Saw X (2023 film)

Category: Torture/gore horror drama

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In the latest (but apparently not the last) instalment of this nearly 20-year old franchise, Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith team up again to help bad guys realise the errors of their ways via the inappropriate use of medical equipment in Saw X.

And while there is only so much wriggle room to come up with new material in a franchise with an already-established canon, I will say this entry is by no means the worst - and actually has some outstanding qualities.

The biggest plus is that Saw X is quite well written and paced, so much so that Saw X could well have been its own standalone film because there was a real refreshing feel about this movie. Or, conversely, if Saw X had been made before the other instalments (because why not make the 10th movie in the series take place between the first two), it would at least have allowed for a better plot progression for the subsequent entries in the series. I wrote in my combined reviews for Saw 3 and Saw 5 that the only thing more convoluted than the traps was the plot, and that was because in those films we got this contrived back and forth between people with a mysterious connection, a corrupt FBI agent in a pool of stupid law enforcement officers and a man attempting to extol the virtue of life while committing murder. Whereas here, the traps are convoluted, sure, but the plot is relatively straightforward and able to be understood.

Spiral: From The Book Of Saw (2021 film)

Category: Torture horror/police drama

Directed by: Darren Lynn Bousman

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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.

Saw 3 & Saw 5 (2006 & 2008 films)

 Category: Gore/torture horror

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Welcome to the Saw franchise…where the only thing more convoluted than the traps is the plot.

You don't really need to know too much plot-wise - the summary of the Saw series is as such: a man dying of a tumour plays all of God, freelance philosopher, father figure and back shed scientist in order to engineer contraptions/scenarios that test a person's will to live or how far they will go to save others, depending on their misdeeds.

Wolf Man (2025 film)

Category: Werewolf horror, reboot/remake of existing IP

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The government of the state of Oregon over in the US must be tearing their hair out. How are they ever going to attract anyone to come visit when there are so many horror movies, TV shows and video games set there (and all that's without mentioning the residents). There was Longlegs, there was also the open-world zombie game Days Gone (a low-key classic in my opinion) and now we have this - a movie about a werewolves in a forest!

What attracted me to this was when I saw Leigh Whannel's name on it - he has been involved with numerous high-quality horror films (the Saw and Insidious franchises come to mind), so I thought I'd give this one a spin - if indeed one can spin movies.

Is it any good? Find out after the plot!

The plot:

The movie starts off with a shot of a forest and text stating that in 1995, a hiker went missing as they succumbed to a virus called "Hill Fever" by the locals, or "Mouth Of The Wolf" by the indigenous peoples. We then see Grady (Sam Jaeger) on a hunting trip through the woods of Oregon with his young son Blake (Zac Chandler) in order to teach him how to be a hunter and to survive not just forest environments, but in life in general. Of course, Blake ignores his father's advice and wanders off away from his dad at the most inopportune time - a scary and mysterious creature much more threatening than the deer they have in their sights is close by.

Hostel: Part 3 (2011 film)

Category: Torture horror/drama

Directed by: Scott Spiegel

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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.

Snowtown (2011 film) + UPDATE

Category: Violent murder/psychological drama/biopic

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Oh fucking hell. What a movie. 

Snowtown is as depressing as it is disturbing as it is hard-hitting as it is well-crafted as it is based on true events. And to me, it's made all the more impactful by the fact that I lived and worked only a handful of miles from where all this was happening!

In case you're not familiar, the name Snowtown refers to the small rural town approximately 100km north of the capital of the state of South Australia where four men, led by John Bunting, stored the remains of some of their murder victims in a former bank vault in the town at the time the four were arrested and their murder spree was ended in late 1999. Thus, the name/word Snowtown is synonymous with the string of murders committed by the four, despite the fact that only one murder was committed there. 

However, this movie is not a documentary - for all intents and purposes, this movie is a retelling of the Snowtown murders, but with details changed. For staters, the suburb where the perpetrators lived is changed, as well as some other things.

Choose Or Die (2022 film)

Category: Supernatural horror with sci-fi leanings.

Directed by: Toby Meakins

Feels like: Jumanji meets The Ring meets Pixels

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I honestly didn't know what to expect when I saw this come up as an option on my streaming service, except that it was only 84 minutes. A sense of relief came over me that it wasn't no 3.5 hour epic like The Brutalist. There's nothing wrong with Hollywood epics - some of them are my favourite movies - but there's just something about the 90-minute format that is comforting. Like being under a thick blanket on a cold night while you tuck into a bag of snacks.

And horror movies - you should know by now I loves me a good horror movie.

So is Choose Or Die, a 2022 effort directed by Toby Meakins, a good horror movie? Find out after the plot recap!

The plot:

The opening scene sees Laura (Kate Fleetwood) berating her son Gabe (Pete McHale) about an unspecified, but serious incident as there are mentions of police involvement. The two eventually bemoan how the dad of the family, Hal (Eddie Marsan) is uninvolved in family affairs due to his electronic gadget obsession in his "man cave". We then see Hal shut the door and start up a text-based computer game called CURS>R on an old green phosphour CRT screen.

Apocalypse Now (1979 film)

Category: War drama/book-to-movie adaptation

Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola

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In keeping with the military theme around ANZAC Day, given my last review was for The Water Diviner, I'll now review another military-themed movie, but this time a little more dark and serious...

I watched Apocalypse Now for the first time back when I was in high school and was tasked to write a report about it. There wasn't much compunction about letting the older kids/young adults studying a quite mature film since it was final year, and it was either this, or To Kill A Mockingbird. And goddammit, I wanted some action! Little did I know all those years ago that I was actually writing a book report by-proxy, the book in question being Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad about a man who travels up a river on behalf of an ivory trading company in Belgian-controlled Congo and witnesses large-scale depravity. Change a few details, modernise it to be a reflection on a highly unpopular war and voila, an old story is new again.

I appreciated this movie as being fairly decent when I first saw it all those years ago and noticed it has made numerous "must watch before you die" lists, so I wanted to re-watch this with mature eyes - to see if it stood the test of time.

From the initial 1979 release, two subsequent versions were created - Redux and Director's Cut. However here, I'll only be reviewing the standard theatrical cut. Redux adds scenes to the standard cut, and then Francis Ford Coppola went and added yet more scenes to create the Director's Cut which removed some scenes from Redux. Can't wait for the Mega-Ultra-Redux-Director's Cut-5-Hour-Marathon edition…

The plot:

The movie follows Capt. Ben Willard (Martin Sheen) who we see alone on a bed in a Saigon hotel room dealing with the mental demons from his previous Vietnam deployments and his inability to adjust to life back home. He is suddenly visited by military escorts and summoned to appear before higher-ups who have a mission for him. The mission (should he choose to accept it) is to "terminate, with extreme prejudice" the command of Colonel Walter Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a brilliant soldier who has decided to separate from the US forces and now has his own private militia in Cambodia that worship him as a god.

Knock At The Cabin (2023 film)

Category: Pre-apocalypse hostage thriller.

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I watched this as soon as I saw it in my streaming service because I really wanted to see if Dave Bautista, former pro-wrestler and MMA fighter, had acting chops - and the verdict is yes, the man can act. And if it wasn't for his hulking size and numerous tatts, you almost wouldn't know he was a wrestler in a previous life.

Knock At The Cabin tells the story of Eric and Andrew, a gay couple with an adopted Chinese daughter holidaying at a lakeside cabin who are then held hostage by a group of four (one of them being Big Dave, another being Rupert Grint Ron Weasley from Harry Potter) stating that one of the family of three has to willingly be killed in order to avert the coming apocalypse.

The drama builds as each member of the group of four is killed ritually, followed by live news reports of sudden disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and planes falling out of the sky, all the while Eric and Andrew fight their belief and disbelief respectively as well as trying to protect their young daughter from the horror on display.

Hostel (2005 film)

Category: Gore horror/comedy

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It's gory, it's sexually explicit in parts, it's full of bad language, it's in bad taste, but most of all, Eli Roth's Hostel is stupid fun!

The long and short of Hostel is that three tourists are backpacking through Europe to try fulfil their hedonistic desires when they are told of a hostel in Bratislava, Slovakia, where they can fulfil their wildest dreams. Unbeknownst to the three, almost everyone in and around the hostel are part of a secret group that traps tourists, takes them deep into an abandoned building and allows rich clients to kill them for a fee.

While Josh and Oli are taken and killed, Paxton, through some dumb (and sometimes hilarious) luck, manages to survive his kidnapping and attempted murder to eventually extract revenge against those who got him in that situation in the first place. That's essentially the plot - it's not incredibly deep.

Drive (2011 film)

Category: Semi-romantic action drama.

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I first saw this movie some years back whilst on a 10 hour flight coming back home from overseas and just couldn’t sleep, but the bad noise insulation, crappy airline headphones and lousy in-seat displays meant I wasn't able to comprehend a lot of the movie - especially the dialogue. Being sleep-deprived probably didn't help either, but two things that did stick out were the 1980s setting and the soundtrack. I fell in love with the soundtrack to the point I have it on my phone, and me being a child of the 1980s when things were less complicated and bureaucratic, I was able to feel a certain nostalgia.

Since that fateful evening turned night turned morning crossing time zones and jurisdictions, I've wanted to watch Drive again - even just to make sure I remembered half of what I watched was correct. So imagine my surprise when I re-watched via streaming that first, the movie actually made sense, and second, that the airline version was censored! 

The horror, the horror...

Grave Torture (2024 film)

Category: Foreign language - supernatural horror

Original title: Siksa Kubur (Indonesian for 'grave torture')

Directed by: Joko Anwar

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So recently, it was a public holiday where I am in Australia. As a film buff, I decided to whip out the ol' Netflix and see what was available. A film called Grave Torture sounds kinda interesting - supernatural splatter horror, and with an R18+ rating. This better hit hard because anything with an R18+ rating isn't (and shouldn't be) a walk in the park!

And I can only hope it will be better in terms of Indonesian horror than Guna Guna Istri Muda, which in reality isn't a high bar to clear.

The plot:

The movie begins with siblings Sita and Adil (Widuri Puteri and Muzakki Ramdhan) working at their parents bakery. Their parent's (played by Fachri Albar and Happy Salma) are kindly people, but business is struggling. While standing behind the counter, Adil catches the attention of a man with a serious look on his face and wearing headphones. The man walks in, hands Adil a casette tape, talks about fighting the enemies of Allah and warns him to not go outside. Sita attempts to prevent a theft of cash from the till with the parents confronting the thief outside, but they all fall victim to the man Adil encountered before who turns out to be a suicide bomber.

Morbius (2022 movie)

Category: Superhero/cinematic universe film.

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I kinda got excited when I saw Morbius pop up in the "available now" section of the streaming app for a local television station. Like, there was no way in hell I was ever going to pay to see it, but I also had to jump at the chance to experience the cultural phenomenon for myself - and after having watched it, my final verdict is that Morbius isn't so much a movie as it is an exercise in patience. 

The basic outline of Morbius is that Dr. Michael Morbius (played by Jared Leto) somehow lives into his adult years whilst being afflicted with a genetic disease that…causes him to walk with a limp? In his early years, he befriends another boy named Lucien (but for some reason gets called Milo, because of course) who somehow has the exact same condition and exact same limp.

The Water Diviner (2014 film)

Category: Australian wartime drama

Directed by: Russell Crowe

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The timing of this movie review is somewhat fortuitous - ANZAC Day is a week away, so now is a good a time as any to publish my review of the 2014 World War I drama, The Water Diviner.

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Some of you may be familiar with the term deus ex machina, a literal translation of the phrase "god from the machine" and this term is used in literature or performance art to describe a contrived and/or unrealistic solution to a problem the plot presents. 

Some examples of this phenomenon you might be familiar with include Lord Of The Rings where the Great Eagles appear out of nowhere to take Frodo and Samwise out of Mordor once the ring has been destroyed - despite not being part of the plot at any previous stage. The aliens in War Of The Worlds suddenly die because of…bacteria. In Sicario 2, Bernicio Del Toro's character somehow survives a point-blank gun shot to the head. And the convoluted plan to stab The Creeper with a weather vane somehow works out in Jeepers Creepers: Reborn - these are all deus ex machina. Now, while a bit of DeM isn't a death-knell for a movie, you have to keep in mind that if you're going to employ an improbable resolution to a plot point, just don't take the piss.

And why "god of the machine", you may ask? Because performers who played the gods in the dramas of old would be lowered down into a scene by winches or ropes (machines) to do their god thing.

So why am starting off a movie review with a description of an obscure Latin phrase? Because there is one specific scene in the 2014 war-time drama movie The Water Diviner, starring and directed by Russell Crowe, where the deus ex machina was so egregious that not only was the piss being taken, but my bladder was being absolutely violated.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022 film)

Category: Splatter horror/remake of existing IP

Directed by: David Blue Garcia

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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.

Sunshine Women's Choir (2025 film)

Category: Musical drama

Directed by: Gavin Lin

Similar to: Glee, but in a prison.

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Regular readers and the bots that scrape this website will know that foreign language movies aren't really my thing - out of the 70 or so movies I've reviewed so far, only a handful have been foreign. Not out of hatred or anything, but just that one tends to feel more comfortable with the things they're familiar with. 

However, I can now add another foreign movie to the list - Sunshine Women's Choir, which marks my first Chinese-language movie. My wife wanted to see this since it had quite a bit of hype from its release in Taiwan, and look, discounted movie tickets and a night out with the family aren't the worst combination in history.

When I was told that we're seeing Sunshine Women's Choir, I initially thought it was about the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine - and yes, there is literally a suburb in Melbourne called Sunshine, named after the company that built a manufacturing hub in the suburb around WW1. A movie about a group of women from a working-class immigrant suburb forming a choir wouldn't have been a bad premise for a movie, but it turns out this movie is about a bunch of women in a prison who form a choir instead.

Let's get reviewing, shall we!

Plot (really badly explained):

Inside the northern women's prison of Taiwan (implying there's also a southern women's prison in Taiwan), the pregnant Hui-Zhen (Ivy Chen) gives birth and raises her daughter. In her cell (which looks more like a creche than a place where people do hard times) are three other women who help raise the girl - the more senior Yu Ying (Judy Ongg), the middle-aged Pei Ying (May Suen) who has a male pen pal/love interest on the outside, and Xiu Lan (Amber An).

Hostel: Part 2 (2007 film)

Category: Torture horror with comedic elements

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The first Hostel movie was always going to be a tough act to follow. A shame that it didn't win any Oscars, but bloody hell, it was quite a fun, decent movie. But how do Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino fare second time around? Read on to find out.

Following on from the events of the first movie, this time we follow the (mis)adventures of three women - Beth, Whitney and Lorna, who befriend Axelle and end up in Slovakia after a train ride beforehand with some sleazy Italians. Wouldn’t you know it, they all end up in the same hostel from the previous movie where it now seems half the town is in on the act and the Elite Hunting Club have become a bigger and better operation that learned its lessons second time around - they now have a mobile-friendly bidding website and better locks on the doors.

The Watchers (2024 film)

Category: Supernatural drama/thriller

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The majority of reviews I read for this 2024 supernatural drama movie rated it negatively. However, I enjoyed this movie enough (for the most part) to come to a different opinion, putting me in the minority of reviewers who thought this movie was overall positive. But there two lessons - know when to end a movie, and when will people learn to not blindly trust their GPS?

The plot explained:

Dakota Fanning plays Mina, an aspiring artist who works a dead-end job in Galway, Ireland, and is asked by her boss to drive a precious Golden Conure parrot to a zoo in Belfast.

However, just like with Outback, the GPS is the movie's first villain as it leads Mina deep into a forest with no paved road in the west of Ireland when her car suddenly breaks down and the electronics stop working. As she walks around the forest looking for assistance (caged Golden Conure in hand), she first notices her car isn't where she thought it was and can't be found, and then she suddenly sees an elderly woman walking alone. She gives chase to the elderly woman who leads her to an incongruous box-like structure whose defining feature is a large one-way mirror in the front that allows the outside to see in, but the people inside to only see their reflection.

Primate (2025 film)

Category: Animal horror/teen horror.

Directed by: Johannes Roberts

Similar to: Cujo

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I don't usually watch movies in the cinema. Partly because of cost (of both tickets and refreshments), partly because of the convenience of streaming and partly because not all movies are cinematic experiences. However, my teenage son wanted to go see this, we found discounted tickets and so off we went.

I went in with low-to-middling expectations - the first sign that I should be worried was the fact that when we bought our tickets, we could pick literally anywhere in the cinema to sit indicating that there was low demand to see this. Once the movie started proper, there was a total of twelve people seated, including a pair of middle-aged women - a scenario that struck me as incredibly strange. Undeterred, I kept an open mind and decided the quality of the work should speak for itself. 

Now, the only burning question remaining: is this movie about a hominid ape or a high-ranking Catholic bishop?

The plot:

Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) returns home to Hawaii alongside her friends Kate (Victoria Wyant), Hannah (Jess Alexander) and Kate's older brother Nick (Benjamin Cheng) and is reunited with her father Adam (Troy Kotsur, but I could have sworn was Gary Sinise) and younger sister Erin (Gia Hunter). Adam is an author and animal conservationist, and his recently deceased wife was a professor of linguistics who had taught their pet chimpanzee Ben (Miguel Torres Umba in a physically-demanding role) to communicate by using sign language and a sound board.

Dragged Across Concrete (2018 movie)

Category: Crime drama/thriller

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They say there is no such thing as bad publicity, but I'm sure Hollywood big names like Harvey Weinstein and Mel Gibson would disagree. And so we come to one of the biggest conundrums I felt when I hit play on this movie: despite all the horrible things Mel Gibson has been recorded as saying and has been sued for as well as any number of other things, can we still appreciate his work as an actor?

Well, you better, because you're going to miss out on a LOT if you let your personal feelings about Mel Gibson get in the way of what is an outstanding performance in the 2018 crime drama, Dragged Across Concrete.

This movie is actually three stories that eventually weave in to one: