It Hunts (2026) | It Hunts turns recurring murder nightmares, depression, and grief into supernatural horror. Because apparently therapy wasn't creepy enough. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 4.7/10. It Hunts starts with what seems like a perfectly ordinary street scene, accompanied by some surprisingly soothing music. Someone walks along with a bottle, takes a swig, gets into their car, and is promptly stabbed repeatedly by someone hiding in the backseat. A lovely way to start the evening.

Thankfully, it was only a nightmare. Casey (Izzy Martinez) has been having recurring dreams about murders, though the details change each time. His already mundane life isn't exactly helping, either. He's a lazy nightcrawler with a diet almost as bad as his dead-end job, while his girlfriend Alex (Katlin Svadbik) is getting understandably tired of carrying everything while Casey mostly settles into his routine.

As the dreams and visions become more intense, Casey starts trying to figure out what's actually happening. Gabriel Black handles all of the camera work, and there are some nice choices throughout. A good variety of angles makes even the mundane scenes visually interesting, while the increasingly unsettling imagery helps blur the line between what Casey is experiencing and what might actually be happening.

The performances are a little more inconsistent. Both leads have scenes where they work really well, followed by moments that the actors may have been looking for cue cards. Still, there's an interesting story underneath the supernatural elements.

One way to tell a story about mental illness is to disguise it as a supernatural horror movie, and that's what It Hunts feels like it's doing. Beneath the nightmares is a story about grief, along with guilt, depression, and learning to accept consequences. There are plenty of metaphors throughout, with the supernatural elements representing Casey's internal struggles.

And if you have to kill yourself and somehow come back from it, apparently the next logical step is to consult the Internet. LOL.

I was on board with what the movie was building until the ending. The setup takes its time and works on you psychologically, giving the story details to think about. Then the final act feels rushed. One late-arriving character makes a dramatic shift from wanting to tear Casey apart to deciding to do the right thing incredibly quickly, and it doesn't quite land for me.

I'm also a fan of endings that leave you wondering, and I think the idea works here. Unfortunately, I found the answer, or at least my guess at it, pretty obvious. Either way, any ending that makes you think ultimately keeps you talking about it.

Still, It Hunts is a solid indie horror movie using supernatural elements to explore mental illness rather than relying on jump scares. That isn't a new approach, but there is enough of a spin on it to make it worthwhile. I've apparently been finding quite a few of these deeper horror movies lately, like Cruel Hands, that are more interested in getting inside your head than making you jump out of your chair. I'm not complaining. I like seeing directors try creative things.

It Hunts (2026)

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

Bury the Devil (2026) | A hospice nurse realizes dementia might not be the only thing wrong with her patient, and suddenly work gets VERY complicated. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 4.8/10. We open on what appears to be a lakeside mansion slowly smoldering away, accompanied by the faint sound of a woman's scream. So, yeah, things seem to have gone slightly off the rails. Then Bury the Devil jumps back 75 minutes to find out exactly how we got there.

Evelyn (Dawn Ford) is an elderly woman being cared for by Sarah (Isabella Gonzalez), a hospice nurse looking after her during a rather unpleasant thunderstorm. Evelyn brushes her hair while Sarah tends to her, and before long it becomes apparent that dementia may not be the only thing Sarah has to worry about.

Ford is the standout here. Her performance as Evelyn basically makes the movie. There is something genuinely unsettling about watching her switch between moments of vulnerability and something more sinister. Gonzalez holds her own alongside her and even manages to sneak in a little humor, which is welcome because this is a very dark movie.

And I mean that literally.

The entire movie takes place inside this enormous mansion during a thunderstorm, so the lighting is appropriately moody and atmospheric. Unfortunately, there were also times when I was wondering what exactly I was looking at. The darkness absolutely fits the movie, but sometimes it feels like the house swallowed the cinematographer.

Writer/director Adam O'Brien doesn't spend much time getting bogged down in mythology or complicated explanations. The basic pitch is essentially - here is a possessed old woman, she's dangerous, and let's see what happens. There are a few ideas tossed into the mix, but they never really come together into anything substantial.

Then, about an hour in, I realized something else. This appears to be playing out as one continuous take. Surprisingly, it works.

Once I noticed it, I started paying more attention to it, but I never found myself trying to pick apart every transition. It felt natural enough that the technique became part of the experience rather than the entire experience. Considering the movie was shot in just six days, I'm guessing there weren't exactly unlimited opportunities for everyone to say, “Let's do that again.”

There are a couple of genuinely cool moments, including that opening shot of the burning mansion and one particularly nasty throat-ripping scene. And yes, that image from the poster? Yep. When it happens, it is every bit as spooky as you were hoping.

Unfortunately, some of the kills happen off-screen, which takes a little of the fun out of things, and the story ultimately doesn't come together as well as I'd hoped.

Bury the Devil (2026)

Still, Bury the Devil gets a lot out of its simple premise, largely because Ford absolutely commits to Evelyn. There isn't a deep supernatural mythology to uncover here. It's mostly a crazed older woman, a nurse trying to survive the night, and a mansion that really needs better lighting.

Ending on the same scene that opened the movie was also a nice touch.

https://jackmeat.com/bury-the-devil-2026/

Land of Wolves (2026) | Four ex-SEALs, an underground death match, and a room full of masked billionaires watching. Sometimes simple really is enough. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 4.9/10. I'll admit it. I threw Land of Wolves on because the plot sounded so simple. Not that my usual horror-movie plots are exactly brain twisters, LOL. Four former Navy SEALs get captured, thrown into an underground death match, and forced to fight for the entertainment of a bunch of depraved billionaires. No weapons, no way out, just military training, brotherhood, and a bunch of rich assholes apparently looking for something to watch after dinner.

Honestly, I've watched movies with far more complicated plots. I've also watched movies about haunted dolls, so my standards aren't exactly unreasonable.

It starts with Marcus (James William Clark) putting in some time with a heavy bag while having the obligatory wartime flashbacks. Briggs (Matthew Gray), part of his platoon, shows up with some good news: Knox is alive. The bad news? He's in Mexico. So they put a team together to rescue him, because apparently "let's contact the authorities" wasn't on the list of options.

Of course, the rescue goes sideways, and before long our four SEALs are participants in an underground death tournament.

Another movie about people livestreaming real violence. You have to think this shit is happening somewhere on the web, just hopefully not quite on this scale. These matches are being watched live by a room full of masked "rich" people, and it all feels very familiar. Squid Game certainly didn't invent the concept, but apparently we've reached the point where "wealthy people watching poor people die for entertainment" is its own cinematic genre.

The fights are actually pretty decent. I haven't seen much CGI blood at this point, which is always a nice surprise. Most of the brutality is practical, with the occasional bloody mess hitting the camera for effect. The bare-knuckle fighting isn't anything flashy, but it's fairly grounded and doesn't have everyone suddenly becoming an MMA superhero.

I wasn't surprised by what happened once they found Knox, although I was a little surprised by where things went afterward.

Then the guns come out. And suddenly, so does the CGI blood. I'm guessing this is a budget limitation, because the practical effects looked considerably better. You can almost hear someone in the effects department say, "Well, that's the last of the money."

Most of the acting is forgettable, and the characters are paper-thin, which doesn't do the talent any favors. Butcher (Felix Alexander) was easily the highlight. His calmness makes him considerably scarier than if he were running around screaming about how evil he is.

For an indie movie with very little money behind it, the effects are solid, and there is clearly genuine talent both in front of and behind the camera. Kudos to Tommy Jackson, because his eye for the scene is definitely there. He really needs to hire some help, though, because this is an ambitious movie that could have been considerably better with the resources to match that ambition.

Understand exactly what you're getting into, and you might have some fun with Land of Wolves. It's got decent brutality, practical effects, and enough ambition to make the rough edges forgivable. Just don't expect the billionaires watching the livestream to have better taste than you do. Less morals, sure.

Land of Wolves (2026)

https://jackmeat.com/land-of-wolves-2026/

Cruel Hands (2025) | Cruel Hands takes forever to get moving, but underneath the slow burn is a surprisingly brutal and realistic family drama. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 4.7/10. “Things were different when I was a girl. Before the fires came and washed all the green away.” And that's how Cruel Hands lets us know we're in Australia. Nothing says “welcome to the Aussie horror/thriller experience” quite like a kid giving us some ominous bushfire exposition before his family disappears into the wilderness.

Maria (Mavournee Hazel) and her 12-year-old son, Dai (Diesel La Torraca), have fled their violent husband/father, Jason (Josh McConville), and taken refuge in an abandoned farmhouse while bushfires rage across the region. Emergency services are struggling to find them, Jason is very much not interested in letting them remain missing, and Maria is trying to build something resembling a safe life for her son.

It doesn't take long to figure out that the farmhouse isn't the only thing Maria is hiding from. Flashbacks gradually fill in the blanks about the family's life before they went on the run, and Dad's preferred explanation for everything is that Mom's mental health is the problem. Because apparently “my wife is suffering under years of abuse” is less convenient than “she's crazy.”

The movie takes its time getting anywhere, though. Cruel Hands is slow. Like, “maybe this abandoned farmhouse came with a complimentary calendar because we're going to be here for a while” slow. But once the pieces start falling into place, there's a genuinely grim story underneath all that patience.

There is one particular decision that had me questioning Maria's parenting credentials. She chooses to hide a dead body rather than report it. On paper, that sounds like one of those moments where you yell at the screen, “Are you fuckin' serious?” And yet, the more I thought about it, the less ridiculous it seemed. She's terrified, isolated, dealing with an abusive husband, surrounded by bushfires, and trying to protect her kid. Add in the Australian gun laws and the general panic of survival, and suddenly making a catastrophically bad decision feels pretty damn human.

That's one of the things Cruel Hands gets right. The situation isn't silly. It's ugly and uncomfortable, and the characters don't always make the sensible choice because people trapped in horrific circumstances generally aren't operating with a fully charged brain and a helpful decision tree.

Unfortunately, the acting occasionally works against that realism. There are moments where performances don't quite match the emotional weight of the scene, and it can pull you out of the movie. Thankfully, it isn't constant enough to completely derail things.

What does work is the feeling that this story is personal. Cruel Hands is not about the bushfires, the farm house, or even about the increasingly risky situation that Maria is put through. In reality, it is a tragic exploration of the internal battle that two damaged individuals fight as a result of their destructive relationship, which renders them unable to act like parents.

Writer/director Al Kalyk brings uncomfortable realism to that dynamic that makes me wonder if there's some personal experience informing it. I'm not saying there is. I'm saying the movie understands the ugliness of that situation really well.

Cruel Hands isn't a bad movie. It just takes a long-ass time to become the movie it wants to be. The performances can be shaky. The pacing is glacial. And some of the character decisions will have you wondering if everyone collectively left their common sense in the burning bush.

Beneath it all, however, lies a dark yet strangely realistic tale of abuse, trauma, and survival, in which an innocent child finds himself sandwiched between two adults who are entirely incapable of protecting him from their own destruction.

Cruel Hands (2025)

https://jackmeat.com/cruel-hands-2025/

Mutiny (2026) | Mutiny delivers the Statham ass-kicking package, but unfortunately forgot to include the urgency, mystery or anything memorable. Ship Happens! #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 5.6/10. Mutiny starts with a truck speeding down the street. Right into another truck.

The first truck goes flipping over, because apparently we are starting at maximum volume and working backward. I’m sure we’ll come back to that. Then we get a look at the focused eyes of the driver, followed by the focused eyes of Jason Statham scanning a high-rise lobby. Clearly, we’re supposed to assume he was behind the wheel, and now he’s working security. Because when Jason Statham is looking at you like that, you just assume he has several very specific skills listed on his resume.

Cole Reed is protecting his billionaire industrialist boss when said billionaire is murdered right in front of him. Cole is immediately set up to take the fall, which seems like a pretty lousy day at work. Now he’s on the run, trying to clear his name while uncovering an international conspiracy, and naturally I settled in expecting the next 80 minutes to contain a healthy amount of ass-kicking.

And there is ass-kicking. Just not quite enough of the good stuff.

When Cole eventually ends up stowed away on a ship, he has apparently chosen the one vessel where things can somehow get even more complicated. He’s soon joined by Angie, played by Annabelle Wallis, who was somehow unaware of the illegal things floating with her. There are some fun action moments along the way, including a fight where blood splatters directly onto the camera lens. That was a nice little touch. The stunts are impressive, the camera stays where it belongs, and the movie doesn't spend much time standing around explaining itself. Thankfully.

Unfortunately, Mutiny feels like something I've watched before. Several times.

Just another entry in Statham's growing collection of movies where an ordinary guy turns out to be extraordinarily capable of beating the living hell out of anyone in his way. The problem is that this one doesn't bring much mystery, suspense, or urgency along for the ride. The story feels like a copy of the same basic formula, with a few different locations and a slightly different collection of people trying to kill him.

It's still entertaining, and there's even a little heart mixed in to soften the violence, but it never reaches the intensity of The Beekeeper or even Shelter. There are some creative kills and impressive stunts, but the movie is over before the story has much opportunity to become interesting.

Mutiny (2026)

If you're a Statham fan, there's enough here to keep you entertained. Just don't expect this one to muscle its way to the top of his action-movie pile. It gets the job done, kicks a few people through walls, and leaves almost as quickly as it arrived.

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

Talk to Me (2023) | A bunch of idiots find a creepy, embalmed hand that lets them talk to ghosts, and naturally, they turn it into a party game. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 6.9/10. Well, Talk to Me has found a pretty damn effective way to make the ancient art of “summoning the dead for shits and giggles” feel fresh again. And, thankfully, it does it without dragging out the Ouija board for the 9,000th time.

Instead, a group of friends gets their hands on an embalmed hand that lets them communicate with the dead. Because apparently “hey, this creepy dead person's hand can let us see ghosts” is exactly the sort of thing teenagers hear and respond to with, “Oh, awesome. Let's absolutely fuck around with that.”

And, as you might expect, they fuck around. Then they find out.

The setup immediately grabs you, and the movie does a great job of slowly turning what initially looks like a fun party trick into something increasingly dark and dangerous. The scares are genuinely effective, too. There are some wonderfully nasty moments here, and while I can't claim I was hiding behind my hands, I can confirm there were several occasions where my face made the universal expression for “yeah, that's probably not good.”

Visually, Talk to Me is just as impressive. The cinematography and direction create a suitably eerie atmosphere without constantly screaming, “LOOK! THIS IS THE SCARY PART!” Shadows, lighting, and some seriously unsettling imagery do a lot of the work, giving the whole thing a grimy, uncomfortable feeling.

What I really liked, though, is that underneath all the supernatural nonsense, the movie is actually about consequences. The whole “don't play with forces beyond your control” thing isn't exactly new, but Talk to Me gives it some teeth. What starts as harmless fun spirals into something far more disturbing, and the movie isn't afraid to explore the guilt, grief, desperation, and mental damage that comes with it.

Basically, the dead aren't the only things these kids need to worry about. Their own terrible decision-making is doing plenty of damage already.

The cast is solid across the board, but Sophie Wilde stood out to me in the role of Mia. She pulls off a character that is charming and foolish in a way that makes it very clear that she can do some pretty stupid things. Her weakness creates an element of intrigue that allowed me to actually care what happened to her. That isn't something every potential final girl in horror manages to pull off.

And that's probably the biggest strength of Talk to Me. Beneath the creepy hand, demonic possession, and teenagers repeatedly making decisions that would get them immediately banned from my house, there are characters you actually give a shit about.

The movie isn't reinventing supernatural horror, but it does things that make it stand out. It has some gruesome moments, great visuals, and a plot which somehow seems both familiar and fresh.

It's also a hell of a first feature from Danny and Michael Philippou, the twins behind the chaotic YouTube channel RackaRacka. Going from making insane YouTube videos to pulling off a legitimate horror feature is one hell of a leap, and they joined that rare group before Obsession became a hit.

Talk to Me (2023)

For those who are looking for a supernatural horror movie with some truly good scares along with an intriguing concept and people who could use some parental guidance, then Talk to Me is worth watching. Just remember. If someone offers you an embalmed hand that lets you talk to dead people, maybe don't turn it into the hottest party game since beer pong.

https://jackmeat.com/talk-to-me-2023/

Yellow Eyes (2026) | I would've left that house before the title card finished, but I guess common sense wasn't included with the inheritance. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 3.9/10. Yellow Eyes starts with an old man crawling toward a door, desperately trying to paint something on it before apparently meeting his maker. He tells us he can see now, which raises approximately seventeen questions before the movie has even introduced itself. There's an eye on the door, plenty more drawings of eyes during the credits, and eventually we learn an old relative has died and left our young couple a house.

Because horror movies have a standing agreement with inherited real estate. If a dead relative leaves you a house, burn the paperwork and run.

Instead, they go from “I wonder if we'll get the house?” to “Let's move in and dump all our money into it!” almost instantly. Never mind the creepy statue they discover walled up inside. Never mind the evil-eye imagery. Never mind the fact that the place is practically screaming GET OUT. They're homeowners now. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the demon, obviously.

Julia starts having creepy dreams involving finger eating and yellow eyes, which seems like a pretty clear indication that the new fixer-upper comes with a supernatural pest problem. But she has an impressive ability to fall asleep through things that would have me sleeping in the parking lot of a police station. At one point I genuinely wondered if the movie forgot to mention that Julia is narcoleptic.

Nena Martins is fine as Julia. Not bad, not great, but she's stuck with a character making some questionable decisions. Michael Kunicki never sold me on Brad at all. When he tried to turn up the emotion, it somehow came across even worse, making it difficult to give a crap about his character.

And then there's the statue, which is really where the movie loses me. We're told it's haunted and houses something powerful, but Yellow Eyes never bothers to properly explain what the hell this thing actually is. Where did it come from? What's its history? What are its rules? What does it want? Why does it possess people?

I don't need a ten-minute mythology lecture, but when your entire movie revolves around a mysterious relic, maybe tell me something about the damn relic.

Instead, Yellow Eyes is a slow, unfocused horror movie that raises a dozen questions and lazily refuses to answer most of them. The scenes begin to merge into one another, the acting is low quality, and there are so many bad choices that I was more annoyed that they haven't left yet. That is assuming the characters can stay awake long enough to be dumb.

There is some wasted potential here. The creepy imagery works in places, and the Chicago-area setting is always a bonus for me. Unfortunately, the movie never turns its decent ideas into anything particularly memorable.

Yellow Eyes (2026)

And just when you're hoping the movie is finally going somewhere, it throws in a sequel tease that nobody wants, and certainly is not unearned.

https://jackmeat.com/yellow-eyes-2026/

Revelations (2025) | Revelations is a dark Korean thriller where a pastor's kid goes missing and more proof Yeon Sang-ho is a damn good director. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 6.2/10. Revelations has been sitting on my Netflix watchlist for a while now. I couldn't remember why until I saw the name Yeon Sang-ho attached to it. You may recognize that one from Colony. Ah, right. Time to get to it.

A young girl wanders through an alley during a downpour while some suitably somber music plays. A mysterious man appears to be following her, so she smartly ducks into a church. The drenched dude follows her inside, staring her down the entire time. Just cutting from that to Pastor Min-chan (Ryu Jun-yeol) on stage singing his sermon and then to the title card is disturbing enough. The music was definitely setting something up.

The mysterious man gets roped into registering at the church before his ankle monitor is noticed, while we briefly meet Detective Yeon-hee (Shin Hyeon-bin), who happens to bump into the girl at a store. I could see that this is going to be a character-driven Korean thriller. Here comes the slight bit of mystery. Then the pastor's kid goes missing.

Which is, admittedly, one hundred percent his fault. He forgot to pick the kid up, and his immediate thought is the mysterious man from the church. He even has a printed copy of the photo he took on his phone. Apparently Pastor Min-chan is operating under the assumption that the printed copy is the only place that photograph exists.

It doesn't work like that, Pastor.

Yeon-hee has some unresolved grief of her own, and naturally these two miserable people are destined to collide. There are plenty of religious quandaries along the way, with the story digging into guilt, faith, responsibility, revenge, and mental illness. The main message seems to be pretty simple. Take responsibility for your own actions. Unfortunately, almost nobody here seems particularly interested in doing that.

It's tagged as a mystery, but I wouldn't really call it one. There's not much mystery to solve. It's more of a thriller and character study. The acting is quite good and helps keep things moving, although following a collection of constantly miserable people does get a bit exhausting.

Technically, Revelations is a very well-made film, and Sang-ho clearly knows what he's doing. The police work toward the end gets a little too convenient, and the result should probably be better considering the talent involved. Still, it could have been a lot worse.

No, it isn't another Train to Busan. But after that one, Yeon Sang-ho is probably going to be living in his own shadow for the rest of his career.

Revelations (2025)

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

Wrong Side of Dead (2026) | Wrong Side of Dead wasn't terrible, but it tried so hard to force a twist, I just stopped caring. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 3.4/10. When behavioral science major Amber (Sabina Gadecki) investigates a series of murders at Capps Crossing, she finds herself caught in a tangled web of lies involving the local ranger and his son, David. And judging by the way Wrong Side of Dead starts, somebody has been lying for quite a while.

The film starts with overbearing music and the sound of an ambulance driving. Right away, it becomes clear that none of them had a good night. In a hospital, there is a man trying to seek help. There is also a mother and her son arguing because she has gotten tired of bailing him all the time. A badly injured woman is then brought in and everyone has a different version of what happened.

The son claims he's the one who was shot. Everyone else blames him. And, they probably should.

The movie packs all of this into the opening minutes, including a wonderfully questionable medical moment where the heart monitor waits to flatline until after someone runs out of the room. Apparently these monitors have a “you're out of the room, you're dead” setting.

Then we jump ahead a year and meet four girls going camping, which is always an encouraging sign in a horror movie. They get themselves settled in, and wouldn't you know it, the local ranger comes along to check on them. Because when you're writing a horror movie, sometimes the character most likely to be involved in everything suspicious is conveniently the guy who has keys to the woods.

From there, Wrong Side of Dead settles into its familiar horror-thriller routine. Everyone is hiding something, everyone seems suspicious, and the story keeps piling on secrets as Amber tries to figure out what happened at Capps Crossing. I was actually surprised to see Beverly D'Angelo turn up as Sandra, David's mother, which was probably one of the more interesting surprises the movie had to offer.

Unfortunately, the movie itself is kind of a mess. It is like the story is trying so damn hard to set up the twist, and we can actually hear the gears grinding. The characters do things for the sake of the plot, revelations are made on account of convenience, and the mystery itself doesn't gel well enough.

The acting is strangely adequate, though. Nobody completely embarrasses themselves, and Gadecki does enough with Amber to keep the investigation watchable. David (Garrett C. Phillips), on the other hand, feels noticeably flat for a character who should be carrying considerably more weight in the story. Considering how much of the mystery revolves around him, I expected a little more menace.

There is enough here to make it semi-watchable for a single viewing, particularly if you happen to be in the mood for a low-budget horror mystery where everybody has secrets, and nobody seems particularly interested in making good decisions. But the movie never comes together well enough to make the mystery feel worthwhile.

Wrong Side of Dead (2026)

Wrong Side of Dead isn't quite bad enough to become entertainingly bad, nor good enough to make you care all that much about figuring out what's going on. It's just kind of...there. A mildly watchable horror-thriller that you can finish, shrug at, and immediately understand why you probably shouldn't have gone looking for it in the first place.

https://jackmeat.com/wrong-side-of-dead-2026/

Colony (2026) | Colony isn't the next Train to Busan, but its bizarre zombies bring a hive mind with a body count. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 6.8/10. I saw that Colony was directed by Yeon Sang-ho, the guy who made the insanely excellent Train to Busan, so naturally it got bumped straight to the front of my list. Because apparently I have learned nothing about the dangers of having expectations.

The movie begins with a phone call to the police reporting what the caller describes as a bioterror attack. He has injected himself with the pathogen and claims that makes him the only vaccine capable of stopping the outbreak. From there, a biotech conference becomes a very bad place to network when the virus is released, the authorities seal the facility, and Professor Se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun) and a small group of survivors find themselves trapped inside with a rapidly mutating army of infected people.

For a two-hour movie, Colony wastes absolutely no time getting to the zombie business. Someone is attacked around the 12-minute mark, and after that, the infected basically become the stars of the movie.

And that is just fine with me.

These aren't your standard shuffle-around-and-bite-someone zombies. They move fast, contort themselves into increasingly ridiculous shapes, scramble back to their feet like their skeletons are merely a suggestion, and sometimes move with an eerie synchronization that makes them look less like infected humans and more like a particularly pissed-off gymnastics team. The acrobatic movements are impressive, undeniably cool, and occasionally make me wonder if the virus came with a free membership to Cirque du Soleil.

The hive-mind concept works particularly well, while the way the infected continue to evolve gives the movie some strange and unpredictable moments. There were several times when I found myself more interested in what the zombies were going to do next than what was happening to the actual characters. That's probably not ideal for the humans, but it does make for some entertaining zombie action.

There isn't a ton of gore considering the premise, but there is plenty of action. The infected are constantly moving, climbing, contorting, attacking, and generally making the building feel like the worst possible place to have attended a meeting.

Jun Ji-hyun makes for a solid hero as Se-jeong, particularly because she relies more on brains than brute force. Unfortunately, Colony doesn't give her a particularly strong protagonist group around her. The main antagonist and his increasingly bizarre collection of infected easily overshadow the human characters, and once the zombies start doing their thing, they're difficult competition for anyone.

Yeon Sang-ho's direction is outstanding, which brings me to the unavoidable problem: Yeon Sang-ho directed Train to Busan.

It's a little like what I was just saying about Spielberg and Disclosure Day. Once you've made something as excellent as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, every subsequent movie has to fight against your own resume. Sang-ho is now stuck in his own Train to Busan shadow, where every zombie movie he makes is inevitably going to get compared to the movie that put him on the map for so many people.

And Colony isn't Train to Busan.

I ultimately put it around the same level as Peninsula, but for completely different reasons. Peninsula went bigger and more action-heavy, while Colony has a much stranger, more evolutionary approach to its infected. This one has some seriously cool ideas, some excellent creature work, and sequences that are so bizarre they become difficult not to enjoy.

It's not the next Train to Busan, but thankfully, it doesn't need to be. It's a weird, fast-moving, occasionally bonkers zombie movie with infected people doing things that infected people absolutely should not be physically capable of doing. And that was enough bite for me.

Colony (2026)

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

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/

Soulm8te (2026) | Soulm8te is what happens when a lonely guy gets a naked robot girlfriend and immediately starts editing her code. Where's the problem? #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 6.1/10. Soulm8te starts with some soothing music before sliding into a sex scene that is clearly being monitored. It eventually ends with some unwanted autoerotic asphyxiation, then cuts to an ad for a tech company working on home automation. So yeah, you can probably figure out the woman doing the choking was a robot. Subtle stuff.

After a ruthless tech giant acquires a small robotics company, grieving engineer David (David Rysdahl, who clearly won't be missing those production cues) gets tasked with testing their new AI companion. When he decides to reprogram her to become a truly sentient soulmate, she develops needs of her own and eventually unleashes a precision-engineered spree of mayhem.

I quickly recognized our android Sara/Lydia as Lily Sullivan, who played Beth in Evil Dead Rise. There has been a suspicious amount of Evil Dead crossover in my recent viewing. I am apparently living in an Evil Dead cinematic universe. And I like it.

At first, the soulmate is just a cloud-based AI companion. Then the full-size, naked robot arrives. Good news, she comes with a schoolgirl outfit, because apparently the filmmakers wanted to make absolutely certain nobody misunderstood what this companion was designed for. LOL.

Those pulsating eyes when Sara goes into power-saving mode are creepy. David, meanwhile, takes approximately twelve seconds to plug himself into Sara's system and start removing safeguards so she can act more "human." Has anyone informed David that humans can often suck? He also doesn't take long to start plugging something else into her, while simultaneously editing her computer code left and right and generally tinkering with the expensive murder robot.

Pretty dumb move for a supposedly smart guy.

Of course, the pretty android eventually gets attacked by a sleazy asshole so she can kick the shit out of him. It's already an obligatory scene in this particular flavor of killer-robot movie. Another familiar trope arrives in the form of David's real-life friend Aubrey (Claudia Doumit), who naturally becomes a threat to the robot love affair.

And there is a kill in this one that you won't soon forget. LOL. Director Kate Dolan works in a couple of good kills, and that's where the movie starts having some fun with itself.

Soulm8te reminded me a lot of Companion, just not quite as well made. Sullivan does a good job with the robotic expressions and movements, giving Sara that slightly-off quality that makes these android characters work. People seem to be comparing this one more to M3GAN, which makes sense because both movies are connected through that Elsie home assistant. So apparently they exist in the same killer-robot universe.

The internet, naturally, has decided this movie is better than everything else in the genre because that's apparently the sheep move you're supposed to make now. I would put it somewhere around M3GAN 2.0. For comparison, Companion is better than all three.

This was shot before Obsession and then dumped onto streaming after M3GAN 2.0 flopped at the box office, which probably explains why it feels like something that was sitting around waiting for its turn.

It's cheesy, it's fun, and it's worth a one-off view. Just don't expect the next great killer-robot movie.

Soulm8te (2026)

Side note: Please pay attention to the English language. The movie should be titled "Soulm8", NOT "SoulmEIGHTte" as this title implies. You're welcome.

https://jackmeat.com/soulm8te-2026/

Corporate Retreat (2026) | Not the worst Saw knockoff I've seen, but definitely one where “team bonding” takes a very literal and extremely bloody turn. #jackmeatsflix

My quick rating - 4.3/10. At least Corporate Retreat didn't waste time establishing that this team-building exercise is going to be a little more aggressive than trust falls and a tug-of-war. The movie opens with sweeping shots of a gorgeous estate, followed by some dead bodies, because apparently the HR department at Immaculate Ponds has a very different definition of “company culture.”

Then we meet the employees: Cliff (Elias Kacavas), Ginger (Odeya Rush), Carl (Ashton Sanders), Devin, Billie, Omar, Deborah (Rosanna Arquette), Aubrey, and enough other people to make me wonder whether the film was going to remember all of them. Or more importantly, am I supposed to? It helpfully flashes their names and job titles on screen, so at least someone in the production knew I was going to need a cheat sheet.

They're all heading to a corporate retreat, although Cliff has told Ginger they're going on a romantic getaway. That lie probably works better when the destination isn't a mansion where the welcome package includes hanging corpses.

It doesn't take long before someone discovers the bodies and gets grabbed, kicking off a series of Saw-lite trials that deliver plenty of practical gore and some nasty kills. Unfortunately, the movie occasionally lets the CGI blood ruin the fun. One early beheading has blood that doesn't even splatter onto the ground, which is a pretty significant problem when your movie is trying to convince me someone just lost their head. The practical effects fare much better, and when Corporate Retreat gets messy, it can get properly messy.

The corporate satire is there, too, although the script doesn't squeeze nearly enough blood from that particular stone. There are plenty of opportunities to turn workplace politics, ambition, and soulless corporate culture into something truly vicious, but the movie settles for being more of a survival horror with corporate wallpaper. I still identified with plenty of the corporate nonsense enough to enjoy the jabs Aaron Fisher did take.

Rosanna Arquette is also criminally underused. Why bring in Arquette and then barely let her have fun? That's basically a corporate crime in itself. The disgruntled ex-owner Arthur, played by Alan Ruck was a fun nostalgic touch.

Odeya Rush, meanwhile, surprised me. She does a good job carrying the material, especially considering this is very much the sort of horror movie where someone's primary job requirement eventually becomes “try not to get horribly murdered.” The film also knows exactly the audience it's targeting, including one particularly overdrawn eyeball-gouging scene that will absolutely test the limits of anyone who doesn't enjoy watching eyeballs being introduced to blunt objects.

The biggest problem is the script. There's a decent horror-comedy buried in here, and the practical gore, dark humor, and occasional twists show flashes of what this could have been with a little more polish. Instead, it feels like a Saw knockoff that occasionally remembers it has a corporate comedy hiding somewhere inside it.

Corporate Retreat (2026)

Still, it's not the worst Saw ripoff I've seen. There's enough blood, ridiculousness, and black humor to keep it moving, and the ending got an actual laugh out of me. Because naturally, after all that corporate carnage and eyeball-spooning, the movie ends with “Can't Take My Eyes Off You.” That's probably the most appropriate performance review the movie could give itself.

https://jackmeat.com/corporate-retreat-2026/