The Mummy is an outlier in the Universal Monsters brand, with all the monsters being reinvented consistently but usually in the same basic genre conventions. Horror is the common home for these monsters, and only some entries deviate from that genre. However, The Mummy stands as a franchise where each entry completely reinvents the wheel and becomes something incredibly different. The original Universal Monsters era focuses on horror, with gothic backdrops mixing with the archaeology angle, and completely leaving the desert setting by the final entries. Hammer horror brought the franchise back between 1959 and 1971, the only time the reboot matched the original in horror conventions, and by the time they brought the franchise back in 1999, it birthed a new life for itself as an action-adventure franchise. Starring Brendan Fraser, and easily the most popular era in the franchise, the films became Indiana Jones-style swashbuckling adventure films, with minimal horror moments, with three entries mixing out the horror for a focus on special effects, comedy and a central romance. The third film would become a critical dud, and following an animated spin-off series and a spin-off trilogy focused on original character, The Scorpion King, it came time to reinvent again in the 2010s. This saw another massive swing, as Universal rebirthed the franchise as the starter of a Cinematic Universe, the Dark Universe where the classic horror characters would become almost-superheroes. Outside of a successful box-office run-in China, the Tom Cruise-starring special effects blockbuster was a critical and commercial dud and destroyed the Dark Universe before it could even take-off, leading to all follow-ups being cancelled instantly. Now, we have arrived to 2026, and its time for Warner Bros and Blumhouse Productions to attempt another version of The Mummy, this time with director Lee Cronin attached.
Cronin got his start with the 2019 A24 feature film, The Hole in the Ground, but would gain massive success after directing the newest entry in the Evil Dead franchise, 2023’s Evil Dead Rise. Originally conceived as a streaming exclusive, the film got a larger theatrical release and became a box office success. Approached by producer James Wan, and offered his next project, here we come to Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. The production of this film has been at-times more interesting than the actual movie, from the troubled test screenings, the internet rumour that Warner Bros were looking to bury the film and release it under a new name as The Resurrected, and the choice to include Cronin’s name in the title to differentiate it from the recently announced fourth entry in the Brendan Fraser-starring The Mummy franchise which will hit theatres next year. It is a long-troubled road, but the film is finally on the big screen. The film follows a family who lose their daughter while on a work-trip in Cairo, only to be reunited with the daughter eight years later. Found in a sarcophagus, the mummified daughter comes back changed and wreaks havoc on her family.
Veronica Falcon in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy
The biggest problem that faces this version of The Mummy, which transforms the franchise into a modern horror gore-fest, is that it’s a hodgepodge of ideas that have done better in other films. It is essentially a remake of the Exorcist and then becomes a full-blown Evil Dead movie in its third act. Cronin turned down making a sequel to his smash-hit Evil Dead Rise to do this film, and what he has essentially done is trade out one Evil Dead film for another. Evil Dead Rise worked because it embraced the franchise’s focus on humour, riding the line perfectly as a horror-comedy, but this film attempts to do the same, but feels more like a parody film. There are some comedic moments, but the film takes itself incredibly seriously and takes all its ridiculous plot beats as emotional moments that it’s hard to judge if the comedic is on purpose.
The times when the Cronin of Evil Dead Rise shines through is when the film is at its best, the gore effects are intense and exhilarating, and the third act becomes a completely different film which makes the previous two acts feel like a chore for a better film. Cronin’s directing style is also stylish and impressive, he loves slanted angles and long-take pull back shots, he feels like an Evil Dead director. There is a massive Sam Raimi-feel to the entire film, it is just a massive shame that the film’s colour grading is so terrible at times. For a film that looks so cinematic and filled with detail, the colours are moody and grey in a way that even a horror movie should not be, it is hard to see anything, and even the daylight scenes look too moody. It is a modern problem for the entire Hollywood blockbuster, and it plagues this film increasingly. It plagues many films, but when there is an interesting narrative, it is easy to overlook these faults, but here, that’s just not the case.
Cronin’s script is messy in various ways, from the character-writing, the dialogue and especially the way the movie conveys its central mystery. The film was marketed under the mystery of what happened to Katie, and besides the title of the film obviously giving it away, and the film answers this question in its opening couple of minutes. However, the film still treats it as a mystery, and over-explains the mystery in the third act, when the characters finally learn, but the audience already knows and it feels like superfluous information. The film’s characters are also just incredibly irritating; Cronin seems to understand horror tropes more than anyone and is using each of them as a ticking box. Dumb character decisions are a staple of horror cinema, they complained about consistently in audience discourse, but they exist so a story can continue, no horror film would happen without some characters being dumb.
This film takes it to the next level however, each character feel like they share a single brain cell, and the parent’s over-the-top want to help their daughter and their belief there is nothing wrong with her is laughable throughout. The film mixes the daughter doing the most heinous acts, with the parents insisting to a comedic degree that she is fine, it would feel on purpose on something like Scary Movie, but the movie is attempting to have an emotional crux of its narrative, so it feels laughable in all the wrong ways. It does not help as well that the central characters are not given anything to do, and the very little characterisation they have been given is eyerolling at best. Jack Reynor and Laia Costa give very unconvincing performances as the parents of the family, but the question is really if it is down to themselves or the half-baked script, they have been given. Natalie Grace does a splendid job as the possessed Katie, and Billie Roy is very good as the family’s youngest child, Maud, but the possessed nature of the film just comes across as an attempt to just do the Exorcist again. Cronin has described the film as having an influence by Se7en, and that comes from a side-story featuring May Calamawy as a detective, looking for what really happened to Katie. It is easily the most entertaining part of the film, with a compelling shoot-out sequence, but it feels unnecessary, when the mystery is obvious and it is just conveying information that the audience already knows. It could have easily been extracted from the film to make more time for the family drama, or to develop the emotional ending of the film that never feels earned. The film is way too long, sitting a little over two-hours, without needing to be that long.
Natalie Grace in Lee Cronin’s The Mummy
The Mummy is a strange case; it is a film that it feels like it barely wants to be what the title is advertising. Any staples of the franchise, from tomb-raiding to an actual mummified corpse, is all thrown out for a generic possession film. It is a poor attempt to mix the possession angle of The Exorcist, the family grief drama of Hereditary, and then becomes a comedy in its finale as a homage to the Evil Dead. It’s a movie where every idea has been done better somewhere else, where it relies on so many generic tropes to tell its story. The characters are unengaging and deliver groan-inducing dialogue in every sequence, making the only rewarding part of the experience the excellent direction and the great gore. The third act is delightfully absurd, but to get there, you must drift through a horrendous first two acts.
Video game movies seem to be a hot commodity in Hollywood these days, with so many games being translated to the big and small screen, from HBO’S The Last of Us adaptation, Tom Holland starring in Uncharted, to the now trilogy of Sonic the Hedgehog movies. With the clear downtrend in the superhero genre, this seems to be the new trend, and it’s a certified way to make money, with movies like A Minecraft Movie making close to a billion dollars, even with a very lukewarm word of mouth. These movies really seem critic proof, people are fans of these properties and will come out in droves to see them adapted. Nintendo, easily the biggest video game company on the planet, would not be expected to so quickly join this trend, especially with how protective they are of their intellectual property. Nintendo already attempted to go to the big screen in 1993, with a live action take on the Super Mario Brothers, a film which seemed to burn them for a long time about ever putting their properties back on the big screen. The film was a commercial and critical failure, and remains a laughingstock by its cast and crew, becoming a cult classic by the modern day.
Fans would be surprised then when a new take on the beloved Nintendo property would be announced in 2020, a animated film from Despicable Me creators, Illumination, and would be further surprised when the cast become a major online discussing point, from Chris Pratt as the lead character, to Jack Black as super villain Bowser, to Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong. These casting choices would become memes, and would cause genuine internet discourse, but when the film came to release, these critiques were for nothing, as the film generated over a billion dollars and became the second highest grossing film of the year. A beautifully animated film but one devoid of anything substantial outside of making references to the games themselves, the film seemed created as a reference machine, an easter egg hunt for characters you recognise, leaving behind many typical narrative or characterisation elements that you would need in a film. The success however clearly led to renewed interest in Nintendo crafting big screen content, with a live action Legend of Zelda being in production, and Illumination’s Mario sequel hitting the big screen this week.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, based on the game that it shares a title with and its sequel, picks up after the events of the previous film. Mario and Luigi are now protectors of the Mushroom Kingdom, and Bowser is imprisoned and attempting to make amends. However, the two brothers, Princess Peach and Toad must go on a new adventure into outer space to save the intergalactic princess Rosalina. The princess has been imprisoned by Bowser Jr, who seeks to free his father and help him take over the universe. Along the way, the characters will run into various other references that the previous film did not manage to get to.
In a similar way to the first film, the movie’s focus is the constant iconography it can throw in your face, the unrelenting number of cameos and references to every game in the franchise could be fun for the fans, but for anyone else, it is exhausting. The first film however was an origin story and had the smallest semblance of a narrative going on, with at least a hero’s journey for its title character. This time around, there is a narrative to hinge references on, but no character goes for an arc, there is very little time for any interesting plot, it essentially exists to act as a rollercoaster, travelling from one reference to the next. The characters in this movie do not feel like actual characters, each element feels so committee-managed, and like that Nintendo committee feels scared to even give its most famous characters some sort of flaws. Mario goes through no character arc in this film, he begins and ends the film the same, it is a video game movie at the end of the day, but when translating from one medium to another, you would expect at least plot-less games like the earliest Mario games to be translated into a actual narrative for a big-budget feature.
The main problem with the narrative comes from how incredibly fast-paced the movie is, at slightly over 90 minutes, the film does not allow its characters or audience to breathe for one second. It feels like a film designed for the TikTok audience age, moving at a blistering pace to keep the audience’s attention, and throwing enough new at the audience in each scene to further keep that attention. This short-runtime and fast pace however leave every character somehow feeling lost in their own film, Mario feels like a secondary character in his own film, you could probably count on two hands the number of lines the character says across the film. There are so many characters running around that there is no focus given to any of them, and attempts at character arcs fall flat because of how fast they are resolved. Bowser attempts to redeem myself, and then falls back into villainy across two scenes, with his turn back to the dark side feel laughable how quickly it happens.
Casting celebrity voices as these characters was a massive mode of contention when the first film was announced, with mostly all the cast delivering solid performances across that initial feature. Falling back into the cameo-fest notion, the casting of various new characters was the focus of the marketing of this film, with some of these castings really showcasing the marketing machine that Nintendo is. The announcement of Glen Powell portraying Star Fox, a Nintendo character outside of the Mario Universe, felt like a strange announcement when it’s a late-game cameo in the movie. The knowledge however that Nintendo is supposedly creating a new Star Fox game and setting up a shared Nintendo universe, which could lead to a Super Smash Bros movie, makes the film’s choice to stop halfway through to include the character feel incredibly obvious. Powell is good in the role however, but he feels out of place, and feels more like an IP mine in hopes of also getting his own standalone film.
The rest of the new cast are very solid, Donald Glover makes noises as Yoshi, and the character will walk away being one of the highlights of the movie. Benny Safdie is surprisingly great as new villain Bowser Jr, a winy and obnoxious performance as a petulant child, it really works. Brie Larson feels wasted as Princess Rosalina, a character central to the narrative but only in the characters attempting to save her. Returning actors Charlie Day and Keegan Michael Key deliver good performances as Luigi and Toad, feeling like the actors who are easily fitted to their roles the most. Jack Black, who walked away with a hilarious song and a memorable performance last time, walks away feeling from this with a very wok-man like performance as Bowser, there is nothing really to say about his performance. Chris Pratt and Anya Taylor Joy are really the weakest parts of the cast, as the main characters Mario and Peach, they feel asleep behind the wheel voice-acting wise and clearly not interested in the material. You cannot help but feel bad for them though, when they are acting out such uninteresting material, where the movie essentially allows them the privilege to not even try.
It is all a massive shame as well however, because the animation is truly excellent, this is the best-looking Illumination movie ever made, and all the visual noise of references still manages to look pretty. The worlds look fleshed out and nice, and the movie does manage to be fun because of so. It is a film that will entertain its target demographic of children and super-fans of the franchise, but it does not offer much else outside of that. The comedy misses more than it hits, and the best parts of it feel like the bizarre casting choices that led up to its release. The first film was not the best but at least had a barebones plot for a general audience to latch onto, this one is just visual noise designed to mine as much IP as possible from this property. There are certainly worse ways to spend 90 minutes, but god only knows how much worse the next one could possibly get
Currently in cinemas are two films that could be easily mistaken for each other, with Radio Silence’s follow-up to their breakout hit Ready Or Not releasing last week, and They Will Kill You starring Zazie Beetz also opening in a close time. Both films follow characters being hunted by rich socialites in a game of sport or a game of life and death, with a supernatural twist, focusing on a working class versus upper class dynamic. The differences come down to setting, but there mix of horror, thriller and comedy makes them feel like sister-films, it is not hard to see They Will Kill You being inspired by Radio Silence’s original Ready or Not. With how similar these films are, it is only appropriate to tackle a review of these films in one article, appraising them for their similarities and differences.
They Will Kill You
Starting with the original feature, They Will Kill You follows an ex-convict who starts working as a housekeeper at a mysterious New York high-rise. She soon realises she has applied to a job run by a community of rich socialites who are involved in a series of disappearances. The biggest problem of this film is how derivate it is, after a central twist which was hidden in the marketing, the film falls back into the common conventions of these survival action-horrors, and the narrative becomes incredibly predictable. After this initial supernatural twist, which the marketing hid by showcasing most of the first act as the main footage in those trailers, the film enters a great rhythm that gets slowed down heavily until an utterly bizarre third act. Besides it’s obvious inspiration from Ready or Not, the film very clearly holds its influences from films like Evil Dead, The Raid and John Wick very earnestly, as its bloody action feels stylized in a way that recreates the video-gamey decisions made behind the camera for the newest John Wick feature.
Inspirations from Tarantino also appear commonly, namely in the very first action sequence which feels very Kill Bill-Esque. The action is easily one of the highlights of the film, playing every action beat so comedically and with so much stylisation behind the camera that you can very easily forgive some of the pitfalls the movie falls through. Director Kirill Sokolov has made a career for making darkly comedic action films, and he clearly knows his way around a camera, there are so many dynamic camera movements here that make the action feel alive and fluid, tracking shots are a highlight of this very feature. There are some visual effects that feel out of place in the carnage, but it strangely gives the film a campy effect, something that makes it feel very rooted in tone to Evil Dead 2. The action is bloody and violent, with some excellent kills, and a great final sequence which is lit by inflamed fire axe, and the film delivers a great balance between serious gore with comedic sequences featuring those kills. The films’ supernatural twist allows for some hilarious moments where the insanity of the plot becomes a goldmine for physical comedy. A great score from Carlos Rafael Rivera and a great use of hip-hop backing track gives the action some great rhythm and movement.
It is the characters which really hold this film back from being anything other than solid. These horror-action films can really be defined by how memorable its group of characters are, from its protagonist to the group of villains that are designed to either be comedic foils or beyond evil and designed to make you want them to be killed. The villains here are so surface level and undeveloped that an audience will feel nothing when their narrative is wrapped up. They exist to hunt our protagonist and that is it, the only one who is given anything to do is Patricia Arquette’s lead villain. Arquette seems to be playing the same character she plays in Severance, with an inconsistent accent and a backstory which feels like an afterthought with how very little it gets brought up.
Her connection to another character feels surface-level and shows that such a brisky 90-minute film could have maybe done with an extra ten minutes of runtime to develop some of the background characters. Zazie Beetz is really the star of the film and is holding the entire narrative on her back. She has proven herself as an action star starring as Marvel superhero Domino in Deadpool 2, and she continues to impress as a leading woman here. She is burdened by a superfluous family plot, which feels so tropey for these types of films, that even Ready or Not 2 does the same thing and feels so barebones. Beetz manages to bring out some level of emotion from that plot, but it all feels a little empty when you must look at anything over than the action and gore
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
Moving onto the sequel to the inspiration for They Will Kill You. The original Ready or Not was a surprise hit when it came out in 2019, a fun and refreshing survival film where a woman must survive until dawn while being hunted by her new in-laws on the night of her wedding. The movie skyrocketed the directing duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and their production company Radio Silence into major success, as they were instantly given the opportunity to make two Scream movies, and their upcoming project is a new sequel to Brendan Fraser’s Mummy franchise. A sequel to their breakout hit would have been the obvious next step along the way, and here we have it. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come picks up instantly after their original feature, as Samara Weaving’s Grace is recovering from surviving the brutal game of hide and seek that led to the death of her entire new family. Surviving the game has triggered a power-play with the elite families that run the games, leading them to use Grace in a new game, where she must protect her sister in a familiar situation.
That is easily the biggest problem with this sequel, everything feels very familiar. It feels like a typical 80s or 90s sequel, a Ghostbusters 2 or Beverly Hills Cop 2, where they are essentially the same films beat for beat as the original, just with new villains. The only big difference is their attempts to go bigger, and Ready or Not 2 does go bigger. It benefits from the fact that the supernatural elements are out of the bag now, they were a closing twist in the original, but now the film gets to run with that supernatural angle, and it allows for some very compelling visuals and kills. The main way however that the film decides to go bigger is through both the multiple families hunting the protagonists, and through the addition of Grace’s sister, meaning there is two being hunted this time rather than just one.
The addition of multiple families’ facilities the same plot being laid out, just with more characters now hunting than just one family, but the film does do something that They Will Kill You failed to do, make its villains interesting and compelling. The various families all have interesting quirks and play off each other in compelling ways, all out for themselves, whether it makes them scary or pathetic, leading to tension and comedy. Elijah Wood plays a fun role as the lawyer for each family, a man just concerned with the game and nothing else, and Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy deliver great performances as the film’s central antagonists. Hatosy delivers a very chilling performance in the final act, but a performance that isn’t scared to lean into zaniness at the same time.
Writer Andy Weir has already gotten one of his famous novels to hit the big screen and to tremendous success, with 2015 seeing the release of the big screen adaptation of his novel, The Martian. Directed by Ridley Scott, the film followed an astronaut who must survive after being left behind on a mission to Mars, a drama-filled and emotionally focused survival film which became the 10th highest grossing film of the year. The film was nominated for seven awards at the year’s Academy Awards, including the notable awards for Best Picture and Best Actor for leading man Matt Damon. This saw a clear hunger for studios for more of Weir’s work, and when his 2021 novel, Project Hail Mary, was purchased for a film adaptation by MGM before it was even released, it clearly showed that Weir’s work was made for film.
The novel was picked up for film in 2020, with Ryan Gosling already set to star and produce, with Phil Lord and Chris Miller attached to direct, famous directors and producers who had created such iconic franchises, as the Lego Movies, Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs, the animated Spider-Man Spider-Verse films and 21 and 22 Jump Street. Drew Goddard would return as screenwriter, after previously writing the screenplay for The Martian, and the massive changes between scripts is remarkable. 5 years after the release of the novel, and the film has hit the big screen, with the film currently making a major profit in its box office journey. The film follows Gosling as schoolteacher and former molecular biologist Ryland Grace, who wakes up adrift in space with no memories of how he got there. Alone and confused, he slowly pieces his past back together as he realises, he has been sent on a mission to save the world, and more specifically the sun, and the problem only becomes more complex as he runs into an unlikely ally.
The biggest praise that could be given to this film is that it certainly feels like a film Spielberg could have made during his blockbuster days, it may be derivative in various aspects, but it wears its influences on its sleeve in the most earnest way. It’s a crowd-pleasing blockbuster which feels more comedic and imaginative than The Martian, that film feels very based in science and drama, a awards-pleaser, this feels designed to be incredibly broad in its appeal to a general audience, and to be more focused on spectacle and entertainment. This type of film could come off as cookie-cutter and safe, but Phil Lord and Chris Miller are excellent directors, who have played with genre filmmaking a lot through their careers, making every simplistic moment feel awe-inspiring and classically imaginative. There is a pure wit to the film that comes from Lord and Miller delivering dialogue handed to them from Goddard’s multi-faceted script, dialogue that feels so snappy and like their Jump Street films that it is insane that they were not involved in the scripting phase of the film. The third part of why the script comes alive in such a snappy way is because of Ryan Gosling, a naturally charismatic leading actor who is always reliable in every film he is featured in. The actor has been having a very interesting last couple of years, mainly focusing on starring in action movies and blockbusters, whether it is the Barbie movie or the film adaptation of old Hollywood series The Fall Guy, and soon the upcoming Star Wars film, Star Wars: Starfighter.
Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary
Even if he has been starring in mainly franchise material, he is always committing to putting in an incredible performance and really stands out as the highlight of each film he is in. This film, with its amnesia plotline, really allows Gosling to flex his acting skills, as he essentially plays two separate characters. The film plays out its plot through flashbacks, as the amnesiac Ryland recalls his past, with the film flashing back and forth between the present storyline and the events that lead up to these moments. It is a genius idea that helps the film to feel incredibly tightly paced, stopping the audience from a slow first act where you build to Gosling travelling to space, and instead those moments help to alleviate tension and become great snapshots of character work. Gosling’s earth-based moments showcase a nervous and un-heroic character who is more contained in his science, a man who has potential but is too scared to face that potential. The version of Gosling that populates the main sections of the narrative is more like his normal film persona, he’s witty and confident, but still with the smarts and some of the insecurities that come from his past. Gosling also just knows how to play with an audience’s emotions, and he works tremendously well with the emotional moments, with the film’s feel-good and positive mentality working hand in hand with this performance. The performance would be nowhere as good if he wasn’t working off his co-star, an alien named Rocky. Rocky is a second act reveal and will not be discussed too heavily here in the review for spoilers, but he is featured in the trailers, so it is only right to briefly discuss.
Rocky serves as Gosling’s best friend, and the dynamic between the two is electric on screen. Rocky will easily become one of the most favourite characters of the 2026 film season, he was designed to be popular, with a cute design, and a great sense of humour. It should be applauded how easily Gosling is able to act against nothing, in a film where he is essentially on-screen by himself, and how perfect Goddard’s script is in breathing life into a talking rock and making every scene with him feeling so palpable and real. The heart of the film is the dynamic between Ryland and Rocky, and the film pulls it off masterfully.
If there is one downside to the film, its that the side characters in the earth segments feel slightly under-developed. The flashback segments are crucial, for building Ryland’s hero-journey and showing the scale of the threat, but it mainly is enjoyable because of Gosling. Sandra Huller, fresh from her massive-scale new global prominence from her two films of 2023, Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest, is the standout of the supporting cast. She has a great solo singing sequence, which stands as one of the emotional centres of the flashback, but the rest of the cast are given virtually nothing, Ken Leung and Milana Vayntrub play the roles of co-pilots on the spaceship and the film’s synopsis gives more away than anything for how small their roles are going to be. Essentially the film serves as a one-man show, between a man and his rock friend, and the flashbacks serve to make those sequences hit even harder. These scenes are also paired with some of the most impressive effects that’s been in a blockbuster in years. Special effects are taken for granted now, when most films are covered in special effects, or filmed entirely on green-screens, and for this film to deliver such incredible sequences which is directed so perfectly, even if its all visual effects, it shows how groundbreaking these sequences can still be.
There is a warmth to this film that is hard to see in many modern-day blockbusters, an earnest positivity that is palpable on the screen. The film roots its narrative in science and real-world drama, but never gets stuck in gloominess or paranoia, and instead leans back on comedy and a perfect dynamic between Gosling’s Ryland and Rocky, a dynamic which holds the film together perfectly. Gosling has truly proven himself as a great leading man, a capable and charming actor who can literally act opposite a rock, and this is a film worthy of such a strong performance
Adaptations of Mary Shelley’s classic 1818 horror novel Frankenstein has been a hot commodity in the last couple of years in Hollywood, as various directors have put their own two cents on the classic novel. From Guillermo Del Toro’s long-standing adaptation finally seeing the light of day on Netflix last year, to the horror-comedy inspired by 2009’s Jennifer’s Body, Lisa Frankenstein. Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, an adaptation of the novel of the same name, takes a lot of inspiration from the Frankenstein story, and does everything what this year’s newest Frankenstein adaptation tries to do. The Bride, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s sophomore feature after her smash-hit The Lost Daughter, attempts to take a feminist approach to the original text, and put its own spin on Universal’s classic sequel, 1935’s The Bride of Frankenstein.
A feminist take on the material is a confusing order of events when the text itself is incredibly feminist and written by a woman at the end of the day. However, there was a chance to craft something new and modern with the material, but what Gyllenhaal has delivered is a hodgepodge of ideas from other films, from Joker, Bonnie and Clyde, Natural Born Killers to Poor Things in a mess of a feature. The project was originally developed for a Netflix release but was bought out by Warner Bros when Netflix dropped the picture after a budget dispute with the director, and this purchase allowed the director more freedom behind the camera and led to an expensive film being made. It is always important for a director to realise their vision, but there are times when a director needs to be reined in and limited in scope, and that comes as one of the biggest problems of this feature. The film stars Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale, as the titular character and Frankenstein’s Monster respectively, as Buckley’s character becomes possessed by the spirit of Mary Shelley, starting a journey into the true story that the author ‘wanted’ to make. The Monster, known as Frank, revives Buckley’s Ida to find love in his lonely life, only to cause a series of events which lead them on the run from the law.
Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley in The Bride
Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale are easily the highlights of the film, two committed actors who are giving performances that this film does not deserve. Buckley is currently the front-runner for the best actress award for her role in Hamnet at this year’s Oscars, and her performance here is a complete blast. The material feels lesser to such a talented actress, but she pulls it off. The addition of the possession of Mary Shelley, who appears in black-and-white also played by Buckley, comes as the only negative to this performance. The inclusion comes across like the character has a form of Tourette’s, with Buckley twitching and suddenly switching to a British accent, and saying something ‘smart and sophisticated’, which usually means random rhyming that has little to do with what is going on. It becomes irritating by the tenth or eleventh time it is done in the film, and the inclusion of these lines comes across incredibly pretentious and becomes even more ridiculous once they are dropped by the third act and become irrelevant. Bale and Buckley share great chemistry, and Bale delivers a performance that feels incredibly more vulnerable and layered compared to anything he has done in the last couple of years. Annette Bening also deserves a strong shoutout for committing to an incredibly goofy and strange character but is severely missed whenever she is not on screen.
It is everything else in the film that forms the film into an incredible mess, a tonal and genre mess that does not know what it wants to be. There is an incredible musical sequence half-way through the film, where the film leans heavily into the zany and over-the-top nature of the story, and it’s magnificent to watch unfold. However, it is the only time that the film does something like this, there’s moments where Frank sees himself in movies, dream sequences almost in black-and-white photography, conveying a connection between the monsters and the arts but it feels like something that is not developed on at all. The film constantly moves between feeling dark and serious, and zany and goofy, and each time it pings pongs back and forth it is incredibly jarring to watch. Bale feels like a living cartoon at times, but then it is paired with incredibly sexual imagery, and scenes focusing on sexual assault and the tone becomes incredibly jarring. One of the film’s biggest problems is how it refuses to commit to a genuine tone, narrative or message, instead feeling like a grab-bag of everything that the director could have made across multiple films. A Bonnie and Clyde story focused on Frankenstein and his bride is a remarkable idea, but then you also must deal with a villainous mob boss, a police corruption storyline with two investigators following our lead’s crimes, and a female uprising against sexual and domestic abuse.
Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale in The Bride
The themes of femicide and power dynamics in relationships are very important, but they are not developed enough and instead feels like window-dressing or a prop that was meant to be developed later. Women taking to the streets in a violent mob in protest feels like a carbon copy of Joker, where the same happens after the lead character’s appearance on TV, while there it was a burning catalyst to a movie’s worth of exploration, here it thrown in and forgotten about instantly, a fun idea that just exists. The biggest theme seems to be an exploration into the controlling of women, femicide and sexual abuse against women, but the film explores this so sloppily that it comes across as toxic itself. Every time our lead gets in danger, it’s Frank that gets here out of the trouble, how are we meant to get the film’s message of women being strong and independent if the main character does not reflect this message. It only gets worse when the film is so inept in trying to convey its message, that there is an entire scene where the lead conveys the message of the film verbally, spelling out what the film is attempting to convey to the audience, in the sloppiest way possible.
What the film really needs is to pick a lane and keep with it, every time Bale and Buckley are on screen the film is magnificent, and whenever the film leaves those two characters, it truly dips. The exploration into how film connects these two characters, and how the escapism of those films helps them deal with their lives is very compelling, but every time you get lost in that, the film cuts back to the police officers, or the mob storyline. The police storyline itself feels like one of the easiest cuts the film could have made, with Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz working together to hunt Frank and The Bride. Cruz is the subordinate in the relationship, Sarsgaard’s assistant who is not allowed on the force but is the one who has the true detective instinct, as Sarsgaard claims the credit. It could have been a good storyline, but it feels like a loose part in a story not about them, and the dialogue between the two is some of the most heavy-handed writing in a big-budget film in a long while. It is a film that has messages but deploys them so sloppily and by using Mary Shelley to make them seem preachy and pretentious, but it’s writing does not hit the same marks that the film thinks it is reaching.
Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale in The Bride
Director focused passion projects are important, and Maggie Gyllenhaal very clearly had a lot of passion when crafting this film. It has gorgeous looking cinematography, and some very striking sequences, alongside three great central performances. However, the film is just a mess of ideas that leave it feeling anything but cohesive. Cuts needed to be made, and the film needed to become more focused, but in its current state, it feels like a film that is basically about everything but nothing at the same time.
The production of Scream 7 has been a troubled one, with a series of creative retooling’s taking place during the production of the seventh film in the franchise that used to be the child of horror legend Wes Craven. Craven directed the first four films, and after his unfortunate death in 2015, Spyglass Media Group and Paramount Pictures looked to revive the franchise. Revive the franchise they did, as Scream 5 and 6 released in 2022 and 2023 respectively and became box office smash hits, marking the Scream franchise back in the big leagues. Scream 6 would not be without its small amount of controversy, as the franchise left behind its lead actor, Neve Campbell, lowballing the actress for pay in the franchise that she was the so-claimed ‘final girl’ of. This would only be the start of the trouble that would come for this franchise, with Scream 4 and 6 directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett announcing they would not return to wrap up this trilogy, and they would be replaced by Freaky and Happy Death Day director Christopher Landon. These directors would not be the only people leaving the franchise, as replacement lead for the franchise, Melissa Barerra, would be fired from the 7th film after the film was paused during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Barrera’s firing came from the studio’s claim of her supporting antisemitism on her social medias, after posting pro-Palestinian videos during the Gaza War. This would be the catalyst that would cause many to boycott the film, and created a domino effect of more problems, from other lead actress Jenna Ortega to leave the project, and to lose new director Christopher Landon.
This soon caused a clear panic mode for the studio, as Paramount and Spyglass quickly made the decision to repair their relationship with former series star Neve Campbell, with her returning as lead, and to move the franchise as far as possible from Ortega and Barerra. Kevin Williamson, who wrote the original, would finally return to the franchise after being absent since the 4th entry, and would sit in the director’s chair this time around. The franchise seemed to fall back into what any franchise does when it faces controversy, hide from it by filling the film with nostalgia. The marketing of this film has hit home that Matthew Lillard is returning as Stu Macher, and the trades have already leaked that David Arquette and Scott Foley would return as Dewey and Roman Bridger respectively. It reeks of desperation, and the film reflects that. Scream 7 picks up after the events of the New York attacks in the previous film, as Sydney lives a safe life with her daughter and husband. When a new Ghostface arrives to her sleepy town, hunting for her daughter, and potentially in leagues with Stu Macher, she is forced out of retirement to stop another massacre.
Neve Campbell in Scream 7
Scream was once the most consistent horror franchise out there, none of them could hold up to the original film, but they all felt genuine worthwhile experiences, that had something to say about the genre and the state of Hollywood at the time. Scream 7 is the first time that the franchise has genuinely nothing to say and feels like it was made only to make some money. There are some small commentaries on true crime, the never-ending cycle of Sydney being brought back repeatedly, and the absence of Sydney from the previous film play a role in the film’s narrative. All of this feels only like surface dressing however, and feels incredibly underbaked, as the film attempts to remove itself from the commentary, and instead taking itself incredibly seriously. A part of Scream was how it perfectly played both sides; it could be incredibly graphic and intense but also played with the genre in comedic ways and Ghostface himself could be a terrible killer. This film plays everything way too straight, which leads to some unintentionally comedic moments, and removes the fun.
The movie has some brutal kills, the pure highlight of the film, but the movie really stands apart from the franchise because it feels like it has nothing to do with the franchise outside of its nostalgia pandering. The nostalgia feels all-consuming to a franchise that usually jokes around with its own connections to the wider genre, and the nostalgia feels like a crux here, the only thing it can really offer when it has no commentary to tell. The movie recreates various scenes from the original, including out of place musical queues, all to elicit some sort of nostalgia twinge to its audience. It is the type of thing the franchise should be making fun of, not actually doing, and that goes for the storyline where the film is essentially recreating Laurie’s motherhood storyline from both H20 and the 2018 Halloween film.
Neve Campbell delivers an incredible performance here, feeling like she has never left the role as Sydney feels authentic as ever. Every scene she owns, and she really elevates some really excruciating dialogue, and the movie’s focus on her coming to terms with her trauma is one of the very few good parts of such a messy script. Her relationship with her daughter is the central focus of the film, dealing with generational trauma as the Ghostface killers decide to target her daughter, Tatum, and make her become the next Sydney. Isabel May delivers a solid performance as Tatum, but she does not feel as fleshed out as the protagonists of 5 and 6, and she very much falls back into being the moody teenager character. Joel McHale also does a solid job as Sydney’s husband, Mark, who the film quickly makes you like as he shares great chemistry with Campbell. The character was very clearly written originally to be Mark Kincaid, a character introduced in Scream 3, played by Patrick Dempsey, but with the actor unable to return, they pivoted and changed Mark to another Mark. McHale’s Mark is a solid replacement for such a legacy character, however. The biggest problem of the film is how many characters are in the cast, and how little the film uses those characters.
Celeste O’Connor, McKenna Grace, Sam Rechner and Asa Germann play the friendship of Tatum, a group of characters that appear in every movie, and the movie doesn’t even bother to make them characters, they are just in the film to add to the body count. It is hard to care when the characters exist to die, and when the deaths are so brutal, it feels almost mean-spirited. Other returning characters include Gale, who after Sydney’s absence in 6 is the only character to appear in all 7 movies, and Chad and Mindy, the remaining leads from the 5th and 6th film. These characters feel like they could be removed from the film and nothing would change, superfluous characters who are only bearable because the performances are so charming.
Kevin Williamson has only directed one film before this, the 1999 black-comedy feature Teaching Mrs Tingle, and with a 27-year gap in directing, his direction here is very surprising and strong. The film looks great, and has some very striking shots, and cinematographer Ramsey Nickell heightens so many kill sequences by making them look frighteningly beautiful. It can only be said that Williamson should have probably spent as much time polishing his script as he did prepare for the actual film shoot. Every great who-dunnite mystery feature has various red herrings, characters designed to be mysterious and make the audience think that they are the ones responsible. Scream has used this trope various times across the various films, from the boyfriend character in Scream 2, and the new Deputy in Scream 4, this film makes the use of various red herrings, but these characters make a flimsy plot fall apart completely. Characters completely disappear from the plot with no end in sight for their storylines, and various plot threads barely come together to make a cohesive plot. It feels like multiple different scripts that have just been thrown together, with such big elements like Stu’s return feeling superfluous to the actual plot taking place.
Williamson has already stated that there were various scenes cut in the original version, with a chase sequence with Gale being a big one, and that can really explain why so many elements feel so half-baked and left behind. It can also explain why the Ghostface reveals are so underwhelming as well. No spoilers of course, half the fun of these movies are figuring out who the killers are, but these killers are the most underwhelming of the franchise, feeling both incredibly obvious and so underwhelming with how little they appear in the film before the grand reveal. A middling movie could be saved by a great reveal and fantastic conclusion, but the Ghostface reveal just destroys any good will left. First the finale gives us a embarrassing cameo-fest of characters phoning in lines where they look like they just got out of bed, and then the actual killer reveals leave the audience underwhelmed. The motive makes no sense and doesn’t really add to Sydney’s overall storyline, and feels more at home with a typical slasher, and not the Scream franchise that this used to be.
Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown in Scream 7
Scream 7 is a disappointing franchise return, a movie that seems desperate to make you forget about the previous entries and the controversy that came from Melissa Barrera’s firing. Nostalgia is the focus of this film, recreating scenes from Craven’s classic and bringing back as many characters as possible, even if these do not fit into the comedic tone of the franchise. Neve Campbell delivers a great performance, and the kills are brutal and creative, but they are the only highlights of this absolute mess of a feature. The film takes itself way too seriously for it to be fun, the supporting cast feel underdeveloped and boring to watch, and the script feels like a first draft with how much it doesn’t make sense. With Williamson supposedly attached to helm Scream 8 already, as well after the box office hit this film has been, it can only be hoped that he learns from the mistakes of this film and delivers a better product. However, it truly feels like this franchise has outlived its lifespan, maybe it’s time to finally let it rest
This passing week has saw the release of some of the biggest films in the year already, from Gore Verbinski’s new blockbuster adventure feature, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, to the controversial new adaptation of Wuthering Heights from Saltburn-director Emerald Fennell. However, it also saw the release of a contained and smaller feature that harkens back to the old creature-feature mid-budget movies of the past, and that would be Cold Storage. Starring Stranger Things breakout Joe Keery and Barbarian star Georgina Campbell, alongside the well-known Liam Neeson, the film is based on a book of the same name, written by David Koepp, the screenwriter behind such classics as Jurassic Park and Mission Impossible. Koepp would return to write the screenplay for the film adaptation, which skews very closely to his original text, with that former text feeling like a proof-of-concept for a film anyway. The film follows Keery and Campbell as disgruntled workers at a storage industry building, who meet on the same nightshift as they discover the building has been built on the remains of an old military base. The base holds a parasitic fungus, as the duo attempts to contain it and with the help of a military officer, played by Neeson, who has had a past with the fungus, destroy it as well.
There is something inherently charming about Cold Storage, a very contained body-horror thriller, contained to one single location, and developing enough interesting sequences in such a contained location. The film screams low budget, with the director being someone who has gained prominence from documentaries, and some one-episode stints on TV. In this day and age, when the cinema experience seems to be designed for big-budget blockbusters, it is incredible to see such a entertaining and smaller-scale feature, that in this day would end up being sent straight to TV or be thrown on a streaming service like Netflix. There have been many contagion-style films, or zombie apocalypse scenarios, and even the concept of this coming from a fungus is not original, the game and television series The Last Of Us done that first, but homage seems to be the focus of this film. It feels spiritually like a Romero-film, or like it is homaging Shaun of the Dead, a horror-comedy that uses the tropes of the genre to have fun and designed to be enjoyable without any major thought into the plot.
That is not to say that the movie is perfect however, as mentioned before, the plot is not where you are coming for, it is essentially a loose connection of fun sequences that are tied together by a string that will crash and burn at any moment. The central plot-thread of the American military leaving one of their decommissioned military bases that holds a world-ending fungus is laughable, especially when the fungus is shown to have been spreading through the base before the military left and no one noticed. The fungus also works in such a way that if you removed yourself from the harmless and fun vibes of the feature, you would question why it breaks its own rules consistently. Sometimes the fungus takes minutes to infect a host, sometimes it takes longer, and the amount of time it takes to kill or bloat them into a fungus bomb varies based on where the plot is at that moment. In an impressively eerie opening sequence set in the initial finding of the fungus, the film sets up the fungus will move itself to meet the nearest host and can infect a host through their shoes when they stand on it. However, the film goes out of its way to make the fungus act irrationally to stop its main characters from being infected, even during a scene where a lead touches a padlock that was previously touched by an infected.
Liam Neeson, Joe Keery and Georgina Campbell in Cold Storage
Speaking of those main characters, the performances of the main cast is where the film truly comes alive. Georgina Campbell has made a name for herself as a Scream-Queen in the last couple of years, from starring in Zach Cregger’s Barbarian, to her next film being the slasher, Psycho Killer, and she pulls in an engaging performance here. Joe Keery is another reliable actor, rising to fame because of his smaller role in Stranger Things, that soon led him to become a fan-favourite and become boosted to a major character. With that show over, his career can truly start, and he plays differently to his iconic Steve Harrington character here, taking on the role of a fast-talking delinquent with a level of charisma that can only come from Keery. His need to constantly talk can become irritating at some points, but it’s saved by the excellent chemistry between Keery and Campbell, they compliment each other well and the movie gives them enough emotional beats to offset how fast the action starts when they first meet.
Liam Neeson seems to be leaning more into his recent turn to comedy here, off the back of his The Naked Gun remake, with his side of the film being easily the most comedic based. He spends essentially the whole movie driving to the plot and serves as basically an exposition machine for the world-building of this fungus, but that exposition never feels tedious, because Neeson delivers it in such a serious way that you cannot help but find it hilarious. His section of the film feels like a completely different film at times, but when you get to the two plotlines overlapping, the small interactions you get between the central cast is very endearing.
Rated in the UK as a 15 as well, the film does enough with the body-horror angle of the fungus infection to make some memorable, and usually comedic in tone sequences with some great makeup effects, and some impressive visual effects for a movie so low-budget. Not all the effects are perfect, any time the movie includes an infected animal, namely a cat and a deer, the effects stand out incredibly hard, and make sequences which are meant to be frightening, into something incredibly comedic. There is an interesting choice throughout the film to include visual-effects heavy sequences where the camera follows the fungus into the body, showcasing it affecting the blood cells and taking over the body, and those sequences are some of the most frightening featured across the film, really bringing across the fear of the situation.
Georgina Campbell and Joe Keery in Cold Storage
The effects really shine a light on how the film is, not perfect, but a great popcorn flick that Hollywood just does not make anymore. In another world, if it wasn’t for the Liam Neeson appearance and the fact its written by such a big screenwriter, this film would find a home on Netflix, or any of the other streaming services. It is important to appreciate good mid-budget features like this on the big screen, and there is enough fun to be had here to make any horror fan have a good time. It is not the most original film in the world, but its influences it wears earnestly, and three great central performances allow it to become a compelling zombie flick that is worth the price of admission
Sam Raimi has spent most of the late 2010s and early 2020s as a producer, producing mainly horror features in films such as Crawl, Don’t Breathe and the newest instalments in what used to be his sole franchise, The Evil Dead. Raimi got big off the back of his original feature, The Evil Dead, released in 1981, a movie which hit the mainstream when getting praised by iconic author Stephen King. His career has been characterised by works in the horror genre, crafting a unique style which mixed the worlds of horror but also comedy, with slapstick genre features alongside those horror films. Evil Dead spawned a franchise, and he launched into even more success when helming the free Tobey Maguire-led Spider-Man films, which made him into a blockbuster filmmaker. Since the release of Spider-Man 3 and him leaving the franchise, he only directed two features until 2020, the return to horror-comedies with 2009’s Drag Me To Hell and 2013’s Oz the Great and Powerful. A prequel to the Wizard of Oz, the film seemed to sour Raimi’s love for filmmaking for nearly a decade, with his only credits for a long while being as producer. It took another comic book film for him to come back, replacing Scott Derrickson as director of Marvel’s Doctor Strange sequel, 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. It wasn’t a critically lauded film, but a film that proved that Raimi still had it, he could shine through with his stylistic quirks in a big studio film.
It seemed to get him back into the mood to direct as well, as we have entered 2026, and that marks the release of the first original Raimi feature since 2009, and his first R rated feature since 2000’s The Gift. Send Help stars Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien as they get stranded on a deserted island when getting into a plane crash. O’Brien plays the CEO of a company, and McAdams his employee, a dynamic which becomes increasingly twisted when employee becomes boss and boss becomes subservient when stuck on the island.
Dylan O’Brien and Rachel McAdams in Send Help
The film takes a while to get going, with a prolonged first act to get to the plane crash and set up the workplace relationship between employee and boss, but when the film gets to the actual survival aspect, it is an absolute blast. It has been a while since a Raimi movie has been able to go so far into the slapstick and goofy angle, and this film goes for broke in various instances, while remaining an entertaining and emotionally fulfilling narrative. The centre pieces of the film are the incredible performances from the film’s two leads, who are doing so much heavy lifting in a film which is essentially just them two for the entire runtime.
Rachel McAdams is an Academy Award nominated actress, a true powerhouse of a serious performer, with films like Spotlight and the Notebook showing off her talents, so its entertaining as hell to see her acting it up in a goofy film by Raimi. She commits to a crazy performance here, commandeering the screen and making herself the focus, playing well with the hilarious and over-the-top script by writing duo Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, who wrote the screenplay for horror crossover Freddy Vs Jason. Her performance is multi-layered and deliberately hard to track, as she moves from quiet and chaotically unsocial, to glowing up into a provider and survivalist, with a streak of meanness. Dylan O’Brien has a great performance here as well and seems to have been cast based on how hilarious his laugh can be, feeling like Raimi has found the perfect Bruce Campbell successor with that quirk. He plays the spoiled rich boy perfectly, and his movement from power-mad sleaze to subservient employee is entertaining to see for sure.
One of the most entertaining parts of both the script and both character’s performances is that both characters are far from saints, and the movie constantly plays with the audience for which character they are meant to root for. Dylan O’Brien’s Bradley is easy to hate at the beginning, a clear translation of a nepo-baby boss, who is there because of his family and not because of his skill, passing people up for promotions so his friends can also be wealthy. McAdams’ Linda feels like a typical protagonist, as the movie works from her perspective, but as the power of being the top-dog on the island goes to her head, she morphs into a near monster, sadistic and hiding information from both the audience and Bradley. Bradley retains his douche personality from the beginning, but he morphs into a survivalist himself, and you can only feel sorry for him for what he eventually must go through. O’Brien is so good at making you care for him, when he is playing such a horrible individual, and you cannot help but fall for the chemistry between the two actors and then feel even the sadder when the film becomes a cat and mouse game of control and into violence by the third act.
Rachel McAdams in Send Help
The film bears a lot of resemblance to Ruben Ostlund’s 2022 film, Triangle of Sadness, in how they both talk about class, and the relationship between bosses and their employees when survival pushes those dynamics out the door. That film also ends up with the characters stranded on an island, with the power dynamic shift leading the less fortunate to become as ruthless and careless as the people they once served. Raimi’s film is very clearly not as deep as that film, its just background dressing for a fun thriller, but it is notably there. It has something to say clearly about the dynamic between men and women in the workplace, toxic masculinity and how power can easily corrupt someone.
Raimi’s metaphorical exploration into these themes is very surface level at times, but that is to showcase how much he still has it in the directorial compartment. His directorial style is all over this film, with so many sequences that seem to be built just for the director’s taste, the screenwriters work perfectly to make this feel like a Raimi movie. All of the comedy comes from Raimi’s signature whip-pans and pull-ins, the movie would be no where near as effective without those quirks. There is a great use of close-ups in the beginning that marks the audience with an actual reason to also find Rachel McAdams’ character as gross. The movie manages to hold a great balance between slapstick, over-the-top comedy and genuine tension-filled drama, with some of the most over-the-top gore.
Rachel McAdams in Send Help
The movie is listed as a horror film in some areas, but that part feels a bit shoe-horned in to keep up with Raimi’s normal genre conventions, but the film would be more characterised as a survival thriller really. If you are here for brutal kills and some goofy gore through that, you are in total look, there’s some nail-biting gore sequences here, but it never goes too far in vomit-inducing mood because of the hilarious way the film conveys these sequences. It is a directorial style that may not be for everyone, but it’s something you won’t get from any other director and helps to showcase how important directorial voices are in these big blockbuster features. It can only be hoped that this will be major success and bring Raimi back for another outing and keep him working for the foreseeable future.
It has been a year since the tragic passing of one of film’s greatest directors, David Lynch, and this year also marks the 40th anniversary of one of his most famous films, Blue Velvet. Through an impressive career, he delivered 10 incredibly dreamy, frightening and impressive features, and the incredible series, Twin Peaks. His work has been characterised by their dream-like qualities, the surrealist depiction of life and character, and a developing exploration into sexuality, coming of age and abuse. He is one of America’s most important directors, so important he launched a term just for himself, Lynchian, and as follows, we will list his 10 released features:
10) Dune (1984)
Kyle MacLachlan in Dune
At the bottom of the list, we have Lynch’s big attempt to break into mainstream Hollywood and why he returned to his roots away from the limelight straight after, and that project would be Dune. Based on Frank Herbert’s iconic science-fiction novel of the same name, which is essentially the blueprint for the modern science-fiction film, and part of the structure that makes up Star Wars. Comparing this original attempt to the modern two-part version that has come out lately shows the difference in the Hollywood business essentially, and how ambitious Lynch was in trying to adapt such a large novel into one film. The modern version split the novel in half, which helped the pace, but where Lynch’s film succeeds is in how it adapts the spiritual, dreamy and strange side of the novel. Herbert’s tendency to use visions and more out-there ideas matches with Lynch a lot, with the newest versions shying away from some of the strangest elements of the novel, and if the movie had the runtime and pace to match it would produce a completely solid feature. The movie’s pacing just hurts it completely, delivering a movie which cannot breathe and stops some of the character-based moments from hitting as much as they should.
The descent of Paul Atreides just feels sudden and unconvincing, down to a mixture of the pace and a frankly miscast Kyle MacLachlan in the role, who works for Lynch the first time here. The effects have obviously not aged the best as well, showcasing a quaint look at the way effects have evolved in the years. It is impressive for Lynch to attempt to bring over so much of the strange elements of Herbert’s novel, but the effects were not there to match his vision. The movie was deemed confusing by various reviews at the time, with the film being bogged down in exposition to attempt to make any sort of sense out of such a complex novel, opening with a character talking to the audience in a black void. This has essentially become the black sheep of Lynch’s filmography, the film he had essentially disowned and the major film that had been hated by critics. It is his only major blockbuster, and his wishes to continue work in the mainstream world, being offered a Star Wars film and working on a script for Dune: Messiah, the novel’s follow-up, would become dead in the water.
9) The Straight Story (1999)
Richard Farnsworth in The Straight Story
Another big outlier in Lynch’s filmography is the road movie, The Straight Story, a film which throws out Lynch’s surrealist tendencies in favour of a story about a man travelling the country in search of connection. Based on the true story of Alvin Straight’s journey across Iowa and Wisconsin on a lawnmower, the film is named The Straight Story both because of its connection to the real man, but also because the film is incredibly straightforward in its narrative. Marketed as a family-movie, it is easily Lynch’s simplest story, a story of a man just travelling, and the slow movement of his vehicle allowing the film to showcase the beauty of the American countryside ad the way of life. It is an exploration of the American Dream, a lust for connection and something better even this late in life. Road movies are commonly characterised by the characters our lead meet along their journey, and how they help them in their journey, and Lynch, who showcased his love for humanity and connection in projects like Twin Peaks, shows the best of America in the kindness and appreciation thrown our lead’s way by the people he meets. A simple story contains multitudes, and one of the best Lynch moments, as Alvin recounts his trauma during the war with a fellow World War II veteran in a bar, and how the world is not ready to help those people who have been damaged
8) Lost Highway (1997)
Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette in Lost Highway
A film which feels like the biggest showcase of Lynch’s tendency to showcase beautiful imagery, paired with an amazing score, and then leave the audience to explain to themselves what they just watched. A narrative which has been described as similar to a Mobius strip, essentially a time loop where the film circles back in on itself by its conclusion. This narrative structure has allowed it to become one of the director’s most-talked about films in trying to understand its meaning, with the director refusing to ever explain what his dream-like films mean. It is a clear film about identity, with the main character literally changing into a second actor halfway through the runtime, as he explores what it is like to be young again, how he would redo his life outside of the prison cell he finds himself in, and forced to make the same mistakes again. Characterised as a neo-noir, it plays heavily with the tropes of the genre, from a lead character who is investigating a mystery, and is constantly thrown into a destructive world of death, sex and darkness. He is plagued by a femme fatale, a female character who represents the sexuality of the genre, and acts as a mysterious woman who is usually dubious in nature.
Alice represents this character well, as Patricia Arquette plays double roles as both Alice and Renee, but the film explores the neo-noir world, as described by Arquette herself ‘through the eyes of a misogynist’. Lynch’s works commonly focus around sexual abuse, and commonly that abuse faced by women, and Renee sees herself as a victim of the men in her life, and when reborn as Alice, she does not live in a perfect world, she is instead seen as a dubious woman who the men in her life still sees as a monster. Paired with an incredible score by Angelo Badalamenti and Barry Adamson, the movie feels like a living nightmare, and a perfect look at some of Lynch’s most incredible filmmaking tendencies
7) Inland Empire (2006)
Laura Dern in Inland Empire
Lynch’s final film, Inland Empire, feels like one of the most Lynchian films ever made, a perfect final movie which includes every theme of the director’s previous works, and a perfect conclusion to his filmmaking career. Laura Dern returns to the world of Lynch and puts in one of her best performances, in a film which can only be compared to a living nightmare. Written, shot, directed, scored and edited by solely Lynch himself, the film follows a Hollywood actress who begins to lose her identity when entering a cursed production, which cause nightmares and her to inhabit the character’s personality. No film could be described as more genre less than this film, a film which defies the conventions of various genres but still sees itself as a combination of so many genres, from surrealism, crime, drama, horror and fantasy. It explores the long-running themes of the director, exploring a dissolution with self, dissociation with one’s identity, and continues Lynch’s dark exploration of Hollywood and the filmmaking life which follows from Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway.
Lynch’s choice to shoot the film on digital gives the film an intimate look, a grainy feel which makes every sequence feel more frightening, and closer to home, and draws a direct comparison to porn videos, continuing Lynch’s look into sexual crimes and the danger that women face. The film features some of the most frightening images in Lynch’s filmography and some of his most bizarre, as the narrative comes together as a loose collection of scenes that need to be paced together, unified by tone and their confusion drawing more fear. It is a beautiful final big-screen outing from the director, a three-hour exploration into dreams and nightmares, a movie which makes you feel like you are floating with each sequence
6) The Elephant Man (1980)
John Hurt in The Elephant Man
Lynch’s second feature feels like one of his most emotional, the story of a man with a physical ailment who deals with the common theme of identity, as his physical form causes him to face both pain and love. John Hurt does wonders crafting a character who the audience barely ever sees face-to-face, doing wonders in acting without ever completely showing his face. It could not have been easy to pull off a character who the audience cannot connect with face-to-face, but he manages to make the audience feel for the character and deliver one of the most emotional performances in any drama. It is such a powerful character that the makeup was criticised for not being nominated at that year’s Oscars ceremony, causing the creation of the Academy Award for Best Makeup at the following year’s ceremony. The film even gained widespread acclaim, receiving eight nominations at the Oscars, with Lynch being up for Best Director and John Hurt up for best Actor, though the film finished the night with no awards.
The film is loosely based on the life of Joseph Merrick, which had already been adapted into two novels and a broadway play, and caused the film to be sued to claim copyright infringement. Freddie Francis’ black-and-white cinematography allows it to stand apart from the various other adaptations of the story, giving it the feel of a documentary, and bringing an authentic feel to the setting of 19th century London. It is easily one of Lynch’s most emotional films, relaying a very straightforward story which emphasises human compassion and connection, paired with some of the best performances of Anthony Hopkins’ and John Hurt’s careers
5) Eraserhead (1977)
Jack Nance in Eraserhead
The film where it all began and marked Lynch as a powerful filmmaker in the surrealist scene. Starring Jack Nance, who would become a staple actor in the director’s works, a man who is thrown into an unexpected time in his life when he must care for his deformed baby. Here is where a lot of Lynch’s most iconic themes start from, Nance’s Henry Spencer is a regular everyman, whose identity is formed by his inactivity and passivity to the events going on, only becoming proactive in the end, when he kills his own child. The act is awarded by the mysterious Lady in the Radiator, representing Spencer’s pursuit of identity, his pursuit of becoming proactive in his own life, even if his choice begins Lynch’s common look at men’s violence, which morphed into sexual abuse exploration later in his career. There is a lot of sexual imagery throughout the film, opening with a image of conception, and Spencer going through a sort of coming of age throughout the film, as he is scared, but fascinated by the concept of sex. The child represents a sperm-like creature, the Lady in the Radiator even violently smashes various sperm creatures in her musical sequence, drawing a connection to sexual violence towards men, as Lynch showcasing the dangers of sexual growth.
There is a reason why this film became a cult-classic and why it launched Lynch into becoming one of our most popular filmmakers, it can frighten you and shock you, but its impossible to look and not be fascinated by the images on screen, it’s a perfect sensory experience. Industrial sounds frequently fill the backdrop of the audio landscape, disorienting the audience from the out-there visuals on display and creating a contrast between these real-world sounds and the visuals. The sound design of this film is just something that cannot be talked about enough, it is why the film is so unsettling throughout and still stands high as one of Lynch’s best features.
4) Wild at Heart (1990)
Laura Dern and Nicholas Cage in Wild at Heart
A film that would usually be expected to be a lot lower on some people’s ranking, Wild at Heart is a beautiful fever dream of a movie, a film that both compliments and subverts what would come with the Straight Story years later. It acts as basically a anti-road movie, as our characters move across the seedy underbelly of the American landscape, and meet every scum and horrific character that gives them trouble, far removed from the positive and loving look at American life from Lynch’s later road movie. Characters like Bobby Peru, played perfectly by Willem Dafoe, especially feel creepy and monstrous, pure villains who just continue to explore Lynch’s look into the pain that men can cause. There is an attempt at times to make every character increasingly over the top, which emphasises the villainous qualities, and the heroic and desperate love between Ripley and Fortune, played perfectly by Nicholas Cage and Laura Dern respectively. The movie’s dreamy qualities come into play when the movie makes various allusions to classic film, The Wizard of Oz, which acts as an escape for our various characters, a dream of a perfect world away from violence, and the sexual abuse faced.
The road is referred to as the Yellow Brick Road commonly by the characters, a possible escape from the pain of the real world, and after she is sexually assaulted by Bobby Peru, Fortune clicks her red heels together twice, just like Dorothy, hoping to return to the safety of home. Sheryl Lee, who played Twin Peaks’ Laura Palmer, even appears as Glenda the Good Witch, appearing to convince Ripley and Fortune to get back together, to reject the pain of the unknown and embrace each other again, the one bit of freedom and happiness the two have known. It is a deeply passionate love story, that embraces romance and sexuality in a positive way, when done with a partner who really cares for you. The lightness of the feature mixes well with the darkness, embracing Lynch’s beautiful character work.
3) Blue Velvet (1986)
Kyle MacLachlan and Isabella Rossellini in Blue Velvet
Lynch’s big comeback film after the failure of his big studio blockbuster, Dune, Blue Velvet has become of his most popular films since release, named as one of his ‘magnum opus’ features. Starring Kyle MacLachlan in a perfect role for the young actor, he plays a developing college man, who is drawn into the world of the seedy underbelly of his town when finding a severed human ear in a field. Easily being able to be described as a coming-of-age film by the director, the film sees MacLachlan’s Jeffrey Beaumont stuck between the love of the girl-next-door type character Sandy, played by Laura Dern, and the mysterious troubled older woman, Dorothy, played by Isabella Rossellini. A simple mystery with surrealist elements, the true narrative forms from looking at the film in a Freudian way, as Jeffrey represents the Child in the Oedipal stage, a developing man who is drawn to the motherly figure in Dorothy, and by the violence displayed by lead villain Frank Booth. Frank represents a father figure to the young man, a violent father who represents the cruel world he is stepping into, and the normalised violence that men inflict on women. This violence could consume Jeffrey, to inflict his ownership over Dorothy, and the sequences where Jeffrey watches Booth inflict pain on Dorothy when hiding in her closet showcases this. It is the forbidden pull of violence and the mysterious love of an older woman, that can only be pulled away from when Jeffrey finds a woman of his own age, in Sandy, a woman that can pull him away from the mother figure.
Lighting becomes a key component in keeping the film in the neo-noir genre, dark and surrealist images conveying the danger that Jeffrey is taking part in keeping with Dorothy, and the true hidden horror she is also facing. It is incredibly real and disturbing imagery, that the film was initially reviewed middlingly because of the use of the sexual violence in such explicit ways. These frightening visuals however are used to build to a beautiful moment, as Jeffrey and Sandy reconcile, the screen filling with bright warm light, a terrific contrast to the former events. It is a simple narrative with so much complexity, and setting up various narrative devices and images that Lynch will continue to use throughout his filmmaking career. The seeds that will become Twin Peaks from here, from the musical sequences that make the audience feel like they are floating with every beat, and the appearance of red curtains, which eventually form the red room in the series. It is a haunting, beautiful film about the pull of growing older, and the hometown secrets that are bubbling under the surface, a Lynch classic.
2) Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
Kyle MacLachlan and Sheryl Lee in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
The runner-up goes to the film that served as both a prequel and sequel to what most would say was Lynch’s biggest project, Twin Peaks. Fire Walk With Me was meant to serve as the first of multiple spin-off movies that would serve as the continuation of the show’s narrative, years before the actual revival, and after the cliffhanger ending of the show’s second season. This film took us back to the final days of Laura Palmer but also seeks to feature various references to the plot ongoing in the show’s future, after the show’s sudden cancellation. It features a perfect showcase of turning people’s expectations on their heads and pulling an audience into a false sense of security, opening with something familiar to every member of the audience who had seen the show. FBI agents are sent to a small-town to investigate the death of a girl, with the help of various familiar faces, but things go awry instantly, and the feeling that will return in the show’s revival season comes to the forefront, the fact you cannot ever go home, that nothing will be the same. Where the town of Twin Peaks welcomed Dale Cooper with open arms, the town are hostile to our new agents, and these small worrying changes opens the door to one of Lynch’s most unsettling films. The audience are aware of the reveals of the show, that Laura’s own father is possessed by the villainous Bob, and that Leland Palmer himself was the one who killed Laura. So, when we finally return to the town of Twin Peaks, there is no hiding the horrors in display, the story may include supernatural imagery, and some incredible horror sequences, but it is at heart the story of the sexual abuse a father can inflict on his own daughter.
It is deeply unsettling, and horrific, but so simple in basic structure, as the true horror comes from scenes in the household, from Sheryl Lee’s shook performance and Ray Wise’s chilling performance as Leland. One of the biggest aspects of the show is that it opens with Laura already dead, and through the various characters you learn about her and feel for her because they do. However, off the back of watching this film, you can start that first episode again and feel those emotions alongside the characters, fleshing Laura out into a full-blown tragic character.
1) Mulholland Drive (2001)
Naomi Watts and Laura Harring in Mulholland Drive
Sitting at the top of our list is a film that commonly features near the top of everyone’s Lynch list, and that is Mulholland Drive. A true mystery box of a feature, a true neo-noir looks at the Hollywood system, the film was initially meant to be a television series, with a pilot being filmed from the footage that would become the film. After ABC viewed the initial cut for the pilot however, they scrapped it and Lynch went on to repurpose the script for a film, filming new material and writing a ending into the script. A true Lynchian classic, the film has compelled critics and audiences for the last decade to try and understand its meaning, to try and see what the true narrative tells. Lynch sees it as a straightforward film, a film that tells a clear-cut narrative, but that usually comes from a perspective of seeing the film just through the lens of dreams, or as a mood piece. Critics like Ebert note that various scenes, plotlines and vignettes seemingly go nowhere, which may be a holdover from the pilot’s script, or just the way dreams go, dreams don’t have a natural endpoint, you just wake up. However, various actual narrative theories have persisted through the years, namely the film’s look at the horrors of Hollywood. Lynch clearly holds a warm candle to the past, to the early days of Hollywood, giving a sort of nostalgia-tinted lens to those days, but he does not shy away from how twisted Hollywood can be, and certainly how rough it is on new voices in the modern day.
Both Naomi Watts and Laura Harring serve dual roles in the narrative, Watts portraying Diane and Betty, and Harring as Camilla and Rita. Which is the true self in this scenario is what has plagued theorists for years, but the common assumption is that the true narrative is Watts’ Diane imagining the actions of her life through the promising and successful Betty. Diane has ruined her life, it has slumped without the success she desperately desires, and in her pain, she arranges for her ex-lover, Rita, to be killed. Desperate to remove herself from the world, she recontextualizes her life as one where she is Betty, an upcoming movie-star, who is living the life of an old Hollywood movie, and one where Rita has become Camilla, a dependant amnesiac which allows her a second chance at both controlling her and loving her. It is a purposeful ode to a film that inspired Lynch so many years ago, Sunset Boulevard, and you can only hope these works will continue to inspire people for years to come
The introduction of Disney+ broadened the worlds of various Disney properties from just the big screen, introducing such shows like the Mandalorian and Ahsoka from the Star Wars brand, or Monsters at Work from Pixar. One of the biggest franchises that took advantage of this was Marvel, which went from an interconnected set of films to a brand that released just as many television series, or even more series than films now. The problem came with the number of series being produced, and how many of them seemed like stretched-out scripts for films, that had been given the television treatment. Only some shows, namely She Hulk: Attorney at Law and WandaVision, felt like actual shows designed with the television format in mind. When in production of their revival for the Netflix series Daredevil, which would now be known as Daredevil: Born Again, and faced with the writer’s strike of 2023, Marvel Studios acted in overhauling their television productions. Shows would move away from focusing on major characters from the films, budgets would be saved and shows would now be helmed by creatives, led by a lead showrunner rather than a team led by a lead writer, which is more common for film. The first show to come out of this creative change, the Daredevil revival, would come out as a mixed bag, a Frankenstein-product of two different versions of the same show edited together.
Another show would be developed and slightly retooled during this era, and that is Wonder Man, Marvel’s newest streaming series. The show came to life when Daniel Deston Crettin, director of Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Marvel’s next Spider-Man feature, signed a deal to create television series for the streaming service. The show began filming before the writer’s strike, and when resuming production, Andrew Guest, who was previously a writer for the show, was named showrunner. Set as the second television series in Marvel’s refocused look at TV, the show follows aspiring actor Simon Williams, who is hiding his superpowers, as he attempts to get cast in the reboot of his childhood favourite film, Wonder Man. While fighting for the role, he gets involved with Trevor Slattery, a disgraced actor who is attempting to revitalize his image.
Ben Kingsley in Wonder-Man
The marketing for Wonder Man had been non-existent until a couple months ago, a show which Marvel looked like they were trying to keep secret, announced by the trades in 2022, but not formally announced by the studio until 2024. The show dropped all its episodes in one day, moving away from the one episode a week drop that formed the backbone of the service in the past. For a series that the studio seemed to want to drop and run from, it has come out as one of Marvel’s best projects in years. It is refreshingly low stakes for a franchise which deals with the end of the world in nearly every project, and the lack of action makes for a very different project. With the studio focused on the promise of the Multiverse and leading to another Avengers crossover, it’s when the franchise becomes grounded and human does it truly shine. It is a rare television series set in this brand that feels like it has been designed for this medium, each episode serves the goal of having a three-act structure and feeling standalone in scope, not just only a part of a larger story. The connections to the wider universe also feel like window dressing rather than a necessity, with the brand’s interconnected homework problem becoming a major issue lately. Existing as a meta-fiction in the world of Hollywood and television, industry references to actors, television series and films exist as the main so-called easter eggs in the show, with the franchise’s connective tissue with its other properties existing as an actual backdrop from the show, and not just for the use of setting up various other stories.
The heart of the show comes from the dynamic between Simon and Trevor, a budding bromance which fills the show with a sense of direction and a true grounding. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is not a stranger to the superhero genre, previously playing the villain Black Manta in the two Aquaman features, and Doctor Manhattan on HBO’s Watchmen adaptation, but here he really plays something different. Simon is a character dripping with insecurities, rooted in his hidden powers that could stop him from achieving his dream, a plot point paid off in the fourth episode, featuring the Doorman character from the comics. He is driven, but filled with anger and sadness, but his love of the arts and his passion for Wonder Man shines through, and the moment with his family really shines through and makes him a character to root for.
Ben Kingsley and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in Wonder-Man
Trevor is another broken man, who serves as the connection to the wider Marvel universe, still reeling from bombing his career by becoming the Mandarin in Iron Man 3, and then being broken out of prison by the time Shang Chi and the Legend of The Ten Rings rolls around. He brings in the Department of Damage Control into the project, a group introduced in Marvel’s Spider-Man films, and have become the main threat in trying to imprison superpowered threats. This group serves to embolden the superpowers as metaphor for minorities that is prevalent across the show, which will be more prevalent when the franchise finally introduces the X-Men. Ben Kingsley just remains a highlight of every MCU project he is in, and he seems to be having a blast playing Trevor again, and the show’s attempt to humanise him and make him more of a character outside of the joke also just works wonders. There is a deep need for redemption, to do anything to make it big and make up for the things he done wrong, which bonds him to Simon. Yahya and Ben share wonderful chemistry throughout the season, and the show gives them the chance to just riff off each other and show their acting abilities, and those moments are the pure highlight.
The lack of action allows the character moments to shine and allows the drama to take more of the focus. It also allows the show to be incredibly more creative than the rest of the Marvel television projects, feeling alive in the editing suite and forming its own distinct style. Sequences invoke the feeling of old Flash Gordon-type films, showcasing the magic of cinema and how rooted the love of arts is in the modern American dream, grounding the story by various flashbacks between Simon and his father. A long problem of the Marvel franchise is how grey they look visually, and how similar they look visually because of so. Choices like this however allows Wonder Man to stand on its own away from that standard lack-of-visual flair. Episode 4, mentioned earlier, shows this visual uniqueness, a bottle episode focusing on the explanation of the Doorman Clause, which stops superpowered actors from working in Hollywood. Portrayed in black-and-white, the episode showcases the true creativity that could come from these television series embracing the television format and not relying on being overly long movies.
Yahya Abudl-Mateen II and Ben Kingsley in Wonder-Man
At current time of writing, a second season of this show is in a limbo state, awaiting to see how this show fares. With minimal marketing and essentially going under the radar, it can only be hoped that the positive reception will convince the studio to continue this unique series. Superhero fatigue is a real thing that has faced the Marvel brand moving into the 2020s, with an oversaturation of superhero content making it so that all their major film releases in 2025 underperformed. In a time where the brand is failing, projects like Wonder Man are what they really need, something unique, fresh and something that stands out from the crowd. Led by two superb performances, and dealing with a refreshingly low stakes journey, which swaps out the super powers and high stakes action for a drama which takes the pursuit of the Hollywood dream as seriously as an end-of-the-world threat, Wonder Man is bound to be a Marvel project that will be remembered for a long time afterwards.
Rhys Reviews 