There’s little irrefutable about The Irrefutable Truth About Demons, other than the fact that it’s a mess. Directed by Glenn Standring, this early-2000s New Zealand horror feature tries desperately to punch above its weight with feverish style and occult overdrive—but collapses under the weight of its own incoherence.
The film stars a young Karl Urban as Dr. Harry Ballard, a lecturer who stumbles into a demonic conspiracy involving cults, hallucinatory breakdowns, and a lot of unintelligible shouting in dimly lit warehouses. Urban, already showing glimmers of the talent he’d bring to far better roles down the track (The Boys, Dredd, LOTR), does his best to hold the centre—but it often feels like he’s battling the script as much as the demons.
Visually, the film is drenched in grime and erratic camera work, clearly aping the stylistic chaos of late-‘90s horror like Jacob’s Ladder and Event Horizon, but without the clarity or craftsmanship. What could have been an atmospheric descent into paranoia and possession is instead a barrage of half-baked ideas and shrieking performances. The narrative never quite decides if it wants to be a psychological thriller, an urban fantasy, or a cult horror flick—and ends up being none of the above convincingly.
The supporting characters, including a mysterious ex-cultist love interest, offer little substance, and the dialogue ranges from awkward to unintentionally hilarious. The demons themselves—both metaphorical and literal—are reduced to generic growling and bargain-bin effects, robbing the film of any true menace.
The Prognosis:
At the time, The Irrefutable Truth About Demons may have aimed for edgy, underground horror, but in hindsight, it feels more like an overwrought student film with delusions of grandeur. It wants to scorch the screen with dark revelations but instead fizzles out long before it finds its footing.
Thankfully, Karl Urban emerged from this chaos largely unscathed—and the only real truth here is that his career went in a much better direction.
Trapped in a Cave of Terror! is the tagline, but what It’s Alive! really traps you in is 80 minutes of painfully sluggish pacing, cardboard performances, and a prehistoric monster that looks like it crawled out of a craft store clearance bin.
Directed by infamous B-movie auteur Larry Buchanan, It’s Alive! is emblematic of his career: micro-budget genre filmmaking produced quickly and cheaply, often for television syndication. Known for titles like Zontar, the Thing from Venus and Curse of the Swamp Creature, Buchanan built a niche out of public domain plots, recycled storylines, and rubber-suited monstrosities. Unfortunately, It’s Alive! may be one of his least inspired efforts—and that’s saying something.
The “plot,” such as it is, involves a deranged farmer who lures three travellers into a cave and traps them with his pet monster—a leftover from some vague prehistoric past. What unfolds is a glacial march through bad dialogue, inert suspense, and long, dark cave scenes where it’s hard to tell whether anything is happening at all. Even by Buchanan’s notoriously low standards, the energy here feels drained.
The monster, when it finally appears, is a masterclass in zero-budget filmmaking—part papier-mâché, part bargain-bin rubber. It’s hard to be scared of something that looks so awkwardly immobile, and worse, it barely appears in the film. Most of the runtime is devoted to the characters sitting around, arguing, or reacting to sounds in the dark, presumably because the costume couldn’t withstand more than a few minutes of movement.
To Buchanan’s credit, he knew how to make movies fast and cheap—and there’s a certain campy charm to his drive-in philosophy. But in It’s Alive!, even that charm is in short supply. The film is padded, slow, and visually murky, with a script that feels like it was written on the back of a diner napkin during a lunch break.
The Prognosis:
Looking back, It’s Alive! might be worth a glance for die-hard fans of no-budget horror or as a curiosity in the Buchanan filmography. But for most, this is one fossil that should’ve stayed buried.
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.
Tim Sullivan’s 2001 Maniacs rolls out the red carpet (and the entrails) for fans of grindhouse gore and Southern-fried sleaze, but 20 years on, its brand of horror-comedy feels more like a hangover than a hoot.
A remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s 1964 cult classic Two Thousand Maniacs!, the film follows a group of Spring Break-bound college kids who stumble into Pleasant Valley—a town still clinging to Confederate glory, where the annual “celebration” involves blood-drenched vengeance against unsuspecting Northerners. It’s an outrageous setup that promises over-the-top carnage, and sure enough, Sullivan delivers on that front. Bodies are torn, twisted, barbecued and dispatched in inventive (if juvenile) ways.
Robert Englund shines with his devilish turn as Mayor Buckman, clearly relishing the campy chaos, and Lin Shaye adds some deranged spice to the Southern stew. But beyond their performances, 2001 Maniacs quickly becomes a slog. The humour is crass and rarely clever, the characters are paper-thin even by genre standards, and the satire—if you can call it that—is muddled at best, offensive at worst.
Where Lewis’s original had a rough-edged grindhouse charm and a weirdly timely commentary, this update feels like an extended frat joke with a horror twist. The gore is plentiful, but the film never quite commits to saying anything with its Confederate ghost revenge plot. It’s content to wallow in stereotypes and slapstick without subverting or deepening the premise.
The Prognosis:
2001 Maniacs wants to be a wild, tongue-in-cheek bloodbath—an-d to a point, it is. But the novelty fades fast, leaving behind a film that’s more exhausting than entertaining. For die-hard splatter fans, it might still satisfy a curiosity itch. For everyone else, it’s best enjoyed with your brain firmly in neutral—and maybe a barf bag nearby.
Directed by The Motorcycle Diaries‘ Walter Salles and boasting a stellar cast led by Jennifer Connelly, Dark Water (2005) had all the ingredients for a compelling psychological horror. But despite its prestigious pedigree and the eerie bones of its Japanese source material, the film never quite rises above a slow, soggy trudge through grief, isolation, and leaky ceilings.
Connelly plays Dahlia, a mother in the throes of a bitter divorce who relocates with her daughter to a dilapidated apartment on Roosevelt Island. From the outset, the mood is steeped in melancholy—a constant downpour, peeling wallpaper, and a black stain that won’t stop bleeding through the ceiling. It’s all metaphor, of course, for abandonment, trauma, and emotional erosion. And while Connelly commits fully, offering a deeply felt, restrained performance, even her best efforts struggle to keep the film from sinking under its own dreariness.
There’s strong support from the likes of John C. Reilly, Tim Roth, Dougray Scott, and Pete Postlethwaite, each adding gravitas in small doses. But the ensemble feels wasted on a script that paces like a dirge and spends too long building atmosphere at the expense of real suspense. Where Hideo Nakata’s 2002 original (Honogurai mizu no soko kara) balanced its ghost story with quiet dread and a haunting emotional core, this remake feels bloated by comparison—drawn out and uncertain of where to land its final blow.
Salles, though an accomplished filmmaker, seems misaligned with the genre here. The horror elements never hit hard enough, the tension evaporates rather than builds, and even the film’s climactic revelations arrive without the sting they need. There is a tragic weight at the story’s centre—a meditation on motherhood, abandonment, and sacrifice—but it’s bogged down by the film’s sluggish rhythm and predictability.
The Prognosis:
Dark Water isn’t without merit. It’s beautifully shot and well-acted, and at its heart lies a poignant idea about the things we carry and the past we cannot rinse away. But ultimately, this is a film that, despite all the polish and pedigree, feels like a remake with little new to say—trailing in the shadow of its superior original.
Soaked in mood but lacking menace, Dark Water leaves only a damp impression.
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.
From director Steven Kostanski—known for splatter-heavy cult hits like The Void and PG: Psycho Goreman—comes Frankie Freako, a horror-comedy that aims to dial up the chaos, crank the VHS fuzz, and unleash a pint-sized goblin menace into your living room. Unfortunately, while the film has all the right ingredients on paper, the end result is a noisy, uneven mess that never quite finds its footing.
The premise is pure midnight-movie bait: Conor, a tightly wound yuppie (played by Conor Sweeney), calls a late-night party hotline and accidentally summons a rock-and-roll goblin from hell—Frankie Freako, voiced with glee by Matthew Kennedy. What follows is a barrage of low-budget practical effects, manic energy, and a throwback aesthetic that tries to marry the weirdness of Ghoulies with the gross-out humour of Garbage Pail Kids.
Kostanski, whose visual creativity is rarely in question, fills the screen with rubbery monster effects, neon lighting, and practical gore. It’s clear he’s having fun, and fans of Manborg or Father’s Day will find familiar vibes here. But unlike those earlier works, Frankie Freako struggles to balance its tone. The gags are more grating than funny, the pacing stutters, and despite its short runtime, the film often feels stretched thin.
Conor Sweeney gamely leads the charge, surrounded by a cast of Kostanski regulars and internet personalities like Rich Evans and Mike Stoklasa from Red Letter Media. Their presence adds a layer of cult credibility, but the script gives them little to do beyond mugging through absurd scenarios. Kristy Wordsworth and Adam Brooks add some spark, but it’s not enough to elevate the film from feeling like an overlong YouTube skit.
The real shame is that Frankie Freako could’ve been a chaotic gem if the humour had landed more often, or if the titular goblin had been used with more narrative bite. Instead, it’s a film so desperate to be outrageous and off-the-wall that it forgets to be consistently entertaining.
The Prognosis:
For die-hard fans of Kostanski’s DIY style and ‘80s gross-out nostalgia, Frankie Freako might still have some charm. But for most, it’s a party line best left unanswered.
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.
It’s been three decades since Species first slithered onto screens in 1995—a glossy, genre-blending hybrid of sci-fi, horror, and late-night cable erotica that became something of a cult sensation. Directed by Roger Donaldson, the film offered a deceptively smart concept beneath its pulpy surface: What if we answered a message from space… and it answered back with DNA?
That DNA, of course, led to Sil—a genetically spliced human-alien hybrid designed in part by legendary artist H.R. Giger. The resulting creation? A deadly beauty with a primal drive to reproduce, mutate, and kill. Natasha Henstridge, in her film debut, brought an icy sensuality to the role, transforming Sil into an instantly iconic figure of ‘90s sci-fi. As a lethal blend of curiosity, vulnerability, and predator instinct, Henstridge’s physicality carried much of the film, even when the dialogue didn’t.
Behind the seductive sheen, Species boasted a surprisingly high-calibre cast. Ben Kingsley lent some serious gravitas as the ethically compromised scientist Xavier Fitch. Alfred Molina was endearingly out of his depth as a hapless biologist, and a pre-Dawson’s Creek Michelle Williams gave a strong early performance as young Sil. Meanwhile, Michael Madsen—still riding high off Reservoir Dogs—was all steely stares and sardonic cool, playing a government mercenary like he was on a weekend break from Tarantino’s universe.
But it’s Forest Whitaker as Dan, the soft-spoken empath, who truly steals the show. Equal parts eccentric and heartfelt, Dan’s ability to “feel” things becomes more than just a plot device—it gives the film a much-needed emotional centre. In a movie teetering on the edge of full-blown B-movie madness, Whitaker’s gentle weirdness provides just enough human grounding to keep it from falling over the edge.
Sure, the film isn’t without its flaws. The script often veers into hokey territory, the logic gets hazy, and the creature effects—impressive for the time—now flicker with a nostalgic fuzziness. But Species endures because it commits fully to its sci-fi sleaze and treats its central concept with just enough seriousness to stay compelling.
The Prognosis:
30 years on, Species remains a slick, oddly lovable oddity—a creature feature dressed up in prestige casting and dressed down in late-night thrills. It may not have evolved into a sci-fi classic, but it sure carved out its own curious corner in ‘90s genre cinema. And for that, it deserves its moment in the moonlight once again.
Released at the dawn of the new millennium, Scary Movie arrived as a riotous, rapid-fire parody that gleefully skewered late-‘90s horror staples like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans and fronted by a then-rising cast including Anna Faris, Regina Hall, and the Wayans brothers, the film was an immediate box office smash. But a quarter of a century later, it’s clear that this once-popular spoof hasn’t aged gracefully—if it ever stood solidly on two feet to begin with.
At its core, Scary Movie is a barrage of slapstick gags, crass jokes, and references fired at the audience with relentless speed and very little subtlety. Its tagline, “No mercy. No shame. No sequel,” turned out to be only partially true—there were plenty of sequels, and arguably even less shame. But what the film severely lacked then, and even more so now, is wit.
What may have passed for edgy in 2000 now lands with a thud. The humour leans heavily on lazy stereotypes, body shaming, homophobic jabs, and bodily fluids—none of which were especially clever then, and are painfully tone-deaf today. While parody thrives on exaggeration, Scary Movie feels like it’s constantly shouting at the audience, relying on shock value rather than smart satire.
There are some bright spots: Anna Faris proves her comedic chops, and Regina Hall brings impeccable timing and energy to her now-iconic Brenda. But the film’s biggest flaw is its one-note approach—once you’ve seen one riff on a horror cliché, you’ve seen most of them. Rather than building momentum, it becomes a series of increasingly desperate skits stitched together by a threadbare plot.
The Prognosis:
Retrospectively, Scary Movie is more a cultural time capsule than a comedy classic—an emblem of a post-Scream era when horror was ripe for ridicule but rarely treated with nuance. It may have made audiences laugh in 2000, but today it plays more like a relic of cheap laughs and tired punchlines.
For better or worse, it left a legacy, but it’s a legacy that proves not all parody ages with grace. Some just curdle.
Surgeons of Horror 