zubiemom

Onslaught (2026). An army sniper vet (Adria Arjona) with PTSD has to protect her daughter and trailer park against a trio of experimental supersoldiers.

This is by the directing/writing team of Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, who also made You're Next and probably my very favorite Dan Stevens feature, The Guest. This is set in the same universe as The Guest and also has Stevens, although in a smaller and unrelated(?) role as an evil, albino, bald German scientist. Rebecca Hall appears briefly as his dominatrix wife and Drew Starkey as a government operative sent to clean up the mess.

This is not as good as it could have been. The script really needed at least one more pass; Starkey's character is introduced as if he's going to be important and then he disappears for almost the whole last act, and the ending is very abrupt. Despite Chekhov's gun cabinet introduced in the beginning, Celeste has to escape her trailer before she can access it, and in fact the cabinet full of guns never appears again. One of the nearly unstoppable bad guys gets killed when a car he's riding passenger in crashes into a dumpster at what seems like a relatively low speed, and I guess the car didn't have an airbag? There's just a lot of odd choices, is what I'm saying. Also, as a matter of preference, I found Stevens' character to be really offputting, and not in the fun way. There's also a stripper(?) segment about a third of the way in that felt really out of place.

And despite all that, I had a really good time. This is a movie that largely runs on style, and it has that in spades. I've seen it described as a grindhouse throwback, and although I'm not very familiar with that genre, it seems like a legit comparison (and I guess explains the strippers, boo). It is not a movie to be taken seriously, like, the supersolders' pupil glow in the dark, which is totally nonsense and looks fantastic. Arjona is delightful in the lead role, and Hall is great as always and makes the most of her screen time.

I think this is a movie where if you like the things it's aiming for and its particular brand of nonsense, you'll have a good time. A very violent popcorn movie.

--

Dark Harvest (2023). Every Halloween night, all the teen boys in town are unleashed to kill a murderous candy-filled scarecrow named Sawtooth Jack, and the boy who succeeds wins a bunch of prizes for him and his family, including a chance for him to leave town. Richie's brother won the year before, so Richie gets a waiver not to participate in the Run this year, but he's determined to do so anyway.

Based on the novel of the same name by Norman Partridge, this movie is like if Pumpkinhead was a folk horror death game set in a caricature of the 50s. I read the novel last year and was surprised to discover there was such a recent adaptation of it that I'd never heard of. You'll be unsurprised to learn that it's because this is bad, specifically in that same too-shiny way that CW shows used to be. Can't believe this was an MGM production.

( blathering about film vs novel )

I think fundamentally the problem here is that the novel is deliberately and joyfully nonsensical, pulling together disparate horror tropes for the sheer fun of it, and the movie tries to take things too seriously and discard that zaniness, to its detriment.

Frankly, I would not recommend this to anyone unless they too read the novel and are curious about the adaptation.

Coyote vs Acme (2026). After years of his schemes failing due to faulty Acme products, Wile E. Coyote decides to sue, and he drags unwilling human personal injury lawyer Kevin Avery (Will Forte) into the lawsuit with him.

You may have heard of this movie because three years ago, Warner Brothers decided to shelve the completed movie for a tax writeoff. Then there was a big hue and cry, and they grudgingly agreed to sell it instead (for $50M, so there is no way you can convince me that wasn't better for them than the tax writeoff). It has now finally been realeased in theaters by tiny indie distributor Ketchup, and the question is, is the movie worth all that bother? Can the actual piece of art hope to live up to the narrative around it?

Friends, I am pleased to report that this movie is a fucking delight and one of my favorite movies of the year. The sight gags are plentiful and very funny. The Wile E./Kevin dynamic is fun and sweet (and yes, I ship it). The integration of cartoon and live action worlds generally works and has a lot of fun little moments. The acting is generally solid, and there are some real highlights. It's got a lot of heart; I had feelings by the end! But most of all, it's just really clear that this movie was made with a lot of joy and care and love for the source material, and that feels ever more precious in our days of hypercapitalism and AI slop.

Some particular favorite parts:
- John Cena as the mean opposing lawyer, using classic intimidation tactics on... Tweety Bird.
- The hip hop song where all the censored bits were replaced with "beep beep"
- That Wile E. doesn't talk. He communicates entirely through pantomime and signs, and it's perfect.
- More that I'm definitely forgetting, but that's okay, pretty sure I'm going to see this again before it leaves theaters.

If I have any complaints, it's that the transition of the plot from climax to epilogue didn't quite work, and also I wish there'd been more female characters. It's basically just Kevin's intern niece and a single female cartoon. But these are quibbles. Absolutely bonkers that this is what WB wanted to shelve, as opposed to all the mediocrity they've released recently.

If this sounds like fun, go see it. For #art, and because it's just a really fun time.

--

Buddy (2026). In the world of a forgotten 90s kids TV show about an orange unicorn named Buddy, things are starting to feel very wrong to the kids on the show.

Another viral breakout success, this is a horror movie that is basically about how Barney the Dinosaur was really creepy. It takes some pretty bold risks, structurally; we watch an entire episode of the show and part of another one before things start getting shaken up. There's a hard switch of POV and setting at one point.

Overall, I would say this accomplishes what it sets out to do. Buddy's increasing unhingedness is really scary, especially to kids with no resources, no adults to call on, and who can't even leave the world of the show. The violence begins offscreen (which is very good for all the confused parents who apparently didn't read the rating or genre and chose to bring their kids to see it) but escalates to some pretty gnarly on-screen gore, most of all on Buddy himself, which feels wrong in exactly the right way. The way the movie interacts with the TV world worked really well for me. The kid acting ranges from solid to really great; Delaney Quinn, who was nine or ten at the time, really carries the film. The movie also has just the right amount of lore, IMO. It doesn't overexplain, and I appreciate that.

I don't know if the movie does a lot more than what you expect from the premise, but it does execute that premise pretty well, IMO, and it captures some of that "little kid in a big scary world" vibe that was popular in a ton of the more traumatizing 80s kids movies (Return to Oz, An American Tale, The Adventures of Raggedy Ann and Andy, The Brave Little Toaster, to name just a few).

--

The Dog Stars (2026). In a world emptied years ago by a plague, survivor Hig (Jacob Elordi) flies his prop plane to get supplies, check on neighbors, and search for evidence that life can still be good. Costars include Josh Brolin as Bangley, Hig's "partner" in survival (no comment); and Margaret Qualley as Cima, a fellow survivor whom Hig discovers when he has to make an emergency landing.

This movie doesn't make a ton of sense. There are a bunch of roving, murdering bandits that threaten even Hig and Bangley's isolated outpost, to the point that Hig does daily recon to spot them. In Denver, desolate and lifeless and something like a decade out from the epidemic, there's still electricity, and apparently the roving bands struck straight out into the wilderness, because there are still tons of unlooted supplies, and Hig's own abandoned house seems to be untouched. And from this whole isolationist survivalist fantasy, we drop briefly into the bizarro fever dream of the Grand Junction survivors, which feels like it comes from some other movie.

This film also doesn't move very fast; it's more of a character drama than a thriller, but the characters aren't exactly complicated, either. (And this is after Elordi and Qualley brainstormed a bunch of "personalizing" touches for them; I can only imagine how thin they were in the original script.)

And there's some really clumsy writing at times. For example, the last fifteen minutes or so are a mess, structurally, like they tried to just jam all the novel's remaining plot and thematic points in whether they fit the movie or not.

So yeah, it's not very good, and yet I had a pretty good time watching it. For one thing, I'm a simple woman who just really enjoys Elordi wandering around being tall and sad, and we get a ton of that here. There's also copious gorgeous mountain scenery as Hig is flying around. I liked the Hig/Bangley relationship (yes, I ship this too), and Brolin is fun in the role. I have mixed feelings about how the story deals with Cima, but Qualley is always solid, and I enjoyed Hig and Cima's very slowburn romance as they're both mourning their respective dead spouses. (I really appreciated that Cima was married, too, and comes to the relationship with a similar amount of romantic and sexual experience.)

Overall, far from the worst I've seen this year, and I'm not mad I saw it. IMO it doesn't really deserve either the critical shellacking (38% on RT) or the cratering box office performance. I now have some OT3 feelings that I might explore via a Yuletide request or something.

CW for pet death.