Dracula: Voyage Of The Demeter (2023) - Movie Review

It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these on here, but we’ve got another preview screening to get through today (thanks again to StudioCanal for reaching out and letting me attend)… and this is an interesting one. After dealing with some Dracula fanfiction over the past twelve months, between the god-awful The Invitation and the pretty goddamn good Renfield, we now have a specific adaptation of the original Bram Stoker novel. More specifically, the chapter ‘The Captain’s Log’ which, in context to the rest of the book, is mainly just an interlude to explain Dracula shifting from one place to another so that the bigger story can continue.

The Boogeyman (2023) - Movie Review

After scoring two respectable hits (well, one hit and one highly divisive feature, but this is me talking, and I think they were both very good) while the industry around him was busy scrambling to deal with a once-in-a-lifetime epidemic, director Rob Savage has now stepped right into the mainstream with a Stephen King adaptation. Knowing what happened last time a promising new talent made their kick-in-the-door announcement with a King feature, I’d like to say that I’m keeping my expectations in check… but honestly, I really wanted to like this. And yeah, I do, but only like it.

The Suicide Squad (2021) - Movie Review

I appear to be one of the few people who is still willing to say a good thing about David Ayer’s Suicide Squad (and without endlessly pleading for a #AyerCut to make it “good”). Yeah, it’s definitely flawed and more than a little messy, but on the strength of the characters, I had a lot of fun with it. However, if anyone was going to give that concept a second try, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone better suited for it than James Gunn. He’s already proven his worth with elevating lower-tier comic book characters with his work on the Guardians Of The Galaxy, and for a team on a similar moral standing, he should know how to deal with the material. And I gotta say, even as an apologist for the 2016 film, this honestly blows it out of the water.

Relaxer (2020) - Movie Review

This film doesn’t seem like much when explaining the plot as it is. Set in the final days of 1999, it’s the story of Abbie (Joshua Burge), who is given a challenge by his brother Cam (David Dastmalchian): Get past level 256 in Pac-Man. He is not allowed to leave his apartment, or even his couch, until it’s completed. For the entirety of the film’s run time, we never leave this apartment or Abbie’s side. I know that the prevalence of Twitch streamers nowadays somewhat makes the idea of watching someone else play video games for hours on end seem plausible, but does that make this watchable? Well, in the hands of writer/director/editor Joel Potrykus, more so than you’d think.

The Belko Experiment (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: For the workers of Belko Industries, situated in an office building in Bogotá, it started out like any other work day. That is, until a mysterious voice rings out through the building posing a terrible ultimatum. All the doors have been locked down, and every window has been shuttered; the workers are trapped inside. The mysterious voice tells them that, of the 80 workers in the building, 30 must be killed in order for the rest to make it out alive. If not, 60 of them will be randomly selected to die instead. With their options running out and tensions running high, it seems that some are more willing to play along than others.