Jordan Peele’s (Get Out) latest horror-thriller, Us, explores the concept of evil doppelgängers. Peele writes, directs and co-produces. He’s played on his fear of look-alikes. Lupita Nyong’o is Adelaide Wilson, a woman returning to her childhood home. She’s bringing her husband, Gabe (Winston Duke), and their two children, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan…
Neil Jordan was a big name in the 1990s. Movies like The Crying Game and Interview with the Vampire made him a household name. Since then his output has been a little patchy, but now he’s back with Greta, a film with a crafty premise and a great cast. The problem is that Jordan’s direction…
Six strangers are brought together in an escape room challenge and have to use their wits when the game turns lethal in this hybrid horror/survival-thriller. It’s a bit like Saw, but without the torture. Six strangers – who seemingly have nothing in common – each receive a mysterious cube. When they manage to open it,…
Clever, zany and funny, Happy Death Day 2U ticks all the boxes for a sequel. I loved the creativity in the original and feared that any follow-up would be a disappointment. Fortunately though that’s not the case because the writer and director Christopher Landon has taken the finest elements of the initial offering and twisted…
Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist takes us back, way back, to the teenage years when the world was just an open sky of endless opportunity. In the capable hands of a best-selling horror writer, we know that this particular new world of discovery is shortly about to evolve into something truly frightening. Lindqvist has inserted…
Cold Pursuit sees Liam Neeson (Taken) again taking violent revenge against a gang of criminals who have attacked his family. However, in a slight twist to the usual formula that drove his previous film, Cold Pursuit is actually a remake. It’s based on a 2014 Norwegian thriller In Order of Disappearance, which featured Stellan Skarsgard…
I suppose it’s almost impossible to use an exuberant color palette for a film situated in a Slavic country. Every time the story takes place in such a communist or ex-communist country, the screen is filled with depressing colors. The closer one approaches Russia (the motherland of communism) the more gray, grizzled, and duller the…
Post 9-11 it’s hard to think that there hasn’t been speculation about the next shock and awe campaign. I bet nobody thought there’d be an Australian, rough and tumble ex-commercial pilot, come spy at the centre of it all. The theory that Michael McGuire proposes in his thriller Flight Risk is, however, just believable enough…
Each year ends with a bang. You’ll have the end-of-year festivities and people party themselves into the New Year. But when it’s about movies, this one created an end-of-a-film-year-bang. Frankly, I didn’t expect too much of it. But maybe my prejudice about Sandra Bullock has something to do with that. I readily admit that I’m…
While it’s more common for theatre to be adapted into movies, some have gone the other way. They’re mostly however musicals (a la School of Rock: The Musical) or drawing room dramas. Certainly, the thought of staging a big action movie seems daunting. But the creative team behind North by Northwest have pulled off that…
