Review: Greenland (dir. by Ric Roman Waugh)

Posted on January 12, 2026 by Arleigh

“But sometimes you just gotta suck it up. Push through, right? Even when you’re super scared.” — John Garrity

Greenland is one of those disaster movies that sneaks up on you a bit. It sells itself like another “stuff blows up while Gerard Butler scowls” kind of ride, but what’s actually on screen is a more grounded, road-trip survival story about a fractured family trying to stay together as the world quietly ends in the background. Originally slated for a wide theatrical release, the film dropped right as the COVID pandemic shutdown began in early 2020, forcing theaters to close and tanking its box office hopes before it even started. That quick pivot to video-on-demand and streaming services gave it a real second life though, letting it find an audience at home when everyone was hunkered down, doomscrolling real-world chaos that felt eerily similar to the on-screen panic. It’s not a genre reinvention, but it’s a solid entry that balances tense set pieces with surprisingly sincere family drama, even if it leans hard on contrivances and some uneven effects along the way.

The setup is simple: John Garrity (Gerard Butler), his estranged wife Allison (Morena Baccarin), and their young son Nathan are thrown into chaos when a supposedly “spectacle only” comet called Clarke turns out to be a civilization-ending event. The family receives a government alert selecting them for evacuation, which kicks off a desperate scramble through crowded bases, riots, and crumbling infrastructure as they try to get to a classified bunker system in Greenland before impact. The structure is very much “point A to point B with escalating obstacles,” and if you’ve seen any road-movie apocalypse story, you can probably predict the broad strokes: separation, dangerous strangers, moral compromises, last-minute reunions, and a hopeful-but-not-too-happy ending.

What makes Greenland stand out, at least compared to louder fare like Geostorm or the Emmerich filmography, is the way it shrinks the perspective down to the family level. The script keeps the camera glued to people on the ground instead of spending time with scientists in war rooms or presidents giving big speeches, so the apocalypse feels like a series of frightening news alerts and glimpses of distant fire instead of a nonstop CGI showreel. That choice works in the film’s favor; the tension comes less from “how big is the explosion?” and more from whether this specific kid gets his medication in time or whether this specific couple makes it through a checkpoint together.

Gerard Butler reins in his usual action-hero mode and plays John as a somewhat worn-down, very fallible guy who’s been messing up at home long before the comet showed up. He’s not the indestructible savior archetype; he panics, he makes mistakes, and he ends up in violent situations that feel ugly instead of triumphant, especially during a grim sequence on a truck full of evacuees where a man tries to take his wristband and everything spirals. Butler’s limited but believable emotional range works here, and you can see why some viewers singled this out as one of his better recent performances in a genre that usually just uses him as a gruff mascot.

Morena Baccarin gets a bit more to play than disaster-movie wives usually do, which is a pleasant surprise. Allison’s arc runs parallel to John’s for large chunks of the film as she navigates looters, manipulative would-be rescuers, and the absolute nightmare scenario of having her child kidnapped by a couple trying to pass him off as their own to gain access to evacuation flights. Baccarin sells the mix of desperation and competence; she’s constantly stuck in situations where the “right” moral call is murky, but the film never reduces her to someone who just waits around for John to fix things.

The emotional spine of the story rests on the family dynamic and the small, very human interactions they have with strangers along the way. You get scenes with compassionate people—like the FEMA workers who listen to Nathan when he insists he’s been kidnapped—that remind you the apocalypse doesn’t instantly turn everyone into a villain, even as the script also leans into the uglier side of survival instinct. That push and pull between kindness and cruelty keeps Greenland from feeling completely nihilistic, and it lines up with the recurring idea that the real threat is less the comet itself than what people are willing to do to outrun it.

On the disaster side of things, the film works with a mid-sized budget, and you can feel that restraint in both good and bad ways. When the CGI is kept at a distance—comet fragments streaking across the sky, distant impacts lighting the horizon, a sudden shockwave rolling through a neighborhood—it does a solid job of selling scope without drawing too much attention to its limitations. Up close, though, the seams show: some of the destruction shots and digital fireballs look cheap, which undercuts moments that are clearly meant to be awe-inspiring or terrifying, something multiple viewers have criticized as “not consistently convincing CGI effects.”

Pacing-wise, Greenland rarely slows down, which is both a strength and a drawback. The film opens with domestic tension and immediately starts ratcheting things up: news of impacts, sudden evacuation notices, airport chaos, violent confrontations, and constant travel. That forward momentum keeps the film from dragging, but it also leads to what some viewers see as “too many plot twists and always new obstacles to overcome,” a sense that the script keeps piling on one more crisis just to keep the adrenaline high.

Because the film tries to have it both ways—grounded survival and genre thrills—it occasionally betrays its own realism. The amount of coincidence needed to reunite characters after brutal separations, or to get the family to exactly the right airfield and exactly the right plane, feels contrived even by disaster-movie standards. By the time the story reaches its final act in Greenland, complete with last-minute sprinting toward bunkers while the worst of the comet hits, you can feel it edging closer to the “unfortunately genre-typical heroic towards the end” vibe that some reviewers pointed out.

Where Greenland does feel a bit different from many peers is in tone. It’s not quippy, it’s not self-aware, and it does not pause for big “cool” shots of landmarks getting obliterated just for spectacle. The destruction is mostly glimpsed from the vantage point of regular people, via news broadcasts or distant views, which makes the apocalypse feel weirdly more intimate and plausible, like something you’d doomscroll rather than watch unfold from a helicopter. That seriousness is refreshing if you’re tired of disaster movies that treat mass death as a theme park ride, but it also means the film can come off as dour if you were hoping for more escapist fun.

Reception-wise, Greenland landed in that “better than expected, still not amazing” territory with both critics and audiences. Some viewers praised it as “one of the best disaster movies” of recent years specifically because it prioritizes human drama over “weightless CG spectacle,” calling out how tense and emotionally engaging the smaller-scale approach feels. Others shrugged it off as “usual disaster film fare,” pointing to its predictable structure, familiar character beats, and lack of a truly clever story, saying it’s fine for passing time but not particularly memorable. Its streaming surge during lockdowns only amplified word-of-mouth, turning what could’ve been a forgotten theatrical casualty into a go-to comfort scare for pandemic viewers craving controlled chaos.

Ultimately, Greenland sits in a comfortable middle lane. It’s not trying to reinvent the genre, and it doesn’t fully escape its clichés, but it does care more about its characters than its body count, and that goes a long way. If you go in expecting a grounded, on-the-road family survival story with occasional bursts of large-scale chaos, the film mostly delivers, bolstered by committed performances from Butler and Baccarin and a tone that takes the end of the world just seriously enough. If you’re looking for jaw-dropping effects or a genuinely surprising narrative, it will probably feel like a solid, slightly grim, one-and-done watch that does its job and quietly exits before wearing out its welcome—especially resonant for those who caught it streaming while the real world felt a little too apocalyptic itself.

Review: Constantine (dir. by Francis Lawrence)

Posted on January 11, 2026 by Arleigh

“Heaven and Hell are right here, behind every wall, every window, the world behind the world. And we’re smack in the middle.” — John Constantine

Constantine is one of those mid-2000s comic book adaptations that never quite hit mainstream classic status but has quietly built a loyal cult following, and it is pretty easy to see why once you revisit it. On the surface it is a supernatural action movie about a chain‑smoking exorcist stomping demons in Los Angeles; underneath, it is wrestling with guilt, faith, and whether redemption is even possible for someone who does not think they deserve it. The film is messy in spots but strangely compelling, and that tension between pulpy cool and spiritual angst is a big part of its charm.

Keanu Reeves plays John Constantine as a tired, bitter man who has seen way too much of both Hell and humanity to have patience for either. This version of Constantine is loosely adapted from DC’s Hellblazer comics, but the film leans into a distinctly Hollywood noir vibe: he is not a wisecracking British punk in a tan trench coat so much as a burnt‑out L.A. exorcist in a black suit who chain‑smokes like it is a survival mechanism. That shift understandably annoyed some comic fans, but taken on its own terms, this Constantine works. Reeves’s usual reserved style actually fits a guy who has emotionally checked out; he moves through scenes like someone who has accepted that his life is transactional and almost over, and there is something darkly funny about how little awe he shows when confronted with angels and demons. Even when the script gives him on‑the‑nose lines about damnation, he plays them with a kind of deadpan resignation that keeps the character from turning into a parody.

The basic setup is simple enough: Constantine can see “half‑breeds,” angelic and demonic entities who nudge humanity toward good or evil while technically obeying a truce between Heaven and Hell. As a child, he tried to kill himself because of these visions, and that suicide attempt has doomed his soul to Hell. Now he works as a freelance exorcist, trying to earn his way back into God’s good graces, not out of pure faith but out of sheer self‑preservation. That dynamic gives the movie a strong hook—this is a protagonist who is doing the “right” thing for profoundly self‑centered reasons. When he gets pulled into a mystery involving a police detective, Angela (Rachel Weisz), investigating her twin sister’s apparent suicide, the film folds in a noirish murder case, religious prophecy, and a scheme that could break the balance between Heaven and Hell. It is all a bit overstuffed, but there is a certain pleasure in how seriously the movie commits to its supernatural mythology.

Visually, Constantine is where the film really separates itself from a lot of its contemporaries. Director Francis Lawrence leans hard into a grungy, stylized urban Hellscape—Los Angeles feels damp, sickly, and spiritually polluted even before anyone literally steps into Hell. When Constantine does cross over, Hell is portrayed as a blasted version of our world, frozen in an eternal atomic blast, buildings shattered and howling winds full of ash and debris. It is not subtle, but it is memorable, and many of the images still hold up surprisingly well for a 2005 effects‑heavy movie. The demon designs are gnarly without becoming cartoonish, the exorcism sequences have a tactile, physical quality, and the movie uses practical effects and lighting cleverly to smooth over the limitations of its CG. Even small visual touches—like holy relics turned into weapons or tattoos used as mystical triggers—help sell the idea that this world is saturated with hidden religious warfare.

The cast around Reeves does a lot of heavy lifting. Rachel Weisz brings warmth and vulnerability to Angela, grounding the story whenever it threatens to float away in theological technobabble. Her dual role as both Angela and her deceased twin gives the plot some emotional weight beyond cosmic stakes. Tilda Swinton’s Gabriel is one of the film’s secret weapons: androgynous, cool, and quietly menacing, Gabriel feels alien in a way that fits an angel who has spent too long watching humans from a distance. Then there is Peter Stormare’s Satan, who shows up late in the game and somehow steals the entire third act with a performance that is gleefully gross and oddly charismatic; his version of Lucifer is barefoot, in a white suit stained with tar, amused and disgusted by Constantine in equal measure. These performances keep the movie watchable even when the script gets tangled in its own mythology.

Tonally, Constantine lives in an odd space between horror, action, and supernatural thriller. On one hand, it has jump scares, grotesque demons, and a very dark sense of humor. On the other, it features extended action beats where Constantine straps on a holy shotgun and goes demon hunting like a paranormal hitman. The film is at its best when it leans into slow‑burn dread and eerie atmosphere—scenes like the early exorcism or Angela’s first encounters with the supernatural feel genuinely unsettling. When it shifts into more conventional action territory, it is fun but less distinctive; some sequences play like obligatory “we need a set piece here” insertions rather than organic escalations of the story. The score and sound design help stitch it all together, layering in ominous drones, choral elements, and sharp sound cues that emphasize the hellish undertones without getting too bombastic.

One of the more interesting aspects of Constantine is how it treats belief and morality. The film’s theology is a mash‑up of Catholic imagery, comic‑book lore, and Hollywood invention, and if you are looking for doctrinal accuracy, you will probably walk away frustrated. But as metaphor, it works better than it has any right to. God and the devil are treated almost like distant power brokers using Earth as their battleground, the angels and demons as middle management enforcing a “rules of the game” structure that Constantine constantly pushes against. What saves it from feeling totally cynical is that the film does not ultimately let Constantine win by gaming the system; his big climactic play hinges on a genuinely selfless act. There is a sense, however stylized, that grace and sacrifice still matter, even in a world that treats salvation like paperwork. At the same time, the movie is very much a product of its edgy 2000s era, and at points it flirts with the idea that faith is mostly about loopholes and bargaining, which might put some viewers off.

That brings up another key point: Constantine is absolutely not a family‑friendly comic book movie. It is full of disturbing imagery, body horror, and bleak subject matter like suicide, damnation, and spiritual despair. The violence is often grotesque rather than purely action‑oriented, and the general mood is closer to a horror film than a superhero romp. The R rating is well earned. For some audiences, those elements will be exactly what makes the movie interesting—a comic book adaptation that is not afraid to be nasty and heavy. For others, the relentless grimness and graphic content will feel excessive, especially when paired with a mythology that is, frankly, all over the place.

Where Constantine stumbles most is in its storytelling clarity and pacing. The film loves its jargon: half‑breeds, the Spear of Destiny, balance between realms, rules of engagement, obscure relics tossed into dialogue with minimal explanation. If you are not already inclined to meet the movie halfway, it can feel like a pile of cool‑sounding concepts that never fully cohere into a clean narrative. The central mystery—what really happened to Angela’s sister and why—is engaging early on, but as the plot widens into apocalyptic stakes, some of the emotional throughline gets lost in exposition. The pacing can be uneven too, moving from slow, moody sequences to abrupt bursts of action, then back to dense dialogue. It is rarely boring, but it can feel disjointed.

Compared to the Hellblazer source material, the film definitely sandpapers off some of John Constantine’s rougher, more politically charged edges and transplants him into a more conventional action framework. Fans of the comics often point to the loss of his British identity, the absence of his punk roots, and the more simplified view of magic and the occult as major flaws. Those criticisms are fair if you are judging the adaptation on fidelity. As a stand‑alone movie, though, Constantine carves out a distinct identity: a moody, grimy, spiritually obsessed supernatural noir built around a protagonist who is more tired than heroic. It is less about clever schemes and more about a man who has done terrible things realizing that the only way out is to finally stop acting in his own interest.

In the years since its release, Constantine has aged better than a lot of early comic book movies. The visual style remains striking, the performances are still strong, and its willingness to be weird and bleak makes it stand out in a landscape that increasingly favors quip‑heavy, crowd‑pleasing superhero fare. The flip side is that its flaws—clunky exposition, a sometimes incoherent mythology, and a very specific grim tone—are just as apparent as they were in 2005. Whether it works for you will depend a lot on how much patience you have for religious horror dressed up as action cinema. Taken as a whole, Constantine is an imperfect but memorable ride: stylish, occasionally profound, frequently ridiculous, and ultimately more interesting than many cleaner, safer adaptations.

Guilty Pleasure No. 98: Raw Deal (dir. by John Irvin)

Posted on January 9, 2026 by Arleigh

There is a point in every Arnold Schwarzenegger fan’s journey where they eventually circle back to Raw Deal and go, “Wait, how did this one slip through the cracks?” Set between Commando and Predator, this 1986 action vehicle often feels like the red-headed stepchild of Arnold’s golden era: a half-forgotten mob thriller dressed up as a one-man-army shoot-’em-up, with an undercover plot that keeps tripping over itself. Before Arnold was secret agent Harry Tasker in True Lies, he was already workshopping that whole undercover persona as former FBI man Mark Kaminski in Raw Deal. There is something strangely compelling about watching him play at being slick, whether he is posing as “Joseph Brenner” in mob circles or later reinventing himself as a suburban-family-man-turned-super-spy. Yet for all its clumsiness, tonal whiplash, and baffling choices, Raw Deal settles into that sweet, trashy groove where “this is bad” and “this is kind of awesome” blissfully merge. It is, in the purest sense, a guilty pleasure.

The setup is straightforward on paper. Arnold plays Mark Kaminski, a former FBI agent pushed out of the bureau for beating a suspect who assaulted and murdered a child, now stuck as a small-town sheriff in North Carolina with an unhappy, alcoholic wife and a life that feels like exile. His shot at redemption comes when his old FBI buddy Harry Shannon (Darren McGavin) recruits him for an off-the-books vendetta: infiltrate the Chicago mafia responsible for Shannon’s son’s death and tear them apart from the inside, in exchange for a possible path back into the bureau. Kaminski fakes his death, rebrands himself as “Joseph Brenner,” and sets out to worm his way into the organization run by boss Luigi Patrovita (Sam Wanamaker), while juggling mob politics, double-crosses, and a steady escalation of gunfire.

What makes the Kaminski era so weirdly fascinating is how hard the film leans on Arnold as a suave operator when his natural screen charisma is more brute-force than smooth-talking. In Raw Deal, he stalks through nightclubs and mob hangouts as an “undercover” tough guy, and you can almost see the movie trying to stretch him into a more traditional cool-gangster mode even as his sheer physicality keeps breaking the illusion. That tension carries right into True Lies, where the humor finally acknowledges how absurd it is to treat this gigantic Austrian bodybuilder as a low-key spy. The seeds of Harry Tasker’s double life are there in Kaminski: the awkward attempts at suave posturing, the undercover role-play, and the sense that the film is constantly asking the audience to accept him as something more than just the gun-toting tank he so effortlessly embodies. That tonal tug-of-war is kind of a mess, yet it’s also exactly why the movie is weirdly fun to revisit.

As an action piece, Raw Deal is very hit-or-miss, but when it hits, it goes all in on 80s excess. Director John Irvin stages a number of shootouts, but the standout sequence is the gravel pit massacre where Kaminski tears through mob soldiers with Mick Jagger’s “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” blaring on the soundtrack, turning what should be a grim set piece into something closer to a music video about vengeance. The climactic assault on Patrovita’s casino base is another high point, with Kaminski stalking room to room, methodically mowing down henchmen in suits as the film abandons any pretense of undercover subtlety and embraces straight-up carnage. These moments are absurdly over the top, but they’re the reason the film lingers in the memory more than some “better” constructed movies from the same era.

The problem is that the film around those set pieces often feels oddly slack. For a movie with such a simple premise—ex-cop goes undercover in the mob—Raw Deal somehow manages to tangle itself in muddled plotting and underdeveloped subplots. Roger Ebert complained that the story is so basic it should be impossible to screw up, yet the movie still finds ways to make motivations cloudy and relationships confusing, especially when it comes to FBI leaks and why certain hits are happening. There are scenes, like the cemetery assassination setup, that should be loaded with emotional and narrative clarity but instead play as strangely opaque, leaving viewers wondering less “What will happen next?” and more “What exactly is going on?”

Despite the narrative wobbling, the cast gives the film more personality than it probably deserves. Schwarzenegger is still in that phase where his acting is limited but his screen presence is undeniable, and Raw Deal leans into that presence by letting him oscillate between stoic enforcer and deadpan comedian. He is not as effortlessly iconic here as he is in The Terminator or Predator, but he has a grounded gruffness in the early scenes as the weary small-town sheriff, and a playful swagger once he shifts into mob-infiltrator mode. The movie’s tonal confusion sometimes works in his favor: when he drops a ridiculous line in the middle of a supposedly serious undercover situation, it breaks the film’s self-seriousness in a way that oddly makes it more enjoyable.

On the supporting side, Darren McGavin brings a welcome dose of worn-out moral anguish as Harry Shannon, a man consumed by grief and desperate enough to go rogue, while Sam Wanamaker’s Patrovita and Paul Shenar’s lieutenant Max Keller give the mob side just enough theatrical menace to keep things lively. Kathryn Harrold’s Monique—Patrovita’s associate and Kaminski’s sort-of ally—is more underwritten than she should be, but she adds a smoky, world-weary charm to an otherwise thin role, bringing a touch of noir-vibe melancholy to a film that mostly cares about bullets. The dynamic between Kaminski and Monique hints at a more emotionally grounded movie lurking underneath, one that never fully arrives but peeks through in their quieter moments.

Visually and stylistically, Raw Deal fits comfortably into the mid-80s action aesthetic: slightly grimy urban backdrops, neon-lit nightclubs, smoky gambling dens, and anonymous industrial sites where bad guys go to die. John Irvin, better known for dramas and war films, occasionally tries to inject a more grounded tone, but the movie keeps undercutting that with comic-book logic and stylized violence, making it feel as if two different films are wrestling for control. On one level, that is a flaw; on another, that disjointed energy is part of what gives Raw Deal its “so off it becomes its own thing” quality, especially when watched now with decades of ironic distance.

Critically, the film was not well-loved on release, and its reputation has never really recovered in a mainstream sense. It holds a low Rotten Tomatoes score and only middling numbers on Metacritic, with reviewers at the time describing it as muddled, clichéd, and cheap compared to other action fare. Yet audience reactions have always skewed a bit warmer, with CinemaScore polling showing a respectable “B” grade and plenty of fans over the years framing it as an uneven but entertaining entry in Schwarzenegger’s catalog. The distance of time has turned Raw Deal into one of those movies where people admit its flaws freely but still find themselves rewatching it, chuckling at its corniness and vibing with its shootouts.

As a guilty pleasure, Raw Deal works because it is simultaneously too serious and not serious enough. It wants to be a gritty mob infiltration story but keeps indulging in gleefully excessive violence and dumb jokes; it dreams of being a tight cop thriller but never quite musters the narrative discipline. Yet that tension gives it a peculiar charm: it is a film that fails to be the sleek genre picture it might have been, but succeeds as a scrappy time capsule of 80s action sensibilities, carried by Arnold’s charisma and a few standout set pieces.

Viewed today, Raw Deal is hard to defend as “good” in any conventional sense, especially when measured against Commando’s pure cartoon energy or Predator’s lean genre perfection. But as a late-night watch, beer in hand, half-laughing at the dialogue while leaning forward during the gravel pit and casino shootouts, it absolutely delivers the specific pleasure it promises. The system may have given Mark Kaminski a raw deal, but for Arnold fans willing to embrace something messy, loud, and gloriously dated, this film still feels like a trashy little win

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Review: Face/Off (dir. by John Woo)

Posted on January 8, 2026 by Arleigh

“It’s like looking in a mirror. Only… Not.” — Castor Troy with Sean Archer’s face

Face/Off is one of those late‑90s action movies that feels like it escaped from an alternate universe where “too much” is a compliment, not a warning label. It is bigger than it needs to be, sillier than the premise probably deserves, and yet somehow more emotionally earnest than most modern blockbusters. The result is a film that swings hard between breathtakingly good and gloriously ridiculous, and that tension is exactly what makes it worth revisiting.

At its core, Face/Off is a story about two men who literally become each other, but it works because it never treats that concept as a small thing. John Travolta’s Sean Archer is an FBI agent consumed by grief after the death of his young son, while Nicolas Cage’s Castor Troy is a theatrical terrorist who seems to enjoy being evil as a kind of performance art. The sci‑fi hook—cutting off their faces and swapping them—does not remotely pass a reality test, but the movie leans into the idea with such conviction that you either roll with it or get left behind in the opening act.

The big selling point is the acting showcase baked into that swap. Watching Travolta play a supposedly buttoned‑up lawman unraveling inside the body of a flamboyant villain, while Cage dials his madness into something deceptively controlled, gives the film a strange, theatrical energy. There is a real pleasure in tracking how each actor steals little gestures and rhythms from the other, so scenes become layered: what you’re seeing on the surface and who you know is “underneath” the borrowed face are constantly at odds.

That identity confusion isn’t just a gimmick; it gives the film some surprising emotional weight. Archer’s grief isn’t window dressing—his obsession with bringing down Troy comes from the trauma of losing his son, and the face swap forces him to confront who he’s become in that tunnel‑vision pursuit. Meanwhile, Troy, once inside Archer’s life, plays “family man” in a way that’s both gross and unnervingly intimate, manipulating Archer’s wife Eve and daughter Jamie with a mix of faux tenderness and predatory charm.

Joan Allen, as Eve, quietly grounds all this insanity. Her character spends a good chunk of the film being gaslit on a level that would break most people, yet Allen plays her with a subdued intelligence that makes the eventual moment of realization feel earned instead of convenient. Dominique Swain’s Jamie gets more of a stock “rebellious teen” setup, but the way Troy‑as‑Archer slithers into her life gives some scenes a genuinely uncomfortable edge, underlining how invasive the villain’s masquerade really is.

Of course, this is a John Woo movie, so the drama is constantly fighting for space with balletic gunfights and slow‑motion chaos. The action is elaborate and stylized, full of dual pistols, flying bodies, and highly choreographed carnage that feels closer to a violent dance than a grounded firefight. Whether it is the prison escape with its magnetic boots or the church shootout framed with doves and religious imagery, Woo stages set pieces as big operatic crescendos, not just plot checkpoints.

That operatic tone is both a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, the heightened style matches the bonkers premise, letting the movie exist in a kind of hyper‑reality where emotions and bullets fly with the same intensity. On the other hand, the sheer excess sometimes undercuts the more serious beats, as if the film can’t decide whether it wants to be a heartfelt story about grief and identity or the wildest action comic you have ever flipped through.

The script occasionally gestures at deeper themes but rarely lingers on them. Archer’s time in a secret off‑the‑books prison hints at broader commentary about state power and dehumanization, yet the movie mostly uses the setting as a backdrop for an escape sequence rather than exploring what it means. Similarly, Troy’s infiltration of Archer’s family brushes against ideas about how easily trust and intimacy can be weaponized, but the story is more interested in cranking up tension than really unpacking that psychological damage.

Where the writing truly shines is in the mechanics of the cat‑and‑mouse relationship. The film keeps finding new ways to twist the knife, whether it’s Archer stuck in Troy’s body trying to convince former enemies he’s changed sides, or Troy using Archer’s authority to erase evidence and tighten the trap. Some of the most satisfying scenes are the quieter confrontations where both men have to stay in character in front of others while aiming verbal daggers at each other, maintaining the illusion even as their hatred escalates.

Still, Face/Off is not exactly a model of restraint or logic, and that’s where some fair criticism comes in. The science of the face swap is nonsense even by sci‑fi standards, and the movie’s attempts to hand‑wave voice, body shape, and mannerisms require a level of suspension of disbelief that will be deal‑breaking for some viewers. On top of that, the third act piles on so many stunts and reversals that fatigue can set in; not every action beat feels necessary when the emotional arc has already hit its key notes.

There is also the question of tone in how the film treats violence and trauma. The opening murder of Archer’s son is genuinely brutal, and the later manipulation of his family taps into real discomfort, yet the movie often snaps back into cool‑shot mode a moment later, as if unsure how long it wants to sit with pain. That tonal whiplash can make it hard to fully buy into the emotional stakes, because the film keeps reminding you it is here, first and foremost, to put on a show.

Despite those flaws, Face/Off has aged in a strangely resilient way. In an era where many big action movies flatten actors into interchangeable cogs in a CG machine, there’s something refreshing about how much personality this film allows its leads to display, even when they’re chewing the scenery. The movie’s excess becomes part of its charm: it feels handcrafted in its madness, a spectacle built around big performances rather than just big effects.

Face/Off is neither a straightforward masterpiece nor a disposable guilty pleasure; it lives in a messy, entertaining space between those extremes. The film delivers memorable performances, inventive set pieces, and a surprisingly sincere emotional throughline, but it also leans on ludicrous science, tonal inconsistency, and overindulgent action. If you can accept its central absurdity and meet it on its own heightened wavelength, it remains a wild, engaging ride that showcases what happens when star power, genre bravado, and unfiltered style crash into each other at full speed.

Review: The Accountant 2 (dir. by Gavin O’Connor)

Posted on January 4, 2026 by Arleigh

“Is there anything better than punching somebody in the face who’s got it coming?” — Braxton

The Accountant 2 plunges back into the offbeat world of Christian Wolff, Ben Affleck’s autistic accounting savant who wields a calculator and a combat prowess with equal deadliness. Directed by Gavin O’Connor, the sequel reunites Christian with his wayward brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) as they unravel a conspiracy triggered by the murder of FinCEN director Raymond King (J.K. Simmons), pulling in agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) for a tense alliance. It cranks up the action and brotherly banter from the 2016 original, delivering bursts of gritty fun, but bogs down in bloated plotting and uneven tone that dilute its punchy premise.

The story explodes open with King’s brutal assassination, his dying message—”find the accountant”—dragging Christian out of his trailer-bound solitude. Medina taps Wolff’s uncanny financial insight to sift through King’s jumbled clues, tracing a trail from a pizza parlor’s money-laundering scheme to a vicious human trafficking ring straddling the Juarez border. A sleek assassin named Anaïs (Daniella Pineda) haunts the edges, her fragmented memories linking to Christian’s murky history, while Braxton joins for brawn and levity, transforming the probe into a chaotic sibling odyssey. The narrative sprawls across factories, motels, and hacker dens, blending forensic number-crunching with explosive confrontations, though it piles on subplots—like selfie-stalking tech whizzes and cartel infighting—that strain coherence without sharp resolutions.

Affleck deepens Christian’s portrayal, blending rigid logic with flashes of wry humor that feel more lived-in than the first film’s stiffness. He shines in quirky beats, like speed-dating disasters fueled by probabilistic algorithms or spotting fiscal fraud in pizza dough sales, then enforcing confessions with a vicious finger-twist. Yet the character teeters into trope territory, his neurodivergence often serving as shorthand for unstoppable violence rather than a nuanced lens on isolation. Bernthal dominates as Braxton, his raw charisma and emotional cracks—vulnerable confessions evolving into rowdy bar dances teaching Christian social flow—infuse the film with infectious warmth. Their rooftop schemes and escort-aided stakeouts pulse with buddy-movie spark, a major merit that carries weaker stretches.

Action remains the film’s powerhouse, surpassing the original in raw ferocity if not elegance. The pizza factory brawl erupts from interrogation into a whirlwind of pipes, knives, and improvised carnage, while garage pursuits and a border compound siege unleash R-rated savagery—precise headshots, joint-snapping grapples, even a sniper duel echoing thriller classics. O’Connor’s practical stuntwork and sweaty cinematography ground the chaos effectively, with a throbbing score that heightens tension without flash. These sequences thrill, but the climax devolves into a generic bullet storm, missing the original warehouse fight’s balletic intimacy, and the 132-minute runtime drags amid repetitive cop-agenta standoffs.

Medina’s arc offers steady grit, as Addai-Robinson charts her shift from protocol-bound skeptic to off-book partner, her rapport with Christian adding subtle friction to the bromance. Simmons maximizes his opener, fending off thugs in a dive bar before a fatal shot, nailing a tone of immediate peril. Pineda’s Anaïs cuts a striking figure—poised killer grappling with resurfaced trauma—but her threat fizzles, undermined by sparse buildup and a rushed tie-in to the brothers’ past. Lesser foes like the greasy pizza kingpin or border thug Tomas propel the plot competently yet forgettably, while Christian’s handler Justine (Annie Oosterom) doles out remote wisdom that’s underutilized.

At its core, The Accountant 2 wrestles with family bonds and hidden pains, pitting Christian’s analytical shell against Braxton’s impulsive soul in redemption-tinged flashbacks. Lighter quirks—honky-tonk flirtations, cat cameos, goofy T-shirts—humanize without diluting the edge, crafting a playful hyperviolence that charms in detours like smart-home hacks gone absurd. These merits shine brightest in hangout vibes, where meandering chats and line dances breathe life into the formula. Failures creep in through diluted quirks: the accounting genius takes a backseat to rote crime-thriller beats, cartel clichés overwhelm the fresh oddity, and pacing lurches from taut kills to listless exposition.

Technical craft holds firm, with O’Connor’s no-frills visuals capturing industrial grime and motel seediness, favoring tangible impacts over CGI gloss. The R-rating justifies itself via unflinching gore and profanity, satisfying gorehounds, though humor occasionally jars—like trailer quips amid slaughter—disrupting tonal balance. Compared to the debut’s sleeper surprise, this entry coasts on familiarity, expanding the Wolff mythos with teases of future clashes but lacking the tight ingenuity that sparked cult love.

The Accountant 2 succeeds as a rowdy sequel when leaning on its stars’ chemistry, visceral fights, and odd-couple heart, making it a blast for action cravings. It falters, however, in overreaching scope, diluting Christian’s uniqueness amid familiar shadows and slack momentum. Solid for fans seeking sibling sparks and calculated brutality, it lands as entertaining excess rather than essential evolution—catch it for the highs, forgive the math that doesn’t quite balance.

Review: We Bury the Dead (dir. by Zak Hilditch)

Posted on January 3, 2026 by Arleigh

“You can’t keep digging if you’re still holding onto the shovel of the past.” — Clay

We Bury the Dead knows exactly what genre it’s working in and makes no qualms about it, blending zombie tropes with a refreshingly modest scale that keeps the focus tight on one woman’s personal quest amid catastrophe. Directed and written by Zak Hilditch in his first effort since These Final Hours, the film unfolds in Tasmania after the U.S. President accidentally detonates an experimental explosive device, killing 500,000 people—some from the blast, others from a pulse that shuts down their brains. Daisy Ridley stars as Ava, who joins a body retrieval unit searching for her missing husband, only to face complications when the corpses begin showing eerie signs of life.

The setup draws from familiar zombie beats but refreshes them through its grounded, intimate lens. Rather than globe-trotting stakes or worldwide pandemonium, the story stays glued to Ava’s hip as she combs the ruins, making her emotional journey the true center of gravity. Gradual flashbacks peek into Ava and her husband’s rocky relationship before the event, adding layers to her drive without overwhelming the present-tense dread. Encounters with traumatized military forces emerge as secondary antagonists, heightening tension through human flaws rather than just the undead threat.

Daisy Ridley’s reserved yet gripping performance anchors everything, deftly avoiding caricature by pulling back just enough to hint at deeper turmoil bubbling beneath Ava’s surface. She brings a quiet physicality to the role—slumped shoulders during endless retrievals, micro-expressions like a jaw tightening over a child’s toy or hands trembling before steadying—that fills the sparse dialogue scenes with unspoken pain. Ridley knows when to unleash raw emotion, as in survival scraps with reanimating bodies or a claustrophobic clash with soldier Riley (Mark Coles Smith), where her eyes convey fear, rage, and clarity in equal measure. Her restraint evolves into resolve by the end, distilling Ava’s arc into a wordless shift from numb hope to tentative agency, her face a map of acceptance and lingering sorrow.

Even amid the somber tone, Hilditch infuses energy to keep things lively: a bright pop-rock track over chilling explosion fallout imagery, retrieval crew members partying hard off-duty, or Brenton Thwaites’ Clay (a reasonably charming co-lead) masking horror with dark comedy. These beats prevent the film from dragging into pure depression, balancing Ava’s grief with flickers of messy humanity. Clay’s warmth breaks up her isolation through shared exhaustion and hesitant bonds, while his humor underscores the absurdity of survival.

The zombies themselves spark a love-hate dynamic, refusing the z-word like Shaun of the Dead but delivering undead with a standout twist: teeth grinding to shards, visually grotesque but sonically haunting in a way that crawls under the skin. They start subtle, twitching amid body bags, before ramping to aggressive charges in the final act—though their motivations stay murky, adding unease. This sound design stands as one of the film’s boldest, most horrific choices, turning every onscreen appearance into an auditory assault that lingers longer than the visuals. Violence stays blunt and quick, feeling like grim necessities in a broken world rather than showy spectacles.

Craft-wise, the modest production shines. Cinematography captures Tasmania’s vast emptiness and suffocating interiors, with dust motes and shadowed hallways amplifying emotional compression. Design sells the halted lives—scattered toys, frozen family photos—without CGI excess, grounding the pulse-induced apocalypse in tangible loss. The 95-minute runtime clocks in tight, its observational repetition mirroring grief’s grind while building to disruptive spikes of undead or human peril.

Pacing favors atmosphere over escalation, risking sluggishness in routine retrievals but fitting the theme of numbing loss punctuated by shocks. The finale embraces ambiguity, prioritizing Ava’s internal shift over tidy resolutions to the outbreak or weapon’s fallout, leaving bigger questions underdeveloped to stay personal.

Ridley’s work elevates the familiar tropes, her internalized subtlety proving ideal for this scaled-down zombie tale that prioritizes haunting sound, emotional depth, and quiet resilience over bombast. We Bury the Dead may lean on genre staples, but its fresh restraint and sonic chills make it a compelling, if divisive, mood-driven entry—perfect for those craving horror that’s more about enduring the aftermath than outrunning the horde.

Review: Strange Days (dir. by Kathryn Bigelow)

Posted on December 31, 2025 by Arleigh

“Memories are meant to fade, Lenny. They’re designed that way for a reason.” — Lornette “Mace” Mason

Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days plunges into a gritty, near-future Los Angeles teetering on the edge of the millennium, where illegal “SQUID” technology lets people hijack others’ sensory experiences, fueling a black-market addiction to raw thrills. Released in 1995 with a screenplay by James Cameron and Jay Cocks, the film stars Ralph Fiennes as Lenny Nero, a shady ex-cop dealing these clips amid escalating racial tensions and urban chaos. At over two hours, it mixes cyberpunk visuals with thriller tension, crafting an immersive world that pulses with sensory overload and moral ambiguity.

The story opens with a heart-pounding sequence—a robber’s point-of-view heist captured in one seamless, breathless shot that drops you right into the adrenaline-fueled action, setting a template for the film’s signature subjective dives into chaos. Lenny navigates this underworld, peddling clips of highs and dangers to escape his own regrets, especially over a past love, singer Faith Justin, brought to life by Juliette Lewis with vulnerable intensity that captures the pull of faded dreams. He pulls in his loyal bodyguard Mace, Angela Bassett delivering a fierce, grounded performance, as a mysterious clip hints at deeper corruption involving cops and power players in the city, drawing them into a web of intrigue that tests loyalties amid the neon haze. Bigelow leans into the tech’s seductive pull, where users feel every rush or rush of emotion, blurring lines between observer and participant in uncomfortably real ways that linger long after the credits roll.

Visually, the film explodes off the screen, with cinematographer Matthew Leonetti’s dynamic camera and Bigelow’s high-octane style painting L.A. as a neon-drenched maze of helicopters, crowds, and holographic distractions that feel alive and oppressive. That kinetic opening blends POV chaos with slick editing that amps the disorientation, making every frame pulse with urgency. The world feels authentically grimy and multicultural, alive with New Year’s Eve energy in clubs and streets, evoking millennial anxiety through thumping sound design and distorted audio bleeds that heighten the sensory assault. Bigelow channels her action roots into visceral set pieces that turn the future into something tangible and tense, rewarding close attention to the details that build immersion, from flickering holograms to rain-slicked streets buzzing with tension.

Fiennes captures Lenny’s sleazy charisma perfectly—a sweaty, chain-smoking hustler whose charm masks desperation, keeping him oddly relatable even as his flaws pile up in moments of quiet vulnerability. Bassett dominates as Mace, a tough wheelwoman with unshakeable integrity, her presence anchoring the frenzy and elevating every exchange with quiet strength that cuts through the chaos like a blade. Lewis adds raw edge to Faith, trapped in a web of influence and ambition, her scenes crackling with desperation and fire. Tom Sizemore brings twitchy noir flavor as Max, Lenny’s private investigator buddy who adds layers of unreliable grit to their partnership, his manic energy bouncing off Fiennes in tense, believable banter. The cast meshes well in the overload, though some peripheral figures lean into cyberpunk stereotypes like street dealers and digital oddities, occasionally stretching the vibe thin without fully fleshing out their roles amid the relentless pace.

At its core, Strange Days digs into tech’s grip on empathy in a numb world, where SQUID clips turn voyeurism into full-body complicity, raising tough questions about detachment, consent, and the thrill of borrowed lives. Lenny’s habit of replaying personal moments underscores the addictive pull of reliving the past, turning memory into a dangerous escape that erodes real connections. Bigelow threads in sharp commentary on racism and authority, drawing from real ’90s unrest, with Mace pushing for truth amid systemic shadows in ways that feel urgent and unflinching, her moral compass a steady force against the moral rot. The infamous rape scene stands out as a gut-wrenching pinnacle of this approach, forcing viewers into the perpetrator’s twisted perspective via SQUID playback, amplifying the victim’s terror and the assailant’s depravity to confront voyeuristic horror and power imbalances head-on without pulling punches or easy outs—its raw intensity is jarring, deliberately so, to expose the ethical rot at the tech’s heart. The female-led perspective highlights abuses thoughtfully, adding layers to the spectacle and giving the film a distinctive edge that balances exploitation with unflinching critique.

That said, the film isn’t without bumps, as the plot weaves a tangled web of alliances and betrayals that can feel convoluted under the sensory barrage, occasionally losing focus amid the noise and demanding sharper clarity to match its ambition. Its 145-minute runtime sags midway with Lenny’s brooding and repetitive demos, testing patience before ramping up to its feverish peaks, where the editing could trim some fat for tighter momentum. The climax aims for catharsis amid riots and revelations but lands unevenly, with a hopeful turn that feels rushed or tidy in spots, underplaying certain social threads post-buildup and diluting their harder-hitting potential just when they build to a roar. Some effects show their age, like glitchy clip transitions that disrupt rather than enhance the immersion at times.

Still, these rough edges can’t overshadow the film’s bold highs. Bigelow’s direction thrives on discomfort, using the SQUID concept to mirror how media desensitizes us, making every clip a window into ethical quicksand. The sound design deserves special mention—bass-heavy tracks and visceral screams that bleed from headsets create a claustrophobic intensity, amplifying the tech’s invasive allure. Action beats, from high-speed chases to brutal confrontations, showcase Bigelow’s knack for kinetic choreography, with Bassett’s physicality in the driver’s seat stealing the show. Lenny’s arc, flawed as it is, lands with pathos, his hustler’s denial cracking under pressure to reveal flickers of redemption tied to loyalty and loss.

Strange Days delivers highs that exhilarate and lows that challenge, mirroring its own addictive clips—a raw, uneven ride pulsing with Bigelow’s bold vision that thrives on discomfort and connection. Mace’s decency offers human spark amid the dystopia, balancing provocation with heart in a way that elevates the whole, her bond with Lenny grounding the spectacle in something real. It’s provocative cyberpunk for those craving immersion with bite, a film that doesn’t just show a future but makes you live it, flaws and all, leaving you wired and wary. Fire it up if you’re ready to jack in and feel the rush—just brace for the crash.

Review: Civil War (dir. by Alex Garland)

Posted on December 30, 2025 by Arleigh

“What kind of American are you?” — Unnamed ultranationalist militant

Alex Garland’s Civil War is the kind of movie that feels both uncomfortably close to reality and strangely abstract at the same time, like a nightmare built out of today’s headlines but deliberately smudged at the edges. It plays less like a political thesis and more like a road movie through a country that has already gone past the point of no return, seen through the eyes of people whose job is to look at horror and keep pressing the shutter anyway.

Garland frames the story around war journalists traveling from New York to Washington, D.C., hoping to reach the President before rebel forces do, and that simple premise gives the film a clear spine even when the politics around it stay fuzzy. Kirsten Dunst’s Lee, a veteran photographer, and Cailee Spaeny’s Jessie, a young aspiring shooter, are paired with Wagner Moura’s adrenaline-chasing reporter Joel and Stephen McKinley Henderson’s weary old-timer Sammy, forming a sort of dysfunctional road-trip family driving straight into hell. The setup is classic “last assignment” territory, but the context—an America shattered by an authoritarian third-term president and secessionist forces from places like Texas and California—is what makes the film play like speculative non-fiction rather than pure sci-fi. That Texas-California alliance as the Western Forces stands out as such strange bedfellows, two states about as diametrically opposed as you can get politically and culturally, which subtly hints at just how monstrous the president must be to drive them into the same camp against a common enemy.

The plot itself is pretty straightforward once you strip away the political expectations people bring in. The group moves from one pocket of chaos to another, crossing a patchwork United States where some areas still look almost normal while others are full-on war zones. The tension ramps as they get closer to Charlottesville and then D.C., eventually embedding with Western Forces as they push toward the capital. Along the way, the journalists encounter a series of vignettes—mass graves, roadside militias, bombed-out towns—that feel intentionally episodic, like flipping through the front page of a dozen different conflicts and realizing they all share the same language of fear and dehumanization.

Performance-wise, Dunst is the emotional anchor, playing Lee with a kind of hollowed-out professionalism that feels earned rather than performative. Her character is someone who has seen too many wars abroad and now finds herself documenting one at home, and Dunst sells that numbness without turning Lee into a complete emotional void. Spaeny’s Jessie, meanwhile, is the mirror opposite: all raw nerves and hungry ambition, constantly pushing closer to danger for the shot, until that drive becomes its own kind of addiction. Their dynamic—mentor vs. rookie, caution vs. thrill—gives the movie a human arc to track even when the bigger national stakes remain frustratingly vague.

The supporting cast makes the most of their moments. Moura brings a reckless charm to Joel, someone who clearly gets off on the chaos even as he understands the risks, while Henderson’s Sammy has that lived-in, old-school journalist vibe that makes his presence feel instantly comforting. Nick Offerman’s president shows up mostly as an image and a voice—an isolated leader giving delusional addresses about “victories” and “loyalty” while the country burns—which fits Garland’s choice to keep power distant and almost abstract. And then there’s Jesse Plemons in a late, unnerving scene as a soldier interrogating the group with the question “What kind of American are you?”, a moment that pulls the film’s subtext about nationalism and dehumanization right up to the surface.

Visually, Civil War is stunning and deeply unpleasant in the way it should be. Garland and his team lean heavily into realism: grounded battle scenes, chaotic firefights, and that disorienting sense of being in the middle of something huge and unknowable, with the camera clinging to the journalists as they scramble for cover or line up a shot. The film often uses shallow depth of field, throwing backgrounds into blur so explosions and tracers feel like ghostly streaks behind the tight focus on a face or a camera lens, which reinforces how narrow the characters’ survival focus has become. Sound design is equally aggressive—gunfire, drones, and explosions hit hard in a theater, and Garland doesn’t shy away from making violence both terrifying and, in a way, disturbingly exhilarating.

That’s one of the film’s more interesting, and arguably more uncomfortable, tensions: it’s overtly anti-war in its messaging, but it also understands that war, on a visceral level, can feel like a rush. Several characters clearly chase that feeling, and the film doesn’t let them—or the audience—off the hook for enjoying the adrenaline that comes from life-or-death stakes. There are moments where the action almost tips into “too cool” territory, but Garland usually undercuts this with the emotional fallout afterward, making it clear the cost of those images and thrills is paid in trauma and numbness.

Where Civil War is really going to divide people is in its politics—or more accurately, its refusal to spell them out. The film never fully explains how this United States got here or exactly what the sides are fighting over, beyond hints of authoritarian overreach and regional alliances like the Texas-California Western Forces. You get breadcrumbs: a third-term president who dissolved norms, references to an “Antifa massacre,” and presidential rhetoric that echoes real-world strongman language, but Garland refuses to plant a big obvious flag that says, “This is about X side being right or wrong.”

Depending on what you want from the movie, that choice either feels smartly universal or frustratingly evasive. On one hand, treating the conflict like a kind of Rorschach test lets viewers project their own anxieties onto the screen; it becomes a story about any country pushed too far by polarization, propaganda, and the normalization of violence. On the other, the vagueness around ideologies can come across as sidestepping tough specifics, especially in today’s charged climate, where audiences might crave a bolder stance on division and power.

To the film’s credit, its focus is very clearly on the experience of war, not the policy debates that preceded it. The journalists are not neutral robots; they have opinions, fears, and moments of moral conflict, but their professional instinct is to document first, analyze later, and that’s the lens the film adopts as well. You see how the job warps them: Lee’s exhaustion, Jessie’s desensitization, Joel’s thrill-seeking, Sammy’s weary sense of duty. In that sense, Civil War feels as much like an ode and a critique of war journalism as it does a warning about domestic collapse.

That said, the character work will not land equally for everyone. The emphasis on spectacle and raw incident sometimes leaves less room for layered personal depth, with figures beyond the leads feeling more archetypal than fully fleshed out. Even Lee and Jessie are shaped primarily by their roles in the chaos rather than extensive personal histories, which suits Garland’s lean, immersive style but might leave some wanting more nuance.

The last act, set during the assault on Washington and the White House, is where the film fully commits to being a war movie rather than a political allegory. The battle is staged with a mix of big, chaotic action and small, intimate beats: journalists diving behind columns, soldiers shouting directions, Jessie pushing closer to get the shot even as bullets hit inches away. It’s brutal and propulsive, driving home the film’s bleak thesis: once violence is normalized, legitimacy and process vanish, replaced by whoever has the most guns in the room.

Is Civil War perfect? No. It is at times overdetermined in its imagery and underdetermined in its world-building, and the decision to keep the “why” of the war so foggy will absolutely alienate viewers who wanted a sharper, more pointed statement about the current American moment. But it is also undeniably gripping, technically impressive, and thematically rich enough to spark real conversation about violence, media, and how far a society can bend before it breaks. As a piece of speculative near-future filmmaking, it lands somewhere between warning and reflection: not saying “this will happen,” but asking whether a country this polarized and numb to cruelty should be so confident that it won’t.

Guilty Pleasure No. 96: The Hidden (dir. by Jack Sholder)

Posted on December 29, 2025 by Arleigh

The Hidden is a guilty pleasure from 1987, a sci-fi action romp that barrels into B-movie territory with zero brakes and maximum glee. It’s the kind of flick you stash away for those late-night binges when no one’s judging.

Right from the explosive opener, a squeaky-clean bank clerk named Jack DeVries flips the script. He storms a Wells Fargo branch like a one-man apocalypse, gunning down guards and peeling out in a stolen Ferrari for a high-octane chase that leaves LAPD scrambling. Cops riddle him with bullets in a spectacular crash, but as he flatlines in the hospital, out slithers a pulsating alien parasite—a glowing, tentacled slug that prizes luxury cars, blaring rock anthems, and indiscriminate slaughter above all else.

It wastes no time hopping into fresh meat, turning an arms dealer into a walking arsenal, then a sultry stripper who turns deadly seduction into a bloodbath. Cue Detective Tom Beck, Michael Nouri’s world-weary LAPD vet with divorce papers and a pint-sized daughter sharpening his edges. He teams up with the enigmatic FBI agent Lloyd Gallagher, Kyle MacLachlan dialing up the eerie charm like he’s fresh off Blue Velvet. Gallagher’s no standard G-man—he skips the coffee, eyes suspects like prey, and knows way too much about this interstellar joykiller. Beck’s gut screams “weirdo,” but with bodies piling up, he’s along for the parasitic ride. Their mismatched partnership becomes the beating heart of this wild chase.

Diving deeper into why The Hidden earns its guilty pleasure crown, it’s all about that unapologetic mash-up of genres. Think Lethal Weapon‘s buddy-cop fireworks fused with The Thing‘s body-horror paranoia, wrapped in a low-budget package that punches way above its weight.

The alien doesn’t just possess—it corrupts with cartoonish vice. It blasts Metallica’s Master of Puppets while mowing down traffic, guzzles ice cream cones mid-rampage, and even puppeteers a German Shepherd into a jogger-shredding beast. Hosts shrug off shotgun blasts, car wrecks, and point-blank headshots, laughing through the pain like invincible demons. This cranks the tension during chases from neon-lit strip joints to posh art auctions gone haywire.

Picture Brenda Lee, played with fierce allure by Claudia Christian, grinding on a mark before ventilating him and trading bullets with highway patrol—it’s equal parts sexy, scary, and stupid fun. Then there’s the mannequin factory showdown, a claustrophobic bullet ballet with plastic dummies exploding in slow-mo glory. Director Jack Sholder, hot off A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2, keeps the pedal floored across 98 taut minutes. He blends practical effects that ooze tangible grossness—no lazy CGI, just squelching tentacles and slime trails that still unsettle on modern screens. The creature’s big reveal, bursting from a gut in a hospital bed? Pure visceral nightmare fuel that lingers like bad takeout.

But let’s talk about the real magic: Nouri and MacLachlan’s chemistry, which transforms potential cheese into something oddly heartfelt. Beck is the everyman anchor—tough exterior hiding a soft spot for his ex and kid. She clocks Gallagher’s off vibes immediately, hiding behind Dad during their first meet-cute awkwardness. Gallagher’s the alien hunter in human skin, pursuing his nemesis from the galaxy’s edge to Earth. MacLachlan nails the wide-eyed alien tourist act: fumbling forks at pizza joints, blanking on human etiquette, yet unleashing a phaser-like zapper with cold precision.

Their dialogue zings with natural friction—Beck barking “What the hell are you?” while Gallagher parries with vague cosmic lore. It builds to warehouse confessions amid flying lead. It’s 48 Hrs. with extraterrestrials, punctuated by hilarious side beats: Beck’s partner Cliff Willis (Ed O’Ross) biting the dust early, precinct captain Ed Malvane (Clarence Felder) getting briefly slimed into a foul-mouthed tyrant, even a senator’s rally turning into invasion bait. The supporting roster shines without stealing thunder—Christian’s tragic dancer, Richard Brooks’ scumbag john. They all flesh out LA’s underbelly as the perfect playground for alien anarchy.

Layer on the sly socio-satire, and The Hidden reveals sneaky smarts beneath the schlock. This parasite’s a yuppie id unleashed, embodying Reagan-era ’80s gluttony: crashing Porsches, bankrolling hooker sprees, amassing arsenals. All while plotting to hijack presidential hopeful Senator Holt for an Oval Office coup that’d summon its mothership armada. It’s a gleeful middle finger to excess, with the slug reveling in what humans suppress—pure hedonistic rampage from Malibu beaches to political podiums. Sholder doesn’t belabor the point; he lets the absurdity sell it. Like the arms dealer’s arsenal haul or the dog’s park massacre underscoring unchecked impulses.

Sound design throbs with synth-wave synths and guitar riffs that propel every stunt. Michael Convertino’s score swells dramatically for emotional beats. Dialogue veers from pulpy gold (“Pain? What’s that?”) to poignant, especially Gallagher schooling Beck on alien resilience versus human spirit.

Flaws? Sure—the third act rushes to a flamethrower climax and bittersweet farewell. Some effects betray the budget in brighter scenes, and plot holes gape if you squint (how’d the slug learn English so fast?). Yet it owns every imperfection, turning cheese into charm.

Ultimately, The Hidden endures as peak cult guilty pleasure, outshining flashier ’80s peers by blending brains, brawn, and balls-to-the-wall entertainment. It foreshadows Men in Black‘s fish-out-of-water agents and Venom‘s symbiote chaos. All while delivering practical FX wizardry that CGI eras envy. Nouri’s magnetic lead turn should’ve rocketed him higher; MacLachlan’s proto-Lynchian quirkiness fits like a glove. Stream it on whatever dusty platform hosts it, or snag a VHS for authenticity—pair with beer and zero expectations for two hours of adrenaline-spiked joy.

The finale’s sacrificial gut-punch lands because you’ve bonded with these oddballs, capped by Beck’s wry nod to humanity’s messy soul. It’s dumb when it wants, deep when it surprises, always a rush. Slug-slinging sci-fi doesn’t get guiltier or greater. Dive in, emerge grinning, no regrets.

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Review: Frankenstein (dir. by Guillermo Del Toro)

Posted on December 27, 2025 by Arleigh

“An idea, a feeling became clear to me. The hunter did not hate the wolf. The wolf did not hate the sheep. But violence felt inevitable between them. Perhaps, I thought, this was the way of the world. It would hunt you and kill you just for being who you are.” — the Creature

Guillermo del Toro’s long-awaited take on Frankenstein finally lumbers to life after years of speculation and teases, and it’s every bit the dark, hypnotic fever dream you’d expect from his imagination. The film, a Netflix-backed production running close to two and a half hours, stars Oscar Isaac as the guilt-ridden Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as his tragic creation. The result lands somewhere between Gothic melodrama and spiritual lament—a lush, melancholy epic about fathers, sons, and the price of neglect. It’s both a triumph of aesthetic world-building and a case study in overindulgence, the kind of movie that leaves you haunted even when it occasionally tests your patience.

From the very first frame, del Toro plunges us into a Europe steeped in rot and beauty. His world feels more haunted than alive—every misty street lamp and echoing corridor loaded with centuries of decay. Victor, introduced as both a visionary and a failed son, is shaped by years of cruelty at the hands of his domineering father, played with aristocratic venom by Charles Dance. That upbringing lingers in every decision he makes, especially when he turns to science to defy death. Del Toro shoots his laboratory scenes as though they were sacred rituals: the flicker of candlelight reflecting off glass jars, the close-up of trembling hands threading sinew into flesh. When the Creature awakens, lightning cracks like some divine act of punishment. It’s a birth scene that feels more emotional than monstrous—Elordi’s raw, wordless confusion gives it a painful tenderness that lingers longer than the horror. Del Toro discards the usual clichés of flat heads and neck bolts, opting for something far more human: an imperfect body full of scars and stitched reminders of mortality.

One of the most striking choices del Toro makes is reframing Victor and the Creature as mirror images rather than opposites. Instead of playing Victor as a simple mad scientist, del Toro paints him as a broken man desperate to reclaim the control he never had as a child. That fear and obsession ripple through the Creature, who becomes his unacknowledged shadow—an extension of Victor’s failure to love or take responsibility. The movie often frames the two in parallel shots, their movements synchronized across different spaces, suggesting that creator and creation are locked in a tragic loop. The audience watches both sides of the story—Victor’s guilt and the Creature’s anguish—without clear moral lines. This emotional split gives the film its heartbeat: the Creature isn’t a villain so much as a rejected child, articulate and lonely, begging to know why he was made to suffer.

Jacob Elordi’s performance is revelatory. He channels something hauntingly human beneath the layers of prosthetics and makeup. There’s a fragility to the way he moves—those long, uncertain gestures feel less like a monster testing its strength and more like someone trying to exist in a world that never wanted him. His eyes carry the movie’s emotional weight; the moment he sees his reflection for the first time is quietly devastating. Oscar Isaac, meanwhile, leans hard into Victor’s manic idealism, all sweat-soaked ambition and buried grief. He makes the character compelling even at his most despicable, though at times del Toro’s dialogue spells out Victor’s torment too bluntly. Still, the scenes between them—particularly their tense reunion in the frozen north—achieve the Shakespearean tragedy that del Toro clearly aims for.

Visually, Frankenstein is pure del Toro—sumptuous, grotesque, and alive in every corner of its composition. Each frame looks painted rather than filmed: flickers of gaslight reflecting on wet marble, glass jars filled with organs that seem to breathe, snow settling gently on slate rooftops. The film feels drenched in the texture of another century, yet vibrates with modern energy. Costume designer Kate Hawley, longtime collaborator of del Toro, deserves special recognition here. Her work helps define the story’s emotional tone, dressing Victor in meticulously tailored waistcoats that hint at obsession through precision, and the Creature in tattered fabrics that seem scavenged from several lives. Elizabeth’s gowns chart her erosion from warmth to mourning, using color and texture as silent narration. Hawley’s palette moves from opulent golds and creams to bleak greys and winter blues—visually tracing how ambition and grief drain the light from these characters’ worlds. The costumes, much like del Toro’s sets, feel alive with history, heavy with stories stitched into every seam.

Mia Goth gives a strong, if underused, turn as Elizabeth, Victor’s doomed fiancée. Her early scenes bring a spark of warmth to the story’s coldness; her later ones turn tragic in ways that push Victor toward his final breakdown. Minor characters—the townspeople, the academics, the curious aristocrats who toy with Victor’s discovery—carry familiar del Toro trademarks: grotesque faces, eccentric manners, glimmers of compassion buried in callousness. The composer’s score matches this tone perfectly, alternating between aching melodies on piano and surging orchestral crescendos that make even the quiet scenes feel mythic. Combined, the sound and visuals give Frankenstein a grandeur that most modern horror films wouldn’t dare attempt.

Still, not every gamble lands cleanly. Del Toro’s interpretation leans so hard into empathy that it dulls the edges of the original story’s moral conflict. Shelley’s Creature grows into a murderous intellect, acting out of vengeance as much as sorrow; here, his violence is softened or implied, as though del Toro can’t quite bring himself to stain the monster’s purity. The effect is powerful emotionally but flattens some of the tension—Victor becomes the clear villain, and the Creature, the clear victim. It fits del Toro’s worldview but leaves the viewer missing some ambiguity. The pacing also falters in the middle third. There are long, ornate monologues about divinity, creation, and guilt that blur together into a swirl of purple prose. The visuals never lose their grip, but the script occasionally does, especially when it slows down to explain what the imagery already tells us.

Those fits of overexplanation aside, del Toro’s Frankenstein stays deeply personal. The story connects directly to the themes he’s mined for years: innocence cursed by cruelty, love framed in pain, beauty stitched from the broken. The Creature isn’t just man made from corpses; he’s a kind of prayer for grace—a plea for understanding in a world defined by rejection. Victor’s failure to nurture becomes an act of spiritual cowardice rather than scientific arrogance. The parallels between them give the film its emotional voltage. Every time one character suffers, the other feels it by proxy, as if their bond transcends life and death.

By the final act, all the grand tragedy is distilled into the silence between two beings who can’t forgive each other—but can’t let go, either. The closing image of the Creature, trudging across a barren arctic plain beneath a rising sun, borders on mythic. His tear-streaked face and quiet acceptance of solitude bring the story full circle: a being born of man’s arrogance chooses forgiveness when his maker couldn’t. It’s sad, tender, and surprisingly spiritual, hinting at del Toro’s constant fascination with mercy in a cruel universe.

As a whole, Frankenstein feels like the culmination of del Toro’s career obsessions condensed into one sprawling film. It’s not perfect—it wanders, it sermonizes, and it sometimes sacrifices fear for sentiment—but it’s haunted by sincerity. You can see del Toro’s fingerprints in every gothic curve and crimson hue, and even when he overreaches, you believe in his conviction. Isaac anchors the film with burning intensity, Elordi gives it wounded humanity, and Goth tempers the heaviness with grace.

In the end, this version of Frankenstein isn’t about horror in the traditional sense. It’s not there to make you jump—it’s there to make you ache. The film trades sharp scares for bruised hearts, replacing terror with empathy. Del Toro reanimates not just flesh but feeling, dragging one of literature’s oldest monsters into our modern reckoning with parenthood, grief, and the burden of creation. It’s daring, messy, and undeniably alive. For better or worse, it’s exactly the Frankenstein Guillermo del Toro was always meant to make.