Disclosure Day (2026) | Spielberg still can put on a show. Shame the massive conspiracy reveal felt more like a polite shrug than a mic drop. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 6.6/10. It takes about thirty seconds for Disclosure Day to let you know you're not watching a typical alien conspiracy movie. It opens with a professional wrestling match. Nope, I'm not kidding.

And if you are also a wrestling fan, you might recognize it's Lance Archer taking on Brian Cage. Somewhere in the crowd, while everyone else is busy enjoying two giants trying to knock each other's heads off, Daniel (Josh O'Connor) has a different agenda. He's there to rescue Jane (Eve Hewson), and before long it's obvious he's carrying something that a very powerful corporation desperately wants back.

In 2026, the most valuable thing in the world isn't gold. It's data. That's about all I'll say because the less you know going in, the better.

If for some reason you didn't get that from the previews, this definitely has the Spielberg touch. This guy just does it so well that it's no wonder that he's still one of the best directors out there. And what else can you expect when the legendary John Williams comes along? Apparently, those two signed a friendship contract several decades ago that nobody is allowed to break. The score is classic Williams. Instantly recognizable without overtaking the whole show.

Emily Blunt is fantastic as Margaret Fairchild, a local weather reporter who accidentally finds herself becoming... well... something far more important than she ever planned. Wyatt Russell is solid as her boyfriend Jackson, while Colin Firth quietly steals scenes whenever he appears. Nobody phones it in here. The performances across the board are excellent.

The action is also handled nicely. Steven Spielberg still knows how to stage a chase sequence better than most directors half his age. Cars, helicopters, people sprinting through locations they probably shouldn't be sprinting through. It all looks fantastic. Sure, a few character decisions had me wondering if common sense had taken a sick day, but that's blockbuster cinema. If everyone made smart decisions, we'd lose about an hour of running time.

My biggest issue is that Disclosure Day feels like it's building toward a jaw-dropping revelation...and then it kind of shrugs.

The conspiracy never gives the payoff it promises, but even more bizarre is that there is no fallout from all this. This is one of those stories that you will definitely look at the person next to you and say, “Is that it?” If you have watched it, you know exactly what I mean.

That's too bad since everything leading up to it is genuinely entertaining. There is nonstop movement, a bit of mystery, and Spielberg shoots everything with his signature flair. The problem is that all of this excitement is building up to an anticlimactic ending.

I also couldn't help comparing it to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That film left me thinking about it long after the credits rolled. Disclosure Day never landed that emotional punch. Instead of blowing my mind, it gave me a polite little nudge on the way out of the theater. The film shows that empathy exists in everyone, even if we call them the villains.

Maybe thirty years ago this ending would've sparked endless conversations. In today's TikTok-sized attention span world, though, audiences expect something that really sticks the landing, and this just doesn't quite get there.

Disclosure Day (2026)

Still, if you're looking for a slick conspiracy thriller with great performances, exciting action, and Spielberg doing Spielberg things, there's plenty to enjoy here. Just don't expect the universe's biggest secret to completely blow your socks off.

https://jackmeat.com/disclosure-day-2026/

Kill Trip (2026) | Road trips are supposed to create memories. Kill Trip mostly creates second-hand embarrassment. For me? The actors? Both. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 3.2/10. Talk about suckering me in. Kill Trip kicks off with a surprisingly stylish graphic novel-inspired opening credits sequence. The visuals themselves are rather impressive, and it briefly seems as if the credits will lead somewhere interesting that will tie back into the movie itself. They do…sort of. Just enough to remind you that writer/director Kristian McKay had at least one good idea.

Then reality hits.

We wake up with Katy (Diletta Guglielmi) and her group of four friends on their way to a Texas music festival. After demonstrating that not a single one of them possesses even a passing familiarity with rhythm, they're soon stranded on the side of the road. Enter Dallas (Tate Christensen), a friendly bloke driving a van who happily offers them a lift.

Because accepting a ride from a stranger in a creepy van has never gone badly in horror movies.

Oddly enough, Dallas turns out to be the most accommodating serial-killer-looking chauffeur imaginable. Need a swim? Sure. Want random sightseeing stops? No worries. He's practically running the world's least profitable Uber. The giant flashing warning signs couldn't be brighter if they were sponsored by Vegas.

The dialogue doesn't help matters. Every conversation feels painfully forced, with characters delivering lines that sound like they were generated by a "Teen Horror Dialogue" starter pack.

My personal favourite - "You think this guy picked us up to murder us, and then kill us." 36-minute mark if you think I am joking.

To make matters worse, the group spends so much time arguing with each other that you almost find yourself rooting for the mysterious van driver. These people don't seem to like each other, and before long neither will the audience.

There are a few light gore scenes scattered throughout, but nothing particularly memorable. The kills don't overshadow the stupidity of the script, and unfortunately that script is where Kill Trip completely falls apart. It borrows ideas from far better road-trip horrors without using them properly. That and the plot threads dangling everywhere don't help. All this before stumbling into an ending that's unintentionally hilarious.

It's frustrating because the opening storyboard and the basic premise had potential. With tighter writing and characters that behaved like actual human beings instead of walking horror clichés, there might have been a fun little indie slasher hiding underneath.

Kill Trip (2026)

Instead, Kill Trip spends most of its runtime trying to hitchhike on the success of better films and never reaches its destination.

https://jackmeat.com/kill-trip-2026/

The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026) | It's Star Wars with a Marvel vibe. Plenty of laughs, action and aliens, but don't expect that classic galaxy-far-far-away magic. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 7.1/10. Disney's latest trip back to a galaxy far, far away comes in the form of The Mandalorian and Grogu, where the Empire is gone but cleaning up the mess is proving to be a full-time job. The evil Empire has fallen, Imperial warlords are still scattered across space causing trouble while the New Republic tries to glue everything back together. To help keep the peace, they call in the galaxy's favourite babysitting bounty hunter, Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), and his pint-sized apprentice, Grogu.

The movie opens with the usual Imperial board meeting. You know the drill. Someone questions the boss, someone gets shot for questioning the boss, and everyone else suddenly becomes very supportive of management. The only problem this time? Somebody crashes the party. I'll give you one guess who. And yes, Baby Yoda...sorry, Grogu...is along for the ride.

What follows can only be described as Disney standing in the middle of the room yelling, "Look what we can do with CGI!" Thankfully, it's not just visual flexing. It's also a great reminder that the Mandalorian can dismantle an army with the calm efficiency of someone crossing items off a grocery list. Before the opening credits even roll, you've already had about ten minutes of explosions, blaster fire, jetpacks, and general chaos. That's a pretty good way to start a movie.

Sigourney Weaver joins the Star Wars universe as Colonel Ward, the latest person willing to hire Mando for another impossible mission. We also get a fun nostalgic surprise when his first client turns out to be Jabba the Hutt's uncles looking to rescue Jabba's son, Rotta. It's a nice callback without feeling forced.

Visually, the movie is fantastic. The worlds are vibrant, the creatures are everywhere, and the underground fight sequence is packed with enough weird aliens to make the galaxy feel properly lived in again. There are plenty of Easter eggs and nods to classic Star Wars that fans will appreciate, while Grogu continues stealing every scene he appears in. Watching him suit up like a tiny green Rambo had me laughing. Whoever came up with that deserves a raise…or at least first pick at the buffet.

Oddly enough, my biggest criticism is also one of the movie's biggest compliments.

The Mandalorian and Grogu doesn't really feel like a movie. It feels like someone accidentally stitched together four really good episodes of The Mandalorian and said, "Yep...that's two hours, send it to cinemas." There are plenty of entertaining side quests, but no single storyline that ever feels massive enough to justify the jump to the big screen. That's not really a knock on the film because the series has always been consistently entertaining. It just never quite reaches the cinematic scale I was hoping for.

I also never got that classic Star Wars feeling. The sweeping orchestral moments are mostly missing, the story never feels truly epic despite hopping all over the galaxy, and the whole experience occasionally feels like Marvel borrowed Mando's helmet for the weekend. Fun? Absolutely. Legendary? Not quite.

If you're already a fan of The Mandalorian, you'll probably have a blast. It's packed with action, humour, familiar faces, fantastic creatures and plenty of Grogu being impossibly adorable.

If you're a lifelong Star Wars fan looking for the next big cinematic event, you'll probably enjoy it, but don't expect it to recapture the magic of the original films.

And if you've never watched the series? You'll probably spend two hours wondering why everyone keeps risking their lives for a tiny green puppet...before eventually deciding you'd probably risk your life for him too.

Star Wars The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)

https://jackmeat.com/the-mandalorian-and-grogu-2026/

The Breach (2022) | The Breach is like an all-you-can-eat horror buffet where none of the dishes match, but you're weirdly glad you stayed. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 5.2/10. Some horror movies slowly build toward insanity. The Breach blew off the instructions, threw every horror trope into a blender, hit "liquefy," and hoped nobody noticed.

Sometimes it works. Most of the time, I was wondering what exactly I was watching.

Chief of Police John Hawkins (Allan Hawco) is only days away from escaping the tiny town of Lone Crow forever. Naturally, because horror movies have a strict "no retirement without trauma" policy, a horribly mutilated body washes up along the Porcupine River. Instead of spending his final week packing boxes and saying awkward goodbyes, Hawkins finds himself investigating a mystery that quickly spirals into body horror, cosmic horror, science gone wrong, and enough goo to make any practical effects artist smile.

The biggest problem with The Breach isn't that it's bad. It's that it constantly reminds you how good it could have been.

Director Rodrigo Gudiño throws a lot onto the screen. There are hints of Lovecraftian horror, psychological tension, gruesome creature effects, mystery, conspiracy, and enough strange events that you begin wondering if the script accidentally shuffled its own pages. Every individual ingredient sounds fantastic, but they never fully come together into the terrifying feast they're aiming for. It's that horror buffet where none of the dishes match.

As Linda, the mysterious wife of the town scientist, Natalie Brown is definitely the standout performer. She brings an eerie sense of presence to every scene that she appears in, with something far more to her than what meets the eye. But before we can learn anything about her, the movie takes us off on another odd tangent.

That becomes the recurring theme throughout the movie.

Every time The Breach starts building momentum, it immediately gets distracted by another idea.

The pacing never quite settles into a rhythm. One moment it is establishing suspense, the next one, throwing out-of-the-blue exposition, and then going crazy on monsters again. Instead of mystery, the constant detours make the story feel disconnected. Instead of wondering what's coming next, I found myself wondering whether the writers remembered where they were heading in the first place.

Thankfully, us horror fans still have something to enjoy.

The creature effects are clearly the best part of the movie. It is always great to see practical effects get so much attention in an age when CGI takes the spotlight in most movies. The creature designs in some cases are rather frightening and provide some of the best parts of the movie.

Almost.

The atmosphere also deserves some credit. The isolated Canadian setting creates a bleak backdrop, and the eerie soundtrack maintains that uncomfortable mood even when the story starts wandering off into the forest.

By the time the credits rolled, I wasn't angry. I was just disappointed.

The Breach had all the ingredients to become a fantastic Lovecraft-inspired horror film. Strong practical effects. An intriguing premise. Some solid performances. Hell, even some genuinely creepy moments are in there. They simply never lock together into the terrifying experience I had hoped for.

The Breach (2022)

It's still an entertaining 90-minute creature feature if you're a fan of cosmic horror, practical effects, or movies that embrace weirdness without apology. Just don't expect every question to be answered. Or even for every subplot to remember it exists. Sometimes the biggest breach wasn't reality. It was the script.

https://jackmeat.com/the-breach-2022/

Dropbear (2025) | I can't decide what looked faker. The stuffed dropbear, the CGI monsters, or the moving truck that clearly wasn't moving. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 3.2/10. I popped on Dropbear expecting some low-budget Aussie creature feature nonsense. What I got was…well…exactly that. The difference is that somewhere along the way it becomes so unbelievably ridiculous that you can't help but laugh. AT IT!

It opens with a few mates around a campfire before one wanders off for a midnight piss. He spots a red-eyed koala-looking creature in a tree, there's a bit of snarling, and next thing you know he's hanging upside down as the title card appears. It's cheesy from the very first scene, which sets the tone perfectly.

We then meet four American tourists signing up for a "real Australian adventure" led by two blokes who couldn't look more suspicious if they tried. The brunette is the only one showing any common sense while everyone else happily walks straight into every bad decision imaginable.

The tiny budget becomes obvious almost immediately. During the driving scenes, the truck clearly isn't moving. Everyone just bounces around while the driver wildly jerks the steering wheel. Once you notice it, it's impossible not to laugh.

The guides eventually try the classic fake dropbear prank using what looks like a stuffed toy, but things go sideways when they discover the legends are actually real. Although I'm honestly not sure what looked faker - the stuffed animal or the CGI dropbears that attack later.

Then the movie completely loses its mind.

The group stumbles across a secret government research facility, and we're introduced to the king of the dropbears. He's basically a full-grown bloke wearing a bear costume…who can talk. I genuinely burst out laughing. The flashback showing him as a baby somehow tops it by using an incredibly obvious hand puppet. It's so spectacularly silly that it circles back around to being entertaining.

Writer and director John DeCaux also throws in an ending that feels heavily inspired by Peter Jackson's Bad Taste. It's a fun nod to one of cult cinema's greatest splatter comedies, and I'll happily give credit where it's due. Sadly, borrowing a great ending doesn't magically fix everything that came before it.

The acting is brutal across the board, with performances ranging from wooden to outright painful, although by the time a talking mutant dropbear is delivering dialogue, I almost stopped caring.

Even the end credits get a laugh thanks to a surprisingly funny song, and there's a bizarre post-credit sequel tease featuring what sounds like a Donald Trump impersonator calling the research lab.

Dropbear is objectively a mess. The effects are laughable, the acting is poor, and the production values barely scrape by. But somewhere underneath all that is a movie that understands just how absurd its premise is.

It's not good. It's not even close. But I'll admit. I laughed far more than I expected.

Sometimes that's enough.

Dropbear (2025)

https://jackmeat.com/dropbear-2025/

Sunset Strip Killers (2026) | Sunset Strip Killers proves one thing - love makes people do crazy things, like willingly joining a murder spree. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 3.9/10. Sunset Strip Killers doesn't waste any time. It opens with a woman sprinting for her life before some blond bloke casually shoots her full of holes. Well...that's one way to kick things off. One body down before the opening credits. Efficient.

Then we're dumped into a dodgy little country bar where everyone looks like they've had a rough decade. It's New Year's Eve, 1980, Carol gets herself thrown out, bumps into Doug, and if you were paying attention, you'll recognise him from that little murder we just watched. Carol really does have an Olympic-level talent for picking absolute winners.

Doug takes her to a party where they somehow end up meeting John Holmes during a movie shoot, which honestly wasn't on my bingo card. Somewhere around here, I realised I'd completely confused this with another trailer I'd seen. That explained why the movie wasn't going where I thought it would.

Unfortunately, it doesn't really go anywhere particularly interesting.

For a film based on one of LA's most notorious serial killer couples, everything happens way too easily. Doug basically tells Carol he's a murderer, and instead of running for the nearest police station she's practically reaching for the hacksaw. Before long she's happily helping remove heads like she's been waiting her whole life for the opportunity. Maybe the real story unfolded that smoothly, but the movie sure doesn't sell it.

The biggest problem is the acting.

Max E. Williams is at least entertaining enough as Doug, but Susan Priver never quite convinces as Carol. Every beat feels just a little off, which is a shame because with stronger performances, the simple script might've actually worked. Instead, it all feels a bit like a true crime reenactment you'd catch at two in the morning after falling asleep with the TV on.

One thing Chad Ferrin (Scalper, Night Caller) keeps getting right, though, is practical effects. As always, the gore feels like old-school stuff, messy and fun but not drenched in lousy computer graphics. The film is imbued with that cheap straight-to-video feel of something you’d watch from a dusty videotape at the local video store back in 1991. Probably its greatest strength.

The film also keeps the real-life necrophilia angle mostly off-screen. It's mentioned, but never shown, so don't go expecting the movie to wander into that level of uncomfortable.

By the end I wasn't bored, but I also wasn't particularly invested. The practical effects deserve a nod, the true story is fascinating, but the performances never let Sunset Strip Killers escape its B-grade roots.

It's worth a look if you're into low-budget serial killer flicks or true crime adaptations. Just don't expect anything that'll stick with you much longer than it takes Carol to decide murder sounds like a fun new hobby.

Sunset Strip Killers (2026)

If you're curious about the actual Doug Clark and Carol Bundy case, it's honestly a far more bizarre and disturbing rabbit hole than the movie manages to capture.

https://jackmeat.com/sunset-strip-killers-2026/

Backrooms (2026) | Backrooms looks fantastic and creates some genuinely creepy moments, but even a supernatural office maze needs a better business plan. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 6.4/10. Backrooms is another horror movie getting plenty of attention, so naturally I had to see if this internet-born concept could actually work as a feature film. The idea has already become popular through countless YouTube videos, although I personally never made it more than a couple of minutes into them because I always thought they were kind of ridiculous. An endless yellow office space with creepy noises? Congratulations, you invented the world’s worst workplace tour.

We start with some grainy home video footage from around 1990 inside the familiar yellow corridors. If you know the Backrooms, you know exactly what this is. A man is wandering through this strange dimension, trying to broadcast a message to anyone who might hear him. He has seen something. He does not know what it is. And he would really like someone to come find him before this chase is over.

The opening leans heavily into jump scares and creepy imagery, which seems to be the entire point. There are some great visuals as he runs through the endless halls before eventually being cornered. The recording ends, and that is where the actual movie begins.

We are introduced to Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is talking with therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve). Clark is clearly unhappy with his life, especially his job as a furniture salesman. His embarrassing commercial we see him filming might be the most terrifying thing in the movie. Nothing says “I have lost control of my life” quite like pretending to be excited about selling couches.

When an electrician discovers a strange breaker at Clark’s store that appears to be connected to nothing, Clark decides the logical thing to do is investigate the creepy basement himself. After being thrown out of his house, he starts staying at the store to figure out what is happening with the strange electrical problems.

Naturally, he ends up messing with the fuse box and walking through a wall into another dimension.

The usual.

One thing I appreciated is that Clark actually makes a smart horror movie decision. Instead of just telling everyone about this impossible discovery and hoping they believe him, he brings his employees along and uses a camera to document the place. Finally, someone in a horror movie remembers that evidence is useful.

The Backrooms themselves are easily the highlight. The cinematography is excellent. The visual effects are solid. The movie does a great job of creating a feeling of isolation. Nice trifecta. There is something quite unsettling about being trapped in a place that seems endless and completely disconnected from reality.

Unfortunately, the story never reaches the same level as the atmosphere. I was interested in the idea that the Backrooms represented loneliness, depression, and feeling trapped in a life you don't want. There was something interesting there. Then the movie shifts direction, and the ending weakens a lot of what had been built throughout the runtime.

Since I have been binging the original The Twilight Zone recently, I also have to mention the episode “Little Girl Lost.” I watched it only a couple of weeks ago, and the similarities immediately stood out. A person disappearing into another dimension through an impossible opening in reality? My Twilight Zone alarm went off pretty quickly. Maybe Kane Parsons has talked about that influence before, but it was impossible for me not to notice.

Overall, Backrooms is a good horror movie that could have been great. The visuals, atmosphere, and concept are all there, but the story and ending hold it back. It is a fascinating idea that needed a stronger payoff.

Backrooms (2026)

https://jackmeat.com/backrooms-2026/