Team Nefarious

https://youtu.be/amxs9Smj9kU?si=hg_qhrG-IIzF7Knq

https://youtu.be/7xVweDMpiEc?si=AQ7zkyTqCEFnR8cC

Here is the newest Former Critics episode!

Alex and Logan talk about Longlegs 2, Testament of Ann Lee, Ivy Wolk, and a bunch of other things you don't wanna miss out on!!!

https://youtu.be/CGPGbHx5Uxs?si=JTB5tkPvPxsjL9ys

Ashley is BACK with a new episode of her Get Weird podcast!

This time talking about Naked Lunch! Directed by David Croneberg, this is a weird, and wild, fun ride!

You can find this everywhere you get podcasts as well!!!

Whistle just dropped and it's well, it's a movie alright!

It stars Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse, and Percy Hynes White. The premise follows a girl who finds a death whistle and things start to go awry.

Whistle doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, but it certainly knows how to spin it. The film follows a group of high schoolers who unwittingly trigger a curse by blowing a prehistoric whistle. What follows is a sleek, dread filled hunt where the antagonist isn't a slasher in a mask, but a relentless, unseen rule of nature.

The film shines most when it leans into its atmosphere. Much like It Follows, Whistle excels at making the audience scan the background of every frame. The sense of inevitable, slow-moving dread is palpable. It treats the "curse" not just as a jump scare generator, but as a heavy, atmospheric weight that the characters (and the audience) can’t shake off.

When the dread finally breaks, the payoff is pure Final Destination. The kill sequences are elaborate and inventive, playing on the idea that once your time is up, the universe will find a way to "collect." If you’re a fan of creative practical effects and "how are they going to die?" suspense, these moments are the highlight of the film.

The film misses the mark with explaining the back story of the whistle and some of the writing and production were a little off with this one which is preventing it from being great.

The pacing is also a little off.

It Ends isn’t a horror movie in the traditional sense. There are no cheap jump scares, no relentless chase sequences, no over explained mythology. Instead, it delivers something far more unsettling, existential horror rooted in the inevitability of life and death.

At its core, It Ends feels less like a story about events happening and more like a meditation on what it means to exist at all. The film weaponizes inevitability. From the very beginning, there’s a quiet understanding that something final is approaching not necessarily violently, but absolutely. That looming finality becomes the film’s true antagonist.

What makes the movie so effective is how it frames death not as spectacle, but as certainty. There’s no dramatic orchestration of fate. There’s just time. And the characters are forced to confront that time is limited that everything, every relationship, every memory, every moment of love or regret, eventually… ends.

That’s where the existential horror creeps in.

The film asks uncomfortable questions:

If everything ends, what gives anything meaning?

Are we defined by how we live, or by how we face the end?

Is death terrifying because of pain or because of oblivion?

Rather than answering these questions directly, It Ends lets them linger. Silence becomes just as important as dialogue. The pacing allows dread to seep in gradually, the kind of dread that isn’t about monsters in the dark but about the void waiting at the edge of consciousness.

Visually, the film reinforces this theme with stark framing and negative space. Characters often appear isolated within the frame, dwarfed by their surroundings, emphasizing how small and fragile human life feels in the grand scheme of things. Even moments of warmth carry a subtle melancholy as if the film is reminding us that joy is fleeting precisely because it cannot last.

What elevates It Ends beyond typical horror is its emotional honesty. The fear here isn’t external. It’s internal. It’s the quiet panic that surfaces at 3 a.m. when you think about your own mortality. It’s the realization that everyone you love is temporary. It’s the uncomfortable awareness that you are, too.

By the time the film reaches its conclusion, the horror doesn’t explode, it settles. And that may be the most disturbing choice of all. There’s no catharsis, only acceptance.

In that sense, It Ends succeeds not because it terrifies you in the moment, but because it lingers long after the credits roll. It transforms life and death from abstract ideas into something intimate and immediate.

It doesn’t just ask what happens when things end.

It asks what it means that they have to.

Here is my video review of this movie as well:

James Van Der Beek, star of Dawson's Creek has passed away from a long battle with cancer. He was 48.

Van Der Beek was battling colorectoral cancer. His family made the announcement via Instagram.

Feels Good Man is a documentary about a meme and that sounds stupid at face value but what is hidden underneath the hood is wild.

The documentary is about the Pepe The Frog meme. It explores the origins of the character and the creator of it as well as the past, present, and future or what is happening with it.

If you are unaware Pepe The Frog came from a comic strip that the creator published on Myspace of all things. Once it came out, weird gym bros started reposting the Pepe character.

It grew from there and was posted onto 4chan which took the character and made it into a meme. The meme of all memes so to speak.

The character was then picked up by the alt right and the rest is history.

The documentary is insane. It is a wild ride. There is a wild Alex Jones appearance, among other things.

Feels Good Man goes into unexpected territory and is a surprising wild ride.

You can hear my full review of the movie here:

https://youtu.be/5uyKdmXijnw?si=ZHK3L8Ajl7G7a8c8

Photo Courtesy of Rolling Stone

Today is a sad day as we have heard the news of Catherine O'Hara passing. She was 71.

Catherine is best known for her role as Kevin's mom in Home Alone. She was everyone's mom in the 90's.

Photo Courtesy of Mubi

"I feel fine."

Die My Love is the newest film from acclaimed director Lynne Ramsay and she is back with a bang. This time she is tackling the "post partum" sub genre.

Don't worry, that is not a spoiler.

The movie stars Jennifer Lawrence as Grace and Robert Pattinson as Jackson. This film is based on a novel of the same name.

Grace and Jackson are newlyweds who end up having a baby and then their lives basically start unraveling from there. Fights ensue. And Robert Pattinson's character is seen less and less as he is off "working" and while Lawrence is at home with their new baby raising it herself. She also craves moe intimacy, which she is clearly not getting.

At the start of the movie she is a free spirited woman with ambitions and goals and seems to love life but as the film goes on she starts losing it. Everyone around her feels like she's going "crazy" even though a lot of it justified and she is just clearly at her wits end.

The movie is bleak and also thrilling and pessimistic. The direction here is tight and controlled. The visual pallette is lovely with the colors. Sissy Spacek is stellar as always.

Jennifer Lawrence of course is the stand out here. Her performance is intense but also restrained at times. Pattinson is just an a-hole but that is the character and he plays it well.

The film offers a lot of authentic rawness to grab onto and if you love grounded dramas you will love this one. It just feels real.

Here are some more quick thoughts on the movie in video form if you're into that:

https://youtu.be/nfv73YoXeyk?si=RALZffuGGeTg8EMM

Photo Courtesy of IMDB

https://youtu.be/dZcAn4FtKSs?si=rd--sKxsE7crjyvv

Ashley covered a couple of really BAD horror movies and she did a deep dive into them! Come check it out!