The Whisper Man (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by James Ashcroft — Screenplay by Ben Jacoby and Chase Palmer.

Every once in a while, something goes straight-to-streaming that looks the part, so to speak, of something that, once upon a time, would not only go to theaters but also draw a crowd. As The Whisper Man is evidence of, a serial killer movie with an A-list star and an otherwise recognizable cast is now likely to land on a streamer and face the potential sad fate of being buried in a vast and ever-growing content library while the world moves on. Although The Whisper Man is certainly nowhere near as good as the stone-cold classics of the genre that it is clearly inspired by, it is, however, too watchable to deserve being fully ignored or be treated as background noise for your nightly doomscrolling. It definitely won’t wow you, but I suspect that thriller die-hard fans will feel that this is the kind of film that definitely scratches the right itch, even if it isn’t particularly memorable.

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Yndige Mennesker (2025) | REVIEW

Directed by Anders Jon, Michael Kunov, Kasper Juhl, and Michael Panduro.

Yndige Mennesker (or, Adorable Humans) is a Danish horror anthology film from four Danish directors, none of whom are household names in their home country. Each story is loosely inspired by select stories originally written by world-renowned Danish writer and poet Hans Christian Andersen, who is primarily known for his many beloved fairy tales. Although Lars von Trier’s Riget series (int. title: The Kingdom) and Ole Bornedal’s Nattevagten (int. title: Nightwatch) are both beloved titles in Denmark, the country isn’t known for the horror genre, and it is very rare for Danish horror to land well over here. In recent years, the most successful Danish horror title is Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil, which has already gotten an American remake. Indeed, perhaps a new generation of filmmakers is now ready to make the horror genre feel more at home. In any case, Yndige Mennesker shows that some Danish filmmakers are trying to tell stories in the genre.

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The Invite (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Olivia Wilde — Screenplay by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones.

When actress Olivia Wilde burst onto the scene behind the camera with her feature directorial debut, Booksmart, it was quite exciting. It felt like the kind of film that could stand the test of time and become a coming-of-age comedy favorite for a certain generation of moviegoers. So, when her second attempt as a director, Don’t Worry Darling, was widely recognized as an underwhelming and somewhat messy sophomore slump, it was quite disappointing. Well, it’s been four years since Don’t Worry Darling, and now Wilde is back with her third film as a director. The actress-turned-director is pulling double duty, as she’s also one of the stars of the four-hander that is The Invite. This is the latest of multiple remakes of Cesc Gay’s Spanish comedy The People Upstairs from 2020. This adaptation was scribed by screenwriting duo Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, and it is a remarkably strong return to form for director Olivia Wilde.

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The End of Oak Street (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by David Robert Mitchell (It Follows; Under the Silver Lake) — Screenplay by David Robert Mitchell.

I think it’s fair to say that we’ve been treated to an undersupply of dinosaur films since Steven Spielberg and his crew perfected big-screen dinosaur action storytelling with the masterpiece that is 1993’s Jurassic Park. For whatever reason, there haven’t been many attempts to tell new stories with dinosaurs, other than the increasingly threadbare Jurassic sequels. The most notable live-action attempts have been Peter Jackson’s King Kong from the mid-2000s, which I quite like, and Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ quite underwhelming Adam Driver-vehicle titled 65. This summer, we’re treated to another attempt at non-Jurassic World dinosaur-centric cinema. The Warner Bros. picture is the long-awaited fourth feature from It Follows-director David Robert Mitchell, whose last film was the 2018 stoner noir film Under the Silver Lake, which has amassed something of a cult following. I thoroughly enjoyed both his horror breakthrough and his aforementioned cult film, so I can say that I’ve enjoyed every film of his that I’ve seen up to this point. The same goes for The End of Oak Street, which is a terrific crowd-pleaser of a dinosaur summer flick that ticks all the right boxes.

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Die My Love (2025) | REVIEW

Directed by Lynne Ramsay (Morvern Callar; You Were Never Really Here) — Screenplay by Enda Walsh, Lynne Ramsay, and Alice Birch.

Based on Ariana Harwicz’s novel of the same name, Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love follows a young mother, Grace (played by Jennifer Lawrence), as she struggles with everything from an identity crisis to postpartum depression and an imbalance within her marriage. The film is mostly set in and around a Montana-based home that the couple inherited from her husband’s late uncle. Robert Pattinson plays Jackson, Grace’s feeble husband, who is oblivious to how his behavior (and his being largely uninvolved in the day-to-day challenges) is impacting her. The film also features supporting performances from Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte as Jackson’s parents, as well as LaKeith Stanfield as a mysterious individual with whom Grace has an ambiguous connection.

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The Last House (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk; Grimsby; Fast X) — Screenplay by Matthew Robinson.

Louis Leterrier’s The Last House is a sci-fi survival thriller-adjacent film about a family of four — parents Ann (played by Greta Lee) and Jason (played by Wagner Moura) and children Ruth (played by Riley Chung, Emma Ho, and Arden Cho) and Graham (played by Noah Alexander Sosnowski and Gabriel Barbosa) — as they experience a seemingly worldwide supernatural occurrence in which barriers of water form around houses thus blocking anyone from getting out of their homes and making it impossible for any person stuck outside to get in. You can drill holes in the door and try to smash your windows, but then the characters in the world would see water form up and block the holes and prevent the windows from shattering and falling apart. Although the electricity works (for now) and they have air coming in and access to running water, they only have a limited amount of food and medicine, and they have no way of contacting the outer world other than to hold up signs for neighbors to see. Meanwhile, rain often falls outside their windows, and soon they start getting the idea that some creature, or creatures, may be outside and that they may be a serious threat to their lives.

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The Devil’s Mouth (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Jeff Wadlow (True Memoirs of an International Assassin) — Screenplay by Aja Gabel and Myung Joh Wesner.

Jeff Wadlow’s The Devil’s Mouth follows a group of friends on vacation in Thailand. Two of the friends, Sara (played by Kathryn Newton) and Max (played by Lana Condor), initially struggle to see eye to eye after the former is left behind in the ocean, while the rest of the group partied and sped off without realizing where she was. Although they did eventually come back for her, the encounter left Sara badly damaged after coming into contact with a school of jellyfish. Sara feels that Max won’t take responsibility for anything, and yet still insists on controlling what to do, so while they try to get over the aforementioned incident, those issues always sit just beneath the surface. When, one day, they decide to tour the titular underwater cave system, chaos ensues as a trapped bull shark attacks and kills their guides. Now, the group must work together if they want to all make it out alive.

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Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton — Screenplay by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers.

It has been five years since the last time we saw Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The interconnected universe of Marvel movies has since changed, and the core cast of the Tom Holland-led Spider-Man films has grown up. To pull off a soft reboot that reflected this — albeit with the same characters and actors — the decision-makers turned to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton, after it became clear that Jon Watts, who had directed the first three Holland-led films, opted not to return. As has become the norm with the Spider-Man films in the world of the MCU, Cretton’s film has to juggle both universe-furthering elements and a relatively standalone Spider-Man-focused narrative that is honest to the journey the character had been on. This juggling act came under even more pressure when it became clear that the superhero films that have come out since the last Spider-Man film haven’t been performing as well as they once did, both at the box office, with audiences, and with critics. Time will tell if Destin Daniel Cretton’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day becomes the film to turn the tide positively for the interconnected universe, but what I can say now is that Cretton’s film is a terrific one that seems to fully understand the titular character, how he works best, and how best to update the style of these films.

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‘Oh, Hi!,’ ‘Is This Thing On?,’ ‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey,’ and More (2025) | Bite-Sized Reviews

Being a cinephile means that you’re never done trying to catch up. Therefore, I sometimes write these bite-sized review collections of films from recent years that I didn’t get to see at the time but have since seen. Today, I want to share my thoughts on six films from 2025. It is a varied collection of films. There are films here that I really loved, but also films that I have complicated relationships with. It’s a mixed bag of films, a potpourri of movies, or as we say in Denmark, “en blandet landhandel.” Perhaps some of these really worked for you, in which case, don’t be shy. Please comment below with your own thoughts on some of these films. If you follow me on Letterboxd, do know that these bite-sized reviews have previously been posted on my Letterboxd profile (either partially or entirely). Should you wish to get a sneak peek at what films I see, I advise you to follow me on that social media platform.

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Masters of the Universe (2026) | REVIEW

Directed by Travis Knight — Screenplay by Chris Butler, Aaron Nee, Adam Nee, and David Callaham.

I can’t say that I have much of a prior relationship with the 1980s Mattel toy line or the animated series that were built around it (or, for that matter, a big relationship with the 1987 live-action film adaptation). In fact, even though I’m pretty sure I saw the Dolph Lundgren film when I was young, I mostly know the characters from my father, who, still to this day, quotes Frank Langella’s Skeletor from time to time. Still, I was curious to see what a new film adaptation of the story could be like, especially given the years of development hell it went through. Well, Travis Knight’s Masters of the Universe was recently released on Amazon Prime Video, so I finally got to see the film just the other day. Having now seen it, I will say that I mostly enjoyed the Bumblebee-director’s attempt at giving new life to He-Man and the many characters, but I don’t think this is a complete home run.

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