Swinton implied that she’s ready for a break in her career, but that break won’t be coming too soon since The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that she’s been signed to star in a new thriller titled Death in Her Hands. The film is an adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh’s cult novel. It will be written and directed by David Lowery for the company See-Saw Films with a group of producers that will include Iain Canning, Emile Sherman and Jeanie Igoe. Additionally, Simon Gillis and Ann Phillips are on board as executive producers on the project.

Per THR the story is “an anarchic whodunnit, an otherworldly psychological thriller and a striking portrait of a woman striving to take control of her own story.” Swinton is set to portray Vesta Gul, “a recently widowed woman who comes across a chilling handwritten note while walking in the woods near her home. It reads: ‘Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body.’ Unable to find a body or blood, Vesta becomes obsessed with finding the truth about Magda’s fate.”

Writer/director Lowery expressed his excitement in a statement, “I am a devoted fan of Ottessa Moshfegh, and the opportunity to translate Death In Her Hands to the big screen has been, in some ways, a subterfuge for getting to spend a great deal of time obsessing over her prose. But now the ruse is up. The script begot by the novel will soon become a film, and I am suddenly aware more than ever that adapting this particular work represents a devious challenge — anyone who’s read the novel will understand why. But I’m ready for it, and am emboldened to have such wonderful collaborators at my side: the whole team at See-Saw, Jeanie and of course, the incredible Tilda Swinton, who I know will illuminate Ottessa’s story in ways I could only dream of.”

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Over Your Dead Body is based on director Tommy Wirkola’s 2021 Norwegian thriller, I Onde Dager, which starred Noomi Rapace and Aksel Hennie. The screenplay by Wirkola, John Niven, and Nick Ball has been reworked by Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney. The original film had the following synopsis: Eager to end their marriage by murdering each other, a husband and wife head to a remote cabin — but soon find themselves facing an even bigger threat. Deadline said the remake will follow a dysfunctional couple (Segel and Weaving) who head to a remote cabin to “reconnect”, but each has secret intentions to kill the other.

XYZ is financing and producing the new film with 87North’s Kelly McCormick, Lee Kim, and Guy Danella. Taccone and Wirkola serve as executive producers alongside Jørgen Storm Rosenberg and Kjetil Omberg, who produced the original film for 74 Entertainment. Actress Karen Gillan, who happens to be married to writer Nick Kocher, is co-producing.

Here’s part of the press release:

“Jorma Taccone stands as one of the most creative and reliably brilliant voices in comedy and we are delighted to collaborate with him and our friends at 87North, XYZ, and Resolute Films on OVER YOUR DEAD BODY,” said Head of IFC Entertainment Group Scott Shooman. “The film is a dark, twisted, and riotous action comedy, with a killer cast – a perfect recipe to delight audiences on the big screen.”

Said director Jorma Taccone, “I am THRILLED to have Independent Film Company as a partner on releasing OVER YOUR DEAD BODY. I am equally pumped to have audiences watch this movie in real live theaters and love that IFC understands how important it is for a movie this kick ass and full of twists to have a real theatrical release. If I have a third child, I’m probably going to name it IFC!”

Wirkola, who previously worked with 87North when he directed the Santa Claus action movie Violent Night, provided the following statement: “I can’t wait to see Jorma bring his totally singular sensibility to the material. That, combined with this killer cast, makes me beyond excited that this film will truly stand out in the cinematic landscape.“

Taccone added, “I’m a huge fan of Tommy’s work and I love the original film. I have a totally singular sensibility, and I can’t wait to see what I bring to the material.“

What do you think of Jorma Taccone, Jason Segel, Samara Weaving, Timothy Olyphant, Juliette Lewis, Paul Guilfoyle, and Keith Jardine teaming up to bring us a remake of Tommy Wirkola’s I Onde Dager, a.k.a. The Trip? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.

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F.A.S.T. marks Richardson’s feature directorial debut, which David Heyman and Jeffrey Clifford of Heyday Films will produce, with Taylor Sheridan and Jenny Wood of Bosque Ranch Productions negotiating to join the effort.

“The breadth of Taylor Sheridan’s body of work is simply astounding and unparalleled in sheer excellence and consistent quality and we could not be more honored to be making this film with him,” Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group’s Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy said in a statement. “With the hugely talent director Ben Richardson behind the camera and the exceptional producing talents of Heyday Films and Bosque Ranch, we are thrilled to have such an incredible creative team bringing F.A.S.T. to the big screen.”

The Hollywood Reporter says F.A.S.T. revolves around a “former special forces commando, down on his luck after he returns Stateside, who is tapped by the DEA to lead a black op strike team against CIA-protected drug dealers in his town.”

THR says Sheridan wrote the F.A.S.T. screenplay in the mid-2010s when his bread and butter were scripting movies like Sicario, Hell or High Water, and Wind River. At first, Sheridan wanted to direct F.A.S.T. at Warners with Chris Pratt (Jurassic World, The Electric State, The Garfield Movie) in the lead role. Gavin O’Connor boarded the project to direct in 2019. Still, ownership of the studio exchanged hands, with new brass not seeing dollar signs in the concept with a $60 million to $70 million price tag for production. With the studio unwilling to foot the bill and the project costing too much money for a streamer, F.A.S.T. fell into production limbo.

Fast-forward to today when Taylor Sheridan is the backbone of Paramount+, and the thought of bringing F.A.S.T. to theaters is music to the executive’s ears. Granted, a budget still needs to be set, but they’ll figure it out.

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Panos Cosmatos directs The Flesh of the Gods from a screenplay by Se7en scribe Andrew Kevin Walker, based on a story by Cosmatos and Walker. Adam McKay joins the project as a producer alongside Betsy Koch of Hyperobject Industries and Gena Konstantinakos and Isaac for Mad Gene Media. The Flesh of the Gods heads to Cannes this week, though a production start date is unknown. The film’s significant star power makes scheduling difficult, though the stars should align at some point.

Elizabeth Olsen recently completed work on the David Freyne-directed comedic romance Eternity, starring Miles Teller, Callum Turner, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and John Early. In Eternity, everybody gets one week to choose where to spend eternity after death. For Joan, Larry, and Luke, it’s a question of who to spend it with. In addition to the upcoming conspiracy thriller from Sam Esmail, Panic Carefully, starring Olsen, Julia Roberts, Eddie Redmayne, and Brian Tyree Henry, Olsen is hard at work shooting the Seven Sisters TV series. In Seven Sisters, a tight-knit family begins to unravel when a sister starts communicating with a voice no one else can hear. Seven Sisters stars Cristin Milioti, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Edwards, Meredith Hagner, Odessa Young, Ryan Eggold, J Smith-Cmaeron, Phillip Ettinger, Zoe Winters, Bridget Brown, and Carolyn Kettig.

Did you see Panmatos’s Mandy? That movie is a head trip and a half. I’m excited to see what he’ll do with the ’80s party scene with vampires owning the night. Are you intrigued by Elizabeth Olsen joining the cast of Flesh of the Gods? Let us know in the comments section below.

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The Dog Stars hails from 20th Century Studios and is based on the 2012 novel by Peter Heller (Burn, The River, The Painter, The Last Ranger). Initially, Scott was reteaming with Gladiator II star Paul Mescal for The Dog Stars, but scheduling conflicts with his part in Sam Mendes’s Beatles anthology kept him from participating. Mescal plays Paul McCartney in Mendes’s upcoming Beatles film series, making him essential to the project. Mark L. Smith, who wrote The Revenant and the Netflix mini-series American Primeval, is partnering with Christopher Wilkinson (Ali, Nixon, Birth of the Dragon) to pen the screenplay.

Here’s the official synopsis for Heller’s novel:

“Hig’s wife is gone, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a mercurial, gun-toting misanthrope named Bangley. But when a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists outside their tightly controlled perimeter. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return and follows its static-broken trail, only to find something that is both better and worse than anything he could ever hope for.”

Most know Benedict Wong as Wong, Master of the Mystic Arts, leader and former librarian of Karmar-Taj. Still, Benedict Wong is a spectacular presence in many film and television projects like Annihilation, The Three-Body Problem, Deadly Class (gone too soon), The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, and more. Wong’s next theatrical outing is for Zach Cregger’s anticipated horror mystery film Weapons. In Cregger’s follow-up to Barbarian, all but one child from the same class mysteriously vanishes on the same night at exactly the same time, and a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance.

On a scale of one to ten, what is your hype level for The Dog Stars? Let us know in the comments section below.

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The Bookie & the Bruiser finds Vaughn reuniting with S. Craig Zahler, who directed the actor’s Brawl in Cell Block 99 and Dragged Across Concrete. Like the films above, Zahler will write and direct The Bookie & the Bruiser with Academy Award-winner Anthony Katagas (12 Years a Slave, Ad Astra, Adrian Lyne’s Deep Water) producing via Keep Your Head Productions alongside Dave Caplan (Longlegs, The Monkey).

The Bookie & the Bruiser is set in 1959 New York City and features a pensive, Jewish fellow named Rivner (James) and an oversized Italian American tough named Boscolo (Vaughn). Having served in World War II, the two return as changed men, no longer fitting into their old lives. Unwilling to take orders or play by the rules of polite society, the two partner up as a bookmaker and his enforcer and run an illicit gambling operation that proves highly profitable—but dangerous. Their operation thrives until they’re caught in a violent power struggle between the Mafia and an Irish gang, forcing them into a violent fight for survival.

Theo James, who played Four in the Divergent film series, recently starred in Osgood Perkins’s adaptation of The Monkey, based on a short story by Stephen King. The darkly comedic splatter horror film was a hit with fans of the genre, grossing $68.7M worldwide. James recently wrapped production on Fuze, an action thriller directed by David Mackenzie. Fuze tells the story of an unexploded WWII bomb discovered on a busy construction site in the center of London. Chaos ensues as the military and police begin a mass evacuation against a ticking clock.

In addition to his acting work, Vince Vaughn produced Carlyle Eubank’s Broke, which starred Wyatt Russell (Thunderbolts*) and Dennis Quaid (The Substance, Running Man). In Broke, True Brandywine (Russell), a struggling rodeo rider, gets trapped in a blizzard and must confront his life choices while battling the elements for survival. We have an exclusive interview with Russell and Quaid about their new film on the site.

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In Echo Valley, Moore plays Kate Garrett, a woman recovering from a personal tragedy while boarding and training horses at Echo Valley Farm, twenty-two remote, Bob Ross painting-worthy acres in Southeastern Pennsylvania. In the middle of the night, Kate’s recalcitrant daughter, Claire (Sweeney), is covered in blood at her doorstep beside herself. As an unexpected guest shatters Kate’s quiet recovery, things quickly spiral out of control.

Scott Free’s Ridley Scott produces Echo Valley, and Michael Pruss, Ingelsby, and Kevin Walsh produce through The Walsh Company. Pruss and Ingelsby collaborated on the script, creating a twisty thriller fueled by familial blood and self-sacrifice. Scott Greenberg, Scott Free’s Rebecca Feuer, and Nicole Jordan-Webber executive produce. Erika Olde and Sam Roseme will also executive produce courtesy of Black Bicycle Entertainment, with Tanja Tawadjoh co-producing.

In today’s Echo Valley trailer, Claire (Sydney Sweeney) appears on her mother, Kate’s, doorstep, covered in someone else’s blood and confused about her next steps. The truth is too terrible to face alone, so Kate leaps to help cover her daughter’s tracks. After convincing herself all is well, an opportunistic sleazeball comes knocking and threatens to expose the truth about Kate’s cover-up. As the situation intensifies, Kate and Claire must decide if killing again is the answer or if admitting the truth is the way to free them from an unthinkable dilemma.

Echo Valley is Ingelsby’s fourth project with Scott Free after Out of the Furnace (2013), American Woman (2015), and 2019’s Our Friend. There should be plenty of buzz for Echo Valley after the success of Mare of Easttown, starring Kate Winslet, Julianne Nicholson, Jean Smart, Angourie Rice, John Douglas Thompson, Joe Tippett, and more. Presented in a seven-episode format, Mare of Easttown was all anyone could discuss when the series aired in 2021. I’m optimistic fans are looking forward to seeing what Ingelsby has been up to since the series ended.

Echo Valley comes to Apple TV+ on June 13, 2025.

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THE STORY: A mad IRA bomber (Tommy Lee Jones) escapes prison and travels to Boston, where he stalks his former protégé (Jeff Bridges) who now has a new identity and is a member of the police bomb squad.

THE PLAYERS: Director: Stephen Hopkins (Predator 2, Judgment Night, The Ghost & The Darkness, Lost in Space, TV’s 24). Writers: John Rice, Joe Batteer, and Jay Roach (yes, THAT Jay Roach). Starring: Jeff Bridges, Tommy Lee Jones, Lloyd Bridges, Forest Whitaker, and Suzy Amis (Titanic). Score by Alan Silverstri (The Avengers).

THE HISTORY: Blown Away was supposed to be the sleeper hit of 1994. It had all the ingredients. Tommy Lee Jones had just won the Oscar for playing U.S Marshal Samuel Gerard in The Fugitive, and this would be his first full-on bad guy part since Under Siege, which was an unlikely megahit towards the end of 1992. It also had Jeff Bridges in full-on action hero mode for the first time in his career. While Bridges is now regarded as a beloved character actor, twenty years ago he was more of a heartthrob, but for the most part, he avoided big action parts. This was primed to be the movie that would make him a Harrison Ford-style hero.

“My character is changed by his experiences of colonialism, racism and imperialism….But when I started using those terms; I emptied the room right quick. That language wasn’t popular with the writers or the producers. Instead, (my character’s) motivations were left purposely vague and ambivalent.” – Tommy Lee Jones

At the time, movies about bombs were curiously in vogue. Opening on July 1st, 1994, Blown Away was the second of three movies about bomb-makers/the bomb squad, sandwiched between Speed and The Specialist. If anything, Speed was to blame for Blown Away’s middling performance at the box office. You see, no one expected Speed to become a hit. Keanu Reeves was strictly B-list at the time, no one had heard of Sandra Bullock, and it was director Jan De Bont’s first movie. In fact, the biggest star in the cast, at the time, was Dennis Hopper. No one expected much from it, while Blown Away seen as a potential summer blockbuster.

When Speed opened to boffo box office and largely excellent reviews, Blown Away was all but doomed. Opening just a few weeks later, critics savaged it, mocking Tommy Lee Jones’s attempt at an Irish accent and complaining that the carnage was nowhere near as inventive as it was in Speed, which – to be fair – it’s not. Rubbing a little salt in the wound for Bridges was the fact that he was originally courted to play Reeves’s part in Speed (as per the IMDB). In the end, Blown Away eked out about $30 million at the box office, well below the $50 million budget. It didn’t help that it had to compete with The Lion King, and later True Lies and Forrest Gump, all which went on to make hundreds of millions. Worst of all, in week four, Speed still managed to top it over opening weekend (as did the now obscure Alec Baldwin superhero flick, The Shadow).

WHY IT’S GREAT: I’m not going to make a case for Blown Away being a classic. In fact, in the pantheon of action flicks released in 1994, it’s not even close to being the best, with Speed, True Lies and even Clear and Present Danger all cleaning its clock. I saw this theatrically with my folks opening weekend in 1994, and as a twelve-year-old, I liked it well enough, but it’s only been in recent years that I really started to appreciate it. The reason for this is simple – action movies have gotten horrible. What was initially only a mediocre nineties action flick now seems like a kind of mini-masterpiece, given how low the bar has been set. If Blown Away was released now, people would be tripping all over themselves raving about how stripped-down and raw it is (although a scene where a dog is murdered would have never made it passed test audiences).

While readers who remember seeing Blown Away when it was new will probably think I’m way off-base celebrating it, I honestly believe that our younger readers, who know Bridges most for his grizzled character roles in movies like True Grit, will get a big kick out of seeing him in action hero mode. Lean and handsome, even if he was in his mid-forties when this was made, Bridges did indeed make for a likable hero, with his Jimmy Dove being a solidly complex action hero for the time. He feels like an everyman, lacking the burliness of most action stars of the era.

The hero/antagonist relationship is deeper than usual, with it established that Dove was once the protégé of Jones’s Ryan Gaerity and in love with his sister – only to have betrayed him once he got wind of the fact that a bombing Gaerity was planning was designed to inflict maximum collateral damage. While he helped foil this attack, Gaerity wound up in jail, with his sister dead, while Dove high-tailed it to Boston and started a new life with the help of his Irish cop uncle (Lloyd Bridges – Jeff’s real-life dad – superb in a juicy character part).

“I loved acting with my dad, Lloyd Bridges, in Blown Away. He enjoyed the process so much. His joy was contagious. Everyone had more fun and took their work up a notch when he was on set. – Jeff Bridges

If the movie has any failings it’s that buddy-cop angle with Forest Whitaker’s hot-shot rookie also feels artificially antagonistic at first; although a scene where they work together to diffuse a bomb in Forrest’s earphones is top-notch. That said, the conflict between the two does drive home the fact that Bridges’s Dove is markedly different from most action heroes of the era, being more of a responsible type desperate to avoid any loss of life at all – making him feel more like a real cop. I also like the low-key romance with Suzy Amis, with them marrying early in the film and her and her daughter being jeopardized in the big chase finale. Sure, it’s a cliché, but it works.

Director Stephen Hopkins does a solid job orchestrating the action. Always an underrated action director, Blown Away was one of several good movies he made during this era. Predator 2, while lacking the bigger-than-life aspect of the original, was a fine B-movie, while Judgment Night was a slick thriller (with a great soundtrack). His next movie after Blown Away, The Ghost & The Darkness, was probably his best, although sadly it never quite found the audience it deserved – a fate shared by many of his movies. Hopkins has a knack for pulling off impressive shots, such as a really cool one where Bridges observes an explosion that claims the life of his Bomb Squad colleagues from the balcony of his hotel room, and another where he allows a “Bouncing Betty” to explode during his mano-a-mano showdown with Jones.

The score by Alan Silvestri is a little too bombastic for my tastes (although I typically really like his work from this era), but Hopkins manages to incorporate some classic U2 tracks that underscore the Irish aspect of the plot, even though Bono and the boys were probably shocked by Jones’s accent—which I’ll admit is not good.

SEE IT: Blown Away is widely available on DVD (it was one of the first films released in that format), 4K Blu-ray, iTunes, streaming and more.

PARTING SHOT: Again, Blown Away isn’t some kind of unheralded action classic. But, it is a superior thriller with a terrific performance by Jeff Bridges in an atypical part for him. While it may have paled alongside Speed or True Lies in 1994, twenty-two years and hundreds of subpar action movies make it seem far better now than it did then. As such, it holds up well and is a obscure little film well-worth checking out.

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Assassins assemble! I hope you’ve said your prayers and left cookies out for the Baba Yaga. The latest poster for Lionsgate‘s John Wick spinoff, Ballerina, is gathering a murderers’ row of murderers for new promo art that pops with attitude and steely reserve.

The new print features Ana de Armas’s Eve with a gun primed and ready while stars like Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane, Norman Reedus, Angelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, the late and great Lance Reddick, and more flank her on all sides. The new Ballerina poster continues using a purple and pink aesthetic that gives “at the club” vibes with denizens of the Slovic mythology overtones.

Taking place during the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, Ballerina follows Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas) who is beginning her training in the assassin traditions of the Ruska Roma. As Eve’s story unfolds, she uses her marksmanship, cunning, and hand-to-hand combat skills to rip through a sect of the assassin order that destroyed an aspect of her life. There’s no holding back, and no amount of finely-fitted Kevlar will save you.

Ana de Armas leads Ballerina, with Anjelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne, Lance Reddick, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Norman Reedus, Anne Parillaud, David Castañeda, Abraham Popoola, Ian McShane, and Keanu Reeves rounding out the cast

We’ve previously heard that de Armas was quite excited to work with Keanu Reeves, and his appearance came at the perfect time during the production “We’ve been in Prague filming for four months. We still have one more month to go. And I’m in pain,” she explained. “You know, my body, my back, everything hurts. I’m complaining, I’m sore, I’m bruised. Bond was fifteen minutes. This is a whole movie, another level. But the other day, Keanu and I were rehearsing our very difficult stunt scene, and this man is just rolling and throwing me and doing crazy stunts. And I’m like — I can’t complain anymore. Because he is doing it! He truly is the best.”

What do you think about today’s new Ballerina poster? Are you excited for the film to pack a punch in theaters on June 6, 2025? Let us know in the comments section below.

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In 1996, David Cronenberg introduced audiences to Crash, a psychological drama about a car crash victim who finds himself turned on by car accidents and becomes involved in a sub-culture of like-minded souls. It’s a terrifying premise, and today, filmmaker Jason Buxton gives us another car accident-obsessed individual in the trailer and poster for Sharp Corner, an upcoming thriller starring Ben Foster (Hell or High Water, The Messenger) and Cobie Smulders (The Avengers, How I Met Your Mother).

Jason Buxton directs and writes Sharp Corner. It follows Josh McCall(Ben Foster), a troubled man increasingly consumed by the fatal car crashes in front of his house. As Josh’s obsession takes hold, he begins to spiral, placing his wife, Rachel Davis-McCall (Cobie Smulders), and son, Max (William Kosovic), in jeopardy and setting in motion a series of events that threaten to break the family apart permanently.

In Vertical‘s Sharp Corner trailer, Josh witnesses a fatal car crash. As he watches the light leave the driver’s eyes, he becomes transfixed, forming a deep and personal connection to the deceased. As time passes, more accidents occur, signaling a dangerous pattern of car crashes and near-misses in front of the McCall family’s new home. Is the sharp corner to blame, or is Josh deliberately placing people in harm’s way to recreate the rush he felt from watching someone die? Maybe not. Maybe next time, he could save a life. He won’t know unless there are more accidents and more victims of his twisted fantasies. Will Josh go too far to complete his disturbing mental Bingo card of tragedy?

Paul Barkin, Marc Tereault, Jason Levangie, and Jason Buxton produce Sharp Corner, with Gavin Drea starring as Erikson alongside Ben Foster and Cobie Smulders.

Any car accident victim knows how traumatic they can be. The loss of control and feeling of hopelessness stays with you, a permanent scar on your mind, reminding you to be more aware as you travel. Imagine if someone manipulated the road, hoping to throw you off course. What kind of person could be so cruel? We’ll find out when Sharp Corner drives into select theaters and onto VOD on May 9, 2025.

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Some could say it’s too early in the day for a drink, but it’s the right time somewhere. Today, Lionsgate is clinking glasses with Marc Webb’s upcoming crime thriller Day Drinker by introducing a first look at Johnny Depp’s character in the film. Production for Day Drinker is underway, with Johnny Depp and Penélope Cruz reteaming for the fourth time.

Lionsgate’s image of Johnny Depp for Day Drinker presents the iconic actor in a way you might not expect. In the picture, a bearded Johnny Depp leans against a bartop while holding a chilled beverage. Depp’s character has piercing blue eyes, an undershirt to match, and a navy-colored vest that gives him a distinguished look. Depp’s beard and long hair appear gray with age, though he wears it exceptionally well.

According to Lionsgate’s official description, Day Drinker tells the story of a private yacht bartender (Madelyn Cline) who encounters a mysterious onboard guest (Johnny Depp). They soon find themselves entangled with a criminal figure (Penélope Cruz) and connected in ways no one saw coming.

In addition to Depp, Cruz, and Cline, Lionsgate adds four to Day Drinker with  Manu Ríos, Arón Piper, Juan Diego Botto, and Anika Boyle. The film, which begins production in Spain, is produced by Thunder Road’s Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee, who produce the John Wick franchise for Lionsgate, Adam Kolbrenner, producer of The Tomorrow War, Free Guy, and Prisoners, and Zach Dean, who also wrote the original screenplay. Apple TV+/Skydance recently released Kolbrenner and Dean’s film The Gorge.

The film’s executive producers include Dan Friedkin, Micah Green, Daniel Steinman, Stephen Deuters, Jason Forman, Sam Sarkar, Marc Webb, Eric Sherman, Sarah Hong, Scott LaStaiti, Christopher Woodrow, Connor DiGregorio, and Adrián Guerra.

“I’m excited to be starting production with Johnny, Madelyn, Penélope, and this incredible cast,” said Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man, Snow White, Gifted). “We’re in a beautiful location with a fantastic crew and a thrilling, ferocious story to tell.  This is gonna be fun.”

What do you think about Johnny Depp’s look in Day Drinker? If you didn’t tell me it was Depp in the photo, I’d have difficulty picking him out. I recognize him around the eyes, but the salty mop and beard throw me off. Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

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Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, known to many as The Weeknd, brings his mind-bending thriller Hurry Up Tomorrow to theaters next month on May 16. If you watch the trailer, you’re aware the movie starring Tesfaye, Jenna Ortega (Wednesday, Scream), and Barry Keoghan (Saltburn, The Banshees of Inisherin) looks like a twisty mindf**k of epic proportion. Before the film causes audiences to question the contents of their popcorn, Lionsgate is ready to drop three Hurry Up Tomorrow character posters featuring Tesfaye (The Weeknd), Ortega (Anima), and Keoghan (Lee).

The upcoming musical thriller focuses on a musician plagued by insomnia pulled into an odyssey with a stranger who begins to unravel the very core of his existence. Trey Edward Shults (It Comes at Night, Waves, Krisha) directs Hurry Up Tomorrow from a screenplay he wrote with The Weeknd and Reza Fahim. The producers are Abel Tesfaye, Reza Fahim, Kevin Turen, and Harrison Kreiss.

Today’s Hurry Up Tomorrow character posters feature Abel Tesfaye, Ortega, and Keoghan, each lying on a cherry-red floor in various states of bewilderment. While Tesfaye looks like he’s in the midst of a bad trip, Ortega looks like she’s taken a few pills of ecstasy as she stares upward with clear eyes. Finally, it’s nap time for Keoghan as he catches a few winks before diving back into the rabbit hole.

According to Lionsgate, Hurry Up Tomorrow is “the culmination of The Weeknd’s trilogy of studio albums, following the blockbuster hits Dawn FM (2022) and After Hours (2020). This third album represents the creative apex of the project, serving as the final chapter crafted with existential and self-referential themes and accompanied by visionary teasers that have set fans ablaze with anticipation for this concluding installment.”

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Shults confirmed that Hurry Up Tomorrow is about “an artist, you could say, on the verge of a mental breakdown. He meets this woman, and they go on this odyssey together. It’s a mix of psychological thriller and drama. I honestly feel like I’ve never seen a movie quite like it.”

Check out the new Hurry Up Tomorrow character posters below:

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The latest from Blumhouse surprised me. Drop is one of those flicks that you step into and realize that you are having lots of fun with. It helps that filmmaker Christopher Landon has crafted a taut little thriller. And he also happened to bring in the right actors. Meghann Fahy and Brandon Sklenar are terrific as a couple on a first date. You have a fancy, top-floor restaurant with one hell of a view. Add to that a series of threatening “airdrops” that send our heroic leading lady on a mission to save her family. It’s an exciting movie that is perfect for a date night. You can check out Chris Bumbray’s take on this engaging surprise here.

Earlier this week, we spoke to the cast and filmmaker behind Drop. First up, we spoke with Christopher Landon about his latest. He talked about bringing this technologically driven cat-and-mouse game to the big screen. He also had high praise for his two leads. I’d have to agree with him on this; they were delightful. And finally, with the recent announcement that Happy Death Day 3 was finally happening, he spoke about the excitement from the fans.

When I walked in and sat down with Meghann and Brandon, they instantly made me feel welcome. And with the setup in the room designed to be like a dinner date, it was incredibly charming and comfortable. The first thing I brought up was Brandon’s lack of a tie in the film, and that conjured up a whole lot of face and fabric discussion. They talked about how nice it was to work with each other, as well as their movie waiter, Jeffrey Self. It was such a terrific chat; it put me in the mood to click on another viewing of Drop.

Drop opens today, only in theatres.

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Written and directed by John Rosman, the psychological thriller The Silence Game is currently filming in New Mexico, and Deadline informs us that the cast of the film includes Sarah Yarkin, Nicholas Cirillo, and Tony Cavalero. Details on the specific characters each of them are playing have not yet been revealed.

Genre fans may recognize Sarah Yarkin from Happy Death Day 2U and the 2022 Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Nicholas Cirillo’s credits include Outer Banks and The 4:30 Movie, and Tony Cavalero has been seen in the likes of The Righteous Gemstones and the School of Rock TV series.

The Silence Game is said to follow a disillusioned young man who, after following a mysterious woman into a camp of outsiders, falls under the influence of a charismatic leader preaching virtue in “The Silence Game,” an unnerving game with simple but terrifying rules. As the ideology takes a darker turn, he must grapple with its intoxicating philosophy before it spirals into something far more sinister.

The film is being produced by T. Justin Ross. Rosman made his feature directorial debut with the 2023 zombie horror movie New Life, which was acquired by Brainstorm Media and is currently streaming on Hulu. (You can read our 7/10 review at THIS LINK.) The movie told the story of “a deadly cat and mouse game in the Pacific Northwest”, with Sonya Walger (For All Mankind) taking on the role of Elsa, a brilliant ‘fixer’ assigned to capture a mysterious woman on the run. As the snare of the pursuit tightens, Elsa must fight her own secret battle with the deadly disease ALS to stay on top of the explosive case, before it reaches an apocalyptic endgame. As their two stories interlink, the stakes ratchet up, and their journeys uncover the deep truths of what it means to be alive. And that can only come through the power of acceptance and hope.

Are you glad to hear that John Rosman is teaming up with Sarah Yarkin, Nicholas Cirillo, and Tony Cavalero to bring The Silence Game to the screen? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.

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PLOT: A widowed mother (Meghann Fahy) goes on a date with a handsome stranger (Brandon Sklenar) she’s been chatting with on dating apps. While at dinner, she receives an escalating series of anonymous messages, with them soon revealing that they are holding her sister and son hostage and will kill them unless she poisons her date.

REVIEW: Christopher Landon’s Drop is a slam-bang thriller that absolutely brought the house down at SXSW (which is where I first saw it). A contained thriller in the vein of Wes Craven’s underrated Red Eye, Landon’s film hits all the right notes, giving him a solid, Hitchcock-flavored romp in the vein of his own Disturbia, that should be a big hit from Blumhouse when it comes out next month. 

Contained thrillers, where most of the action is limited to one locale, have become increasingly in vogue, but Landon’s movie feels less claustrophobic as he has a really neat location to work in. The movie is set at a sprawling high-class restaurant on the top of a skyscraper in downtown Chicago. This gives the director plenty of real estate to use, with excellent production design and a fun supporting cast of characters wandering in and out of the plot.

Tonally, the film hit just right with Landon doing a good job mixing suspense, a tiny bit of camp, and sudden, jarring jolts of hard-edged violence, with the movie rougher than expected for a PG-13 thriller. Notably, though, the movie also works nicely – and perhaps unexpectedly as a romance.

Drop is led by two breakout streaming stars, with Meghann Fahy having stolen The White Lotus Season 2, while Brandon Sklenar became an instant star thanks to his role in 1923. Fahy is relatable as Violet, a widow who’s dipping her toe back into the dating world. She has to overcome past trauma, with her dead former husband being horrifically abusive, while she also has a very young son she’s devoted to. Fahy is the kind of heroine who’s easy to invest in, and she looks stunning in the jaw-dropping dress she spends most of the film’s running time in. Sklenar plays Henry, a photographer who, in addition to his heartthrob looks, happens to be a sweet, easygoing guy; with him so thoughtful a date, he’s even brought her a gift to give to her young son. 

Fahy and Skelenar have such good chemistry that you really find yourself investing in the date aspect. While all of the audience’s focus would naturally go towards the thriller side of the plot, where Fahy has to somehow figure out a way to save her family, I was surprisingly caught up in the date itself. I wanted the two of them to somehow end up together. 

Drop really does hit all the right notes, especially in the final act, when it takes a bit of a detour into action territory, with a couple of nifty showdowns, and some hair-raising set pieces that put the main couple in danger. Landon really is an ace at movies like this, with the film also benefitting from a score by the terrific Bear McCreary. The film is so well done that it’s not hard to imagine it becoming a significant date night hit, although I do hope Blumhouse is able to resist doing a sequel, as a movie like this is better as a one-off. It’s certainly one of their best movies in a long time and the kind of tightly-paced, ninety-minute thriller we need more of. I had a blast. 

Drop (2025)

GREAT

8

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Earlier this year, JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray had the chance to watch Lurker, the boundary-pushing debut feature from writer/director Alex Russell, at the Sundance Film Festival. Describing the film as “a terrific blend of black comedy and psychological thriller” and “exactly the kind of movie I want to see when I hit Sundance,” Bumbray gave Lurker a 9/10 review that can be read at THIS LINK. Now, it has been announced that film distributor MUBI (which is also a streaming service and production company) is planning to give Lurker a North American theatrical release on August 22nd. Hopefully we’ll be seeing a trailer for this one very soon.

Here’s the official synopsis: When a twenty-something retail clerk encounters a rising pop star, he takes the opportunity to edge his way into the in-crowd. But as the line between friend and fan blurs beyond recognition, access and proximity become a matter of life and death. The directorial debut from The Bear and Beef writer-producer Alex Russell, Lurker is an exhilarating cat-and-mouse thriller made for the moment. Online fixation meets reality in this parasocial, paranoid film driven by a brilliant score and star-making performances.

The film stars Théodore Pellerin (Beau is Afraid), Archie Madekwe (Saltburn), Sunny Suljic (Mid90s), Havana Rose Liu (Hal & Harper), Zack Fox (Abbott Elementary), and Daniel Zolghadri (Eighth Grade).

Lurker was produced by Alex Orlovsky, Duncan Montgomery, Galen Core, Charlie McDowell, Jack Selby, Marc Marrie, Francesco Melzi d’Eril, Olmo Schnabel, and Archie Madekwe. Production companies include High Frequency Entertainment, MeMo, Arts & Sciences, TWIN Pictures, and Case Study Films.

MUBI was behind the release of The Substance (which also got a 9/10 review from Bumbray) last year, so now we wait to see if they’ll have a similar level of success with Lurker. Bumbray mentioned in this review that this is “the kind of movie that could readily crossover to a mainstream audience if handled appropriately.”

Does Lurker sound interesting to you? Does this seem like the sort of movie you’d like to check out on the big screen during its theatrical release? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

The post Lurker: MUBI to release black comedy psychological thriller in August appeared first on JoBlo.

PLOT: When his supervisors at the CIA refuse to take action after his wife is killed in a London terrorist attack, a decoder takes matters into his own hands.

REVIEW: I’m of the opinion that revenge is one of the best catalysts for a great action movie. John Wick, Kill Bill, or hell, even The Punisher are all stories of revenge that give a clear goal for both the protagonist and the audience. We want to see the bad guys get their comeuppance and the hero stand tall over them. Yet we’ve seen so many variations over the years that it can be tough to come up with a unique spin. But I’d say casting Academy Award Winner Rami Malek as your action lead is a good start in the unique department.

The Amateur follows CIA decoder, Heller (Malek), who loses his wife, Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan), in a terrorist attack in London. He wants nothing but revenge and for his wife’s killers to face justice. Unfortunately for him, the higher-ups in the CIA don’t agree with him, and he has to circumvent them in order to go on his revenge mission. There’s also an intriguing element of corruption, which may or may not have contributed to Sarah’s death. Was it random, or was Heller getting too close to something that he shouldn’t have? Heller uses his skills and translates them to the real world, proving he’s more capable than they ever realized.

Rami Malek is so easy to root for as Heller, and you can really feel his grief through the screen. The man just lives and breathes torment. They do a good job of not overwriting the character and making him “all knowing.” He’s just very prepared and thinks of situations from many angles. It never went too ludicrous. Same with the moments that he gets in on the action. It all feels very believable, with him even being bested by a woman. And it’s also easy to see where he’s coming from with his grief, as Rachel Brosnahan‘s Sarah is utterly captivating. She has little screen time, yet she makes the most of it. They have good chemistry, and it’s easy to see why Heller would be so lost without her.

Laurence Fishburne in any kind of mentor role just feels right, and his Henderson is just enough of a threat to make the cat-and-mouse pursuit fun. His respect for Heller makes him more interesting, as he feels like more than just a mindless assassin on his tale. Jon Bernthal shows up in a role that feels somewhat similar to Henderson, ironically named The Bear. But unlike Henderson, he’s not on the hunt for Heller, meaning he’s not very involved in the story. But his brief role brings a little bit of hope, as it shows that not everyone in the company is without morals. And it’s getting to the point where if Holt McCallany shows up, then I can assume he’s a bad guy.

One thing that will always bother me about this or any film is treating characters as fodder to move the story forward. It inadvertently makes Heller a bit of a bad guy, as his involvement is getting innocent people killed. I’d love to see them explore this more in a sequel, if we’re lucky enough to get one.

The action in The Amateur is handled really well, never betraying the idea that Heller isn’t some typical action star. He uses his brains and resourcefulness to get out of a situation, not brawn or physical superiority. Even the moments where it seems like they may be leaning in that direction, they instead bring back Heller’s “three steps ahead” approach. It makes for a very satisfying watch, even if one of the coolest deaths was spoiled in the trailers. They’re able to provide just enough mystery, but this still runs a track laid down by action films of the past.

I had an absolute blast with The Amateur, and I got a similar feeling as I did watching The Bourne Identity for the first time. The action genre has long needed someone who breaks from the standard mold, and Malek does just that. The “man behind the computer” is often a thankless role, so it’s satisfying to see someone in that position finally get more of a spotlight. The story is compelling and satisfying, and leaves room for more. I know I’m absolutely on board with this becoming a franchise. The Professional, anyone?

THE AMATEUR RELEASES TO THEATERS ON APRIL 11TH, 2025.

The Amateur

GREAT

8

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Jaume Collet-Serra directed the horror thriller The Woman in the Yard, which has pulled in just $17 million at the global box office since reaching theatres last month, but back in December he brought us the action thriller Carry On, which quickly became one of the most popular movies on the Netflix streaming service. There has been talk of a sequel – but before any Carry On follow-ups get rolling, Variety reports that Collet-Serra and Netflix will be working together on the dramatic psychological thriller An Innocent Girl.

Michael Mohan, the director of The Voyeurs and Immaculate, wrote the original screenplay for An Innocent Girl, and Marc Guggenheim, who created the DC Comics-inspired TV shows Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow, has since come in to handle revisions. The project has the following logline: When a young and ambitious woman is seduced by a high powered D.C. couple, she’s drawn into a dangerous world of sex, power and murder.

Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter, who worked with Guggenheim on those DC shows, are producing the film for Berlanti /Schechter Films. Guggenheim serves as an executive producer alongside Mike McGrath and Scott Greenberg.

Variety notes that, as of right now, Carry On is the second-most watched film of all time on Netflix with 172.1 million views and over 344.1 million hours streamed. So it makes sense that the streamer is interested in staying in the Jaume Collet-Serra business.

A couple of months ago, it was announced that Collet-Serra has also signed on to direct a survival thriller called Play Dead, which is being described as Don’t Breathe meets 1917. That one is not set up at Netflix, but it is expected to start filming in May, so An Innocent Girl will have to wait for the director to be finished with Play Dead before it can head into production. As for the Carry On sequel, Collet-Serra has only said, “I would like to definitely make another one. When we started with the movie, it certainly felt like one unique story in a moment in time with a set of characters. If an idea comes to us that feels like we can do something that is as original as the first one, and that can connect with the audience in the same way, then we’ll explore that.“

Does An Innocent Girl sound like an interesting project to you? Share your thoughts on the new Jaume Collet-Serra / Netflix team-up by leaving a comment below.

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THE STORY: A British military engineer (Val Kilmer) travels to Africa circa 1900 to complete a railroad project that’s been plagued by delays. While there, he’s horrified to discover his native workers are being picked off one by one by a pair of man-eating Lions. Ill-equipped to deal with the almost supernaturally deadly lions, he enlists the aid of a famed American hunter (Michael Douglas) with a tortured past.

THE HISTORY: If you’ve read William Goldman’s second volume of memoirs, “Which Lie Did I Tell?” you’ll note that the esteemed writer of Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid and The Sting is not entirely pleased with the finished version of The Ghost and the Darkness. This was his passion project, basing it on the real Tsavo Man-Eaters, who are on display at the Museum of Natural History in Chicago. He wound up having a lot of grievances against the finished film, but the big sticking point is the casting of Michael Douglas as Remington, the hunter. As they went into production, Douglas was already involved in the film as a producer, and they tried to get Sean Connery or Anthony Hopkins to take the part, only for Douglas to step in out of necessity. However, once he was cast, the part had to be beefed up, and Douglas apparently insisted on rewrites that Goldman thinks ruined the film.

“Michael decided to play the part himself. My initial reaction was delight. He is a major star, he gave the movie all the weight it would need. He also ensured against any catastrophe that the movie would get made. More than that, I knew the script was protected because I had spent hours and days with him going over it and I knew he understood what the strengths were. But shit, as we all know, has a way of happening.” – William Goldman, ‘Which Lie Did I Tell: More Adventures in the Screen Trade’

His original script may well have been a masterpiece, and the movie probably would have been better with Connery. But, the fact is the finished film is pretty damn good, and even Goldman’s feelings on the film have improved in recent years, with him recently admitting that director Stephen Hopkins did a great job. While mostly treated as a footnote in Douglas’s career, I’ve noticed that The Ghost and the Darkness has a lot of fans over the years, most of whom, I presume, are like me, having seen the film in theaters as a fourteen-year-old, who found the idea of Douglas and Kilmer hunting lions in Africa pretty damn exciting.

In 1996, this was considered a prestige movie, even getting a late fall release. It wound up bombing both financially and critically, with the late Kilmer getting a much undeserved Razzie nomination for his performance thanks to a controversial Irish accent (although it did get one Oscar nod – for best sound editing). I believe it wound up earning a profit with the foreign gross. Still, it was bad enough that for the next few years, Douglas stuck pretty close to type, mainly playing harassed businessmen, until really shaking things up in 2000 with the one-two combo of Wonder Boys and Traffic.

WHY IT’S GREAT: There’s something about the old-fashioned pageantry of The Ghost and the Darkness that just appeals to me. A kind-of “Out of Africa meets Jaws”, there’s no way a movie like this would be made on the same scale nowadays as it was in the nineties. At the time, Michael Douglas was one of the biggest stars in the world, and Val Kilmer was coming off Batman Forever and some other great roles, so the studio probably thought they had a huge hit on their hands. While it didn’t do very well at the box office, it’s developed an appreciative following over the years, and it’s a damn exciting, grounded thriller with amazing sound design and an incredible score by Jerry Goldsmith, one of my all-time favorite composers.

“Michael wanted the audience moved when Remington died. That’s what I think was at the heart of the changes. And the best way to do that was to win sympathy for Remington. What he succeeded in doing was destroying him.” – William Goldman, ‘Which Lie Did I Tell: More Adventures in the Screen Trade’

To be fair to Goldman, he has a point about Remington’s story being too prominent. While Douglas is off-screen until the second half, and used sparingly, there’s a scene that’s just as bad as Goldman says it is – which is when some clunky exposition reveals he lost his family in The Civil War. It humanizes a character that should have been mysterious and larger-than-life and probably would have stayed that way if Connery or Hopkins had played him.

Even still, the movie is magnificently shot and edited, with terrific action scenes, and a fun “high adventure” vibe throughout. I love these kinds of old-fashioned adventure films, and the supporting cast is full of character actors who went on to become big names, like Emily Mortimer as Kilmer’s wife, Tom Wilkinson as his boss, and Lord of the Rings’s Bernard Hill as the requisite cynical safari doctor. John Kani, who showed up as Black Panther’s doomed father in Captain America: Civil War, also steals scenes as the cynical African foreman who sticks around once the lions start turning his workers into lunch.

“I also think the time was wrong. Not the time of year when it was released, I mean the time for lions. In our long history, perhaps no other animal has had such graph changes. From being vermin to being gods. Now is a cutie-pie stage. BORN FREE and THE LION KING. I don’t think the audience wanted much to hear about these two monsters that shredded so many lives.” – William Goldman, ‘Which Lie Did I Tell: More Adventures in the Screen Trade’

PARTING SHOT: I get pretty nostalgic for movies like The Ghost and the Darkness because I can remember a time when big-tentpole movies weren’t solely the domain of superhero sagas and sequels. In the era of Sherry Lansing, Paramount was one of the last hold-outs to keep making old-fashioned star-driven entertainment, and I kinda wish people like her were still around calling the shots.

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Being on an island with Vanessa Kirby, Sydney Sweeney and Ana de Armas? It really must be Eden! Deadline has reported that Ron Howard’s newest thriller will now be a summer movie release. The film was acquired by the studio Vertical for domestic distribution and they are looking to cap off the summer by premiering the movie on August 22.

Howard said in a statement, “Thanks to our partners at AGC Studios, Vertical, and our amazing team at Imagine Entertainment, I’m thrilled to be able to share Eden with audiences in the U.S. This story has been a passion project for me for years, rooted in the incredible true events of three wildly different groups of people who chose to leave modern society behind and recreate themselves on an uninhabited island in the Galapagos. The complexity of the characters and the collision of personalities that resulted are what drew me in, and I hope audiences connect with the profound themes of survival and human nature. It’s a story that feels so relevant today, and I’m excited for audiences to experience it on the big screen.”

Additionally, Peter Jarowey of Vertical said the company “couldn’t be more excited to bring Eden to U.S. audiences. Ron Howard, a legendary filmmaker, delivers a masterful vision at the peak of his craft. It’s a thrill to reunite with our friends at AGC and Jude following last year’s The Order campaign, and we can’t wait to collaborate with the exceptional talents of Ana, Vanessa, Daniel, and Sydney.”

The film stars Vanessa Kirby (Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning), Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria), Jude Law (Sherlock Holmes), Ana de Armas (Knives Out), and Daniel Bruhl (The Alienist). Kirby and Sweeney took over roles that were previously assigned to Alicia Vikander and Daisy Edgar-Jones. The cast is rounded out by Felix Kammerer (All Quiet on the Western Front), Toby Wallace (Babyteeth), Paul Gleeson (The Thin Red Line), Ignacio Gasparini (Como Hermanas), and Richard Roxburgh, whose previous credits include Moulin Rouge, Rake, Mission: Impossible II, Van Helsing, and Elvis.

Eden is based on an unsolved mystery that unfolded on a remote island in the Galapagos and charts the lengths humans will go in pursuit of happiness. Other reports have revealed that the screenplay by Tetris writer Noah Pink is based on “two different accounts of the same true story.” It’s said to be “a darkly comic tale of murder and survival, set around a group of eclectic characters who abandon civilization for the Galapagos. They are all searching for the answer to that ever-pressing question that plagues us all: what is the meaning of life.” Howard has been wanting to bring the story to the screen for 15 years, ever since he visited the place where the real events took place.

Howard is producing the film alongside Brian Grazer and Karen Lunder for Imagine Entertainment, AGC Studios’ Stuart Ford, and Bill Connor and Patrick Newall. AGC Studios, Library Pictures International, and Elevate Production Finance are providing the funding. The producers say Eden “explores the human condition in ways that are unexpected, absurd, humorous, sexy, but above all thrilling and deeply suspenseful.“

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About seven years ago, author Laura van den Berg wrote a short story called Your Second Wife, which was published by Lenny Letter (and you can still read it online at THIS LINK). That story recently came to the attention of Jessica Rothe, star of the Happy Death Day films – and now, Deadline reports that Rothe is producing an erotic thriller series adaptation of Your Second Wife for the Max streaming service!

Created by Your Friends & Neighbors writer/executive producer Jamie Rosengard, the Your Second Wife series will follow Liana Dunn, an aspiring actress-turned-high school theater teacher trapped in stasis on Long Island. Struggling to move on from the death of her sister, Liana cultivates an unconventional double life that proves too intoxicating for her to give up … even when it places her life in imminent danger. Rosengard serves as showrunner.

Rosengard is also executive producing the series alongside Michael Sugar, Ashley Zalta, and Margaux Swerdloff of Sugar23. The project is produced by Sugar23, Adele Lim (co-writer of Crazy Rich Asians) and Naia Cucukov of 100 Tigers, and Rothe’s company Lil’ Situation.

Your Second Wife is said to be “in development,” so it might be a while before we hear any further news, including casting news – but that just gives anyone who’s interested in the project more time to catch up on the short story. Laura van den Berg’s other works include the novels State of Paradise, Find Me, and The Third Hotel, plus the short story collections There Will Be No More Good Nights Without Good Nights, The Isle of Youth, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, and What the World Will Look When All the Water Leaves Us.

It’s not clear whether or not Jessica Rothe intends to star in the series once it gets rolling. We did recently hear that Rothe will be starring in the Brazil-set creature feature Titan, and there are rumblings that she might end up starring in a prequel spin-off from the hit Netflix series Virgin River, where she played a character in 1970s flashbacks during the show’s sixth season.

Does Your Second Wife sound interesting to you? Would you watch a “soapy erotic thriller” series on the Max streaming service? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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While we wait to see whether or not Warner Bros. is going to give Lethal Weapon franchise star Mel Gibson the chance to direct Lethal Weapon 5, Lionsgate gave the Gibson-directed action thriller Flight Risk a theatrical release back in January (you can read our review HERE) – and now, the film is available on home video, having received a release on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD. There’s even a 4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital Combo Pack SteelBook. To mark the occasion, we have a featurette clip that you can watch in the embed above.

If you want to add a copy of Flight Risk to your collection, you can buy one at THIS LINK.

Scripted by Jared Rosenberg, Flight Risk has the following synopsis: In this high-stakes suspense thriller, Academy Award nominee Mark Wahlberg (Actor in a Supporting Role, 2006 – The Departed) plays a pilot transporting an Air Marshal (Michelle Dockery) accompanying a fugitive (Topher Grace) to trial. As they cross the Alaskan wilderness, tensions soar and trust is tested, as not everyone on board is who they seem.

Gibson produced the film alongside John Davis, John Fox, and Bruce Davey, with Alex Lebovici, Jenny Hinkey, Ryan D. Smith, Natasha Stassen, Allen Cheney, Christopher Woodrow, K. Blaine Johnston, Christian Mercuri, Petr Jákl, Vicki Christianson, Nick Guerra, Russell Hollander, Jon Huddle, Patrick Josten, Walter Josten, and Jordan Wagner serving as executive producers. The film is coming our way from Lionsgate, in association with Media Capital Technologies / Hammerstone Studios. It’s an Icon production and a Davis Entertainment Company production.

Flight Risk comes to 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD with the following special features: Risk Management: Making Flight Risk: Take your seat and listen to these passionate filmmakers talk about the intricate and complicated process of shooting a film inside a physical plane – Theatrical Trailer

Made on a budget of $25 million, the film earned just under $43 million at the global box office. I wasn’t able to catch it during its theatrical run, but I will definitely be taking the first opportunity to watch it now that it’s on home video.

Flight Risk is now available on 4K UHD Steelbook, Blu-ray, and DVD from Lionsgate! Will you be picking up a copy? Take a look at the featurette clip, then let us know by leaving a comment below.

The post Flight Risk featurette clip unveiled as Mel Gibson / Mark Wahlberg thriller reaches home video – Exclusive! appeared first on JoBlo.

Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water, Josh Brolin is in talks to star opposite Austin Abrams (Wolfs) in the Brian Duffield-directed (No One Will Save You, Cocaine Bear, Spontaneous) adaptation of the Daniel Krauss novel Whalefall.

Described as The Martian meets 127 Hours, the scientifically accurate story focuses on a scuba diver searching for his deceased father’s remains, only to get swallowed by an eighty-foot, sixty-ton sperm whale with only one hour to escape before oxygen runs out. While struggling to survive, the young diver discovers a new reason to live in the most unlikely place.

Here’s a synopsis for Krauss’s novel courtesy of Amazon:

Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool’s errand—to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach. He knows it’s a long shot, but Jay feels it’s the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad’s death by suicide the previous year.

The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid’s tentacles and drawn into the whale’s mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only one hour before his oxygen tanks run out—one hour to defeat his demons and escape the belly of a whale.

Josh Brolin is extraordinarily busy. He has three other projects in the works beyond Whalefall, including the third chapter of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out franchise, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, starring Daniel Craig, Cailee Spaeny, Glenn Close, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Thomas Haden Church, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, and more. He also plays Dan Killian in Edgar Wright’s upcoming version of The Running Man alongside Glenn Poweel, Katy O’Brian, Colman Domingo, Lee Pace, William H. Macy, Michael Cera, Emila Jones, and David Zayas. Finally, he’s starring in Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars with Margaret Qualley and Guy Pearce.

Who do you think Josh Brolin plays in Brian Duffield’s adaptation of Whalefall? I assume he plays Jay’s father in flashbacks. We’ll need to wait and see. Are you excited about Whalefall? The concept sounds intriguing. I want to read the book, but I’ve got many other things I’m into now.

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I was pretty bummed to read earlier this week that Wings Hauser had passed away. While often written off as a C-level action star thanks to a long line of eighties and nineties direct-to-video flicks, the fact is Hauser was beyond talented, and when he put the effort in, he could be unforgettable. Such was the case when Michael Mann cast him against time as a slimy lawyer for big tobacco in The Insider where, in one ninety-second scene, he and Bruce McGill all but walk away with what, for the rest of the 158-minute running time, is ostensibly a star vehicle for Al Pacino and Russell Crowe (and to be sure, they are great). 

Such was the power of Wings, who could be great in the right role. I also vividly remember him being terrific as a slimy bounty hunter hired by Luke Perry’s Dylan in an atypically action-packed episode of Beverly Hills 90210, while he was also deliciously over-the-top in Norman Mailer’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance. While that movie is infamous for Ryan O’Neal’s “oh God, oh Man” scene, Hauser somehow found just the right notes to hit in the film, with many saying that, had the film actually been a success, it might have kicked Hauser’s career as a character-actor into high gear.

However, Hauser also struggled with substance abuse issues, with his son Cole Hauser noting this led to some strain in their relationship for a time. For some truly unhinged footage of Wings Hauser drunk, one need only check out this scene in the bargain-basement vanity project Road to Revenge (aka Geteven – and no that’s not a misspelling of the title). I mean, either Hauser is really drunk, or he’s giving an Oscar-level performance in what has to be one of the worst films ever made.

However, Hauser was able to pull it back together, going on to The Insider and several other impressive roles, such as a good one in the cult classic Rubber, with a documentary about his life in the works. Yet, of all of his performances, none is better than his turn as Ramrod the killer pimp in 1982’s Vice Squad – aka Martin Scorsese’s choice for the best movie of 1982 (his quote actually turned up on some VHS editions of the film). 

Directed by Gary Sherman, who directed Dead and Buried the year before, Vice Squad is a down-and-dirty thriller shot on location within the boundaries of Los Angeles’s Skid Row, back when it was even more dangerous than it is now. Season Hubley plays Princess, a suburban mother by day, streetwalker by night, who’s one of the only prostitutes running “outlaw”, which, in the movie’s vernacular, means she doesn’t have a pimp. She’s pursued by Hauser’s Ramrod, who, in addition to being a pimp, is also a psychopath, with him beating a former employee to death with his “pimp stick”, which is a twisted up wire hanger he uses in a grotesque way. Wanting revenge, she’s convinced by a nice guy vice cop named Walsh (played by the completely obscure Gary Swanson), who convinces her to lure Ramrod into a trap, only for him to escape. He spends the rest of the movie hunting her, with the movie cutting back and forth between Princess’s often surreal tricks and Ramrod’s trail of terror as Walsh tries to track him down.

While not a box office hit when it came out beyond the grid house circuit (although it made a tidy profit), clearly the right people saw it, with Clint Eastwood actually lifting his “go ahead, make my day” line from the climax of the film, where Walsh uses it is a slightly different way. Everyone who saw it agreed on at least two things. One was that it was very evocatively shot, with Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon DP John Alcott having done the cinematography between stints in A-features (his next movie would be Greystroke: The Legend of Tarzan). Sherman actually had a very keen eye himself, with his later action flick, the Rutger Hauer movie Wanted: Dead or Alive having the cold, hard look of an industrial film – which is highly unusual for the era.

The other thing people agreed on was that Wings Hauser was terrific as Ramrod, with him also singing the theme song, Neon Slime. I vividly remember Leonard Maltin, in an otherwise bad review in his classic movie guide, dismissing the film but admitting that Wings Hauser made for one of the screen’s best villains. It probably should have led to a bigger career for Hauser as a villain, but he didn’t want to play bad guys – he wanted to be the good guy. Thus, he rarely played villains throughout the rest of the decade, which worked well enough for him for a while as he became a staple of DTV action flicks of the era.

Vice Squad still has a lot of fans, including director Ti West, whose MaXXXine owes a certain debt to this film, along with the similarly themed Angel (with the score from that movie repurposed in certain scenes). If you happen not to really know who Wings Hauser was and want to know why it’s been our number one trending story in the trending tab, give Vice Squad a watch. You can find it pretty easily on a lot of streaming services (it’s now streaming on TubiTV in the U.S). It’s a blast. 

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THE STORY: A corrupt American cop (Michael Douglas) and his partner (Andy Garcia) wind-up in Japan after a prisoner exchange gone awry. With their former captive cutting a swath through the local Yakuza in an attempt to establish himself as the new Tokyo boss, the cops are forced into an uneasy alliance with a by-the-book local police inspector (Ken Takakura).

THE PLAYERS: Starring: Michael Douglas, Andy García, Ken Takakura, Kate Capshaw and Yusaku Matsuda. Directed by Ridley Scott. Music by Hans Zimmer.

THE HISTORY: Michael Douglas was riding high in 1989. Following his Oscar-win for Wall Street, and Fatal Attraction’s boffo box office, his was considered one of the most bankable actors in Hollywood. Opting for a rare action role, grittier and more hard-edged than his turns in Romancing the Stone and The Jewel of the Nile, Douglas, with his Fatal Attraction producers Stanley Jaffe and Sherry Lansing (who would soon run Paramount Pictures), hired Ridley Scott, then on a career downswing following Legend and Someone to Watch Over Me, to helm this stylish East-meets-West thriller, which would shoot on-location in Japan.

I remember when Ridley showed us the first cut of the movie it was about two hours and forty minutes, and it was extraordinary… But, this was his first cut, and so we all new that he was going to go in and make the film under two hours. I mean, the texture of the movie, the performances, the visuals, the sound, we were thrilled. Then, Ridley called us back, I dunno, four weeks later and showed us a movie that was an hour and fifty minutes long. We looked at him and asked, “what did you do,” and he said, what do you mean “what did I do?” “You took out all the good stuff, why did you make it this?” He said, “but I had to,” and he DID have to, to make it under two hours he had to take out some of the texture and some of the finest scenes in the movie. So, we said, “just make it the right length, it doesn’t have to be under two hours, just make it the right length.” (note- the final cut runs 125 minutes) – Sherry Lansing (BLACK RAIN DVD).

Despite critical acclaim and Douglas’s star-power, Black Rain was only a modest hit upon its release in the fall of 1989. It grossed $46 million, decent enough numbers for the era, but it wound-up grossing far less than comparable action movies of the time, although worldwide it was a solid hit, grossing an additional $88 million, while it also became a hot rental on the VHS market.

Nowadays, Black Rain remains popular among aficionados of eighties action cinema, with it remaining Michael Douglas’s one real attempt to make an action-movie on par with what Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger were doing at the time. Sandwiched between Douglas’s more well-known vehicles, with Basic Instinct another giant hit just a few years later, and coming along at a fallow time in Ridley Scott’s career, it remains a movie rarely discussed in examinations of either’s career.

WHY IT’S GREAT: Black Rain is an eighties gem for many reasons. For one thing, Michael Douglas aces his anti-hero part. While introducing him by staging a motorcycle race is maybe trying a bit too hard to establish him as a sexy rebel, it’s notable that his character, Nick Conklin, is allowed to be sleazy and imperfect. He’s under investigation for being on-the-take, and while, with another actor in the lead, he’d eventually be vindicated, we learn early-on that Nick is in-fact guilty. He’s also shown to be a racist, making derogatory comments about the Japanese, and often screwing up his own investigation with a mixture of ego and fool-headedness, all of which eventually gets his partner, played by the great Andy Garcia, killed.

I remember when the picture first came out, there was a very influential critics who called it a racist film because of how it depicted the Japanese. This really bothered me, so I called him up and asked him, “have you ever been to Japan?” Silence..”no.” “Then what do you think you’re talking about?” Then a few weeks later, it gets nominated for best foreign film in Japan. A very respected critic said, “well, this is the best Japanese film I’ve seen this year,” so it was a real compliment to Ridley. – Michael Douglas (BLACK RAIN DVD)

Lest you think he’s unlikable, Douglas makes Nick three-dimensional, to the point that even if we know he’s not too far removed from the baddies he chases, he’s essentially a good man, and his evolution is convincing. His relationship with Ken Takakura’s more honorable Japanese cop, himself a victim of the rigid class system in Japan, is touching. Douglas initially treats him like a joke, but he comes to realize Takakura (who’s one of the biggest stars in Japanese history – on the level of someone like Chow Yun-Fat in Hong Kong) is truly on his side, and an honorable man.

Meanwhile, Yusaku Matsuda’s bad guy is among the scarier ones of the eighties, sporting a crazed look and sense of sadism. Matsuda was, unbeknownst to the filmmakers and Douglas, terminally ill at the time. He apparently knew it would be his last role, and he put everything he had into it. Likewise, Ridley Scott, who one might assume would phone-in what, to him, might seem like a routine assignment, infuses Black Rain with oodles of style. His vision of Tokyo seems almost as futuristic as the Los Angeles of Black Rain, and his eye, matched with Jan De Bont’s cinematography and Hans Zimmer’s amazing, hard-edged score, makes this one of the most impeccably made action films of the era.

BEST SCENE: In cop movies, the younger, more inexperienced partner is always going to die. Even as a child watching Black Rain, I had seen enough of these movies to know Andy Garcia was doomed. As an action-junkie you almost look forward to the partner dying, because it’ll kick the hero into high gear. But, Garcia is so damn likable and charismatic, singing Ray Charles with Takakura (who apparently loved Garcia off-screen) and busting Douglas’s balls that you want him to pull through. All of this makes his eventual death all the more hard-hitting, with it being, in the annals of action movie murder, one of the most sadistic.

SEE IT: Black Rain is easily available on DVD/Blu-ray (I actually have it on HD-DVD), streaming, iTunes, Amazon and more.

You know, people always ask me in my career, what’s your favorite movie. And I have to say, Black Rain is right up there for the unique qualities of the movie, the execution across the board… – Michael Douglas (BLACK RAIN DVD)

PARTING SHOT: Black Rain is another entry into this column that many of you may remember having seen when it came out. If it’s been awhile, I urge you to check it out again, as it holds up really well. And to those younger readers who may have never heard of it, do you like Ridley Scott and Hans Zimmer? If yes, boy oh boy will you love this.

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PLOT: A thief breaking into a luxury SUV realizes that he has slipped into a sophisticated game of psychological horror.

REVIEW: Locked is my favorite kind of film: one that relies solely on its lead and an interesting concept to fill out the entire runtime. It never goes off the beaten path and breaks the promise of the premise, which would have been so easy to do. Instead, it executes the basic premise in a way that excites and thrills over its 90-minute runtime. Add in some fantastic performances and you’ve got the makings for one of the most entertaining thrillers of the year.

Locked starts with Eddie (Skarsgård) as he’s looking for an easy score. He seems to find it in the form of an unlocked SVU parked in a random car park. But when he gets in, he discovers that all the doors are locked, and he’s completely trapped. Despite carrying a gun with him, bulletproof windows make escaping impossible. To make matters worse, the owner of the car, William, calls and torments him, upset that his car has been targeted yet again. He claims the police won’t handle it so he’s taken matters into his own hands. What follows is a sick game of torture, all confined within the small space of an SUV.

Bill Skarsgård continues to be such a chameleon that the mere mention of his involvement is a signal of the role being interesting in some way. The man seeks out intriguing characters that have quite a large arc. Eddie is no different, putting short-term gains above the things that actually matter in his life. The situation can either break him or cause him to finally be the person his family needs him to be. It’s a nice sentiment and immediately has us rooting for Eddie, despite his criminal history. His stubbornness defines him and it’s beautiful all the ways that this manifests in the screenplay.

Not since Hannibal Lecter has Anthony Hopkins taken on such a psychotic role. Like Lecter, William uses his intelligence to get what he wants but there’s a more unpredictable side to him. He has a very fast cadence, going against his more measured delivery. It really works as it sounds like Hopkins is having a blast tormenting Eddie. Most of his role is just as a voice, so it’s easy to expect him to just coast along but he really puts his all into it. I loved the conflict between the two, and there are sure to be people on both sides. William clearly takes it too far, but the message of criminals not being properly punished is a salient point.

At one point, the film becomes Christine, as the car gets remotely controlled, putting Eddie in a slightly different environment. On the outside at least. William’s homicidal tendencies come through in his driving, with several people being the target of his road rage. This really helps to breathe new life into the film, and prevent it from ever feeling stale. I’ve never seen the Argentinian film 4×4, of which Locked is a remake of, but I’m extremely impressed with the narrative structure here. It’s all executed in such a logical but still entertaining way that it’s so easy to get invested. Shooting so practically also puts you in the car with Skarsgård, never properly breaking from the reality of the situation.

I had such a blast with Locked that I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of it sooner. Because this is the kind of film they should be marketing like crazy as it’s such a fun time, I can’t wait to experience it in a theater with a big crowd. Skarsgard and Hopkins have such good banter back and forth and the energy of the film always feels ramped up. There were moments of tension that nearly had me pacing, and an ending that bookends the story beautifully. This is one that you definitely don’t want to miss.

LOCKED IS AVAILABLE IN THEATERS ON MARCH 21ST, 2025.

Locked

GREAT

8

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A new episode of our What Happened to This Horror Movie? video series has just been released, and with this one we’re taking a look back at the 2002 thriller Panic Room (watch it HERE), which was directed by David Fincher from a screenplay by David Koepp. You can hear all about it in the video embedded above.

The film has the following synopsis: Trapped in their New York brownstone’s panic room, a hidden chamber built as a sanctuary in the event of break-ins, newly divorced Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her daughter, Sarah (Kristen Stewart), play a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with three intruders—Burnham (Forest Whitaker), Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) and Junior (Jared Leto)—during a brutal home invasion. But the room itself is the focal point because what the intruders really want is inside it.

We recently heard that Gabriela Amaral Almeida (Friendly Beast, The Father’s Shadow) is set to direct a remake of Panic Room; a Brazilian production that is said to be “a fresh take on the thriller” that will “bring a fresh intensity” to the suspense while “exploring timely ethical dilemmas.” 

This is what the What Happened to This Horror Movie series is all about: Hollywood has had its fair share of historically troubled productions. Whether it was casting changes, actor deaths, fired directors, in-production rewrites, constant delays, budget cuts or studio edits, these films had every intention to be a blockbuster, but were beset with unforeseen disasters. Sometimes huge hits, sometimes box office bombs. Either way, we have to ask: WTF Happened To This Horror Movie?

The Panic Room episode of What Happened to This Horror Movie? was Written, Edited, and Narrated by Tyler Nichols, Produced by Lance Vlcek and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.

A couple of the previous episodes of the show can be seen below. To see more, head over to our JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!

What do you think of Panic Room? Let us know by leaving a comment!

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Sydney Sweeney (Anyone But You, Madame Web), Amanda Seyfried (Mean Girls, Jennifer’s Body), Brandon Sklenar (It Ends With Us, 1923), and Michele Morrone (365 Days, Subservience) star in the psychological thriller The Housemaid for Lionsgate and director Paul Feig, whose credits include Bridesmaids, Ghostbusters, and A Simple Favor. Lionsgate will be releasing the film on Christmas Day 2025 – and in new interviews, Sklenar and Morrone revealed that they’re playing unhinged, weirdo characters.

The film has the following synopsis: In The Housemaid, Millie (Sydney Sweeney) is a struggling young woman who is relieved to get a fresh start as a housemaid to Nina (Amanda Seyfried) and Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), an upscale, wealthy couple. She soon learns that the family’s secrets are far more dangerous than her own. Rebecca Sonnenshine wrote the screenplay adaptation.

Feig is producing the film with Todd Lieberman, Carly Kleinbart Elter, and Laura Fischer. Sweeney, Seyfried, and McFadden serve as executive producers with Alex Young.

Sklenar told Variety that his character is like “Norman Bates meets Patrick Bateman” and the film is “very dark, dramatic, twisted. It’s not gory but it’s twisted. It’s out there for sure. I am a little unhinged. You very rarely get the opportunity to just let the cat out of the bag.“

Morrone plays Enzo, the family’s groundskeeper. He told Variety, “I think the film is going to be very faithful to the book. That’s all I can actually say.” He did add that his character is “a weirdo. I like to play weirdos, as you know. But I’m proud of myself to be part of that project and being a weirdo!“

Lionsgate Motion Picture Group co-president Erin Westerman provided the following statement when the project was first announced: “Part of the fun of the book was imagining the cast while we read it, and Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried are perfect for Millie and Nina — they’re both mysterious, nuanced, and incredibly skilled at becoming characters who don’t reveal everything right away. We’re thrilled to team them with Paul Feig, who we worked with on A Simple Favor and its upcoming sequel, and has a proven track record of developing stories with dynamic female leads.“

Adam Fogelson, Lionsgate Motion Picture Group chair, added: “I’m thrilled to have The Housemaid join our upcoming slate. A great filmmaker and a great cast with a great script from a great book is a terrific place to start. My prior work experiences with Paul and Amanda have been nothing short of spectacular, and Sydney is as talented and compelling as can be.“

If The Housemaid does well at the box office next December, there’s franchise potential here, as the novel has already received multiple follow-ups: The Housemaid’s Secret, The Housemaid’s Wedding, and The Housemaid is Watching.

Are you looking forward to seeing Brandon Sklenar and Michele Morrone play unhinged, weirdo characters in The Housemaid? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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PLOT: A British spy (Michael Fassbender), working for an MI5-like organization, is tasked with tracking down a traitor who has allegedly sold a device that could trigger a nuclear meltdown to a Russian dissident. Things are complicated when one of his chief suspects turns out to be his beloved wife (Cate Blanchett). 

REVIEW: If you read Steven Soderbergh’s annual “Seen; Read” lists, you’ll note that among his diverse tastes in film, he has a particular fondness for spy movies – with the George Lazenby James Bond movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, long noted as one of his favourites. He’s been toying with doing a spy movie for years, with him and George Clooney having famously almost made their own version of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Now, Soderbergh finally gets his chance, his movie owes less to the cinematic world of 007 than his own, stylish Oceans’ Eleven, mixed with a healthy dose of sixties spy thrillers in the vein of The Ipcress File. 

Black Bag takes an interesting approach in that it centers around a plot that could have been lifted from a Bond movie, where thousands of lives hang in the balance, but pulls it off with very little on-screen carnage. Fassbender’s George Woodhouse is a more cerebral spy in the mould of a John Le Carre character, sporting an impeccable wardrobe and Harry Palmer-esque glasses. His mastery of the spy game comes from his uncanny ability to take apart his foes and use their weaknesses to his advantage. Fassbender plays him as cold and calculating, with him utterly unwilling to display any sense of weakness. He’s fastidious about everything, including his wardrobe, with him at one point immediately changing out of a crisp dress shirt when the tiniest drop of wine winds up on one of his cuffs. Yet, he has a significant weakness of his own, being his all-consuming love for his wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), who, like him, works in the highly classified “Black Bag” section, with her under Pierce Brosnan’s George Smiley-like character, Arthur Stieglitz.

In addition to his wife, Woodhouse’s suspects include Tom Burke’s hard-drinking Freddie – his best friend in the agency, as well as Freddie’s much younger mistress, Marisa Abel’s Clarissa, whose emotions make her something of a liability. Then there’s Regé-Jean Page as Stokes, a fast-rising agent who lacks a conscience, and his lover, Naomi Harris’s company shrink, Zoe, who has access to everyone’s secrets. The game here, as written by regular Soderbergh collaborator David Koepp, is for Woodhouse to figure out who the inside man (or woman) is.

It helps that Fassbender and Blanchett have great chemistry, and they are a dazzlingly-stylish couple, both of whom, by necessity, have become experts at keeping secrets from each other. Blanchett’s Kathryn runs a little hotter than George, with her more emotional, and suffering from a bit of burnout due to an op that went wrong, which is only lightly hinted at early in the film. Running a taut ninety minutes, Soderbergh’s crafted a twisty spy romp, although even though it centers around a truly Bond-like MacGuffin, the tone is kept playful, with the thrills being more character-based than anything else. 

It’s driven along by a propulsive, jazzy score by Soderbergh regular David Holmes, and it amounts to one of the director’s more entertaining recent efforts. While his ghost thriller Presence might have been a bit too cerebral for most audiences, with Black Bag, he’s operating in a more mainstream mode. If you liked his Ocean’s Trilogy, you’ll likely get a big kick out his spy flick. Fassbender’s Woodhouse is such an interesting antihero that perhaps a return to his take on spycraft might not be out of the question were this Focus Features release to do well. 

Black Bag

GREAT

8

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There’s just something inherently creepy about dolls, and filmmakers have had a lot of fun over the decades crafting horror stories around that creepiness. Audiences clearly love to see it, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many creepy / killer doll movies out there. So to celebrate this sub-genre, we decided to put together a list of some of the all-time best killer dolls. Not killer doll movies, but specific dolls. Here is our list of the Top 10 Killer Dolls!

ANNABELLE (THE CONJURING UNIVERSE)

This is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” list entry if there ever was one. If we don’t include Annabelle – who scared people so badly in the opening scene of The Conjuring, she got her own spinoff franchise – there will be a lot of fans asking, “How could you leave Annabelle off a top 10 doll list?” If we do include her, genre fans will also point out that Annabelle doesn’t actually kill anybody. It’s the demon she hangs out with that’s the problem. But she is so popular, we’re forced to include her anyway. She may not walk around slashing up victims with a knife, but when she’s around, people are still in mortal danger.

DOLLY DEAREST (1991)

Sure, Dolly Dearest is a blatant Child’s Play ripoff… but it has such an an oppressively dark tone and features evil dolls (inhabited by an evil force called the Sanzia devil child) that are so ugly and creepy, that I found Dolly Dearest too unnerving to sit through when I was a kid. Despite the fact that I was already a Chucky fan by the time I tried to watch this one. So this little knife-wielding knockoff earns a place on the list.

DUMMY (TRILOQUIST – 2008)

Coming to us from director Mark Jones, the director of the original Leprechaun (and the less popular Rumpelstiltskin), Triloquist is an awful movie… but it’s one of those movies that is so bad, it can be highly entertaining to watch once or twice, if you’re in the right mindset. The small killer here is Dummy, a wooden ventriloquist dummy who seems to have somehow been imbued with a life of his own… and not only is he homicidal, he’s also quite horny. He hits the road with the trashy, bloodthirsty Angelina and the developmentally disabled Norbert for a cross-country killing spree, and Jones was clearly endeavoring to make the movie as sleazy and appalling as possible, packing it with wildly inappropriate dialogue. Watching Triloquist is quite an experience.

PIN (1988)

Technically, the life-size anatomy dummy Pin is not a killer. He’s just an inanimate object. But that doesn’t keep him from being an intensely creepy presence throughout the film. Terry O’Quinn plays Dr. Linden, who uses ventriloquism to have the dummy interact with young patients and even teach his own son and daughter life lessons. This is a terrible idea, because it convinces the son that Pin is a living being – especially after he witnesses his father’s nurse using the dummy as a sex toy. That also gives him sexual hang-ups, which leads to him taking an unhealthy interest in his sister’s sex life. Before you know it, people are getting killed. Pin himself isn’t the killer, but he’s at the heart of a well-made, twisted psychological thriller.

FATS (MAGIC – 1978)

I’ll put Fats back-to-back with Pin because they’re sort of in the same boat. Based on a novel by legendary screenwriter William Goldman and directed by Sir Richard Attenborough, Magic is a psychological thriller that stars Sir Anthony Hopkins as struggling magician Corky, who has a tumultuous relationship with his ventriloquist dummy Fats. Is Fats the mean, possessed, potentially homicidal little bastard he appears to be, or is Corky insane? Well, check the movie out and see what you think.

M3GAN (2023)

Like Annabelle, M3GAN is a James Wan production – but while the Annabelle doll isn’t actually a killer, there’s no confusion over whether or not the AI-powered robot doll M3GAN is a killer. She’s supposed to be a little girl’s best friend, but she’s not wired quite right, turning her protectiveness into a homicidal rampage. M3GAN can do the latest trendy TikTok dance to entertain the youngsters, then she racks up a body count when she’s not showing off her moves. She’s getting a sequel now and we’re looking forward to seeing the carnage she’ll cause in M3GAN 2.0.

BABY OOPSY (DEMONIC TOYS FRANCHISE)

I haven’t seen Imaginary as of this writing, but I’ve seen images of that teddy bear Chauncey, and I’ve also seen images of Chauncey where he has transformed into a hulking beast. It’s a familiar look, because I’ve seen this exact same thing done before, in the 1992 Full Moon classic Demonic Toys! That film features a teddy bear called Grizzly Teddy, which also turns into a large monster. He’s awesome, but the star of the Demonic Toys franchise – and the only toy that would be referred to as a doll – is Baby Oopsy, who has gone on to cause all sorts of trouble over the course of several movies.

ZUNI DOLL (TRILOGY OF TERROR – 1975)

There are three horror tales packed into the anthology Trilogy of Terror (thus the title), each one directed by Dan Curtis and based on a story by Richard Matheson. You have to wait until the third segment to be introduced to the tiny terror known as He Who Kills… but it’s worth the wait. This little guy is a total maniac who relentlessly pursues a young woman played by Karen Black throughout her apartment. This part of the movie proved to be so popular, the Zuni doll was brought back for a sequel story in Trilogy of Terror II twenty-one years later.

BLADE (PUPPET MASTER FRANCHISE)

There are a whole lot of killer dolls in the Puppet Master franchise, and each one of them has their adoring fans – which is why this is the biggest franchise on this list, currently standing strong at fifteen entries (and a sixteenth in development). But the most popular puppet of the bunch is Blade, who has a knife for one hand and a hook for the other. In some movies he’s a villain, in others he’s a hero, it all depends on who his master is at the time. He has slashed his way through humans (including a number of Nazis), battled tiny demons, and even faced off with the Demonic Toys. He usually has some puppet pals backing him up, but a few years ago, he even got a solo movie.

CHUCKY (CHILD’S PLAY FRANCHISE)

There are other popular killer dolls out there, but it’s not likely that any are ever going to surpass the popularity of Chucky… and, of course, we’re talking about the original Chucky here, although the Child’s Play remake was surprisingly good. A combination of impressive special effects, wild stories concocted by Don Mancini, and incredible vocal performances from Brad Dourif have made Chucky an iconic character we’ve been fascinated to watch through several feature films and now multiple seasons of a TV series as well.

HONORABLE MENTION: CLOWN DOLL (POLTERGEIST – 1982)

We had to include this one as an honorable mention. The Clown Doll doesn’t kill anyone; in fact, no one is killed in Poltergeist… but the Clown Doll certainly made an attempt to kill little Robbie, and it’s been scaring the hell out of viewers for over 40 years now.

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