When a camping trip goes bad, a haggard Brad Pitt and his canine bestie switch from R&R mode to survivalist mode in an enthralling story that unfortunately sweeps a pressing moral issue under the rug. After years of battle, and particularly traumatising experiences, retired Army Special Forces veteran James Belmont (Brad Pitt) retreats to the middle of nowhere in Alaska with his military comba...
Let’s address the Warner Bros.-sized elephant in the room. The studio shelved the completed film in 2023 for a tax write-off, with plans to lock it in a vault indefinitely. Then Ketchup Entertainment saved the day by purchasing the distribution rights. Gosh, the film must have been an embarrassing dud. A lost cause. Incompetently made and utterly unfixable. A stinker that could have sunk the studi...
Zach Cregger is on a roll. Melding humour and horror has quickly become his signature style. Audiences and critics have lapped it up. Barbarian was a hit, while Weapons became a worldwide phenomenon. It even gained the attention of awards organisations. Now, he has applied the formula to the Resident Evil franchise for a filmography hat-trick. So, after two incredibly successful original horror fi...
Ice Cream Man Review: Kids hacking up adults in graphically disturbing ways for shock value? Sounds like Eli Roth is back in horror mode. Roth has always set out to disturb from the icky skin-eating virus of Cabin Fever to the torture porn of Hostel. Now he finds glee in kids creating the carnage with Ice Cream Man. It seems like it’s going to be another idyllic summer in Bayleen Bay, until a myst...
Backrooms Review: The viral internet phenomenon makes the jump to the big screen in Kane Parsons’ feature film debut. Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, Backrooms is a surreal and deeply unsettling horror experience that trades jump scares for atmosphere, anxiety and psychological dread. Prepare to be baffled, your mind warped and your anxiety levels increased by, gulp, architectu...
Scream 7 has a lot stacked against it. Horror franchise fatigue is real, a part 7 is rarely good (Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and Halloween H20 excepted), behind-the-scenes controversies of a fired cast member, fan backlash, pay dispute, last-minute re-write, and AI and gambling marketing collabs. Should the series have taken an extended break, or even been laid to rest permanently? Alas, the power...
British electro popstar Charli XCX has enjoyed a steady career of hit songs among a dedicated fan-base, but her recent brat album exploded, catapulting her into worldwide superstardom and recognition. The album was her most personal to date, a critical hit and resonated among club-going Gen Z-ers, but the “brat summer” attitude she sold with it caught on like wildfire – “brat” was even named word ...
How do you make the fourth entry in a 24-year-old series about zombies fresh and terrifying? It is the greatest challenge any ongoing horror franchise that refuses to die faces. Fortunately, zombie films have rarely been about the flesh-eating dead, instead a fantastical starting point to explore political and societal themes – thanks George A. Romero. Sure, the speedy, rage filled, bloodthirsty h...
We can never truly know what inspired William Shakespeare to create his legendary works that went on to impact global culture throughout centuries and continues to resonate through modern storytelling. They could have been the result of an active imagination or partially gleaned from real life experiences – hard to say. They didn’t hold press junkets during the late 1500s and early 1600s for journ...
It is already an established concept that music is a universal language that brings people together – every December when Spotify Wrapped drops is an annual reminder. While we may enjoy different singers and genres, once that beat kicks in or that high note is hit, something resonates across borders, cultures and languages. The History of Sound is about how it brings two lovers together, on multip...
Who hasn’t wondered if their CEO or anyone leading a major corporation is from another planet and trying to destroy us? Out of touch, unrelatable, speaking in foreign corporate lingo, and running companies that are doing more harm to humans than good – maybe it isn’t too much of a stretch that they are not really “one of us”. The idea has certainly consumed Teddy (Jesse Plemons). The struggling fa...
Put on your thinking cap and put away all potential distractions because Luca Guadagnino is going to require your undivided attention as he explores murky moral and ethical territory with an intellectual lens and dialogue-heavy script in After The Hunt. Yale University philosophy professor Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts) can appear stuffy and icy, but the intelligent career woman is popular among her ...
