“Side effects may include hallucinations, paranoia, detachment from reality, and nightmares that never end.”
Racheal Cain’s Somnium invites viewers into the shadowy corridors of an experimental Los Angeles sleep clinic where dreams aren’t just studied—they’re manufactured. At first glance, it plays like another indie horror built around a high-concept premise, but Cain’s film manages to stand out thanks to a tight script, stylish execution, and a willingness to explore the darker veins of Hollywood’s underbelly.
The story follows Gemma (Chloe Levine), a young actress trying to carve her way into the industry, who takes a job at Somnium, an overnight sleep program that promises clients their “dreams come true.” Of course, reality is far more sinister. The longer Gemma spends at the clinic, the more she—and the audience—begin to unravel in a world where hallucination and reality bleed together, paranoia runs high, and dreams become nightmares with teeth.
Levine is perfectly cast as Gemma, balancing youthful ambition with growing unease. She’s backed by a strong ensemble: Will Peltz (Unfriended) as a fellow insomniac with secrets of his own, Peter Vack (The Intern) as one of Somnium’s all-too-charming clinicians, and Grace Van Dien (Stranger Things), whose role underscores the disquieting glamour-versus-decay theme that runs through the film.
Cain, who both wrote and directed, brings a confident hand to the material. Her Los Angeles is a city of surfaces—sleek on the outside, rotting underneath—and the dream sequences, shot with a hazy surrealism, capture that tension beautifully. There are echoes of films like A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Neon Demon here, but Cain filters her influences into something distinctly her own: a slow-burn horror-thriller that lingers in the liminal space between dream logic and urban paranoia.
The Prognosis:
Somnium isn’t flawless—the pacing drags in the middle act, and some of the more abstract sequences might test the patience of viewers craving traditional scares. But when it works, it works surprisingly well. By the time the film plunges headfirst into its unsettling final stretch, Cain makes good on her promise: dreams do come true, though rarely the way you expect.
Saul Muerte
Thanks to Lightbulb Film Distribution, Somnium will be available to rent or buy on digital platforms including Apple TV, Prime Video, and Google TV starting September 10th. For those who enjoy psychological horror tinged with surreal menace and a glimpse into the darker corners of Los Angeles life, it’s worth staying awake for.
Premiering on the opening night of FrightFest 2025 at the ODEON Luxe Leicester Square, Illya Konstantin’s debut feature Night of Violence arrives with plenty of ambition and a message aimed squarely at the horrors of corporate greed and the opioid crisis. Part workplace-invasion thriller, part satire, it promises to confront real-world issues through the lens of exploitation cinema.
There’s no denying the energy behind Konstantin’s filmmaking. The film is scrappy, bloody, and unapologetically brash, with moments of gore that land effectively and demonstrate a clear enthusiasm for the genre. The central conceit — asking what survival looks like in a profit-driven world — is a timely and resonant one, ensuring that Night of Violence never lacks for thematic ambition.
Unfortunately, where the film falters is in its execution. The script struggles to sustain its weighty ideas, often relying on dialogue that feels blunt rather than biting. Characters come across as two-dimensional archetypes, serving more as mouthpieces for the film’s message than as people the audience can invest in. As a result, the satire feels undercooked, the thrills somewhat hollow, and the film’s bigger questions end up buried under noise rather than sharpened by it.
The Prognosis:
For a debut, Konstantin deserves credit for swinging big and refusing to play it safe — Night of Violence certainly doesn’t lack passion or intent. But with thinly drawn characters and a weak script dragging down its flashes of brutal impact, the film plays more like a promising calling card than a fully realised statement.
I Know What You Did Last Summer. Followed by I STILL Know What You Did Last Summer. Followed by I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer. Followed by an Indian rip off and a TV Series.
Who knew those last 3 were a thing?!
And now, a Legacy Sequel! That’s the term apparently! Which is basically what you call a sequel that happens so long after the last movie you can get away with slapping it with the original title.
Like The Thing and The Thing and Halloween and Halloween and Scream and Scream.
Or Inside Out and Inside Out and Inside Out and Inside Out and Inside Out. Although those last 5 had nothing to do with each other – that was just an exercise to show off I can use Google as a search engine.
Now with this film they really should have kept the momentum going with something like “Anyway, Where Were We? Oh Yeah! I REALLY Know What You Did Last Summer and Maaaan Are You In Twouble…”
‘Cause why not?
But I digress. When this instalment was announced, it seemed like a blatant cash in on the last Scream release. Except that film didn’t have its female Party of 5 lead, whereas this movie does.
So apart from Jennifer Love Hewitt returning as Julie James, we have Mr. Sarah Michelle Gellar AKA Freddie Prinze Jr. returning as Ray Bronson and…. Mrs. Sarah Michelle Gellar AKA Sarah Michelle Gellar returning as Helen Shivers.
And yes, for those of you who remember the original, that particular last factoid throws up a question that you can probably answer after thinking about it for half a second.
So – to catch you up on the premise of the original – a bunch of rather well-off white kids kill a stranger whilst driving irresponsibly on a quiet bendy road on the side of a hill.
Realising they can get away with this crime if they just stay schtum, we fast-forward a year later and we find these teenagers are dealing with what they’ve done in different ways – none of them healthy.
And their sitch gets worse when they get a mysterious note delivered to them that says the title of the movie, and a large dark figure dressed like a fisherman in a slicker (apparently that’s what the heavy raincoat look is called) armed with a hook starts stalking and killing them.
BUT with this legacy sequel, a bunch of rather well-off white kids kill a stranger whilst driving irresponsibly on a quiet bendy road on the side of a hill.
Realising they can get away with this crime if they just stay schtum, we fast-forward a year later and we find these teenagers are dealing with what they’ve done in different ways – none of them healthy.
And their sitch gets worse when they get a mysterious note delivered to them that says the title of the movie, and a large dark figure dressed like a fisherman in a slicker (apparently that’s what the heavy raincoat look is called) armed with a hook starts stalking and killing them.
So yeah. With that I’m pretty much at a loss as to what to say next. So… with his take on the film – here’s Chris Dawes…
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAAAAAAAA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Jesus Christ.
Ok.
So, get someone drunk. Like really drunk. Like “wheelbarrow of vodka and a hose” drunk.
Then, try to get them to recount the plotlines of every prior I Know What You Did movie.
That is this script.
It’s the most hilariously incoherent pastiche of moments from the earlier gear you could possibly spend 50 million dollars to create.
It is an absolutely terrible film. Just soooooo goddamn dire – but it’s the kind of dire that is enjoyed in the company of friends, with whom you will share every inconceivably written plot point and sophomorically acted quotation from now until the end of time.
I loved every fucking second of it, 1000% worth the price of admission.
Also, watch it with as many Zoomer and Alpha influencers who didn’t grow up ensconced in the culture as you can – their bewildered reactions to everything happening made it all the more special.
Thanks Chris!
Well there you have it. He liked it!
The Prognosis:
Long story short, it’s not very good. But then again, they’ve always been the poor relation to the SCREAM films. Although it’s nice to see Jennifer Love Hewitt again. And oh yeah – spoiler alert – there is a twisty twist that makes you feel… nothing really. Unless you’re invested in this franchise. In which case you cheeky little R. Slicker 😉
Director Matthew Losasso’s feature debut Row takes the oceanic survival thriller and places it in an unnervingly claustrophobic setting. When a blood-stained rowing boat washes up on the Scottish coast, sole survivor Erin (Bella Dayne) is found with no memory of what happened to her missing crew. As fragments of her ordeal begin to resurface, the line between truth and paranoia blurs, leaving her — and the audience — to question what really happened on the North Atlantic.
What makes Row compelling is its stripped-down intensity. Confined largely to a rowing boat and a handful of central characters, the film thrives on its sense of isolation. Much like Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, the limited setting heightens every glance, every fraying nerve, and every creeping suspicion. Losasso’s direction makes clever use of both the open sea and the more intimate water tank sequences, ensuring the tension never feels stagey or static.
Bella Dayne carries the film with a strong, layered performance, keeping Erin’s vulnerability and resilience in constant conflict. Around her, Sophie Skelton, Akshay Khanna, and Nick Skaugen add fuel to the psychological fire, feeding the audience’s doubts about who can be trusted. The film’s visual texture — captured in Caithness and along the Scottish coast — lends a bleak beauty to the ordeal, a reminder of nature’s indifference to human suffering.
If there’s a drawback, it’s that the narrative occasionally drifts into familiar survival-horror beats, and some viewers may find its final revelations less impactful than the gripping tension leading up to them. Still, as a debut feature, it’s a confident and unsettling piece of work that thrives on mood, anxiety, and the psychological unravelling of its characters.
The Prognosis:
Row doesn’t reinvent the genre, but it demonstrates that Losasso is a director with a keen eye for atmosphere and psychological stakes. Tightly woven, quietly haunting, and with shades of Hitchcockian influence, this is a thriller that pulls you in and refuses to let go.
When Zach Cregger entered the horror feature scene, he didn’t tiptoe — he detonated expectations. Barbarianwas less a debut than an ambush: a grimy, surprising, and brutally effective tale that revealed the monstrous rot beneath the airbrushed façade of Airbnb America. Its impact was seismic enough to place Cregger alongside names like Ari Aster and Jordan Peele — auteurs reshaping horror into the cultural mirror it was always meant to be. So when Weapons, his sophomore effort, sparked a bidding war (with Peele among the contenders), it was more than a surprise — it was a coronation in waiting.
Needless to say, Cregger won that war — and what he’s delivered is not Barbarian 2.0, but something stranger, more ambitious, and arguably more fractured. Weapons is a moody mosaic of trauma and silence, a sinister Rubik’s Cube where every rotation deepens the dread.
The premise? Devastatingly simple: seventeen children vanish in a single night from a third-grade classroom, leaving behind one silent survivor. From this incomprehensible event, the narrative spirals outward — or perhaps downward — following a grieving parent, a guilt-ridden teacher (Julia Garner in one of her finest, most haunted performances), a cop on the edge, and a child forever changed. But where other films would tighten their grip around whodunit logic, Weapons unspools into something looser, more hypnotic, and more unsettling.
Like Magnolia if directed by a sleep-deprived David Lynch with a grudge against PTA meetings, Weapons stitches together fractured timelines and parallel points of view. What emerges is not a thriller in any traditional sense, but a psychological pressure-cooker about grief, complicity, and the invisible rot hiding beneath the manicured lawns of America’s suburbs.
This underworld — literal and figurative — is fast becoming Cregger’s signature terrain. In Barbarian, it was the basement: that dread-soaked labyrinth of generational abuse buried beneath a “perfect” Detroit neighborhood. In Weapons, there is no single basement, but many — emotional caverns, buried truths, suburban crypts dressed as cul-de-sacs. The “what lies beneath” motif returns, only now it’s diffused across an entire town, each household its own cracked mask.
Cregger’s knack for dissonant tonal shifts — likely honed during his time with the absurdist comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U’ Know — is used here not just for comic relief, but as a narrative landmine. Just as you settle into one emotional register, he flips it: tragedy becomes absurdity, horror becomes farce, and laughter curdles into a scream. The comedy doesn’t soften the horror — it accentuates it, like a smile too wide on a corpse.
Though Weapons doesn’t carry the shocking immediacy of Barbarian, it proves Cregger isn’t a one-trick provocateur. He’s a filmmaker drawn to structure — and its collapse. He’s fascinated by what people repress, and what happens when that repression becomes radioactive. What makes this second feature particularly resonant is its willingness to linger, to disorient, and to drag its audience down into the darkness without the promise of catharsis.
Josh Brolin, as a grizzled, emotionally feral father, grounds the film with a gut-punch performance that crackles with grief and rage. And Garner’s turn as Justine Gandy — a character navigating guilt, authority, and maternal ambivalence — is quietly devastating. Their presence not only adds gravitas, but signals that Weapons is aiming beyond the horror niche. It wants to haunt, not just horrify.
Yes, Weapons will divide. It lacks the clean arc of a traditional mystery. It demands attention, patience, and a willingness to fall into its emotional sinkholes. But for those attuned to its wavelength, it’s a rewarding descent — a fever dream that lingers in the bones.
The Prognosis:
Cregger has once again shown that he isn’t just interested in jump scares or gore. He wants to excavate — to dig through the ruins of modern life and see what festers beneath. With Weapons, he’s pulled up something malformed, tragic, and oddly beautiful.
The question isn’t whether he’ll push boundaries in future films. It’s whether we’ll be ready for where he takes us next — or what lies buried when we get there.
Quarxx’s All the Gods in the Sky (Tous les dieux du ciel) is not easily categorised, and that’s entirely the point. Sitting somewhere between psychological horror, arthouse drama, and cosmic nightmare, this French genre-bender takes its time and isn’t afraid to make its audience uncomfortable—both emotionally and philosophically.
At the centre of this bruising tale is Simon, a deeply troubled factory worker played with quiet intensity by Jean-Luc Couchard. Isolated on a decaying farmhouse in the French countryside, Simon devotes his life to caring for his sister Estelle (Melanie Gaydos), who was left severely disabled due to a tragic accident during their childhood. The pair exist in a shared purgatory of guilt, silence, and unresolved trauma.
Quarxx delivers a slow punch of a film—one that creeps under your skin not with conventional jump scares, but with mood, decay, and despair. It builds its atmosphere with surgical precision, weaving in splinters of sci-fi, existential dread, and surrealism. Simon’s fixation with extraterrestrial salvation offers a disturbing mirror into his desperation—a hope that something beyond this earth might rescue them from their irreversible reality.
While not all of its experimental swings land perfectly, the film is bolstered by weighty performances and a haunting visual style. The bleak, moldy interiors and ghostly farm exterior evoke a tactile sense of rot, both physical and spiritual. Quarxx makes no effort to handhold the viewer, instead demanding that we wade through the same confusion and torment as Simon himself.
All the Gods in the Sky is certainly not a film for everyone. Its pacing is deliberate, its emotional resonance often brutal, and its genre elements veer from subtle to grotesque. But for those willing to embrace its unsettling tones, there’s something strangely transcendent at its core—a meditation on guilt, disability, and the yearning for escape, whether divine or alien.
The Prognosis:
Though it never fully ascends into the upper tier of arthouse horror, it remains a distinct and memorable piece—an otherworldly prayer whispered from the darkest corners of human suffering.
Saul Muerte
All The Gods in the Sky premieres on Shudder and AMC+ Monday 4 August
If you’re even slightly squeamish about insects, They Nest might push you into full-blown entomophobia. This made-for-TV creature feature from director Ellory Elkayem (Eight Legged Freaks) creeps along with familiar B-movie beats but manages to burrow under your skin with some genuinely unsettling bug-based horror. Think Arachnophobia meets The Thing, but with cockroaches—and far less prestige.
Thomas Calabro plays Dr. Cahill, a stressed-out surgeon escaping city burnout by retreating to a quaint island in Maine, only to be greeted by hostility from the locals and the rising threat of flesh-eating, mind-controlling cockroaches. The infestation is discovered via a waterlogged corpse, and as you’d expect, nobody believes Cahill until it’s far too late. Add Dean Stockwell to the mix as a cranky islander, and you’ve got a reliable genre face to anchor the mayhem when it hits.
Despite some low-rent production values and a fairly predictable plot, They Nest offers a few effective chills, especially when the critters start crawling into the more intimate spaces of the human body. The practical effects are modest but used cleverly, and Elkayem leans into the paranoia of small-town denial with just enough flair to keep it from feeling entirely by-the-numbers.
The Prognosis:
Where the film stumbles is in its uneven tone and forgettable characters, who mostly serve as bug fodder. But for fans of creature features who enjoy a slow buildup and a grotesque payoff, They Nest has enough squirmy moments to satisfy. It never reaches cult classic status, but it’s an enjoyable slice of early 2000s horror that earns its place in the insect invasion subgenre—just don’t watch it during dinner.
Directed by: Mike Wiluan | Starring Dean Fujioka, Callum Woodhouse | Premieres on Shudder & AMC+ July 25
In Monster Island, Shudder’s latest exclusive creature feature, wartime survival collides with Southeast Asian myth in a film that smartly blends old-school monster thrills with an unexpected emotional core. Inspired by Creature from the Black Lagoon and rooted in Malay folklore, the story drops a Japanese soldier and a British POW onto a seemingly deserted island following a submarine attack. But peace is short-lived, as the island is home to the Orang Ikan — a fearsome aquatic predator who’s as territorial as it is terrifying.
What sets Monster Island apart from many of its creature feature contemporaries is its willingness to slow down and explore the human side of horror. Rather than lean solely on blood and beasts, the film builds tension from cultural divides and post-traumatic wounds, forcing its two leads into a fragile alliance. Dean Fujioka and Callum Woodhouse bring depth and vulnerability to roles that could have been flat archetypes. Their chemistry makes the film’s central theme — that survival often means facing not just monsters, but your own past — all the more resonant.
Admittedly, the film’s ambition sometimes outpaces its resources. Pyrotechnic effects and digital enhancements can look rough around the edges, and the pacing dips during some mid-island soul-searching. But the film’s practical effects — particularly the creature design — are strong, evoking a rubber-suited charm without feeling dated. There’s enough gore to keep horror hounds engaged, but it never overpowers the human drama, and that balance is key to its charm.
The Prognosis:
While it might not revolutionise the genre, Monster Island shows there’s still plenty of room for creature features with a conscience. By grounding its mythological terror in real-world history and emotional stakes, the film claws its way out of B-movie cliché and into something far more sincere. For fans of wartime horror, international folklore, or just old-school monster mayhem with a pulse, this island trip is worth the ferry.
The sequel we all knew was coming. And yes, we will be referring to our checklist of what makes a good sequel, but that aside, is this outing any good, and was it necessary?
From memory the last movie (reviewed and podcasted by me and Chris Dawes) was definitely ripe for franchising. So straight away we’re not in Matrix territory where the question “Why!? Just why!??” isn’t screaming in your head every few minutes.
In 2.0 we pick up two years after the last movie, where Megan’s creator – Gemma (Allison Williams) and her niece Cady (her name is Cady!?? The whole time you swear they’re calling her “Katie!) played by Violet McGraw – are continuing their lives as the only family each one of them has. Except now Gemma is a staunch and vocal advocate for AI regulation due to her knee-jerk reaction to being almost killed by a robot AI (of her own making, it should be said) and Cady (in turn) is following in her aunts’ footsteps (of sorts) by being a computer science nerd.
In an overcompensating effort by Gemma, she ensures Cady takes Akido lessons so she can defend herself. Unfortunately Cady takes those lessons to an unwanted extreme by regarding Steven Segal as a martial arts poster boy, and one beaten up school bully later, Cady gets in trouble; Gemma is at her wits end, and we soon realise life between them is full of tension. For Gemma still punishes herself for putting Cady in harm’s (Megan’s) way, and Cady hates on Gemma for… reasons. She’s a teenager now, so it’s Hollywood lore she be a little bitch to any authority figure in her life. To be honest, you kinda zone out when you go through their motivations ‘cause you’re keen for the Megan goodness to begin.
And that gets kick started by the presence of another killer robot named Ameila (played by NOT Olsen sister, Ivanna Sakhno). However, unlike Megan, Ameila is very lifelike in face and body, as she is constructed NOT to be a faux babysitter for kids, but as a turbo charged infiltration assassin for the CIA.
How she came into existence is the McGuffin that drives the Main Plot of this film, as we simultaneously find out that (shock surprise) Megan is still “alive”, in an online only sort of way. So when Amelia goes rogue (because of course she does) and comes after Gemma and Cady (for reasons you’ll have to watch to understand) Megan’s primary directive to protect Cady at all costs comes to the surface as she demands Gemma build her a new body to literally kung fu fight Amelia (robato robato).
So with our pieces on the board, let’s get into the nuts ‘n’ bolts of M3gan 2.0.
And for a more detailed description of that, as with our last analysis of the first movie, here’s Chris
Dawes with his half of this review.
Dude – I didn’t see it! You went to the premiere without me!
Chris Dawes
Thanks Chris!
Anyway – some highlights worth mentioning is the existence of another Chekov’s Gun in the form of a cybernetic exo-skeleton that makes people super strong (although its application is at least a little funnier/cooler than you’d think).
We also have a new Megan dance number. For those of you who don’t remember, the main (and some would argue, only) reason the first movie did so well, was because of Megan’s hip-hop/ballet moves she pulls before killing Ronnie Cheng. It was a perfectly bite sized Tik Tok moment which gave the film it’s viral boost as countless people imitated it along the lines of Deadpools *Nsync number.
However, Megan’s effort this round – whilst certainly cool – is less memorable due to the fact it doesn’t have any unique & easy-to-copy dance move(s). In the first instalment it was a simple twist of the hips and a rubbery swing of the arms mixed with a sideways head-duck. But for 2.0 she does the Robot (very generic and a bit on the nose) with a 360-degree head spin (which is impossible to replicate). Although in its defence, it’s still entertaining to watch…
Kiwi legend Jermaine Clement guest stars as Alton Appleton, a tech billionaire who serves as both plot device and comedy device.
Another nice (re)addition is the return of Gemma’s two co-workers from the last film Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez) and Tess (Jen Vann Epps) giving us some nice continuity for 2 characters (and actors) who really don’t need to be there.
And speaking of returning cast – the 2 most important also come back, despite the fact that, had they not, a lot of people wouldn’t have noticed. And they are Amie Donald and Jenna Davis. For they are Megan. More specifically her body and voice respectively.
As Megan was meant to be a pre-teen to match Cady in the first film, the immediate problem they were always facing was, IF they were going to recreate her as before, they would have to recast. But the film-makers clearly appreciate one of the reasons Megan works, is because Donald and Davis clearly work.
And so – with Donald going through the typical growth spurt that comes with puberty – Megan finds herself a foot taller when given her new body, and leaning into this means that the franchise is trying to give the impression each instalment will be a continuation of Megan’s evolution; both in body and in sentience.
And that alone implies this film series will be less Chucky and more Terminator. In more ways than one, as tonally there is a clear shift in Megan’s role from being the Big Bad, to the thing that fights the Big Bad (just like Arnie did in T2)
The Prognosis:
The film-makers have put careful thought into this sequel by analysing the first film’s success, identifying what worked, and leaning into those markers.
So checklist time:
1. Is it a clone of the original? NO
2. Is it a clone of the original but simply more and just bigger? NO
3. Does it expand the universe/lore of the original? YES
4. Is it a good standalone film without relying too heavily on the original? YES
5. (Optional) Does it have a cool new gimmick or element that’s not in the original film, but sits well within the universe of the first film? (Eg: Think Yoda and his ground breaking puppetry in The Empire Strikes Back. Or the CGI T-1000 in T2). NO
6. Does it identify the SPIRIT of the original, and duplicate it? YES definitely.
Because the biggest thing the film-makers have wisely clocked is that Megan ISN’T a horror film, but a fun film. Camp fun. And that’s what makes this movie an upgrade from the original.
Heretics, directed by José Prendes, is yet another entry in the ever-bloated found footage genre—a tired rehash of tropes that aspires to be The Blair Witch Project in a haunted house but crashes and burns before it even gets the camera rolling.
The premise is painfully familiar: a group of thrill-seeking teens break into the abandoned Simmons House, armed with shaky camcorders, bad attitudes, and even worse dialogue. They’re swiftly confronted with the presence of a shadowy cult that begins picking them off one by one. It’s a setup we’ve seen dozens of times, and Heretics brings nothing new to the table—only louder screams, cheaper scares, and a cast that feels more irritating than imperilled.
Any potential tension is suffocated by the unbearable ensemble of characters, each more grating than the last. Instead of building atmosphere or dread, the film relies on aimless yelling, predictable jump scares, and faux-ritual mumbo jumbo. It’s hard to care about who lives or dies when you’re actively hoping the cult hurries things along.
The only flicker of professionalism comes in the form of Eric Roberts, whose 20-second cameo is little more than a contractual obligation. His presence is both jarring and ironic—proof that the film knows how to attract a name, but not how to use it.
From its dull aesthetic to its lazy execution, Heretics feels like it was made with one eye on viral success and the other closed entirely. It mistakes noise for tension, clichés for plot, and shaky cam for style. What could have been a creepy little cult horror flick turns out to be an uninspired slog with no purpose and zero payoff.
The Prognosis:
Some heresies are unforgivable. This is one of them.
Surgeons of Horror 