Halloween Countdown, New In Theaters

Squid Monster Games

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The Host (2006)

Back in 2006, Bong Joon Ho followed up his masterpiece Memories of Murder with a Korean take on the Godzilla fable. The Host, which tells the tale of a giant mutant monster terrorizing Seoul, has all the thumbprints of Godzilla movies: military blunder, resultant angry monster, terrorized metropolis.

The Host opens in a military lab hospital in 2000. A clearly insane American doctor (Scott Wilson), repulsed by the dust coating formaldehyde bottles, orders a Korean subordinate (Brian Rhee) to empty it all into the sink. Soon the contents of hundreds of bottles of formaldehyde finds its way through the Korean sewer system and into the Han River. This event – allegedly based on fact – eventually leads, not surprisingly, to some pretty gamey drinking water.  And also a 25 foot cross between Alien and a giant squid.

Said monster – the filmmaker reportedly called him Steve Buscemi – exits the river one bright afternoon in 2006 to run amuck in a very impressive outdoor-chaos-and-bloodshed scene. A dimwitted foodstand clerk (Bong regular Song Kang-ho) witnesses his daughter’s (Ko Asung) abduction by the beast, and the stage is set.

What follows, rather than a military attack on a marauding Mr. Buscemi, is actually one small, unhappy, bickering family’s quest to find and save the little girl. Their journey takes them to poorly organized quarantines, botched security check points, misguided military/Red Cross posts, and through Seoul’s sewer system, all leading to a climactic battle even more impressive than the earlier scene of afternoon chaos.

The film’s decidedly comedic tone gives the film a quirky charm, but The Host generates real, claustrophobic dread when it focuses on the missing child. The action is breathless, the emotional highs and lows devastating, and the monster looks so good!

Given its endearing characters, well-paced plot, terror and laughs and excellent climax, The Host is easily one of the best creature features to come along in decades.

Lucky for us it’s hitting big screens again!

The Screening Room

Screening Room: How to Rob a Bank, Victorian Psycho, Ebenezer & More

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Hope & George review this week’s new releases: How to Rob a Bank, Victorian Psycho, Ebenezer, Once Upon a Time in Harlem, Mouse, and Heartland. PLUS a visit with Movie News & Notes from Daniel Baldwin, The Schlocketeer!

Outtakes

Murder on Music Row

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Heartland

by Hope Madden

Jessica Chastain as a foul mouthed, quick tempered, hard drinking, cut your finger off as soon as look at you, disgraced country singer back in Nashville to shove that boot in somebody’s Wranglers?

OK.

Shana Feste writes and directs Heartland, Netflix’s new action/thriller with Chastain as Misty Jones. Misty’s niece Charlie (Carter Faith) followed in her footsteps, making a name for herself as a singer/songwriter in Nashville. But nobody’s heard from Charlie in five days, and Misty knows something’s up.

Heartland is kind of the junk drawer of action thrillers. Loads of stuff in there, most of it doesn’t really belong anywhere in particular, a lot of it should have been thrown out. There are red herrings, clues that go nowhere, evidence that makes little sense, revelations and contrivances and forced emotional climaxes.

Still, it is undeniably fun to see Chastain wince with contempt, flip the bird, slash some tires, and again, do not get your fingers near this woman.

It’s been an interesting year for the Oscar winner, classing up horror (Other Mommy), erotic thriller (Dreams), and now action-thriller. She seems to be seeking complicated, often unlikeable characters who struggle with the compromises life offers them. Thanks to Chastain’s talent, each of the characters has been an exceptional trainwreck, mesmerizing to watch.

Is she better than these films? Lord, yes. But all three are watchable, some even genuinely enjoyable, because she’s in them. Plus, Chastain can sing.

Enjoying country music will certainly elevate Heartland for some viewers. Feste’s visuals and storyline pit a Kentucky bourbon-soaked old school country against the blonde extensions and sparkle of the contemporary sound. She doesn’t necessarily take sides, rather reinforcing a “darker side of fame” theme that transcends generations.

Heartland is not a great movie. Its strengths are its lead and Feste’s comfort in the NashVegas environment. The result is a tawdry mess, but Chastain is a hoot.

New In Theaters

Does She Like Huey Lewis and the News?

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Victorian Psycho

by Hope Madden

A Victorian era governess loses it, and terrible things happen. That’s the long and short of Victorian Psycho. But don’t expect the spectral maddening of 1961’s masterpiece The Innocents. Winnifred Notty (Maika Monroe) was mad the moment she took the position.

I enjoyed Virginia Feito’s slight but delightfully violent 2025 novel. It read very much like a movie, so when I learned that Feito herself was adapting the novel for the screen, I was pleased.

With Sanctuary’s Zachary Wigon to direct and Monroe as lead, things looked promising.

The supporting cast impresses, particularly Ruth Wilson and Jason Isaacs as Winifred’s employers. But problems creep in almost from the start.

Monroe seems slightly lost. Her voiceover is sometimes wonderfully dry, but her performance on the whole relies on a maniacal facial expression and stiff gait.

But Winnifred Notty is an unhinged lunatic, and I say that with great admiration. Within moments of arriving at Ensor House, body parts are falling out of luggage and staff members turn up missing. The film, almost immediately, is a frenzy of blood and viscera.

There’s basically nowhere to go.

Feito trims out Winifred’s backstory, nearly eliminates the feminist underpinnings of the book, gives just a nod to its classist upbraiding, and paints every character with the broadest possible brush.

What remains is a frenetic bloodbath, filmed with bodymounts and Dutch tilts to amplify the mania afoot. It’s fun. It’s full of energy. It amounts to nothing.

You don’t root for anybody. You don’t root against anybody. And because one pivotal character is drearily underdeveloped, the final shot holds none of the wicked satisfaction of the novel.

That’s not to say it’s a bad film, just that it’s a bloody comedy without much bite.

New In Theaters

Hungry Like the Wolf Mask

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How to Rob a Bank

by George Wolf

Don’t make it weird, but I dig it when people wear animal masks.

And How to Rob a Bank has plenty of that, along with a load of Luigi-approved anti-capitalist rage fueling its social media zeitgeist that feels especially in-the-moment.

Wait, isn’t this an Amazon movie? The irony is also special.

Nicholas Hoult is easy to root for as Ryan aka “The Wolf,” leader of a band of outlaw influencers behind the “Who’s Hungry?’ YouTube channel. They brazenly rob bank after bank in animal masks and high style and stream the result, taking the time to carefully explain how you can do it, too. And you should rob a bank, because it’s now become the only way to win a game that’s rigged against you.

Director David Leitch and writer Mark Bianculli use the group’s social videos to hit the fourth wall without breaking it, speaking directly to us and laying out the stats and figures to define how deep the rot goes.

The followers grow quickly, and though the Wolf’s declaration that “the algorithm rewards authenticity” lands with a curious thud, the belief that “audience is power” does not. And the Who’s Hungry crew (which includes another nice supporting turn from Pete Davidson) is getting plenty of both, along with a ton of money. FBI Agent John West (John C. Reilly) vows to unmask them, but he’ll need the help of an ankle-monitored coder (Zoë Kravitz) to decipher the tech he doesn’t get – like how to use AirPlay.

The Reilly/Kravitz pairing is good fun, and Bianculli gives us sympathetic moments for both the robbers and the cops while Leitch (Atomic Blonde, Bullet Train, co-founder of the John Wick franchise) frames the action with winning pizazz while the lessons get more and more spoon fed. The entire narrative sports a Fight Club for doomscrollers vibe that gives way to Third Act heist and one final “how to” surprise.

The film isn’t deeply layered, and the two-hour running time begins to feel a bit bloated, but it’s never less than timely, relatable and entertaining. You don’t need headlines or election results to know there is anger out there, and How to Rob a Bank feeds into that for an escapist good time. It may not be a standard bearer of social satire, but there’s still a place for tapping a vein that feels crowd pleasing and cathartic.

New In Theaters

We’ll All Float On Anyway

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Mouse

by Hope Madden

Kelly O’Sullivan is batting a thousand.

Her 2019 feature debut as a screenwriter, Saint Frances, was a raw, sloppy, honest treasure. By 2024’s critical darling Ghostlight, she was co-directing her screenplays with Saint Francis director Alex Thompson. The duo pair up behind the camera once again to bring O’Sullivan’s latest script, the bumpy and mournful coming-of-age drama Mouse, to the screen.

Mouse follows the grief cycle of two people: a mother (Sophie Okonedo) who lost her daughter, and a cripplingly introverted teen Minnie (Katherine Mallen Kupferer), the daughter’s best friend.

The film masquerades as a coming-of-age story. It follows its protagonist’s bumpy path out of the innocence of childhood toward adulthood, learning painful but vital lessons along with her. But there’s never anything so linear or obvious about O’Sullivan’s work.

Her writing is so beautifully messy, resembling life far more honestly than any streamlined feature could. The film sits with the rage and wonder, joy and guilt, hope and shame that complicate young life—often in the same scene, sometimes in the same moment.

O’Sullivan and Thompson’s quietly powerful ensembles is more than up to the task. Kupferer delivers not a single false note as a girl who didn’t realize how lost she was in her best friend’s shadow until the shadow disappeared. Minnie’s awkwardness never feels put on, giving her heartbreak and outbursts painful authenticity.

Okonedo’s never turned in a weak performance, and her work here is especially tender and prickly, as it should be. She, in particular, seems to feel the bruises of O’Sullivan’s writing, addressing a side of grief—the abandoned, unwelcomed, awkward-to-be-around side—we rarely see realistically portrayed.

A gorgeous supporting turn from Tara Mallen emphasizes the film’s real world feel and its terribly human humor. Iman Vellani likewise bursts with wit and humanity.

As is always the case with O’Sullivan and Thompson’s films, Mouse delivers an unpredictable, lived-in mess of a world brimming with pain, laughter, and above all, resilience. It may be their best work yet.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Godzilla Minus Zero, The Last Temptation of Becky & More

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Hope & George review this week’s new releases: Godzilla Minus Zero, The Last Temptation of Becky, Jimmy, Possible Love, Silver Screamers, New Group, and The Restoration at Grayson Manor.

Outtakes

One of the Living

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Possible Love

by George Wolf

Director Lee Chang-dong opens his latest with a text reminder that “Thou Shalt Not Covet.” He then spends the better part of three hours on a clinically intimate dissection of coveting in the modern world.

Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu, Memoir of a Murderer) is a Korean factory worker who lost his job after private equity restructuring brought layoffs. An organized labor strike turned violent, and Ho-seok’s continued trauma has strained his family life with wife Mi-ok (Lee favorite Jeon Do-yeon) and their young son. Mi-ok continues a sympathetic devotion to her husband, but he remains emotionally distant.

Their lives change when documentary filmmaker Ye-ji (Parasite‘s Cho Yeo-jeong) begins including them in a film about the effect of the layoffs on the displaced workers and their families. Mi-ok and Ye-ji become fast friends, but as the two couples spend more time together, the wealth and privilege of Ye-ji’s husband Sang-woo (Zo In-sung from Hope) simmers the tension between boundaries of class, compassion and exploitation.

Lee (Burning, Peppermint Candy, Secret Sunshine), again co-writing with Jungmi Oh, confidently builds a patient, spellbinding and wonderfully acted drama through multiple layers of socioeconomic anxiety. Souls feel dead without the purpose of employment, unable to bear even random meetings with former friends still working and cast as one of “the living.”

And, as things must be today, the suffering is preserved thanks to the camera of Ye-ji, sometimes with questionable consent. Lee and the stellar cast make sure these moments stand on their own, but anyone who has recently been transfixed by You Can See Everything will find more fuel for a conversation about authenticity, the performative, and manipulation.

Possible Love (Ganeunghan sarang) is a time-consuming but richly rewarding human drama. The layers are plentiful and deep, ultimately laying bare a graceful, in-the-moment encapsulation carrying valuable insight that should only increase over time.

Shudder Premiere

Compliance Formation

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New Group

by Hope Madden

In 2023, Yûta Shimotsu took a queasying look into obedience with Best Wishes to All. As the smalltown folk horror morphed from one subgenre to the next, the audience felt the same bewilderment facing the beleaguered heroine.

Disobey, that’s the theme of Best Wishes to All, as well as Shimotsu’s second feature, New Group. Quiet high school student Ai (Anna Yamada) doesn’t rock the boat. She wants to go unnoticed, not get left behind.

But conformity in Ai’s high school amplifies. Soon, bullies and cliques make way for absurd compliance with authority manifesting as giant gymnastic formations including a human pyramid 20 people high.

Though the symbolism in New Group is far tidier and more heavy handed than in Shimotsu’s previous effort, the film offers an alarming take on the loss of individuality. It begins with Ai’s nightmares of mindlessly violent behavior in an attempt for a viral video. Though the group think and desensitization of the digital age has its place in New Group, Shimotsu’s aim seems more trained on larger ideas concerning Japanese culture.

Fitting, then, that it’s Yu (Aoki Yuzu), a new student who’s been studying in America before being dumped back home by inattentive parents, whose introduction sparks Ai’s burgeoning courage. His entrance also corresponds with news of a sound being emitted from deep space.

Shimotsu’s imagery is arresting. The human pyramid composed of identically dressed students is alarmingly precise and almost beautiful. The other gymnastic formations tend to be wilder and darkly comical. Comedic, too, is the figure of the school principal (Pierre Taki). Though the veteran has few scenes, he relishes the authority figure’s power trip.

There are additional layers and wild turns, but New Group‘s theme is clear and the climax inevitable. Best Wishes for All delivered a creepier and certainly less predictable outcome, but Shimotsu’s second feature is a reminder that Japanese horror has never stopped being vital.

Outtakes

Blood and Ben Gay

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Silver Screamers

by Hope Madden

Sean Cisterna has made a lot of movies, most of them cheesy TV crime dramas. But his best work (The Long Rider, From the Vine) have been documentaries. For Silver Screamers, the filmmaker combines the best of both worlds.

Silver Screamers is Cisterna’s documentary about making the short horror film The Rug. Like a lot of BTS filmmaking docs, Silver Screamers offers a fly-on-the-wall observation of the craft and crap that goes into making a movie. What sets this documentary apart and gives it endless appeal is its cast.

Cisterna put out a call to retirement homes looking for crew for his horror short. Though it took some doing, and some taming of the language in the want ad, the filmmaker found his volunteers: an 80-year-old former softball coach, a ninety-something grandmother for on-set sound, a recent widow for blood FX, a long-retired teacher for practical creature FX. Nobody involved likes horror. Indeed, once they sign on with Cisterna, they all watch The Exorcist together, some of them holding folders in front of their eyes while others grimace.

So, why take the job?

Though the answer is obvious and potentially cloying, Cisterna’s approach is respectful and full of compassion. Yes, the seniors are cute. They’re also genuinely proud of themselves, and with good reason.

Anthony Garramone is a beloved figure in their small town of Aurora, often referred to as the town’s ambassador, so he’s elected to sweet talk townsfolk out of the props the production will need. He indeed obtains the titular rug at a deep discount.

David Swift uses his old art lessons on puppetry to figure out how to make the rug seem to crawl up a narrow set of steps.

Diane Ament throws herself into the make-up role, even keeping the severed body parts looking freshly gnawed. Ament took the position because her husband had recently passed away. Like everyone else who volunteered, Ament needed something to fill her time, to keep her mind busy.

Though slight and to a degree predictable, Silver Screamers is as endearing a peek behind the filmmaking curtain as you are likely to find.

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?