New In Theaters

Inheritors of a Wonderful World

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Wildwood

by Hope Madden

Laika Studios don’t produce a lot of movies, but the films they make are remarkable. Kubo and the Two Strings has been the high-water mark, but Coraline set their path. The gorgeous stop motion, the perilous adventures, the emotionally rich and intelligent stories together mark each of the studio’s efforts.

The same goes for Wildwood, their latest, a hero’s journey set in the studio’s own back yard.

Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) lives in Oregon with her parents and her toddler brother, Mac. Her overprotective, hippie parents don’t let Mac out of the house, but Prue thinks that’s dumb and takes him on his own wee adventure. Promptly, Mac is abducted by a massive murder of crows and carted off to the Impassable Wilderness. In an attempt to rescue her brother, Prue drags (inadvertently) the goofy Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) into said wilderness. But there’s a reason it’s impassable, and a reason Prue can get inside. What she finds in there is a magical quest.

“Magical quest” are not words that appeal to me. They’re not actually words that appeal to Prue, either, which is part of the reason Wildwood works so well.

The voice cast doesn’t hurt. Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, Charlie Day, Tom Waits, Jemaine Clement, Awkwafina, Carey Mulligan, Jake Johnson, Richard E. Grant, Blythe Danner and more bring this epic to vivid life.

Directed by Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings, Masters of the Universe) and based on Colin Meloy’s beloved fantasy novel, Wildwood offers a beguiling tale masterfully articulated with stop motion animation and powerful performances. It is glorious to look at, the animation astonishing, the intricacy of the environment and the nuance in each character is just breathtaking.

And while the film is an immediate crowd pleaser, it is not meant to entertain the very young. There are battle scenes here worthy of a live-action period epic. Battle scenes mean violence and death, and these animators shy away from neither.

There’s humor, some of it cynical, and love, emotion and some great needle drops. The film is spooky at times, magical at times, breathless and beguiling. While every Laika film has been a treasure, Wildwood is probably their most polished jewel.

Outtakes

Villain Diaries: Cap. Ryan

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TO: Mjr. General Callum, Special Weapons Division

FR: Cap. Ryan, Special Operations

RE: On-ground Reconnaissance and Proposal

Report

Major General. A spate of missing persons cases in the highlands of Scotland, evidence of animal attacks, and testimony from one local—a zoological expert—provided intelligence enough to merit an investigation into a very real threat to society in the area, and a greater threat should the beast ever leave the highlands.

Our reconnaissance confirms rumors of a large, aggressive predator. Said predator has claimed the lives of at least two dozen over the course of the last several months. Attacks follow a lunar cycle, feeding at every full moon. We expect a reappearance of the predator on May 11.

All data suggests a beast unlike anything currently captive, indeed, unlike any we’ve seen before. Its size, aggression, tactical behavior, resilience to injury, and elusive nature suggest a specimen worth study. 

I have personally seen incontrovertible proof of the beast, sir. I now know what lives in the shadows.

Proposal

Sir. I propose that you allow my unit to exercise the expertise and craft we’ve honed over the last two years. Supplied with the appropriate materials—tranquilizers, night vision, repellant spray—and outfitted with a team of expendables to lure the beast, we can take this trophy for the Crown. Dead or alive, the beast could offer our science officers insight into body armor, bio-accommodations, defense, and possibly bio-weaponry.

Request

In keeping with earlier communication concerning the satisfaction of the mission, sir, I’d like to suggest we commission the unit led by Sgt. Thomas Wells as our beta team. Though an unheralded lot not likely to be missed by Her Majesty’s Army, one soldier in particular—Pvt. Cooper—having been rejected from my unit, has at least the requisite skill and predictable adherence to training to be trusted to lead our prey to us. He can also be trusted not to overcome the enemy and ruin the Crown’s prize. The man couldn’t harm a dog.

*by Hope Madden. Art by Michael Anthony Carroll.

Disclaimer: Villain Diaries is a non-commercial work of fan fiction and parody. All characters, names, and elements from the film belong to their respective copyright and trademark holders. I don’t own them and I’m not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the creators, studios, or rights holders. This piece is an original creative commentary inspired by their work. It is shared for free, for entertainment and critical purposes, and earns me no money. If you’re a rights holder and have concerns, please contact me at maddwolf95@gmail.com and I’ll respond promptly.

Shudder Premiere

Waning and Waxing

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The Cycle

by Hope Madden

Seven years ago, ThanksKilling director Jordan Downey crafted the nearly wordless folk horror The Head Hunter. The medieval fantasy relies on framing, sound design, set design, creature design, and one brooding central performance to compel rap attention and generate real dread.

The filmmaker’s new Shudder original The Cycle flexes many of the same team muscles for a police procedural turned creature feature.

Downey’s film follows Meg (Deborah Ann Woll), a forensic scientist called in to help a coastal town police force with a new crime scene. Two victims, both mainly eaten, obvious animal attack. One additional body on the scene, long dead. Meg’s dad.

What the police, including chief Marks (Jeffrey Donovan), can’t figure out is why his body is there and why the maggots haven’t had their fill of him yet.

The emotional core of the film is the conflict within Meg, who ceased thinking about her father decades ago, when he abandoned her and her mother. Instead, she focused on what she could see, study, and figure out. That happened to be corpses. The conflict comes first from having to grapple with the human reality of her father, and then something else decidedly unscientific.

Woll is up to the task, and Jordan bathes her investigation in the cool blues of a Fincher investigation. The cast around her supports without overshadowing, allowing the lead performance quiet power.

But where Fincher’s forensic investigator would be working against the clock to stop a serial killer, Meg’s case is more related to a calendar than a clock, and the killer requires a lot more prosthetics than any of the monsters Fincher unveiled.

Downey’s no stranger here, although the creature work in The Cycle isn’t always on point. Cinematographer (and co-writer) Kevin Stewart relies often on shaky cam to keep the FX hidden, but there are a handful of very impressive monster moments.

The film goes on for too long, and while Downey has found a new entry point to an old mythology, he asks viewers to make a couple too many big leaps in logic. More attention paid to the mythology, streamlining the rest would have resulted in a more satisfying scary movie. But for Spooky Season devotees looking for some throwback cinema, The Cycle fits the bill.

New In Theaters

Better a Fake Somebody Than a Real Nobody

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A Talent for Murder

by Hope Madden

It’s fun to romanticize writers, especially when what they write is so ghastly. And if they’re odd ducks to begin with? All the better! Why do you think Poe shows up so often as a character in a film?

So, why not Patricia Highsmith? The lesbian icon who wrote Strangers on a Train before tackling the Tom Ripley novels casts a fascinatingly bent and curious shadow. In director Anton Corbijn’s latest, Helen Mirren plays the cantankerous, chain smoking, misanthrope playing cat-and-mouse with her youthful editor, Edward Ridgeway (Alden Ehrenreich).

At first, A Talent for Murder follows the wholesome Edward to Europe, where he is tasked with convincing the terrifying author to sign a contract for one more Ripley novel. On the train to Switzerland, Edward meets the beguiling Clementine Balfour (Olivia Cooke), headed the same direction to try to convince her wealthy aunt to untie those purse strings.

Were Edward a little more suave, more dangerous, the scene would almost feel like a page from a Highsmith novel.

That’s the fun of this story within a story. As Highsmith slowly warms to Edward, he agrees to bounce ideas around with her for this possible 6th novel. Soon imagination and reality blur as Edward imagines himself as Tom Ripley, then maybe even begins to live a life a bit more like Tom’s. Or is he?

Joanna Murray-Smith’s script is sharp and witty, and Mirren’s delivery is masterful. Her Highsmith is hateful and playful as a cat and Ehrenreich flavors Edward with the perfect blend of vulnerability, ambition, and insecurity. Their banter is an acerbic treat.

Naturally, the film takes us to glamorous European locals as the potential novel plot develops. Then, in a twisty overlapping story, Edward leaves Highsmith’s home to venture out for his own adventures. The three threads—Highsmith’s home, Ripley’s adventure, Edward’s outings—braid to form a twisty, amorphous thriller.

But Corbijn loses the claustrophobic chamber piece feel once his tale leaves the confines of Highsmith’s Swiss home. Murray-Smith’s twists sometimes threaten to be too clever for their own good. The film blurs the line between fact and fiction perhaps once too often, thereby removing the fun of a mystery: finding out what really happened.

It’s a gorgeous film boasting fun turns from great actors. A Talent for Murder is just maybe more of a mash note to thrillers than a thriller itself.

Outtakes

Villain Diaries: The Rotten

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AITA?

Freedom is all anyone wants, really. You may say power, but without freedom, what good is power? What good is money, what good is sex? There is nothing without freedom. 

I am not the villain. Not the asshole. I yearn for freedom. It isn’t easy. Freedom is never easy. But you find allies. The afraid and the unafraid. Children are unafraid. Evil loves children because children are chaos, they cause chaos, adults erupt into chaos around them, and chaos is my freedom.

Rage also creates chaos. Men. Stupid men desperate to control the situation who know nothing except lashing out, who refuse logic, who scream and punch and grab. Chaos! Gorgeous, bloody chaos, they are as ideal, as instrumental in creating my chaos, in freeing me, as children. 

Children will slaughter the logical. Raging men will abandon the logical to the slaughter. But more important, raging men will always finally trust their truth: violence. Their violence is my freedom.

I am called Rotten. But I am freedom.

*by Hope Madden. Art by Michael Anthony Carroll.

Disclaimer: Villain Diaries is a non-commercial work of fan fiction and parody. All characters, names, and elements from the film belong to their respective copyright and trademark holders. I don’t own them and I’m not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the creators, studios, or rights holders. This piece is an original creative commentary inspired by their work. It is shared for free, for entertainment and critical purposes, and earns me no money. If you’re a rights holder and have concerns, please contact me at maddwolf95@gmail.com and I’ll respond promptly.

New In Theaters

Main Character Syndrome

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Terrestrial

by George Wolf

You notice Steve Pink as the director, and then you glimpse both Craig Robinson and Rob Corddry in the opening minutes, and you’re thinking Terrestrial may be another raunchy comedy with a sci-fi catalyst on the order of Hot Tub Time Machine.

The raunch got left behind, but there’s a decent, darkly comic mystery here that’s rooted in science fiction, fandom, a pack of lies and some good ol’ writer’s block.

Allen (Jermaine Fowler) is a struggling science fiction writer who could be on the verge of something big. He fanboys the sci-fi novels of “The Neptune Files” series, and idolizes their author, SJ Purcell (Brendan Hunt from Ted Lasso). Allen’s devotion carries over to the cheesy Neptune Files TV show, and those fictionalized clips (starring Robinson and Corddry) are cheeky and charming.

The mystery begins when Allen’s college buds (James Morosini, Pauline Chalamet, Edy Modica) visit him at his new L.A. mansion. They’re happy for their old friend’s success, but start to wonder about Allen’s odd behavior and the big paydays that hit before his first book is even finished.

What’s really going on here?

To find out, Pink and screenwriters Connor Diedrich and Samuel Johnson take us back to three months earlier, and the film is instantly elevated by a captivating, self-aware thriller vibe. Fowler’s (Sorry to Bother You, Faces of Death, The Blackening) ability to transmit Allen’s refusal to let his slowly growing panic derail the bigger plan is a frantic delight, and it keeps your interest grounded when events get bloody and more than a little spacey.

Pink effectively juggles the story – and the story within the story – for a solid setup, but Act Three can’t quite deliver on the promise. Pink scripted both Grosse Point Blank and High Fidelity some years back, and this friend reunion could have used more of the cynical bite he brought to those interactions. Terrestrial seems satisfied to ramp up the body count, and crawl across the finish line out of breath.

New In Theaters

Good Is in the Wood

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Wicker

by Hope Madden

Even if the Wicker trailer didn’t have you salivating over an Alexander Skarsgård shaped basket, this cast list should do it: Olivia Colman, Peter Dinklage, Elizabeth Debicki, Richard E. Grant, and, of course, under a lot of titular twigs, Skarsgård.

Writers/directors Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson (Save Yourselves!) take full advantage of that cast to bring Ursula Wills’s short story “Wicker Husband” to silver screen life.

In some fairy tale village, the ostracized Fisherwoman (Colman, magnificent as always), tired of being both alone and the butt of village jokes, commissions a husband from Master Basket Weaver (Dinklage). He makes her a Skarsgård.

Fischer and Wilson’s script lengthens and complicates the source material with rich characters, cheeky situations, and frighteningly authentic peril. Told as a fable, Wicker picks the patriarchy scab, particularly its heroic efforts to undermine human connections and respect. This remarkable cast mines the clever script for laughs and pathos and a couple of real surprises, some of them with bite.

The Fisherwoman’s happiness, the genuine love and respect shared by the pair, stirs a frenzy of jealousy, lust, and insecurity in the village. Debicki’s conniving Tailor’s Wife (or Doctor’s Daughter, depending on who you ask) delivers subtle, controlled malice and ensemble players—Ella Bruccoleri and Ben Ashenden, in particular—give the village real flavor. 

Dinklage is a saucy delight and Skarsgård’s believable tenderness leaves you feeling very protective of Mr. Wicker. Though he delivers his lines as an innocent, the writing itself is so sharp and poetic and Skarsgård is so expressive despite the prosthetics, that Wicker easily becomes the most romantic film of 2026.

But of course, it’s Colman who owns the film. Able to glide from comedy to heart wrenching drama in the blink of an eye, she delivers a deeply human performance that ensures the winky concept never feels like a gimmick.

There is much depth and beauty, as well as recognizable human fault, beneath the witty concept. And if that doesn’t do it for you, this cast will have you swooning.

Outtakes

Villain Diaries: Remmick

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Gather, friends! 

Those who are left behind. Those who yearn for fellowship. Community. The power to build, to create, to thrive. To survive. Freedom from those who would hold you down. Who would, if it were within their power, enslave you.

Accept my greeting. And take—please, take—all that I have to give. It is more than you can conceive, unless you let your mind travel. Ease. Bounty. Camaraderie. Power. But not equality. No. No, we would never settle for equality. 

What will it cost you? Not one penny. Not one penny! I don’t ask for your worldly possessions, only for what lives inside you, burning to get out. To be freed. To be shared!

In return I offer power to the powerless. Hope to the hopeless. Strength to the weak and life to those barely hanging on. Everything and more than that.

Take me in. Take me into your homes, your families, your lives, your very beating hearts and know freedom as you have never known it, never even dreamed it. It’ll just cost you a song. 

~Remmick

*by Hope Madden. Art by Michael Anthony Carroll.

Disclaimer: Villain Diaries is a non-commercial work of fan fiction and parody. All characters, names, and elements from the film belong to their respective copyright and trademark holders. I don’t own them and I’m not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the creators, studios, or rights holders. This piece is an original creative commentary inspired by their work. It is shared for free, for entertainment and critical purposes, and earns me no money. If you’re a rights holder and have concerns, please contact me at maddwolf95@gmail.com and I’ll respond promptly.

Outtakes

Villain Diaries: Dracula

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*by Hope Madden. Art by Michael Anthony Carroll.

Disclaimer: Villain Diaries is a non-commercial work of fan fiction and parody. All characters, names, and elements from the film belong to their respective copyright and trademark holders. I don’t own them and I’m not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the creators, studios, or rights holders. This piece is an original creative commentary inspired by their work. It is shared for free, for entertainment and critical purposes, and earns me no money. If you’re a rights holder and have concerns, please contact me at maddwolf95@gmail.com and I’ll respond promptly.

Outtakes

Villain Diaries: Mr. Cooper

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AITA?

Everything was fine. We were fine! We were in the basement, obviously the safest place to be. Only one door to worry about! Nice bar on it! So, we were down there, Helen giving me that look, but we were fine. And yeah, we heard the girl scream upstairs. So what of it?! Like you would have done any different! What am I going to do, risk these women, a sick kid? Five of those things flipped over my car! Hell no, we’re staying put, in the basement, where we’re safe. 

And then that stupid boy had to go see what was going on. Damn him! He heard a radio and said we needed to find out what was happening, blah blah blah. We’d still be safe and sound down that basement if he’d kept his mouth shut!

Look, I’m no coward. I don’t care what that…look, we were fine in the basement. I wasn’t the one saying those windows would hold. I was the one saying they wouldn’t hold! And did they? DID THEY?!

And was it my bright idea to go out for the gas? Did I shoot the lock off the tank and light the truck—the only vehicle!—ablaze? No! No, I was inside the house looking after the women. That’s right, they left me alone with my wife Helen, big help she is, that nutty girl and my injured kid. 

But when That Man got back in—when he broke down our secure door and led all those murder happy ghouls in with him!—did I just leave him and run back downstairs? No! Because I am not a coward. I helped him nail the door shut again.

And what happened then? What happened when that… that violent, uppity bastard is safely back inside the house, thanks to me? After he cost us our only vehicle? He punched me! He assaulted me! 

I had to get that gun! Two people were dead already on account of him and his big ideas. We weren’t safe with him around! Assaulting us and waving that gun around! 

I’m no coward! If we’d just stayed down that basement! If everybody had just listened to me. I was right. I was right!

I am not a coward.

-Cooper

*by Hope Madden. Voiceover by George Wolf. Art by Michael Anthony Carroll.

Disclaimer: Villain Diaries is a non-commercial work of fan fiction and parody. All characters, names, and elements from the film belong to their respective copyright and trademark holders. I don’t own them and I’m not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the creators, studios, or rights holders. This piece is an original creative commentary inspired by their work. It is shared for free, for entertainment and critical purposes, and earns me no money. If you’re a rights holder and have concerns, please contact me at maddwolf95@gmail.com and I’ll respond promptly.

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?