Mark Hamill – Movie Meister Reviews

Released: 11th September
Seen: 14th September

In 1979, Stephen King released the book The Long Walk under the pseudonym Richard Bachman (a name he picked partially to avoid saturating the market with King books and partially to test if his success was based on skill). The book was well received like a lot of early King works were and has been named one of the best books for teenage readers by the American Library Association. Like a lot of King books, there have been talks about an adaptation of The Long Walk for years, way back in 1988 it was going to be made by George Romero, but that ultimately fell through. Next up was Frank Darabont, who took a shot in 2007 and then in 2019, one André Øvredal (the man behind Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark) had a go, but none of these versions made it. Finally, someone looked at the content of the books and presumably went, “Hey, this feels kind of like a more fucked up Hunger Games… why don’t we just get the Hunger Games guy?” and so Francis Lawrence was gifted the chance to make The Long Walk… and made one of the best films of 2025.

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Released: 20th June
Seen: 20th June

In 1988, a horror icon was born. Poking fun at the popularity of Cabbage Patch Dolls, Child’s Play showed us what would happen if one of those cherubic collectable toys ended up being possessed by a vicious serial killer who needed to put his soul into the body of a young child. The film was a box office success, pulling in around $44 million worldwide on a budget of only $9million. It spawned four theatrically released sequels and two VOD releases with the most recent one, Cult of Chucky, getting released two years ago. There’s also a TV series coming out on Syfy next year that’s currently being called Chucky and will bring back the legendary serial killing doll. It’s a series that has a loyal fan base who have followed the series from day one and it’s easily in my top 5 favourite horror franchises. I enjoy the series so much that I have even defended the much-maligned Seed of Chucky, which I still feel is an underrated gem that just happened to come out at the exact wrong time. Basically, the franchise is pretty much perfect as it is and doesn’t need a remake… but thanks to some fun legalese where the Child’s Play name isn’t owned by the creators of the franchise (because intellectual property law is fun and not at all pointlessly convoluted), MGM didn’t need to get permission to reboot the franchise that’s still alive and kicking and so now here we are with Child’s Play (2019)… because remakes of classic 80’s slashers never go horribly wrong, except for every single time they remake a classic 80’s slasher.

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