‘Backrooms’ Review – A Bit Lost in Its Own Liminal Space

Reviews /

A new generation of horror auteurs is upon us and the box office is booming! Following the crazy success of Obsession, this week Backrooms is hitting theatres, the latest from A24 and the first for director Kane Parsons. Parsons also co-produced the score with Ido Van Breemen. The film was written by Will Soodik and stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark, a furniture store owner, and Renate Reinsve as Clark’s therapist Mary. Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett as Bobby Roberts, and Lukita Maxwell round out the supporting cast.  So is Backrooms a movie worth getting lost in or not worth exploring? Also, if you prefer a video review, we’ve got you covered! Verdict Before I get into more specific spoiler-free thoughts on the film, I like to lead with my verdict and unfortunately I’m giving this a dislike rating on the heart-o-meter.  It’s closer to a mid than a hate, mostly because of how impressed I was with Kane Parsons’ direction and the performance from Chiwetel Ejiofor. But overall the movie was just too long, and the three exceptional horror sequences in it weren’t enough to outweigh all the bloat. Spoiler-Free Thoughts Full disclosure, I wasn’t familiar with Backrooms or the concept before I saw this movie. So if this is one of those cases where it’s made by fans for fans, that went right over my head and is not something I can weigh in on or give you any sort of insight into whether or not they were accurate to all the lore. Related to that though, this movie unfortunately made me think a lot about Iron Lung, which I haven’t thought about since we finished the podcast episode on that where I went scorched earth because I really did not like that movie. I will say I thought this was exceptionally better than that film but it also is plagued by a lot of the same issues. It’s clear the creative team really likes the backrooms concept, and they’re so passionate about it that it just doesn’t translate to people that maybe don’t share that familiarity with it. And like Iron Lung, I thought the pacing of this movie was brutal. Backrooms is shorter, but it still was too long for what it was, to the point where people around me were yawning frequently and the theatre was mostly quiet the entire time.  At an hour forty-five, the movie was just too long and really only had the three sequences in it that I mentioned before that are really good. They were so good in fact that every time they weren’t doing something like that, all I wanted was to get back to those creepy moments. There’s a lot of unnecessary scenes too of characters talking or dropping backstory that didn’t really add much to the film. There was even a scene where they were shooting a commercial for the store that felt totally unnecessary.  A great example of this is Mark Duplass’ role in this film, which could have been entirely removed and all of the things around it cut from the film, and it would have changed absolutely nothing important. In fact, I thought the inclusion of his character ruined the mystery of the Backrooms but also didn’t provide enough answers to make it more clear. I felt by simultaneously giving too much and not enough, I got left in a purgatory where I would’ve preferred it to be less explained and more of a mystery which would have helped trim the runtime and help the pacing issues. I thought Renate Reinsve was fine in the movie. She was just another one of those characters that functionally I didn’t think really added a whole lot, and was really just a plot necessity to carry us into the end of the film. The third act where her character becomes more involved also is the weakest chunk of the film. While it did feel too long, it also felt like a chunk of the movie was missing. After the second act is concluded with one of the great Backrooms sequences, by the time we return to that character, so much has changed and happened without any real cohesive explanation. This caused the ending to feel very messy and overall pretty unsatisfying too. Now with all that said, I didn’t hate this movie and I want to give a lot of love to Kane Parsons, who was 19 when he made this movie. There is some exceptional direction here, and it was easily the strongest point of the film. There was clearly a lot of thought put into almost every shot, and the strongest examples of this were these handheld shots on like an oldschool VHS camcorder. I loved the look and the feel of those sequences and how they showed off the exceptional set design that was going on. For anyone unfamiliar with the Backroom look, it made me think almost of a bad AI prompt in a way, as if you told AI to make an office building and this is kind of what it’s spit out.  The makeup and costumes were fantastic too with a handful of things that I won’t spoil but that fit the vibe perfectly. These factors are what made those three sequences stand out from the rest of the film. I felt like they definitely could have kept going back to that well and really drawing out the tension before revealing what was also inside the Backrooms. I have zero concerns about Kane Parsons as a filmmaker and I’m really excited though to see what he can do with a better script. Conclusion Overall this just didn’t add up to a movie that I can enthusiastically recommend, but I will say that early reviews are a little more positive than I am on this film, so if you are intrigued by it, don’t let this review be the reason you don’t go to see it! We started Screen Love Affair because we love

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‘Passenger’ Review – Don’t Stop for This One

Reviews /

Buckle up because today we’re reviewing Passenger, the latest from Paramount Pictures. The film was directed by André Øvredal and written by T.W. Burgess and Zachary Donohue. The film stars Jacob Scipio and Lou Llobell as Tyler and Maddie, two lovers leaving the big city and committing to van life. Unfortunately for Tyler and Maddie, a hitchhiking demon is not letting them live the van life alone. Verdict We like to give our verdict upfront so if you’re looking for just a quick recommendation, this is the review for you!  Unfortunately, I can’t recommend this movie and Passenger gets a firm “hate” rating from me on the Heart-o-Meter. I saw the film at an early advanced screening, with a lot of free tickets given out to other people, and there was a lot of phone and watch checking going on. Not to respond to texts but to note the time, which is always a bad sign!  If you want some more spoiler free thoughts about why I feel this way about the movie, let’s dig into that. My Thoughts My biggest issue honestly was the relationship story at the core of this movie. I’ve really ragged on the movie Abigail, and if you’re a long time listener of the Screen Love Affair Podcast, you’ll know that that’s a movie I pick on quite often because of the way it forces these serious beats in a movie that doesn’t really require them. This movie might be my new reference point for this though, because most of this film, which is supposed to be about a demon hitchhiker, is actually very serious.  The relationship at the core of this movie is so prominent that I found it really hurt the pacing because I just never got to a point where I really cared enough about Maddie and Tyler to be invested in what happens to them in the film, let alone about their relationship and their problems.  And I don’t mean to pick on the van life hippies, but they even forced serious themes about the van life thing into the film. They each explain how Tyler was raised in a home where maybe there was some abuse or at the very least that he didn’t have a good home life, while Maddie was a foster kid who constantly didn’t have a home. That leads to them having an argument about whether van life is good and how it’s his dream because of his trauma and it’s her nightmare because of her trauma.  I understand functionally how this could be plausible, but I didn’t need this moment where we explored the deeper reasons for their disagreement about van life because it felt so forced and silly that I just felt like we were wasting time getting to the whole demon aspect of the film. Speaking of the demon, we can’t talk about Passenger with talking about The Passenger. Of course this name is given to him in the film during one of those obligatory bad horror movie research sequences where we’re reading books and we’re Googling stuff and landing on these websites with the blood red fonts to exposit all the lore. On the design side, The Passenger is kind of generic and feels derivative of a lot of other demonic spirits we’ve seen in other films. Functionally too, The Passenger barely felt like a threat. Two thirds of the kills in the movie happen in the cold open. There is very little in the way of horror sequences throughout the film and the movie itself doesn’t really reconcile with this either because it demonstrates that it can kill quickly and suddenly, but of course, because Maddie and Tyler are the main characters it just messes with them every once in a while.  The kills themselves were not particularly great either, with only one standing out to me as even sort of memorable.  I also want to talk quickly about the camera work here because there’s this part in the cold open where the camera rotates from inside the car and it’s a really effective shot that builds tension. Unfortunately, they clearly like that shot because they use it again later in the film in a parking lot. Unfortunately, the execution this time was significantly worse, whipping around way too fast so I couldn’t even see anything and instead of building tension, it just gave me a headache. I’m not a motion smoothing guy (please check if you have this enabled on your TV and disable it), but this shot almost needed it. I mentioned the pacing a bit earlier, but it was way off in this movie. It felt much closer to two hours but it was only 94 minutes long. That’s a real problem and all the things we’ve talked about contribute to that pacing; Minimal spooky sequences, barely any kills, and lots of time devoted to the relationship between Maddie and Tyler. Overall, this movie just felt like a really bad horror flick from the late 2000s or early 2010s and Paramount really dropped the ball releasing this a week after Obsession came out.  If you’re reading this review because you’re considering a trip to the theater to go see a horror movie this weekend, go see Obsession instead.Also, if you’ve already seen Obsession, be sure to check out our episode of the Screen Love Affair Podcast from earlier this week, where we dive right into the spoilers of all of the things going on in that movie!

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‘Hokum’ Review: We’re Checked In To This Haunted Irish Hotel Horror Starring Adam Scott

Reviews /

We’re big fans of Damian McCarthy’s Oddity over here at Screen Love Affair. It was easily one of the best movie theatre experiences we had back when we saw it at Fantasia in 2024. So expectations were high for McCarthy’s third feature, Hokum. With each film, McCarthy has upped the ante, and this is no different, with a bigger budget, a bigger star in Adam Scott, and bigger distribution courtesy of Neon. But does Hokum deliver? Well, it never quite reached the heights that Oddity did for me, but nevertheless I loved it. I do wonder how much of that comes down to the contagious energy of a Fantasia Festival crowd, which was missing here. Still, I had a blast watching this. I will admit that I’m the exact kind of person this movie was made for. I’ve always loved ghost stories and been enamored with the way horror can excavate both the extremes of human darkness and the depths of human emotion. In Hokum, as in Oddity, McCarthy does so through the lens of Irish folklore and the contained powder keg of a single haunted location. The movie follows Scott’s Ohm Bauman, a successful yet depressed alcoholic writer, who visits a small hotel in Ireland to finish his latest novel and put his deceased parents to rest. If the setup of a writer holing away in a remote hotel until things begin to unravel sounds familiar, well the movie deliberately riffs not just on The Shining but also another Stephen King touchstone, 1408. Yet, Hokum still feels fresh and entirely its own. Part of that comes down to its setting and its rootedness in Irish folklore. McCarthy imbues the movie with the tone and sensibility of a supernatural parable or Gothic folk tale. It’s a story about storytelling and the way that stories, like folk tales or novels, can help us process feelings like grief and guilt and heal our wounds. I loved the framing device and thought it was a really unique way to structure a horror movie. There’s a similarly dark sense of humour and cynicism lurking here as there was in Oddity, but Hokum offers a bit more hope, too. I’m a sucker for stories about traumatized, grieving oddballs finding some kind of kinship with one another, even if only temporarily. Not everything here fully works, however. Bauman is such an overt asshole at the beginning that it almost beggars belief, though it does provide a lot of the movie’s early humour. And his tragic backstory is also very dark and only glancingly drawn, so the emotional climax of the movie doesn’t totally land. But when the movie gets to the extended spooky puzzle box it’s been building toward, it delivers one of the best contained horror set-pieces in recent memory. This is where the movie truly sings. And it’s where Hokum had me like putty in its hand, along for the ride with Adam Scott’s character with no way to get off. The first half of the film is really just place-setting for that exquisite third act. It takes its time getting all the pieces in place, and some of that definitely feels disjointed and lacking in scares. But boy is that third act an all-timer, proving that McCarthy truly has the goods. He just understands how to build atmosphere and tension—and when exactly to release it. Verdict Hokum isn’t perfect, but if you like atmospheric folklore-laden supernatural ghost stories, the movie has a lot going for it. Despite some disjointed character work and plotting, the spooky core of the film—rooted in masterful performances, a killer setting, and the fundamentals of horror craft—is one for the books.

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‘Undertone’ Review: A Nerve-Shredding, Audio Driven Nightmare

Fantasia International Film Festival, Reviews /

EDITOR’S NOTE: Our review was originally written after we screened the film at the 2025 Fantasia Film Festival. A year later, our opinion hasn’t changed! Go see this film with a big crowd at the theatre with the best sound possible. If you’re Canadian and have access to an AVX theatre, we definitely think it’ll be worth the premium ticket cost. Our coverage of the Fantasia Film Festival is rolling on, even if the Festival has officially wrapped! One movie I absolutely need to talk about is The Undertone, because it’s undoubtedly one of my favourite movies that I saw at the festival.  The setup is simple: “A podcast host covering spooky content moves in to care for her dying mother. When sent recordings of a pregnant couple’s paranormal encounters, she discovers their story parallels hers, each tape pushing her toward madness.” The film was written and directed by Ian Tuason and stars Nina Kiri as Evy, the podcast host who moves in with her mother. As usual, this review will be spoiler-free, so don’t be scared to dive in!  My Thoughts If you read our Best Movies of 2023, you’ll know that Skinamarink was #2 on my list. Like that movie, The Undertone is all about doing the most to bring horror back to its base elements of sights and especially sounds. Unlike Skinamarink, though, I think this movie is more accessible. The Undertone is shot simply but to maximum effect. I won’t even describe specific shots because it would lessen their impact. I will say it’s the kind of movie where you’re constantly checking the corners and edges of the frame to make sure nothing is hiding there.  As a seasoned horror movie veteran, I consider movies like this to be the scariest kind I’ve ever seen. It’s easy to drop the audio and then suddenly blast loud music and have something jump into frame, that’s why 90% of horror movies are crammed full of jump scares. But eventually, you start to see them coming from a mile away, and they don’t even impact you. The Undertone, like Skinamarink before it, understands that tension is what really makes an audience uncomfortable. Jump scares are releases of tension, so you may jump when one happens, but it’s not real fear or stress.  This movie uses the frame and sound design to maximize that tension. Every time the main character put on her noise-cancelling headphones to start recording the podcast, I would hold my breath as the ambient sounds of the house went silent and all you could hear was the muffled hum of the headphones, as if I was also wearing them.  The brilliance of this is that it makes the audience feel like a part of the movie, anxiously watching over Evy while she’s recording the podcast to try and see if anything spooky is happening in the house, as if we could burst in to warn her.  The camera work enhances this, too. Simple movements give us the opportunity to scan the house looking for something, anything, that might be where it shouldn’t be.  The fact that I’m talking about all this horror and dread, without even discussing the tapes they’re listening to on the podcast, should really tell you just how much this movie got under my skin. The podcast within the movie is a completely distinct source of dread in its own right too, where they play anonymously submitted audio tapes of a different paranormal encounter. The tapes themselves are creepy as hell, and the characters constantly rewind and replay key moments over and over again to try and hear certain things, which naturally means we the audience end up doing the same thing.  Nina Kiri as Evy is phenomenal in this too, selling everything perfectly, dialing up everything we’re collectively feeling. As our only real onscreen character in the movie, she has to be strong enough to carry you through, and she does it with absolute ease.  Lastly, I have to mention Ian Tuason, who is outstanding in his directorial debut. The things that make this movie so effective seem very simple on the surface, but they’re incredibly hard to actually pull off convincingly, which is why so many other horror directors just rely on jump scares. From nearly the very beginning, Tuason starts ratcheting the tension higher and higher, barely giving you the room to breathe, and just when you feel like it’s safe to let your guard down, it’s not.  Verdict Not only did I love The Undertone, it was confidently a “Best of the Fest” movie for me. This movie proves that you don’t need millions of dollars or elaborate sets to make an incredibly effective horror movie. The tension was so next level that by the end of the movie, I wasn’t sitting in my seat, I was welded to it. Without question, The Undertone is best enjoyed at a theatre, and I’m happy to report that it was just announced that A24 has acquired the rights for this movie, so I hope that means it will be coming with a nice theatrical run too.  When it does, don’t wait around. See this movie on opening weekend with a packed crowd and immerse yourself in this movie. Just don’t expect to ever feel comfortable wearing noise-cancelling headphones at home again.

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‘Queens of the Dead’ Review – A Horror Comedy That’s Cool, Kind, and Queer as Hell

Fantasia International Film Festival, Reviews /

Tina Romero, daughter of legendary horror filmmaker George A. Romero, makes her directorial debut with her own take on the zombie genre in Queens of the Dead. This horror comedy follows a group of drag queens, DJs, drug dealers, and club kids who have to fend for themselves as zombies flood the streets of Brooklyn during a warehouse party. The film is unapologetically made by and for the queer community, and that’s really what makes it sing, despite its flaws. If you’ve ever wanted to see a rag-tag group of gays, girls, and theys—plus a token straight guy—fight for their lives against a horde of shambling, sparkling zombies, then you’re in for a treat. The zombies here are more glitter and glam than guts and gore. But while some may want a bit more horror in their horror/comedy, the heart and humour is what makes this movie so fun. Queens of the Dead is an ensemble film, and its emphasis on community and kinship makes it stand out among other movies in the genre. There’s no single hero or final girl here. The hero is really the queer community, and that’s reflected in the broad and colorful cast of characters. While many of those characters are hilarious and fun to watch bounce off of each other, the characters as individuals feel somewhat underbaked as a result, making it harder to get invested in the individual drama and emotional beats. For that reason, some of the more serious moments that were meant to elicit emotion didn’t quite land for me. In a way, I wish the movie had leaned even more into the absurdity and comedic side. It is a funny movie, and watching it at Fantasia with an eager and joyous crowd was probably the best way to experience this movie. However, not all of the comedic moments landed, just as not all of the emotional beats landed. I still had a great time overall, but I think a more focused narrative and character work would have made those moments even stronger. If there’s anyone that’s close to a protagonist here it’s Katy O’Brian’s club manager, Dre. O’Brian is an absolute star. She has so much presence and charisma. Between a bit part in this year’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and her star-making turn in Love Lies Bleeding, it’s nice to see her do lighter fare like this, where she gets to kick zombie ass but also show some comedic chops. I really hope her career skyrockets, because she’s a very magnetic performer. Jack Haven is the other big scene-stealer as the ditzy blonde intern, Kelsey. This is a far cry from their role in I Saw The TV Glow, and again, it’s nice to see an actor show their range and go from a more intense or serious role to something light and fun, where they’re clearly having a blast and making the audience have a blast with them. Overall, the whole cast is solid. For a relatively low-budget indie movie, it looks great too. It’s chaotic and colorful, with some fun makeup and costume choices that offer a unique and sufficiently silly interpretation of zombies that is actually pretty refreshing in an era where we’ve seen every iteration of scary zombies imaginable (28 Years Later is another recent fresh take on zombies, but that’s more about what it does with its human characters than its zombie design). If you’re looking for a truly scary zombie movie, you won’t find that here. This is very much a comedy more than anything else. But it’s also a beautiful ode from a daughter to her father’s legacy, in a way that is very clearly true to her own experiences and vision. If nothing else, the movie feels like a love letter to both queer spaces/communities and to the genre that her father built his career on. There are plenty of fun and clever easter eggs that pay homage to George A. Romero’s films, but Queens of the Dead is, as Tina Romero said in the Q&A after our screening, a movie that her dad would never have made. It’s her movie through and through, and it’s a welcome addition to the zombie canon. Verdict Queens of the Dead put a huge smile on my face. It’s a joyous movie that in some ways lampoons the zombie genre and in other ways honours it. It’s funny and silly and kind, and it’s unapologetically gay. If you’re looking for a fun zombie flick with an eclectic cast of (mostly) queer characters and a sense of humour, you’ll likely have a good time with this.

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‘Together’ Review – Alison Brie and Dave Franco Stick Together in this Darkly Funny Romantic Horror

Fantasia International Film Festival, Reviews /

Have you ever felt like you were losing yourself in a relationship? Writer and director Michael Shanks takes that fear and turns it into the central horror of his debut feature Together. Tim and Millie (played by real-life spouses Dave Franco and Alison Brie) have been together for a decade when they uproot their life in the city to move into a big beautiful home in the countryside. Millie is a schoolteacher and Tim is an aspiring musician, but he’s unsure of his place in the world and in his relationship. When we meet the couple, he seems to have lost his sense of individuality (tellingly, at their goodbye party with friends, Millie points out how cute it is that they inadvertently wore matching outfits—we cut to Tim changing his shirt). He doesn’t really know who he is outside of his relationship, and he’s chafing against that—he loves Millie but feels trapped. When the pair encounters a supernatural force in the vicinity of their new home, it puts the limits of their relationship to the test. The marketing of this movie gives a lot of its premise away, but I want to stress that it works best if you go into this one knowing as little as possible. What I can say is that this is a very strong directorial debut from Shanks. It’s marketed primarily as a horror film, but it’s also a very funny and very romantic movie at heart. It does a remarkable job of weaving those different threads together and balancing its different tones. There are consistent laughs, but also very effective scares, creepy moments, and body horror, not to mention a genuinely romantic core. Brie and Franco bring their real-life chemistry to the screen to make the film’s central relationship feel lived in and make us want to root for them, despite the obstacles and struggles they face. A recurring motif in the film is the idea of being oblivious to something rotting right under your nose, like a dead rat rotting away behind a light fixture. The rot creeps in so gradually that you don’t even know you’re breathing it in. At first, Tim and Millie’s relationship seems to have gone the way of the rat. They’ve clearly lost touch (ha!) with one another, and we wonder if the relationship has simply gone stale after all that time, even if they’re still in the room, breathing in the stink. But by the end, it’s clear that Shanks has a more hopeful, if twisted, view of love and relationships. The movie walks a fine line between exposing the flaws of its central relationship and asserting that they’re still right to fight for it anyway. One of my favourite things about horror as a genre is its ability to take grounded human experiences and emotions and amplify them through metaphor. This film takes the fear of commitment and of sharing your life with someone and amplifies it to its logical extreme as a metaphor, raising questions about what it actually means to build a life together and make compromises and become one half of a unit that is a couple. On top of the great tonal balance and central performances, the visual effects are, for the most part, phenomenal, with a perfect marriage (ha!) of practical and digital effects, aside from one pivotal moment that doesn’t quite land. Beyond that, the body horror is visceral and effective with just the right amount of restraint. The movie is a little heavy-handed at times, telegraphing certain reveals a little too much. But I really loved a lot of what it’s doing and had such a fun time with it at Fantasia, where the unparalleled crowd experience really made this a blast to watch. Verdict Together is the perfect horror rom-com for anyone who’s ever felt trapped, co-dependent, or lost in a relationship. But it’s also for the hopeless romantics and horror fans. It’s a remarkably well-balanced mix of genres and tones, anchored by the lived-in chemistry of its leads.

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’28 Years Later’ Review – Somehow Still Alive… and Better Than Ever

Reviews /

28 Days Later hit theatres in 2002 and has loomed large in the lexicon of horror fans everywhere. Even before I saw the full film, I knew the haunting image of Jim (played by now-Oscar winner Cillian Murphy) wandering the empty streets of London. To this day it remains one of the most striking and impactful sequences I’ve ever seen. Directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours, Steve Jobs), the film also marked the debut of screenwriter Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation, Civil War, Warfare). 28 Years Later marks the return to the franchise for both Boyle and Garland and is the first of a planned trilogy of new movies. This movie picks up, as the title suggests, 28 years after the initial outbreak of the “Rage” virus in the UK. Title cards at the beginning tell us that the virus has been eradicated from continental Europe, but the British Isles remain in indefinite quarantine. Alfie Williams plays Spike, a 12 year old living on a small tidal island with access to the mainland only possible during low tide.  So was this franchise worth revisiting 23 years later or is it just another case of the legacy sequel virus? My Thoughts I have to say, this movie might be the biggest surprise of the year for me. I had a list of movies I wanted to see these last few weeks and going into them all, this is the movie I expected the least from. I knew very little details, but I did see the teaser trailer a few times. Nevertheless, I found myself rolling my eyes a bit at yet another legacy sequel. 28 Days Later is still an all time classic for me, but the sequel 28 Weeks Later, was decidedly inferior than the original movie and was criminally generic, especially when contrasted with the lo-fi visual style of the original. However, both Garland and Boyle were not involved in that sequel so that was at least an intriguing notion.  But as an ardent film lover, despite my reservations, I capped off my week of movies with 28 Years Later and an open mind. And as the credits hit, it was clear to me that 28 Years Later is undoubtedly one of my favourite movies of the year so far.  Why? Well first I have to start with the visual style. In today’s world of film, with flat grays, awkward lighting, and just a general boring visual style, it can be easy for a movie to stand out as long as it does even one small thing differently. 28 Years Later really remains true to its roots and is one of the most distinct and visually impressive movies I have seen in a while. I don’t want to give any of the specifics away, but even this behind the scenes shot of an infected shows you the kind of toys they were playing with.  Trust me, Boyle is absolutely firing on all cylinders here.  He’s not alone either because Alex Garland delivered (in my opinion, anyway) his best script since 2014’s Ex Machina. When I tell you that 28 Years Later is one of the most emotional and moving films I have seen all year, I promise you that I’m not lying. Garland’s script is so great at every level. On the surface, there is an amazing coming-of-age story and also a meditation on life, death, and love. That alone is worth the price of admission, but if you care to scratch a little bit deeper, there is more depth here than even I realized on my initial watch. This movie has sparked plenty of discussions about isolationism, Brexit, cultures stuck looking backwards instead of forwards, and so much more. None of these themes are essential to understand or to appreciate the film, but I think that’s what I find so brilliant about the script. The layers here are truly impressive and it’s able to deliver something for everyone that may wander into the theatre to see this movie.  Of course, for a movie to be this good, it needs a rock solid cast and 28 Years Later has that, too. We definitely need to start with Alfie Williams. What an incredibly impressive feature film debut, especially for someone who was 13 years old at the time of filming. I only bring up his age because of how much more impressive it is. In some movies, I will often caveat performances from young actors by saying it was a great “child performance,” but I am making no such caveats here. This whole movie hinges on Alfie’s lead performance and it’s one of the best of the year so far. He’s not alone, though, in this movie. Even the supporting characters absolutely shine. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Jodie Comer play his parents and both of them are incredible at every point. The biggest powerhouse performance though for me comes from Ralph Fiennes, who isn’t in much of the movie, but is critical for the story and evolution of these characters. Fiennes is incredible at balancing the duality of his character, and without Fiennes, the story just wouldn’t come together nearly as strongly.  As a whole package, I was kind of floored by this movie. It starts off gritty and raw and I was thoroughly enjoying the experience which includes some very cool and gnarly gore and kills, too. As it progressed though, the emotional story sort of snuck up on me and absolutely cut me to the core.  There has been much discussion about the ending, which I won’t talk about at all here (stay tuned for a spoiler-filled episode of The Screen Love Affair Podcast to hear about that), but as long as you keep an open mind, I think you’ll love the ending as much as I did.  Verdict I didn’t expect to love 28 Years Later, in fact, I was ready to write it off like so many other legacy sequels. But I couldn’t

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‘Bring Her Back’ Review – It’ll Make You Squirm, But Will It Stick With You?

Reviews /

Bring Her Back is the sophomore effort from Danny and Michael Philippou, after the critically and commercially successful release of their first film Talk To Me. Danny and Michael are twin brothers from Australia who you may know from their successful YouTube Channel RackaRacka. Bring Her Back stars Billy Barratt, Sora Wong and Sally Hawkins.  You know we like to avoid spoilers here at SLA, and luckily the synopsis for this movie gives you just the right amount of setup: “A brother and sister uncover a terrifying ritual at the secluded home of their new foster mother.” So is Bring Her Back a welcome addition to the family, or one you’ll want to disown? My Thoughts First, I think it makes the most sense to start with my feelings about Talk to Me because overall I feel pretty similar about both movies.  I was a little less excited by it than most people were. I was definitely impressed by how solid the movie was considering it was their first crack at a feature film, but when the movie ended I was just left feeling like something was missing.  Unfortunately, I felt something similar with Bring Her Back. However, I still think overall that I liked this one more!  One of the best parts about it for me was Sally Hawkins. Without getting into details, she was perfectly casted as someone that has such a sweet and innocent look to them, but also was believable when she’s doing much darker things too. Genuinely, this was perfect casting.  Billy and Sora play Andy and Piper, the brother and sister duo and our main characters. They were both solid in their roles. Jonah Wren Phillips, who plays Oliver, a child that is living with Sally Hawkins’ character Laura, probably has a tougher assignment here given the oddities of that character, but he’s also very solid.  Outside the characters though, the movie shines brightest when it starts playing more with some of these horror elements. Particularly the sound design. It’s been a few days now since I saw the movie, and one moment in particular hasn’t left my head and it makes me shudder when I think about it.  But for my money, I didn’t feel like there was enough of these moments. Because they’re so effective and well done, it become noticeable when a bunch of time would pass and nothing too creepy or unsettling would happen.  At the same time though, I didn’t feel the movie was too heavy about its themes either, specifically as it relates to grief and losing family members. They’re definitely there and prominent enough, but I don’t feel like we were focusing on too many moments to reaffirm these themes at the expense of these more tense and gnarly horror moments.  And really, this is where my feelings about the movie leave me a little stumped. I was enjoying this ride but ultimately, when we get to the ending, I couldn’t help but shake this feeling that something was missing. I think the biggest issue with both of these movies is that they don’t wrap up in a way that feels totally satisfying.  I really like when a movie fades to black for the end credits and I feel stuck in my head. Either I’m blown away by what I just saw, or I’m left speechless contemplating the feelings the movie has elicited from me. But this movie just left me feeling a bit more hollow.  Verdict Even with my lack of feelings as the credits rolled, I still had a good time and I think many of you will, too. The journey hits harder than the destination, packed with enough sharp horror beats to make even a genre veteran like me wince and squirm with the rest of the crowd. Writing this, I kept thinking about something Brandon and I discussed on Talkies about how Final Destination movies (to me at least) are just attempts at forgettable fun built on a great hook. Bring Her Back could’ve landed in that same category, but there’s real talent behind the camera here. It might not leave a lasting mark, but I’ve seen plenty of movies with much bigger budgets and none of the guts, skill, or sharp edges this movie brings.

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‘Clown in a Cornfield’ Review – A Slasher That’s More Corny Than Clever

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It’s no secret that I love the horror genre. From classic slashers to the more modern era of “elevated horror” (not my favourite term), there’s so many interesting and unique things to experience in the genre.  When I saw the trailer for Clown in a Cornfield at the theatre I was intrigued, but skeptical. I was a big fan of Tucker and Dale vs Evil, a horror comedy directed and co-written by Eli Craig, who is the co-writer and director for this. But the trailer lacked some of that originality or self awareness that Craig’s previous movie had and looked like a very generic horror slasher with a clown.  The film stars Katie Douglas, Aaron Abrams, Carson MacCormac, Kevin Durand, and Will Sasso. Douglas is our lead, Quinn, who moves from Philadelphia to the small town of Kettle Springs, Missouri. The psuedo town mascot is Frendo the clown, the actual mascot for the Baypen factory that historically has been the economic lifeblood of the community before it recently burned down.  So, is Clown in a Cornfield a-maize-ing fun, or just another corny catastrophe? My Thoughts Unfortunately, some of my instincts about this one were spot on. It’s not all bad though, and I’ll start with what I liked!  The Fendo costume and the kills were solid. They were a bit more gnarly than I was expecting (complimentary) and a bit more bloody too. So much of the movie takes place in the dark though, so much of that gore is hidden away by that.  There were also some jokes I liked throughout. There were flashes of smart humour, particularly around the Gen Z and baby boomer divide that were funny.  The cast in this was fine, too. Nobody stood out as incredibly good or bad, but this is also where I’m going to pivot to the negatives. While I didn’t think performances were bad, the characters on the page were definitely worse. The dialogue, especially at the beginning, was super clunky and inorganic, and the characters we’re introduced to really are paper thin and cliched horror movie characters.  Speaking of cliches, this script was absolutely FILLED with them. Now, I admittedly haven’t read the book this is based on to have an opinion on it as an adaptation, but as a movie on its own, I struggle to think of experience I’ve had that was more basic and by the numbers than this was. The narrative “twists” (and I never had used that term this loosely before) are so obvious and apparent from the outset basically that it gave me the feeling as if I had actually read the books and knew what to expect. Beyond that though, it’s all in here. We got city folk moving to the small town, we got the rowdy young kids and the grumpy boomers, we got a killer clown, we got a final girl that was forced to move here against her wishes (which of course is causing conflict with her dad), we got weird neighbors, we have sudden emotional backstories delivered via exposition, we’ve got small town parades, we’ve got a mayor (I think, anyway) delivering the big speech about small town values, we’ve got jocks, highschool bullies, and yes, parties in a barn out by the cornfield. By no means is this list comprehensive either. I’m intentionally not listing other cliches that would spoil parts of the film.  However, this on its own isn’t a point of negativity. Lots of movies, especially in the horror genre, are formulaic. However, the biggest sin this movie commits is that it does absolutely nothing, outside basically a single throwaway line, to acknowledge this or do anything with it. Tucker and Dale vs Evil was so funny, particularly in the first two acts, because it played with those stereotypes in a unique and fun way. My only issue with that movie is that the third act becomes a very generic horror movie, and unfortunately that’s where Clown in a Cornfield starts and ends.  As always, I want to keep details as vague as possible so as to not give things away, but the last point I needed to mention is the Gen Z vs Boomer dynamic of it all. I’m a millenial, so I’m not in either camp here, but the heavy handedness at points about this dynamic made my eyes roll out of my head. Delivering a big speech about how a generation is destroying the planet while the other has no respect for tradition at climatic moments just didn’t work for me at all and it screamed inauthentic, surface, and hollow.  Verdict Clown in a Cornfield has a few solid kills and the occasional laugh, but it’s buried under so many clichés it might as well be six feet deep. Unless you’re brand new to horror, you’ve seen this all before. Still, if you’re Gen Z and the premise still grabs you, it’s playing in theatres now!

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‘Final Destination Bloodlines’ Review – Death Is Back and Better Than Ever

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It’s been 14 years since the last Final Destination movie and I, for one, thought the franchise was dead and buried. Thankfully, Final Destination Bloodlines, the sixth instalment in the series, brings some fresh blood to the lineage. I have a fondness for the Final Destination films, particularly the first three. As a kid, I spent a handful of summers at a cottage near Otter Lake. There was a small convenience store nearby that rented out DVDs. Our cottages came equipped with a DVD player, so us kids would trek over to the store and peruse the shelf and bring back the latest horror movies they had. This is how I watched most of the Saw franchise and the first three Final Destination movies. I was definitely too young to be watching these movies, and the gruesome mass accidents stayed with me. For the longest time, I couldn’t pass by a log truck on the highway without flashing back to the opening sequence of Final Destination 2. The idea that you could die horrifically in a freak accident tapped into some primal fear that I, and probably many others, had about the arbitrariness of death. Don’t get me wrong, these are not “good” movies. There’s nothing elevated about the horror in the Final Destination films, but that’s what makes them so fun. If you’ve seen one, you know exactly what you’re going to get with the rest. Someone gets a premonition of a gnarly freak accident with mass casualties and then stops it, narrowly evading Death, who subsequently comes knocking to claim the lives of those who escaped him one by one in increasingly elaborate and unlikely Rube Goldberg-like machinations involving everyday objects and scenarios. Bloodlines doesn’t reinvent the formula, but it doesn’t have to. After 14 years, something as silly and fun as this is a welcome change in the horror landscape. It scratches a similar itch as The Monkey did, which I aptly compared to Final Destination in the over-the-top silliness and gore of its deaths. If anything, Bloodlines feels right at home in the 2000s sensibility of the early Final Destination movies. It lacks any sense of specificity, and I say that as something that works in its favour. If the movie mentioned a specific city in which it was set, I can’t remember it. Aside from modern-looking cell phones and cars, there’s little sense that it takes place in a specific time, either. But it all works, because no one is coming to Final Destination for astute socio-cultural commentary—we’re here to see a bunch of people we don’t really care about die in creatively gruesome ways. The biggest compliment I can give Bloodlines is that it understands the assignment. The opening sequence is excellent, right up there with the best of the franchise, with a cheeky knowingness and humour that sets the tone right off the bat. While I said there’s nothing revolutionary here, what Bloodlines does bring is a sense of self-awareness that brings the franchise into a new era and makes it fit for horror audiences who have seen it all. The movie plays with expectations in a way that feels satisfying for both fans and newcomers, with a number of great pay-offs and subversions. The cast is also refreshingly made up largely of unknown or little-known actors, who all do a solid job. Among them, Richard Harmon’s Erik stands out as the snarky piercing-laden, tattoo-clad comic relief character. The late, legendary Tony Todd (Candyman, Final Destination), in his final film role, also brings some gravitas in his brief but memorable appearance. If I have one gripe, it’s that the movie could have benefitted from a slightly tighter runtime and a less rushed finale, but it never felt like it dragged too much. Ultimately, this is just a very fun movie. It’s not too serious, it’s clever and funny and gory, if a little too reliant on CGI blood. While it tries to make us care a little about the characters and their dramatic backstories, it undercuts those moments of seriousness in just the right ways. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen any of the other films in the franchise, but if anything, Bloodlines might even be the most polished movie in the series to date. Verdict Go see Final Destination Bloodlines with a group of friends in the most packed theatre you can find, and I guarantee you’ll have at least a fun time. For a largely dead franchise’s sixth entry, Bloodlines is surprisingly on the ball, with a fresh take on the formula, a great sense of humour and of audience expectations, and a game cast that gets to die in ridiculous(ly fun) ways.

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