment. You get the expected squad dynamics: the true believer, the skeptic, the joker, the one who freezes when things get ugly. The film rarely surprises you with what these people do, but the actors sell the camaraderie, and when bodies start dropping, the losses feel at least momentarily sharp instead of purely mechanical. Still, if you walked out of the movie and had trouble naming more than two characters, that would be understandable; the movie cares more about how they move than who they are.
Hughes’ direction sits in that modern streaming-action pocket: clean, serviceable, with a couple of standout moments but nothing that radically redefines the genre. The early training beats are shot with a straight military grit that grounds the later sci-fi escalation; you can feel the weight of gear, the slog of the environment, the tight focus on lines of advance and retreat. When the alien threat fully enters the frame, the film shifts into a more stylized mode, with harsher lighting, heavier VFX integration, and some nicely framed silhouette shots that emphasize size and speed over detailed anatomy.
Action-wise, War Machine is at its best when it uses geography and tactics instead of just spraying bullets into darkness. A mid-film set-piece in a partially collapsed structure, where the squad tries to funnel the creature into a kill zone, shows how much more interesting the movie becomes when the characters think rather than simply react. You get coordinated movement, overlapping lanes of fire, and the sense of a plan barely holding together. Other sequences lean more on chaotic spectacle, with quick cuts and digital mayhem that get the job done without really sticking in your memory.
The creature itself—both in concept and in execution—is solid, if not iconic. Hughes has mentioned that his original instinct was to completely hide the sci-fi angle in marketing and even within the film for as long as possible, turning the reveal into a full-on genre pivot. You can feel that tension: the movie is structured like a long-burn mystery, but the way it’s framed assumes you already know there is some kind of alien or advanced threat in play. As a result, the first half can feel like it is coyly dancing around a surprise that you walked in expecting, which blunts some of the intended impact.
Once revealed, though, the alien threat has a tactile, physical presence that helps sell the danger, especially when Ritchson is forced into close-quarters encounters. The effects and practical elements blend reasonably well, particularly in dim environments where the film smartly avoids overexposing any weaknesses in the design. You’re never watching the thing and thinking “instant classic,” but you also rarely feel like you’re staring at a dated video-game cutscene, which is no small feat at this budget level.
Where War Machine wobbles is in its relationship to its own ideas. The RASP setting, the simulated-mission-gone-wrong structure, and the presence of an unprecedented threat all hint at questions about how militaries adapt to non-traditional warfare, how much human soldiers matter in a future of machines, and what “training” even looks like when the enemy doesn’t follow any known playbook. Every so often, the screenplay brushes up against those questions—usually in a line about command decisions or acceptable losses—and then quickly retreats back into “shoot, move, communicate.”
There is also a thread about trust in authority and the expendability of trainees that could have turned this into a sharper, more cynical film. Instead, War Machine opts for a more earnest, almost old-fashioned faith in individual bravery and brotherhood. The movie clearly admires these soldiers and wants you to admire them too, so it stops short of really indicting the system that put them in harm’s way. That choice keeps the tone accessible and avoids turning the movie into a lecture, but it also leaves some dramatic meat on the bone.
In terms of craft, this is very much a “Friday night streamer” movie—for better and worse. It looks good enough on a living room screen, with clean sound design that makes each impact and gunshot feel beefy without blowing out your ears. The editing rarely confuses basic spatial relationships, which already puts it ahead of a lot of action on the platform, but it also seldom lingers long enough on a moment to let you fully savor the choreography or the creature’s movement. You get the sense of a film that has been trimmed for pace and attention-span metrics more than for rhythm or mood.
There has already been talk of this being a “spectacle worth watching” if you like Ritchson and sci-fi action, paired with the caveat that it is a decent, familiar entry in a crowded space whose lead performance carries it over the line. That feels about right. War Machine is not trying to be the next genre landmark; it is trying to give fans of Reacher a chance to see their guy punch, shoot, and strategize his way through a different kind of nightmare. On that level, it mostly delivers.
The ending leaves the door open for more, without dunking you in a full-on cliffhanger. You can watch this, feel like you got a complete story, and still understand why the creative team is already floating sequel ideas and talking about “War Machines” in the plural. Whether that happens will depend on the usual streaming calculus—completion rates, social buzz, how long people keep it in their “Recently Watched.” Creatively, there is room to expand the world and dig into the implications that this first film mostly uses as background texture.
If you come to War Machine looking for tight, character-driven military sci-fi with big thematic swings, you’ll probably walk away thinking about what could have been. But if you want a solid, competently staged sci-fi shoot-’em-up anchored by a physically commanding lead turn, this is a pretty easy recommendation—especially if you are already waiting for the next season of Reacher and need something in the same physical, bruising register to fill a couple of hours.
First released in 2006, Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly is one of the unacknowledged great films of the past ten years. The scene below, featuring Rory Cochrane as the hapless Charles Freck, is all the stronger for being adapted almost word-for-word from Philip K. Dick’s source novel.
“The theory I think summarizes the situation most succinctly is, the gorge is the door to Hell and we’re standing guard at the gate.” — Jasper “J.D.” Drake
The Gorge delivers a gripping streaming thriller anchored by a fresh premise and strong performances, even if it doesn’t always sustain its early promise. Directed by Scott Derrickson, this Apple TV+ film stars Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy as elite snipers posted on opposite rims of a massive, shadowy chasm, charged with guarding against mysterious dangers rising from its depths. Mixing sci-fi intrigue, budding romance, and horror-tinged action, it hooks you early but shows some cracks later on.
The setup grabs attention right away. Levi Kane (Teller), a haunted ex-Marine sniper, signs on for a year-long solo stint in a high-tech tower overlooking the gorge’s west side—no outside contact allowed, and strict radio silence with whoever’s stationed opposite. Anya Taylor-Joy’s Drasa, a tough Lithuanian operative with Kremlin roots, faces her own isolation on the east rim, wrestling with personal demons tied to her family’s struggles. Trapped in these fortified outposts, they scan the foggy abyss through scopes and monitors, the vast divide amplifying their solitude. Sweeping drone shots make the gorge feel alive and oppressive, a character in itself that looms over every scene.
The film’s strongest stretch comes in the first half, where tension simmers through daily grind broken by fleeting human sparks. Levi copes with PTSD nightmares by scribbling poetry in quiet moments, while Drasa bends rules on her birthday—flashing signs across the void to goad Levi into a long-distance shooting duel. What starts as competitive jabs turns into warm, flirtatious banter, like forbidden notes swapped in a deadly game. Teller brings coiled intensity with an everyman edge, making Levi instantly sympathetic, while Taylor-Joy layers Drasa with fierce independence and subtle vulnerability. Their chemistry bridges the chasm convincingly, nurturing a romance that cuts through the routine. When threats finally breach the surface—nightmarish entities clawing upward—the defense sequences snap to life: precise sniper fire synced with automated turrets and mine blasts, all taut and thrilling.
Derrickson keeps the pace deliberate yet engaging, drawing on isolation vibes from classics but spiking them with sharp combat and emotional beats. Sound design builds dread masterfully—distant rumbles and unnatural cries echoing from below—while the score pivots from pulsing synth menace in fights to softer strains during tender interludes, like Levi’s daring zipline crossover for a candlelit meal from scavenged supplies. A shared poem moment lands with quiet impact, balancing the gunfire without veering into cheese. It’s this blend of intimacy and adrenaline that gives the movie its heart.
The story shifts midway when Levi’s routine relief mission derails spectacularly, pulling both snipers into the gorge’s underbelly for a chaotic fight for survival. What follows cranks up the stakes with bigger set pieces—vehicle chases, mercenary clashes, and desperate ingenuity against escalating horrors—but the momentum dips as exposition rushes in and spectacle overtakes nuance. Some creature designs impress with gritty practical work, though CGI falters in brighter spots, and the human drama gets sidelined by the frenzy. The leads hold it together, capping things with a synchronized shot that unveils hidden tech and forces tough choices. The wrap-up aims for bittersweet punch but ties threads a bit too neatly, dodging bolder risks.
Teller and Taylor-Joy shine as the core duo. Teller charts Levi’s arc from withdrawn loner to committed partner with grounded charisma that tempers the sci-fi weirdness. Taylor-Joy owns every frame as Drasa, her sharp gaze conveying both killer instinct and inner turmoil. Sigourney Weaver’s cameo as a steely handler adds weighty presence, though her role follows a familiar path. The tight cast serves the contained story well, with no fat to trim—brief warnings from predecessors hint at deeper peril without overexplaining.
Visually and technically, The Gorge punches above streaming norms. Derrickson’s flair for genre hybrids—honed on atmospheric horrors—lends moody lighting: hazy green fog in the depths versus sterile tower blues. Action choreography feels authentic, rooted in real stunts for those sniper exchanges, and the gorge’s scale stuns in wide shots. The soundscape lingers, from guttural threat growls to metallic turret whirs. A few nitpicks persist—runtime drags in probe-heavy stretches, and some effects look dated up close—but the craftsmanship stands out.
At its best, the movie teases thoughtful isolation amid global secrecy, but it leans harder into creature chaos and corporate shadows than profound mystery. Romance fans will warm to the leads’ spark, action lovers get solid payoffs, while horror buffs might crave more bite given the PG-13 leash. It promises slow-burn depth yet settles for crowd-pleasing beats, leaving a few gorge secrets hanging just out of reach.
Overall, The Gorge works as a lively genre cocktail, driven by star power and a killer hook. It nods to tight-quarters thrillers with extra heart and hardware, making for engaging viewing despite uneven gears. The leads and atmosphere carry it far enough to recommend for fans of smart popcorn flicks on a chill night.
“You and I both know that this clock is bullshit. You make your decisions about the people in this courtroom before they’re even in this chair.” — Det. Chris Raven
Mercy is the kind of movie that looks great in a trailer and promises a slick, high‑concept thriller, but then sputters once you sit through it. It’s set in a near‑future Los Angeles where the LAPD relies on a program called the “Mercy Court,” in which AI judges rapidly process violent crime cases, and the whole thing is framed as a techno‑noir twist on the courtroom thriller. The central gimmick is compelling on paper: detective Chris Raven wakes up strapped into a high‑tech chair, accused of brutally murdering his wife, and has 90 minutes to prove his innocence before being executed by a sonic blast. That setup alone should guarantee at least a tense, scrappy B‑movie; instead, the film keeps undercutting itself with lazy writing, cluttered subplots, and a surprising lack of nerve.
The biggest problem is the script, which feels like it’s trying to be three different movies at once and doesn’t really commit to any of them. On one level, Mercy wants to be a real‑time investigation, where Raven works with an AI judge to access security feeds, social media, emails, and police databases to piece together his wife’s murder. In practice, this becomes a series of exposition dumps—Raven talking out his thought process, the AI reciting rules, and side characters popping in just long enough to drop information before the movie rushes on. It’s not building tension; it’s building a checklist. The film’s pacing stays brisk, but that’s because so much of the middle act feels like procedural filler rather than a genuine mystery.
Tonally, Mercy swings wildly between modes. At times it’s going for something like a sleek, dystopian Minority Report–style narrative, then it veers into a revenge‑driven character drama about a cop who may be too reliant on an authoritarian justice system, and then it suddenly transforms into a generic bomb‑plot action movie. The initial setup—a world where people suspected of murder are strapped into a chair, presumed guilty, and given a brutally short window to prove themselves—feels genuinely unsettling. But the movie doesn’t really sit with those implications; it flirts with the moral and ethical questions and then rushes off to a more conventional, physical threat. What should be a caustic, uncomfortable critique of automated justice reduces to another last‑minute rescue mission.
The central mystery is another missed opportunity. The evidence stacked against Raven is substantial—blood on his clothes, footage from cameras, his drinking problem, and a history of violent outbursts—but the film telegraphs the real culprit so early that the final reveal feels less like a twist and more like a completion of prior signposting. The story tries to make the framing of Raven seem like a master‑plan‑level conspiracy, but the plan hinges on an almost impossible level of predictability on his part. The more the movie explains, the harder it becomes to buy into the logic of the setup. Instead of feeling like the net has tightened around him in a sophisticated way, it feels like the script is forcing contrivances to land on top of him.
Chris Pratt’s performance is an odd fit for the material. The movie seems determined to present him as a darker, more tortured version of himself, and there are a few moments where that dynamic works—Raven’s vulnerability, his self‑loathing, his conflicted belief in the system he helped create. But the script never really lets him live in the morally grey space it clearly wants him to inhabit. Instead, it keeps reassuring us that he’s essentially a good cop who’s been wronged, which undercuts any real tension about whether he might actually be guilty or at least dangerous. You get glimpses of a more interesting character, but they’re constantly being smoothed over by the need for a likable protagonist.
The AI judge, voiced and embodied by Rebecca Ferguson, is one of the few genuinely strong elements here. She plays the voice and presence of the system with a cool, clipped rationality that occasionally shades into dry wit, and her interactions with Raven hint at a more ambitious film lurking underneath. The idea of an AI judge slowly questioning its own assumptions—pushing back on emotional appeals, probing inconsistencies, and gradually developing something resembling curiosity—is inherently compelling. Ferguson gives the character enough personality and nuance to make that arc feel plausible, but the script mostly treats her as a glorified search engine and a moral referee for the final act, when she should be the co‑lead driving the film’s central conflict.
The supporting cast is fine, but underused. Raven’s partner mostly exists to run errands off‑screen—tracking suspects, raiding houses, reacting over the comms—so the movie can cut away from the courtroom whenever it gets bored. Raven’s AA sponsor is saddled with a mix of clumsy foreshadowing and heavy‑handed motivation, which only becomes relevant when the revenge angle kicks in. Raven’s daughter functions almost entirely as emotional leverage and a hostage, escalating the stakes in a way that feels mechanical rather than organic. You can tell the film wants these relationships to carry weight, especially when it leans on family flashbacks and guilt, but they play out like bullet points instead of lived‑in dynamics.
Visually, the film leans into its creator’s usual fondness for screens within screens, overlay graphics, and multimedia collage. The Mercy Court itself is a striking concept—an almost clinical chamber where Raven is strapped into a chair while the AI’s interface shifts around him—yet the movie keeps cutting away to external action once the premise might otherwise grow too tense or claustrophobic. The pacing is brisk, and there are a few set‑pieces—an intense raid on a suspect’s house, the final assault on the courthouse—that deliver a basic level of genre competence. The issue is that competence is about as high as Mercy ever aims; it never really experiments with the form or stakes of its own setup.
Where the film stumbles most is in its attempt at commentary. The world it presents is, on paper, horrifying: defendants are presumed guilty, strapped into a chair, surveilled across every aspect of their digital life, and given a brutally short window to clear their name before being executed. That’s fertile ground for a scathing critique of mass surveillance, algorithmic justice, and the erosion of due process. But the movie is oddly kind to the system itself; by the end, the AI judge is portrayed as more reasonable and “fair” than most humans, and the real villain is just an individual with a personal grudge. The film nods at privacy violations and the moral grey zones of automating justice, then quickly moves on to a more traditional, physical threat. For something that positions itself as a provocative AI courtroom thriller, it ends up feeling strangely apolitical and conflict‑averse.
To be fair, there are a few things Mercy gets right. The core structure—a detective investigating his own case against a clock—remains inherently watchable, even when handled clumsily. Ferguson’s performance gives the material a center of gravity whenever it threatens to spin out into nonsense. And there’s an occasionally interesting tension between Raven’s instinct‑driven, emotionally charged approach and the AI’s cold, probabilistic logic, suggesting a better film that really pits those worldviews against each other instead of letting them conveniently converge. If you go in with low expectations and a tolerance for generic sci‑fi thrillers, you might find it mildly diverting.
But for anyone hoping Mercy would be a sharp, nasty, high‑concept genre piece with something to say about AI, policing, and due process, it’s a disappointment. The movie leans on an admittedly strong premise, some slick production design, and a few scattered performances, yet it never commits to either being a full‑tilt B‑movie or a genuinely thoughtful techno‑thriller. It’s not unwatchable, just frustratingly timid—content to skim the surface of its own ideas and then blow something up when things get complicated. By the time the credits roll, you’re left with the sense that the AI judge wasn’t the only one operating on a strict time limit; somewhere along the way, the film seems to have run out of patience with itself, too.
“Now when they remember us, they ask themselves: Why didn’t we all get to come back? What does it all mean? You’ll need to find out yourselves. ‘Cause the answer is in you.” — Numa Turcatti
Society of the Snow is the kind of survival movie that sneaks up on you, starting as a rugby team’s joyride and morphing into an existential gut-punch about faith, God, and what binds people when hell freezes over. Directed by J.A. Bayona, it revisits the 1972 Andes crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, stranding the Old Christians rugby club, pals, and kin in a snowy nightmare 72 days long. No heroes hog the spotlight; it’s an ensemble of mostly newbie Uruguayan and Argentinian actors embodying a group forged by crisis, tackling taboos like cannibalism not as shock value, but as a collective leap of desperate faith.
The setup hooks you quick: carefree banter on the flight from Montevideo to Santiago, singalongs, rugby dreams bubbling. Then boom—the wings shear off, the fuselage cartwheels into a glacier, and 45 souls face subzero isolation with slim rescue odds. Bayona’s crash sequence is visceral chaos: screams swallowed by crunching metal, bodies tumbling, sudden silence under starlit peaks. It’s not Hollywood gloss; it’s the indifferent brutality of nature claiming lives, leaving the rest to improvise in a metal tomb.
Early days blur into tending wounds, rationing snacks, scanning skies for choppers that never come. Characters emerge gradually—Numa Turcatti’s narration grounds us, Nando Parrado’s grit shines later, Roberto Canessa’s smarts anchor medicine—but it’s the group’s dynamic that carries the load. Some introductions rush by, making deaths more statistical than soul-crushing at first, a fair knock since 16 eventually perish from crashes, avalanches, exposure. Still, that haze mirrors real panic, where faces and flickers of personality become your lifeline.
As weeks grind on, Society of the Snow almost becomes an existential exercise in the meaning of faith, belief in God, and how disaster can pull survivors together despite their differences to make that collective decision to perform something that others safe and sound would consider abhorrent. These devout Catholics debate God’s role: Is the crash punishment, test, or sheer accident? Priests invoke Eucharist parallels—body of Christ sustaining the living—while doubters rage at a silent heaven amid freezing nights and howling winds. Disaster doesn’t just bond them through shared misery; it forces this collective buy-in, where atheists, believers, and everyone in between hash it out in the fuselage’s dim light, snow piling up outside.
Differences in personality or background fade fast when hypothermia and starvation make every choice a referendum on humanity itself; rugby jocks, quiet thinkers, hotheads form a tribe, voting on the unthinkable: eating the dead to cheat death themselves. Safe outsiders might recoil in horror, but up there, it’s reframed as sacred reciprocity, a group oath blending survival instinct with spiritual rationale. Bayona doesn’t linger on gore—he shows enough to unsettle, focusing on the hushed consent, the tears, the way it reshapes their souls without breaking the bond.
Visually, it’s stunning restraint: Pedro Luque’s cinematography paints the Andes as majestic jailer, vast whites dwarfing ant-like survivors. Makeup sells the toll—cheeks hollow, skin ashen, eyes haunted—as bodies waste away on meager flesh. Sound design immerses: fuselage creaks like a dying beast, wind a constant roar, silence after avalanches deafening. Score stays subtle, melancholic strings underscoring faith’s quiet wrestling rather than cueing cheap tears.
Mid-film drags a tad, the routine of despair—avalanche buries them alive, failed expeditions limp back—testing patience as it mirrors their grind. At 144 minutes, repetition risks numbing, though it aptly conveys time’s cruelty. Humor peeks through: dumb jokes, rugby chants, home stories keeping spirits flickering, proving they’re not just victims but vibrant lives interrupted.
Climax shifts to Parrado and Canessa’s epic trek—shoeless, rag-wrapped, scaling cliffs with rugby posts as ice axes. Physically punishing to watch, it culminates in that eerie rescue meet: a gaucho across a torrent, civilization’s whisper after eternity. Their return sparks media frenzy, but the film ends introspective, faith renewed not in miracles, but in human will and collective defiance.
Bayona’s take earns widespread acclaim, including Oscar nods for International Feature, makeup, and score, praising its dignity over prior adaptations like Alive. It honors survivors’ input, shot partly on location with Uruguayan authenticity. Downsides? Ensemble sprawl blurs some arcs; heavy themes demand stamina, no popcorn thrills here. If gore or bleakness turns you off, skip it—but for raw humanity amid atrocity, it’s top-tier.
Ultimately, Society of the Snow lingers because it asks: What’s faith when God seems absent? How does abhorrence become salvation through unity? Just as Frank Marshall’s 1993 Alive left an indelible mark on that generation’s filmgoers, grappling with survival’s raw ethics amid the early ’90s thirst for true-story grit, this film resonates powerfully in today’s fractured world. In an age of endless online division and existential dread—from climate crises to global unrest—it spotlights unbreakable human bonds forged in the worst conditions, reminding us that shared ordeal can still transcend differences and redefine what we’re capable of. Disaster doesn’t divide; it welds them, turning horror into testament. Powerful, flawed, profoundly human.
Caleb Whitley (Daniel Stine) is an energetic and handsome pastor who is also a coach at the local high school. His father was a pastor and Caleb inherited the church that his old man founded. Caleb’s loyal mother, Hattie (Annette Saunders), is there to protect Caleb in all that he does because she believes that he is meant for something special. Caleb’s wife, Jenn (Clark Sarullo), appears to be the perfect pastor’s wife. She’s blonde, she’s composed, and she always seem to have control over the situation.
And that’s good because Caleb …. well, Caleb often falls to temptation.
Caleb is the type of pastor who makes a big deal about running shirtless every morning so that the single women of the neighborhood can appreciate him. Caleb says he’s just trying to take care of his body but we all know what he’s doing. Caleb also has a history of cheating on Jenn and his mistresses have a tendency to turn up dead once they become inconvenient. Is the Pastor truly preying? Or is something else happening?
That’s what fashion designer Nicole (Amanda Nicholas) is determined to find out. After her cousin, Amanda (Analisa Wall) is found dead, Nicole immediately suspects the pastor. She shares her concerns with Detective Chandler (Wade Hunt Williams) but does she have any proof? Not yet….
I should say a few words about Detective Chandler. There are a lot of memorable characters to be found in The Pastor Who Preys but Detective Chandler is one of the most entertaining, just because he seems to be so genuinely perplexed by everything that he hears. Most detectives tend to be cynical but Detective Chandler seems to be genuinely shocked at the idea that the pastor could be a serial adulterer. When the detective later talks to Jenn about the rumors of her husband’s infidelity, he has no problem revealing the name of the person who said that Caleb’s a cheater. It seems like most detectives would know better than to reveal the name to a potential suspect. Chandler is so incompetent at his job that he becomes oddly likable. I mean, he’s just trying so hard! His facial expressions during the film’s finale really should be put in a museum.
This is a Lifetime church melodrama. I have to admit that almost everything I know about protestant churches, I learned from watching Lifetime. I’ve learned that the pastors are always charismatic but they shouldn’t be trusted. The church men always want to get home to watch the game. The church women always spend their meetings gossiping about who is cheating on whom. There’s always a divorcee who wears leopard-print dresses and who has her eye on the pastor. In this film, that role is filled by Lacey (Erika Monet Butters) and she’s definitely the best character in the film.
The Pastor Who Preys is an enjoyable melodrama in the time-honored Lifetime tradition. It offers up several credible suspects and I have to admit that my first guess as to who was guilty turned out to be wrong. Caleb is one smooth operator. I expect he’ll return when they get around to The Pastor Who Stalked Me.
2020’s Teacher’s Shortage starts off with a genuinely disturbing suicide scene.
Through the Shattered Lens 