Firestarter (2022) - Movie Review

The 1984 film version of Stephen King’s Firestarter is… okay. It doesn’t reach the oft-underappreciated heights of the better movie adaptations, nor does it succumb to the amazingly goofy lows of those ‘90s TV miniseries. It mainly gets by on the personality of its cast, especially Drew Barrymore and George C. Scott, and while the treatment of its superpower-adjacent thrills was a little bland (especially compared to how bombastic King adaptations regularly get), there was enough on offer to make the whole package watchable. With how much of an upgrade more recent King adaptations have been, the idea of remaking this particular feature seemed understandable enough; there’s a lot left to work with. What I wasn’t expecting, however, was a feature that would feel this much like I’d been licking drywall for an hour and a half.

Blood Quantum (2020) - Movie Review

The zombie apocalypse sub-genre may be one of my personal favourites, but I’d be lying if I said that’s because of its originality. It’s a pretty reliable source of gorehound material, and there’s definitely something about the recurring scenario that speaks to my socially-isolated ways (and that’s before the pandemic made that way of life mandatory), but it’s quite a task to truly think outside the box with the stumbling or running dead these days. Some attempts like Warm Bodies just feel like bad experiments, and arguably the most creative zombie movie in recent years, Zombieland, is largely the result of poking at how overused its own tropes are. So for something to come out that really pushes the boat out is cause for celebration, far as I’m concerned, and this Shudder exclusive is one such effort.