Category Archives: Movie review

“Push (2025): A House of Tension Without Foundation”

07 Monday Jul 2025

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Push, the latest Shudder Original, arrives with a high-stakes premise that promises maternal terror and psychological tension—but despite its visceral setup, this horror-thriller quickly loses steam and ultimately fails to push past cliché.

Natalie Flores (Alicia Sanz), eight months pregnant and haunted by the tragic loss of her fiancé, seeks a fresh start in America. But her attempt to rebuild takes a dark turn when she’s targeted by a sadistic killer (Raúl Castillo) during what should have been a routine open house. Trapped and alone, her situation becomes increasingly desperate when she goes into premature labor, setting up a race-against-the-clock scenario that sadly never reaches its full potential.

There’s no denying the narrative ambition behind Push—it touches on trauma, female autonomy, and the vulnerability of pregnancy under threat. But these weighty themes are handled with a frustratingly superficial touch. In its best moments, the film flirts with intensity, but more often, it feels like a pale imitation of Inside (2007), the ferocious French horror film that tackled similar themes with unflinching brutality and far greater psychological depth.

Alicia Sanz gives a committed performance, doing what she can with a role that leans heavily on panic and pain, while Raúl Castillo brings unsettling energy to his villain, though the character lacks dimension. The script, unfortunately, relies too much on convenience and thinly sketched motivations, leaving tension deflated and plot turns predictable.

The house itself—a key location in the film—offers some atmospheric framing, but it’s not enough to compensate for the story’s undercooked emotional arcs and rushed pacing. The stakes are clear, but the suspense rarely lands, and what should feel like a suffocating countdown instead plays out like a laboured shuffle toward an inevitable climax.

The Prognosis:

Push is watchable enough for fans seeking a late-night thrill, but it never comes close to the visceral punch or thematic weight of its cinematic predecessor. It’s a film about survival that, ironically, never quite finds a pulse.

  • Saul Muerte

The Shrouds (2024) – Cronenberg’s Grief-Laced Techno-Tomb

02 Wednesday Jul 2025

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How dark are you willing to go? For David Cronenberg, The Shrouds marks another step into the abyss—one not of body horror, but of soul-rattling grief. This is arguably his most intimate and meditative work in decades, stitched together from threads of personal mourning, speculative technology, and the philosophical weight of death’s final curtain.

At the centre is Karsh (played with measured intensity by Vincent Cassel), a widower and tech entrepreneur who creates a radical new device: one that allows the living to peer into the graves of their deceased loved ones via digitally monitored “shrouds.” This deeply invasive (yet oddly spiritual) concept is classic Cronenberg—scientific progress colliding with deeply human frailty. But when a series of graves, including that of Karsh’s wife, are mysteriously desecrated, the film pivots into a sombre, noir-like mystery driven more by obsession than resolution.

From the turn of the century, Cronenberg’s work—Spider, A History of Violence, Cosmopolis, and Crimes of the Future—has leaned away from his earlier grotesque sensibilities and toward psychological excavation. The Shrouds is a continuation of that journey, and perhaps his most self-reflective piece since The Fly. With the recent passing of his wife, the film becomes a stark act of cinematic mourning—less a story than a eulogy.

The concept of the shroud here operates on multiple levels: biblically, as the linen of death and resurrection; metaphorically, as the veil between life and death; and narratively, as the enigma that cloaks Karsh’s unraveling. There’s also the ever-present shroud of mystery that clouds the truth—not only of the graveyard desecrations, but of Karsh himself. As the film progresses, Karsh becomes more opaque, his motives murkier, and his grief increasingly pathological. These twists are fascinating but also frustrating, leading the narrative into a fog of unanswered questions that might leave some viewers cold.

Yet Cronenberg surrounds Cassel with a stellar cast that brings warmth and depth. Diane Kruger and Guy Pearce, both enigmatic and grounded, help anchor the film in emotional reality even as it drifts into cerebral territory. Their performances are subtle yet compelling, with Pearce offering a particularly nuanced turn.

The Prognosis:

The Shrouds isn’t easy to love—but then again, grief rarely is. What it offers is a look into one man’s private hell, filtered through the lens of a director who has never shied away from uncomfortable truths. If its philosophical weight sometimes outweighs its dramatic clarity, it remains a compelling, mournful meditation from one of cinema’s most fearless auteurs.

  • Saul Muerte

The Shrouds will be screening in cinemas nationwide from Thu 3rd July.

Outbreak (2024) – A Predictable Descent into Trauma

30 Monday Jun 2025

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Directed by Jeff Wolfe, Outbreak promises psychological dread and emotional turmoil against the backdrop of a creeping viral catastrophe—but ends up delivering little more than a tepid, trauma-soaked shuffle through familiar terrain.

The film follows a State Park Ranger (Billy Burke) and his wife (Alyshia Ochse) as they navigate the emotional wreckage of their teenage son’s disappearance, only to be confronted by a mysterious outbreak that further destabilises their world. As the infection spreads, so too does the sense of despair—but unfortunately, not much tension.

Billy Burke anchors the film with an earnest and committed performance, his weathered presence lending weight to otherwise limp material. Wolfe allows plenty of room for grief to dominate the narrative, but the pacing is sluggish, and the dramatic beats soon feel repetitive. Rather than building momentum, Outbreak spirals into melodrama, with a script that too often leans on genre clichés and a plot that telegraphs its twists from miles away.

There are a few flashes of atmosphere—some moody cinematography and eerie silences—but the film’s tonal heaviness overshadows its horror ambitions. The virus metaphor is serviceable, and by the time the film reaches its climax, the emotional payoff feels muted and overly familiar.

Despite its promising premise and a solid cast including Raoul Max Trujillo, Taylor Handley, and Jessica Frances Dukes, Outbreak plays it safe when it desperately needed to take risks. Watchable, sure—but only for the curious or the committed fans of the cast. For most, this is a slow trudge through thematic terrain that’s already been better navigated by others.

Outbreak will be available to rent or buy on DVD & Digital across Apple TV, Prime Video, Google TV, YouTube, and Fetch (AU) from July 2nd.

  • Saul Muerte

“28 Years Later: A Familiar Virus, A Mutated Vision”

21 Saturday Jun 2025

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In 28 Days Later (2002), Danny Boyle and Alex Garland didn’t just kick the zombie genre into overdrive—they reanimated it. With rage-fueled infected, urgent digital grit, and a raw emotional core, it felt like the end of the world captured in real time. The sequel, 28 Weeks Later, traded intimacy for scale and kept the horror grounded in family trauma and moral collapse. Now, 28 Years Later arrives with all the right ingredients—Boyle and Garland reunited, a new angle on the infected, and a haunting performance from Jodie Comer—yet somehow the dish feels tepid, left too long to simmer in its own legacy.

Set nearly three decades after the initial outbreak, the film offers an evolved world, where quarantine zones remain ruthlessly enforced and life persists in liminal spaces. Comer plays Isla, a survivor embedded in a tight-knit community on a remote island connected to the mainland by a single, heavily guarded causeway. It’s a solid setting, rife with dread and potential—one that echoes the tension and bleak solitude of the original. But where 28 Days Later propelled itself with primal urgency, this entry often feels subdued, wandering through plot points instead of sprinting toward them.

The heart of the story follows a lone expedition back into the mainland’s infected heartland, where the infected have not only continued to mutate, but so too have the remnants of human society. The central theme once again revolves around family dynamics, something that has served as a connective tissue across all three films: Brendan Gleeson’s tragic turn in Days, the fractured Carlyle-McCormack family in Weeks, and now a newly-formed surrogate bond at the centre of Years. But here, it feels overemphasised to the point of distraction—particularly in scenes involving Ralph Fiennes, whose ponderous monologues often stall the film’s pulse when it should be quickening.

Comer, however, is the standout. Her portrayal of Isla brings grit, empathy, and conviction to a role that could’ve easily fallen into genre archetypes. She’s the emotional engine of the film, grounding it in human stakes even as the narrative wobbles into philosophical excess. The supporting cast handles their parts well, but none leave quite the same mark.

Visually, Boyle still knows how to stage devastation. His direction remains bold, capturing dereliction and dread with poetic framing. Garland’s script toys with paranoia, substance use, and psychological collapse—recurring themes for the duo—but here they feel more like recycled motifs than fresh meditations. There’s also an odd tonal shift in the final act, when the film suddenly veers into kung fu-style combat and hallucinatory spectacle, abandoning its grounded realism for a jarring dose of genre whiplash. The effect is disorienting and not entirely earned.

Fans looking for the visceral shock and bleak urgency of 28 Days Later may be disappointed. This is not that film. The infected still rage, the world still crumbles, but the pulse has slowed. The film’s strongest moments are its quietest – glimpses of survival, the cost of trust, the strange rituals that have replaced society. But in its desire to evolve, 28 Years Later sometimes forgets what made the original bite so hard in the first place.

The Prognosis:

28 Years Later is a fascinating, if flawed, return to a world that reshaped horror cinema. It’s packed with emotional resonance and striking visuals but often stumbles under the weight of its own ambitions. The virus has changed. Maybe the filmmakers have too.

  • Saul Muerte

“Full Tilt Into the Void: Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce at 40”

20 Friday Jun 2025

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There’s weird, and then there’s Lifeforce. Tobe Hooper’s 1985 sci-fi horror fever dream didn’t just step outside the box—it set it on fire, turned it into a naked vampire, and launched it into orbit. Forty years on, this glorious trainwreck of a film still pulses with an unholy energy: part alien invasion thriller, part erotic vampire myth, part end-of-days apocalypse, and all unleashed Hooper. It’s a mess—but it’s a beautiful, ambitious, and absolutely unhinged mess.

Based loosely (and we stress loosely) on Colin Wilson’s novel The Space Vampires, Lifeforce begins like Alien and ends like The Omega Man, with an interstellar expedition to Halley’s Comet bringing home something ancient and devastating: a trio of seductive, humanoid vampires who drain the life—literally the force—from their victims. What follows is a strange cocktail of sci-fi espionage, metaphysical dread, zombie contagion, and enough full-frontal nudity to make the MPAA sweat through its polyester.

At the centre of it all is Hooper, hot off the back of Poltergeist (and still shaking off the questions about Spielberg’s creative control). With Lifeforce, he grabs the wheel, hits the gas, and swerves into chaos with wild-eyed conviction. This is Hooper unfiltered, blending gothic horror and pulp science fiction with operatic flair. The film is massive in scale—shot like a prestige epic, scored with bombastic orchestration, and featuring enough laser-beam FX to fry a satellite. It’s hard not to admire the sheer guts of it all.

There’s espionage too—cold war paranoia baked into the script like secret messages in a sandwich. The British government scrambles to contain the outbreak, while American astronauts (including a stiff but determined Steve Railsback) struggle to explain what the hell they brought back. At times, the film plays like The Day of the Jackal with energy-sucking space demons. Other times, it’s Dracula on a spaceship, as Mathilda May’s otherworldly alien lures victims with silence and skin, drawing a hypnotic trail of destruction through the ruins of London.

And it’s in May’s performance—ethereal, deadly, utterly magnetic—that Lifeforce finds its strange gravitational pull. She doesn’t speak a word, but commands the screen like a vampire goddess. She is both object and agent of desire, representing Hooper’s recurring obsession with sexuality as a monstrous, irresistible force.

Yes, it’s convoluted. Yes, it spirals into nonsense. But there’s a manic joy in how it barrels forward, ideas colliding midair like doomed satellites. Life-force theft, reanimation, psychic connections, body horror, possession—it’s all here, stitched together like a mad scientist’s pet project. The tone shifts from serious sci-fi to gothic melodrama to gonzo action, often within a single scene.

And yet, for all its excesses and flaws, Lifeforce endures. It’s campy and chaotic, but also strangely profound. Beneath the spectacle is a film about identity, human weakness, and the eternal hunger for connection—even if that connection destroys you.

The Prognosis:

In an era of sanitised blockbusters and streamlined storytelling, Lifeforce stands out as a relic of fearless filmmaking. It’s a film that swings for the stars and occasionally misses, but when it hits… it leaves a mark.

  • Saul Muerte

“Consecration: A Beautifully Shot Descent into a Convoluted Mystery”

14 Saturday Jun 2025

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Director Christopher Smith (Triangle, Severance, Creep) has long walked the fine line between genre smarts and psychological thrills. With Consecration, he returns to familiar territory: isolation, trauma, and the gnawing sense that reality is unspooling by divine design—or perhaps something darker. Unfortunately, despite a stellar cast and evocative visuals, this theological thriller never quite delivers the clarity or momentum it promises.

At the centre of the story is Grace, played with icy restraint and wounded conviction by Jena Malone, who travels to a remote convent in the Scottish Highlands after the supposed suicide of her priest brother. It’s no spoiler to say she doesn’t buy the Church’s official line. What follows is a grim unpicking of spiritual rot, ancient rites, and personal demons—literal and otherwise.

Malone is a reliably magnetic presence, giving Grace a cold, coiled intensity. She’s in nearly every frame and carries the film with a quiet sense of fury, even when the script leaves her wandering in narrative fog. Danny Huston, meanwhile, brings a slippery, unsettling charm to his role as Father Romero—a man whose calm demeanour suggests he’s either a holy man or something far more manipulative. Their scenes together crackle with tension, even if the broader story never quite catches fire.

Visually, Consecration is arresting. Robert Adams’ cinematography makes the windswept cliffs and ancient stone interiors of the convent feel appropriately ominous and otherworldly. There’s a chilling stillness to the imagery, as though the land itself has been cursed. Smith knows how to set a mood, and he does so beautifully here, evoking The Ninth Configuration by way of The Nun.

But for all its atmosphere, Consecration stumbles under the weight of its convoluted plot. Flashbacks, hallucinations, religious visions, and a not-so-linear structure make for an increasingly confusing experience. Smith is no stranger to twisty storytelling—Triangle remains a standout in that regard—but here the puzzle-box elements feel murky rather than mind-bending. The story moves slowly, and its pacing often saps the tension that the setting and premise so deftly establish.

By the time the “revelations” arrive, they’re less shocking than they are baffling, tipping the film into a kind of Doctor Who-style timey-wimey terrain that doesn’t mesh with the grounded horror of its opening acts. It’s a tonal mismatch, and one that ultimately dulls the emotional impact of the finale.

Still, there’s something admirable about the ambition on display. Consecration isn’t content to offer up surface-level scares. It aims for spiritual unease and existential horror, and when it clicks, it’s genuinely unsettling. But in the end, the execution can’t match the ambition.

The Prognosis:

A gorgeous, well-acted descent into faith and madness—but one that loses its way somewhere along the sacred path.

  • Saul Muerte

Consecration will be available on UK Digital Platforms from 16th June.

“In Her Skin: The Stylist and the High Cost of Belonging”

13 Friday Jun 2025

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Streaming on Shudder and AMC+ from Monday 16 June

Beneath its softly lit salons and the hushed intimacy of late-night haircuts, The Stylist carves out something far more unsettling: a psychological portrait of aching loneliness, identity collapse, and the monstrous lengths some will go to feel like they belong. Directed with eerie precision by Jill Gevargizian, this feature-length adaptation of her acclaimed short film offers a muted but effective horror tale that leans more into sadness than shocks.

Claire (Najarra Townsend) is a woman adrift—quiet, awkward, desperate to connect—but with a hunger that’s gone grotesquely unmet. She doesn’t just cut hair. She scalps. Each kill is not about violence for its own sake, but a tragic, chilling attempt to wear someone else’s life. And that’s where The Stylist cuts deepest—not in the gore, but in its exploration of identity as a fragile performance, and what happens when someone can no longer locate their own sense of self.

Enter Olivia (Brea Grant), an affable, outgoing bride-to-be who naively invites Claire deeper into her world. From there, the spiral is slow and agonising. What starts as admiration curdles into obsession. Claire’s need to be Olivia isn’t just jealousy—it’s pathological yearning. Her scalping isn’t about trophies in the serial killer sense. It’s about transference. Taking the one thing a person can’t fake: their presence, their social ease, their confidence. Claire doesn’t want to destroy—she wants to inhabit.

Townsend delivers a superb, painfully internal performance. Her Claire is meek but never blank—each nervous twitch and downward glance revealing someone quietly screaming behind her skin. She doesn’t play the killer as a monster, but as a woman in mourning—for connection, for warmth, for identity. It’s a performance that sticks with you. Brea Grant, meanwhile, plays Olivia with a brightness that never tips into caricature, making her slow realisation all the more tragic.

Stylistically, the film is polished, with an elegant aesthetic that contrasts beautifully with its macabre subject matter. There are echoes of Maniac, May, even Single White Female, but The Stylist stands on its own, particularly in how grounded its emotional horror remains. The mood is heavy, sometimes to a fault, with pacing that occasionally feels listless rather than deliberate. Still, the thematic undercurrents—how we mask our emptiness, how we covet others’ confidence like currency—are deeply resonant.

The Prognosis:

There’s a sadness in the scissors. In the need to be seen. In the horror of invisibility. The Stylist doesn’t reinvent the horror genre, but it delivers something more haunting than expected: a quiet eulogy for those who never quite found their place, and the darkness that fills the void.

  • Saul Muerte

Englund, Harris, Moseley—Wasted on a Toothless Slasher

10 Tuesday Jun 2025

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Trick, no treat: A horror legend trio wasted on a forgettable fright night

Directed by Dwight H. Little, Natty Knocks arrives with a nostalgic promise—one rooted in its genre-savvy casting. With horror icons Bill Moseley, Danielle Harris, and Robert Englund all appearing in the same film, expectations are understandably raised. Unfortunately, what unfolds is a tepid, undercooked Halloween flick that feels more like a missed opportunity than a macabre thrill ride.

Set on Halloween Eve, the story follows Britt (Charlotte Fountain-Jardim), a babysitter tasked with protecting a group of kids from Abner Honeywell, a deranged killer who is also the son of a B-movie scream queen known as “Natty Knocks.” It’s a set-up that might have worked better had the film leaned harder into its retro horror roots, or capitalised on its intriguing central lore. Instead, the narrative plods along with soft suspense and little impact.

Bill Moseley plays it straight but subdued, a far cry from his unhinged roles in House of 1000 Corpses or The Devil’s Rejects. Danielle Harris, often a reliable presence in indie horror, is underused here, while Robert Englund—despite a brief and welcome appearance—feels more like stunt casting than a meaningful addition. The trio’s collective legacy deserves better than what the film ultimately offers.

Technically, the film struggles with uneven pacing and flat direction. There are a few stylistic touches and the occasional attempt at atmosphere, but none of it ever quite gels. The kills are mostly offscreen or uninspired, and the tension rarely rises above a simmer.

The Prognosis:

In the end, Natty Knocks tries to dress up a bare-bones slasher with legacy casting and light folklore, but it doesn’t have the teeth to break through the noise. For fans of Moseley, Harris, or Englund, there’s some fleeting curiosity value. For everyone else, it’s a Halloween story better left untold.

  • Movie Review by Saul Muerte

Natty Knocks is available to rent or buy now.

Love on the Run Turns to Terror in Queer Horror Road Trip Straight On Till Morning

02 Monday Jun 2025

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Freak Me Out delivers another bold, bruising genre gem.

The Freak Me Out program at Sydney Film Festival 2025 has always been a haven for horror misfits, and Straight On Till Morning is a welcome addition to its blood-splattered roster. Directed by Craig Ouellette, this road trip romance-turned-nightmare pits love against extremism, identity against tradition, and outsiders against a force of cruel conformity.

At its heart are Dani and Kaitlin, two queer lovers caught in the euphoric haze of newfound intimacy. Their chemistry is charming, unforced, and grounded in quiet authenticity—a refreshing portrayal that sidesteps overused tropes and instead paints their connection as real and lived-in. But their dreamy road trip through America’s underbelly soon turns into a brutal descent, as they collide with a seemingly God-fearing family whose values are warped by delusion and control.

The film takes its time to find traction, and its deliberate pacing may test some viewers. The first act drifts on the wind of romantic indie minimalism, until a mid-point collision throws everything off the rails and into pure survival horror. From there, it delivers raw tension, visceral violence, and a grim dissection of how love—queer or otherwise—threatens rigid systems built on fear and false righteousness.

What elevates Straight On Till Morning beyond standard genre fare is its refusal to paint anyone with a single brushstroke. The villains are monstrous, yes, but they are never cartoons. Likewise, our protagonists are flawed, unsure, and deeply human. Ouellette doesn’t go for clean lines—this is a film about grey areas. About how outcasts, be they queer lovers or zealots hiding from the modern world, can collide in catastrophic ways.

The Prognosis:

It’s a challenging, sometimes uneven ride, but when it hits its stride, it’s gripping and unrelenting. In a landscape still learning how to do queer horror without pandering or punishing, Straight On Till Morning is a welcome entry—messy, brave, and full of heart.

🎟 Screening Times – Freak Me Out @ Sydney Film Festival 2025

  • Tuesday 10 June, 8:20pm – Dendy Newtown, Cinema 1
  • Friday 13 June, 8:30pm – Event Cinemas George Street, Cinema 9

Dare to fall in love. Stay for the fear.

  • Saul Muerte

“Bring Her Back” Is a Brutal, Brain-Bending Horror That Sticks With You

31 Saturday May 2025

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The RackaRacka boys have delivered again with another twisted take on the horror genre.

Where most modern horrors have become predictable, Bring Her Back keeps you guessing—delivering tense scenes, cover-your-eyes moments, and genuine shocks rather than cheap jump scares.

You feel every bone crack and every piece of skin tear, thanks to ingenious stunt work and makeup effects, bolstered by incredibly savage sound design. It’s easy to see why some of the body horror may be too much for the faint of heart—featuring one of the most brutal moments I think I’ve ever seen on screen.

The Philippou brothers, Danny and Michael (Talk To Me), excel at finding great young talent, and this is no exception. The cast includes a group of up-and-coming stars alongside Sally Hawkins, who delivers an unsettling performance (and a flawless Aussie accent). For a pair of lads who come across as nutters in every interview they do, the brothers show surprising maturity—especially in their camerawork and originality.

Like most horror films, it’s a very clear allegory, but it’s still entertaining. There were moments that could’ve been a bit clearer without needing to spell everything out—but then again, I suppose we’d have had nothing to discuss in the car park afterwards.

The Prognosis:

You may need an exorcist to remove this movie from your brain—not just because of the body horror, but because you’ll probably be trying to piece the puzzle together the whole ride home.