leebutler Comedy, Drama, Review, Romance

One Night Only (2026) – Celibate

Released: 6th August
Seen: 13th August

The year is 2013, and James DeMonaco makes his feature-length directorial debut with a film called The Purge. This is a big deal for James, because up to this point in his career James has mostly been a scriptwriter who got his start writing the script for Jack (that Robin Williams film about the boy who ages weirdly) but wasn’t really known for anything that special. He worked, certainly, but didn’t really get to make his mark. The Purge movie was going to make his mark; he wrote and directed it, got Ethan Hawke to star in his little low-budget horror film about a world where all crime, including murder, was legal for one night only; things were going well. Hell, the film made money, nearly 90 million on a 3 million budget. Everything should be going great… Unfortunately, the film got slaughtered in reviews.

Continue reading “One Night Only (2026) – Celibate” →
leebutler Horror, Review, Thriller

Passenger (2026) – Directionless

Released: 28th May
Seen: 12th August

Driving has become one of those things that everyone more or less needs to be able to do to be a significant part of society nowadays. Sure, you could theoretically get by on public transport and walking but everything is so far away and public transport is woefully underfunded in most places so as a general rule, you’re going to need to know how to drive. Because we spend so much time behind the wheel of a car it would make sense to have a horror movie where driving is a major element of the story, tap into some of those fears that come with the act of getting into a ton of steel on wheels and moving at 100 kms per hour alongside other tons of steel on wheels. There’s something naturally there that could make for quite the interesting film… or you could just do a fairly standard haunted house movie on wheels, that’s also an option available to you if you would like it and apparently that’s what Passenger went with.

Continue reading “Passenger (2026) – Directionless” →
leebutler Drama, Horror, Review, Romance, Sci-Fi

The Bride! (2026) – Marital Bliss

Released: 6th March
Seen: 10th August

Mary Shelley was, essentially, the inventor of modern science fiction with her 1818 novel Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus. This single 280-page book about a mad scientist deciding to dig up a bunch of corpses and sew them together to create the perfect man was an absolute revolution and would eventually go on to be the basis for another important work of art, that being the 1931 feature film Frankenstein. That film was, and still is, an absolute benchmark of horror cinema that everyone has referenced at some point and was one of the top earning films of the year when it came out, making 12 million at the box office (adjusted for inflation, that’s about 263 million today). It was big enough that director James Whale was basically begged to make a sequel which brought us The Bride of Frankenstein which is iconic in a very different way from the film that went before it (It’s campier and so much gayer, because why not?). That would inevitably lead to a string of sequels, remakes, reimaginings, recontextualisations and eventually would lead to Maggie Gyllenhaal taking a swing at the idea and giving us The Bride!, a striking modern take on the eternal classic.

Continue reading “The Bride! (2026) – Marital Bliss” →
leebutler Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Undertone (2026) – Underdone

Released: 25th July
Seen: 9th August

In 1927, the film The Jazz Singer came out and changed the world. While it was possibly the first film to use sound (depending on how we want to define it there are several candidates for the first sound picture), it was certainly the first to be popular and to allow the use of audible dialogue, and so, with the simple line “You ain’t heard nothing yet”, that film entered the history of cinema as an important benchmark (even though that benchmark comes with a notable history of racism… but so does most early cinema, let’s be honest). Since then, sound has been an essential element of the cinematic experience; it can make or break a film. There are countless stories of films that were deemed to be bad because they didn’t have the soundtrack completed yet, a bad sound mix can make a serious scene into an accidental comedy, there’s an absolutely hilarious version of the trailer for The Mummy that muted the wrong audio track which became the only interesting thing about that movie. Sound is important and so when a horror film sells itself on its sound by saying it’s the scariest movie you’ll ever hear you hope that it can deliver on that… in the cast of Undertone, it sounds good but I’ve heard scarier.

Continue reading “Undertone (2026) – Underdone” →
leebutler Horror, Review

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026) – Evil Dead Wrap

Released: 16th April
Seen: 7th August

In 2023, Evil Dead Rise was released and became a smash hit. It absolutely dominated the box office with $147 million, got rave reviews from the critics and has possibly the most badass title card reveal that audiences have seen for a very long time. It was the kind of film where the person who made it would be undoubtedly heralded as a potential horror legend and basically guaranteed that they’d be able to make any film they would ever want to make in this specific genre. Therefore, it really shouldn’t be a shock that the next film by writer/director Lee Cronin would not only be one where he’s not held back by studio notes but one where he’s so clearly in charge that they have to put his name in the title… Now, if only Lee Cronin’s The Mummy were actually about The Mummy.

Continue reading “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026) – Evil Dead Wrap” →
leebutler Horror, Review

Whistle (2026) – Hot Air

Released: 12th February
Seen: 5th August

A good old horror movie staple is the cursed object, something that’s been imbued with evil magic that causes death. The Monkey’s Paw, a tape that makes you die in 7 days, a One Wish Willow – simple everyday items that result in horrific deaths for anyone who happens upon them. This can often make for some truly great horror stories that not only shock the audience but also feel somewhat relatable; everyone at some point has picked up a random item and fiddled with it, so the idea of happening upon a cursed item and accidentally triggering its curse is weirdly believable. Sometimes it can lead to great movies, but often it’ll lead to films that’re just kind of OK, like the film Whistle, a film that doesn’t even have the decency to actually blow and give me an easy pun to make.

Continue reading “Whistle (2026) – Hot Air” →
leebutler Crime, Drama, Horror, Review, Thriller

Psycho Killer (2026) – Boring Heads

Released: 20th February
Seen: 6th August

In 1995, the movie Se7en came out to good reviews and a great box office. It’s the film that made people start noticing David Fincher as a director, gave several people involved some much-needed career boosts and is nowadays considered an absolute classic of the genre, showing how genuinely intelligent and dark a crime thriller could actually be. The man who wrote it was Andrew Kevin Walker, who has written several other films, done script doctoring on some major works like Fight Club and even wrote an episode of Tales From The Crypt, so he should be considered a genuinely great writer… and he wrote the script for the movie Psycho Killer, so even the greats can write absolute trash.

Continue reading “Psycho Killer (2026) – Boring Heads” →
leebutler Action, Adventure, Animation, Family, Fantasy, Mystery, Review

Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender (2026) – Bent

Released: 25th July
Seen: 3rd August

From 2005 to 2008, the animated TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender was released to massive love and acclaim. It was a huge hit series, widely considered one of the best animated series of all time and spawned countless imitators. It also has spawned a stunning amount of attempted reboots, from the successful follow-ups like The Legend of Korra to the much less successful (indeed, downright hated) live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender movie made by M. Night Shyamalan and the middling live-action series that’s been rated as “Fine” by most critics. It seems obvious to anyone looking at this that the franchise is at its best and most loved when animated. Of course, eventually they were going to probably do something to follow up the adventures of Aang the Avatar and so we got Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender, a perfectly fine animated movie that fans are gonna love… which is all it had to do, I guess.

Continue reading “Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender (2026) – Bent” →
leebutler Action, Adventure, Review, Sci-Fi

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) – Incredible

Released: 30th July
Seen: 1st August

It’s been 5 years since we last saw Spider-Man in the cinema and boy, it set a high bar. Spider-Man: No Way Home was an undeniable highlight of the post-Endgame MCU era, not only for its ability to weave nostalgia for previous iterations into a truly compelling narrative, but also for being a gut-punch of a film that shifted the course of the franchise. It absolutely changed how Spider-Man was dealt with in this universe due to the world-changing final moments where Dr Strange made everyone forget who Peter Parker was in order to save the world. Personally, I put the film in my top 10 list of that year and I still think Willem Dafoe’s return to the Green Goblin role should’ve gotten him an Oscar nomination (Just saying, he would’ve been a far better nomination than JK Simmons for Being the Ricardos). Any follow up film that Spider-Man had was going to have a lot to live up on not only a narrative level but an emotional one. Fortunately, Spider-Man: Brand New Day manages to meet the standard set by the previous movie in a truly fascinating and compelling way.

Continue reading “Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) – Incredible” →
leebutler Horror, Thriller, Mystery, Review

Scream 7 (2026) – Annoyed Yell

Released: 26th February
Seen: 2nd August

In November of 2023, it was announced that Melissa Barrera was no longer going to be a part of Scream 7. She was fired over a handful of posts she’d made calling the attacks in Gaza a genocide, these posts were deemed anti-semitic by Spyglass… they were not, they were calling out the actions of the government of Israel and specifically those of its leader, who right now has a warrant out for his arrest in relation to war crimes, specifically the genocide in Gaza. This was a pretty obvious overreaction back in 2023 but the feeling of anger towards Spyglass only grew as the war raged on and it became even more obvious that Melissa was right, which led to a lot of people calling for a boycott of Scream 7. This is why I didn’t go see the film during its initial release, despite loving this franchise which was my introduction to the horror genre that I love so much. Now Melissa has come out and said she’s moved on from everything, and the film made so much money that it feels silly to keep boycotting it (this isn’t a Harry Potter situation where the people who made it are so hateful that giving them a dollar actively harms others) so I finally saw it… and it’s probably the worst entry in this legendary franchise.

Continue reading “Scream 7 (2026) – Annoyed Yell” →