One clear winner this week, though two others are definitely worth your time.

Heretic

Heretic is the prototypical 2024 horror movie – a very straightforward psychological thriller with a simple premise that doesn’t overreach until the overly ambitious and inevitably unsatisfying conclusion. It doesn’t break new ground but it doesn’t fuck up the basics either. It features solid performances from a small cast in a single location. It’s good without ever reaching the heights of greatness and I doubt I’ll remember it five or ten years down the road.

Yellowjackets’ Sophie Thatcher (the one playing young Juliette Lewis) and Chloe East play two twenty-something Mormon missionaries. The film begins with a very entertaining stretch of dialogue between them about magnum condoms that also clearly clues us in to each missionary’s perspective. After establishing them as actual characters and not just one-dimensional cardboard cutouts, we follow them to a cozy but ominous little house owned by the “charmingly befuddled” Hugh Grant. Based on promises of another female present and blueberry pie, the two missionaries voluntarily walk into the lion’s den where Grant proceeds to fuck with them for the entire run time of the movie until blood is spilled and they’re both screaming for mercy.

The first two-thirds of the movie are inevitably stronger than the final third, these are the passages that focus more on the psychological terror and musings on religion and philosophy versus people hemorrhaging blood in the basement. Heretic is thoroughly predictable, not unlike Smile 2 or The Substance, two other very good but not quite great horror movies released this year. While we know exactly where it’s going, Heretic still leads us on an interesting journey that is highly watchable. There are a few groaner moments and one utterly implausible plot development, but the ending is surprisingly deep in a way I hadn’t anticipated.Heretic marks Hugh’s first horror movie since Ken Russell’s The Lair of the White Worm and he’s a perfect fit here. He’s able to switch from charming to sinister to caring to violent in an instant, sometimes even giving us a combination of the four. Thatcher and East are also very good as the missionaries, though East completely steals the movie out from underneath Grant and Thatcher as the wholly devout but surprisingly clever Sister Paxton. Those looking for a groundbreaking dissection on the power of faith will probably be disappointed, but for those looking for a fun horror movie that expertly kills two hours, Heretic is a winner. Grade: B (In Theaters)

Juror #2

“Are you going to see Juror #2?” a friend texted me. “Lol,” I responded. “No joke, it was the best trailer I’ve seen all year.” Hmm, I thought. Clint “One-Take” Eastwood hasn’t had a decent movie in quite a while, maybe since the 2000s. I opened up the Tomatoes website and checked the score – 92. Wow. Most critics pointed out that seeing an old-fashioned, traditional, well-plotted movie was refreshing. “Oh,” I thought. It was a classic done right. Sometimes familiarity is tolerable if the execution is nearly perfect. I almost watched the trailer, but then I thought, I should just walk in blind, and blind I went. I didn’t even know Toni Collette or JK Simmons were in it; I didn’t even know the plot. The only thing I knew about this movie was that Nicholas Hoult played Juror #2.

The movie began, and instantly, it felt like a Lifetime Original Movie that they somehow blackmailed Nicholas Hoult into starring in. Visually, it was flat. Everything was super bright, little to no camera movements, it was shot like a Pepsi commercial. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a theatrically released movie with absolutely zero aesthetic. “Holy mole!” I thought. This is terrible. Let’s dive into the plot. Hoult plays an upper-middle-class married man with a pregnant wife who gets assigned jury duty. He wants to ignore it, but his wife reminds him of his civic duty. He goes into jury selection and bumps into – “TONI COLLETTE?” I asked out loud in the theater. I didn’t know she was in this, and I was definitely not prepared for her unhinged Southern accent. Anyway, she’s the prosecutor on the case Hoult has been called in for – the murder of a young woman at the hands of her gang-affiliated boyfriend.

Of course, Hoult gets selected but, upon hearing the details of the case, realizes the murdered girl might have been murdered by him…ON ACCIDENT. You see, Hoult‘s character is a recovering alcoholic, and he found himself in the bar where the victim and her boyfriend were fighting on the night of the murder. He ordered a drink and tearfully stared it down before leaving the bar during a GIGANTIC RAINSTORM. While driving down a dark and rainy road, he hit something. Panicked, he got out of the car, but it was too dark to see anything; he assumed it was a deer. But here’s the thing, it wasn’t a deer – it was a person! The murdered lady!! He accidentally murdered someone and didn’t find out till 5 months later, and now some innocent guy is gonna get the death penalty because of it!!! WHAT IS HE GOING TO DO?!?!?!

First off, what a fun premise. It mostly plays out like a Lifetime Original Movie, entertaining but could definitely be deeper and more realistic in its exploration of characters. Unfortunately, Eastwood is also too restrained and modest to explore its potential pulpiness. Instead, he focuses on the moral dilemma at heart, and to his credit, he doesn’t oversimplify the situation. While the Hoult character is well written, everyone else is little more than a caricature – there’s the angry guy who hates gangs (Cedric Yarborough from Reno 911), the old lady, the stoner kid, and even JK Simmons has a role as a juror who is a former detective. It’s a real-nothing role, too, so you have to wonder why Simmons even bothered. The always underrated Chris Messina (Sharp Objects, Devil) is excellent here as the defense attorney, while the real disappointment is the usually extraordinary Toni Collette. Her accent is wonky AF, and she really overplays the character to the level of camp.

Juror #2 is the best thing Eastwood has done in a while, which isn’t saying much, but it’s very watchable. Wait for a lazy Sunday to watch it for free on streaming, though. It’s not quite worth $15 at the theater. Grade: B- (In Theaters)

It’s What’s Inside

Besides having a terrible, instantly forgettable title, It’s What’s Inside is guilty of taking a genuinely fascinating premise and doing the most basic bitch shit with it, merely scratching the surface of what could have been an epic examination of trust and power dynamics within a dysfunctional friend group. This Netflix Original begins with a truly annoying couple played by The White Lotus’ Brittany O’Grady and James Morosoni, they’re arguing because the guy would rather watch porn than have sex with his gorgeous fiance. Jesus, pal. We find out later that this guy’s name is Cyrus, and his nickname is Cyrus the Virus, presumably because he and his friends are fans of Con Air. That’s literally the only thing I can relate to in this movie.

From there, the couple goes to a pre-wedding party at a mysterious mansion for one of their old friends (Devon Turrell) from college. When they get there, they’re greeted by a gaggle of underdeveloped and/or completely insufferable characters – there’s the girl who is obsessed with Instagram and totally fake but is also “the hot one” so all the guys want to dong her (Alycia Debnam-Carey), the wild one who acts gangsta but is actually a coward (Gavin Leatherwood), and there’s also Forbes (the always delightful David Thompson), the computer genius who was kicked out of college and nobody has seen since college…but who has mysteriously appeared at this pre-wedding party. There’s also two other female characters who are so underwritten it’s tragic. Anyway, Forbes is now some genius tech guy and has brought with him a top-secret game from his lab that allows the friends to switch into each other’s bodies. They then try to guess who each person really is. What could possibly go wrong?

Anything you just thought of right now that could go wrong goes wrong in this movie, far into the second act. As a thriller, It’s What’s Inside is so damn predictable it had me yawning at three in the afternoon. Even if this movie ultimately descends into the common tropes of the thriller genre, it should at least detail the characters enough so we can enjoy a meal out of the human drama. The characters are far too bland and the drama far too basic to generate any suspense and you’re so preoccupied trying to figure out who is who – not because of how complex the narrative is, but because of how confusingly written the screenplay is.

On top of that, the movie has the gall to play out its final twist (not much of a revelation tbh) to Beethoven‘s Allegretto like it’s proving some mind-blowing point. It’s simultaneously egregious and hilarious, failing almost every step of the way to deliver on the promise of its premise. I’d like to buy the rights to this, keep the premise but completely gut the narrative/characters, rewrite the script, and mount it as a stage production. It will be like a cross between The Big Chill and Heathers. Grade: C (Netflix)

Blink Twice

The directorial debut of Zoe Kravitz, daughter of Lisa and Lenny, ex of Channing and Ezra. Blink Twice is a fairly entertaining, extremely well-cast but deeply problematic satiric dark comedy thriller that ends on a note so fucked up it triggered my gag reflex. This is not to say movies cannot end bleakly or follow a protagonist who is a complete piece of shit, but here it feels entirely driven by the filmmaker’s desire to shock the audience even at the expense of pre-established character stuff that came before it.

Channing Tatum is perfect as Slater King, a billionaire asshole who gets canceled for just being himself, bro. His punishment is that he has to buy his private island somewhere tropical where he and his scuzzy friends go to binge on hallucinogens and make Geena Davis uncomfortable. One night, he bumps into Frida (a great Naomi Ackie) and her best friend, Jess (Alia Shawkat) when they’re catering an event he’s at and instantly they fall for each other. Slater arranges for Frida and Jess to fly on his private jet to his private island and party with him and his friends for seemingly forever. Frida and Jess surrender their phones and days blend into nights as they all begin partying and being weird. However fun soon hints at something way more fucked up as one of the girls suddenly disappears and no one has any recollection of her existing in the first place. Either the remaining girl has a Tyler Durden sitch going on or there’s a massive conspiracy happening on Slater King’s private island. From there, the movie steadily transitions from ridiculous satire to an uneasy thriller, getting less and less enjoyable as it loses its edge as a social critique and dives head-first into horror.

The acting is superb across the boards, not just from leads Ackie and Tatum but from an impressive ensemble cast that includes Christian Slater, Hitman’s Adria Ajorna, Haley Joel Osment, Red Rocket’s Simon Rex, and even Kyle MacLachlan for a hot second. Geena Davis is my fave though, in a small supporting role that adds much-needed levity to the proceedings. Ultimately, I don’t think Blink Twice is a serious enough movie or a well-thought-out enough movie to handle the amount of SA it traffics in. It comes off feeling exploitative and not in a fun grindhouse-y way. It all leads to an ending as I mentioned before that left a terrible taste in my mouth. It’s seriously the most tone-deaf “girl boss” moment in recent memory. Blink Twice isn’t a good movie but it has a lot of good things in it and demonstrates Kravitz as an extremely capable filmmaker. I hope she makes another film, I just hope it’s better and more focused than this. Grade: C+ (VOD)

My Old Ass

Megan Park’s My Old Ass is being labeled a “science-fiction-comedy-drama,” which I guess is maybe true, but those expecting spaceships, aliens, and that type of shit will be massively disappointed. Perhaps not sci-fi, because My Old Ass ultimately feels more spiritual than it does extra-terrestrial, and not just because it begins with a mushroom trip. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s dive into the plot of this little indie dramedy.

My Old Ass follows Elliot (Maisy Stella), who just turned 18 and is leaving her family’s farm in a couple weeks to go to college in Toronto. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that this is a Canadian maybe-sci-fi-but-more-spiritual-comedy-drama. She’s being a typical teenager, not really understanding that she’s leaving the nest for good and kinda being dismissive/inconsiderate towards her parents and her siblings. The night of her birthday, she blows off her family’s surprise party to go do shrooms in the woods with her besties. During her trip, she encounters a woman (Aubrey Plaza) who claims to be her from the future. Elliot’s old ass 39 years old, so not too ancient) tells her to spend more time with her family and appreciate what she has cause the future is rocky as fuck. Also, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES fall in love with a cute boy named Chad (Percy Hynes White)…which, of course, SHE DOES.

My Old Ass is a very small film and one that doesn’t really show you its power until the final 30 minutes. The first hour or so is a mildly funny but pretty unspecific and rote YA comedy, but the final third has some very real things to say. I must admit I cried real tears during the penultimate scene of the film. Besides being surprisingly touching at the end, the film features some fantastic performances from Aubrey Plaza and especially Maisy Stella as 18-year-old Elliot. She’s a real discovery, and I hope I see her in more things. Percy Hynes White is as good as Chad as the rest of the cast in underdeveloped roles. Seriously, Elliot’s friends are so underwritten. My Old Ass isn’t perfect and struggles most in its second act, but I wasn’t expecting to be thoroughly moved by it. Grade: B (Amazon Prime)

Red Rooms

Red Rooms begins most strangely with a thirty-something woman, Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy), getting ready in her apartment. She then travels to the city, into a government building, and then into a bright white, almost sanitized-looking room where an extended courtroom sequence begins. There’s a bald French dude in a cage that the prosecutor explains is a homicidal maniac who filmed himself butchering three teens for a paying audience on the dark web. The detail she goes into is horrifying and vivid, and the scene lasts for what feels like ten whole minutes.

After that, we switch back to Kelly-Anne, who is revealed to be a freelance model. It’s unclear why she’s attending this court hearing. Still, she ends up befriending Clementine (a fantastic Laurie Babin), a deeply disturbed twenty-something in love with the supposed killer and who is adamant about his innocence. Of course, Clementine has no concrete evidence to suggest the contrary, but she’s quick to spout outlandish conspiracy theories that would make Fox Mulder blush. As the movie progresses, Kelly-Anne and Clementine form a close bond, a very big-sister/little-sister relationship, with Kelly-Anne trying to help Clementine in any way she can. From there, the movie goes into bizarre and unpredictable territory, nothing I’d ever dream of spoiling for you on here.

This is a slow-burn horror film that simmers instead of boils. It claws its way under your skin until reaching a fever pitch of insanity with one holy-fucking-shit sequence towards the end of the film. All the actors were solid in their roles, but most of all, Juliette Gariépy was mesmerizing. She does so much with so little; it’s astounding. It’s also so well made from a technical level, and never in a showy way. Most every frame has a specific purpose, and a few managed to hard sear themselves into my brain. On the other hand, I cannot overstate how much this film is NOT for everyone. It’s very slow and doesn’t offer viewers resolution in any traditional way. In fact, my biggest gripe about the movie (besides a brief lull between the second and third acts) is how it ends. I’m definitely a fan of understated and/or ambiguous endings, but it feels like the finale of Red Rooms was poking at something larger; it just couldn’t communicate. Regardless, it’s one of the best pieces of work I’ve seen this year. Grade: B+ (VOD)