leebutler Drama, Horror, Review

Until Dawn (2025) – Glitchy

Released: 25th April
Seen: 3rd October

In 2015, the video game Until Dawn was released on PlayStation. It was a major hit almost instantly, the game being mostly story based, where the player would have to essentially keep a cabin full of teenagers alive for a single night while assorted creatures tried to kill them. The central gimmick of the game was a system that allowed the players choices to make a difference in the ending (AKA you pick up a certain book and it might lead to a specific character living that would die in any other playthrough), It was enough of a hit that it spawned a few spin offs and even recently got a full remake for the newest console. It’s the kind of game that was pretty much destined to get a film adaptation at some point and now it has one, it just doesn’t work like you would hope.

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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

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) – Know Nothing

Released: 18th July
Seen: 29th September

In 1997, I Know What You Did Last Summer was released to a public who had just had their appetite for slasher films reawakened by the monster hit Scream. I Know What You Did Last Summer was basically the confirmation that Scream wasn’t a fluke, it was the beginning of a revival of the slasher genre that had been floundering since roughly the end of the 80s. It basically cemented that a late 90s slasher would include glossy visuals, quippy dialogue and a cast made up of a lot of well known TV actors trying to make the transition from TV to film. It was a pretty big hit, making just over $125 million at the box office which was enough to get it a direct sequel with the surviving cast, a direct to video sequel that sucks and no one likes, a TV series that no one talks about and now a legacy sequel… because apparently the legacy of I Know What You Did Last Summer was so great it warranted another sequel, such a pity the latest sequel it got was this one.

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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

Night Of The Reaper (2025) – Don’t Fear The Reaper

Released: 19th September
Seen: 28th September

It’s pretty undeniable that the peak of the Slasher genre was back in the 80s; that’s certainly when all the major classics of the genre came into existence. There are many theories about why this is, but I’d suggest it’s a combination of “Horror was an infamously cheap genre to make movies in during the 80s” and people like Tom Savini showing what extremes that practical effects could achieve. That combo created a gold rush that defined the genre for the longest time (until Scream came along and made it meta) and that period of history being so closely associated with the slasher might also explain why a lot of throwback horror films set themselves up in the 80s to play with the nostalgia of the genre. Night of the Reaper is a prime example of a film doing whatever it can to remind us of films from the 80s but also has something special of its own that makes it worth watching.

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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, Family, Fantasy, Review

Freakier Friday (2025) – On And On And On

Released: 7th August
Seen: 20th September

In the year 2003, Disney did something absolutely unheard of by the company… They released a remake of one of their previous films. The film being remade was 1976’s Freaky Friday, which was a fairly decent success with several Golden Globe nominations and featured a young Jodie Foster (who would also be in Taxi Driver that same year, 1976 was a wild year to be Jodie Foster) so remaking it probably seemed like a foolish idea, but it went ahead. The film would star Lindsay Lohan in one of the roles that would go on to define her career and Jamie Lee Curtis in probably one of her most beloved performances outside of a slasher film. Together, they made a little piece of millennial magic. Anyone who was a teenager in 2003 knew this film and loved it on some level. Hell, just play a few notes of Take Me Away and anyone of that specific generation will have flashbacks to Jamie Lee Curtis shredding the guitar solo like she’d been a rockstar for her entire life. It was an undeniable sensation, it was the 20th highest-grossing film of 2003 and is a real fan favourite live action Disney film. It’s actually shocking that it took 22 years for them to make a sequel to it, but now they have… It’s fine.

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leebutler Horror, Mystery, Review

Bring Her Back (2025) – Unnerving

Released: 29th May
Seen: 18th September

2022 was an absolutely incredible year for Horror films, one of the best that we’ve ever had. It was so good that when the time came to make my best of the year list I had no choice but to fill 5 of the top 10 slots with 6 movies (For those wondering how that works out, 2 films tied for one spot… it was a good year, what can I say!), and still had to put two more in Honourable Mentions. One of the horror films I didn’t put on the list that year was a little film called Talk To Me but let me be clear, that film was also one of the best films that was released that year. Talk To Me was an absolutely stunning original horror film that instantly put the Philippou brothers on the map as a pair of young directors to keep an eye on. While they’d had some positive response to their work on YouTube, their debut feature film really opened the floodgates to get them noticed. Of course, doing one great horror film is fine and all, but the real trick comes with the follow-up: Can you pull off the same magic again? Yes, yes they fucking can, in fact, they can go even more insane than they did before.

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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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leebutler Documentary, Review

Exorcismo: The Transgressive Legacy of Clasificada ‘S’ (2025) – Magnífico

Released: 13th September
Seen: 13th September

One of my weird fascinations is with film rating systems and what can and can’t be shown to certain audiences. The entire strange history of the US’s NC-17 rating is something I will never stop being fascinated by, same with the story of the British Video Nasties and how some horror films were considered so vile that owning a copy was grounds for an arrest. The ways that these ratings have impacted what movies get made or released is something truly worthy of lengthy study so hearing about this kind of censorship from around the world is something I’m eager to learn more about, which is why I’m glad that I got a chance to see Exorcismo: The Transgressive Legacy of Clasificada ‘S’ because it turns out Spain’s history of censorship is as wild as it gets.

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