Category Archives: Movie review

Ride the Snake Slithers into Darkness, But Never Truly Strikes

10 Saturday May 2025

Posted by in Movie review

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Despite bold intentions and strong performances, this slow-burning psychological thriller is too meandering to leave a lasting bite.

Ride the Snake, the latest effort from British filmmaker Shani Grewal, attempts to crawl into the feverish subconscious of grief, guilt, and revenge, but ends up shedding more skin than substance. With an ambitious palette of references, the film isn’t lacking in aesthetic aspirations. Unfortunately, it’s precisely this reverence for genre greats that weighs the narrative down, muddying what could have been a searing, timely story of loss and reckoning.

At its core, the premise is loaded with potential. Harper (Suzanna Hamilton) and her daughter abduct the drunk driver responsible for the death of Harper’s husband, believing they’ve seized justice on their own terms. What follows is not the revenge thriller one might expect, but a slow, deliberate psychological descent. The pacing dares to crawl, not sprint. And while restraint can be a virtue, here it flirts too closely with inertia.

Hamilton, best known for her haunting turn in 1984, delivers a performance of quiet intensity. Her portrayal of Harper teeters between vulnerability and steel resolve. Michael Maloney also anchors the film with a weary charisma that keeps certain scenes afloat, particularly when the tension begins to sag. Madhav Sharma, too, brings subtle gravity to his supporting role, though he is underutilised.

Where Ride the Snake does strike a chord is in its atmospheric tension. The visuals are brooding and textured, soaked in bleak palettes and long, oppressive silences. Grewal and his cinematographer seem deeply attuned to visual storytelling—but perhaps too much so. At times, the atmosphere feels like an end in itself rather than a complement to the story. There are echoes of genre classics everywhere, but they never quite congeal into something distinct or urgent. It’s a film that gestures toward menace without ever fully embracing it.

Yet, beneath the uneven pacing and the sometimes self-conscious aesthetic, there’s something commendable. Grewal’s comment about the difficulties of casting British/Asians in non-stereotypical roles speaks to a real and persistent issue in UK cinema. In that regard, Ride the Snake is a step forward—not because it tokenises its characters of colour, but because it simply allows them to exist in complex, human roles. The film’s universality lies in its grief, in its moral murk, and in the desperation that grief can provoke.

The Prognosis:

For all its noble intentions and atmospheric flourishes, Ride the Snake ends up coiling in on itself. It never quite delivers the psychological punch it promises. The suspense simmers but rarely boils. The horror stays at arm’s length, more suggested than felt. In the end, it’s a film that mourns deeply but moves too slowly—and struggles to find its own voice amid the echoes of cinematic ghosts.

  • Movie Review by Saul Muerte

Ride The Snake is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

The Ugly Stepsister Finds Her Voice in the Shadows

10 Saturday May 2025

Posted by in Movie review

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

This darkly feminist fairy tale slow-burns its way through vanity, envy, and the societal curse of beauty.

In Emilie Kristine Blichfeldt’s icy, melancholic The Ugly Stepsister, the velvet drapes and soft golden glows of the fairy tale kingdom mask something far more corrosive: the bitter ache of envy, inadequacy, and the impossible pressure to be seen. It’s a film that peers behind the glass slipper and turns the looking glass back on us—audiences raised on ideals of beauty, charm, and happy endings for the fairest of them all.

The titular “ugly” stepsister, Elvira (Lea Myren), is not the cackling caricature of pantomime lore. Played with aching restraint, she’s a quiet storm of desperation and longing—her plainness not exaggerated but perceptibly measured against the luminous perfection of her stepsister, who seems preordained to capture the prince’s attention. The film’s magic lies not in spells or transformations, but in its psychological excavation of a woman unraveling under the weight of expectation and invisibility.

Blichfeldt wisely avoids overt parody or satire. Instead, she leans into the fairy tale structure only to slowly erode it, exposing the emotional and societal cost of a world built on outward beauty. In Elvira’s quiet glances, her tightening posture, and her increasing willingness to bend morality in pursuit of admiration, we witness something tragic: not a villainess in the making, but a reflection of how warped self-worth becomes in a world that equates beauty with value.

The film’s pacing is deliberate, sometimes to a fault. It takes its time—almost too much—in building its portrait of simmering resentment and warped aspiration. But the stillness serves a purpose: The Ugly Stepsister is less concerned with plot propulsion than with emotional erosion. This is no Cinderella story, even if it steals her ballgown. It’s a study in marginalisation—of being the one never chosen, never seen, and never allowed to dream on her own terms.

Though the production design is gorgeously oppressive—regal and cold in equal measure—it’s the thematic spine that resonates: the film’s commentary on the female experience within patriarchal beauty myths. Elvira’s descent isn’t driven by malice, but by an internalised belief that to be loved, she must first be looked at. It’s a bitter irony that in pursuing visibility, she must become someone—something—unrecognisable.

The Prognosis:

The Ugly Stepsister doesn’t always land its punches with perfect clarity and might frustrate viewers expecting a more dramatic reversal or fantasy payoff. Blichfeldt isn’t rewriting a fairy tale—she’s exhuming it, pulling up what’s been buried beneath centuries of curated perfection.

In this world, beauty is not a blessing. It’s a prison. And for those left outside its gates, the fairy tale is a nightmare told in soft pastels and sharpened smiles.

  • Review by Saul Muerte

Until Dawn Falls into the Loop, but Misses the Fear

02 Friday May 2025

Posted by in Movie review

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

This adaptation of the cult horror game spins a promising premise into a stylish but shallow spiral of déjà vu.

Translating a beloved video game into a feature-length film is no easy feat, and Until Dawn (2025) finds itself caught between reverence and reinvention—never fully satisfying either impulse. Directed by David F. Sandberg (Lights Out, Annabelle: Creation), the film adaptation of Supermassive Games’ acclaimed 2015 interactive horror experience arrives with expectations as high as the snowy mountain peaks that once haunted the original. Unfortunately, the result is a visually competent, sometimes eerie effort that ultimately loops on itself in more ways than its premise intends.

Gone are the sweeping tracking shots of icy cliff edges and gothic ski lodges that defined the game’s snowy isolation. In their place is a mist-shrouded valley and a rusting visitor centre—less operatic in tone, more grounded in survival horror clichés. The story follows Clover (Kaitlyn Bernard) and her group of friends who venture into the remote wilderness where her sister Melanie vanished a year earlier. But this isn’t a straightforward slasher. Soon, each grisly death resets the evening, plunging the characters into a surreal time loop. Every death becomes part of a macabre routine—a concept ripe for tension and innovation.

Yet despite this intriguing setup, Until Dawn struggles to replicate the game’s carefully balanced atmosphere of dread, character interplay, and escalating supernatural unease. While the film toys with repetition in the vein of Happy Death Day or Triangle, its execution feels flatter. The stakes should rise with each iteration, but instead, the sense of urgency dissipates into predictability.

One of the most glaring issues is tonal dissonance. The game deftly shifted between teen horror, creature feature, and psychological thriller—leaning into its interactive nature to let players explore moral ambiguity and consequence. The film, however, strips away much of that complexity. The characters are archetypal and underwritten, with little of the branching narrative depth that gave players a stake in their survival. Despite Bernard’s earnest turn and a committed supporting cast, we don’t get enough time or texture to care deeply when the inevitable deaths arrive—especially when the film keeps undoing them.

David F. Sandberg, known for his knack with shadowplay and minimalist dread, brings some eerie flourishes to the visuals—particularly in the initial sequences of isolation and the early deaths. But his more intimate, character-driven horror style doesn’t always sync with the sprawling, meta-narrative scope the story requires. There are moments of atmosphere, to be sure, but they’re rarely sustained.

Perhaps most disappointing to fans of the game is the near-total omission of the Wendigo mythology that underpinned its final act. In favour of streamlining the plot for a film-length runtime, the supernatural elements are toned down or erased entirely—leaving a more conventional masked killer in their place. It’s a simplification that robs the story of its distinctive edge and sense of mythic terror.

The Prognosis:

Until Dawn isn’t an outright failure—just a missed opportunity. It flirts with high-concept horror and offers a few moments of stylish unease, but never quite captures the pulpy grandeur or narrative inventiveness of its source material. As a standalone film, it’s serviceable. As an adaptation, it’s trapped in its own loop, chasing shadows of something far more chilling.

  • Movie review by Saul Muerte

Ash (2025): A Sensory Voyage from a Singular Artist

24 Thursday Apr 2025

Posted by in Movie review

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

Flying Lotus has never been a filmmaker to colour inside the lines. With Kuso (2017), he exploded onto the scene with a hallucinogenic blend of body horror, surrealism, and sound design that dared viewers to stick with it—or run screaming. With Ash, he reins in the chaos just enough to create what is arguably his most accessible film to date, while still packing it with enough aural and visual flourishes to remain unmistakably his own.

Set on a remote planet and anchored by a creeping sense of cosmic dread, Ash follows a woman (Elza González) who wakes up to find her crew slaughtered and must unravel the mystery before a darker truth consumes her. It’s a premise steeped in sci-fi tradition, but Flying Lotus isn’t here to offer a straightforward space thriller. Instead, he weaves a waking dream of sound and vision—atmospheric, meditative, and disorienting in equal measure.

The real marvel is in the film’s sensory layering. The soundscape—unsurprisingly exquisite—is a collage of ambient dread, industrial echoes, and meditative melodies that feel like transmissions from another dimension. As a musician, Flying Lotus has always been a sound alchemist; here, he pushes that instinct into the very bones of the film.

Elza González gives a committed, emotional performance that grounds the film’s cerebral tendencies. It’s largely her show, and she rises to the occasion with a mix of vulnerability and resolve. Aaron Paul appears in a supporting role that brings both tension and quiet depth, acting as a counterpoint to González’s isolation and inner turmoil.

The film’s Achilles’ heel is its plot. Beneath the rich surface textures and hypnotic editing, Ash tells a story that is familiar, even predictable. But it’s cleverly concealed beneath the stylistic veneer, like a well-worn book with a mesmerising new cover. There’s craft in how Flying Lotus reshapes and recontextualises sci-fi horror tropes, but at times, it feels like style just barely holding up a sagging structure.

The Prognosis:

There’s no denying Ash is a step forward—a distillation of Flying Lotus’s eccentricities into something more narratively digestible while retaining his unique artistic stamp. For fans of bold sci-fi that dares to flirt with the abstract, Ash may not be the deepest story, but it’s one hell of a ride through an artist’s ever-evolving mind.

Ash is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

  • Review by Saul Muerte

Sinners (2025) Burns Slow, Strikes Deep: A Southern Gothic Horror for the Soul

24 Thursday Apr 2025

Posted by in Movie review

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ryan Coogler’s masterful period horror blends haunting performances, rich character work, and a chilling exploration of generational trauma in 1930s Mississippi.

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is a searing slow-burn period horror that dances with dread and walks hand-in-hand with grief. Set in the Mississippi Delta in 1932, the film follows twin brothers Elijah “Smoke” Moore and Elias “Stack” Moore—both masterfully portrayed by Michael B. Jordan—as they return home to bury their past and sow new beginnings. What they unearth instead is a long-dormant evil that has been waiting, watching, and whispering ever since they left.

The true triumph of Sinners lies in its narrative depth and the emotional complexity that Coogler and his cast mine from every silence, glance, and haunted memory. This isn’t just a horror film—it’s a reckoning. Coogler, whose storytelling instincts have never been sharper, peels back layers of trauma, familial guilt, and the deep-rooted scars of racism, infusing the piece with a quiet fury and poetic sorrow. The horror grows from within, shaped by generations of silence and sorrow, before it ever manifests as something supernatural.

Michael B. Jordan’s dual performance as the Moore brothers is nothing short of riveting. As Smoke, the reformed bootlegger-turned-father haunted by regret, and as Stack, the charming yet damaged twin desperate for purpose, Jordan crafts two fully realised personas that often share the screen but never blur. It’s a feat of nuanced acting that few could carry off with such clarity and emotional intelligence.

Hailee Steinfeld is quietly devastating as Mary, Stack’s ex-lover who embodies both the warmth of a past life and the cold reality of its collapse. Miles Caton delivers a breakout performance as Sammie “Preacher Boy” Moore, a cousin torn between faith and family, while Wunmi Mosaku brings aching humanity to the role of Annie, Smoke’s wife, whose inner strength glows amid the encroaching darkness.

Visually, Sinners is a stunning amalgamation of Southern Gothic decay and modern horror stylings. Coogler references films like The Thing and From Dusk Till Dawn not through mimicry, but through spiritual succession—mood, tension, and a willingness to go where many fear. He weaves these references into the very fabric of 1930s America, evoking a time where the devil wore not just horns, but hoods. The racist undercurrent of the era isn’t just backdrop—it’s part of the horror itself, as oppressive and insidious as any demonic force.

Ludwig Göransson’s score is another masterstroke—an eerie, pulsating blend of Delta blues, spirituals, and ambient dread. It doesn’t just accompany the film; it guides it. The music conjures the Devil at the crossroads, the sorrow of the land, and the weight of sin—historical, personal, and inherited.

The Prognosis:

Sinners isn’t a film that offers easy scares or tidy conclusions. It’s a powerful, slow-burning descent into a uniquely American hell—one born of blood, legacy, and the terrible things we choose to bury. Coogler has delivered something rare: a horror film with heart, history, and heat. A Southern ghost story for our times—and for all time.

  • Saul Muerte

“The devil don’t wait in the shadows. He walks the road with you.”

Into the Fog: Fréwaka: Fréamhacha Drifts Through Grief and Myth

20 Sunday Apr 2025

Posted by in Movie review

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Aislinn Clarke’s hypnotic folk horror enchants the senses, but its symbolic weight and languid pace may leave some viewers lost in the mist.

Aislinn Clarke’s Fréwaka: Fréamhacha is an Irish folk horror steeped in grief, mythology, and atmosphere — a hypnotic, slow-burning tale that seduces the eye even as it keeps the heart at a distance. Cloaked in shadows and silence, the film follows Shoo, a care worker carrying her own unresolved pain, who’s sent to a secluded village to tend to an agoraphobic woman terrified of both her tight-knit neighbours and the Na Sídhe — ancient, otherworldly beings from Irish folklore.

Clarke, previously lauded for her sharp direction in The Devil’s Doorway, leans further into abstraction here. The cinematography is stunning, bathed in misty blues and deep greens, echoing the isolation and fractured psyche of its characters. Symbolism runs thick, and the film often feels like a visual poem mourning lost time and personal trauma.

But where Fréamhacha excels in tone, it falters in engagement. Narrative threads unravel into the ether, characters remain emotionally remote, and the pacing — glacial by design — asks more patience than it rewards. For all its visual allure and thematic ambition, the film’s dreamlike drift can feel aimless, as if lost in the very fog it conjures.

The Prognosis:

Clarke’s vision remains singular. Fans of folk horror who appreciate the meditative and the metaphorical may find something to latch onto. But for others, Fréamhacha risks becoming a beautiful but intangible whisper — haunting, yes, but fleeting as smoke in the trees.

  • Saul Muerte

The Woman in the Yard: Rooted in Atmosphere, But Lacking in Fear

19 Saturday Apr 2025

Posted by in Movie review

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Danielle Deadwyler shines in this moody supernatural tale, but Jaume Collet-Serra struggles to fully unearth the horror at its heart.

Twenty years after House of Wax melted into mediocrity, director Jaume Collet-Serra returns to the horror genre with The Woman in the Yard, a moody, slow-burn supernatural tale that teases tension but never quite takes root. There’s a welcome sense of restraint this time around — a desire to craft something more grounded, more psychological — but the final product ends up feeling more undercooked than unnerving.

Danielle Deadwyler is the anchor of the film, delivering a committed and emotionally charged performance as Ramona, a grieving widow attempting to hold her family together after her husband’s sudden death. Deadwyler brings texture and soul to every scene she’s in — her presence commands attention and breathes life into an otherwise uneven script. Whether she’s shielding her children from the unknown or confronting her own internal anguish, she elevates the material with quiet fury and vulnerability.

The premise has potential: a mysterious woman appears on the property — expressionless, enigmatic, and perhaps not entirely human. The creeping dread builds in the first act with genuine intrigue. But instead of snowballing into something harrowing, the film meanders, content to rely on vague symbolism and atmospheric shots without connecting the emotional stakes to the horror elements. The titular woman remains more concept than character — a spectral threat with no real grip on the narrative beyond metaphor.

Collet-Serra shows flickers of maturity here, eschewing the slick gore of his early career for something more intimate and slow-burning. There are shades of The Others and even Relic in the DNA, and a few sequences — particularly a late-night confrontation hint at the film this could have been. But despite these improvements, The Woman in the Yard never fully comes into focus. The tension dissipates rather than crescendoes, and by the final act, the film seems content to whisper instead of scream.

The Prognosis:

It’s not a disaster — far from it. But with such rich performances and a potent setup, it’s frustrating to watch it all drift into the mist. Ultimately, Collet-Serra has taken a step forward in his genre evolution, but this yard still needs some serious tending.

  • Saul Muerte

“Werewolves (2024) Howls Loud, But Barely Scratches the Surface”

16 Wednesday Apr 2025

Posted by in Movie review

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

They will hunt you. Unfortunately, so will cliché.

Steven C. Miller’s Werewolves imagines a dystopia where a supermoon-triggered genetic mutation has turned swathes of the human population into feral beasts. It’s been a year since the initial outbreak wiped out nearly a billion people, but as another supermoon looms, the lycanthropic carnage returns—and so does Frank Grillo, flexing his jawline and gritted-teeth charisma in what amounts to The Purge: Lupine Edition.

Despite a premise with potential for social commentary or even fresh horror spectacle, Werewolves settles for the path of least resistance. What we get is a series of repetitive chase sequences, mid-tier digital werewolf effects, and characters who rarely rise above exposition delivery systems or action-fodder. The plot—two scientists failing to prevent another outbreak, then fleeing to a family home—never truly builds tension or stakes beyond the expected, and the dialogue might as well have been generated by an algorithm trained on testosterone and B-movie one-liners.

Grillo, as always, commits with gravelly intensity, but even he seems to be running on fumes. He does his best to anchor the chaos, but his character is paper-thin, and the emotional beats are forced. It’s the kind of role he’s played better—and with more bite—in other low-budget action-horror hybrids.

Thematically, there’s a whisper of something interesting: a post-apocalyptic world grappling with genetic fate, mob violence, and the loss of humanity. But these ideas are brushed aside in favour of blood-splattered shootouts and tough-guy posturing. The result is a film that never quite decides whether it wants to be a creature feature or a survival thriller—and ends up being neither effectively.

The Prognosis:

Werewolves isn’t without a pulse. There are moments—mostly during nighttime attacks or glimpses of cities overrun—that hint at a more engaging, visceral film. But they’re quickly buried beneath generic set pieces and uninspired direction. The werewolves themselves, while serviceable in design, are too often relegated to background threats, more like cannon fodder than apex predators.

In the end, Werewolves howls loud but rarely lands a bite.

  • Saul Muerte

Dead Mail Delivers Style, But Forgets the Substance

15 Tuesday Apr 2025

Posted by in Movie review

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

An 80s-inspired mystery with a killer synth score gets lost in its own overwritten posturing.

There’s something undeniably intriguing about the premise of Dead Mail—a mysterious cry for help lands in a 1980s post office, pulling a dead letter investigator into the orbit of a kidnapped keyboard technician. It’s weird, it’s retro, and it’s got all the makings of an offbeat cult thriller. Unfortunately, it never quite delivers on that potential.

What starts as a stylised mystery told through a unique lens quickly buckles under the weight of its own self-importance. The dialogue, while initially compelling, becomes increasingly laborious—a dense and indulgent spiral of overwritten musings that feel more like cinematic wankery than meaningful character development. The film leans hard on its quirkiness, but instead of building tension or intrigue, it feels like it’s stalling for time.

Where Dead Mail does shine is in its sonic world. The synth-heavy score pulses with personality, creating an ambient hum of unease that subtly underscores the surreal premise. There’s a genuine love for the analog here—tape decks, clunky tech, and circuit boards become part of the storytelling language, and the music stitches it all together with a retrofuturist flair. The score doesn’t just support the film—it elevates it, becoming its own kind of character: detached, nostalgic, and oddly haunted.

That said, atmosphere alone can’t carry a film this narratively inert. As Dead Mail lingers in endless corridors of conversation and cryptic visuals, the tension flatlines. There’s too much effort in trying to sound profound and not enough substance to back it up. What could have been a tight, unsettling dive into lost messages and fractured identity ends up feeling like a late-night transmission from the Twilight Zone that didn’t quite come through.

The Prognosis:

For all its eccentricities, this dead letter is best returned to sender.

  • Saul Muerte

Dead Mail will be streaming on Shudder from Fri 18th Apr.

Preachy and Painless: Shadow of God Lacks Spirit

08 Tuesday Apr 2025

Posted by in Movie review

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

An exorcism film with nothing to exorcise but your patience.

Exorcism horror is a subgenre rich with potential—questions of faith, frailty, and fear, all wrapped in layers of the unknown. Unfortunately, Shadow of God, the latest Shudder original, squanders that potential with glacial pacing, overwrought storytelling, and bargain-bin visual effects that break whatever immersion its lofty premise tries to build.

The film follows Father Mason Harper (Mark O’Brien), a Vatican exorcist drawn back to his hometown after a mysterious string of clergy deaths. What should be a chilling homecoming quickly devolves into a murky theological slog, especially when Mason’s long-thought-dead father, Angus (Shaun Johnston), reemerges—changed, and possibly possessed… not by the devil, but something supposedly divine. It’s a neat inversion on paper, but in execution, it’s all empty sermon and no soul.

Director Michael Peterson leans heavily into a tone of self-importance, mistaking laborious dialogue for depth. The film drowns in exposition and symbolism so on-the-nose it feels like you’re being bludgeoned by scripture. What could have been a taut, unsettling exploration of corrupted holiness instead becomes an exercise in patience.

Worse still are the effects. When Shadow of God tries to finally erupt into spectacle—visions, possessions, biblical cataclysm—it falters hard. Cheap CGI and awkward choreography undercut whatever tension might’ve remained, ejecting the viewer from the already tenuous atmosphere. It doesn’t help that the performances, while earnest, are often lost in the noise of a bloated script and uncertain direction.

Mark O’Brien does what he can with a lead role that demands more whispery brooding than range, while Shaun Johnston’s Angus never fully sells the “divine possession” angle. Jacqueline Byers, so compelling in Prey for the Devil, is underused here. And while the supporting cast (Josh Cruddas, Adrian Hough, David Haysom) put in respectable work, they’re ultimately swallowed by the film’s somber, meandering tone.

The Prognosis:

Shadow of God wants to wrestle with grand themes—faith, legacy, divine intervention—but the execution is so leaden and clunky that it all feels like a sermon no one asked to hear. Instead of soul-searching, we get soul-sapping.

  • Saul Muerte