BY ANY MEANS (2026) – Mix of Civil Rights Drama and Mobster Torture Jarring

I feel like I’ve seen this movie already.

A tough Italian mobster type helps a Black man in the deep South. In GREEN BOOK (2018) Viggo Mortensen plays the Italian bouncer who becomes the driver for Mahershala Ali’s Black pianist, and the two men form an unlikely friendship as they navigate through the South.

Now comes BY ANY MEANS (2026). Here, the Black man is F.B.I. agent Wayne Strider played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and the Italian mobster who helps him is hitman Greg Scarpa, played by Mark Wahlberg, and the two team up to investigate the deaths of some civil rights leaders in 1966 Mississippi, with Strider asking the questions and Scarpa busting the heads.

To be fair, BY ANY MEANS tells a completely different story than GREEN BOOK, but as I watched this one, I couldn’t help but feel that this movie was very reminiscent of the Mahershala Ali/Viggo Mortensen drama. GREEN BOOK is also a much better movie than BY ANY MEANS.

BY ANY MEANS is based on a true story, although it seems very loosely based on that true story. Mob hitman Greg Scarpa was a real person who was in fact an FBI informant who was indeed recruited by the Bureau to work cases in Mississippi with the thinking being his illegal methods would get people to talk, and this turned out to be true. The second case Scarpa worked on, which is the one depicted in this movie, supposedly had Scarpa working with an unidentified Black FBI agent, and that is the story told here. It seems safe to say that a lot of the story told in this movie, especially regarding the FBI character Wayne Strider, is largely embellished.

In BY ANY MEANS, FBI agent Wayne Strider (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and his wife Allison (Nicole Beharie) move to Mississippi because he wants to make a difference, but he is frustrated that his boss, Special Agent Roy K. Moore (David Strathairn) is reluctant to put him in the field to solve cases. When Wayne’s good friend and civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer (Giancarlo Esposito) is killed by the KKK, he is surprised and grateful that Moore puts him on the case, until he learns the real reason, which is Moore has decided to call in mob hitman Greg Scarpa (Mark Wahlberg) to work the case, and it’s to be Wayne’s job to simply be his handler and keep out of his way.

The two men do not get along as Wayne does not approve of Scarpa’s tough guy illegal methods, but when the KKK targets his wife, Wayne changes his tune and goes all in with Scarpa to break some heads and find out who all the guilty parties are, all in the name of justice, although in this movie, justice seems more like vengeance.

I had a difficult time with BY ANY MEANS, and it didn’t really work for me, mostly because of the justice vs. vengeance disparity.

The opening sequence is indicative of the problem I had with the entire movie. It opens with Scarpa pretty much torturing a witness in order to get him to talk. Sure, this torture got results, as Scarpa got the information the FBI was looking for, but the movie ask us, the audience, to be rooting for a guy like Scarpa who to get the confessions he needs, doesn’t just throw a few punches but goes all in with severe bloody and gruesome torture, in scenes which reach horror movie levels of violence. And he’s the good guy? That’s a big ask, and not one I was comfortable buying into.

And it’s not like you can’t have a sympathetic mobster. Hello Tony Soprano! But in this movie, unfortunately, there really isn’t a sympathetic main character anywhere.

The result is a very imbalanced civil rights movie. Wayne and his wife represent justice, and they are fighting a losing battle in Mississippi against the ingrained racism of the people there. The KKK are despicable people. But Scarpa really isn’t any better in terms of what he is willing to do to get people to talk. Sure, there are some scenes that work, and yes, you do want to see these guys get their comeuppance, but the two sides of this story, Wayne’s and Scarpa’s, never seem to gel. Wayne balks at Scarpa’s methods and even tries to arrest him at one point, but eventually, when he feels completely powerless, he joins Scarpa in his bid to terrorize the KKK. It’s jarring to say the least. It’s like watching Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. turn to Malcolm X and say, “Yeah, forget everything I said. Let’s do it your way.”

The best sequence in the movie is when Wayne and Scarpa hit their boiling points and come to blows and kick the living daylights out of each other, and it’s also the one time we see Wayne get under Scarpa’s skin, accusing him of being a rat and a loser, and you can see at this moment Scarpa’s vulnerability. But afterwards, when Wayne is disillusioned and goes all in with Scarpa’s methods, the two become violent murderous robots, and the movie asks us to root for these guys. A story like this could work, but in this movie, the tale of violence to quell violence is treated like a lighthearted action flick rather than a period piece drama about racial injustice. The treatment of the subject here just didn’t cut it.

BY ANY MEANS was directed by Elegance Bratton, with a screenplay by Sascha Penn. The scenes from Wayne’s perspective look good and capture the feel of 1960s Mississippi, but they don’t resonate as well, and most of them fall flat and are nowhere near as effective as similar scenes in other movies. Scarpa’s hitman scenes resonate better, except he’s such a brutal guy and he resorts to such violent torture that he’s a difficult character to root for.

The storytelling also has its issues. Other than Wayne saying so, we don’t really see the difficulties of what it was like to be a Black FBI agent in 1960s Mississippi aside from the obvious slurs and threats thrown at him by white racists. The screenplay doesn’t really ever get inside Wayne’s head. As such, Yahya Abul-Mateen II’s performance seems superficial.

Nicole Beharie does a nice job as his wife Allison, but it’s a thankless role, as there’s not much for her to do other than to argue with her husband when he wants her to leave Mississippi for safety reasons. Beharie has had practice with this kind of role, as she previously played Jackie Robinson’s wife Rachel in 42 (2013).

Mark Wahlberg is effective as mob hitman Greg Scarpa, but Scarpa is such an ugly character, he’s difficult to build a movie around.

The movie does have a veteran supporting cast, with the likes of David Strathairn, Giancarlo Esposito, Josh Lucas, and Ethan Embry in the mix, but none of these folks make much of an impact here.

BY ANY MEANS wants us to accept that sometimes vengeance is better than justice, and while in some stories this is true, in this movie, I found its mix of civil rights drama with exceedingly violent torture scenes to be a difficult one to manage, especially when the main character, a mob hitman, was the guy the movie wanted us to root for.

I give this one two stars.

-END-

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

ONSLAUGHT (2026) – Action Horror Movie Brutal and Disturbing

Imagine if… Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, and Michael Myers were all hired by the U.S. government as super soldiers and unleashed to prey on U.S. citizens, and just what the ensuing bloodbath and terror would look like… and you have a pretty darn good idea of what you’re walking into when you go see ONSLAUGHT (2026).

Which for horror fans makes this one sound even better than it actually is. Honestly, it’s not bad. It has its moments where it fires on all cylinders. It just doesn’t take full advantage of its premise, but for a movie that doesn’t seem to be on anyone’s radar, for what it was, a brief 90-minute horrific adventure, I liked it.

And no, Jason, Leatherface, and Michael Myers are not in this movie, but the three maniacal super soldiers who are in the film do act like them, even chasing after their victims with chainsaws.

In ONSLAUGHT, Celeste (Adria Arjona) is a single mom raising her daughter Daisy (Blake Kennedy) while fighting with her ex-husband for custody rights, and he is threatening to gain sole custody of their daughter. Celeste lives in a trailer park in the middle of nowhere, and she likes it here as she feels safe. She’s a former army sniper, and so she enjoys the quiet of living somewhat off the grid. She lives in this park with an assortment of neighbors who are all friendly enough.

Not too far away, at a secret military base, an experiment in producing super soldiers goes awry, and the three genetically enhanced super fighters who look like they walked off a horror movie set, escape and wreak havoc in the surrounding countryside, eventually setting their sights on wiping out everyone inside the trailer park. It’s up to Celeste to use her military training to protect her young daughter.

That’s the plot in a nutshell. There’s more. The movie makes no secret of the part the U.S. government plays in all this, as the head of the operation makes clear that the killer fighters are not to be stopped. The situation is viewed as an experiment, and the powers that be want to see how far these soldiers can get and how much damage they can in fact inflict.

The movie takes its time setting this all up, which is a good thing as it does a nice job of fleshing out the characters. An unrecognizable Dan Stevens plays Hans Kammler, the scientist behind the experiment, an exceedingly quirky and weird individual, and Michael Biehn plays the military officer who’s tasked with sending in his best men to take on the souped-up soldiers in the initial test of their powers. Biehn, of course, made his mark decades ago in the movies THE TERMINATOR (1984) and ALIENS (1986).

And we also get to know Celeste, her daughter, and their neighbors.

So, it takes about half the movie before the attack happens on the trailer camp, and when the action takes over, the film flies by incredibly quickly. I actually wish this part of the movie had been longer. There was untapped potential here for a really intense thriller. As it is, it’s hard hitting, but it’s so quick; it feels like a thrilling roller coaster ride which is over in a few seconds.

Part of this, perhaps, is that the violence is disturbing. There’s a sequence before the mutated soldiers get to the trailer park where they wipe out everyone at a gas station variety store, and the images here come right out of a mass shooting, so for some, this could be a trigger for some very upsetting emotions. I can easily see how some folks would protest at this sequence, but the thing is, it doesn’t glorify it. It is supposed to make the audience feel awful, to feel horror, and it succeeds in doing so. It’s the most disturbing sequence in the movie.

ONSLAUGHT was directed by Adam Wingard, who also directed GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE (2024), GODZILLA VS. KONG (2021), and going back aways the horror movie YOU’RE NEXT (2011). Honestly, I haven’t really been a fan of Wingard’s work before this, but I liked ONSLAUGHT, so for me, this might be my favorite Wingard movie so far. There’s a lot of creative direction here, and early on the camera gets in close and captures lots of details which before the action gets going brings the story to life.

Wingard also co-wrote the screenplay with Simon Barrett, which, in spite of its horrific violence, really has an anti-war message and definitely paints the U.S. government and their views on war in a negative light. I mean, the reason these killers are on the loose is because the government wants them on the loose and wants to see just how good they are at taking out civilians. Sick stuff, but also somewhat plausible when we see ICE agents killing people on the streets with few repercussions.

Adria Arjona gives the performance of the movie as tough as nails mommy Celeste. What’s fun about her performance is most of her tough persona is delivered through her acting rather than her action scenes. We really get a good feel for her personality and for what drives her as a person. Sure, she enters kick-ass mode during the film’s second half, but these scenes are quick and hard hitting and not at all over the top. Celeste takes quite the beating from these soldiers, but she never relents. So, it’s not like she grabs a bunch of guns and makes short work of the baddies. It’s an ordeal.

I like Arjona a lot, and she has been in a lot of movies lately, as she has starred in SPLITSVILLE (2025), BLINK TWICE (2024), and HIT MAN (2023), as well as the TV shows ANDOR (2022-2025) and TRUE DETECTIVE (2015). She’s believable here as army sniper mom Celeste.

Blake Kennedy, the young actress who plays little Daisy, is also really good, playing a very sincere little kid.

The cast also includes Reginald VelJohnson, who back in the day played Sgt. Al Powell in the DIE HARD movies. Here he plays Josiah, one of Celeste’s neighbors, a Vietnam vet who helps her fight off the super soldiers. And Rebecca Hall plays the cold, government leader in charge of this whole ugly experiment. Hall starred in the recent GODZILLA VS. KONG movies, THE TOWN (2011) and way back when in Woody Allen’s VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA (2008).

The three amped horror soldiers, who go by the names The Butcher, The Cockroach, and The Crybaby, in spite of their names, don’t really have much personality, but they do look mighty scary chasing their victims with chainsaws buzzing furiously. The shots with the three of them standing side by side with their eyes glowing are also creepy and menacing. As I said, it’s like having three slasher movie killers in one film. They’re frightening.

ONSLAUGHT really isn’t getting much critical love or word of mouth attention, but I liked this very short exercise in horror action— hell, it’s not even really being marketed as a horror movie, but the violence certainly reaches those levels. After a creative and patient opening, it turns into a blood-soaked intense actioner for its latter half. It also features one very disturbing mass shooting sequence, which adds to the point this one is making, that here in the U.S. things are rather messed up, and most of the ugliness can be traced back to the government itself.

I give this one three stars.

-END-

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

SHOCK SCENES: DRACULA’S DEMISE- A Look at the Hammer DRACULA Endings- Part 1

Dracula (Christopher Lee) screams in agony in the conclusion to HORROR OF DRACULA (1958)

THE FOLLOWING SHOCK SCENES COLUMN is a reprint from several years ago, and I’ve decided to update it to include the actual footage from the DRACULA movie endings. This was a four-part column.  This is Part One, and I will update the next three parts in the weeks ahead.

As always, thanks for reading!

—Michael

 

 

SHOCK SCENES:  DRACULA’S DEMISE- A Look at the Hammer Dracula Endings

Part 1

By

Michael Arruda

Welcome back to SHOCK SCENES, the column where we look at famous scenes in horror movie history.  Up today, a look at the Hammer DRACULA series, specifically the endings, those scenes where Dracula meets his demise, which is a strange thing when you think about it:  the King of the Undead is an undead, immortal, and yet at the end of every movie he’s thrust back down into the world of ashes and dust.  It’s a wonder how he survived so long in the first place!

Anyway, we’ll be looking at the various endings to these Dracula movies to see how Dracula met his end in each one.  So, if you haven’t seen these films, be forewarned, there are spoilers galore, so consider this a major spoiler alert.  If you have seen these films, read on and enjoy!

Here we go:

HORROR OF DRACULA (1958)

The first Hammer Dracula film, HORROR OF DRACULA (1958)  is widely considered to be Hammer Films’ best movie, as well as one of the finest Dracula movies ever made.  A big reason for this is the ending. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) chases Dracula (Christopher Lee) into Castle Dracula.  They scuffle, and Dracula pins Van Helsing into a corner, but the clever doctor sees a sliver of sunlight shing through the curtains, and he climbs onto the long table, runs across it, and leaps up at the window, tearing the curtains down.

The sunlight knocks Dracula to the ground, and Van Helsing keeps him there by grabbing two candlesticks and using them to make a cross, forcing Dracula into the sunlight, where the shrieking vampire disintegrates into dust before our very eyes.

This is one of those endings where once you see it, you never forget it.  Hands down, this is the best ending of any Dracula/vampire movie.  Ever.  Period.  Not even close.  If you have not seen HORROR OF DRACULA, you owe it to yourself to check it out.  The ending alone makes it worth it, and of course, fans know the rest of the movie is every bit as effective as its famous conclusion.

There’s lots to talk about here.  First off, the special effects, for 1958, are amazing.  Dracula’s disintegration looks horrific and authentic at the same time.  It’s all done with a series of cutaways.  The camera cuts back and forth between Dracula’s disintegration and Van Helsing’s reactions.  It’s all very quick, but effective.  The last stage is pretty much a dummy of a rotting Dracula head with red lights inside lighting up his eyes. It’s a really cool image.

Of course, for years, the original uncut ending was not shown to Western audiences, until just a few years ago (and I’ve written several blog posts on this along with the video links, so feel free to check them out.) when the uncut footage was discovered in a vault in Japan.  The footage, which shows a few more scenes of disintegration, as well as one very cool shot of Dracula clawing the flesh off his face— again, for 1958 these were some incredibly bold effects— was finally released to European audiences but for some reason has still not been included in U.S.versions.  That being said, I did include a link of this footage on my blog post so feel free to check it out.

Strangely, when Hammer chose to restore HORROR OF DRACULA several years ago and insert the “lost” scenes from the Japanese version, they didn’t include all the scenes. For some reason, there are still scenes from the finale in the Japanese version which did not make it into the recently restored print of the film.  I don’t know why they were not restored.  Anyway, if you check YouTube, you can sometimes find the complete ending from the Japanese version.

The other reason this ending stood out in 1958 was before this, the endings to the Universal DRACULA series had been pretty much anticlimactic.  Heck, Dracula was staked off camera in the original Lugosi DRACULA (1931) and none of the subsequent Universal films contained dramatic endings, but that’s a story for another column.

A few other items about the ending to HORROR OF DRACULA:  supposedly, it was Peter Cushing himself who suggested the infamous run across the table and leap to tear down the curtains from the window.  The original script had Van Helsing taking out a crucifix from inside his coat to ward off Dracula, but as Cushing once put it, he felt like a “crucifix salesman” pulling out crosses in nearly every scene, and so he suggested the more dramatic leaping from the table.

And as far as I know, since I’ve never read or heard otherwise, that is Peter Cushing himself and not a stuntman making that run and leap at the curtains.  If anyone out there has information to the contrary, I’d love to hear from you.

Of course, the ending takes liberties with the tradition of a crucifix warding off a vampire.  In this ending, rather than using a blessed religious crucifix, Van Helsing forms two candlesticks into the shape of a cross and uses that to fend of Dracula.  It probably shouldn’t work, but it sure makes for great cinema!  And it also has made it into vampire lore.  In one of my favorite lines from the vampire movie FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (1996) George Clooney asks the folks trapped with him by the gang of vampires what they know about vampires, and one guy suggests making crosses out of anything they can find.  When Clooney asks if that will work, the guy replies, “Peter Cushing does it all the time.”

HORROR OF DRACULA not only contains the best ending in the Hammer Dracula series, but it’s also the most dramatic and memorable ending of any Dracula movie period.

It’s one for the horror movie history books.

 

THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960)

Christopher Lee declined to play Dracula again in Hammer’s proposed sequel to HORROR OF DRACULA from fear of being typecast.  Of course, he would change his mind several years later.

But in 1960 Hammer went ahead without Lee and made THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960), a film that in spite of its title did not feature Dracula, but instead one of Dracula’s disciples, Baron Meinster (David Peel).  Hammer did get Peter Cushing to return to play Van Helsing once again.

The ending to THE BRIDES OF DRACULA, while not as memorable as the ending to HORROR OF DRACULA, is very good.  The film was directed by Hammer’s best director, Terence Fisher, who also directed HORROR, and he goes all out with this one.  THE BRIDES OF DRACULA may be the best looking of the Hammer DRACULAS- it’s certainly the most atmospheric, and is one of the most atmospheric vampire movies ever made.  For some fans, THE BRIDES OF DRACULA is their favorite Hammer Dracula, and considering that Christopher Lee isn’t in the movie,that’s saying quite a lot.

The ending, as directed by Fisher, is every bit as atmospheric as the rest of the film.  One of my favorite shots is when Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) enters the old windmill in search of Baron Meinster.  Its shot with purple lighting, and Van Helsing is backlit, and it makes for an indelible image.  It’s also reminiscent of the scene in THE EXORCIST (1973) when Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) first enters Regan’s home.  I’ve often wondered if EXORCIST director William Friedkin was influenced by this scene in THE BRIDES OF DRACULA.

One of the most memorable parts of the ending comes when Meinster and Van Helsing battle, and this time Meinster wins and actually bites Van Helsing, setting up one of the most memorable scenes in the film, where Van Helsing uses a hot poker to burn the bites on his neck before dousing them with holy water, in effect curing him of the vampire’s bite.  Once again, Hammer takes liberties with vampire lore, but it again sure makes grand horror cinema!

Later, Van Helsing burns Meinster’s face with holy water, setting up the film’s dramatic conclusion, where Van Helsing leaps onto the wings of the windmill, using it to form a shadow of a cross which falls on Meinster and destroys him.  Terence Fisher purposely did not show the shadow of the windmill but only of the wings, and he did this for full dramatic cinematic effect.

As Hammer Dracula endings go, this one is one of the more understated, as Meinster simply collapses, and we do not see him distintegrate.  For story purposes, this makes sense, since unlike Dracula who was centuries old, Baron Meinster had only been a vampire for a relatively brief time.

The ending to THE BRIDES OF DRACULA, like the rest of the movie, is wonderfully atmospheric and cinematic.

Of course, this wasn’t the original ending.  Originally, Van Helsing was to use a little black magic to conjure up the forces of darkness to unleash a barrage of vampire bats which would descend upon Baron Meinster and tear him apart.  Peter Cushing objected to this sequence because he felt it out of character for Van Helsing to turn to black magic rather than religion and science, and I agree with him. I’m glad they changed it.  Hammer would use a variation of the vampire bats sequence for the ending to their next vampire movie, KISS OF THE VAMPIRE (1964), which once more did not feature Dracula.

https://youtu.be/uCNKkyckQCI?si=jlq-vbErIFmSdOBJThat’s it for now.  Join me next time for Part 2 of SHOCK SCENES:  DRACULA’S DEMISE- A Look at the Hammer Dracula Endings, when we’ll look at the endings of the next two Hammer Dracula movies, DRACULA-PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1966) and DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE (1968).

See you then!

—Michael

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NORMAL (2026) – Quirky Bob Odenkirk Actioner Goes All in on the Violence Rather than the Script

In a town called Normal, how weird can things really be?

Turns out, really weird!

NORMAL (2026) is a new action movie starring Bob Odenkirk that hit theaters back in April but just recently premiered on HBO Max. I missed this one when it first came out, and as a fan of Bob Odenkirk, I definitely wanted to make sure I caught up with it now that it’s playing on the streaming network.

NORMAL has quirky thriller written all over it, but unfortunately, it decides to focus on over-the-top violence rather than dialogue and its characters. I have no problem with over-the-top violence, but in this case, it takes away from the best elements this movie had going for it, namely Bob Odenkirk’s performance and the supporting cast of oddball characters around him.

Odenkirk plays Ulysses Richardson, a former sheriff who now goes around to different towns and works as a temporary sheriff in places that need them, or as he describes his role, he’s kinda like a substitute teacher. The town of Normal needs a new sheriff because their previous lawman died unexpectedly, and Ulysses only plans to be there for a few weeks until the next election gives the town a new permanent sheriff. And we learn that Ulysses is a former sheriff because he was involved in a controversial shooting that not only cost him his job, but his marriage, as his wife left him afterwards.

In Normal, Minnesota, Ulysses meets the locals, and they are as you would expect in a movie like this, an oddball lot, but they like Ulysses because of his easygoing laid-back style. For example, on a parking violation, rather than give the person a ticket, he places a note on their car which says, “Park better next time.” He expects this to be an easy gig, but he discovers that things really aren’t normal in Normal. And when he enters a bank to negotiate with two wannabe and not very good bank robbers, and his own officers start shooting at him, he realizes that something is very wrong with this town.

And what’s wrong with this town has to do with Japanese gangsters making deals with the locals to house their illegal money there, and in return the town earns a percentage of the criminals’ profits. Ulysses finds himself having to team up with the two robbers and also the trans nonbinary offspring of the former sheriff, who it turns out was murdered by the town. What follows is an over the top violent second half of the movie where Ulysses and his friends can do no wrong, and the townspeople in spite of all their weaponry and explosives, continually fail to take down their temporary sheriff.

As I said, this one had the potential to be a quirky movie, and to a certain extent, it is. I mean, Bob Odenkirk, as expected, is really good and very watchable as Ulysses, and he gets his share of memorable lines. But he also gets his share of fight sequences and shoot-outs, which often end in the brutal and very bloody deaths of his opponents. It’s all played for laughs, but it’s just not all that funny. While it is amusing, a sharper script and more time spent on the characters here would have made this a better movie. Odenkirk is funnier and more interesting talking to his fellow townspeople than he is shooting at them.

He’s supported by a decent cast all playing eccentric characters, including Henry Winkler as the very over-the-top mayor whose fate is one of the more “explosive” deaths in the movie.

The screenplay was written by Derek Kolstad and Bob Odenkirk. Kolstad also wrote the screenplays for Odenkirk’s other action series, NOBODY (2021) and its sequel, NOBODY 2 (2025). Hmm. He must like one-word titles that begin with No…

NORMAL was directed by Ben Wheatley, and he was clearly having fun with this one, as the style is light and humorous, but unfortunately, he decided to focus on the R-rated violence rather than the R-rated characters.

NORMAL has its moments, most of them involving Bob Odenkirk, but had he been given more to do in the acting department rather than in the stunt department, this one would have been much more fun.

I give it two stars.

-END-

RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA (2026) – Ambitious “Horror” Movie Not Helped by Inaccessible Storytelling

FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) meets SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950). Joe Gillis, learn who you are through Norma Desmond, while the two of you tie your identities to Jason Voorhees. And that my friends, is today’s movie in a nutshell. Sort of.

With a title like TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA (2026), this one definitely sounds like it’s going to be a horror movie comedy spoof, but it’s not. It’s not really even a horror movie, actually. The opening scene takes care of that. We see a couple approaching the killer who immediately makes short work of them, igniting a volcanic eruption of blood firing into the sky. This sequence emitted some chuckles from the audience, but more importantly, it made clear that this really isn’t going to be a horror movie, not with an unrealistic blood fountain like this one. It makes Monty Python look subtle.

So, if not a horror movie, what is TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA exactly? Let’s find out!

Let’s get the plot out of the way first, which on the surface, is a rather interesting one. A very young director, 29 year-old Kris (Hannah Einbinder) has been hired to make a reimagined reboot of a famous slasher horror movie series, the CAMP MIASMA series, which back in the day rivaled both the FRIDAY THE 13TH series and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series. The lead actress in the first CAMP MIASMA movie quit acting right after it, and she did not appear in any of the sequels, and over the subsequent decades, became a recluse. Kris feels that the key to making her movie a success is gaining the perspective of this reclusive actress, and so she lands a meeting with her.

To Kris’ surprise and shock, she discovers that the actress, Billy (Gillian Anderson) lives on the site of the campground where the original movie was filmed. The rest of the movie, in terms of plot, involves Kris getting to know Billy and trying to figure out how to make her movie a success. Pretty straightforward plot, but this movie isn’t interested in this straightforward plot. It’s interested in a whole lot more.

The main topic in this movie is queerness. Kris identifies as queer, and she’s trying to make a movie that celebrates queerness even though the Hollywood powers that be who hired her really aren’t interested in that, and as she says, feel like they have done their duty simply by hiring a director who identifies as queer, because many of the original CAMP MIASMA movies had anti-trans sensibilities.

But more than this, Kris is also learning more about herself, as Billy peppers her with personal questions and gets Kris to admit that she does have trouble with sex and relationships. So, a lot of TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA revolves around the understanding of self and also the acceptance of being queer and just what that means and feels like.

But there’s more.

I mentioned SUNSET BOULEVARD, and this movie is referenced a couple times of times here in CAMP MIASMA, as Kris likens her visit with the reclusive Billy to William Holden’s encounter with Gloria Swanson’s reclusive Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder’s 1950 classic. And the story here does touch briefly on one of the main themes in SUNSET BOULEVARD, ageism, as Billy does reference that even though she had quit acting, after she reached a certain age, Hollywood stopped calling her.

And for my money, Gillian Anderson gives the best performance in the movie as Billy, as she is an eccentric character who is not above using her acting abilities to keep the young Kris off balance. When they first meet, Billy tells Kris she lives at the camp because the killer in the movies, Little Death, is real and lives in a hole in the bottom of the lake, and so someone must always be at the campsite to receive him when he emerges. She convinces Kris that she is crazy and unhinged, before breaking out into hysterical laughter in a perfect “gotcha!” moment. She does this several times in the movie, each time providing Kris with a teachable moment on things she can use for her movie.

Anderson is terrific, which of course is no surprise. Obviously, she’s most known for her now iconic portrayal of Dana Scully on THE X-FILES, but she’s also been in a bunch of other movies and shows, with several notable performances in recent years. She played Margaret Thatcher on the TV show THE CROWN (2020), and she played BBC reporter Emily Maitlis in the movie SCOOP (2024). She was exceptional in both roles. Her performance here in CAMP MIASMA is equally as good.

The way Billy maneuvers around Kris reminded me of another classic movie of yesteryear, THE STUNT MAN (1980), where maniacal director Eli Cross (Peter O’Toole) runs circles around his stunt man Cameron (Steve Railsback), who’s actually on the run from the police, in order to achieve what he wants for his movie. Billy does the same here with Kris, but the question is, what is it exactly that Billy wants? In a way, she wants to be seen and have her life validated, and she can do this through Kris’ movie. The dynamic between Billy and Kris, which plays on their age differences and as a result cultural differences, is also a key part of this one. All this being said, none of this is all that clear cut, which works against this movie.

And that’s because TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA was written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun, and precise storytelling is not her strong suit. Schoenbrun previously wrote and directed I SAW THE TV GLOW (2024), another acclaimed horror movie that didn’t quite work for me mostly because a lot of its story just wasn’t all that accessible.

Now, I love smart horror movies, but for a smart horror movie to really work, the audience has to understand what is going on, and while complicated layered stories are terrific, if the story becomes too complicated or not all that clear, it will lose its audience. That happened for me with I SAW THE TV GLOW and to a lesser extent here with CAMP MIASMA.

It’s obvious here that Schoenbrun and CAMP MIASMA are most interested in queerness and how that affects one’s individuality and life in general. I have no problem with this. The problem I have is that this and other themes in this movie simply aren’t always clear.

The main killer in this movie, Little Death (Jack Haven) is a trans character who was trans in the first movie but wasn’t really identified as such by the filmmakers other than he was a “freak” and that’s why the characters in the initial movie killed him, and that’s why he returned as a supernatural killer, to seek his revenge. His look in this movie with an air vent as a mask reinforces the notion that this is not a serious horror movie. It’s a serious movie, but not a horror movie. In terms of plot, Little Death’s motivations are easy to understand, but in the bigger picture of the plot of the Kris/Billy storyline, it’s unclear what their relationship to him is, other than Kris grew up with the series and because of it the character is etched into her consciousness.

Schoenbrun makes the intriguing leap into the idea of movies becoming conscious, with the point in this film that Kris makes as she says that it’s not just people watching movies, but movies watching people. Schoenbrun made a similar attempt in I SAW THE TV GLOW. It’s kind of a muddled idea, one that doesn’t completely work. The better idea, that moviegoers are indeed shaped and their lives influenced by movies, which is what happened to Kris, is more realistic and resonates more readily.

Schoenbrun’s view is there again when Billy describes Kris’ previous movie as remaking PSCYCHO from the perspective of the shower curtain. Which for me just gets a shrug of the shoulders. Why do I care about a shower curtain’s perspective? Intellectually, I get it. Oh, the things a shower curtain has seen! But getting back to PSYCHO, I’d rather see it from the perspective of a differenct character than the shower curtain!

The best scene in the movie is when Kris has an online meeting with her Hollywood producers, and she explains her new idea for the reimagining, and the producers don’t get it at all. This scene speaks to the disconnect between creative artists and business types in the movie world, and it also serves as one more attempt to explain the real director, Schoenbrun, and her ideas for making this movie TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA. Kris takes a line from Billy’s story, that there is a hole in the bottom of the lake, and it’s from this hole that the movies are generated, and it’s not the movie makers and actors making the movies, but the lake itself. In terms of Kris, she’s saying her new reimagining is going to be from the perspective of the lake, and in terms of Schoenbrun, she’s saying TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA is also from a totally different perspective, but what just that perspective is, is unclear, and that’s a major problem I had with this movie. I can see the queerness perspective, and I’m good with that, but even here, the film doesn’t make things all that clear.

Hannah Einbinder does turn in a good performance as Kris, and she and Gillian Anderson drive this movie forward, even as its plot and theme ideas meander all over the place. Einbinder is the daughter of original SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE star Laraine Newman.

The image towards the end of the film of a blood-soaked scantily clad Kris lovingly roaming around town with blood-soaked Billy is jarring to say the least and also a head-scratcher. Life imitates art, art imitates life, life is a bloody mess, movies are bloody, people love bloody movies and identify with them, so much so that they become part of one’s life at a deep, deep level. Some may find this disturbing, while others embrace this connection. All of this comes to mind. None of it is hammered home.

So, yes, there is a lot going on in TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA. It’s just not all that accessible. Also, while Schoenbrun does capture the look of the old FRIDAY THE 13TH movies, the horror elements in this one simply don’t hold water. It’s gruesome at times, yes, but it’s not really a horror movie, per se.

Another great sequence is when young Billy (Amanda Fix, in a sincere performance) films her sex scene where Little Death appears. This scene is returned to repeatedly and used by present-day Billy to explain her feelings on sex, which are very different from Kris’. The sequence captures the psychological pain Billy endures as do other young women in similar situations, and the most intriguing part is, this is true, yet we’re seeing young Billy use her experience and pain to film a scene in a movie, which is being watched by older Billy and Kris in this movie!

TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA is definitely an ambitious movie. But its confusing storytelling techniques don’t do it any favors.

I give it two and a half stars.

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RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

MUTINY (2026) – Latest Jason Statham Vehicle Rather Muted

If you’ve seen one Jason Statham movie, you’ve seen them all.

So say some movie viewers and critics.

I don’t completely disagree with this statement. I mean, Statham has a distinct onscreen persona, one that I happen to enjoy, and so yes, he tends to play the same role over and over again, as do many action film stars, so his range is not always on full display. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

To be fair, Statham does on occasion shake things up a bit, as he did in the giant shark adventure, THE MEG (2018), and in the comedy SPY (2015) where he was one of the best and funniest parts of that Melissa McCarthy comedy as he parodied his tough guy persona to perfection. But more often than not his movies are pretty much the same, and while he is generally entertaining in all of them, sometimes you get a really good Jason Statham movie, and other times you get a not so good Jason Statham movie.

MUTINY (2026), Statham’s latest, definitely falls into the latter category. Earlier this year, Statham starred in SHELTER (2026), an okay action movie, but MUTINY, his latest, is a less-than-okay action movie.

It opens, rather slowly I might add, with Statham playing former military hero and cop now turned bodyguard Cole Reed protecting his client, wealthy businessman Tibu Campallo (Ramon Tikaram) in Bangkok. When they are ambushed on the road, and Tibu is killed, and Cole is framed for the murder, Cole decides to go undercover and find out who is responsible for his client’s murder, and then ultimately, seek justice.

His clues lead him to a cargo ship, and once on board, he discovers the ship is carrying a bunch of immigrants to be sold into slavery, and so Cole being the natural hero that he is, vows to rescue these people. The bulk of the movie then follows Cole’s attempts to do just that, along with the help of a female officer, Angie Ellis (Annabelle Wallis) who seems to be the only member of the crew not involved with the slavery scheme. The main villain in this one becomes the ship’s corrupt captain, Marko (Roland Moller) who had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of Tibu. And once the proceedings on the ship are eventually wrapped up in Cole’s favor— you didn’t think a Jason Statham character was going to lose to the bad guys, did you?— he returns to his main mission to seek vengeance for the death of Tibu, in a neat and all-too-quick ending. It’s just a weird construct for a story because the majority of the movie has nothing to do with Cole’s initial desire to seek vengeance for his murdered employer or even to clear his name.

I’m guessing this disconnect has to do with the origins of the screenplay. Director Jean-Francois Richet, who directed the Gerard Butler actioner PLANE (2023) had intended to do a sequel to that movie, called SHIP (gotta love those ambitious titles!), but plans were scrapped when Gerard Butler left the project, and the film was re-written to fit Jason Statham. It feels as if the wraparound story of the assassinated businessman was added after the main story of the immigrants being smuggled on the cargo ship. The bottom line is the screenplay by Lindsay Michel and J.P. Davis isn’t very good. Not only is the plot uneven, but the dialogue is barely memorable. Statham doesn’t even get any good lines.

The action sequences are also meh. There are some violent combat scenes, but most of the action involves gunfights, and director Richet chooses to keep the camera in tight on his actors, which often is a good thing, but doesn’t work all that well in this case. They’re on a cargo ship, and for the majority of the time the camera is tight on the actors’ faces, meaning we don’t really get a feel for being on that ship. It’s a wasted opportunity.

Jason Statham is fine in the lead as Cole. He continues to look the part of the believable action hero, but he gets no good lines of dialogue, and his character isn’t fleshed out in the least. I’m a big fan of Annabelle Wallis going back to her days on the TV show PEAKY BLINDERS (2013-2019), and she’s made her share of movies, including some horror movies, like the first two ANNABELLE movies, but like Statham, her role here is not helped one iota by the script. In short, there’s little she or Statham do in this one to lift the material.

Roland Moller does make for a formidable villain as the evil captain, and the final fight sequence between him and Statham is the best action scene in the movie. And Ramon Tikaram delivers an effective albeit brief performance in the beginning of the movie as businessman and Cole’s friend Tibu.

For an action movie, MUTINY is rather muted, but one thing that wasn’t muted, and for me, was the best part of this one, was the audience I saw it with. They were vocal! And I’m not talking teenagers here. I saw MUTINY with a decent-sized crowd, and these folks were all around my age, which is to say, we’re all of that “certain age” category. Senior rates can apply! Anyway, there was cheering and roars all in favor of Jason Statham, and there was one woman behind me in particular who was having a grand old time. When at the end of the movie, Statham’s Cole declares that he’s there for one thing and one thing only, vengeance!, the woman behind me followed suit with a loud, Yesssss!!!

Who said audiences of a certain age can’t enjoy a good old fashioned bloody violent action movie?

That being said, the audience was the liveliest part of this movie. The movie itself was just standard fare, even with the presence of two actors I generally like, Jason Statham and Annabelle Wallis.

Because of their presence, I give this one two stars.

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RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

INSIDIOUS: OUT OF THE FURTHER (2026) – Sixth Film in INSIDIOUS Franchise Has Its Moments

Anything further, father?

Anything, further, father? That can’t be right. Isn’t it anything farther, further?

That’s Zeppo, and of course Groucho Marx delivering the second line, from the classic Marx Brothers comedy HORSE FEATHERS (1932).

This Groucho Marx joke always comes to mind when it’s time to revisit the Further, the world in which the demons reside in the INSIDOUS series. Maybe it’s this joke or just me, but for whatever reason, I just can’t take the name of the Further in these movies all that seriously.

That being said, I do like this series, which is a guilty pleasure for me, starting with the first movie, INSIDIOUS (2010) which was one of my favorite horror movies of the early 2010s. Its first sequel, INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 2 (2013) wasn’t half bad either, but then it was downhill from there with lesser programmers like INSIDIOUS: CHAPTER 3 (2015), INSIDIOUS: THE LAST KEY (2018), and INSIDIOUS: THE RED DOOR (2023), which I actually kinda liked. As I said, all of these movies are guilty pleasures for me, mostly because of the strength of the original film in 2010.

Now comes INSIDIOUS: OUT OF THE FURTHER (2026), and the gimmick here in this sixth INSIDIOUS movie is that the main character possesses the ability to bring things out of the Further and into the real world, meaning both physical objects and… gulp!… demons! Where’s Scooby Doo when you need him?

In INSIDIOUS: OUT OF THE FURTHER (2026), Gemma Hall (Amelia Eve) is a single mom raising her 9-year-old daughter, Maya (Island Austin), and they live in the same house in Pittsburgh where Gemma was raised by her single mom. Dads are noticeably absent in this movie. In fact, they’re never mentioned, not even once. Anyway, Gemma’s mom suffered from psychotic episodes and made little Gemma’s life a living hell, and she even took her own life in front of young Gemma, who as an adult vows to stay in the house she grew up in so she can have the life she never had as a child. Oka-ay. I mean, she could have this life in a different house without all the emotional baggage, but that wouldn’t set the stage for the plot of this movie, which has Gemma beginning to suffer from psychotic episodes of her own, including extremely vivid and horrific dreams. Gemma fears she is becoming her mother.

But wait! It’s not this at all! It’s really— demons! Gemma learns this when in one of her dreams, she meets Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye), the one character who has been in every INSIDIOUS movie. When the series started, she was the paranormal investigator who initially informed the haunted characters all about the Further, and after she was killed off, she continued on in the series living in the Further, helping people from that side of existence, because, as she says in this movie, “It’s what I do.” Elise tells Gemma all about the Further, including why one demon in particular is interested in Gemma, because he wants to use her and her ability to escape the Further and return to the human world.

Blah, blah, blah.

The plot of INSIDIOUS: OUT OF THE FURTHER is not its strong point. The screenplay by director Jacob Chase, based on a story by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, and based on characters by Leigh Whannell, is heavy on exposition during its second half when it should have been busy scaring its audience, which it doesn’t do. It’s during the second half where Gemma finds the answers to what’s been going on with her, and unfortunately, most of these plot points are contrived and not very believable, and the movie makes little effort to try to make any of it believable.

Part of the problem with the Further is that it has its own set of rules, and the writers seem to make up these rules as they go along. To go into the Further, it’s wise not to say there too long, so you need a timer and someone to wake you up after five minutes to bring you back before things get too out of control. So, it’s kinda like Freddy Krueger land because you have to be asleep to get in, which for me, always makes things less believable when you have characters operating in a dream-like world.

Gemma can bring things both in and out of the Further, but how she can do this is never explained. The evil humans who are helping the demon inside the Further have to be asleep as well, and so much hullabaloo is made about finding these people and waking them up so they can’t work their dastardly deeds inside the Further. Holy alarm clock, Batman! They must be stopped from going farther in the further, or is that further in the farther?

Anyway, plot wise, the movie just comes off as flat out unbelievable.

However, behind the camera, director Jacob Chase does carve out a couple of really frightening sequences during the movie’s first half, and these were well done and appreciated. One of my favorite parts of the original INSIDIOUS, was when I saw it in a packed theater, people were screaming out loud. Frequently. It was that scary a movie. The best sequence in INSIDIOUS: OUT OF THE FURTHER is when Gemma enters her daughter’s makeshift playhouse in their living room, made up of sofas and sofa cushions, and she suddenly finds herself— in a sequence worthy of the horror movie BACKROOMS (2026)- in an endless maze of corridors in which she is joined by some very creepy visitors. And the best part is there is a moment in this sequence where the audience did gasp, groan, and scream, the best moment of the movie, and the one moment which captured the spirit of the original INSIDIOUS.

Chase also crafts a frightening sequence in a dentist’s chair. But during the film’s second half, when things should be even scarier and more intense, the story gets bogged down in plot exposition and the frights are nowhere near as effective as the two aforementioned sequences.

Amelia Eve makes for a strong heroine in Gemma, even if the role isn’t terribly exciting. She briefly suffers some angst about turning into her mother, but this goes away quickly once she learns about the Further, and then she becomes a kick-ass leading lady, which isn’t as rewarding as it sounds since the bulk of her actions take place in the magical world of the Further. One more thought about the Further: this place should be terrifying. It should be a place both the characters and the audience do not want to enter. But it’s not. Instead, it’s a dreamlike realm with some spooky stuff here and there but where ultimately characters survive just fine. This is a major drawback to the INSIDIOUS movies. The Further is nowhere near as frightening as it needs to be.

Young Island Austin is fine as Gemma’s daughter Maya, and speaking of young, Brandon Perea plays Gemma’s cop boyfriend, and he looks like he’s about 12 years old! Yes, I’m exaggerating, but he does look incredibly young. Okay, not 12. More like 13!

Maisie Richardson-Sellers plays Clare, the woman who helps Gemma in the real world and helps her to communicate with Elise. Laura Gordon plays Gemma’s mother and is very good in her few scenes. Gordon also starred in LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL (2023).

Joseph Lopez plays Lester, the main baddie in this one. I’ve been calling him a demon, but Lester is really a human who died while he was doing evil things here on Earth, which is why he wants to get back to human Earth in order to continue those evil things. Again, blah, blah, blah. Lopez is sufficiently creepy, and if he looks familiar being all evil and eerie, it’s because we just saw him do the same thing in another horror movie, PASSENGER (2026) where he played— you got it, the evil Passenger!

And once again Lin Shaye returns as Elise Rainier, and while Shaye has always been a strong point in this series, she can play this role in her sleep, and while she’s fine here, and while Elise continues to kick demons in the butt in the Further, it’s nothing we haven’t seen Shaye or the character do before. That being said, I like Shaye in this role, and wouldn’t want to see an INSIDIOUS movie without her in it. She’s to this series what Donald Pleasence as Dr. Loomis was to the original HALLOWEEN series.

INSIDIOUS: OUT OF THE FURTHER has its moments. Unfortunately, most of them come during the first half of the movie. Still, I enjoyed this one for what it was, the sixth movie in a horror movie franchise that truth be told, I have a soft spot for, and so I admit I may be a bit biased.

And that’s as far as I will go. No farther. No further. No farther further. Further farther.

Furthermore…

I give this one two and a half stars.

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RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

IN THE SPOOKLIGHT: THE CRIMSON CULT (1968)

A pair of sixes? I’ve got that beat. Check this out. A pair of Frankenstein monsters!

Sure, in cards, it means nothing, but in the movies, now we’re talking!

And that’s because in today’s IN THE SPOOKLIGHT movie, THE CRIMSON CULT (1968) we have Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee.

Boris Karloff, of course, achieved international stardom for his performance as the Monster in Universal’s classic FRANKENSTEIN (1931), while Christopher played the Creature in the first color remake of FRANKENSTEIN, Hammer’s THE CURSE OF FRANKNSTEIN (1957), also a worldwide hit, although it would take one more role for Lee, as Dracula, in HORROR OF DRACULA (1958) to make him a household name.

Karloff and Lee, although from different horror eras, actually had a lot in common and some shared history. They starred together twice, the first time in the very good horror movie, CORRIDORS OF BLOOD (1958) where Karloff played an overzealous doctor and Lee played a sinister graverobber and murderer with an awesome name, Resurrection Joe. The second and final time they starred together was in this movie, THE CRIMSON CULT (original title CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR), which unlike CORRIDORS OF BLOOD, is not a good movie. Lee considered it one of his worst films. It’s actually not that bad, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Karloff and Lee were also good friends in real life and actually lived right next door to each other for a time. In fact, it makes for one of my favorite Christopher Lee stories. As he told it, he used to get a kick out of seeing people do a double take when both he and Karloff would come outside in the morning to bring out their trash at the same time. They also played a few of the same roles, from Frankenstein’s creation to Fu Manchu.

Karloff was ill during the making of this movie, and in most of his scenes he was in a wheelchair. Sadly, he would die just a year later. THE CRIMSON CULT would be the last Boris Karloff movie released during his lifetime.

It’s the swinging 60s, and antiques dealer Robert Manning (Mark Eden) travels to a remote mansion in search of his missing brother whose last correspondence alluded to his being at this house. Manning arrives at a wild party, hosted by the lovely Eve Morley (Virginia Wetherell), who tells Robert she hasn’t seen his brother. She invites him to talk to her uncle and the owner of the house, J.D. Morley (Christopher Lee). Morley is overly polite and hospitable, and even though he tells Robert he has never seen his brother, he invites Robert to stay as a guest in the house for as long as he wants while he searches for his missing sibling, which pleases Robert to no end, not only because it will help him search for his brother, but he is instantly attracted to Eve. Speaking of Eve, Morley does warn Robert that his niece hosts some wild, crazy, and very loud parties, and as long as that doesn’t bother him, he’s welcome to stay.

Also staying at the home is Professor John Marsh (Boris Karloff), an expert on the occult. Marsh is rather grumpy and continually gives Robert lots of grief for a variety of things, like not appreciating fine brandy, for example. The longer Robert stays at the house, the more he is convinced that one, his brother was there, and two, something weird is going on. He receives warnings from the home’s unstable servant, Elder (Michael Gough) to leave before he is killed, and he also begins to suffer from very vivid nightmares where he is taking part in some sort of demonic ceremony.

And when he discovers a secret passageway, the answers are just a dusty corridor away.

Okay, in terms of story, the one told in THE CRIMSON CULT is not terribly exciting. In fact, it’s rather boring. The screenplay by Mervyn Haisman, Henry Lincoln, and Jerry Sohl is pretty much a mystery at heart, and the horror elements are all downplayed.

It’s pretty bad when the demonic sequences, with Barbara Steele playing the undead witch Lavinia Morley are all dull and tepid. Director Vernon Sewell certainly could have made this one a better horror movie, but for some reason he doesn’t emphasize any of the horror parts to this one. There are tons of scenes of conversations about horror stuff, witchcraft and curses and the like, but nothing much actually happens.

The reason to see THE CRIMSON CULT, and the reason at the end of the day, it’s really not an awful horror movie, is the pairing of Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff. Both are fun to watch in this movie.

Lee plays Morley as the relaxed, polite, and perfect host. He seems amused by his niece’s antics and genuinely concerned that Robert cannot find his brother. He also beams in his scenes with Karloff. You can tell that Lee enjoyed filming these scenes. In fact, supposedly, Lee only signed onto the movie knowing that he would be able to star once again with Karloff.

And Karloff is a lot of fun as the grumpy witchcraft scholar Professor Marsh. He steals nearly every scene he’s in. He’s actually pretty darn funny throughout.

For that matter, Mark Eden is surprisingly watchable as lead man Robert Manning. The role as written is a snooze, but Eden makes the guy sympathetic. He also gets the best line in the movie, and the one time the screenplay strikes gold, when he comments on how the house seems spooky, and that you get the feeling that “Boris Karloff is going to pop out at any moment!” And of course, Karloff shows up in the next scene. A memorable bit, but the movie sadly has no more of these.

It does have violence, blood, nudity, and yet it resonates like a PG mystery rather than an R-rated horror flick, which is no surprise, as it was made by Tigon Films, a British film company that tried and failed to compete with Hammer and Amicus. Tigon also produced one of Peter Cushing’s worst movies, THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR (1968), which was also directed by Vernon Sewell. Probably Tigon’s best movie was the Vincent Price horror flick WITCHFINDER GENERAL (aka THE CONQUEROR WORM (1968), as that one was well received by critics and fans alike.

The ending also doesn’t do the movie any favors. It’s contrived and anticlimactic, and it’s one of the worst parts of the movie. It’s edited strangely, cutting back and forth between Boris Karloff spouting plot exposition explaining the answers to the mystery, and firefighters attempting both to put out the fire consuming the mansion and to rescue the revealed villain who is gesticulating from the roof to the crowd below. If you want to learn how to make fighting a fire as boring an exercise as possible, check out the ending to this film. It’s pretty bad if you can’t even make firefighting exciting.

The movie also wastes the fine talents of Barbara Steele and Michael Gough.

THE CRIMSON CULT is far from a horror movie classic, but it does have something to offer, two Frankenstein monsters, Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee, and despite the low standard horror fare here, neither horror master disappoints.

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THE WRONG GIRLS (2026) – Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat Play Amiable Leads in new Stoner Comedy

A stoner comedy for women.

That’s what you’ve got with THE WRONG GIRLS (2026), a new comedy starring Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat as best friends who among other things spend most of their days getting high, and in this movie, when they accidentally get their hands on a secret government drug, not knowing what it is, they— of course!- decide to take it, and hilarity ensues!

Well, that’s the idea, anyway. I always judge comedies by how much I laugh, and while I did laugh frequently during this movie, the bottom line is at the end of the day, the screenplay by writer/director Dylan Meyer isn’t all that funny. I mean, it’s light and enjoyable, but the humor could have been sharper and more on target.

Frankie (Kristen Stewart) and Molly (Alia Shawkat) are best friends and roommates who aren’t quite living the dream. Frankie is a college drop-out who currently works as a delivery driver, but she’s no slouch, as supposedly she’s a genius who just was bored with college which is why she dropped out. Molly is a wannabe chef but spends most of her days creating dishes which incorporate weed, and so yes, Frankie and Molly spend most of their days getting high together.

Frankie is also insanely jealous of Molly’s down-to-earth boyfriend, Josh (Zack Fox), who is a really nice guy and wants Molly to move in with him, which of course, Frankie does not want. When Frankie is mistaken for someone else at a bar by a government agent, the agent delivers to her a case which is supposed to be delivered to that someone else. The next morning, Frankie barely remembers what happened, but she and Molly open the case, find what looks to be vials of a drug, and they of course decide to try some.

This drug gives them mind reading abilities, and when their cats lap up some of the spilled drug on the floor, the felines start talking! Whoa! Yup, talking cats, voiced here by Seth Rogen and Kumail Nanjiani. Frankie and Molly decide that they may be able to make a lot of my money by selling these drugs, and so they set out to do so. Meanwhile, the government agent is informed that he handed the briefcase to the wrong person, and so he goes off in search of Frankie and Molly, who are also being pursued by dangerous henchmen who want to steal the drugs from them, and the shenanigans of these three storylines are what make up the rest of this movie.

THE WRONG GIRLS is fun enough, and its story is light and frivolous. It’s just not overly funny, as the gags and jokes don’t all land. For example, when the cats first start talking, it’s funny, and when we first hear Seth Rogen and Kumail Nanjiani speaking as the cats, there are some laugh out loud moments, but this gag continues throughout the movie, and it’s less and less funny as it goes on.

The best sequence in the movie is when Frankie and Molly crash a private party in the hopes of selling the drugs there. Not only do the jokes work here, but there’s a lot going on, as the henchmen attempt to steal the drug from the girls at this time as well. Speaking of these henchmen, they are not particularly funny, and they’re in the movie a lot. LaKeith Stanfield plays the suffering government agent who is eventually tasked with keeping Frankie and Molly safe so he can get the drug back to its intended destination, and he does enjoy some fine moments. But by the time the plot gets to Kate McKinnon who plays the scientist who created the drug, and her scientist boss played by Geena Davis, two topnotch actresses, the plot has gone stale and the jokes simply aren’t there anymore.

I’m a big fan of Kristen Stewart’s, and I’m so glad her career survived the awful TWILIGHT series. She has some serious acting chops, but it’s unfortunate that so far, she hasn’t had a role that has really landed her some post-TWILIGHT success, unlike her co-star Robert Pattinson, whose list of integral roles continues to grow. While Stewart has been making movies regularly since the TWILIGHT series wrapped up in 2012, the last movie I saw her in was the deep-sea thriller UNDERWATER (2020), in which she was excellent. Here in THE WRONG GIRLS, she enjoys many fine moments, and for me, her performance was the best part of this movie. There’s a scene where all she does is silently mouth an obscenity, and it had the audience I saw the movie with laughing out loud. Stewart is a genuine talent.

And she enjoys fine chemistry with her co-star here, Alia Shawkat, known for the TV series ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT (2003-2019). Shawkat also was in the thriller BLINK TWICE (2024), which starred Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum. Here, as Molly, Shawkat plays the amiable and more laid back of the two friends.

Chris Estrada gets some humorous bits at their landlord Jose, who never stops talking, and this trait makes for a funny sequence where he happens to discover the henchmen trying to break into the girls’ apartment.

THE WRONG GIRLS was written and directed by Dylan Meyer, who also cowrote the comedy MOXIE (2017). THE WRONG GIRLS is Meyer’s directorial debut, and it’s a decent one. Meyer scores high— heh,heh– from behind the camera, as the direction is energetic and creative, exactly what you would expect in a comedy like this. The writing is decent as well, but it’s simply not as funny as it needs to be to really work as a really good comedy. But as things stand, it’s not bad, and she has two very likable actors, Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat playing the leads, and they do a terrific job. Incidentally, Meyer and Kristen Stewart have been married since 2025. And in more family news, Meyer is the daughter of writer/director Nicholas Meyer, who directed two of my all-time favorite movies, TIME AFTER TIME (1979), and STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982).

I enjoyed THE WRONG GIRLS well enough. I just wish it had been funnier.

I give it two and a half stars.

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RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

THE RIVALS OF AMZIAH KING (2026) – Matthew McConaughey in Limited Screen Time Carries Comedic Thriller

Presence is a thing.

Some performers have it. Others do not. Matthew McConaughey has it, and then some.

And that presence is on full display in today’s movie, THE RIVALS OF AMZIAH KING (2026), a dark comedy and thriller in which McConaughey plays a down-to-earth southern beekeeper who’s generous to a fault, and who eventually runs afoul of some sinister rivals who aim to steal his business from him. As we learn in this movie, the beekeeping business is full of unsavory characters. Who knew?

With McConaughey in the lead, the first half of this movie fires on all cylinders and makes for pretty much perfect storytelling, but… but McConaughey is gone for the entire second half of this movie, and that presence I was talking about, it is sorely missed during the film’s second half, which is nowhere near as compelling as the first half, which is not a good thing, because how you finish is always more important than how you started. And it’s not just the lack of McConaughey which impacts the film’s latter half. There are other issues as well. But when you have a performer with the onscreen charisma of Matthew McConaughey leading the way and carrying a movie, and then remove him completely, well, that’s a loss that is really difficult to overcome, and this movie doesn’t overcome it.

THE RIVALS OF AMZIAH KING opens wonderfully with Amziah King (Matthew McConaughey) arriving at a drive-in restaurant in Oklahoma where he and his friends break into an impromptu concert at the outdoor eatery. The laid-back mood in this sequence sets the stage for the tone of the rest of the movie. And when the police and two federal investigators arrive to question Amziah, he makes a joke about it but then seeing their serious reactions quips if he shouldn’t be joking about their presence. Turns out, Amziah isn’t in any trouble, but they need his help as the local bee expert in trying to identify a truckload full of barrels of honey which the investigators believe to be stolen.

Amziah agrees, which then sets up the first of two enormously interesting and laugh out loud sequences in the movie. The first involves Amziah organizing an impromptu gathering of his friends and employees to help quickly melt down the honey so he can search for any identifying marks at the bottom of the barrel which would help the investigators identify the owners of the honey. This sequence is not only captivating, led by McConaughey’s on point performance as King, but when a gruesome accident occurs out of the blue, it becomes hilariously funny, not because of the violent injury, but because writer/director Andrew Patterson perfectly captures everyone’s natural human reactions, from horror to revulsion to caring. It’s an impeccable sequence.

The second is later on in the movie when Amziah and his staff are called in to a middle school to help them control a swarm of bees found inside the school. Again, Patterson captures perfectly the reactions of everyone involved, and for anyone who’s ever worked at a public school, this sequence nails what that’s like having to deal with the rules and regulations in the middle of a crisis, from keeping students on a bus to the use of smoke to keep the bees at bay. It’s all hilarious.

In the midst of these sequences, Amziah is reunited with a former foster child, Kateri (Angelina LookingGlass) who along with her brother had lived with Amziah and his wife years earlier when they were children, but the system moved them to a different family when Amziah’s wife died. Now meeting Kateri as an adult, Amziah offers her a job with him working with the bees. She accepts and finds she has a knack for it.

But then all the bees are stolen, and the second half of the movie deals with the aftermath and trying to save Amziah’s business. It’s this half that doesn’t work as well. It pretty much becomes Kateri’s story, as she declares that she is going to get Amziah’s business back up and running, and at the same time, find out who stole his livelihood and make them pay. Angelina LookingGlass is very good as Kateri, and she gives a really good performance and creates a likable character in Kateri, but without Matthew McConaughey along with her, things just aren’t as compelling.

But it’s not just the lack of McConaughey. Andrew Patterson’s screenplay simply isn’t as good during the film’s second half. The first half takes its time, we get to know the characters, and the situations all play out beautifully. It’s like the savory aroma and eventual taste of a slow-cooked meal. But the second half while still taking its time, doesn’t delve in directly to the more sinister aspects of its plot. Kateri’s investigation is interesting enough, and she makes good on her threats to get revenge, and all of this is satisfying, but the characterizations and situations in the film’s latter half simply aren’t as on target. The story shows us things in the first half, but it tends to tell us things in its second, and in storytelling, there’s a big difference between the two.

Even the presence Kurt Russell doesn’t help. He shows up as the immoral businessman who stole Amziah’s bees, and as Kateri learns, because of his connections, he’s pretty much untouchable, but she continues to persist until she finds a way. Russell is good in the role and avoids making the guy a cliche, but he’s not in it much, and his presence doesn’t add a whole lot to the story. We’re told what kind of man he is, but we are never shown it.

THE RIVALS OF AMZIAH KING almost feels like two different movies. The first half is four star perfect, with Matthew McConaughey leading the way. It’s light, fun, and heartwarming. The second half, however, which becomes a melodrama, simply lacks the edge and precision of the first half.

I’ve been singing Matthew McConaughey’s praises throughout this review, and that’s because he’s a terrific actor. I first noticed him years ago in the compelling thriller, A TIME TO KILL (1996). While he continued to make movies, it took him a while to really make his mark, and that started with his exceptional performance in THE LINCOLN LAWYER (2013) and continued with such films as MUD (2012), DALLAS BUYERS CLUB (2013), which won him an Oscar for Best Actor, INTERSTELLAR (2014) and Season one of the TV show TRUE DETECTIVE (2014) where he costarred with Woody Harrelson. I last saw him in THE LOST BUS (2025) where he played a troubled school bus driver who ends up saving a busload full of school kids during a devastating West Coast fire.

His work here in THE RIVALS OF AMZIAH KING is once again Oscar worthy, even though he’s only in half the movie.

Angelina LookingGlass is solid as Kateri, and she enjoys many fine moments. In addition to Kurt Russell, this one sports a strong ensemble cast who all bring their supporting characters to life, including Jake Horowitz as one of Amziah’s friends who steps up to help Kateri, Scott Shepherd as Amziah’s loyal employee, and the running gag with him is no one can understand a thing he says, which makes for some hilarity during the swarm sequence at the school, Rob Morgan as Amziah’s friend and attorney, Tony Revolori as the man who becomes the victim in the insane sequence with the honey melting, and Bruce Davis as the sincere and down-to-earth Federal investigator who’s been trying without success to take down Kurt Russell’s character, and who gains an unlikely ally in Kateri.

Director Andrew Patterson does a wonderful job at the helm and imbues this one with many rewarding cinematic moments. And evidently all the bees in this one were real. No CGI was employed. This is a good thing and adds to the authenticity of all the bee scenes. His screenplay is a bit uneven, however. It’s pretty much perfect early on but then stumbles when it becomes a melodrama late in the game, mostly because it doesn’t quite capture the intensity needed for this part to work. The best part of the screenplay is the way Patterson frames the story, in the context of the bees, their specific roles, and their relationship to the queen bee. Amziah explains this in a beautiful scene early on, and later, this story comes full circle in the context of Kateri and her relationship with those around her. This part of the screenplay works exceptionally well.

THE RIVALS OF AMZIAH KING is a really good movie. It had a chance to be an amazing movie, because its first half is indeed amazing, but even with its subpar second half, it still features some strong storytelling and benefits from Matthew McConaughey’s presence, which, although limited, still lifts this one to high heights.

I give it three and a half stars.

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RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful