leebutler Horror, Mystery, Review, Thriller

The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025) – Uggh

Released: 4th September
Seen: 6th December

Ed and Lorraine Warren were complete and utter con artists whose damage to the people they claimed to help won’t be fully known for years to come. For literally decades they would go from town to town and “investigate” strange goings-on and somehow come to a “scientific” conclusion that this meant they found some form of demon. All the time just a whole mess of demons, it’s never mental illness or epilepsy or strange coincidences… nope, always demons. I’ve said this before, literally verbatim because I copied that opening section from my review of The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It which I still regard as the worst mainline Conjuring movie (The spinoffs are somehow worse, but none fill me with as much actual rage as The Devil Made Me Do It). One might hope that they would stop this franchise at some point, Horror as a genre is in a new era that’s not exactly suited to what The Warren’s and their lies could inspire but nope, we now have The Conjuring: Last Rites and my god, I hope this is the end because even the lies are getting repetitive and dull.

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leebutler Review, Thriller

Hurry Up Tomorrow (2025) – Go Away Now

Released: 15th May
Seen: 2nd December

In 2023, Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye decided to try his hand at acting with the miniseries The Idol and the reviews for that series were absolutely scathing on a level that very few shows could get. It had an infamously bad production history, and every episode was met with brutal vitriol as it became apparent to everyone paying even a little bit of attention that Abel was not a good actor. Honestly, the reviews were so bad that it seemed like it should stop him from ever being asked back to try and do anything even close to acting again… but alas, lessons were not learned and someone decided to give him a movie where he confirms he can’t act and his co-stars prove that even their incredible talents can’t save this crap.

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leebutler Comedy, Crime, Review, Thriller

Caught Stealing (2025) – Steals The Show

Released: 28th August
Seen: 30th November

Darren Aronofsky is the kind of director who seems to revel in polarising the audience, in making a film that’s going to get an extreme reaction no matter if it’s positive or negative. There aren’t really any films in his catalogue you could say are just good or well-liked; you either love his stuff or hate it. In recent years, even though I’ll admit he’s obscenely talented, I just wasn’t into his work on films like Mother! Or The Whale, but in the past, he’s delivered truly breathtaking work like Black Swan so undoubtedly there was a chance that he was going to win me back at some point with one of his works. It feels like Caught Stealing seems to be the first time that Darren has tried to make a film with a strong mass appeal (hilarious to say in retrospect since it bombed at the box office), and honestly, it’s just a damn good time.

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leebutler Action, Comedy, Crime, Review, Thriller

Nobody 2 (2025) – Fun

Released: 17th October
Seen: 29th November

In 2021, a little film called Nobody was released to the public. The film could be basically described as a mass-appeal suburban version of John Wick, filled with some truly incredible action sequences, a captivating lead performance by Bob Odenkirk and enough charm to elevate the already excellent material. It was a genuinely glorious little film that easily was one of the best of 2021 (and while being a good film in 2021 was a low bar because of how that year was still a pandemic recovery year for the movies, believe me when I say that Nobody was still genuinely fantastic). It was the kind of film that seemed like it was destined to be a franchise and deserved a sequel just to see what this little family did now that their father’s clandestine history had been revealed. Well, in Nobody 2, the Mansell family decide that the way they’re going to handle things is by going on a summer vacation… it will go exactly as expected.

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leebutler Horror, Review, Thriller

Good Boy (2025) – Barking Brilliant

Released: 3rd October
Seen: 25th November

Last year, I proclaimed that In A Violent Nature was the best film of the year (a claim I stand by, fight me). Part of what made that film so special was that it took a genre we all know pretty well, that being cheesy hyper-gory slasher films, and changed the perspective that we follow from the perspective of the future victims to the perspective of the slow-moving moving stumbling killer. It was such a simple shift that created a radically brilliant piece of art that kind of defied the rules of the genre by explaining the magic trick behind how they work. That simple idea of shifting the perspective of a story to a character that we don’t normally spend any time with really allows something familiar to feel exciting and new, and can allow for a really creative director to show off just what they can do. Good Boy is that kind of movie, taking a subgenre we know all too well and finding the most unique possible way to explore that genre that I’ve seen in a long damn time.

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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, Mystery, Review, Thriller

Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare (2025) – You Can Fly

Released: 27th Feburary
Seen: 1st October

The Twisted Childhood Universe is the name given to the movie franchise that’s slowly being created which takes public domain fairy tale characters and turns them into horror movies. It’s a universe brought to you by the Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey people and when they first announced that this was a thing they were doing, the internet collectively groaned because the idea sounded painful and we had all suffered through the first movie which was a steaming heap of garbage. Then they released Blood and Honey 2, a marked improvement on the original that proved the actual potential of this stupid concept. Of course those were still early test films, they were banking off the Winnie the Pooh as a killer idea and we didn’t have much information about how the full Poohniverse (The other nickname given to this universe) would fare… Well, now the first film that isn’t about the bear of very little brain has come out and folks, this might actually turn out OK.

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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 Comedy, Horror, Review, Thriller

Anything That Moves (2025) – Is It Sexual? Yeah!

Released: 14th September
Seen: 14th September

The final film I saw this year at the Sydney Underground Film Festival was chosen pretty much at random. I ran into that situation that I’m sure a lot of people have run into when it comes to film festivals. I bought a set of 5 tickets and used 4 of them for films I was interested in, so the last one was going to be chosen pretty much at random. I want to note that I entered this movie without any prior knowledge or preconceptions about what it would be like. It’s one of those films where the basic description in the booklet made the final choice for me… probably should’ve picked something else, I’m not going to lie.

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