Movies - Screen Love Affair

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

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 movies, so if you’re intrigued by this film, go see

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

Reviews / Shea Angus

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

Reviews / Shea Angus

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 / frederic.simard@me.com

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 / Shea Angus

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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‘Sweetness’ Review – Misery Meets MCR in Emma Higgins’ Bold Debut About Teen Angst and Obsessive Fandom

Fantasia International Film Festival, Reviews / frederic.simard@me.com

UPDATE: This review was written after we screened this film at the 2025 Fantasia Film Festival. We really like this movie, but it’s best enjoyed with a crowd and some friends! So go support this one if its playing in a theater near you! Writer/director Emma Higgins introduced her debut film, Sweetness, at the Fantasia International Film Festival by saying it was for “girls who shop at Hot Topic, wear too much eyeliner, coloured hair, people on SSRIs, the emos, for Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance—it’s for anyone who has ever loved a musician or had a broken heart or [felt] unrequited love. It’s for the horror fans and it’s for Canadians.” It’s the perfect intro to this gem of a psychological thriller, which I adored. I really hope this movie takes off, and I look forward to seeing it get a theatrical release, so more people get a chance to see it. It’s a great sign of the current state of Canadian filmmaking! Made with an all-Canadian cast, crew, and production, the movie was shot in North Bay, Ontario and is set in a fictional small town in Ontario, to boot. I make such a point of this because it’s refreshing to see a movie set and made in Canada that feels this high-calibre. Obviously, there are homegrown cult classic gems like Ginger Snaps (which feels like an influence here, to some degree), but this gives me some hope for the future of the Canadian film industry. This thing is slick, well-shot, cleverly written, and well-paced, with an excellent cast and great balance of tone. The Fantasia crowd was eating it up too, hooting and hollering at the film’s twists and turns, which only enhanced the experience of seeing it on a big screen. Sweetness follows Rylee (Kate Hallett), a lonely sixteen-year-old girl who’s bullied at school, is grieving her mother, and has a fraught relationship with her emotionally stunted cop dad (Justin Chatwin) and his new girlfriend (Amanda Brugel). Her only source of solace amidst all of that turmoil comes from the songs of her favourite band, Floorplan, led by a Gerard Way-esque pop star named Payton Adler (Herman Tømmeraas), whose lyrics suggest he may be the only person in the world who truly understands Rylee’s angst. What starts as a simple story about teenage obsession slowly devolves into cringe-inducing sickly sweet delusion after a chance post-concert encounter leads Rylee to discover that Payton is a dysfunctional drug addict, pushing her to take it upon herself to fix him. I’m a sucker for stories about desperate people who get themselves into a hole and inevitably end up digging themselves deeper and deeper. Every time I wondered if the movie would go there—it did, and each time, I got more and more on board. Sweetness was the first film at this year’s Fantasia that really got its hooks in me and had me feeling elated walking out of the theatre after. One of its big strengths is that it knows exactly what it is and delivers on the promise of its premise without overstaying its welcome. That largely comes down to the tight script and balancing act performance from Kate Hallett. Despite what very easily could have tipped over into an unbelievable or hard-to-swallow premise, the film never broke my suspension of disbelief. And every time it upped the ante, I bought in further, which is a difficult thing to pull off. Visually, the movie is also incredibly self-assured, especially for a debut feature on a relatively small budget. It just has a ton of style, from the poster design to the title font to the score and original songs by Blitz//Berlin, which have just the right amount of pop cringe. It all feels polished and adds to the style and tone of the movie. But the real star here, as mentioned, is Hallett as Rylee. The character is a tough one to pull off, because Rylee has to be sympathetic and easy to root for, while descending into more and more questionable moral territory as the movie progresses. In the Q&A after the screening, Higgins said she wrote the character as the heroine of the story—because she is. Rylee believes wholeheartedly that she’s in the right every step of the way. And the only way a story like this works is if the script is on her side. We, as an audience, may or may not be, but Rylee is the protagonist and the heroine and the driving force. As Higgins elaborated, it’s the plot that’s in opposition to her. Rylee’s the hero of her own story, even though her actions may be less-than-heroic when taken in a broader context. As wild as the film gets, it’s rooted in the emotional truth of being a teenage girl. A lot of teenage girldom is often dark and difficult and lonely and crazy-making. By tapping into those emotions, we can always at least understand what’s motivating Rylee, even if we can’t necessarily condone the outcome. It’s that tension that the movie holds in perfect balance. In lesser hands, the character could easily have fallen flat and brought the whole movie down with her. It’s to the film’s credit that it always treats Rylee as a sympathetic character. She may be an emotional, delusional, grieving, obsessive teenage girl, but the film takes her seriously, which makes us as an audience take her seriously and see her as more than one-dimensional. That’s not to say the movie takes itself too seriously. Part of why it works so well is that it doesn’t and has a very dark sense of humour about its subject matter. The film consistently delivers laughs, thrills, chills, sweetness, and violence, making a perfectly balanced cocktail for a good time at the movies. Verdict Sweetness gets a strong recommend from me. This psychological thriller gem has an excellent handle on tone and style, with great performances and an awesome script from writer/director Emma Higgins. It’s a modern-day

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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 / frederic.simard@me.com

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 / frederic.simard@me.com

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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The Naked Gun (2025): Funny Enough to Walk Free

Reviews / Shea Angus

“Surely you can’t be serious! I am serious and don’t call me Shirley.” Long before I knew the movie, I knew that moment from the 1980 film Airplane. Airplane was a turning point in the career of fellow Canadian Leslie Nielsen, an established working actor known for playing more serious roles before playing Dr. Rumack in Airplane. The concept was simple: take serious actors and have them play their characters completely straight in an absurdist comedic movie. The movie was a hit and from this point on, Nielsen was known for his deadpan comedy and established himself as a comedic legend up until his death in 2010. Airplane was a smash hit and led to the short lived TV show Police Squad, which then became a film in 1988’s The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! The movie spawned two sequels and now in 2025 it’s been remade without Nielsen and with a whole new creative team. I absolutely adore Nielsen, Airplane, and the Police Squad/Naked Gun movies and shows, so to say I was skeptical about a Naked Gun reboot would be an understatement. We are in the IP era, where studios are seemingly petrified about taking risks to create the next new thing, and instead look for established names with goodwill from the audience to make their money. So, is this reboot criminally unfunny or does The Naked Gun get away with enough laughs to beat the rap? My Thoughts First, we need to talk about Liam Neeson, who plays Frank Drebin Jr., the son of Leslie Nielsen’s original Frank Drebin. Overall, I think Neeson is good in the role. Considering he was given a near-impossible task (in my opinion, anyway), good is probably the best I could have hoped for. The rest of the cast is also solid, including Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, Kevin Durand, Danny Huston, and CCH Pounder. Although there’s a decently sized supporting cast, it’s really only Neeson, Anderson, and Huston that get much screentime. I would’ve loved to see more Paul Walter Hauser, but he did great in the moments he did have. Continuing with the positives, the movie is only 85 minutes long, and it’s crammed full of jokes. Even if some don’t land for you, the good news is you’ll be peppered with five more in the next minute, so you won’t even remember that you didn’t laugh at an earlier bit. The movie delivers a steady amount of chuckles and even got a few hearty belly laughs out of me, too. Without question, the movie is funny, and I think that most people that go and see this will have a great time with it, but I’m personally a bit more torn on it. On the surface, I enjoyed myself and I laughed quite a bit, but when the credits began (which have plenty of jokes in them too and, yes, there is a post-credits scene) I was just thinking about how much I love the originals. If you’ve listened to our podcast at all, you’ll know that we often talk about expectations and what can happen if you bring your own baggage into a movie. This is where the downside of the IP era really hits me, because despite my best efforts to leave my expectations at home, I can’t go into a movie called The Naked Gun and not think about Leslie Nielsen, the previous three movies, and the original show. For new audiences and young people that don’t have that attachment, this won’t register at all, and I don’t expect my experience to be what most people experience. For what it’s worth, I had friends with me that have seen and love the originals and had a more enjoyable time than I did. In that vein, this movie does mostly carry on the spirit of the Naked Gun, but it also leaves behind some of the charms of the originals, too. I read a few things ahead of the release that noted the filmmakers were trying to bring that “old school” kind of comedy to a new audience, and while I can respect that goal, the moderness of this new reboot was what I disliked the most. This manifests most noticeably for me in the visuals and the overall look of the film. It feels too digital, and I was craving more obviously created sets and gags related to that. Even when the classic “noir” jazz music was playing during driving and transition scenes, it just never felt right with the modern look of Los Angeles and because they did nothing creatively to make it feel old school or even funny. Perhaps they thought too much of an “old look” would be a deterrent to modern audiences or something, but when I have such a concrete sense of what a Naked Gun movie should be, if you make one that’s missing some of those same hallmarks, it stands out. Now you might be thinking “This guy is making a bit too big of a fuss over an 85-minute studio comedy” and that’s a totally valid criticism, but I don’t think it’s “wrong” to compare the new Naked Gun to its own namesake. If anything, watching this movie made me want to see this creative team do something original and bring that old school comedic thought to a more modern audience in a way that’s more relevant. When Police Squad first hit the airwaves in the 80’s, police procedurals were all over the place and incredibly prominent in the culture, and the idea was to parody and spoof them. Rebooting the Naked Gun in 2025 feels a little weird in an era when cop movies are just not really made that often anymore. Still, when all is said and done, The Naked Gun is better than I expected but not as good as I wanted it to be. Verdict I was incredibly torn on how to rate this movie, but after thinking it through,

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‘Redux Redux’ Review: A Standout Thriller at Fantasia 2025

Fantasia International Film Festival, Reviews / Shea Angus

The 29th Fantasia Film Festival is well underway and we’ve been on the ground every day to cover everything you need to put on your radar! Make sure you’re checking out the Screen Love Affair Podcast and follow us on Instagram to keep up with all of our coverage. With that aside, one movie I needed to write about was Redux Redux. I talked a little about it on our Instagram, but I wanted to write an official review of it on the website too to dive a bit more into it. It’s a family film, in that it was written and directed by Kevin and Matthew McManus and stars their sister Michaela McManus. It also stars Stella Marcus and Jeremy Holm, who we will definitely talk about in more detail later. I know I say this a lot, but I really do mean this here: This is the kind of movie that is best enjoyed knowing as little as possible. Like, I don’t even want to tell you the genre because it can give something away. This review is spoiler-free too, so don’t worry about reading on. I can say that this is a revenge thriller, just to give you a sense of what to expect, but beyond that, mum’s the word! So, is Redux Redux just another revenge flick or does it burn with something deeper beneath the surface? My Thoughts Redux Redux starts off incredibly strong and basically doesn’t let you go until it’s all over. We kick off with our lead, Irene (Michaela McManus) at a fire and then we jump around to her doing some different things that the audience doesn’t fully understand. It’s particularly for the first act that I am being light on the spoilers. You’re immediately dropped into situations and the movie hits the ground running. It slowly becomes a bit more clear what is happening, but I was enjoying the mystery at the beginning quite a lot, even if I already read about the movie so I knew what was actually happening. Jeremy Holm plays the target of Irene’s revenge, and Holm is very solid in this role. He plays the different sides of his character very well, especially when he has to be more imposing and menacing. Holm and McManus are both great, but the biggest standout for me here was Stella Marcus as Mia. Mia and Irene come together as the movie progresses and it’s really once they come together that the incredibly strong emotional core of this movie starts to shine. Their pairing reminded me a little bit of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but as people motivated by grief and revenge, and at very different stages of their journeys with those two things. It’s a perfect pairing because not only do they manage to flesh out their own individual stories well, but their own relationship developing is as compelling as anything else happening and every moment spent with the two of them was a blast. Another strong point is the script. I often talk about how movies can struggle to balance their own tone and themes in an organic way that doesn’t feel like the movie is grinding to a halt for a monologue. I’m very glad to report though that no such moment exists in this movie. The more somber moments and beats all work and feel natural for the characters in those moments, which makes this movie feel so refreshing when so many mainstream movies struggle to do this part well. This was my first experience with the McManus brothers, but I was really impressed with it. They did an absolutely amazing job with a more limited budget, but with such a strong script, I would be really curious to see what they could do with a bigger budget. Verdict We’re only halfway through the festival, but I’m certain this movie will end up on my Best of the Fest list! Redux Redux is an easy movie to recommend. The violence and action are solid, but it’s really the core characters that shine the most here and make the movie more memorable. It tackles serious themes, but in a way that was more unique and organic than it’s been done before. I was very impressed by everyone involved, but I suspect that you’ll be seeing much more of Stella Marcus in the years to come!

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