Cobweb (2023 film)

Category: Creature horror

Directed by: Samuel Bodin

-----

The Ring meets Home Alone meets Longlegs - this was my impression as I got watching up this creature horror starring Lizzy Caplan, Antony Starr, Woody Norman and Cleopatra Coleman.

And quite surprising is that Seth Rogen, known for his comic acting, was actually a producer of this film!

Can he make a horror? Let's find out after the plot!

The plot:

Peter (Norman) is the son of Carol and Mark (Caplan and Starr) who raise him in the suburbs of somewhere cold America (where is never specified, though I think somewhere north-east) in a large, creaky old house, but are emotionally distant and far from nurturing. Alongside this, Peter is having problems with a bully at school, Brian (Luke Busey), though the growing bond bewteen Peter and his teacher, Miss Devine (Coleman) helps.

However, Peter's biggest problem is that at night, he hears what initially begins as tapping from behind his bedroom wall which then becomes a voice he starts having conversations which that his parents brush off as being the result of an overly active child's imagination.

Hostel: Part 3 (2011 film)

Category: Torture horror/drama

Directed by: Scott Spiegel

-----

Not only should movie studios leave well enough alone, but I have to ask: when am I going to stop doing this to myself? I saw some reviews that forewarned me Hostel: Part 3 was not a top-notch cinematic experience (to put it generously), but I just couldn't say no when this offered itself on my streaming. I suffer for my art.

Hostel: Part 3 shares next to no narrative connection to either Hostel or Hostel: Part 2, save for the Elite Hunting Club name and logo and the concept of people paying to kill other people. It's really more a parallel movie rather than a sequel, and was directed by Scott Spiegel rather than Eli Roth.

Anyway, let's go over the plot and then I'll get into likes and dislikes.

The plot:

The movie begins with a young man named Travis (Chris Coy) who walks into a hostel room as if to put his belongings down to settle in for the night when he finds two people already in his room - Victor (Nickola Shreli) and Anka (Evelina Oboza), a Ukranian couple. There is a sense of unease as Victor (looking very gangster-like) offers Travis vodka, with Travis offering beer instead. Victor and Anka accept, and Anka goes to shower while Victor and Travis chat.

Spiral: From The Book Of Saw (2021 film)

Category: Torture horror/police drama

Directed by: Darren Lynn Bousman

-----

Starring Chris Rock, Spiral isn't so much a sequel to the Saw/Jigsaw series as it is a parallel entry, and I think this confers two advantages:

Freeing this movie from the corpus of Saw canon allows the writers creative freedom - they aren't bound to ten movies of lore and backstory so they can create what is ostensibly a new movie and only need a couple of nods to keep the connection going. Being Saw-adjacent also allows the producers to borrow the clout from the Saw series, assisting this movie with publicity and inspiration.

But does it work? Is it worth a watch, especially if you're a horror fan? Let's find out after a plot recap!

The plot:

The movie starts with a 4th July carnival scene. A man wearing an oversized hat steals a purse from a woman who screams for help, causing a plain-clothes detective who just happens to be nearby give chase. The purse snatcher goes down a manhole with the detective in pursuit. Down the manhole, the detective finds a mannequin in a seat and when he goes to look closer, a hooded figure appears behind the detective and knocks him unconscious. After this, we find the detective at an underground railway line, his tongue clampled in a vice hanging from the ceiling while his feet barely touch the stool that is there to support his weight.

December Boys (2007 film)

Category: Australian coming-of-age drama

-----

In what was Daniel Radcliffe's first major movie role away from the Harry Potter franchise, we get a story set in the 1960s about four boys on a holiday away from their Catholic orphanage who find themselves with lots of free time in a remote part of Australia and in the vicinity of two young and pretty women - what could possibly go wrong?

I initially wanted to watch this not so much because I appreciate Radcliffe's acting ability (though I definitely think he is good at what he does) but also because this movie was filmed in regional areas of South Australia - the state I grew up in - so I wanted to see how much I could recognise.

But let's run down the plot first.

The plot:

Maps, Misty, Spark and Spit (Daniel Radcliffe, Lee Cormie, Christian Byers and James Fraser) are four adolescent boys staying at a Catholic-run orphange in the middle of the South Australian outback and are grouped together by way of their birth month (hence the term December Boys). As a Christmas gift, the orphanage allows them a holiday getaway thanks to a kind benefactor who stays in a seaside shack at a remote place called Lone Star Cove. 

Dirty Harry (1971 film)

Category: Crime drama

-----

It's the movie that put Clint Eastwood on the map and gave the western lexicon the phrase "Do you feel lucky, punk?", as well as spawned four sequels - the 1971 Don Siegel-directed masterpiece "Dirty Harry".

Now, filmmaking was a different beast back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so one of the curiosities for me when was to see how things were done "back in the day". It's also quite possible that this is the oldest movie I have reviewed so far for this blog (Editorial note - yes, it is. And by quite a margin).

But I gotta ask - how does this movie rank in 2025 with over 50 years of cinema to contrast it with? Let's find out after a plot recap!

Plot:

The movie starts off with an unnamed woman taking a swim in the sunshine in a pool atop a very tall building in San Francisco. Unbeknownst to her, a sniper is taking up position on an even higher building not too far away and has her in his sight. The sniper pulls the trigger and the woman bleeds out in the swimming pool.

Prey (2022 film)

Category: sci-fi action/horror

-----

You may remember in my Texas Chainsaw Massacre review that I opined that sometimes, you just need to leave well-enough alone. However, movie studios will do movie studio things such as squeeze more dollars out of an established IP, and so with that in mind, we get another entry in the Predator movie franchise - the 2022 movie Prey, directed by Dan Trachtenberg (who also did 10 Cloverfield Lane, which I think is a great movie in its own right)

Given that the most recent movies in the Predator franchise have been Predators and The Predator, let's see if a female-led Predator entry that highlights Native American culture can do any better.

The plot:

The story takes place in the Northern Great Plains (which is generally taken to be anywhere between Arkansas and Canada) and is set in the year 1719, thus acting as a prequel (of sorts) to the rest of the Predator franchise.

Naru (Amber Midthunder) is a female Comanche skilled in herbal medicine and tracking, but also wants to prove herself at hunting just like her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers). With her dog Sarii in tow, she spends a lot of time out in the forest honing her skills.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022 film)

Category: Splatter horror/remake of existing IP

Directed by: David Blue Garcia

-----

Sometimes you just need to leave well-enough alone.

Did the world really need ANOTHER entry in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series? Well, someone, somewhere decided we did, and this is the end result.

Now, given I haven't seen the original (though very familiar with it on a cultural level) I really have nothing to compare this to, so I suppose this 2022 remake-but-not-a-reboot-and-definitely-not-a-sequel is as good as anywhere to start.

The plot:

Dante, Ruth, Lila and Melody (Jacob Latimore, Nell Hudson, Elsie Fisher & Sarah Yarkin) travel to the (fictional) town of Harlow, Texas, in order to facilitate a bank auction of the properties there. The place is essentially a ghost town, far away from everything and has been left to fall into a state of disrepair, with Dante and Melody being propery speculators looking to gentrify the area for a profit.