Los Habitantes (2023) | My new glasses worked perfectly because I could clearly see the twist coming from about fifteen minutes in. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 4.7/10. As you know, I’ve finally gotten my new glasses. This means that I’m able to watch any movie with subtitles without it seeming like an impossible task to read hieroglyphs from across the room. This took me to Los Habitantes, which is a Spanish horror movie about Emiliano (Jorge Luis Moreno), who finds himself returning to Monterrey following an accident and haunted by ghosts from his past.

Before we get too far, I have to mention one important lesson this movie got completely wrong. Those fancy automated roll-over pool covers are definitely not airtight. Horror movies continue their proud tradition of making everyday household items seem far less reliable than advertised.

To its credit, Los Habitantes gets off to a promising start. In the early stages, there are a few good scares and also a decent amount of intrigue regarding Emiliano's loss of memory over the course of five years post-accident. The flashbacks begin revealing bits of information, and at one point, it seemed like it would be leading somewhere meaningful.

It’s just that by the time you have gotten comfy, the film practically reveals its most important information. It’s like everything that you have been waiting for is revealed at such an early stage that the probability of most people figuring out everything within the first fifteen minutes is quite high. After that point, the only thing left for you to do is wait for the characters to figure things out.

Jorge Luis Moreno does good work carrying both timelines. Whether he's dealing with the aftermath of his accident or navigating the events of the past, his performance remains convincing. The acting was never an issue for me, and Moreno helps keep the story watchable even when the script isn't doing him many favors.

Unfortunately, the execution never quite matches the setup. The plot appears to have been drawn out too far, leaving the movie feeling like a mediocre made-for-TV thriller that just happened to make it to the silver screen. Director Homero Bueno definitely knows how to direct some great shots, but the script doesn’t make enough of an attempt at covering up their intentions. If the real truth of the matter had been better concealed, the climax of the movie would have packed even more of a punch.

Los Habitantes (2023)

In the end, Los Habitantes isn't a bad movie by any means. I wasn't annoyed by it, offended by it, or checking the runtime every five minutes. It simply never gave me much reason to become invested. There are some decent scares, a solid lead performance, and competent filmmaking, but when the credits rolled, this ghost story felt more mediocre than memorable.

https://jackmeat.com/los-habitantes-2023/

Hokum (2026) | Hokum kept me interested with its mystery and scares, even if some answers seem to have vanished into the basement. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 6.4/10. Hokum takes a familiar horror setup, tosses it into the Irish countryside. Then adds a witch, a haunted honeymoon suite, and Adam Scott being perpetually uncomfortable, and hopes atmosphere can carry it the rest of the way. For the most part, it does.

A very dehydrated person is seen walking in the desert along with a kid. He sees a circle made in the desert sand. The cliched phrase from any horror movie rings out, "We're close." Meanwhile, novelist Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) is typing away at a keyboard, revealing that this desert adventure is part of the story he's writing. From there, we head to Ireland, where the scenery immediately starts earning its paycheck. Rolling landscapes, quiet roads, and a quaint little inn provide the perfect backdrop for things to inevitably go very wrong.

Ohm arrives intending to scatter his parents' ashes, but it doesn't take him long to get caught up in some local legend about a witch haunting the inn's honeymoon suite. We spend some time getting to know him, and the movie makes one thing crystal clear. Ohm is not a believer. It also makes another thing clear, he can be kind of a jerk. His interactions with server Fiona (Florence Ordesh) don't exactly paint him as "World's Best Customer."

After a surprising turn leads to Fiona's disappearance, the film shifts into mystery mode. Ohm teams up with the elderly Jerry (David Wilmot) to investigate the infamous honeymoon suite, which sounds like the worst Airbnb review imaginable.

This is where Hokum shines. The atmosphere is fantastic. The sound design works overtime creating tension, and several creepy shots genuinely land. There are moments that might even make seasoned horror fans jump. When Ohm eventually finds himself trapped inside the suite, Adam Scott essentially gets a one-man horror showcase and absolutely delivers. He spends much of the film reacting to increasingly disturbing situations, and he's excellent. Also, bonus points for the unexpectedly clever MacGyver-style clock solution.

The film asks an interesting question about who the real monster might be: man or witch. The witch herself is handled well, with plenty of mystery left intact. The production values are strong across the board, and the cinematography is consistently impressive.

Unfortunately, some of the basement-related developments feel undercooked. While the witch benefits from ambiguity, other elements are left so unexplained that they feel less mysterious and more unfinished. Likewise, the rewrite Ohm makes to the story we see at the beginning eventually makes sense, but I'm still not entirely convinced it serves much purpose beyond connecting the opening and ending. And there are easier ways to open a glass bottle. Just saying.

In the end, Hokum is an enjoyable blend of ghost story and witchcraft horror that can't hit the heights its reputation suggests. The hype may have worked against it. When I ran across such glowing reviews, I expected something exceptional. Instead, I got a solid, polished horror movie filled with ideas we've seen hundreds of times before. Not bad by any means, just not quite magical enough to cast the spell it was aiming for.

Hokum (2026)

And yes, Adam Scott was great. In case I forgot to mention that.

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

Invisible Target (2007) | The action in Invisible Target is fantastic, but what is with Benny Chan's personal vendetta against every window in Hong Kong? #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 6.9/10. Another foreign flick from my watchlist bites the dust. This time it was Invisible Target, a Hong Kong action thriller from the late Benny Chan. Right from the opening armored car robbery, it is clear what we are in for. Those intentions are apparently explosions, gunfire, fistfights, and the complete destruction of every piece of glass within a five-mile radius.

The story follows three cops, Chan (Nicholas Tse), Fong (Shawn Yue), and Wai (Jaycee Chan) - who all end up with personal reasons for hunting down gang leader Tien. One loses his fiancée, one gets publicly humiliated, and one has his brother kidnapped. Needless to say, nobody is having a particularly good week. And yes, Chan is a common last name, but in this case, it is actually Jackie Chan's son.

As expected, Invisible Target opens with a bang. Literally. Then follows it up with a shootout, and I am already glad I popped this one on. The fallout from that opening sequence gives each of our main characters their motivation. Before long, we're watching Nicholas Tse casually demonstrate that arresting suspects is just another opportunity to show off martial arts skills. The man dishes out beatings like he's trying to clear a backlog.

There is one thing that Hong Kong action movies are really good at, which are the chase scenes, and there is no shortage of those in Invisible Target. This film features rooftop chases, insane leaps, and plenty of parkour. My knees were hurting just watching it. The best part is knowing a lot of this was done by actual stunt performers rather than a computer generating twelve backflips while the actor stands in front of a green screen drinking coffee.

There's also a scene where four criminals get stopped by two police cars and proceed to absolutely dog-walk the officers involved. It was one of several moments where I found myself wondering if the police academy in this universe teaches anything beyond how to fill out paperwork.

When the three leads finally collide, the fight choreography is fantastic. And the wire effects are kept to a minimum. Fast, brutal, and easy to follow. Even better, the movie sneaks in some comedy that caught me off guard. I actually laughed out loud, which I wasn't expecting from a movie where disagreements are settled by kicking someone through (insert glass-made item here).

What surprised me most was that Invisible Target isn't just nonstop action. The villains are given reasons for what they do and aren't simply evil for the sake of being evil. It adds some flair and helps them feel more human.

Wu Jing is excellent as Tien and absolutely earns that paycheck during the final fight. Long, final fight. Fans of his work, such as the Wandering Earth movies, will recognize him immediately. And it's easy to see why he went on to become such a recognizable action star.

But let's get back to the glass. Good lord, the poor glass. Windows shatter. Display cases explode. Bodies crash through storefronts. Bullets seem magnetically attracted to every intact pane in Hong Kong. By the end, I was convinced the invisible target wasn't a person at all. It was every surviving window in the city.

Make sure you stick around during the credits. The behind-the-scenes stunt footage is worth sticking around for. We get some proof that these performers were risking life and limb for the camera. After seeing some of those jumps and falls, I'd say they earned every cent.

Invisible Target (2007)

https://jackmeat.com/invisible-target-2007/

Super Happy Fun Clown (2025) | Super Happy Fun Clown proves that years of emotional abuse and clown makeup are rarely a winning combination. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 4.3/10. Super Happy Fun Clown wastes no time clueing us in to the things it has on its mind. The movie opens by teaching us that "Atychiphobia" is the fear of being unsuccessful (failure). I immediately looked it up because I assumed the film was making the word up. It was not. As it turns out, that little psychology lesson becomes pretty relevant once we meet Jennifer Sullivan.

The opening scene drops us right into a police standoff involving a female clown holding a hostage while officers desperately try to talk her down. One officer reminds Jennifer that she's a good shot. Moments later, the screen cuts to black, a gun goes off, and the movie leaves us to do the math. I don't think anyone was aiming for the hostage.

From there, Super Happy Fun Clown rewinds to 2004 and spends some time showing us how Jennifer got here. Young Jennifer, played by Violet Rea, is actually a sweet kid. She gives her sucker to a homeless man, befriends the local clown, and generally seems like someone who deserves a better home life. Unfortunately, her mother appears to have graduated from the Disney School of Parenting Villains.

After about ten minutes of family misery and emotional damage, we jump ahead twenty years. Jennifer is now played by Jennifer Seward and has become the town's resident clown, known as Jenn-O. If the walls covered in serial killer posters weren't enough of a clue that things might not end well, her mother continues providing all the emotional support of a sledgehammer. At one point, she delivers the kind of insult that would probably get most people removed from Thanksgiving dinner permanently.

"What is wrong with you (Jennifer) that your husband has to go out and take pictures of 16-year-old girls?" If you can't see Jennifer's breakdown coming from a mile away, you may have accidentally started scrolling on Insta.

What ensues is an oddly entertaining combination of dark comedy, slasher madness, and cheap thrills that sometimes smells like it might just be flirting with Troma’s style of filmmaking. Setting this movie in Halloween is a wise decision, considering how many times Jennifer manages to fit right in with the chaos around her.

I initially thought the film was building toward a particularly creative kill count after an early hit-and-run sequence, but the later kills are much more restrained. Budget limitations are pretty obvious at times, though credit where it's due - the practical effects are still appreciated. Director Patrick Rea does a solid job framing shots in ways that hide the budget limitations instead of waving them around with shaky-cam nonsense.

Jennifer Seward ends up being the movie's biggest success. And here she was worried about failure. She sells Jennifer's gradual collapse remarkably well, creating a character who's clearly hanging on by a thread long before she finally snaps. The musical score fits nicely throughout, and the film circles back to its opening standoff in a satisfying way.

The ending is surprisingly haunting, not because it's flashy, but because of how simple it is. It sticks with you.

Super Happy Fun Clown (2025)

No sequel tease shows up during Super Happy Fun Clown, but I spotted a post-credit message assuring us that Jenn-O will return. After enjoying the character so much, the lightheartedness of the movie, and the performance by Seward, I am certainly going to be back for round two. Just another guilty pleasure that reminded me of Mildred in the Grotesque flicks.

https://jackmeat.com/super-happy-fun-clown-2025/

Kill Code (2026) | There’s a decent action movie hiding inside Kill Code, but this is more like an AI experiment escaped before final edits happened. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 3.7/10. Kill Code wastes no time throwing us into its grim dystopian future, though maybe a little too much time throwing text at us first. It opens with enough exposition, I thought I accidentally booted up the extended lore section of a video game manual. Crime is everywhere, corporations somehow got even more evil, and apparently the solution is strapping deadly watches onto criminals and forcing them into a murder tournament for freedom. You know, your typical Tuesday in the future.

Before long, we’re introduced to the mysterious mega-corporation Alpire, with none other than Harvey Keitel appearing on TV to calmly ramble about nanotechnology like he’s hosting the world’s most unsettling TED Talk. Then it’s off to a mass execution scene involving a guy randomly asking about D-Day, because apparently subtle storytelling got left behind sometime around the apocalypse.

The film quickly pivots into a music montage showing just how miserable the world has become, because if you’re building a dystopia, legally you must include slow-motion suffering set to dramatic music. Enter Elera, played by Franzi Schissler, arriving home to discover life in this future somehow still finds ways to get worse. She soon gets tangled up in the chaos involving stylish murder gloves, criminals trying to survive, and enough betrayal to make trusting literally anyone feel like a terrible life decision.

To Kill Code’s credit, there are moments where it genuinely feels like there could have been a slick sci-fi action movie hiding underneath all the AI prompts. The fancy gloves-as-weapons gimmick is admittedly cool, and some of the violent CGI head explosions land with the exact sort of ridiculous energy you want from a movie called Kill Code. Tyrese Gibson also shows up as a cop, bringing some solid presence to a world where pretty much everyone seems united in one belief. Alpire absolutely sucks.

Unfortunately, this is where things start to wobble harder than a cheap sci-fi set piece held together with optimism and duct tape. The AI-generated effects become impossible to ignore, especially with fire, backgrounds, and some bizarre visual moments that scream “we’ll fix it in post” - except nobody ever circled back to actually fix it. At times, Kill Code feels less like a finished movie and more like an expensive AI experiment someone accidentally exported too early.

The script doesn’t help matters either. It feels scrambled and messy, bouncing between ideas without committing to many of them. There’s a glaring lack of polish that makes the production feel rushed, even with a surprisingly talented cast doing their best to hold things together. Honestly, they all perform adequately enough, which somehow makes the missed potential sting even more.

Kill Code (2026)

And what was that ending? Silly is probably the kindest word for it. By the time the credits rolled, I wasn’t angry, just confused and mildly amused. Kill Code isn’t nearly as terrible as some online comments made it sound, but when characters are firing guns without fingers even remotely on triggers, somebody really needed to hit pause and double-check those AI-generated shots before release. Little details like that shouldn’t survive quality control, especially in a movie aiming this high. Maybe these are the reasons you can only find this one in Dubai.

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

Iron Lung (2026) | Iron Lung is 80,000 gallons of fake blood and one guy slowly losing his mind in a submarine that feels legally unsafe. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 4.9/10. Iron Lung has one of those concepts that immediately sells itself. In a future where all the stars and habitable planets have mysteriously vanished during an event known as The Quiet Rapture, humanity discovers an ocean of blood beneath the surface of a moon. Naturally, the brilliant minds in charge decide the best course of action is to stuff a convict into an experimental submarine and send him down there to investigate. Something. Nobody seems entirely sure what that something is, which I would think is a minor detail you might want to nail down before launching someone into a cosmic nightmare.

The film opens with a deep, ominous narration explaining humanity's grim situation before introducing Simon (Mark Fischbach), an inmate who quickly learns he is considered highly expendable. With so few people left alive, apparently "high-risk mission" and "certain death sentence" have become interchangeable terms. His only real contact is Ava (voiced by Caroline Kaplan), who calmly reminds him that humanity doesn't exactly have the luxury of caution anymore. Comforting stuff.

For most of the movie, we essentially get a one-man show, and Fischbach does a solid job. The setup is fantastic. The atmosphere is undeniably creepy. And I do like the idea of being trapped inside a claustrophobic metal coffin while strange alien entities lurk outside. Genuinely unsettling. The problem isn't the performance. The problem is that there simply isn't enough story here to support a full-length feature.

I haven't played the game this is based on, but if this is a faithful adaptation, dude, add a bit more story before stretching it to 125 minutes. There are only so many shots of somebody sitting anxiously inside a submarine before you start checking how much runtime remains. The answer is usually "more than I'd like."

To the film's credit, the sense of dread works. A blood-red ocean, strange noises, disturbing sightings, and the constant feeling that Simon is not alone create an interesting bit of sci-fi horror. It's different, and that's something I can appreciate. I just believe it thinks it's saying something profound, but it's mostly just vague. There's a difference between mystery and withholding information. Iron Lung often lands on the wrong side of that line.

The production did break the world record for most fake blood used in a film, surpassing the 50,000 gallons used in the 2013 Evil Dead remake with a staggering 80,000 gallons. Ironically, much of that blood is hidden in darkness or looks obviously fake when visible. Director Fede Álvarez managed to do far more with less in Evil Dead. At this point, they may as well have flooded the entire submarine and let Simon spend two hours swimming.

There's plenty of ambition on display here, and I can appreciate that. Concept? Excellent. Setting? Interesting enough. And Fischbach gives a solid effort. Unfortunately, Iron Lung feels like a short story stretched well beyond its limits. What works as a mysterious game doesn't necessarily work as a feature-length film. Lots of atmosphere. Lots of blood. But not nearly enough story to fill the tank.

Fans of the game will probably spend their time connecting dots and filling in gaps. Everyone else is left piecing together fragments and hoping the movie eventually decides to explain itself. It never really does.

Iron Lung (2026)

https://jackmeat.com/iron-lung-2026/

Fuze (2026) | Apparently, finding an unexploded WWII bomb is London's version of ringing the dinner bell for extremely organized thieves. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating -  6.3/10. David Mackenzie's Fuze starts with a surprisingly cool drone shot sweeping over a busy construction site in the heart of London. Everything looks routine until the workers dig up something that absolutely nobody wants to find buried beneath a major city. An unexploded WWII bomb. Suddenly, what was shaping up to be a normal workday turns into a migraine for just about everyone involved.

They report the discovery to Zuzana, played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who recognizes the device as UXO (Unexploded Ordnance) right away. The city grinds to a halt, while the police and military rush to evacuate everyone. Time is ticking down. Enter Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Will, the bomb disposal expert. Yes, Kraven and maybe even the next James Bond. He keeps the tension high alongside Zuzana, both doing excellent in their roles.

Fuze does an awesome job showing London during evacuations. Packed streets full of people and cars gradually become eerie and empty. This creates a fantastic atmosphere, making the situation feel incredibly real and vast. For a while, it seems the movie will be entirely focused on the bomb-disposal operation.

Then the guys in orange jumpsuits show up.

While the military crew follows protocol, trying to prevent half of London from becoming a very expensive crater, another group decides this would be the perfect opportunity to conduct a heist. Not sure if these thieves spend their free time sitting around waiting for unexploded bombs to be discovered, but judging by the generator hidden in a garbage bin and the amount of equipment already in place, this definitely wasn't a last-minute plan. These guys looked prepared enough to have a PowerPoint presentation ready.

Surprise! They're after a vault full of safety deposit boxes. And the heist itself is surprisingly well thought out. The only slight flaw in their master plan seems to be forgetting that London is one of the most heavily surveilled cities on the planet. Small oversight.

Before I strained my neck shaking my head, it doesn't settle for being just another robbery movie. There are plenty of double-crosses, shifting loyalties, and backstabbing along the way that set it apart. The final act takes a few turns I wasn't expecting, and the ending itself is handled in a fairly unique way.

Fuze ended up being a pleasant surprise. I was expecting a fairly generic premise, but it finds some creative ways to spruce it up. The story is well designed, the pacing is excellent, and at just 96 minutes it never wastes time sitting on scenes longer than necessary. The editing keeps everything moving, making the runtime fly by.

Fuze (2026)

An entertaining thriller with a clever setup, solid performances, and enough twists to keep you guessing. Definitely worth checking out.

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