'V/H/S/Mixtape' (2026) Movie Review

There are two frequent approaches to horror I do not typically care for. First is found footage. I get what people love about these movies, but with a few exceptions, they do not do much for me. Second we have the anthology approach. Shorts are typically a hard sell for me, and stitching them together doesn’t help matters. No matter how hard I try, no matter how many I watch, these are generally not my favorites.

'Ghost In The Cell' (2026) Movie Review

When five minutes into a movie a man is stabbed, flayed, and eviscerated, then his entrails displayed on a ceiling fan like a macabre art installation, you know you’re in for a wild time. And Ghost in the Cell, the latest from Joko Anwar (Satan’s Slaves, Impetigore), does not let you down on that front. This is a blackly comic prison horror and an acerbic critique of government and corporate corruption, all coated in a thick layer of glistening viscera. Seriously, at one point a man is torn asunder and turned into a shower. (You really have to see it for it to make sense.)

'Appofeniacs' (2025) Movie Review

Warnings about new and emerging technology run amok has been a common theme in movies since damn near day one. From Frankenstein to Wells to the Terminator franchise, we’ve been counseled against the hazards of unchecked science we don’t fully grasp yet. With his debut feature, Appofeniacs, prolific music video director Chris Marrs Piliero uses a post-Pulp Fiction maze of rapid banter and intersecting narratives to raise a cautious eyebrow at the use of AI and deepfakes. What lands, lands solid, especially the frequent and ample violence, but what misses whiffs, and the mixed bag of a film winds up mostly a cautionary tale about aggrieved edgelords with no real problems and too much time on their hands. 

'One Last Shot' (2026) Movie Review

Fellow tactical action enthusiasts, today is a day worth celebrating, for we can now watch the third installment of the James Nunn/Scott Adkins single-take franchise, One Shot. They follow up the 2021 original and 2024 sequel, One More Shot, with One Last Shot. Presumably the final chapter, at least from the title, I, for one, hope they never stop making these and am way in the bag for One More Last Shot, One More Last Shot Again, and however many they want to churn out.

'The Weight' (2026) Movie Review

Desperation pushes people to great extremes, like slogging across the dense wilderness shouldering packs weighed down with purloined bars of gold. When Samuel Murphy (Ethan Hawke), the protagonist of director Padraic McKinley’s The Weight, finds himself in a brutal work camp in 1930s Oregon, this is the precise deal he accepts, freedom in exchange for a perilous trek.

'Colony' (2026) Movie Review

As much as I love zombie movies, there are so many of them, and many of those are formulaic and forgettable as all hell. Yet, on a regular basis we get offerings that remind us there is still life in the undead. 2016’s Train to Busan was one of these. Director Yeon Sang-ho followed that up with 2020’s Peninsula, set in the same world as Train. Now he’s back in zombie-adjacent territory with Colony. While this doesn’t necessarily do anything entirely new, it’s a reminder why filmmakers return to this subgenre, what makes it an effective storytelling vehicle, and adds enough unique tics to keep things fresh enough to entertain.

Fantasia 2026: 'Bowels Of Hell' Movie Review

In a time when we’re all wary of diarrhea lettuce, it seems only fitting that we get a poop-centric horror movie. And to that end, we now have Brazilian scatological chiller-comedy, Bowels of Hell. So, thanks for that, writer/director duo Gurcius Gewdner and Gustavo Vinagre.

Fantasia 2026: 'Matapanki' Movie Review

We’ve all had too much to drink and thought we had super powers, right? What Chilean writer/director Diego “Mapache” Fuentes supposes is: what if those powers were real? The resulting film is Matapanki, a frenetic blast of gritty punk vibes and chaos overflowing with hardscrabble energy and breakneck pace. This is not for everyone, or even most people, but hot damn is this ever a movie for me.

Fantasia 2026: 'Our Effed Up World' Movie Review

At this point, it wouldn’t feel like Fantasia without an offering from Alice Maio Mackay. The prolific Australian filmmaker has dropped vampires, ancient parasites, cult murders, and even a Christmas movie, among others delightful genre goodies. She’s back once again with the world premiere of Our Effed Up World, tackling a neon-soaked ‘80s throwback sci-fi horror with her roguish, lo-fi, deep-baked queer sensibilities, and the result is a damn fine time.

Fantasia 2026: 'Attack On Paradise' Movie Review

“This is really bad timing, babe.” For Suleyman (Said Boumazoughe), the protagonist of Bob Colares's new action-thriller, Attack on Paradise, this is easily the understatement of a lifetime, considering he’s about to embark on a day that plays out like a mix of The Raid and Walking Tall. 

'Man Of War' (2026) Movie Review

In writer/director William Kaufman’s new action film, Man of War, we meet our protagonist, Connor (LaMonica Garret), an elite spec-ops veteran, like we always meet this character in movies. He’s shirtless, so we can see both his muscles and his scars from a lifetime of combat, drinking straight from a bottle of booze, staring at a photo of a lost or distant loved one, a loaded gun on the table in front of him. He’s a man lost, adrift, uncertain of how to live in a world beyond the bounds of warfare. 

'Kraken' (2026) Movie Review

A remote Norwegian fjord. A legacy of strange occurrences. Disappearing tourists. Environmental degradation. A corrupt business using questionable technology with unexpected side effects. All of this adds up to a big old mess in director Pal Oie’s new creature feature, Kraken, with mixed results. On one hand, it can be a thrilling adventure about human meddling waking up an unforeseen natural threat from the chilly depths of the ocean. On the other, it’s awash in cliches and a slow burn to the point where the fuse almost goes entirely out.

'Chum' (2026) Movie Review

I’m almost always game for a cheapo, nature-gone-wild movie, especially one involving sharks. This year has already seen a wild amount of animal-attack films. In the first six months we’ve had Primate, Thrash, Deep Water, Killer Whale, and just this week the hippo-rampage adventure Hungry. I feel like I’m even forgetting a few, but you get the point. And there are at least a handful more still scheduled to release in 2026. All of this brings us to Chum, which is dire, nonsensical, and borderline competent.

'Hungry' (2026) Movie Review

When we think about hippos, a lot of us think of them as big, cute, cuddly goofs. They make excellent stuffed animals for a reason, after all. The reality, however, is they are actually ornery, territorial, startlingly fast on land and in water, and dangerous as all hell. There is no shortage of terrifying hippo videos on the internet; they are straight up scary. And now they are getting their due in the fun new hippos-on-a-rampage movie, Hungry. 

'Speed Demon' (2026) Movie Review

Let’s be honest, you know what you’re getting into when you put on a movie called Speed Demon, about a hot nun performing an exorcism on a high-speed train. And director Jon Keeyes and writer Domenico Salvaggio deliver exactly what is advertised in what is mostly a dull thud of a film.

SIFF 2026: 'Lady' Movie Review

When a young documentarian, Sam (Laurie Kynaston) takes a paid gig to shoot a portrait of the obscure noble Lady Isabella (Sian Clifford, Fleabag), what initially appears to be a vanity project for an entitled aristocrat quickly morphs into something much, much stranger and more off the wall. The mockumentary format is a hit-and-miss affair, for me at least, but Samuel Abrahams’s Lady makes excellent use of this stylistic approach and delivers something both hilarious and truly unusual, all anchored by an incredible, unhinged performance from Clifford. Think Absolutely Fabulous meets Grey Gardens by way of the Invisible Man.

SIFF 2026: 'Fifteen' Movie Review

As we all know, growing up is a horror show with no equal. Such is the case for BFFs Ligia (Greta Marti) and Mayte (Macarena Oz). Outcasts, the poor kids at their hoity-toity private school, they’re bullied and mocked and picked on. All they want is to stage the perfect joint quinceanera and show up their priggish classmates, a plan that goes awry when Ligia’s ne’er-do-well boyfriend is bitten by a sewer monster and knocks her up. An unwanted teen pregnancy is tough enough, but in writer/director/brother duo Jack Zagha Kababie and Yossy Zagha’s Fifteen (Quince), it is much more monstrous than that. 

SIFF 2026: 'Again Again' Movie Review

So you’ve been stuck in a time loop, cursed to relive the same day over and over and over again for ten years. But one morning you wake up and it’s tomorrow. What now? Tons of films deal with what it’s like to be endlessly stuck in the same day, some funny, some horrific, but not many, if any, deal with the aftermath. What do you do when you can finally move on? How do you cope? What does that do to your mind and your heart? This is the core idea that drives Mia Moore and Heather Ballish’s feature Again Again.

SIFF 2026: WTF Nightmare Fuel Shorts

I don’t typically watch a lot of short films. While I respect the passion, effort, and craft, they tend to be more miss than hit for me. I recognize that’s a me problem, but it’s the truth. That said, the Seattle International Film Festival always has a robust shorts program, so I thought what the hell, why not check out the eight films in the WTF! Nightmare Fuel package. There is certainly some weird and wild things to behold.

SIFF 2026: 'Body Blow' Capsule Review

Imagine if Greg Araki or Alice Maio Mackay made Cruising and you have an idea of Dean Francis’s Body Blow. Lo-fi and neon-drenched, it follows a sex-addicted, non-masturbating cop (Tim Pocock) as he gets in too deep with a ruthless drag queen crime boss.