Archive for the ‘Thriller’ Category
Monday, February 2nd, 2026
Sam Raimi is back! With a new movie. Not one of his best, but hey – we got a new Sam Raimi movie. SEND HELP was brought to him by screenwriters Damian Shannon & Mark Swift (FREDDY VS. JASON, FRIDAY THE 13TH 2009), but it follows part of the DRAG ME TO HELL template in that it’s about a timid woman who doesn’t fit in and gets overlooked and mistreated by the sexist assholes at her corporate job, then finds her inner viciousness to be able to compete with them. A difference is that in the earlier film the horror scenario comes as punishment for the shitty thing she does to get ahead. This one is about how getting stranded on an island with her asshole boss becomes her opportunity to unleash her mean side.
Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams, PASSION) has worked for seven years as a corporate strategist, though her new boss thinks she’s an accountant. The previous CEO promised her a promotion to vice president, but then he died and his son Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien, AMERICAN ASSASSIN) took over. To Linda’s shock he gives the promotion to Donovan (Xavier Samuel, THE LOVED ONES, Bernard Rose’s FRANKENSTEIN), an idiotic Patrick Bateman type who’s pretty new there, steals credit for her work and happens to have been Bradley’s frat brother. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Pope, Bob Murawski, Damian Shannon, Dennis Haysbert, Dylan O'Brien, Mark Swift, Rachel McAdams, Sam Raimi, stranded on an island, Xavier Samuel
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Thriller | 15 Comments »
Thursday, January 22nd, 2026
THE RIP is Netflix’s new Gritty Cop Thriller (G.C.T.) written and directed by Joe Carnahan (THE A-TEAM, THE GREY, BOSS LEVEL), sharing story credit with Michael McGrale (additional literary material, THE EXPENDABLES 4). It’s a pretty good movie if you enjoy Carnahan’s more serious minded work and/or if you’re interested in the gimmick of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon reuniting as best buddies but in a movie where they’re Gritty Cops so they’re each afraid the other is corrupt and is gonna stab them in the back. There is friendship but also yelling, guns, etc.
It all starts with the prologue death of Captain Jackie Velez (Lina Esco, LONDON) of the Miami-Dade PD. She seems to be Onto Something Big when she gets ambushed by masked men. It’s a good shoot out scene, of the post-HEAT loud and quasi-realistic variety. I like the detail that she’s having trouble calling for help because she got some of her blood on her phone screen. This is the incident that sends FBI agents played by Scott Adkins (X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE) and Daisuke Tsuji (Ghost of Tsushima video game) in to question the members of Jackie’s elite Tactical Narcotics Team (TNT), suggesting they might have been involved. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Affleck, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Daisuke Tsuji, Joe Carnahan, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Kyle Chandler, Lina Esco, Matt Damon, Sasha Calle, Scott Adkins, siege, Steven Yeun, Teyana Taylor
Posted in Reviews, Action, Thriller | 11 Comments »
Thursday, December 18th, 2025
A couple years ago I really liked this horror-thriller I saw on Shudder called INFLUENCER. Yes, I agree with you that movies, and especially horror, are a little too fascinated with social media influencers right now, but I swear this is a good one. Madison (Emily Tennant, SNIPER: ASSASSIN’S END) makes a very good living traveling to exotic places and posting about her adventurous lifestyle, but we see that at least at this time it’s kind of a front. She’s actually depressed and mostly staying alone at a resort in Bangkok, sad that her boyfriend didn’t come.
Then she meets CW, played by Cassandra Naud (IT’S A WONDERFUL KNIFE), an American expat who has lived there for a while and shows her a good time. Unfortunately for Madison, fortunately for cinema, CW turns out to be a psycho with a resentment toward influencers and the computer skills to really do a number on their lives. I like that the influencer is somehow sympathetic but the villain is still fun. It’s kind of a modern take on ‘90s thrillers like SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, BASIC INSTINCT and THE NET, but also kind of a noir because it mostly follows CW as she gets deeper and deeper into her lies and tries to navigate a smooth exit. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Cassandra Naud, Emily Tennant, Georgina Campbell, influencers, Jonathan Whitesell, Kurtis David Harder, Lisa Delamar, Veronica Long
Posted in Reviews, Horror, Thriller | 4 Comments »
Friday, October 17th, 2025
THE HITCHER (2007) is a Platinum Dunes remake I had no interest in at the time. Robert Harmon’s 1986 cult classic obviously didn’t require a remake, and I didn’t trust those guys to do one. Also almost everybody said it was terrible. I do know of an exception – Jordan Crucchiola and Sam Wineman used to rave about it on their podcast Aughtsterion, and they got it to #1 on the “’00 Slashers” episode of Screen Drafts. They’re younger and much more attached to that era of horror than me, but their enthusiasm made me curious.
And I think they’re right! There’s a good chance I wouldn’t have liked it back then, when I had a grudge against Michael Bay productions and the original was more fresh on my mind. It’s certainly not a replacement, and some of it might’ve been lessened if I remembered the original better. But viewed on its own, as 2007 studio horror, it’s pretty impressive – a vicious 84 minute head on collision of a movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: car horror, Dave Meyers, Eric Bernt, Eric Red, Jake Wade Wall, Kyle Davis, Neal McDonough, Platinum Dunes, remakes, Sean Bean, Sophia Bush, Steve Jablonsky, Zachary Knighton
Posted in Reviews, Horror, Thriller | 10 Comments »
Tuesday, October 14th, 2025
(there will be spoilers)
I was pretty sure I’d like Paul Thomas Anderson’s ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, but I was surprised to walk out feeling it was the movie of the year. That’s not only because it speaks so deeply to our exact moment of political insanity, but because it’s such an exhilarating viewing experience – confident, masterful filmmaking, very effective as a thriller, but also extremely funny, absurd and original. It’s possibly Anderson’s most traditionally entertaining movie but it doesn’t feel in any way watered down or compromised.
I saw it in bona fide IMAX, where its Vista Vision format fills the entire screen, so the anxiety-inducing score by Johnny Greenwood rumbles in your jaw as you stare at a scraggly, sweaty, 37-foot-tall Leonardo DiCaprio face fretting and scowling. Then sometimes it switches to a taller version of a Sergio-Leone-type-shot where two tiny characters stand apart on opposite sides of the screen. That’s the full range of cinema right there.
The credits say this was inspired by (not adapted from) the book Vineland by Thomas Pynchon. I was surprised when I learned that character names like Perfidia Beverly Hills, Virgil Throckmorton and Junglepussy didn’t come from the book. These little heightened details spike a mostly naturalistic feeling world with exaggeration and draw attention to the authentic ridiculousness of our world. Sometimes that feels more real than if it was realistic. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Benicio Del Toro, Chase Infiniti, Eric Schweig, Leonardo DiCaprio, Paul Thomas Anderson, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, Thomas Pynchon
Posted in Reviews, Action, Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Thriller | 20 Comments »
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2025
OFF LIMITS is a couple different genres – serial killer thriller, buddy-cop action, Vietnam War movie. It centers on two military police detectives, Sergeants First Class Buck McGriff (Willem Dafoe between PLATOON and THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST) and Albaby Perkins (Gregory Hines between RUNNING SCARED and TAP).
It’s directed by Christopher Crowe, who was the writer of NIGHTMARES, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS and FEAR, but his only other theatrical directing gig was WHISPERS IN THE DARK. He also created a bunch of TV shows (including B.L. Stryker, B.J. and the Bear and The Watcher hosted by Sir Mix-a-Lot) and (no shit) designed the logo for Cheap Trick. I would’ve guessed it was made by more of a cinema veteran because, though I only think it’s pretty good, it has the muscular cinematistic confidence and atmosphere of A Real Fucking Movie. I mean, let me give you a few screengrabs I made to give you an idea of the fuckin vibes (TFV) in this thing:
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amanda Pays, Christopher Crowe, David Alan Grier, Fred Ward, Gregory Hines, Jack Thibeau, James Newton Howard, Keith David, Lim Kay Tong, Raymond O'Connor, Scott Glenn, Vietnam War, Willem Dafoe
Posted in Reviews, Action, Crime, Thriller, War | 22 Comments »
Thursday, September 18th, 2025
After catching up with LOCKED I thought what the hell, I should also see that other recent high concept thriller I kinda meant to see. DROP is the one that Christopher Landon (HAPPY DEATH DAY, FREAKY) went and directed after leaving SCREAM 7 because he didn’t have a movie anymore after the producers (Spyglass Entertainment) fired the star for posting about the genocide in Gaza. (Specifically because she was against it.) I’m not sure what Landon thought about that but he went and worked with the… hopefully at least less evil production company power couple of Blumhouse and Platinum Dunes.
Landon usually writes his movies, but this one is by Jillian Jacobs & Chris Roach (TRUTH OR DARE, FANTASY ISLAND). It feels a little different from his other stuff, being about people in their thirties, but I think you can still feel his sensibilities in it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Blumhouse, Brandon Sklenar, Chris Roach, Christopher Landon, Gabrielle Ryan, Jeffery Self, Jillian Jacobs, Michael Shea, Platinum Dunes, Reed Diamond
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 12 Comments »
Wednesday, September 17th, 2025
Remember the 2013 movie LOCKE starring Tom Hardy? It’s not a thriller, it’s a drama, but the gimmick is that the whole thing is Hardy driving to a hospital and making phone calls trying to straighten out a huge mess he’s made for himself and others. In my review I joked about it being the start of a franchise, but I assumed they’d have titles like LOCKE: OVERDRIVE and be about Locke making other phone calls on other drives. I didn’t know they’d just add an extra letter to the title and have a different chameleonic actor playing a different character alone in a car talking on the phone for a different reason.
Okay yeah maybe technically and legally speaking LOCKED is not a sequel to LOCKE, it’s just the Sam-Raimi-produced American remake of the 2019 Argentine movie 4×4*. It stars Pennywise/The Crow/the boy who killed the world/younger brother of Tarzan/the Northman himself Mr. Bill Skarsgård, looking like Pete Davidson with his bleached hair, tattoos, pink pullover hoodie under a jacket and vape pen. I think he filmed this right after NOSFERATU, so I bet being locked in a car didn’t seem that bad compared to doing six hours of makeup in the morning and Mongolian throat singing between takes. It probly felt like a vacation. I wonder if transitioning out of his Orlok era is also the reason his accent is less consistent here than usual. Early on I wondered if he was not playing American this time, but he settles in after a bit.
Anyway he plays Eddie Barrish, a real fuckup. Eddie’s baby mama (Gabrielle Walsh, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES) is on his ass about failing to pick up his daughter Sarah (Ashley Cartwright, A GODWINK CHRISTMAS: MIRACLE OF LOVE) but he’s helpless because he can’t get his van back from the garage because he doesn’t have the money he owes and he can’t get the money because he can’t make deliveries without the van. Not that he’s averse to dishonest work. When, in desperation, he steals a wallet and starts trying the door handles on parked cars it sure doesn’t seem like a first for him. But he’s nice enough to share his bottle of water with a dog locked in one of the cars – a “save the cat” moment that’s also foreshadowing. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Hopkins, Bill Skarsgard, David Yarovesky, Michael Arlen Ross, Michael Eklund, remakes where I have to admit I never saw the original, Sam Raimi
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 3 Comments »
Monday, September 15th, 2025
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the greater New Orleans area.
On August 30th Kanye West released Late Registration, three days ahead of saying “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” on a live Katrina telethon.
On August 31st THE CONSTANT GARDENER came out.
I had not seen this one before. It’s not quite my type of movie, but it’s a good one. The stylish Brazilian crime saga CITY OF GOD (released in the U.S. in 2003) had been a sensation and its producer, Walter Salles, came to Hollywood to make DARK WATER. Meanwhile its co-director Fernando Meirelles was making this British movie set and filmed partly in Kenya. Based on a then-recent (2001) novel by John le Carré (TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY), adapted by Jeffrey Caine (GOLDENEYE), THE CONSTANT GARDENER is not exactly a spy movie, but a drama involving a murder mystery, a conspiracy, and international intrigue.
The first thing I noticed is that it’s kind of arty. Meirelles, cinematographer César Charlone (also following up CITY OF GOD) and editor Claire Simpson (C.H.U.D., PLATOON, BLACK BEAUTY) immediately create an aggressive style, following a brief opening at an airport with a puzzling collection of beautiful images of the aftermath of a car accident, shot from deliberately disorienting perspectives and angles, and intercut with hypnotic shots of a flock of birds.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Nighy, Danny Huston, Fernando Meirelles, Hubert Kounde, Jeffrey Caine, John Le Carre, Lupita Nyong'o, Pete Postlethwaite, Rachel Weisz, Ralph Fiennes
Posted in Reviews, Drama, Mystery, Thriller | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2025
August 19, 2005
RED EYE is a simple thing: a tight and well-made PG-13 thriller, nothing deep, but entertaining to just about anybody. And it happens to be the only movie like that directed by the late great Wes Craven, and he made it post-SCREAM trilogy using all those chops gained from shooting Woodsboro scrapes and chases. But it’s really in more of a suspense vein than a horror one, and it starts out feeling like a DIE HARD type movie, with quick shots depicting some so-far indecipherable sinister plot (the stealing of a wallet, the preparation and delivery of a mysterious crate), and establishing a set of characters in the bustle of the airport while a bunch of flights are delayed.
Lisa (Rachel McAdams, also the primary victim in WEDDING CRASHERS) was in Dallas for her grandma’s funeral, she’s headed home for Miami and already receiving calls from work. But she’s a self-declared “people pleaser, 24-7” so she doesn’t mind helping flustered hotel employee Cynthia (newcomer Jayma Mays, later in the SMURFS and PAUL BLART franchises) placate irate regulars the Taylors (Robert Pine and Teresa Press-Marx). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brian Cox, Carl Ellsworth, Cillian Murphy, Jack Scalia, Jayma Mays, Kyle Gallner, Loren Lester, Marco Beltrami, Rachel McAdams, Wes Craven
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 13 Comments »
