leebutler Uncategorized

Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 (2025) – Upgrade

Released: 4th December
Seen: 4th December

In 2023, the long-awaited movie adaptation of Five Nights at Freddy’s came out to a pretty harsh critical reaction (myself included, I was not the biggest fan of it for a myriad of reasons) and a box office take that most films would kill to get. It was truly a sensation, bringing in about 300 million on a 20 million budget which makes sense because this franchise is basically review-proof. That’s the kind of return on investment that guarantees a sequel. It was inevitable that one was going to come out and probably quickly and sure enough, here we are with the second film, and to give the filmmakers credit, they seem to have paid attention to the problems that people had with the first one and have vastly improved things. 

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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 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 Comedy, Review

Oh, Hi (2025) – Nice To Watch You

Released: 25th July
Seen: 2nd November

One of my personal favourite film performances in cinema history is by Glenn Close in the movie Fatal Attraction. The story of a woman who has a one-night stand with a married man who then goes absolutely insane and basically tears his life apart because she refuses to be ignored is captivating and that performance has stuck with me since the moment I first saw it. Indeed the entire genre of a scorned lover seeking revenge on their partner is so wickedly fascinating that any time you have a couple breaking up and one of them deciding to make sure the other knows how much it hurts, I am there with a beaming excited grin so you can imagine my joy reading the plot of Oh, Hi and expecting a modern take on the idea. Well, if this is the modern take… ok, it’s fine, I guess I don’t need to see any boiled bunnies, but something of that level would be nice.

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leebutler Horror, Review, Romance

Together (2025) – So Happy

Released: 31st July
Seen: 2nd November

Last year, the biggest surprise in cinema was the reaction to a little film called The Substance. Positive critiques by pretty much anyone who saw it, a massive box office hit and perhaps most surprisingly of all, it received nominations in major categories at the Oscars (and, in my view, should’ve at least won Best Actress). All this for a weird body horror film about how Hollywood treats women past a certain age, that kind of film normally would be relegated to the horror superfans circuit because Body Horror in particular is one of the more difficult sub-genres of horror for people to really get into. Maybe, if we’re lucky, The Substance opened up a floodgate to let mainstream Hollywood actors take a crack at weird body horror films, and if Together is any indication, that feels like a real possibility.

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leebutler Horror

100+ Horror Movies In 92 Days

Every year, on whatever microblogging platform is currently popular (and not overrun by Nazis), there’s a little trend started by @sarahstubbssays. The idea is simple: watch 100 horror movies that you’ve never seen before in 92 days. Back when X was a platform that could be considered mildly usable, I did this but never made the full hundred. This year, not only did I promise myself that I will do the hundred, but I threw in the bonus that I’m going to rank and micro-review every film that I see. Micro-review in this context means roughly 2-3 sentences per film. Hopefully, I won’t babble too much, but it’ll be a fun way to enjoy this lengthy experiment. 

So yeah, here’s over 100 mini reviews of random horror movies in order from worst to best… because why the hell not?

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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

V/H/S/Halloween (2025) – Anything Can Happen On Halloween

Released: 3rd October
Seen: 5th October

The V/H/S franchise now sits as an astonishing 8-film series of anthology films. Those films have consisted of over 40 shorts made by nearly a dozen directors, some of whom have gone on to make some of the most important Horror films of the last 15 years. It’s an undeniable powerhouse in the horror genre that’s had its highs and lows, but the general rule is as long as the majority of the shorts are good, then that’s all that matters. So this year’s entry, V/H/S/Halloween takes the central concept of films shot with VHS cameras and makes every one of the shorts revolve around Halloween, which is a nice, simple way to link everything up. Do they work? Well, as I do every time, we’re going to go short by short.

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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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