Tag Archives: Halloween Movies

Bone Lake review — Sexy horror? Bland and blander.

October 3, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Mercedes Bryce Morgan | Written by Joshua Friedlander | 94 min | ▲1/2 | VOD I don't like criticizing actors in my reviews. Any time an actor seems uncomfortable in a role, if there's fault to be found it's always in the production — with the script, the direction, or the producers for… Read More

Weapons review — The kids are not alright

August 11, 2025 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Zach Cregger | 128 min | ▲▲▲1/2 | Crave It's easy to see why some in the audience might think the new horror/drama by Zach Cregger (Barbarian), about a group of vanished children, is a school-shooting analogy, but there's more going on here than that. In fact, there might be too… Read More

Together review — The horror of pairing up

August 1, 2025 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Michael Shanks | 102 min | ▲▲▲▲1/2 | VOD One of my biggest gripes about horror movies as a genre is how few genuinely fresh ideas are produced within it. Filmmakers are inordinately satisfied with regurgitating the same jump-scares, the same stomach-churning gore, the same themes. So when someone shows up… Read More

40 Acres review — Intense, bloody, homegrown post-apocalyptic thriller

July 3, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by R.T. Thorne | Written by Thorne, Glenn Taylor, and Lora Campbell | 113 min | ▲▲▲▲ | VOD For a national cinema culture that seems weirdly allergic to genre, we can be proud in Canada of the quality thrillers, horrors, and sci-fi movies that bubble up, especially ones with Indigenous roots: Consider Jeff… Read More

28 Years Later review — A parade of zombie wangs

June 21, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Danny Boyle | Written by Alex Garland | ▲▲1/2 | Crave OK, apologies for that headline, but there is truth in advertising. About halfway through this return to the world of 28 Days Later from original creative team Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, I started to wonder why so many of the "zombies," or… Read More

Dangerous Animals review — Grisly and gratuitous

June 5, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Sean Byrne | Written by Nick Lepard | 98 min | ▲1/2 | VOD For us cinephiles, it's impossible to miss the fact that this summer it's been 50 years since Steven Spielberg's Jaws changed Hollywood and became the favourite movie of a lot of people, deservedly so. The producers of this new… Read More

The Shrouds review — Portals to the grave, and other good times

April 24, 2025 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by David Cronenberg | 119 min | ▲▲▲▲ | VOD An earlier version of this review appeared on FITI in September 2024 during coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival. David Cronenberg isn't the only legendary filmmaker in his 80s still making interesting, relevant films, or at the very least taking big… Read More

Sinners review — Southern Gothic and the Blues

April 21, 2025 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Ryan Coogler | 137 min | ▲▲▲1/2 | VOD Ryan Coogler has proved himself a major Hollywood talent from his indie beginning telling a story based on actual events on Fruitvale Station. Then Creed, a clinic on how to revive and spin off a legacy intellectual property. Black Panther was his… Read More

Death of a Unicorn review — Bloody myth goes lame

March 28, 2025 flawintheiris

Written and Directed Alex Scharfman | 107 min | ▲▲ | VOD I really admire the American upstart film studio A24 for investing in talented filmmakers and letting them take big swings. They've done it again here with Alex Scharfman, but the end result is a swing and miss — and that's what sometimes will… Read More

Last Breath review — A visceral underwater survival thriller

February 27, 2025 flawintheiris

Directed by Alex Parkinson | Written by Parkinson, Mitchell LaFortune, and David Brooks | 93 min | ▲▲▲▲ | Amazon Prime A surprisingly simple and effective survival picture, probably the most compelling real-life ocean-going thriller since Peter Berg's Deepwater Horizon almost 10 years ago. Directed by the filmmaker who made a Netflix documentary on the… Read More