June 2 - June 8 2025
Triangle, The Surrender, Malum, Far from the Madding Crowd, Excision, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, The Lure, Predator: Killer of Killers
- Triangle [2009] - 79
An early work by writer/director Christopher Smith, Triangle is a small film with a small budget that manages to incorporate big ideas with pizzaz, grace, and tension. It isn’t perfect, but what work is? When at its best, Triangle is a tight mystery with surprisingly excellent effects and clever, circuitous storytelling — and it’s at its best for the majority of the film. Where this Sisyphean tale loses some of its momentum, however, is in its slight insistence that the audience must be told what is going on at all times. There’s a few too many repeated scenes and few too many moments of needless exposition to truly keep this a highwire thriller from start to finish, but I really love most of the execution and the standout moments truly shine brighter than its dullest stumbles.
- The Surrender [2025] - 66
This 2025 horror/mystery has a lot of similar pacing and vacuity issues that Triangle had but, where Triangle’s missteps were minor while its accolades major, The Surrender, from first-time feature director Julia Max, has some excellent ideas and themes, but most fails to bring them out in its storytelling. Though its closing shots are truly impactful and bring the entire journey full circle in a meaningful way, the film itself is overly long, overly empty, and overly noncommittal in tone to be something one will remember in totality — Parts are funny, parts are scary, parts are weird, and parts are grounded drama… It’s just sort of all over the place in a way that never quite makes sense. I definitely look forward to future works by Max, but this exact type of storytelling is better left to films like Personal Shopper.
- Malum [2023] - 78
Lots of indie horror this week apparently… Malum, a remake of Anthony DiBlasi’s earlier work, Last Shift, is an absolutely excellent vision of what a Silent Hill meets Resident Evil film could look like. It’s kind of just a grotesque horror with nothing much to say and a fairly basic narrative designed simply to drive the mystery and scares forward, but it works, and that’s more important than anything else in a film like this. The effects are absolutely top knotch, the scares are fun and spooky, and the climax of the film leaves you both empty and satisfied in the best way. Where Malum really struggles to break into higher numbers for me is that too many of its scares are significantly cheapened by loud jump noises… which is only further exemplified by so many others that are left for the audience to almost miss entirely — making them all the scarier. While a “78” may not seem like it, I really really liked this one and find it an easy recommendation within the space. I cannot wait for whatever hellish concoction Anthony DiBlasi comes up with next and I’ve been pretty jazzed on this one all week long.
- Far from the Madding Crowd [2015] - 42
Getting away from both small budgets and horror… Far from the Madding Crowd is a period romance based on a novel of the same name. I love a good period romance [Portrait of a Lady on Fire is one of my all time favorite films]… but good golly can I not figure out what there is to like about this one. The storytelling is clipped and all over the place — not really establishing anyone or giving you a reason to care about them —, the characters themselves are either largely unlikeable or just so obviously flat that you don’t connect with them, and the whole plot moves at such a weirdly rapid-but-striated pace that it feels like every scene is almost wholly disconnected form the last. In every way possible, this feels like a romance written by a man [it is], directed by a man [it is], and one that accidentally gives away way too many projections of said writer/directors’ insecurities about women.
It’s kind of a weird watch… and excruciatingly boring.
- Excision [2012] - 55
Annnnd back to indie horror… Excision is the inaugural film for writer/director Richard Bates Jr., and is super interesting and fun in that regard. Based on a short of his by the same name, Excision tells a story similar to horror greats Black Swan, Saint Maud, and A Tale of Two Sisters… but doesn’t quite have its delusional ducks in enough rows to be as engaging or memorable. Excision has a lot of strong moments and interesting steps along its journey — often reminding me of 2024’s The Substance during its most interesting scenes — but ultimately struggles because of some seriously wooden acting from one of the leads, a weird set of memorable cameo castings [Matthew Gray Gubler, Ray Wise, Malcom McDowell, and John Waters to name a few…], and a story that just doesn’t quite feel developed or damaging enough to anything the viewer thinks or wants for it to have any real impact. In some ways it feels like the film wants to give Hereditary, but there’s just not quite enough umpf to make any of it really count in the end… That said, I would absolutely watching something else by Mr. Bates.
- Beetlejuice Beetlejuice [2024] - 58
I’m sure there’s films higher up but, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has got to be very near the top of the “Films That Absolutely Nobody Asked For” list and, by the end… I still don’t think anybody is asking for it. While certainly not bad [shockingly], it still has almost nothing to offer and is clearly a mishmash of ideas, plots, and characters that were certainly all nearly scrapped in the 36 years it took to make this film. Generating new plots just as fast as it throws them away, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice can’t seem to decide on a direction or coherent enough journey to stick to any one thing and develop it, so it often hangs its hat on nostalgia-bait and hopes for the best. It isn’t all bad though; the effects are excellent, the returning cast are mostly fun, the creativity and zaniness of the original is still mostly present, and some of the new characters [Willem Dafoe in particular] are fairly fun… But “fairly fun” is about all that this unneeded sequel manages to summon from the other side.
- The Lure [2015] - 44
A Polish horror/musical about a pair of sister sirens who work for strip club… How was I to pass this up? Turns out… I should have. Maybe it’s just a translation issue/ cultural storytelling barrier, but The Lure takes what could be a very fun and silly plot and turns it into an almost entirely incomprehensible and impossible-to-follow series of vignettes that jump from one [admittedly catchy] song to the next and never really make much sense or development of any one thing or character, instead choosing to just spark event after event and let the viewer either stay strapped in or walk away from the ride. Similar to Excision above, The Lure is not without its interesting scenes and intriguing moments, but it just never goes anywhere with any of them and is significantly too weird with significantly too little connective tissue between its ideas to really mean anything in the end.
- Predator: Killer of Killers [2025] - 76
I had a lot of mostly nice things to say about Trachtenberg’s 2022 entry into this franchise, Prey, and, after watching his newest release, Predator: Killer of Killers, I’ll be echoing almost all of the same thoughts — accolades and criticisms alike. This is some great action [though it would have been significantly cooler if it was live-action] and, though I think the entire premise of the Yautja is incredibly stupid, Predator: Killer of Killers is [mostly] an excellent time [you just have to brace yourself for how truly awful chapter 3 is]. Again, to echo a criticism of his other release, Trachtenberg makes another weird decision here where language is concerned. Chapter 1 is a Viking tale and is told in English, Chapter 2 is a ninja/ samurai tale and is told in Japanese, and Chapter 3 is an American tale told in English… but [minor spoilers] when the time comes to combine characters of these tales… only the American speaks English… while the other two speak their native languages… Why?
Dan, Daniel, Danny, Mr. D. Tracht… please, please, please stop doing weirdo things with character’s native languages in your Predator films. You make excellent pieces for this tired and stupid series, but just have them all speak their native tongues. It’s so weird when you do this.
Anyway… Predator: Killer of Killers is pretty solid if this is your sort of thing, but entirely forgettable if you want anything with substance.
