'The Occupant' (2025) Movie Review

Wilderness survival tales, sagas of human endurance in the face of overwhelming, unrelenting odds, are common fodder for movies. But like other oft-visited genres, they can be the staging grounds for moving, powerful stories. (It feels like I’ve written a lot about this lately when it comes to post-apocalyptic films doing fresh, interesting things.) There’s plenty of room for thrills and edge of your seat tension, and they’re perfect showcases for human resilience, the triumph of man over nature, and that sort of thing. It also helps that they tend to have relatively small casts. And into this fray comes Hugo Keijzer’s directorial debut, The Occupant.

Fantasia 2025: 'Redux Redux' Movie Review

A woman stands in a desert in the darkening twilight, looming over a man, tied to a chair, burning to death at her feet. This is Irene Kelly (Michaela McManus). She’s travelling dimension to dimension, methodically killing every version of Neville (Jeremy Holm), the serial killer who murdered her daughter. It’s a hell of a first image to kick off Kevin and Matthew McManus’s (The Block Island Sound) indie sci-fi thriller Redux Redux.

'The A-Frame' (2024) Movie Review

If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. So goes the well-worn saying, so goes the story of Donna (Dana Namerode). A talented pianist, the diagnosis of an aggressive, highly localized cancer means the only way to save her life is to amputate her arm. As her days become a series of indifferent doctors and callous support groups, the prospect of losing everything she’s devoted her life to leads her to accept an offer from Sam (Johnny Whitworth, Empire Records), a mysterious (sketchy) scientist who claims he can cure her. What initially looks like an immediate, miraculous cure turns into something much more sinister. And occasionally quite gooey.

'Osiris' (2025) Movie Review

Coming off back-to-back bangers Shrapnel and The Channel, William Kaufman is back with more of that sweet DTV tactical action that’s so popular amongst a certain segment of moviegoers. This time, however, he’s splashing around in the genre pool with Osiris. It’s not his first foray into genre, Daylight’s End has vampires, after all, but this one involves aliens and spaceships and all the associated sci-fi accoutrements.

Fantasia 2025: 'Terrestrial' Movie Review

Three friends, Vic (Edy Modica), Maddie (Pauline Chalamet), and her fiancé Ryan (James Morosini), visit their college pal, Allen (Jermaine Fowler), now a hot up-and-coming science fiction writer. As Allen welcomes his old buddies to his epic new Los Angeles mansion, this reunion, while all smiles and hugs on the surface, hides a seething cauldron of sordid interpersonal histories, long-simmering rivalries, distrust, jealousy, and much more. Maybe Maddie is in love with Allen, why does Ryan pick apart every word Allen says, maybe Allen hasn’t even written a single word of his high-priced novel. And then things get out of hand.

Fantasia 2025: 10 Movies To See

It’s time once again for one of our favorite events of the year, Fantasia Fest, also known as the world’s largest genre film festival. Running from Wednesday, July 16 through Sunday, August 3, the schedule is, as always, bursting at the seams with all manner of horror, action, sci-fi, and other assorted cinematic goodness.

'Daniela Forever' (2024) Movie Review

Not everything that looks perfect truly is. That’s the underlying conceit of Daniela Forever, the latest genre-bender from Nacho Vigalondo (Colossal, Timecrimes). Quirky and off-kilter, which is particularly on-brand for the Spanish writer/director, this romance smudges the lines between drama and sci-fi, blending earnest yearning and self-delusion into a careful-what-you-wish-for smoothie of memory, flawed recollections and conceptions of people, and the chaotic nature of dream logic.

'Elevation' (2024) Movie Review

Elevation, the new sci-fi adventure from The Adjustment Bureau director and Bourne Ultimatum writer George Nolfi, is fine. That’s the most accurate way to put it. It’s a solidly executed creature feature with an intriguing if underdeveloped hook, charismatic leads, moderate tension, and a crisp visual style. It gets right in, does its business, and wraps things up in less than 90 minutes. Is it thought provoking, innovative, or particularly memorable? No. But it’s entertaining and compelling enough if that’s all you’re after.

'Alien: Romulus' (2024) Movie Review

If it looks like an Alien movie, walks like an Alien movie, and murders you in space with a giant armor-plated extraterrestrial killing machine, then it’s probably an Alien movie. And by god, Evil Dead director Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus is an Alien movie. We’ve got xenomorphs, we’ve got face-huggers, there’s a chest-burster, corporate malfeasance, capitalistic overreach, acid blood, synthetics up to no good, and all the expected bells and baubles.

'Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga' (2024) Movie Review

“Do you have it in you to make it epic?” one character asks another near the end of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. In answer to his own question, George Miller casually strolls over, taps the mic, leans in, and responds, “Yes, yes I do.” The 79-year-old action maestro has once again stepped up to show the whippersnappers exactly how to do it. And it is good.

SIFF 2024: 'Eternal' Capsule Review

In Eternal, a rift on the ocean floor threatens to destroy not only Earth’s climate but the burgeoning relationship between a young submarine pilot and aspiring singer. 

'Restore Point' (2023) Movie Review

What if you could save your life at a certain point and, if you die unexpectedly, can then reset to that moment, like a video game? That’s the general idea of director Robert Hloz’s Restore Point, a slice of dystopian sci-fi. A solid, sturdy neo-noir, the film combines a twisting mystery and cool world building with an intriguing idea that plays something like Chinatown by way of Minority Report, both thematically and aesthetically. 

'I.S.S.' (2024) Movie Review

The hardest movies to write about are the ones that are fine, the ones that are just kind of okay. Where there’s nothing specifically wrong with them, where there aren’t glaring, slap-you-in-the-face flaws or problems, but also where there’s nothing particularly engaging, memorable, or otherwise noteworthy. And that is the exact place where director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s extraplanetary thriller I.S.S. lives. It has a strong cast doing solid work, seamless special effects, and a decent amount going for it. But the finished product is little more than a shrug and there’s not much to say beyond, “It’s fine.”

'No One Will Save You' (2023) Movie Review

I think I love the way Brian Duffield’s brain works. Spontaneous is easily one of my favorite and most re-watched movies of the last few years; Love and Monsters, which he wrote but didn’t direct, is great; and now we can add his latest multi-hyphenated endeavor, No One Will Save You, to this pile as it does not disappoint. At a base level, this is an alien-home-invasion story, but the reality is so much stranger and more complicated than that. 

Fantasia 2023: 10 Films To Check Out

Wait, it’s been a year already? I guess that’s what happens when time loses all meaning. The good news, however, is that since a year has passed it’s already time for the 2023 installment of the Fantasia Film Festival in ye olde Montreal.

'The Park' (2023) Movie Review

Writer/director Shal Ngo’s feature debut, The Park, is a tale of opposite forces, both colliding and pulling against each other. Playfulness crashes into sadism, goofiness bangs heads with savagery, practical concerns compete with wild dreams, and, most centrally, hope struggles to overcome despair. It’s Mad Max via Lord of the Flies, blending action and horror in a post-apocalyptic saga of roving child murder gangs, earnest friendship, and an abandoned amusement park.

'Kids Vs. Aliens' (2023) Movie Review

All the important bits are right there in the name: Kids vs. Aliens. There are kids, there are aliens, and they fight. That’s the gist of director Jason Eisener’s first feature since 2011’s Hobo with a Shotgun. (If you haven’t checked out his excellent docuseries Dark Side of the Ring, do so, even if you’re not a wrestling fan.) Like his previous endeavor, though in decidedly less brutal fashion, what works best here is a total blast, but at times the thesis statement of the title wears a bit thin stretched out to 75 minutes. (And sans credits, it’s more like 68.)

The 50 Most-Anticipated Movies Of 2023

As 2022 winds to a close, what better time to look forward? This year has been another fantastic one for film. (People who decry any year as a bad movie year blows my mind, because there’s never been a year I didn’t see a ton of movies that blew my mind.) And there’s so much in store for us in 2023.

'Slash/Back' (2022) Movie Review

Kids in small towns spend a lot of time wishing for something, anything to happen. In Nyla Innuksuk’s feature directorial debut, the sci-fi horror Slash/Back, a group of friends get their wish in the form of an alien invasion on the longest day of the year. When  extraterrestrial interlopers show up in the remote, barely-sub-arctic Inuit village of Pangnirtung, it’s up to Maika (Tasiana Shirley) and her pals Jesse (Alexis Wolfe), Uki (Nalajoss Ellsworth), and Leena (Chelsea Prusky) to save the day. And the visitors definitely learn that “nobody fucks with the girls from Pang.”

Fantastic Fest 2022: 'The Antares Paradox' Movie Review

Is there intelligent alien life out there? It’s a question that’s dogged humanity since we first looked up at the stars. And it’s also the central question in the life of Alexandra Baeza (Andrea Trepat), the protagonist and central character of Luis Tinoco’s sci-fi thriller The Antares Paradox. But the film also digs into the personal costs of the protagonist’s singular fixation as she struggles to make an impossible choice between fulfilling her lifelong dream and confronting a brutal familial loss.