The Strangers – Chapter 2 Review

"The Strangers - Chapter 2" was filmed alongside last year's "Chapter 1," with "Chapter 3" still unreleased. The interwebs tells me all three were to be released in 2024, so I don't know what happened there. I have no idea what happened behind the scene, and to not commit a critic-sin, I can't say what happens onscreen. What I can say is that this sequel is bad. Awful. Dreadful. Boring. Dumb. Bloated. And perhaps most damning, completely unscary. I sat in a mostly empty theater stone-faced, unflinching to any of the myriad of alleged jump-scares, growing increasingly annoyed at just how monotonous the whole production ended up being. It's not merely just bad, but artistically inert, unable to even become so-bad-it's-good. 

This is the worst kind of film, so passionateless and mechanical, showcasing just what a hack director Renny Harlin, once a decently respected director, has become. This is the man who made what is probably Hollywood's second best shark movie for crying out loud!

A part of me would love to hate this film, but it is so ruthlessly hollow an experience that I just couldn't muster up any emotions. Like a VHS without any film, this is an empty husk where a movie should be.

The plot, sure, we can get that out of the way. The sole survivor of the first chapter, Maya (Madelaine Petsch) is recovering in a nearby hospital. She wakes to learn her fiance Ryan (Froy Gutierrez), who was also attacked, was not so lucky. This should be a touching moment, but at least he doesn't have to suffer through this dreck.

Maya would likely have lived a normal life then, but then the local sheriff and Deputy (Richard Brake and Pedro Leandro, respectively), have to go and yap about the girl who lived in the local diner. (A place so busy you'd swear it's the town's only restaurant.) Does that mean the three killers also frequent the eatery? Bold of you to assume such basic questions would be answered. 

Because the police don't bother having a guard to protect a woman who barely survived a deadly home invasion, that very night, the masked killers swarm the hospital, which is multiple stories large yet we only ever see, like, four people working there. She's awake because of a nightmare, then her phone rings, an unknown number. She answers it, only to hear one of the masked assailants on the other end. Then she hears a voice outside her room, a man who sounds to be being killed. What's a negative one-dimensional horror movie heroine to do? Call the cops? Pull the fire alarm? No silly, she tries to escape. Of course moments later, only after the power is cut does she try and call. Naturally, there's no cell reception then. Frustrated? Just wait til it happens again!

Anyway, Maya desperately tries to hide somewhere in the hospital, eventually slipping into the morgue. She squeezes next to a dead body in one of those freezer things just before the masked man with the ax walks in. He knows she's somewhere and begins checking each of the cold corpse coolers when he stops, staring directly at the one she's in. He pauses only because the filmmakers mistook idiocy for tension, but then a hapless nurse walks in, who's quickly chopped down. She leaves once the man in the burlap sack goes to hide the body, but I kept thinking to myself, what a great hiding place! She gets to lie down, it's not too hot PLUS she gets a little vent to peak out of, so she can scope the room for when the cops or whoever come by. That, and the killers would no doubt not check a room they already cleared, especially with those tempting woods right next door just begging horror movie characters to run around in.

Maya (of course) leaves and escapes outside into the rainy night, no doubt seduced by the idea of being in a wet hospital gown in the dark. Some plot happens and she flags down nurse Danica (Brooke Johnson) and her friend, who say she's safe now and that she can stay with them. Never did it occur to her to try and figure out how one of her patients escaped, but there I go again with my logic. Maya has a panic attack once they pick up two men, thinking these four are the killers. (Nevermind the fact that there are only three murderers but whatever.)

So like anyone with stitches would do, she steals a knife, boots and some medical supplies and lunges out of a moving vehicle. The foursome pull over and try to find her, but she's just hidden herself far too well behind a dying log to be spotted. Hide-and-seekers just hate to see her coming.

More plot happens and then, and I'm not making this up, the masked ax man lets out a wild boar, who quicky finds and attacks her. Why he didn't follow the animal is never explained. (I'm holding out that they'll answer this mystery in part 3.)

Then after some more plot, and Maya awakes in the care of Danica from before, her wounds cleaned and stitched, but what's this? Why, she's in her panties, so cue scenes of her hardly clothed buttocks, just for fun. In a peverse way, it's the best part of the movie. A sad, depressingly lifeless movie that is so relentlessly unexciting that it could inspire someone who has never read anything in their life to pick up a book and go to town.

One time had to get my license from the DMV, where I waited outside in the chilly November weather: it was more exciting than this. It doesn't help that the ending, what should be the "big reveal," is so poorly handled that you have no idea the "who's" and "why's." With its hour and a half or so runtime feels like three, "The Strangers - Chapter 2" is a cinematic dead-zone.

The Conjuring: Last Rites Review

"The Conjuring" films have their work cut out for them, considering a quick internet search shows, somehow, about half the population believes in the paranormal. I am firmly not in that camp, so smart people like me have to sit and watch make-believe in hopes of entertainment. And this fourth entry, subtitled "Last Rites," is as goofy as they come.

The film opens with Ed and Lorraine Warren, two real-life paranormal investigators and likely con-artists, in an antique shop of sorts, after the owner is found dead by hanging. A pregnant Lorraine decides to investigate, hearing the voices that allegedly drove the old man to his suicide, stumbles upon a mirror, one with three faces carved into the wood at the top. She touches it, lots of loud noises are produced and she's induced. Now at the local hospital, doctors believe she has a miscarriage, but thanks to the power of prayer, their little baby girl takes her first breath. It's all very sweet until you realize this is a horror movie, and babies don't have the best track record in this territory. 

Stars Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson (who's facial hair is not quite ready to commit to actual mutton chops) reprise their roles as the paranormal pairing, now since retired from a life of ghostbusting. And when their now-grown daughter Judy (Mia Tomlinson) returns home from, I dunno college I suppose, new boyfriend in tow named Tony (Ben Hardy), it all becomes very sitcom. Aside from the fact that the family keeps a room locked away in their house littered with purportedly haunted items, of course.

Simultaneously, we follow the Smurl family, a poor and of course religious family of eight living in Pennsylvania. Their daughter Heather (Kíla Lord Cassidy) is seen having her confirmation ceremony, which I'm assuming is something god-fearing people do to try and get on the invisible man's good-side, then thusly gifted the aforementioned mirror, and, I dunno, that ends up inviting demons in. Or ghosts. Or spirits. Or something, I paid attention, I truly did I swear.

The teenager suspects something bad about the mirror, bringing it to the trash one night with the help of her sassy sister Dawn (Beau Gadsdon). The garbage men pick it up and their big truck smashes it, and then the demon fun begins. People float above their beds, a freaky old woman holds toys and phone cords are yanked. (Oh did I forget to mention this takes place during the eighties?) You'd think this is when the Warren's would be called in, but then the runtime wouldn't be able to exceed two hours, so here we are.

But their cries to the local news do attract the attention of Father Gordon (Steve Coulter), a good friend of Ed and Lorraine, or so this fourth movie in a franchise says. (You would think child services would also hear about kids being in constant danger, but I digress.) Their house remains haunted for months, and since they're destitute, are unable to move out. I imagine they're not all that well-liked since they never try to stay with friends or family. Gordon almost immediately detects somethings wrong, but due to plot he ends up killing himself. And for some reason, Judy takes it upon herself to travel to PA and try and help figure out what happens to Gordon. You know, what the police should be doing, but cops just keep back crowds back in movies like this.

So her parents and boyfriend-turned-fiance travel to the Smurl residence, and up until then, I hadn't actively disliked the flick all that much. But then characters lurk about alone in the dark when they shouldn't, which would be impossible considering the tiny house homes eight people! And it happens constantly, so often in fact that I had to keep my intense urge to scream at the screen contained. You would think they'd wait until its light out, grab a buddy and then enter a room where a mysterious voice echoes.

Lorraine just lumbers around looking concerned, and Ed and his sideburns speak in doomy monologues; it's all so self-indulgent. And unfortunately, not all that scary. The same problem that plagued entry number three, that one quickly notices the pattern: someone goes somewhere they shouldn't, the music gets all tense then stops until a monster jumps out. When the film finds an interesting location for all this, sure, it can be fun. A scene in a dressing room is interesting and well done, but come on, another haunted house?

But yes, in the end the plot revolves around a haunted mirror, which in itself isn't all that silly, but what is is when the furniture physically moves and attacks; it is so unbelievably stupid to see veteran actors like Wilson and Farmiga have to combat a hunk of wood. A satire maybe could have made it work, or some broad comedy even, but the filmmakers instead settled on the funless and pretentious.

The Thursday Murder Club Review

There's little in the way of actual comedy in "The Thursday Murder Club," debuting on Netflix just a few days ago, which is curious as it considers itself one. It's more of a lightweight dramatic detective film, if that is such a genre, with a ludicrous plot that I suppose counts as a comedy.

We're introduced to Joyce (Celia Imrie), a newly retired nurse now living at Cooper's Chase, the most unbelievably swanky retirement village you'll ever see. She stumbles into what she thinks it's the puzzle room, only to witness vintage crime scene photos strung up surrounded by fellow retirees: Elizabeth (Helen Mirren), Ron (Pierce Brosnan) and Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley). They belong to the titular "Thursday Murder Club," working through old cold-case files every Thursday I think. The film isn't terribly clear if they do this just once a week, especially since they work night and day once the co-owner of the place Tony Curran (Geoff Bell) turns up dead early on in the runtime.

He's found bludgeoned in his house not long after a disagreement with business partner Ian Ventham (David Tennant), who wants to demolish the place and put in condos or something. Ian is immediately named suspect number one, but that's less to do with effective detective work by local DCI Chris Hudson, played with a sweet tooth by Daniel Mays and much (much, much, much...) more by the amateur gang of aging sleuths.

Their liaison is a plucky rookie cop named Donna (Naomi Ackie), who visited the home earlier on the day of the (first) murder to discuss the importance of locking your doors and windows. Fortunately, that is one of just a handful of geriatric jokes, the rest being few and far between. There's actually far more would-be tender moments about aging, ranging from dementia to hospice care, and these scenes I presume come with the territory, but the script by Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote have no interest in dealing with the true horrors of getting older. Of course, all this could be a result of the book of the same name by Richard Osman, but as I have never read it, your guess is as good as mine.

There's more of course, more characters, plot points and developments, but it's a mystery so I need to do my critical duty and keep some things close to my chest. The big reveal, however, is laborious and ridiculous, dependent on way too many coincidences, hunches and lucky guesses to be satisfying or even logical.

Fortunately, the excellent cast is fantastic and totally game for this material, striking exactly the right tone between serious thriller and goofy parody, and it's fun as the audience to see such famous actors and actresses having what clearly is a good time.

The crisp direction from Chris Columbus keeps the plot moving along at a steady clip, letting the Cooper's Chase become a character of its own; it's grandiose halls, fields and architecture seemingly stretching on for miles. I mean, it's all completely preposterous that it'd be so posh, but hey, it's a movie where Helen Mirren infiltrates the United Kingdom police department and quite literally solves multiple crimes in the span of a week.

If the whole affair plays like an extended episode of Murder, She Wrote, then so be it; it's to film's benefit that I quite like that show 

Nobody 2 Review

2021's "Nobody" was a bit of fresh air in the oftentimes stale action thriller genre, taking the niche carved out by the "John Wick" franchise and narrowing its world-building while adding a slight satirical edge. Most films cut from the cloth of Mr. Reeves' franchise take themselves way too seriously, so this lighter helped it stand out.

But uh-oh, with success comes the inevitable sequel, but "Nobody 2" ends up just recycling everything that happened in the first picture and tries pushing it to the next level. But instead of raising the stakes, it makes things feel bloated and self-righteous, the gimmick of a non-action star (Bob Odenkirk) staring in an action movie no longer enough. Add to that a tired script and a vacation artifice and you have a wasted opportunity at the movies.

One interesting thing during my showing was that, near the end of the runtime, I heard a baby cry; I look back and wouldn't you know it, some family brought a literal baby to a rated R film. To the people who did that, you are bad parents.

Bob returns as Hutch, who is now working for The Barber (Colin Salmon), a mysterious man who runs a mysterious business procuring mysterious things, trying to pay off his debts after the events of the first film. He's told he should be "done by spring," or something like that, but if the original was about a man trying to escape his past, this one is all about how that's impossible. Some character development...

Hutch's wife Becca (Connie Nielsen) is frustrated with how little he's around, out working by the time she wakes up and still out come dinner time. And Hutch, well, he's aware that he's not really "present" to his kids when his son Brady (Gage Munroe) has a black eye from an altercation at school. He tells The Barber he needs a break, a vacation if you will, so he takes his nuclear family to Plummerville, a scrubby amusement park/tourist trap that his dad (Christopher Lloyd) took him to when he was young. Cue "Holiday Road-" wait, that only plays during the trailers? Come on!

Problems arise almost immediately when Hutch rubs the local sheriff Abel (Colin Hanks) the wrong way at a hot dog place, but things really heat up when Brady punches another teenager at an arcade. Why? Because he took his sister Sammy's (Paisley Cadorath) stuffed animal and ripped it in half. The family is kicked out of the building, and just as they're leaving, an employee hits Sammy in the back of the head- well, more of a flick, but you get the idea. And, because this is a movie about an assassin on sabbatical, instead of talking to the manager, the police or, you know, just getting the hell out of town, he beats up a bunch of goons inside. Until the cops show up, and we find out that Abel might be the sheriff, but that the town is really run by Wyatt (John Ortiz), owner of the theme park. And that the kid who Brady hit was his son. What a twist, I know.

This is where I thought to myself "OK, the story's established, let's get the plot out of the way," but then the film's like "wait, there's more!" Wyatt might "run" the town, but Abel feels he really should (I don't think either cops or business men should, but I digress). And fine sure, a bit of tension between the two villains is fine I guess, let's move on. But Derek Kolstad and Aaron Rabin's pompous script's like "no no wait, you'll love this too;" Plummerville is actually a bootleggers town, and working its way though right at this moment is a shipment of MacGuffins for Ledina (Sharon Stone), a ruthless supervillain of sorts who Wyatt owes his own debt to. It is all very complicated, very silly and very unexciting.

Due to plot Wyatt and Hutch team up and booby-trap the amusement park, much like the office in the first movie, but aside from a few neat touches like having a ride fall onto nameless thugs, there isn't really all that done with the environment; most baddies are dispatched by gunshots or explosions, leaving this location as just window dressing for the very same, very old thing.

The casting of Sharon Stone is inspired, and Odenkirk imbues the right amount of weariness into his reprised role, but the magic is gone with round two; the filmmakers try to recapture lightning in a bottle with an opened soda can.

The Pickup Review

"The Pickup" has a talented cast (Eddie Murphy, Eva Longoria, etc.,), a novel plot (guards in an armored vehicle are taken hostage to rob a casino) and action scenes that are refreshingly free of obvious CGI, only to go absolutely nowhere.

Murphy stars as Russell, a veteran armored vehicle guard who is just months away from retiring; he wants to start a bed and breakfast with his wife (a wasted Longoria), and wouldn't ya know it, today is their wedding anniversary. He makes his wife promise she won't be late to their dinner reservations, before he sets off for a day on the job. Unfortunately, he's stuck with the annoying new guy Travis (played by the annoying Pete Davidson), who is gloating about a random hookup he had with a beautiful girl he just met. He actually thought she was robbing the bank he met her at, pulling his gun on her and everything; everyone has worked with an idiot like this, and for the entire runtime I wish he'd just shut up, but I digress.

Russell is also vexed about the route he has today, which takes them through the middle of nowhere in a dead zone (where their radios won't work), as he needs to get back in time for dinner. I know I know, how riveting a plot this is.

And wouldn't you know it, the moment they hit this dead zone, a pair of large SUVs pull up from behind, and a masked figure appears. "Pull over and you won't be hurt," reads a sign the person holds, but if they did that there wouldn't be much of a movie, so instead we get an action scene where they try and get the armored van to stop. The veteran and rookie somehow manage to crash both pursuing cars, but just as they begin patting themselves on the back, one of the crooks manages to sneak onto the back, get inside, and thanks to a gun, brings the armored truck to a stop.

The villain pulls off their helmet and, in something that can only happen in the movies, it turns out to be Zoe, the girl he just slept with the other day. She's played by Keke Palmer, and while she might be great as the straight man in a comedy duo, she simply isn't menacing enough to be taken seriously as the baddie; she just looks too friendly. And not in the "outwardly nice but internally crazy" Gary Busey way- she looks like a dentist or something. But a slight miscast is the least of the problems here.

Her plan is to use their vehicle to make a pickup from a casino, and drive off into the sunset. She gets the sixty million, and they get to walk away with their lives, or so she says, but honestly, who cares? This is Murphy's first action comedy since 2002's "Showtime" that isn't based on an existing property, but he looks absolutely miserable, like someone just sucked all the funny out of him. He might get top billing, but it's Davidson who drives the plot; it's because of him that their characters are in this mess, and he just whines and complains and he just... won't shut up.

And it's a shame because the special effects are handled with surprising finesse, with what looks like actual vehicles driving on actual roads, with actual people hanging off the back door.

"The Pickup" was directed by Tim Story, who brought us the dreadful "Shaft" in 2019 and the equally unpleasant "Tom & Jerry" in 2021, and while there isn't a scene here that hasn't been done before, and done better, I would most certainly watch this over the other two. Faint praise I know, but praise nonetheless.

The Naked Gun Review

Rebooting "The Naked Gun" was always going to be a longshot, since the original three films were so perfectly dumb that revisiting it always carried the risk of ruining it, and for three reasons: A) , any "new" movie would always be compared to the earlier ones 2) it's a comedy, and comedy is completely subjective and D) these flicks are relentlessly, aggressively, overwhelming stupid. And I'm happy to report that 2025's "The Naked Gun" is too.

Liam Neeson takes on the role of lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr., son of lieutenant Frank Drebin senior, I guess, first played by Leslie Nielsen, and that's the films best joke- it's second best is how it never acknowledges it. The third is when junior disarms a robber with a finger gun, and so on. To review a film like this, listing out the jokes is pretty much all you can do.

The plot, if you can call it one, finds Frank hot on the trail of Richard Cane, played by Danny Huston, a rich tech mogul who wants to use some device (literally named p.l.o.t. device) to brainwash the entire world to their most primal instincts, essentially resetting humanity. Why? I'm assuming he has some kind of fantasy of being Tarzan or something, but the story in "The Naked Gun" doesn't matter; in fact as of the time of this review, it's Wikipedia page doesn't even have a "plot" section. Maybe that's really the third best joke? I dunno it's a toss up (I really like the finger gun bit).

Pamela Anderson stars as Beth Davenport, who's brother was found dead early on in the breezy runtime. She's convinced it's somehow related to Cane, and pairs up with Frank on solving the mystery. Of course, the real mystery is how it took until now for Hollywood to realize just how funny Anderson is at this sort of stuff. She makes for a great modernization of the Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley) character from the first three films. It takes a lot of courage and confidence to walk so blindly into a pole all in the name of laughs.

I read on the always-trusty interwebs that Ed Helms was originally tasked with playing the bumbling lieutenant Frank Drebin in an earleir, aborted effort at remaking the property. That would have been terrible, not because Mr. Helms is a bad guy, not that I've ever met him, just because he is no Leslie Nielsen.

Now Liam Neeson? That's about as close as you can get. And hes just great. He recites the most idiotic dialogue, fights the most ridiculous fights and does the most unbelievable things constantly, all while remaining his usual stoic self. He doesn't wink at the camera, let his lip curl even just a bit, as if he knows this is all a farce, and it's his commitment that sells the stupidity.

And boy is it stupid. The film is shockingly stupid, filled with all the puns, background gags and slapstick of the original trilogy, and while it loses some steam towards the end by leaning a bit too heavily on the slapstick, I laughed at lot, out loud and loudly. And if I wished I laughed more, that's only because I was growing restless waiting to laugh again, and then I would. Considering this genre essentially died with the third "Austin Powers" over two decades ago, the world of cinema is better for it. Now all that's left is to wait for "The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear Part 2½: The Fear of Smell."

I Know What You Did Last Summer Review

The early 90's were not kind to the slasher genre, which sputtered out in an anticlimax until 1996's "Scream" took the world by storm, and left millions of young-adult horror fans for something else to sink their, ahem, knifes into. Enter 1997's "I Know What You Did Last Summer," based on the 1973 book by Lois Duncan, which spawned its own series of sequels and knockoffs. Then the genre died out, again, until I'd say 2018's "Halloween," and soon cinemas were flooded with remakes, reboots and legacy sequels; at least the 1990's boon were fresh, I guess.

I've never read Lois' book, or seen any of the subsequent three films, for that matter, so what irony that this totally-a-sequel-totally-not-a-remake, annoyingly also titled "I Know What You Did Last Summer," works as entertainment more so than the most recent entry in the property that inspired it, "Scream VI." Don't get me wrong, "IKWYDLS" is objectively a pretty lousy flick, filled with conveniences, red herrings, characters doing things only dumb horror movie characters would do and to top of it all off, a talky villain. Or should I say villains? Ha, I'll never tell.

Yet I found myself caught up in some of its twists, which are ludicrous and often illogical and I am ashamed I couldn't spot them ahead of time. I didn't, and so I sat in my comfy reclining leather-like chair smiling that the film got me. How could I not see it coming? I can't dive into spoiler-territory, but I can at least proudly proclaim that I did correctly guess 25% of the ending. Suppose that's something.

Still, that doesn't mean this is worth seeing: despite being a slasher film, it contains very little in the way of actual onscreen bloodshed, and just two sex scenes. With no nudity! What does a person need to do to see a breast!? I know that I'm not being too classy here, but this is the territory this movie occupies and it does not succeed in giving its depraved audience the sinful abandon it so wants in a picture like this.

Oh yes the plot, I had almost forgotten: one fourth of July night, a group of friends inadvertently and drunkenly cause a car accident while trying to watch some fireworks off on some narrow mountain road. With the driver barely alive and clinging on for life inside, the party tries to stop the truck from falling down the watery cliff below, but are unsuccessful. Now in full-panic mode, each of them spits out a different idea of what to do once the cops are called; do they drive away? Head to the police station? Go and check on the driver of the vehicle? And before you cry out that this is exactly how the original played out, this time they were not only drinking, but also smoking pot. So totally modern. And then, one year later, one of them opens a note with the words "I Know What You Did Last Summer," and then the bodies start piling up. Sigh, to be in my twenties again...

The friends are played by Madelyn Cline (Danica), Chase Sui Wonders (Ava), Jonah Hauer-King (Milo), Tyriq Withers (Teddy) and Sarah Pidgeon (Stevie), and they are as stereotypical a band of mad-slasher movie cliches as you can get. Danica is ditsy, Stevie is a bit of an outcast, Ava is internally distraught but tough and Teddy is a meathead- yawn. Oh right, Milo, he's, uh, forgettable?

But the performances are all quite good and their dialogue is occasionally smart, sometimes riffing on the silliness of the entire production of it all (a throwaway line about Scooby-Doo had me laughing loudly), but my gosh these people are idiots. When they're not in a situation they should be using their cell phone to call someone, they're splitting up by themselves in a place they shouldn't be in. And then "boo," the shadowy figure in a slicker with a hook comes along, swings it a few times, either killing one off or trying to. You might be wondering "where are the police," and that's a great question. See, Teddy's dad has the whole force on his payroll, since he breathed new life into the town after the events of the first movie, so they beat around the bush and try to brush all this off. Didn't think we'd be ripping off "Jaws" in a slasher film, but here we are.

And also in case you were wondering, the lug head's daddy is also how, despite the proliferation of phones, cameras and cars with GPS tracking, that a pickup could go flying into the ocean and no one know who did it. And they say the rich don't have problems of their own.

I should mention that some familiar faces reappear here in extended cameos, but I won't go any further to risk spoiling the fun, because that's what this new "I Know What You Did Last Summer" is: it's fun. It had me nostalgic for a series I've never seen, as if my mind wanted to escape back to autumn 1997 instead of realizing how close we are to 2027.