leebutler Horror, Review, Sci-Fi, Thriller

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) – Bonkers

Released: 15th January
Seen: 1st April

28 Years Later was genuinely one of the best additions to the zombie movie genre in recent years, a visual treat filled with some of the most purely horrifying imagery. It was an absolutely great entry into the 28 Days Later franchise that promised to be the start of its own little trilogy, continuing the post-apocalyptic story by pushing it into a bold new direction. Well, if 28 Years Later was this franchise swinging for the fences, then 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple loads the franchise into a catapult and throws it over the fences with absolute fucking glee while doing so.

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leebutler Action, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Review, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Mercy (2026) – Release Me

Released: 22nd January
Seen: 23rd March

For better or worse, we live in the era of AI… or at least the era of AI being brute-forced into our daily lives by billionaires who rely on it to turn a profit and make a couple of extra dollars. It’s in everything, it’s in all the apps you use, the very site I post this on offers AI to write a synopsis of what I post (you’ll be happy to know I never use it, I can write shitty unfunny synopsis’ all by myself), and it’s overtaken social media where it does fun things like “makes child sex abuse material” or “endorses white supremacy”. People are now losing jobs and being replaced by AI, which is incredibly faulty and has a high risk of errors… but no error is as big as the error that was made when someone decided to give Mercy a budget and allowed this film to exist because it’s just fucking bad.

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leebutler Comedy, Crime, Review, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Bugonia (2025) – Bee-Gone-Ia

Released: 30th October 2025
Seen: 22nd February 2026

On December 4th, 2016, a fucking moron – who I won’t bother naming here – went to the Comet Ping Pong pizza shop in DC and fired multiple shots. Thankfully, he didn’t end up hurting anyone. Still, his plan was to go in to investigate the pizza place because he believed, thanks to other fucking idiots, that there was a child trafficking ring being operated out of the basement. One small problem, Comet Ping Pong didn’t have a basement nor was it in any way related to a child trafficking ring, it just happened to be a place where the Clinton campaign would occasionally buy food and a bunch of idiots reading emails decided that the phrases “pizza” or “Hot dogs” was some kind of elaborate code suggesting that they were buying children. This is probably the turning point where conspiracy theories went from curious things that went around the internet into actual real-world problems that caused the stupidest among us to threaten the lives of others, try to overthrow duly elected governments and believe that drinking raw milk is actually good for you. It’s the kind of insane shit that’s ripe for someone to use as the basis for a thriller, and Bugonia takes that mantle and runs with it.

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leebutler Drama, Fantasy, Review, Sci-Fi

The Life Of Chuck (2025) – Oh Life

Released: 14th August
Seen: 11th December

When you think of a Stephen King story, you inevitably think of some weird horror story with a terrifying concept and a probably less than satisfying final act. You might also think of his sci-fi work, his grandiose epic The Dark Tower or The Stand. What might be thought of less are his dramatic works, despite them being adapted into truly grand movies. Green Mile, Shawshank Redemption, movies that can genuinely surprise people when they learn it’s a Stephen King adaptation (I’ve literally seen this happen, I’ve shocked people by saying “The Green Mile is based on Stephen King). He doesn’t really get to flex his dramatic writing muscles as much because everyone generally wants a Stephen King book to be scary, but back in 2020 he released a novella called The Life of Chuck. The novella caught the eye of Mike Flanagan, who is one of the modern horror heroes, and he adapted it into a film of the same name which is certainly heartwarming but… well, let’s begin the review before I go into that.

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leebutler Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Review, Sci-Fi

Frankenstein (2025) – Monsterously Great

Released: 7th November
Seen: 28th November

The story of Frankenstein has been told so many times that, at this point, it’s actually a surprise when a full year goes by without someone attempting to tell their version of the legendary Mary Shelley tale, arguably the first science fiction story. Obviously, cinema’s love of this story began with the 1931 Universal classic by James Whale, but ever since then, it’s a well that people keep plunging their buckets into, hoping to extract something special. Of course, a lot of the time the well feels like it’s run dry because everyone has done every possible thing you could imagine with this character, there shouldn’t be anything new or interesting that could be done with him… but then along comes the legendary Guillermo Del Toro to use his special magic on the story and make it feel fresh once more.

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leebutler Action, Adventure, Review, Sci-Fi

Tron: Ares (2025) – …loading

Released: 9th October
Seen: 18th October

In 1982, Disney released the movie Tron and to say it was a revelation is an understatement. Tron is the kind of film where they had to invent technology to figure out how to make it, keep in mind this was before CGI animation was even possible in any real capacity. The computers used to make Tron didn’t even have one-tenth of the power of the phone you are probably reading this on. It was revolutionary, a display of what a computer could bring to the world of cinema and even though it still made back its money ($50 million on a $17 million budget) it has been considered mostly a cult film and thus wasn’t really given a sequel treatment. Well, a combination of that and the fact that the animation department would’ve murdered someone if they had to go through that process again. A sequel would have to wait until the computers could handle the job, which is how we got Tron: Legacy in 2010. It was a fine movie, visually spectacular (besides the de-aging that they did to Jeff Daniels) and made a ton of money… and for some reason it took 15 years for them to try again with Tron: Ares.

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leebutler Action, Review, Sci-Fi, Thriller

M3GAN 2.0 (2025) – She’ll Be Back

Released: 26th July
Seen: 8th October

In 2023, the world was introduced to a dancing robot who killed people and her name was M3GAN. It’s kind of wild how much of a global phenomenon this little doll became, but she was everywhere. She pretty much instantly gained icon status and became a camp superstar; people dressed like her for Halloween, and everyone was excited for more adventures with this murderbot. All this is especially surprising when you consider that M3GAN was released in January, which is notorious for being a dumping ground for movies, particularly those in the horror genre. It was such a great film that I put it at number 7 on my Best list that year, and I’m not the only one who put it up on that pedestal. M3GAN was pretty much guaranteed a sequel the second opening weekend finished, and now 2 years later, M3GAN 2.0 has graced us with its presence, and while I’m not going to pretend it’s bad, it’s certainly nothing like I expected.

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leebutler Horror, Review, Sci-Fi, Thriller

War Of The Worlds (2025) – War Is Hell!

Released: 30th July
Seen: 30th September

In recent years, a new genre called “Screenlife” has grown in popularity, resulting in films like Missing, Searching and Host where all the action takes place on a computer screen. When done right, it can be a truly fascinating way to tell a story, allowing the viewer to jump from video calls to emails, and even see messages being typed and deleted, giving a glimpse into a character’s mind. It’s simple, effective and genuinely a versatile way of making a film… however, when done badly, you get something like War of the Worlds, a contender for every “Worst of 2025” list that you’ll see in a few months.

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leebutler Horror, Review, Sci-Fi, Thriller

28 Years Later (2025) – Took Long Enough!

Released: 19th June
Seen: 26th September

In 2002, 28 Days Later was released into the world and significantly changed the landscape of what a Zombie movie could look like. Its biggest contribution was really making the idea of the fast-moving zombie into something mainstream, signalling the change from the genre’s default of slow-moving moving stumbling beasts. Sure, other films had done fast-moving zombies before, but 28 Days Later really set the standard that all others would follow. It was an undeniable hit and would eventually get a sequel in 28 Weeks Later, which was just as impressive and epic in its tale of just how far the infection had spread and the true nightmare of what a second wave could be. That was in 2007 and ever since then people have been talking about a sequel but because of issues regarding rights and ownership, that’s just not been possible… until now when finally someone pulled the right strings and got everyone in the right places so that they would be able to make 28 Years Later, a post-pandemic zombie movie that we probably wished we didn’t need but we got and it is something else.

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leebutler Action, Comedy, Horror, Review, Sci-Fi

The Toxic Avenger (2025) – I Love You Toxie

Released: 29th August
Seen: 30th August

In 1984, a little independent film company known as Troma released a film that would change the course of the company forever. What started as a little low-budget horror film tentatively titled Health Club Horror would be released with the more memorable name The Toxic Avenger. To say that this film became a cult hit would be a massive understatement. The Toxic Avenger was the kind of cult hit that defined Troma. Toxie would turn into their official mascot and appear in several other movies. The Toxic Avenger would also turn up in other media, video games, comic books, a hit off-Broadway musical and even a Saturday morning children’s cartoon named The Toxic Crusaders. 40 years later and a certain subsection of the world still loves this big green freak in his torn up tutu, so much so that it almost feels inevitable that Hollywood was going to remake this little underground film because that’s just what happens to these cult films, someone will always try to recreate the lightning in a bottle that the original somehow had… so imagine my shock when they actually pulled off the magic trick of making this film work!

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