The Dublin Critic

There’s a version of Wuthering Heights that could absolutely work as a bold reinterpretation. The novel has been adapted so many times that strict loyalty to the source isn’t really the issue anymore. The problem with this version isn’t that it changes things — it’s that it smooths everything out until there’s almost nothing left to hold onto. What should feel raw, cruel, and emotionally volatile ends up looking polished and strangely safe.

Emerald Fennell clearly approaches the material as a doomed romance, leaning heavily into atmosphere and sensuality. On paper, that sounds like a valid direction. But the film repeatedly mistakes aesthetic for emotional depth. The story of Cathy and Heathcliff works because it’s uncomfortable — their connection is obsessive, destructive, and often deeply unpleasant. Here, that ugliness is softened into something closer to a tragic love story, which drains the narrative of the tension that makes it compelling in the first place.

Visually, the film is undeniably striking. The production design is lush, the costumes are immaculate, and every frame looks carefully constructed to be admired. But after a while, the beauty starts to feel like a distraction rather than an enhancement. Scenes that should feel chaotic or emotionally dangerous are framed so carefully that they lose their edge. Even moments that hint at cruelty or darkness are quickly wrapped in soft lighting and melancholy music, as if the film is afraid to sit with discomfort.

The performances don’t quite bridge that gap either. Both leads are watchable, but they never feel truly unhinged or emotionally reckless. The script gives them plenty of opportunities to look intense, but very few moments where they’re allowed to become messy or unpredictable. Without that sense of volatility, the central relationship never fully convinces as something destructive enough to ruin lives.

What’s most frustrating is that the film keeps flirting with something sharper. There are occasional flashes of camp, hints of cruelty, and moments where the tone almost slips into something more daring. But each time it pulls back, choosing elegance over impact. The result is a film that feels like it wants to be provocative without ever risking genuine emotional ugliness.

In the end, Wuthering Heights is beautiful but strangely empty. It’s a film that looks like it should hurt more than it does — all atmosphere, very little bite.

★☆☆☆☆

Park Chan-wook really said what if late-stage capitalism was a Looney Tunes episode but make it existential.

No Other Choice is viciously funny in a way that makes you feel slightly complicit for laughing. A man loses his job and instead of rethinking his life, he decides the problem is… everyone else. What unfolds is less a descent into madness and more a petty, methodical tantrum against the idea of downward mobility. The horror isn’t the violence. It’s how understandable his pride is.

Park shoots corporate humiliation like it’s grand opera. Glass offices feel like execution chambers. Every polite smile hides a blade. The precision here is ridiculous — those dissolves alone deserve their own credit line — but it never feels cold. It’s furious. It’s wounded. It knows exactly how absurd it all is.

Lee Byung-hun plays Man-su like a man clinging to a version of himself that no longer exists. He’s pathetic, dangerous, delusional — and somehow still recognisable. That’s the sting. This isn’t a poverty story. It’s about status. About self-worth welded to employment. About how quickly “I’ve got it all” becomes “Off with his head.”

It’s probably Park’s most openly satirical film in years, but the joke keeps curdling. The further it goes, the clearer it becomes that the system doesn’t need villains — it just needs people terrified of slipping a rung down the ladder.

Darkly hilarious. Uncomfortable. Surgically precise. Another masterclass from a director who makes everyone else look like they’re jogging behind him.

★★★★

There is something deeply reassuring about Send Help being this vicious, this playful, and this unapologetically cruel. In an era where studio horror often arrives pre-sanded and franchise-ready, Sam Raimi’s return to an original, R-rated survival thriller feels like a small act of rebellion. The film takes a brutally simple premise and worries it like a bone, extracting tension, humour, and genuine discomfort from every escalating interaction.

Stranded together in a hostile environment, the film hinges almost entirely on the shifting power dynamic between its two leads. What begins as a familiar survival setup quickly mutates into a psychological tug-of-war, where gender, authority, resentment, and fear are weaponised as effectively as any physical tool. Raimi understands that survival horror works best when cooperation is poisoned, and Send Help thrives on that toxicity. Alliances form, fracture, and reform in increasingly ugly ways, each turn more revealing than the last.

Visually, Raimi is in full command. The camera is restless, invasive, and mischievous, constantly reminding you who’s in charge. His trademark kineticism turns physical suffering into something queasily comic, allowing the film to oscillate between slapstick and genuine dread without ever fully settling into one mode. The violence is nasty but purposeful, lingering just long enough to make you laugh and then immediately regret it.

What elevates Send Help beyond genre exercise is its commitment to character degradation. Both leads are asked to become smaller, meaner, and more feral as the film progresses, and the performances fully commit to that descent. There’s an uncomfortable pleasure in watching civility erode, replaced by survival instincts that feel embarrassingly human.

It’s not subtle, and it doesn’t want to be. Send Help is loud, sweaty, and frequently unpleasant, but it’s also sharply constructed and confident in its ugliness. Raimi proves once again that few filmmakers are better at making cruelty entertaining — and making you question why you’re enjoying it so much.

★★★★☆

There’s a quiet confidence to Hamnet that immediately sets it apart from the usual literary adaptations. Rather than leaning on Shakespearean legacy or overt emotional manipulation, the film chooses something far riskier: restraint. Chloé Zhao approaches Maggie O’Farrell’s novel not as a historical drama to be decoded, but as an emotional landscape to be inhabited, where grief is not announced but slowly settles into every frame.

At its core, Hamnet is less concerned with the death of a child than with the aftershocks of that loss. The film understands grief as something nonlinear and isolating, a force that reshapes relationships, time, and even memory itself. Zhao’s direction often drifts into abstraction, privileging mood and physical sensation over plot progression, but this choice largely pays off. The film breathes. It allows moments to linger, trusting the audience to sit with discomfort rather than rushing toward catharsis.

Jessie Buckley delivers a performance of remarkable emotional precision. Her portrayal of Agnes is raw without being demonstrative, grounded in physicality and silence as much as dialogue. Buckley captures the strange duality of grief — the way it can feel both numbing and violently present — and anchors the film whenever it risks floating too far into impressionism. Paul Mescal, as William Shakespeare, is equally effective in a more restrained role, conveying a tenderness that feels lived-in rather than performative. Together, they create a marriage defined not by grand gestures but by distance, misunderstanding, and the quiet erosion that loss brings.

Visually, Hamnet is often stunning. Zhao’s naturalistic style, paired with soft lighting and pastoral imagery, creates a world that feels tactile and intimate, though at times the aesthetic threatens to overwhelm the emotional clarity. There are stretches where the film’s symbolic impulses feel slightly undercooked, drifting just shy of self-indulgence. Still, even in its weakest moments, Hamnet never feels insincere.

What ultimately makes the film resonate is its refusal to offer easy meaning. It doesn’t frame grief as something to be overcome or resolved, nor does it romanticise suffering in the name of art. Instead, Hamnet sits in the space between love and loss, creation and destruction, reminding us that the act of making something beautiful often comes at an immeasurable cost.

It’s a film that lingers rather than devastates — haunting, imperfect, and quietly powerful.

★★★★

What’s most striking about 28 Years Later isn’t how it tries to scare you, but how thoroughly it immerses you in the feeling of living inside the apocalypse. This is no longer a franchise interested purely in adrenaline or shock value. Instead, it has evolved into something more reflective and, oddly, more human — a continuation that feels less like a sequel chasing relevance and more like a series confidently growing into itself.

Where 28 Days Later remains one of the most viscerally terrifying zombie films ever made, and 28 Weeks Later leaned into spectacle and scale, 28 Years Later shifts its focus again. Fear is still present, but it’s no longer the driving force. The horror here is ambient — the constant weight of survival, the psychological exhaustion of existing in a world that never lets you forget what it’s become. You’re not just watching characters navigate danger; you’re sitting with them inside it.

What makes this chapter especially compelling is how willing it is to wrestle with larger ideas. Questions of faith, purpose, and belief quietly creep into the narrative, reframing the apocalypse as more than a physical threat. Survival alone is no longer enough. The film is interested in why people keep going, what they cling to, and how meaning is constructed when the world that once provided it has collapsed. These ideas never feel like empty symbolism either — they’re embedded directly into character choices and the structure of the story.

That ambition does come at a cost. The film is messy in places, occasionally overwhelming in how much it wants to explore. It doesn’t always land with the precision of its predecessor, and there are moments where its audacity threatens to tip into excess. But there’s something admirable about how unapologetically it swings for something larger. This isn’t a franchise content to repeat itself or coast on nostalgia; it’s actively trying to push its boundaries.

Importantly, 28 Years Later never loses sight of its brutality. The violence still hits hard, the world remains unforgiving, and the sense of danger never fully dissipates. Yet it’s now balanced by a deeper emotional and philosophical undercurrent that lingers long after individual scenes fade.

In the end, this isn’t the most immediately terrifying entry in the series, but it may be the most haunting. It trades raw panic for reflection, jump scares for existential unease. Watching it feels less like enduring an onslaught and more like inhabiting a broken world that refuses to let you look away. As a continuation, it’s bold, strange, and deeply engaging — proof that this franchise isn’t just surviving, but evolving.

★★★★☆

The House Made is a strange watch because it’s constantly hovering between being genuinely bad and oddly entertaining. It’s the kind of film where the script feels like it was assembled at the last minute, the music choices are baffling enough to pull you out of scenes entirely, and yet… you’re still having a decent time. Not because it’s good, but because it keeps tripping over itself in ways that are hard to ignore.

The biggest issue is the writing. The dialogue lurches between trying to sound serious and accidentally becoming comedic, often within the same scene. Emotional beats arrive either too early or far too late, and the pacing never quite lines up with what the film wants you to feel. There’s a solid thriller buried somewhere in here, but it’s smothered by awkward exposition and a refusal to commit to a clear tone.

That said, a lot of the cast is doing surprisingly solid work. Several performances feel grounded and convincing, even when the material doesn’t deserve the effort. Unfortunately, that consistency isn’t universal. One or two performances stick out in the worst way, clashing with the rest of the ensemble and making scenes feel unintentionally funny. It’s frustrating because you can sense that, with a different approach, this could have been something sharper and more cohesive.

Visually, the film is polished but bland. Everything looks a little too clean, a little too composed, especially for a story that’s meant to feel tense and unsettling. The soundtrack doesn’t help either — needle drops arrive with no subtlety, often undercutting moments that should have landed with weight. Instead of heightening the atmosphere, the music repeatedly pulls focus, turning tension into distraction.

What saves The House Made from being a total slog is its unpredictability. There are enough twists, odd character choices, and tonal misfires to keep it engaging in a “what is this movie doing now?” kind of way. Watching it in a crowded cinema helps too — moments that clearly weren’t meant to be funny end up getting laughs, and that shared experience adds to the enjoyment.

In the end, The House Made isn’t good, but it’s rarely dull. It never becomes the trashy camp thriller it flirts with, nor the serious drama it pretends to be, but it sits awkwardly in between. A mess, occasionally entertaining, and far more enjoyable than it probably should be — just don’t expect it to make much sense when you think back on it.

★★☆☆☆

Marty Supreme starts out like it’s about to be a familiar story. A sports movie, an underdog, a rise-and-fall arc you think you already know. That illusion lasts about half an hour. Then the film mutates — louder, stranger, funnier, and far more uncomfortable than expected — until it becomes something closer to a panic attack set to a sprint. By the time it hits its final act, it’s operating on pure adrenaline.

Josh Safdie directs this like someone who refuses to let the film settle for even a second. The pacing is relentless, scenes bleeding into each other with a sense of desperation that feels intentional rather than chaotic. This isn’t just a movie about ambition — it feels ambitious. It’s sweaty, abrasive, and constantly on the brink of collapse, which makes it thrilling to watch. The humour is sharp and often absurd, but it’s never there just to relieve tension. It’s part of the tension.

Timothée Chalamet gives the kind of performance people talk about for years. He’s completely unhinged in the best way — driven, charming, delusional, and heartbreakingly sincere all at once. Marty is a character powered by belief, and Chalamet sells that belief so hard it becomes infectious. You understand why people follow him, why they root for him, and why they eventually recoil. It’s a performance built on momentum, and it never lets up.

The film’s supporting cast only adds to the sense that this world is bursting at the seams. Every character feels like they’re running their own race, chasing something just out of reach. Safdie fills the film with noise, bodies, and motion, but never loses sight of the emotional core. Beneath all the chaos is a real sadness — a question about what happens when ambition becomes identity, and what’s left when the dream starts to crack.

Visually, Marty Supreme is aggressive and alive. The camera stays close, the edits are sharp, and the score drives everything forward like a pulse. It’s exhausting in the best way. By the time the final scene hits, the film does something unexpected: it slows down just enough to let the weight of everything sink in. It’s emotional, even moving, without losing its edge.

Marty Supreme is messy, exhilarating, and deeply alive. A film about chasing greatness that understands the cost of that chase — and still dares you to run anyway.

★★★★★

Yorgos Lanthimos has always had a talent for making the absurd feel uncomfortably familiar, but Bugonia might be the closest he’s come to holding up a mirror and laughing at what he sees. It’s a conspiracy satire wrapped inside a kidnapping thriller wrapped inside pure chaos — and somehow, it works beautifully. This is Lanthimos at his funniest, wildest, and most deliberately unhinged.

The film follows two conspiracy-obsessed believers who become convinced that a powerful tech CEO (Emma Stone) is part of a secret elite destroying the world. Their solution? Kidnap her and demand the truth. What starts as a deranged plan quickly turns into something stranger and more revealing, leaning into the ways paranoia grows, mutates, and fills whatever gaps reality can’t neatly explain.

What makes Bugonia so effective isn’t just its premise, but its timing. Lanthimos taps directly into modern conspiratorial thinking — the desperation to make sense of impossible problems, the anger toward institutions, the comfort people find in even the wildest explanations. It’s funny, yes, but the laughs come with a sting. The film isn’t mocking belief so much as exploring how pain, grief, and frustration can push people toward ideas that feel safer than the truth.

Emma Stone is phenomenal here, shifting between icy confidence and barely contained panic with the ease of someone who knows exactly how absurd her situation is. Jesse Plemons delivers one of his strangest and most compelling performances yet, equal parts intimidating, pathetic, and oddly sympathetic. Together, they anchor the chaos with something resembling humanity, even as the world around them spirals.

The film is also visually striking. Robbie Ryan’s cinematography gives Bugonia an almost candy-coloured brightness that clashes beautifully with its darker themes. Everything looks slightly too sharp, too clean, too staged — a perfect aesthetic for characters who are constantly rewriting their own reality.

If the movie falters at all, it’s in the middle stretch, where the story briefly loses momentum as it shifts perspective. But even there, the ideas are strong enough to keep you hooked, and once the film locks back into place, it becomes something genuinely thrilling. The final act is bizarre, bold, and unexpectedly moving, pure Lanthimos, and some of his best work in years.

Bugonia is hilarious, unsettling, and painfully timely. A satire that knows exactly what it’s skewering, but never forgets the people caught inside the madness. A near-masterpiece from a director who’s never been afraid to be strange — and never been better at it.

★★★★½

Zach Cregger’s Weapons is the kind of horror movie that shouldn’t work as well as it does. It’s sprawling, ambitious and chaotic in a way that feels almost reckless, but underneath all that noise is a film that knows exactly what it’s doing. What begins as a story about a tragedy in a quiet suburban town turns into something much bigger, darker and surprisingly emotional.

The film opens with an unforgettable image: an entire class of children walking out of their homes in the middle of the night and disappearing into the dark. From there, Weapons spreads out like a cracked mirror, each shard showing a different perspective of a community breaking apart. Cregger builds the story through these disconnected lives, shifting tones and points of view, forcing the audience to piece together what’s really going on. It’s ambitious, sometimes messy, but never boring.

Julia Garner leads the ensemble as Justine, a teacher carrying the guilt and suspicion that come after the disappearance of her students. Josh Brolin plays Archer, a grieving father who channels his pain into anger and Austin Abrams quietly steals the film as a young man on the fringes of it all. Their stories weave together in strange and unexpected ways, forming something that feels more like a mosaic than a straightforward mystery.

What’s most impressive is how Weapons balances tone. One moment it’s bleak and tragic and the next it’s genuinely funny. Cregger finds absurdity in pain without ever mocking it, showing how people stumble through grief and fear in ways that are sometimes ugly, sometimes human. The film’s structure, fragmented, looping, and non-linear, shouldn’t hold together but it does. Every thread ties back to the same core question: how much hurt can a community bury before it explodes?

Visually, the film is stunning. The eerie suburban stillness, the washed-out daylight, the way violence cuts through calm, all of it lingers. The score, while understated, adds to that sense of dread that never fully lets go.

Weapons is ambitious horror done right. It’s not perfect, but bold, alive and unafraid to get weird. It’s about violence, grief and the impossible urge to make sense of either.

★★★★½

Some films mistake silence for substance, and After the Hunt is one of them. It’s pretentious to the point of parody, a movie so convinced of its own brilliance that it forgets to actually say anything. Luca Guadagnino dresses it up with moody lighting, cryptic dialogue and long stretches of people staring at each other, but beneath the surface there’s nothing there.

On paper, it sounds rich – questions of power, guilt and truth set against an academic backdrop. In practice, it’s a blur of half-formed ideas that never connect. Every scene feels like a lecture delivered in a language you almost understand, just enough to know you’re missing the point. Guadagnino’s films usually pulse with feeling such as Call Me by Your Name, Bones and All, but this one feels embalmed, trapped under the weight of its own seriousness.

The cast can’t be blamed. Julia Roberts gives her best effort with a script that constantly undercuts her. Michael Fassbender looks like he’s trying to find a character somewhere between the monologues. Even Andrew Garfield, who can usually make anything feel alive, seems lost in the fog. Their performances aren’t bad; they’re just stranded — actors searching for meaning that isn’t there.

There are moments, brief flashes, where you can see what Guadagnino might have been reaching for: a sharp dissection of academic elitism, moral decay or personal accountability. But these moments disappear as quickly as they arrive, buried under dialogue so heavy it collapses on itself. The pacing doesn’t help, scenes drag on long after they’ve said what little they have to say.

Visually, it’s stunning. The cinematography is deliberate and polished, the colour palette rich with autumnal golds and cool blues. But a beautiful frame can’t fix a hollow story. The Reznor & Ross score, usually a highlight in any film, somehow adds to the problem, a constant reminder that the film is trying to be profound rather than actually being it.

After the Hunt isn’t a disaster in the fun way. It’s the worse kind of bad, self-important, joyless and empty. A movie that looks like art but feels like homework. Style pretending to be substance and failing miserably.

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆