Shackled (2026) | I wanted to like Shackled more because the premise is great, but the movie keeps choosing the least interesting road possible. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 4.5/10. Shackled opens with the kind of ominous ’80s synth music that had me thinking something serious is about to happen. Police line the streets to contain a robbery, bullets start flying, and a criminal gets dropped. Then we cut to a man having a nice dinner with a woman while apologizing for his past mistakes. The movie keeps bouncing between the two scenes, repeatedly focusing on the RAPP tattoos on their hands, because apparently subtlety was denied parole.

Then the thief gets taken out in a hail of bullets and some very enthusiastic CGI splatter. A cop searches for his RAPP “match” on a laptop, and suddenly the guy having dinner appears to have his heart explode. He’s dead too. Welcome to the future, where parole apparently comes with a built-in murder button.

In this dystopian setup, the traditional parole system has been replaced by R.A.P.P., the Recidivism Accountability Partnership Program. White-collar ex-con Greg (Graham Powell) gets paired with Max (Armen Garo), a sociopathic gangster with terminal cancer. Both men have explosive charges surgically implanted in their hearts, meaning one wrong move by either of them can result in both being turned into a very brief medical emergency.

The premise is easily the best thing Shackled has going for it. There’s a genuinely interesting movie hiding in here about forced partnerships, government control, second chances, and a system that decides the easiest way to prevent repeat offenders is to give them synchronized heart bombs. Unfortunately, the movie keeps finding ways to take the less interesting road.

The synth music also needs a mention because Shackled really, really likes it. It pops up so often that I was sure at one point somebody would saunter into the shot with shoulder pads on and holding a brick cell phone. The music is pretty good, but the film depends upon it so much that every scene seems to become about selling me a videotape copy of it.

Things get more interesting when human organ trafficking enters the story. That subplot opens the door to some much darker and more compelling possibilities, but Shackled doesn't do nearly enough with it. It feels less like a major development and more like the movie briefly discovered a much better plot and then wandered away from it.

Fortunately, however, the acting is quite good. Powell is the film’s focus as Greg, and Garo is sufficiently threatening as Max to make their pairing work well when it otherwise wouldn’t. Powell also wrote the screenplay, and he at least gives the ending a cynical edge that fits the world the movie created.

That’s ultimately my biggest frustration with Shackled. It has a good idea. Maybe even several good ideas. But all I could do was wait for it to do something more interesting with them. However, it settled on being just an okay dystopian thriller rather than something much better.

Shackled (2026)

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

Lockbox (2026) | Lockbox isn't reinventing horror, but Carla Gugino and Katharine Isabelle are so damn reliable they make vague demon nonsense more watchable. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 5.3/10. Lockbox starts with a van driving down the road, which normally suggests a road trip, a kidnapping, or at least several people becoming part of the body count. Here, it's just one guy being held captive in the back, screaming, “I don't wanna see the boy.” Meanwhile, director Daniel Stamm alternates between showing a child in a wheelchair sitting in what appears to be a hospital. Of course, I have to ask myself just who this kid is and why everybody’s afraid of him.

After the title card, Carla Gugino's Ellen tells us she's going to share her story so this doesn't happen again. Famous last words in a horror movie.

Ellen was a caretaker who eventually couldn't keep doing it after her parents died, so she decided to reinvent herself. Then a relative calls and asks her to take in her cousin Winthrop, played by Lou Taylor Pucci. And because horror movies apparently consider “taking in the mysterious relative” a perfectly reasonable career move. Ellen agrees.

Enter Katharine Isabelle as Vahna, Ellen's strange neighbor who immediately feels like someone you should probably keep an eye on. I have been a fan of Isabelle since American Mary, so naturally I'm paying attention whenever she shows up. Vahna clearly has some ulterior motives, and Isabelle absolutely owns every scene she's in.

Remember that boy? Yeah, he is damn creepy. The movie does a good job of making you question what exactly is going on, particularly once the ritual starts and things get more supernatural. Whatever that creature becomes during the ritual toward the end may have been digital, but it looked pretty damn cool. There's also an arm injury involving skin being ripped apart that looks about as pleasant as it sounds.

Eventually, we learn that the lockbox isn't just some mysterious object. It's essentially a human demon trap. The film seems to be a murder mystery, and initially, that is indeed what I believed I was viewing. Then the weirdness starts piling up. Everyone behaves like something is slightly off, clues don't quite fit together, and the atmosphere keeps making you believe something really bad is happening.

That's where Lockbox works best. The movie creates actual dread, without having to throw shit at us all the time. The sensation is there that even if the story doesn’t explain what’s going on, there is something waiting out there beyond the frame.

Unfortunately, the explanation for the demon itself is where things get frustrating. The script keeps its cards very close to its chest, but eventually you realize it's holding back more than it's actually telling you. We never get a particularly satisfying explanation of where this entity came from, why it specifically wants Winthrop, or what the ancient rules governing this thing actually are. We're basically told it has terrifying powers and should be taken very seriously. Okay, got it. Terrifying demon. Very bad. Please continue.

The performances help enormously. Gugino once again proves she can make nearly anything watchable, while Isabelle is fantastic and more or less hijacks the movie whenever she appears. Even when the story gets a little too vague, the two of them give it enough personality to keep things moving.

Lockbox is well made, unsettling in places, and has a few genuinely creepy ideas. It just never feels like it's doing anything particularly new with the genre. The mystery and atmosphere kept me interested, but the demon mythology needed more meat on the bone.

Lockbox (2026)

Still, I'll happily watch Carla Gugino and Katharine Isabelle make supernatural situations considerably more interesting than they probably have any right to be. That's worth something.

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

Feed (2026) | Feed is a decent little indie vampire flick, assuming you can tolerate influencers making stupid decisions while being hunted. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 4.5/10. Thankfully, Feed wastes no time establishing that its vampires are not here to play nice. We open in Ireland in 1897 with a couple of blindfolded men dragging a bloody body through the forest before dumping it headfirst into a hole. The only problem? Bloody doesn't necessarily mean dead. Soon enough, everyone is screaming for their lives, one unfortunate bastard gets taken down by a sword-wielding kid, and said kid casually brushes his teeth with the man's blood. And then we get the title - Feed. Subtle? No. Effective? I'll give it that.

Fast-forward to the present, where five young adults head off to a forest retreat. Naturally, some of them are already socially obsessed and irritating enough to make you wonder whether the vampire is actually the victim here. I spotted Orla (Grace Collender) as the final girl almost immediately, especially once she started having strange visions. Let's see if I was right.

The movie then gives us an intervention designed to get Orla back ON social media so she can help her supposed best friend sell shit. Because apparently nothing says friendship like dragging someone into the woods to fix their engagement numbers. And that best friend is a real bitch, by the way.

Things get considerably more interesting when a naked, seemingly insane woman wanders into the picture with some seriously creepy eyes. The vampire's ability to control people telepathically is a nice touch, and the effects mostly appear to be practical, which I always appreciate. There is some CGI later on, but thankfully nothing that made me want to claw my own eyes out.

There are still plenty of moments where the writing starts asking questions the movie really should have answered itself. The sun clearly affects the vampire lady, for example, so when the survivors are literally standing at the front door, I'm wondering why nobody thinks, Hey, remember that giant ball of vampire-killing fire outside? Also, I have absolutely no idea where the previously naked vampire woman acquired a trench coat, but apparently even ancient vampires have access to emergency outerwear.

Feed isn't terrible. It has some decent atmosphere and practical effects. I did find their vampire gimmick interesting. And enough bloody nonsense to keep things moving. The characters occasionally make decisions that seem specifically designed to help the vampire with her evening plans, but that's hardly unusual in a horror movie.

Feed (2026)

It's not exactly a revelation in the vampire department, but you could do considerably worse with an indie vampire flick. Just don't expect the influencers to suddenly become less irritating bFeedecause they're being hunted by the world's first vampire. If anything, that seems to make them double down.

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

Meg 2: The Trench (2023) | With Mutiny coming this weekend, I revisited Meg 2. Great visuals but so hokey I wondered if this was Fast & Furious: Fish Tank Edition. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 5.5/10. Pretty sure they took The Meg and threw it into a pot with Fast & Furious. Stirred vigorously, and then dumped the goo into the ocean. That pretty much explains Meg 2: The Trench.

I went into this expecting at least some of the horror vibe from the first movie. Instead, this sequel gradually turns into a full-blown underwater action spectacle where the megalodons are apparently just another item on the Hollywood "things Jason Statham can punch" checklist.

The movie picks up after the events of The Meg, with Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) once again heading into the deep to deal with giant prehistoric sharks. This time, a shady mining operation threatens the research team's mission and, naturally, everyone's lives. Because apparently the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean weren't dangerous enough without someone deciding to start drilling.

The opening stretch is actually pretty damn good. The underwater exploring adds an air of adventure to the film. The visuals really do a good job of capturing the magnitude and beauty, but also the fear of the abyss. There's something about looking out at the dark depths below and knowing that there are most likely creatures lurking that want to eat you.

Then the movie remembers it's supposed to be a giant Hollywood popcorn flick.

The more it progressed, the more the suspense was substituted by an increasingly absurd array of action scenes. I kept waiting for that tense, claustrophobic feeling from the first to return, but Meg 2 would rather throw another explosion at me.

And that is where the trouble began. Not that a film involving prehistoric sharks has to have realism. Of course, we have already crossed that line and thrown it into the mouth of a megalodon. There are times when the film veers into such hokeyness that it begins to undermine itself.

The dinosaur-like creatures that suddenly become major predators are a perfect example. They feel like somebody in the writers' room said, "You know what this needs? More shit with teeth."

And there are plenty of other moments where the movie seems determined to out-stupid itself. I can take ridiculous if the movie is dedicated to it, but Meg 2 sometimes comes across as trying to make me take the ridiculousness seriously right after making me laugh at it.

Luckily, Jason Statham is still Jason Statham, so this film has Statham looking ready to take care of any worldwide emergency using nothing more than a wrench and his attitude. Page Kennedy also steals practically every scene he's in, providing some much-needed comic relief whenever the movie starts taking itself too seriously.

The underwater visuals really save this one. It does a fantastic job at portraying how vast and mysterious the ocean can be, and the deep-sea footage is by far the best part of the film. The problem is that the film loses a lot of this mood to larger action and explosions.

That's my biggest disappointment. The Meg succeeded in making its ludicrous plot work by adding enough suspense to create some threat from the giant shark. Meg 2 seems to care more about making the megalodon the star of an aquatic action franchise.

With a couple of movies by Ben Wheatley under my belt, I knew what to expect (Normal was anything but). However, it didn’t dawn on me that Meg 2 would turn out to be the Fast & Furious: Deep Sea Drift. It’s fun. The action is in place, and there are enough massive sharks to keep the popcorn popping. Just don't go looking for the dread of the first installment.

Meg 2: The Trench (2023)

Meg 2: The Trench is less "something terrifying is lurking beneath us," and more "Jason Statham has approximately 90 minutes to beat the shit out of the ocean." Wonder who the target will be this weekend in Mutiny?

https://jackmeat.com/meg-2-the-trench-2023/

Her Private Hell (2026) | Her Private Hell looks great, but after an hour, I was begging the neon nightmare to actually give me a story. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 4.1/10. Her Private Hell starts with a futuristic-looking cityscape buried under enough fog, I was wondering if the budget went to the cast or a really expensive smoke machine. Elle (Sophie Thatcher) arrives at the Tower hotel, which looks exactly as ominous as a place called the Tower hotel should. There she meets Hunter (Kristine Froseth), before Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), Elle's stepmother, joins them for some truly narcissistic dialogue that somehow manages to tell us almost nothing about the movie they're supposedly there to make.

Naturally, we get the family backstory instead. Elle's father is Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), because apparently everyone in this universe needs a name that sounds like it belongs on a progressive rock album.

Then a mysterious mist engulfs the advanced metropolis and unleashes a deadly, elusive entity. And then the strange mist surrounds the highly advanced city and releases a lethal, mysterious creature. In the meantime, an American GI soldier, Private K (Charles Melton), undertakes a terrible quest to save his daughter and comes across a mentally unstable girl looking for her father. Now, if all of this seems exciting, join the club. I thought so, too.

Visually, they absolutely nailed the movie-within-the-movie. The retro high-tech aesthetic has a great old-school sci-fi quality, particularly during the girls' filming scene. I got a dated William Shatner-era Star Trek vibe. The film is directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, so people who have seen films of his know that the film will offer them lots of neon colors and carefully composed shots.

And the visuals really are impressive. Even the initial Private K sequence has an interesting pan-and-scan quality that makes the whole thing feel like some forgotten piece of futuristic VHS trash that somehow received a very expensive makeover.

Unfortunately, around the one-hour mark, I said out loud, "This is boring." That is generally not the reaction you want with roughly 50 minutes left.

The themes are there. Unstable families. Fame as a prison. Fathers and daughters. The crushing emptiness lurking beneath glamour. It would appear that Refn is attempting a "Neon Giallo" horror film, full of metaphorical visual imagery and dream logic. Unfortunately, there simply isn’t enough story to support all that visual poetry.

Things happen. Then other things happen. Characters move through increasingly beautiful images. More things happen.

Eventually, I realized I was watching events rather than a story.

This is a prime example of style over substance. Her Private Hell is an absolute treat in terms of its look, but it never gives any significance to that imagery in terms of plot to get me interested. It's a beautiful nightmare that forgot to give me a reason to have the nightmare.

There are films where the lack of conventional storytelling becomes hypnotic. This isn't one of them. In this case, the dreamlike staging gradually turns into a test of endurance, and what once was mysterious soon becomes wondering if we are ever going to get a story.

A generous 4.1, largely because this thing looks so damn good. For about 110 minutes, I was trapped inside someone else's visual poetry exercise.

Turns out, Her Private Hell was my private hell.

Her Private Hell (2026)

https://jackmeat.com/her-private-hell-2026/

It Ends (2026) | It Ends traps four recent grads on an endless highway where the car never needs gas, phones never die, and AAA doesn't exist. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 5.2/10. I got an early look at It Ends, which starts with four recent graduates heading out for some late-night grub and one final hangout before life sends them all in different directions. Instead, they accidentally turn onto a two-lane road that apparently has no friggin' end.

The movie opens with an empty vehicle sitting beside a forest road in the middle of nowhere, its door hanging open and the warning beep merrily announcing that something has gone very wrong. Then we cut to what appears to be the same vehicle earlier, before whatever happened to it. Four young adults pile into a Jeep Cherokee and head off. The good news is that nobody is immediately irritating, and they don't seem to hate each other either, which already puts It Ends ahead of plenty of horror movies.

Eventually, they realize they should have reached their destination by now. They turn around, figuring they missed a turn, only to hit a dead end. That's when they realize something else is going on. After stopping to collect themselves, the shit really hits the fan.

And that is when It Ends. Okay, the movie doesn't actually end 15 minutes in. That's just when the title finally appears, because apparently things are about to get weird.

Stopping the car seems to attract a mob that wants nothing more than to bum-rush them like shoppers on Black Friday back in the day. The road is always straight, the car never seems to need fuel, and nobody develops the inconvenient problems of hunger, sleep deprivation, dead phone batteries, or eventually asking, "So... are we just going to drive forever?"

At 56,182 miles, about 44 minutes in, the focus shifts to Tyler (Mitchell Cole). Something happens to him, so let's just say the attention isn't exactly random. We then get "Way Later" on screen, accompanied by upbeat music and a montage of the car driving that feels like the opening credits to a TV show nobody wanted to watch.

They've even already hypothesized that they are stuck in purgatory, and really, I don't think I could come up with a more appropriate answer than that. I mostly wondered whether writer/director Alex Ullom had figured out how to escape the highway-shaped corner he'd driven himself into.

Day (Akira Jackson) and Fisher (Noah Toth) get the spotlight at 835,471 miles, followed by James (Phinehas Yoon) at 1,153,956 miles. I liked the idea of focusing on each character as the journey continued, and the ending was funny whether it was supposed to be or not.

It Ends is far more existential than horror. There are a couple of jump scares early on, but the real tension comes from psychological exhaustion and being trapped in a surreal highway loop with no off-ramp. It's about purpose, existence, and appreciating the little things when you have no idea where you're going.

Ullom provides us with food for thought, but the movie keeps driving for too long without offering answers to the many questions it raises. I thought I was watching some elongated, lost episode of The Twilight Zone.

It Ends (2026)

Instead of a traditional slasher, It Ends turns an endless highway into a metaphor for feeling stuck and searching for meaning. I just occasionally felt like I was the one trapped in the Jeep with them.

Hitting theaters on 08.21.26, so check back later for streaming links.

https://jackmeat.com/it-ends-2026/

Run (1991) | I remembered liking Run, and thankfully 2026 me agrees that this silly little ’90s action flick still knows how to have fun. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 6.0/10. I’ll admit it. I remember plopping Run (1991) on at West Coast Video on workdays when I couldn’t think of anything else. I also remember liking it quite a bit. So, naturally, it’s time to find out whether 1991 me had terrible taste or whether 2026 Jackmeat can still recognize a good time.

Boston law student and part-time mechanic Charlie Farrow (Patrick Dempsey) gets asked by his boss to deliver a new Porsche from Boston to Atlantic City. Because apparently “law student and mechanic” is the perfect resume for driving an expensive car across state lines. Naturally, the Porsche breaks down just outside Atlantic City.

While Charlie waits for repairs, a cab driver mistakes him for a high roller and drops him at a casino where he can grab some food. Charlie then proceeds to beat local tough guy Denny Halloran (A.C. Peterson) at poker, which is generally not the ideal way to introduce yourself to a town where Denny’s father owns the casino, the police force, and seemingly every other building.

Things get worse when Denny starts a fight, trips, smacks his head on the sharp corner of the counter and dies. Charlie, who has apparently never heard the phrase “No one cares if you're innocent,” becomes the prime suspect. Suddenly he’s running from both the cops and Matt Halloran’s henchmen, while the body count starts climbing.

And yep, this is bringing it all back.

There’s something wonderfully 1990s about Run. The music, the overhead city shots that were apparently filmed by a helicopter because drones didn’t exist, and Patrick Dempsey jogging around before casually taking all his buddies’ money in poker. Then comes the offer to deliver a car to Atlantic City and, for a brief moment, it looks like we’re getting a nice little highway-cruising movie.

Nope. Car breaks down. Welcome to hell.

Kelly Preston plays Karen, the one person in town who knows Charlie is innocent and reluctantly helps him out. She’s good in the role, especially considering Karen repeatedly finds herself helping a guy whose survival strategy seems to be making increasingly terrible decisions. That name didn't have a double meaning back then.

And that’s really Run in a nutshell. Bad decisions. And luck.

Charlie is not some unstoppable action hero. He’s basically a wimpy outsider who has stumbled into a town run by a crime boss and has to spend the rest of the movie running for his life. Instead of the usual “shady guy owns a town and the outsider beats the shit out of everyone” setup, Run asks a more realistic question. What if the outsider is just some dude who really, really does not want to die?

There’s also a memorable dog-racing subplot that I had completely forgotten about until it showed up, at which point my brain went, "OH CRAP, I remember this." That might be the most uttered phrase in my head all movie long.

Is Run (1991) great? Absolutely not. It’s silly, ridiculous, and the plot requires Charlie to make enough questionable decisions to keep the movie going. But it has that particular early-’90s action-thriller charm that’s becoming increasingly difficult to fake. It’s energetic, dumb in mostly entertaining ways, and has exactly the sort of ridiculous premise that used to make grabbing a random VHS from West Coast Video a perfectly acceptable way to spend an evening.

Run (1991)

Turns out 1991 Jackmeat wasn’t completely full of shit. (A few years later in 1994, that nickname is born and used everywhere online.)

Still silly fun.

https://jackmeat.com/run-1991/