Meg 2: The Trench (2023) - Movie Review

Y’know, I questioned the point of making a big-budget B-movie like this back when the first Meg came out, but with the industry still recovering from the COVID shuffle, I especially question it now. Doubly so because of the director for this one: Ben Wheatley. While he has a storied history with out-there horror material (also helping to produce just plain weird shit like Aaaaaaah! and The Greasy Strangler), and he’s done a bit of pop work in the past like directing two episodes of Capaldi-era Doctor Who, I’m… still trying to figure out where this fits in his larger catalogue. And bear in mind that I managed to find something about his Rebecca remake that made sense, so it says something when I’m struggling with this one. Then again, there’s a lot about this film that I’m struggling with.

Antlers (2021) - Movie Review

This film should’ve been an easy lay-up for someone like me. A Guillermo Del Toro produced creature feature about Indigenous mythology and the purpose of cultural storytelling. I know I can end up digging myself into my own navel with these kinds of topics, but I genuinely find them to be fascinating, so I was definitely curious to see how this film would turn out. Well, while it definitely has its points of interest, it also suffers from a real lack of focus that ends up hindering its juicier aspects.

Shadow In The Cloud (2021) - Movie Review

Much like with Ava late last year, I was initially debating whether I’d even deign to watch this movie at all, let alone review it, and for largely the same reason: The abusive history of the guy who wrote it. Only this isn’t a niche example like Matthew Newton, as Max Landis has had people distancing themselves from him as early as 2012’s Chronicle, his first feature-length script.

Considering it and American Ultra are the only good movies with his name attached to them (and even then, it’s the presentation that makes those two memorable, not necessarily the writing), there’s other reasons to be sceptical about this one… but again, like with Ava, I don’t see disregarding the work of women in the industry off the back of one toxic guy to be all that helpful a move, although to her credit, director and co-writer (we’ll get to that) Roseanne Liang gets why audiences might distance themselves from this film based on his involvement. I, however, am not going to advocate for that. Instead, I’m going to declare proudly that this is a fantastic film that is more than worth checking out.

Rogue (2020) - Movie Review

As is the case with just about everyone who worked on the Transformers movies, critics make it a sport of taking the piss out of Megan Fox as an actress. “She’s just eye candy”, “She’s centrefold fodder”, “She has the range of a broken cellphone”, etc. And I freely admit that I’m not an exception to this, as I never held much stock in her acting chops either. However, since last writing about her as part of the woeful ensemble in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows, I’ve since seen her career-highlight turn in Jennifer’s Body, and on the basis of that alone… she isn’t a joke to me anymore. When attached to something without the spectre of Bay surrounding it, she can deliver, and for those still unconvinced, here’s her latest.

Sweetheart (2020) - Movie Review

Female-led survival horror flicks have been steadily making the rounds over the last handful of years. The Shallows, Crawl, both entries in the Metres Down series; I guess the recent resurgence in ‘prestige’ horror cinema combined with the attempts to bring more female lead characters to the screen have resulted in this intersection. But up until this point, these films have thrived (or floundered) based on being short but sweet genre exercises, not rising too far above the benchmark for man vs. nature yarns. And then this film came along, yet another from the industrious (industrial?) Blumhouse production line, which… basically recontextualises this entire trend.

47 Metres Down: Uncaged (2019) - Movie Review

Well, after the success of the first 47 Metres Down movie, which was easily one of the most unnecessary features I reviewed in the entirety of 2017, it appears we already have a sequel. Knowing what other unneeded horror cinema have been getting follow-ups (a sequel to The Gallows came out this year; I mean, c’mon!) I should be more irritated at this film’s mere existence… but maybe this could be a good thing.

As I’ve been making a habit of saying around here, I love movies that redeem qualities of bad movies, and while I was largely unimpressed with the first film, it’s not as if it had literally nothing about it that could’ve worked with a different take. Hell, with how well Crawl turned out earlier this year, I’m willing to go into this with some level of optimism. Thankfully, this may not be all that good of a film, but it is markedly better than its predecessor.

Guardians Of The Tomb (2018) - Movie Review

 

Creature features are relatively easy stories to get right. Mainly, because there isn’t much to get right in the first place. Either make a giant-sized version of a regular creature like a snake or a shark, or let the imagination run wild and create a whole new species like with Tremors. Add some likeable characters and a basic plot to make the two meet, and there you go; job done. Of course, as is the case with any sub-genre, there is always room for error and in the age where Sharknado is a thing, the worst thing a creature feature can do is be dull. No points for guessing how this one turns out.

The Meg (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: The underwater research facility Mana One, led by Dr. Minway Zhang (Winston Chao) and his daughter Suyin (Li Bingbing), have discovered a previously-uncharted area of the Marianas trench that is even deeper than the current record. As they send a team down to explore the new depths, they soon find evidence of a Megalodon, a gargantuan shark thought to have been extinct that is far from dead. The mission, the facility, even the entire world could be in jeopardy if the Meg makes it to the open seas, and it's up to retired rescue diver Jona (Jason Statham) to stop it.