Welcome to another edition of Trust Me, I Watch Everything, a weekly guide to all the new movies released on Friday. I’m Brett Arnold, film critic and host of At the Movies Again, a weekly Siskel & Ebert-style movie review show.
In theaters this week are a fresh take on The Mummy and a new action flick starring Bob Odenkirk called Normal.
At home, you can rent or buy Alpha, the latest from French provocateur Julia Ducournau, as well as Reminders of Him, adapted from the Colleen Hoover novel.
And on streaming services you’re likely already paying for, the action sci-fi fantasy fairy tale Dust Bunny hits HBO Max, among several other new options.
Read on, as there’s a lot more, and there’s always something for everyone.
🎥 What to watch in theaters
My not-quite-a-recommendation: Lee Cronin’s The Mummy
Why you should maybe skip it: If you’re wondering why a director you’ve never heard of is getting title billing, consider how many times Blumhouse has tweeted recently, reminding people that Brendan Fraser isn’t in this one. When you add in the fact that The Mummy 4 with Fraser was, in fact, recently greenlighted, it’s easy to see why the marketing team went all in on Cronin.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is an attempt for the filmmaker behind Evil Dead Rise to make a name for himself by utilizing “IP” we all know and ostensibly making it his own. Unfortunately, by the end of its unforgivable 2-hour, 15-minute runtime, all that’s revealed is that he made a bog-standard possessed-child movie, wrapped in some Egyptian trappings.
In the film, the young daughter of a journalist disappears into the desert without a trace. Eight years later, her broken family is shocked when she’s returned to them. What should be a joyful reunion soon turns into a living nightmare as she starts to transform into something truly horrifying.
The set-up is incredibly upsetting and harrowing in a visceral way, especially for me, a father of a young daughter: We witness a woman put a curse on a young girl and whisk her away, and then are left to sit in that family’s trauma as they must attempt to move on with their lives, despite this devastating unsolved kidnapping. What’s most disappointing is that this premise is actually really scary, as is the “reveal” about exactly why this mummification process took place, but the movie’s shift from scares to laughs doesn’t work, nor does its pivot to becoming an extremely familiar, derivative possession flick.
The problem with the movie, largely, is one of tone management; it’s simply too traumatic a situation for the gross-out fest that it ultimately becomes. There’s a sequence that feels ripped out of Scary Movie 3, a jarring energy shift that worked for me less and less as the film went on. Every time it goes for a laugh, something feels off. It’s the second time in a row Cronin has thoroughly convinced me that he’s no Sam Raimi, despite really trying. By the time what is essentially a Raimian Deadite shows up, it’s clear that, despite turning down another Evil Dead movie, Cronin has sort of made one anyway.
It’s not all bad, though, as the gore does deliver on occasion in ways you likely haven’t seen before, including a particularly nasty sequence involving a toenail. The movie is impressively mean, which I normally appreciate in a big studio movie, but it rubbed me the wrong way because of the tonal whiplash. Despite a promising start, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy might’ve been better off staying buried.
What other critics are saying: Reviews are generally not very kind. Benjamin Lee at the Guardian writes: “Cronin, an Irish filmmaker who has made just two films to date, is an undeniable visual talent but his Mummy is also absurdly, watch-checkingly overlong, tonally unsure and, fatally, not all that scary.” TheWrap’s William Bibbiani, however, dug it, writing: “Cronin has an uncanny knack for human mutilation, which would probably be a bad thing in any other context, but if you’re making gross-out horror movies, it’s practically a requirement.”
How to watch: Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is now playing in theaters nationwide.
My bonus recommendation: Normal
Why you should see it: Bob Odenkirk continues his budding action hero trajectory with Normal, another film in which the actor takes down deserving bad guys. Unlike Nobody and its sequel, he’s just an everyday normal guy here, instead of some ex-violent badass. It’s less John Wick and more, “What if Hot Fuzz took place in Fargo, and also Japanese Yakuza members are involved?”
In the film, Odenkirk plays the new sheriff of a small town in Minnesota, who uncovers a dark secret while investigating a botched bank robbery. What makes the role interesting is that, as the character starts to discover something is wrong, he tries his hardest to keep his nose out of it and ignore it. But the bad news persists, and he must eventually go into action-hero mode.
The gunfights are well-staged, and the action is largely a lot of fun, a reminder that director Ben Wheatley’s best movie was 2016’s Free Fire, essentially a feature-length gun fight in a single location. Normal doesn’t quite reach those highs — it’s hard to beat an 85ish-minute movie, in which 80 of those minutes are action — but it’s a fun enough twist on the relatively newly formulated “Bob Odenkirk kicks some ass” subgenre. Henry Winkler is in it too!
What other critics are saying: Reviews are pretty mixed. Katie Rife at IndieWire writes: “Like a firecracker with a long fuse, Normal builds up, burns fast, makes a big noise and then it’s gone.” The AP’s Jake Coyle writes: “Many of its twists aren’t hard to see coming, and the movie sometimes lacks the scale needed for a sprawling battle. But a mustachioed Odenkirk with a shotgun is, by most metrics, more than enough firepower for any movie.”
How to watch: Normal is now playing in theaters nationwide.
💸 Movies newly available to rent or buy
My recommendation: Alpha
Why you should see it: The latest film from French filmmaker Julia Ducournau is less of a ribald provocation than her previous body-horror efforts (Titane, Raw) and more a tragic coming-of-age tale and family drama, which is maybe why it received such a lukewarm reception upon its debut at Cannes, the very same festival in which Titane took the top prize.
Alpha, a troubled 13-year-old, lives with her single mom. Their world collapses the day she returns from school with a tattoo on her arm, as she is feared to have contracted a new lethal bloodborne disease. Her mother (Golshifteh Farahani) is particularly aware of the risks, as she’s a doctor, and also the sister of a drug addict whose habit puts him at risk of exposure to the virus.
People who get this disease start to look like marble statues you’d see in a museum. The movie plays like a big metaphor for the AIDS crisis and how people responded to it with paranoia and stigmatization. It also recalls the COVID-19 pandemic and evokes how a kid might come of age in the aftermath of a devastating viral disease outbreak.
Alpha hasn’t left my mind, mostly due to the striking imagery of marbled humans; Ducournau has said in interviews that she “wanted to implement some sacredness, and give back dignity to the people who are in my film,” as well as those who were shunned for being HIV-infected. “I wanted to elevate their lives and build a monument to their memory through marble.” If you find that sentiment deeply moving, the film will likely work for you.
What other critics are saying: They do not like it! Tomris Laffly at the AV Club calls it “an inexplicably shallow AIDS allegory” and writes that “the disease’s desiccated metaphor is so tortured that it also makes the uninviting movie that surrounds it crumble in real time.” But Jesse Hassenger at Polygon dug it, writing: “Unlike so many horror filmmakers, Ducourneau doesn’t seem fixated on inherited trauma, so much as the ongoing trauma of living in an imperfect world with a deeply fallible body.”
How to watch: Alpha is now available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Prime Video and other VOD platforms.
My bonus not-a-recommendation: Reminders of Him
Why you might want to skip it: Hollywood is speedrunning Colleen Hoover adaptations, and it’s easy to see how we got here. Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni’s It Ends With Us was a box-office smash hit, in spite of (or maybe because of?) all the wild headlines and legal issues surrounding the film, which opened the floodgates for every other Hoover book to get a film adaptation.
Regretting You, the one with McKenna Grace and Mason Thames, was released just months ago, and yet here we are with another one, starring It Follows/Longlegs lead, Maika Monroe, and Tyriq Withers, who was recently in Him and the tepid I Know What You Did Last Summer reboot.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, partly because I found this one rather unremarkable and more suited to the Lifetime channel than a movie theater. Reminders of Him centers on Kenna (Monroe), a woman recently released from prison.
After serving five years for a tragic mistake that killed her then-boyfriend, she returns to her hometown hoping to reconnect with the young daughter she left behind after giving birth while incarcerated. Rejected by nearly everyone in her daughter’s life, Kenna struggles to rebuild trust and prove she deserves a second chance, until a local bar owner becomes the only person willing to look beyond her past. As their connection deepens, both must confront whether love can survive the weight of grief and judgment.
The melodrama is boilerplate stuff, and I found the romance a bit off-putting: The man she meets at the bar is her deceased ex’s best friend! Thankfully, though, Monroe and Withers are both attractive and good enough actors that you actually root for them to work things out and be happy together, despite everything, including the fact that Monroe isn’t particularly convincing here as this doomed, tragic figure.
It’s all meant to be very complicated and emotional, but the movie doesn’t offer enough perspectives to make it work. Her dead ex-boyfriend’s parents are evil until the story demands they won’t be any more, and the movie feels like it’s slightly cheating with regard to the explanation of the accident. Frankly, it works well enough as an earnest weepie, but it’s nothing I’ll remember in a week (ironic, given the title).
If this one doesn’t sound like it’s for you, not to worry: Another Hoover fic, Verity, is on deck for this October and has a bit of a higher profile, thanks to stars Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson and Josh Hartnett. Here’s hoping the characters continue to have insane names like Diem and Ledger.
What other critics are saying: It’s currently got a 57% Rotten Tomatoes score, and some liked it more than I did. TheWrap’s William Bibbiani writes: “It’s a whole lot of pretty good and not a lot of amazing.” IndieWire’s Kate Erbland calls it “easily the best Hoover film adaptation yet, bolstered by strong performances and an emotional center that does not primarily rely on some kind of tortured romance (though, that’s there too!).”
How to watch: Reminders of Him is now available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Prime Video and other VOD platforms.
But that’s not all…
All You Need Is Kill. (Courtesy of GKIDS/Everett Collection)
(Courtesy Everett Collection)
All You Need Is Kill: This beautifully animated film from Japan adapts the novel that we’ve already had adapted in the U.S. as 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow, starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. When a massive alien flower unexpectedly erupts in a deadly event, unleashing monstrous creatures that decimate Japan’s population, Rita is caught in the destruction and killed. But then she wakes up again. And again. Trapped in an endless time loop, Rita must navigate the trauma and repetition of death. It’s an entirely different film from the live-action American blockbuster, featuring monsters and other, harder sci-fi elements. It really emulates the feeling of speedrunning a video game in which you die repeatedly, which is a neat trick. Even if you’ve seen and love Edge of Tomorrow, this is worth a look! Rent or buy
Slanted: If you mashed up The Substance with Mean Girls and added a dash of culturally specific Get Out flavoring, you’d get this movie about an insecure Chinese American teenager who chooses to undergo an experimental surgery to appear white, hoping to secure the prom queen title and peer acceptance. After the surgery, she becomes Mckenna Grace, but the rest of the movie fails to live up to the boldness of its premise. It has a compelling set-up about identity, focusing on an immigrant teen’s experience of feeling different and yearning to be accepted, but once the high-concept surgery occurs, it runs out of ideas and falls into circuitous family drama and body horror clichés. Rent or buy
Undertone: Undertone is so completely underwhelming that it should lead to a moratorium on “the scariest movie ever made!”-style marketing, which only sets up movies like this for failure. A podcast host who covers spooky content returns home to care for her dying mother. When sent recordings of a couple’s paranormal encounters, she discovers their story parallels hers, with each tape pushing her toward madness. It’s a movie in which the camera is either static or roaming, and the audience is left to search the frame for something terrifying in the background, which, spoiler alert, never actually materializes. It’s also a movie that thinks watching waveforms of nursery rhyme podcast audio files and hearing them played backward is scary, for some reason. It is not. It’s an exercise in tedium. It’s all atmosphere, and sadly, it never clicked for me. Impressive sound design can only go so far, and I didn’t even find it all that immersive or compelling to begin with. It may impress some as a no-budget exercise in minimalism and subtle, understated spookiness, but I needed a little more meat on the bone here. If you want a good movie that’s essentially a filmed radio play, check out Pontypool, an underseen favorite of mine. Rent or buy
📺 Movies newly available on streaming services you may already have
My recommendation: Dust Bunny
Why you should watch it: Bryan Fuller, best known as the man behind beloved television shows like Hannibal and Pushing Daisies, makes his debut as a feature film writer/director with Dust Bunny, a high-concept fantasy-action-horror hybrid fairy tale.
Eight-year-old Aurora (Sophie Sloan) asks her hitman neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen) to kill the monster under her bed that she claims ate her family. To protect her, he must battle an onslaught of assassins while accepting that some monsters are real.
The movie is quite clever in its world-building and in how it depicts the way a young girl sees the world; a hitman killing bad guys, for example, presents itself to her as her hero neighbor slaying an evil dragon in a heavily stylized, visually pleasing sequence, which is a fun gateway into more surreal/fantasy territory.
The visual style feels heavily influenced by the films of French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet, echoing that same sense of maximalism; imagine something like Luc Besson’s Leon: The Professional filtered through that lens. Despite its restrictive R-rating, it plays like a gateway horror flick for children interested in the genre.
Ultimately, Dust Bunny uses familiar elements to craft something wholly unique: a children’s storybook brought to life in a R-rated world, with a darker edge than you’d expect for a movie starring a child.
What other critics are saying: Reviews are pretty mixed, but plenty dig it. Carlos Aguilar at Variety writes: “More of a conspicuous pastiche than a unique remixing of components, Dust Bunny eventually does commit to Aurora’s darkly wondrous proposition, and it’s undeniably eye-catching on its way there.” The Daily Beast’s Nick Schager adds: “Blending horror and humor, sweetness and scares, and fantasy and family melodrama, it shoots for the moon — and, more often than not, scores a bullseye.”
How to watch: Dust Bunny is now streaming on HBO Max.
But that’s not all…
Mark Wahlberg and Paul Walter Hauser in Balls Up. (Courtesy of Amazon Prime Video/Everett Collection)
(©MGM/Courtesy Everett Collection)
Balls Up: The latest comedy from one-half of the Farrelly brothers feels less like a film from the director of classic works such as There’s Something About Mary and Dumb and Dumber, and more like one from the guy who directed the particularly juvenile and underwhelming Ricky Stanicky. The premise is so stupid that it feels like it was conceived while reading a list of fun facts about the World Cup: Two marketers (Mark Wahlberg and Paul Walter Hauser) pitch a new condom concept in hopes of getting a partnership with the World Cup, since that event involves the biggest distribution of condoms. After a booze-fueled scandal on the pitch of a big game, they must outrun chaos to survive as every single person in Brazil wants them dead. It’s merely a vehicle for a bunch of dick jokes, only a few of which are funny, and it’s borderline offensive in its depiction of Brazilian culture. There are a few laughs here and there, but not enough to recommend it. Now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Night Patrol: The premise here is a good one, but the movie, sadly, isn’t. In the film, an L.A. cop (Jermaine Fowler) discovers a local task force is hiding a secret that puts the residents of his childhood neighborhood in danger. The ideas are there — it has a lot of thoughts about racism and policing — but they’re marred by the movie’s wonky execution, and it becomes typical genre fare after a while rather than the thought-provoking commentary it seems to want to be. Now streaming on Shudder.
That’s all for this week — we’ll see you next week at the movies!
Looking for more recs? Find your next watch on the Yahoo 100, our daily list of the most popular movies of the year.
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