Hold the Fort (2025) | The funniest part might be everyone calmly explaining the annual demon invasion like it's garbage collection day. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 5.5/10. I do love me a good low-budget horror comedy. But when they embrace madness, once in a while, they manage to hit upon that perfect point where enthusiasm wins out over finance. Hold the Fort had me convinced that I had stumbled upon one of those hidden jewels. That trailer was absolutely fun, and with its short 76-minute duration, there couldn't be much filler. Unfortunately, while it comes close, it never quite survives its own HOA meeting.

The movie wastes no time. An elderly couple is barricaded inside their home, fully armed and preparing for...something. An eerie orange glow hangs outside before we're suddenly introduced to a blood-soaked old woman happily announcing she's ready to sell the house. If that doesn't scream "great neighborhood," I don't know what does.

Our unlucky newcomers are Lucas (Chris Mayers) and Jenny (Haley Leary), who move into what appears to be your average suburban nightmare. Jenny quickly discovers the true horror of homeownership - the homeowners association. Except this HOA doesn't care about your mailbox color. They're busy defending the neighborhood from portals to hell during the equinox. Honestly, that's a much better excuse for mandatory meetings than discussing lawn height.

Jerry (Julian Smith) enthusiastically welcomes the couple to the neighborhood party, promising it's "to die for," which turns out to be surprisingly accurate. The residents casually explain that witches, werewolves, demons, and the dreaded Stickman may appear once the portal opens. Everyone treats this like discussing tomorrow's weather forecast, and somehow that's one of the funniest running jokes in the movie. Also, any raffle where the grand prize is a shotgun immediately gets points from me.

Once the monsters arrive, Hold the Fort finally lets loose. Flying witches explode heads with magical attacks, kung fu spirits possess victims into martial arts zombies, fake blood flies everywhere, and the neighborhood's resident badass McScruffy (Hamid-Reza Benjamin Thompson) strolls in like he owns the place. The practical effects intentionally embrace that B-movie charm instead of trying to hide it, and the creature makeup, especially the final monster, looks surprisingly solid.

Unfortunately, Lucas almost derails the fun. The movie spends far too much time making him the painfully timid guy everyone wants to yell at through the screen. There are only so many jokes built around "coward eventually becomes brave" before you start rooting for the monsters. Jenny telling everyone that his greatest survival skill is running fast leads to one of the movie's funniest exchanges, with Ted immediately asking, "What's your mile time?" because apparently sprinting away from demons now requires verified athletic credentials.

There are enough laughs all the way through, along with good action and a few drug-related jokes that are actually pretty funny. There is potential here, yet the screenplay just cannot seem to find a way to balance the ridiculous plot line and the appealing characters (not Lucas). It's one of those movies that keeps showing flashes of what it could have been.

The strangest decision comes during the credits, where a deleted dream sequence plays that is noticeably better than the awkward kung fu zombie sequence that actually made the final cut. Watching it almost feels like discovering the editor accidentally left the stronger scene on the cutting room floor. The outtakes that follow are fun, and the cast looked like they had just as much fun making Hold the Fort as I wanted to have watching it.

Hold the Fort (2025)

I was hoping that this would turn into another one of those horror comedies that people would talk about for years (They Will Kill You comes to mind). It comes very close, but just never seems to be able to get there. However, if you think that having an HOA meeting interrupted by witches and demons and exploding heads and shotgun raffles sounds like fun, you’ll be right at home.

https://jackmeat.com/hold-the-fort-2025/

Seven Snipers (2026) | Tim Roth and Radha Mitchell deserved a better script, or is the best defense against one sniper inviting a whole bunch of other snipers? #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 4.3/10. The name Tim Roth was enough to get Seven Snipers onto my watchlist. The movie opens with some beautiful sweeping shots of Ipswich, Queensland, before introducing Radha Mitchell out for a morning jog. I've been a fan of hers ever since Pitch Black, still one of Vin Diesel's better movies. She lives quietly on a remote farm with her teenage daughter Anja (Annabel Wolfe), whose rebellious "my mother sucks" attitude wastes no time reminding us that teenagers remain one of cinema's most reliable survival hazards.

The peaceful family drama lasts all of five minutes before bullets start flying, and suddenly it seems like everyone in Australia owns a sniper rifle. Ryan Kwanten shows up pretending to be interested in buying the property, which is about as convincing as a telemarketer calling to "check in." He quickly reveals himself and warns Mitchell's character, better known as Voodoo Child, that the Dragon (Tim Roth) is coming.

The upside? A heavily armed team of military specialists arrives to protect her from the legendary sniper. The downside? They've basically gathered a whole buffet of targets in one convenient location. I couldn't help laughing at the idea of defending against the world's greatest sniper by assembling a group of other snipers in wide-open positions. It's like fighting a shark by jumping into the water with more swimmers. (Yes, I just watched Deep Water lol.)

Apparently there's a $10 million bounty on Voodoo Child's head, attracting the world's deadliest marksmen to collect the prize. Roth wastes no time reminding everyone why his Dragon is feared. One particularly gruesome interrogation scene involving a skull inspection is delivered with such casual confidence that it almost becomes darkly funny. Unfortunately, once the bullets settle, the movie starts relying heavily on flashbacks to explain the connection between Dragon and Voodoo Child, and while they fill in some history, they never really explain why Dragon suddenly decides now is the time to return.

Radha Mitchell makes the absolute best of what little she is working with, and Roth manages to inject some real menace each time he appears. Seriously, the cast needs a much better script, since they are basically carrying the whole thing themselves. The writing just keeps undercutting any sense of tension with bad choices, strange behavior, and far too many plot holes.

Then comes the finale, which somehow turns into a "drop your guns and settle this with your fists" type showdown. In a movie called Seven Snipers. That was the only creative choice? If you're expecting a tactical sniper thriller full of patience, strategy, and long-range cat-and-mouse games, you're going to be sorely disappointed because that's pretty much absent here.

Seven Snipers (2026)

Seven Snipers has capable performances, gorgeous Australian scenery, and a few entertaining moments, but the script simply can't keep up with its cast. There are plenty more head-scratching moments I could dissect, but honestly, the movie already did enough damage to itself. Sometimes the biggest missed target isn't the sniper's shot. It's the screenplay.

https://jackmeat.com/seven-snipers-2026/

Mutilator 2 (2023) | Watching Mutilator 2 is like attending a horror convention after-party that accidentally turned into a slasher movie. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 4.1/10. I was genuinely surprised to discover Mutilator 2 existed. Not only am I a fan of the original The Mutilator from 1984, but seeing writing credits from Jen and Sylvia Soska immediately grabbed my attention. Back in the day, the Soska sisters would've probably been shouting this one from the rooftops to horror fans like me. These days, they're a little busier than when they were making the convention rounds.

The setup is actually pretty clever. More than 35 years after the original film, a crew is shooting a remake at the same Atlantic Beach, North Carolina location. Cast members from the original movie show up for a wrap party while the remake is finishing production. Naturally, because this is a slasher movie, someone starts murdering people one by one. It's a concept that feels like it was tailor-made for us fans of the original.

The movie doesn't try to hide where it came from. It starts off with a scene that becomes obvious fairly quickly and features actors reenacting scenes from the 1984 movie. It's a nice touch, even if the acting had me raising my eyebrows. Actually, "raises eyebrows" might be generous. The acting got so awkward that I found myself wondering if it was deliberate. Honestly, I hope so because the alternative is concerning.

Among the main attractions here is seeing the veteran actor Terry Kiser playing the part of the original actor who played the killer, Jack Chatham, who has since passed away. It is obvious that horror enthusiasts will be delighted by the use of cast members from the original film. Despite the fact that Mutilator 2 is doing something totally ridiculous, it definitely pays tribute to its heritage.

Ridiculous doesn't even begin to describe the hilarious blowjob scene with the prop of the severed head and some form of glue. The gag keeps returning throughout the film, and I found myself laughing more than I probably should have. The cast party scenes have been dubbed an amateur comedy stand-up routine that just happened to be filmed in the middle of a slasher film. It has its hits and misses and bombs.

The first kill is oddly edited and feels a little clunky, but once the body count starts rising, the movie settles into a decent groove. The practical effects deserve credit. They always do. They aren't exactly on the level of Tom Savini's legendary work, but at least they're real effects instead of a bunch of weightless CGI blood splatters. The film also follows the sacred slasher commandments. If characters decide to wander off alone, remove clothing, or head to the beach for romantic activities, their life expectancy drops dramatically.

The kills themselves are pretty interesting and entertaining, which is precisely what we come to see. Unfortunately, after building momentum, Mutilator 2 delivers an ending so anticlimactic, I'm pretty sure everybody decided it was quitting time. It's not terrible, but it definitely lands with a thud rather than a scream.

The end credits could possibly be the most brilliant idea of the entire movie, highlighting the special effects used to create the killings. It's a fun little reward for sticking around.

Mutilator 2 (2023)

Ultimately, Mutilator 2 comes across as less of a sequel and more of a reunion party that every once in a while reminds us that it is still meant to be a slash horror flick. The fans of The Mutilator will definitely get their money's worth with all of the fun that they will have reminiscing about the first film. But after 40 years, I was hoping for a bit more.

https://jackmeat.com/mutilator-2-2023/

Big Foot Burgers (2026) | Big Foot Burgers feels like someone lost a bet and decided to make a movie around a joke that wasn't funny. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 2.1/10. I will admit it right up front. The main reason I picked Big Foot Burgers was that it only runs 64 minutes. After watching the trailer while setting up this review, I knew exactly what I was getting into. The poster alone practically waves a giant warning flag that says, "So you watch everything, huh? Enjoy this one."

The plot itself is even more outrageous than the name suggests. Bigfoot emerges from his cave to rescue a little girl trapped in a forest fire. Instantly, he becomes a celebrity, learns what hamburgers are, and opens a very successful hamburger joint in Los Angeles. But when the recession threat hangs over their heads, the waitresses devise plans that get more and more pointless. That's the movie. Somehow.

Things kick off with what appears to be public-domain footage of a massive wildfire. A reporter interviews the distressed mother of the missing child before Bigfoot nonchalantly emerges from the blaze and carries her out to safety, conveniently dumping her right next to where the reporter is interviewing the mother. Forget fame, though. Bigfoot has more important priorities. Specifically, stealing a burger from a "Food for Firefighters ONLY" station. One bite later, and his entire future career path is decided.

The Bigfoot costume deserves a mention. It looks like something that made its way to the floor in the clearance aisle after Halloween. The credits roll over colorful cartoon backgrounds and an upbeat tune, which somehow feels more expensive than most of the movie itself.

Once Big Foot Burgers opens, the film quickly reveals its true business model. Cleavage with a side of fries. The movie repeatedly tries to make cooking burgers look sexy, but the camera work and editing are so frantic that it often looks like people are suffering from mild electrical malfunctions. The acting is exactly what you'd expect from a movie called Big Foot Burgers. Nobody is hiding the budget either. At one point, the film literally uses an "AI Report" video to explain the restaurant's success story, complete with green-screen interviews.

Writer/director Cindy Lucas throws every idea imaginable at the wall. A recession hits. Gas prices rise. Commercials appear. Random celebrity cameos arrive. There are references to Becky LeBeau and Deborah Dutch that will probably only excite fans of obscure 1980s B-movies. Bigfoot spends much of the movie hanging out with groupies, receiving lap dances, and generally acting less like a legendary cryptid and more like a washed-up rock star. At one point, they're even making "Kick Kok" videos because subtle parody wasn't on the menu.

Most of the film consists of increasingly desperate attempts to save the restaurant, which mostly translates into finding new excuses to feature the waitresses. Despite all the effort, very little of it is funny. The jokes rarely land, the story barely exists, and the low-budget charm never becomes charming enough to overcome the sheer stupidity.

My initial concern after seeing the trailer turned out to be completely justified. Big Foot Burgers is every bit as awful as I feared, and unfortunately, not nearly funny enough to make that awfulness entertaining.

Big Foot Burgers (2026)

https://jackmeat.com/big-foot-burgers-2026/

Deep Water (2026) | Renny Harlin delivers exactly what I expected. A survival-thriller that rarely lets up, even when physics occasionally takes a lunch break. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 5.7/10. Sometimes a movie jumps up my watchlist based on nothing more than the name behind the camera. That was absolutely the case with Deep Water. As soon as I saw it was directed by Renny Harlin, the man who brought me a couple of my favorites, Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger, this went from a casual "I'll get around to it eventually" to "alright, let's see what you've got."

Instead of immediately tossing us into screaming passengers and flying debris, Deep Water takes a surprisingly calm approach. We spend a little time with pilots Ben (Aaron Eckhart) and Rich (Ben Kingsley), getting a glimpse into their everyday lives before disaster strikes. Well, "everyday" might be stretching things when one of those scenes involves karaoke, but close enough. We also meet several passengers, and veteran disaster movie fans will quickly start making predictions about who is going to survive and who is being introduced purely as future shark food. The racist bully, the rude guy shoving through lines, the people who instantly trigger your internal "yeah, that one's not making it" alarm.

Once the emergency landing begins, Harlin delivers exactly what you hope for. The crash sequence looks great. The tension ramps up nicely. And the aftermath feels quite chaotic. We get a good mix of survivors, injuries, panic, and those souls floating face down. The film does a good job making the situation feel dangerous without turning everything into relentless misery. (If you look at the trailer still image here, I am pretty sure they cut that silly-looking scene.)

The sharks themselves are surprisingly convincing. Yeah, they're CGI, but they avoid that distracting rubbery look that sinks these kinds of movies. Every dip below the surface kept me glued because you never know if someone is gonna climb back onto the wreckage or become an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet. The movie repeatedly gives that false sense of safety before reminding you that hundreds of sharks did not gather here for sightseeing.

One thing I could not stop noticing was the miraculous durability of everyone's phones. I don't think I've ever seen so many people carrying expensive devices that can survive repeated underwater adventures and still function perfectly afterward. Forget the sharks, apparently the real science fiction element was the battery life.

Even though Deep Water mostly revolves around the sharks, the movie is actually a survival-action film rather than a horror. The focus is on the cooperation of the passengers, coping with the situation, and staying alive long enough for a rescue. The end does turn out to be rather typical for Hollywood movies, but Harlin embraces that choice with confidence

Deep Water (2026)

You've seen movies like Deep Water before, no question about it. The idea is far from groundbreaking. What I appreciated is that when the movie decides to be intense, it fully commits to that mission for 106 minutes. No unnecessary detours. No long stretches of boredom. Just a disaster movie that understands exactly what it wants to be and keeps its foot on the gas all the way to the credits.

https://jackmeat.com/deep-water-2026/

Saccharine (2026) | The monster looks like Jabba the Hutt's sleep paralysis demon, which became one of my favorite parts. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 5.7/10. There’s that Shudder logo again, which means you're either about to discover a hidden horror gem or spend the next two hours wondering how the pitch meeting ever got approved. Throw in the fact that Saccharine is an Australian horror film and the odds become even harder to predict.

The movie wastes little time establishing its themes. We get slow-motion shots of people stuffing their faces and exercising while Hana (Midori Francis), a medical student struggling with body image issues, gets introduced to a mysterious weight-loss study through Alanya (Madeleine Madden). Naturally, ominous music starts playing almost immediately because Hana is determined to lose weight for Alanya. To get in her pants, of course.

After reconnecting with Melissa (Annie Shapero) during a night out at a club, Hana takes one of these mystery diet pills and wakes up the next morning unsure of what happened. What she does know is that she's losing weight, and quickly. Before long she's obsessively tracking her progress and monitoring other people's transformations online. Being a medical student, she also has the unfortunate advantage of being smart enough to investigate exactly what she's putting into her body.

The answer is both disgusting and hilarious in a darkly twisted way. It turns out the weight-loss miracle involves consuming human ashes. More specifically, the ashes of Bertha, a cadaver Hana previously worked on during a medical procedure. So when Hana starts seeing Bertha's ghost lurking in reflections, it's hard not to laugh and think, "Well, yeah. You ground up part of her rib cage and swallowed it. That probably voids some sort of warranty."

To the film's credit, Saccharine comes up with some genuinely creepy imagery. The creature itself looks great, resembling something along the lines of Jabba the Hutt that is dragging around some unresolved trauma. Hana's horrific dreams, perpetual hunger, sleep-eating, and increasing grotesqueness result in quite a number of memorable horror scenes. The practical body horror effects work especially well here, as well as a couple of jump scares.

The biggest weakness of Saccharine lies in the fact that it does not know how to clearly define its genre. There is horror, there is satire, there is social commentary, and even some dark humor mixed into one movie, but it does not always come together nicely. The discussion of the body image and diet culture in society is relevant and entertaining, however, some other plot lines seem to be unnecessary and uninteresting. The subplot involving Hana's parents, for example, never contributes anything that I could tell.

At 112 minutes, the film also overstays its welcome. By the final act, I found my attention starting to drift as the story wandered through a few side roads that didn't really lead anywhere.

However, Saccharine is not a bad movie in any sense. It has its own original plotline (sorta like The Substance, not nearly as good) some good body horror moments, and also has some disturbing images that will remain with you after the movie. It is just unfortunate that the plot was rather loose and unfocused. However, I gotta say the ending is rather memorable. It is dark, nasty, and outright evil.

Saccharine (2026)

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

Time of Death (2025) | I enjoyed the investigation far more than the ending, which somehow found room for several extra tragedies nobody ordered. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 5.3/10. Time of Death starts with the universal movie signal for "things are about to get very complicated." Michael Kelly is crawling toward an upside-down burning car with a woman and child trapped inside. Before you can ask any questions, the movie cuts to the credits and essentially says, "Relax, we'll get back to this eventually."

We then jump to December 1987 in the grim surroundings of Seneca Ridge Penitentiary, a decrepit institution that appears as if it has long ago become ripe for demolition. The warden, played by Kevin Pollak, awards a prisoner a pass out of the penitentiary for 48 hours, and it becomes evident from the start that the decision is a regrettable one. For the lucky prisoner.

Detective Frank Morley (Michael Kelly) is sent to investigate when that prisoner vanishes without a trace. Along the way he crosses paths with Sgt. Dale Aarons (Dennis Haysbert), whose voice remains one of the most authoritative things in cinema, and investigator Alan Murphy (Trevor Morgan), who begins uncovering strange connections to an execution that took place back in 1978. Unfortunately, Murphy contracts an aggressive case of death before he can explain much of what he found.

Considering it's a mystery movie, Time of Death does a decent job of creating suspense. The movie is not rushed into giving away all the details. Instead, we're taken on a journey through which we get occasional tidbits of information. There's sufficient mystery for us to be intrigued by and great performances that run throughout the film. Kelly handles the investigation with style, and then Mena Suvari shows up just as things become far too suspicious to ignore.

One of the movie's funniest accidental moments comes when Morley discovers the missing inmate's body outside his motel during a power outage. Naturally, he's outside looking for the breaker when he stumbles across the corpse. You know, the way these things happen all the time.

What surprised me most is that Time of Death really isn't much of a horror film despite some marketing that might suggest otherwise. It's far more interested in mystery and investigation, and for most of its runtime, I was digging that direction.

Then the final twenty minutes arrive like a wrecking ball.

The movie becomes so obsessed with closing its own clever little loop that it completely derails much of what it spent the previous hour establishing. The reveals themselves aren't terrible, but the execution feels forced and unnecessarily melodramatic. Characters start making decisions that exist purely to increase tragedy, including one particularly frustrating moment involving someone bleeding out when saving them seemed like a very realistic option. Apparently, common sense was also serving a sentence at Seneca Ridge.

The ending piles coincidence upon coincidence, stacking "oh crap" moments on top of one another until the whole thing starts feeling more contrived than shocking. I will give writer Jason Rosen credit for avoiding the safer Hollywood route, but different doesn't automatically mean better.

By the time the credits rolled, I was left with one final question. What exactly was this ancient prison constructed from? Dry pine needles soaked in gasoline? Because when things start burning, this place goes up like someone hid a warehouse full of fireworks behind every wall.

Time of Death is an interesting film with good acting and a great storyline. It is a pity that the end could not refrain from spoiling its own investigation at the same time.

Time of Death (2025)

https://jackmeat.com/time-of-death-2025/