leebutler Horror, Review, Thriller

Obsession (2026) – Obsessed

Released: 12th March
Seen: 19th May

Go see Obsession. Go. Now. Stop reading this review, go to your vehicle, drive to your local cinema, purchase a ticket for the movie Obsession and then come back. I could pussyfoot around and deliver an opening paragraph about how “Friends to lovers plots are a dime a dozen” and then transition into how unique this version is or talk about the rise in YouTubers making horror movies that’re better than anything else coming out from the major studios or just come up with some elaborate explanation of the concept of obsession, all were options I went with for this opening paragraph that’s designed to be something above the read more line but instead I’m going with GO AND SEE THIS FUCKING MOVIE RIGHT FUCKING NOW!… Thank you, now we can continue.

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leebutler Adventure, Horror, Review, Thriller

Send Help (2026) – Outwits, Outlasts, Outplays

Released: 29th January
Seen: 13th May

In the year 2000, the world was introduced to a reality show that would go on to effectively change history. Survivor, now in its 50th season, took a bunch of random people and dumped them on an island with nothing but their wits and tasked them with surviving for 39 days to try and win a million-dollar prize. It was a monster hit, revolutionised TV as we know it, effectively turned reality TV into the genre we know today and made producer Mark Burnett into such a massive figure that he was able to get another show off the ground, The Apprentice. Speaking of things that start with getting trapped on a desert island and end in unnecessary death, carnage and projectile vomiting, Send Help is a pretty great movie.

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leebutler Action, Netflix, Review, Thriller

Apex (2026) – High Climber

Released: 24th April
Seen: 26th April

The Ozploitation genre used to be truly great. Back in the 70s and 80s, Australia made absolutely batshit genre films that utilised the outback landscape (and a few stereotypes about Australians) to create some genuinely amazing films. Razorback, Patrick, Long Weekend and a whole bunch more weird horror films set Down Under were a great part of the underground cinema of the day… and then they kind of became rare birds, the truly wild days where we could just throw a few people into the middle of nowhere and make a film are rare to say the least. It’s a film style that really should make a comeback, but until then, I will happily take Apex, Netflix’s high-budget imitation brand version of a cheesy Ozploitation film, even if it does have a lot fewer Aussies involved than one might like.

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leebutler Horror, Netflix, Review, Thriller

Thrash (2026) – Fishy

Released: 10th April
Seen: 16th April

In 1975 Steven Spielberg changed the world of cinema forever by introducing the world to a shark named Bruce in the movie Jaws. Jaws was the original summer blockbuster, proving that action spectacle done well can be a massive hit at the box office. It’s also the quintessential shark movie, laying a blueprint for all other movies about sharks that would inevitably follow over the years. Shark movies are kind of ubiquitous at this point, every year there’s at least a couple and they can range from being surprisingly good to absolute dog shit, from serious to goofy. Then you get a film like Thrash which seems to be trying to see just how many kinds of shark movie it can copy during its runtime but just ends up making for a film that’s at best just kind of OK.

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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 Horror, Thriller, Review

Twisted (2026) – Uninspired

Released: 6th February
Seen: 1st April

The label Torture Porn was first used around 2006 when it was applied to films like Saw, Hostel and Wolf Creek. It was an easy way to describe some of the more extreme horror-slasher films of the era that almost revelled in how much gore they could get away with showing. They were some of the most extreme films in the genre that were also major hits in the mainstream cinemas and kind of opened a floodgate that we’re still dealing with. One of the people whose films first got this label, who really just seems to have embraced it in the years since, is the director of Saw 2-4 Darren Lynn Bousman, who used to be really good at making these films… but sadly, Twisted is far from his best work.

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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, Drama, Review, Thriller

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025) – Rosy

Released: 7th August 2025
Seen: 27th February 2026

We all know the famous phrase “Life’s a bitch, and then you die”. That phrase feels more relevant today than ever, where everything just feels constantly overwhelming. Burnout is real and is not only happening in people’s professional lives but in their personal ones. Day-to-day events just pile up in a way that feels insurmountable and unfixable because the people who could fix them are unavailable. That’s a feeling that we’ve all had before and it’s the kind of emotional destruction that could make for a fascinating film, or at least a fascinating performance, and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is fortunately both of those things.

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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 Action, Crime, Drama, Review, Thriller

One Battle After Another (2025) – Great Battle

Released: 25th September
Seen: 21st December

As the year draws to a close, the time is soon approaching when we’re going to learn what the big awards contenders are. The ones that will sweep the upcoming ceremonies that will go down in history as one of the few films every year to get the title of “Oscar-nominated”. It’s always a little hard to guess exactly who the nominees are, hence why every single year there are articles printed about a couple of major snubs and surprises that no one saw coming. Other films, however, are pretty much guaranteed to be in the conversation from the second they turn up on the scene, and one such film that’s absolutely dominated any discussion about upcoming awards is the Paul Thomas Anderson film One Battle After Another, and it’s not very hard to see why.

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