Horror

Rabbit Trap

  • Title: Rabbit Trap
  • IMDb: link

Dev Patel and Rosy McEwen star as Darcy and Darcy Davenport in writer/director Bryn Chainey‘s horror flick. After moving to the wilderness, the married couple accidentally discover and disturb something deep in the forest. Although the film gets off to a promising start, the faerie mythology at its heart is often underwhelming and the film runs out of gas lacking both the necessary tension for psychological horror and the thrills for a basic monster movie.

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The Carpenter’s Son

  • Title: The Carpenter’s Son
  • IMDb: link

For every highlight of Nicolas Cage‘s career there are three or four baffling choices which we can now add The Carpenter’s Son to the list. Inspired by the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the film offers a look at the adolescence of Jesus Christ (Noah Jupe) coming into his powers and knowledge of his destiny. Cage, as you might expect, plays the carpenter Joseph who struggles to keep the boy safe and hidden while also attempting to forcibly instill his own sense of piety.

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Keeper

  • Title: Keeper
  • IMDb: link

In horror there’s a thin line between scary and silly and for far too much of the first hour of director Osgood PerkinsKeeper doesn’t click. A year into their relationship, Liz (Tatiana Maslany) goes away for the weekend with her boyfriend Malcolm (Murder in a Small Town‘s Rossif Sutherland) to his far-from-rustic cabin. Despite her concerns, she’s far from roughing it.

Out of her element, Liz begins to grow paranoid and starts to see or hallucinate odd things in her boyfriend’s home. The question becomes whether the not-exactly-reliable protagonist is imagining things, if something is clouding her judgement, or if there are dark and supernatural events occurring.

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Predator: Badlands

  • Title: Predator: Badlands
  • IMDb: link

Choosing to make the franchise monster the protagonist of the film rather than the antagonist, Predator: Badlands introduces us to the runt of the litter in Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) who, in order to prove himself, goes to the the most dangerous world known to the Yautja seeking to kill the unkillable Kalisk. Gifting Dek with more personality than any Predator before him, the young warrior unlearns a bit of Yautja culture accepting assistance in his quest from a damaged synthetic named Thia (Elle Fanning) along with various creatures including one Thia names Bud.

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Frankenstein

  • Title: Frankenstein
  • IMDb: link

At twice the length of 1931’s Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro‘s new adaptation of Mary Shelley’s tale of a mad scientist the fruit of his labors is an elaborate look into the life of Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) and the madness which spawned his creation (Jacob Elordi). I have a limited tolerance for melodrama, especially one without the wit or snark to undercut the tedium that all-too-often is the byproduct of the genre. Rarely have I seen a film that so earnestly, and so seriously, leaned into its melodramatic overtones.

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