Predator: Badlands (2025) | Predator Badlands shifts the franchise to a lethal alien world where character growth and spectacle evolve alongside relentless alien danger. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 6.8/10. Predator: Badlands takes a hard left turn from the familiar jungle and urban hunting grounds of the franchise and drops us onto Genna, a hostile, alien world where pretty much everything wants you dead (haha, I know, we say that about Australia). From the opening moments, director Dan Trachtenberg makes it clear this isn’t business as usual. The film kicks off with an impressive, brutal-looking fight scene between an older and younger Yautja, which not only sets the pace for the movie but is a testament to how much Predator visual effects have evolved. It’s slick and heavy, and expressive for a species that is known for its clicks as opposed to its words.

The young Predator, Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), hasn’t yet earned his cloak of invisibility, a symbol of status and respect within his clan. His overbearing father sees him as weak and orders Dek’s older brother, Kwei, to kill him. Thankfully, Kwei isn’t on board with that charming bit of family tradition and instead helps Dek escape, sending him on a near-suicidal rite of passage: travel to Genna and bring back the head of an arrogantly chosen, supposedly unkillable target. It’s a classic Predator setup filtered through a more character-driven lens, and surprisingly, it works.

One thing longtime fans may not expect is just how much Predator dialogue we get. If you’ve ever wanted to see full conversations with that wonderfully gnarly mouth design, this is absolutely your movie. Around 20 minutes, the title card is finally shown, which means it’s time to kick off on a 90-minute ride full of realistic CGI, creative creature designs, and relentless environmental hazards. Genna feels alive, poisonous, and cruel, which is exactly what I want from a Predator hunting ground.

In a field of toxic plant life, Dek meets Thia (Elle Fanning), a synthetic created by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, a name that will immediately perk up the ears of Alien fans. This crossover-adjacent element is handled with restraint, but it brings with it the expected corporate secrecy and hidden agendas. Thia’s mission is unfinished, and soon another company android, Tessa (also Fanning), is dispatched to clean things up. Along the way, they’re joined by Bud (Ravi Narayan), a local monkey-like creature who adds some levity and unexpected charm.

Visually, the film is a knockout. New Zealand’s landscapes, digitally enhanced or not, look spectacular, and the action choreography is inventive, including some genuinely fun “leg fighting” that’s best experienced unspoiled. Trachtenberg delivers confident production design, strong cinematography, and a plot that refuses to stay locked into a single objective.

That said, Predator: Badlands does soften the franchise in noticeable ways. The film isn’t afraid to give the Predator emotional beats, and yes, there are a few cutesy, almost Ewok-adjacent moments that feel suspiciously Disney-approved. While the action remains unique and often glorious, I do miss the colder, hyper-intelligent Predator pitted against humanity - two apex killers colliding through evolution and instinct.

Predator: Badlands (2025)

Still, even in this slightly watered-down form, Predator: Badlands is anything but a bad flick. It’s very much a visually striking and different type of predator movie, which, although entertaining, does lead me to want to see a return to the hard-hearted, alien predator of yesteryear.

https://jackmeat.com/predator-badlands-2025/

Mad Heidi (2022) | This self-aware Swissploitation romp turns lactose intolerance into oppression and revenge into a wildly messy splatter fantasy. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 5.9/10. Mad Heidi is what happens when someone looks at the wholesome children’s story of Heidi, watches Dead Alive, and polishes off a cheese fondue pot full of madness, and says, “Yes. All of this.” This is Swissploitation cinema at its most proudly unhinged.

The film wastes no time setting the tone. It opens with a brutal massacre of peaceful protesters by an authoritarian regime, lingering on one woman being executed in a way that practically screams, “This will matter later.” Smash cut to the credits and the wonderfully cheeky “Swissploitation Films” tag, boldly forewarning us of the type of film experience about to unfold. Subtlety doesn’t appear to have made it across the border.

Switzerland is now ruled by President Meili (Casper Van Dien), an autocratic cheese magnate with dreams of global domination through dairy. Yes, cheese is power here. Lactose-intolerant people are treated like subhuman scum, publicly humiliated, dragged off to re-education camps, and literally tortured by cheese. It just doesn’t make any sense, it’s idiotic, but it is also consistently funny. The one area where it really shines is in a joke about a pimp-like character vending cheese because he “keeps his goats happy.” This film is just in on the joke.

Heidi (Alice Lucy), our sweet mountain girl turned vengeance-fueled freedom fighter, is pulled into the madness after her boyfriend, Goat Peter (Kel Matsena), is accused of black market dairy trading. His execution is sudden, nasty, and very, very bloody. In fact, blood sprays so frequently throughout Mad Heidi that it starts to feel like the film was sponsored by the color red. Add in topless cheese servers at tyrant meetings, starvation tactics that force prisoners to choose between death or cheese, and you’ve got exploitation cinema checking off its bingo card with pride.

Things really go off the rails when a henchman is forced to sample the forbidden “Ultra Swiss” cheese, a scene that feels like it wandered in straight from a Troma film and decided to stay. From there, we’re treated to an inspiring, music-themed training montage where Heidi learns to fight under the guidance of forest nuns, because that is what exploitation flix do. Why wouldn’t militant woodland nuns be part of this?

To the film’s credit, the splatter effects are solid, the props are impressively detailed (especially the “final boss” Neutral-izer, a gloriously dumb pun on Swiss neutrality), and the performances fully commit to the insanity. Knowing this came from one of the most successful and respectable crowdfunding campaigns ever only makes it more impressive. Or absurd, you choose.

Mad Heidi (2022)

Mad Heidi is bizarre, wildly original, and unapologetically so. It’s not great filmmaking, but it is certainly a memorable one, and the type of entertainment that I was craving, are you?

https://jackmeat.com/mad-heidi-2022/

Strange Harvest (2025) | A chilling blend of true crime and horror, Strange Harvest turns a routine welfare check into a disturbing, slow-burn nightmare. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 6.4/10. Strange Harvest is one of those flix that quietly dares you to believe it. Presented entirely in a mockumentary style, it opens not with a jump scare or a murder, but with someone calmly explaining a strange, possibly unsolvable puzzle. That framing choice might sound dry on paper, and I’ll admit it nearly put me off at first, but it didn’t take long before the film had me anxiously awaiting the next kill.

The series begins on July 19th, 2010, with a welfare call to 911 that uncovers a chilling scene in the San Bernardino suburbs. A family of three was found bound, drained of blood, and deliberately arranged under a symbol painted on the ceiling using blood. Detectives Joe Kirby (Peter Zizzo) and Lexi Taylor (Terri Apple) immediately recognize the symbol as the calling card of a killer who vanished 15 years earlier. Naturally, that killer has a name that sounds unsettling even before you know what he does - Mr. Shiny. And it isn’t long before he’s back in business.

What follows is a chilling combination of true crime procedural and horror. Victims appear in grotesque ritualistic circumstances - pickled in a swimming pool full of living leeches and hanging flayed in a public park. What's strange is that despite all this horrific gore on screen, there is very little actual horror content in this film. It is all in crime shots, recovered video footage, and still photographs that feel all too real. Some of these are bone-chilling moments that aren’t necessarily so due to over-the-top presentation, but with a matter-of-fact tone that speaks to a real documentary.

Writer-director Stuart Ortiz deserves a lot of credit here. If you weren’t told this was fictional, it would be incredibly easy to mistake Strange Harvest for something ripped straight from the ID Channel or Netflix’s true crime library. The two lead detectives are especially effective, bringing exhausted determination and credibility that anchors the more cosmic elements of the story. The sunbleached suburbs of the Inland Empire setting add to the uneasy feel of being lifeless and oddly exposed.

As this all unravels, it would appear that Mr. Shiny's murders might deal with something much more sinister: cosmic phenomena and forces beyond human explanation. The film never fully explains everything, and that works to its benefit. I couldn’t help but think of Se7en while watching, not because this reaches that level, but because even prompting that comparison feels like an achievement.

Strange Harvest is a slow burn that would rather build up some sense of dread. It is not always an easy watch, especially if you have the patience to sit through some of the awkward early scenes, but once the mythology gets in your system, it will stick around after the credits roll. It might not be perfect, but it's well worth the watch for those into true crime documentaries with a dark twist.

Strange Harvest (2025)

https://jackmeat.com/strange-harvest-2025/

Speed Train (2025) | Human remote-control chaos sounds exciting until the train looks cheap and the screenplay forgets how brains work. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 3.8/10. Speed Train opens with what looks like a fake commercial for a glossy AI megacorp. And honestly, that might be the most believable part of the movie. From there, we’re thrown onto a high-tech train where passengers with brain implants are remotely controlled like human Xbox characters, each user supposedly paying ten million dollars a pop for the privilege. Ten million. And yet every single one of these elite players is sitting in the same weird black void using what looks like a free Zoom background you’d find under “Corporate Dystopia – Depressed Version.” If I’m paying that kind of money, I at least want a custom background or, I don’t know, a plant.

The players themselves are all boxed into this identical, featureless room, staring intensely into their VR headset and delivering line readings so wooden they could be repurposed as IKEA furniture. Their acting is genuinely rough, and somehow it manages to be rivaled by the CGI of the train itself, which looks like it was rendered on a laptop begging for mercy. I do get the limitations - no windows, because animating a moving exterior costs money. But what we’re left with is a train interior that looks like two rows of office chairs shoved along a wide hallway. It’s less “futuristic transport” and more “corporate team-building exercise gone wrong.”

Of the cast, I recognized Scout Taylor-Compton and Nicky Whelan, both established actresses who never quite hit the mainstream. Most of the female characters are stuck in tight white tank tops and thrown into brawls, which, frankly, might be the only thing the movie seems to get right. The action is okay-ish, the idea is solid, but the execution torpedoes it at every stop.

The idea is actually interesting on paper. Everyone must band together when a hacker gets into the system and ruins this luxury murder train with chaos. The problem is logic. The users are controlling inmates, not downloading skills or muscle memory. Yet we’re supposed to believe a random kid at a laptop can suddenly throw crisp punches and kicks through a hardened convict. It’s dysfunctional, and the only part of the movie I found myself laughing at. And repeatedly, the film cuts constantly to randoms at computers, contributing NOTHING to the action. They’re simply present. Pecking at the keyboard. Hard.

Ryan Francis directs with a frenzied, chaotic energy that mostly translates to confusion. The screenplay makes absolutely no sense once you scratch the surface. Even basic rules of the world seem to change scene to scene. There are plenty of fights, a decent amount of blood-splattering gore, and nothing is outright embarrassing. But nothing is cool either. It’s all aggressively fine.

Speed Train couldn't be considered anything other than a B-movie. It has all the qualities that one would expect to find in one. A good premise that could have added some fun and entertainment is instead rendered nonsense because of poor visual effects and plot development that seems to have been written by the same person who seems to be operating the train.

Speed Train (2025)

https://jackmeat.com/speed-train-2025/

Green Ice (1981) | Before Romancing the Stone, there was this much slower and less entertaining jewel heist flick that also involved emeralds. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 4.6/10. I checked out Green Ice mostly out of curiosity. This movie landed smack in the middle of my childhood Showtime cable-box years, a time when I watched - or at the very least read about - everything that passed through the monthly guide. Yet somehow this one completely escaped me. After seeing it now, I’m starting to suspect the poster might explain why. This is supposedly an action-adventure flick, but that label feels wildly optimistic in hindsight.

The setup isn’t terrible on paper. Ryan O’Neal plays a down-on-his-luck engineer who stumbles into an international emerald heist after crossing paths with a mysterious woman, Holbrook, played by Anne Archer. She’s targeting a powerful emerald magnate portrayed by Omar Sharif, a man who essentially runs the land through corruption and intimidation. The plan? Bankrupt him by stealing millions of dollars’ worth of emeralds with the help of a local group of rebel mercenaries and some early-’80s “high-tech” wizardry. It’s the kind of premise that should at least be mildly entertaining.

Unfortunately, execution is where Green Ice completely drops the ball. The movie moves at a glacial pace, and the tone rarely matches what’s happening onscreen. The most baffling choice is the music. The score is so sleepy that it actively works against the film, and keeping it playing during what’s supposed to be an air-heist sequence feels almost comical. If your action scene could double as background noise for a nap, something has gone very wrong.

The romance doesn’t help matters. O’Neal and Archer have little chemistry, and their relationship feels forced from the start. It never develops naturally, instead jumping from scene to scene as if the script assumes attraction automatically exists. As awkward as that pairing is, it’s still more believable than the half-hearted romantic angle briefly suggested between Archer and Sharif, which feels shoehorned in for no real reason other than to complicate things.

Even accounting for the film’s age, it’s hard to imagine this being much better back in 1981. Yes, the computer tech is dated, but that’s not the real issue. The problem is that the film never builds tension or momentum. Scenes drag, dialogue feels flat, and the supposedly daring plot rarely feels daring at all. Sharif brings some enthusiasm to his role, but even he can’t rescue a movie that seems uninterested in its own story.

I can honestly say I’m glad I missed this one back then. Part of me is curious how kid-me might have remembered it, but this isn’t one of those nostalgic rewatches where time softens the flaws. Green Ice doesn’t hold up, and it barely holds attention. What should have been a slick adventure ends up a sluggish, oddly tranquil misfire that explains perfectly why it vanished from my Showtime memories.

Green Ice (1981)

https://jackmeat.com/green-ice-1981/

Top Ten Horror 2025 | Instead of a movie review, here is my TOP TEN (eleven, really) HORROR flix of 2025. Let me know what I missed. #jackmeatsflix

(This is one of those times my website looks much better. https://jackmeat.com/top-ten-horror-2025/)

I finally kept track all year long (so I will inevitably miss at least one flick from your list), so I figured I would give you a summary of my favorite horror flix from this year. So here is my Top Ten Horror 2025! (Eleven, really) I was extremely slack this year on the foreign horror, so my list is fairly devoid of any. My apologies. Update right before posting: I rechecked and realized that I missed a flick I reviewed that also meets the criteria, so in the immortal words of Nigel Tufnel, "These go to eleven!"

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My quick rating – 6.8/10. Dangerous Animals sinks its teeth into a wild genre mash-up that pits surf culture against serial killer psychosis, and somehow it works better than it should. With a title that sounds like a Discovery Channel special I caught during shark week, this lean and tense 98-minute thriller gives us a sun-soaked nightmare that feels like Wolf Creek met Jaws at a pub and decided to co-parent chaos on the high seas.

Hassie Harrison stars as Zephyr, a confident, free-spirited surfer who, unfortunately, catches the eye of Tucker, a shark-obsessed lunatic played with menacing glee by Jai Courtney. It doesn’t take long before Zephyr finds herself shackled on his boat, floating somewhere between the stunning Gold Coast and hell. Tucker isn’t just your run-of-the-mill psycho—he’s filming a twisted “shark show” for his personal viewing pleasure, and the sharks circling below aren’t just window dressing. They’re props in his sick ritual, triggered by a feeding frenzy of flesh and fear...

My quick rating – 6.8/10. In Companion, the dangers lurking in a secluded lakeside estate aren’t supernatural or slasher-based, they’re born from code, circuitry, and the slippery line between programming and personhood. The film doesn’t rely on jump scares or excessive gore. Instead, it threads a sharp needle through ethical quandaries, AI sentience, and human deceit, delivering a low-key but engaging sci-fi thriller that feels eerily plausible.

Sophie Thatcher sheds her survivalist Yellowjackets roots and steps into the silicon skin of Iris, a rented AI “companion” whose performance is easily the film’s highlight. Thatcher plays the role with precision—subtle, restrained, yet compelling. She captures that delicate balance of robotic detachment and growing self-awareness so convincingly that by the time Iris begins questioning her reality...

My quick rating – 6.9/10. Marshmallow kicks off with a bone-chilling dream sequence: a child is tossing and turning while his bed is slowly being engulfed in water, only to see that water is spewing from an open wound in his chest. It’s the kind of opening that grabs your throat and whispers, “This isn’t just a campfire story.” And it’s not. What starts as a standard camp-set horror film slowly transforms into something much more unexpected.

Twelve-year-old Morgan (Kue Lawrence), shy, socially awkward, and clearly out of place among the louder, rougher kids, is our guide through this waking nightmare. He’s the target of relentless bullying, and the film doesn’t sugarcoat the meanness of children—or people in general. While I don’t recall summer camp being quite this cruel when I was nine or ten, I wouldn’t be shocked to hear some kids got their asses kicked behind the mess hall. Marshmallow taps into that uncomfortable truth about childhood: kids can be vicious, and isolation at that age feels like the end of the world...

My quick rating – 7.0/10. Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk trudges down a grim, hypnotic road that feels both eerily plausible and disturbingly familiar. Adapted from Stephen King’s early Richard Bachman novel, the film imagines a dystopian America ruled by a military dictatorship, where teenage “volunteers” enter a government-run endurance contest that doubles as a public execution. The conceit is simple yet nightmarish: one hundred young contestants must keep walking at over three miles per hour. Fall below the pace three times, and soldiers escorting them on the highway deliver swift, televised justice. The last one standing wins “whatever he desires.” Everyone else dies for the nation’s amusement.

Cooper Hoffman leads as Raymond Garraty, a boy driven by something more complicated than hope. Alongside him, David Jonsson’s Peter McVries provides the kind of emotional counterbalance that keeps the movie from collapsing into nihilism. Their chemistry builds the heart of the story, as exhaustion and fear strip away the thin veneer of patriotism they were sold. The rest of the competitors blur together at first, but Lawrence wisely lets their personalities emerge through snippets of conversation and brief, fleeting humanity. The dialogue is surprisingly natural, balancing gallows humor, confusion, and philosophical musings about...

My quick rating – 7.0/10. Somewhere in the cosmic video store of nostalgia, my 12-year-old self just did a cartwheel in parachute pants. I grew up rewinding an original The Toxic Avenger on worn-out VHS until the tracking lines looked like snowstorms over Tromaville. So when Hollywood whispered “remake,” I braced myself for PG-13 sterilization and emotional damage. But bless Macon Blair’s radioactive heart—he didn’t just do it justice, he hosed it down in glowing sludge and handed it a mop.

Our new hero is Winston Gooze (Peter Dinklage), a terminally ill janitor who gets baptized in toxic goop and comes out looking like a meatball with abs and a Costco-sized case of trauma. Dinklage doesn’t just play Toxie, he owns him. He swings that glowing mop like Excalibur dipped in biohazard, and suddenly I remembered why deformed vigilantes matter: because nothing says “hero” like ripping someone’s intestines out while trying to make it to parent-teacher night...

My quick rating – 7.2/10. In a fairy-tale kingdom where beauty is a cutthroat business, The Ugly Stepsister takes the familiar “Cinderella” story, feeds it a tapeworm, and lets it writhe into something darkly hilarious. Elvira (Lea Myren) is not your standard glass-slippered heroine, she’s the one living in the shadow of her dazzlingly beautiful stepsister Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss), and she’ll do whatever it takes to catch the prince’s eye. And yes, “whatever it takes” in this kingdom might include some… questionable dieting methods. The Shudder logo at the start is your first clue this won’t be a pastel-colored Disney sing-along.

Writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt sets the tone with lavish costumes, authentic set design, and a wicked sense of humor. The presentation of the virgins to the prince is both amusing and unnervingly sinister, showing off the film’s perfect blend of satire and discomfort. It’s a bleak, razor-sharp portrait of beauty and ugliness, one that keeps you constantly wondering who’s going to win the prince. Spoiler: You won’t know for sure until the very end...

My quick rating – 7.2/10. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland return to the infected-ravaged wastelands of the U.K. with 28 Years Later, the third entry in the franchise that helped redefine the zombie genre. Set nearly three decades after the original outbreak, this installment doesn’t waste time rehashing familiar territory. Instead, the story plunges us deeper into a mutated world where more than just the virus has evolved.

The story centers around Spike (Alfie Williams), a survivor living on a fortified island community tethered to the mainland by a single, heavily defended causeway. When he ventures into the heart of infected Britain on a rite of passage mission, what he uncovers shifts the tone of the movie from survival horror to something more contemplative, surreal, and surprisingly emotional. Williams delivers a standout performance, balancing quiet resilience with vulnerability, and anchoring the story with genuine heart, something not always expected in a film with this much arterial spray...

My quick rating – 7.3/10. Set in the sultry shadows of 1930s Mississippi, Sinners follows twin brothers who return to their hometown with hopes of redemption and rebirth. Their dream? To open a juke joint and leave their pasts behind. But, as they quickly learn, some sins don’t stay buried—and in classic genre-blending fashion, what begins as a Southern drama quickly plunges into a full-blown creature-feature bloodbath.

Despite some buzz about it being “unique” or “original,” let’s be honest: it’s From Dusk Till Dawn in period clothing. That’s not necessarily a knock; Coogler clearly isn’t aiming to reinvent the wheel. Instead, he’s giving it a fresh coat of paint, some high-end audio upgrades, and Michael B. Jordan in the driver’s seat… twice. Playing both brothers, Jordan pulls off the dual role with swagger, an ambitious challenge that pays off with the help of superb visual effects that let us forget we’re watching one actor carry two personas...

My quick rating – 7.5/10. Zach Cregger’s Weapons wastes no time in pulling the rug out from under you. At precisely 2:17 AM, every child from Mrs. Gandy’s class gets out of bed, walks downstairs, opens their front doors, and disappears into the night—never to return. The scene, narrated in unsettling fashion by Scarlett Sher, drops us directly into the nightmare without a shred of setup, and from there the film becomes less about what happened and more about how different people process it.

The story unfolds in chapters, each centering on a different perspective, slowly piecing together fragments of the mystery. Julia Garner leads as Justine, the class’s teacher, who immediately becomes the town’s prime suspect. It’s not exactly a warm welcome when your name tops the blame list, but Garner gives Justine an edge of haunted strength, playing her as someone frantically trying to hold herself together while the walls close in...

My quick rating – 7.5/10. If you thought the Philippou brothers might ease off the gas after Talk to Me, think again. With Bring Her Back, Danny and Michael Philippou prove they’re determined to keep Australian horror on the global map, and keep your nerves thoroughly shredded in the process.

Following the death of their father, a brother (Billy Barratt) and sister (newcomer Sora Wong) are taken in by their foster mother, only to meet their new “sibling,” who harbors a secret that quickly spins their grieving household into a waking nightmare. What starts as an unsettling family drama morphs into a disturbing exploration of grief, trauma, and how far a mother will go to heal her own broken world, or shatter someone else’s...

My quick rating – 8.2/10. When I first heard that Guillermo del Toro was finally making his version of Frankenstein, I was already in line, no further information needed. The master of the macabre brings Mary Shelley’s timeless tragedy to life with both ferocity and heart, creating something which feels equal parts Gothic horror and soulful meditation on creation, loss, and obsession.

The film opens with a hauntingly beautiful scene aboard a frozen ship where Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) recounts his story to Captain Walton (Lars Mikkelsen). From there, del Toro splits his film into two distinct yet complementary parts: Victor’s Tale and The Creature’s Tale. It’s an ambitious narrative structure that pays off wonderfully, giving equal weight to both the creator and his tormented creation...

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There are some honorable mentions to include, and for my criteria, these all still round up to a 7. For the horror genre, that is pretty damn good. So these also made my list, and all are between a 6.5 - 6.7 in my book. As always, never use any critic as a means to IF you watch something or not. If you tend to agree with my (or anyone else's) ratings consistently, that should help you decide WHEN to watch, never IF.

• Together
• The Conjuring: Last Rites
• V/H/S/Halloween
• Until Dawn
• The Monkey
• Black Phone 2
• Good Boy
• Final Destination: Bloodlines

That is it, so please blow up the comments or message with everything I missed (I still haven't watched Megan 2.0) or however you want to share my omissions. I know there HAVE to be some I missed, and I would love to make sure if they aren't on my watchlist, they get to it, pronto.

Side note: That terrifying banner on the top of the page was created by AI when I asked to "Create a 16x5 banner for a top ten horror list of 2025 by scraping Jackmeats Flix movie reviews at https://jackmeat.com" and that is what it came up with. Not bad, huh? I didn't expect it to come out nearly as good as it did.

https://jackmeat.com/top-ten-horror-2025/

The R.I.P Man (2025) | The R.I.P Man makes one thing clear - if chattering teeth show up, your dental plan has officially expired. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 5.2/10. Set against the deceptively peaceful backdrop of a quiet English town, The R.I.P Man takes a familiar slasher setup and gives it a deeply uncomfortable dental twist. A group of close friends realize they’ve been targeted by Alden Pick, a ghoul suffering from Anodontia - a peculiar oral disease that leaves him without teeth - who compensates by violently removing a single tooth from each victim like some kind of deranged, drill-happy Tooth Fairy. As paranoia spreads and everyone becomes a suspect, a beleaguered detective starts connecting the murders to a long-buried family secret.

My very first thought when Alden showed up was that he looked like a cross between Nosferatu and Billy Corgan, which honestly isn’t something I expected to think in 2025, but here we are. Owen Llewelyn clearly relishes the role, playing Alden with a creepy calm and a grin that suggests he’s having the time of his life performing amateur dental work, blood splatter included. The killer even has the courtesy to text his victims ahead of time to let them know they’re about to be R.I.P., which feels oddly polite for a man who’s about to introduce your mouth to a drill.

All the effects are practical, and thankfully so. You don’t need buckets of gore when you’re dealing with teeth and drills. Just the suggestion alone is enough to make most people squirm, and the film knows exactly how to exploit that discomfort. The dental scenes work very well, getting under your skin without trying to be flashy or excessive.

The problem is what happens when Alden isn’t around. The tone becomes extremely calm, almost sedated. Police interviews and dialogue-heavy scenes unfold in near silence, lulling you into a peaceful trance until Alden pops back up again. While that contrast is intentional, it also makes many of these scenes feel mundane and drawn out.

Among the young adult cast, Clarissa (Jasmine Kheen) and Jaden (Bruno Cryan) stand out the most. Clarissa’s birthday party scene is hilariously loud compared to the rest of the film’s hushed atmosphere, and Jaden, whom I recently saw in Popeye’s Revenge, takes an impressively long time to figure out what the chattering teeth symbolize…all while standing in front of an open iron maiden. Subtlety is dead, Jaden. Much like everyone else.

There’s a backstory involving Donnie (Maximus Polling) that I won’t spoil, but while the acting across the board is perfectly adequate, the characters themselves never feel developed enough to truly care who survives. The ending is abrupt and anticlimactic, though of course, there’s a sequel tease waiting patiently at the door.

Jamie Langlands directs a very nice-looking film. The cinematography is crisp, the camera behaves itself, and nothing feels sloppily shot. Langlands and co-writer Rhys Thompson clearly have talent and ambition, and yes, Thompson even sent this one over for me to sink my teeth into. Sorry. Had to.

Overall, The R.I.P Man is a smidge above average for its budget, full of promise. The Anodontia angle gives the tooth gimmick a twisted logic, even if it still feels like the most aggressive dental coping mechanism imaginable. But it doesn’t quite pull everything together. You also may never look at wind-up chattering teeth the same way again.

The R.I.P Man (2025)

Releasing on streaming platforms on January 5th, 2026. Check Justwatch for links or stop back here in a few days, when I'll have updated buttons for your easy tapping pleasure.

https://jackmeat.com/the-r-i-p-man-2025/