Hello and welcome to the Geeky Brummie Film Roundup, bringing you all the week’s biggest cinema releases and talking through why you should be excited for them. After last week’s bumper crop of new films, this one is pretty quiet – but the one major release does make a pretty loud noise…
Usual disclaimer: unless otherwise stated, I haven’t seen these movies yet so all of my opinions are based on trailers, early reviews and other rumours and buzz.
Scream 7
While slasher films famously generate a lot of sequels, there are very few franchises that can still claim to be a blockbuster release on their seventh outing. Halloween H20 and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare have developed a bit of a cult following since their releases but weren’t huge box office successes, while Friday the 13th: The New Blood has sunk into oblivion. The Scream series has managed to keep itself alive through carefully-crafted callbacks to its earlier films and a regularly updated meta commentary on the state of the horror genre, and Scream 7 seems quite happy to stick with that formula.
The film follows Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott, the first film’s final girl, now married with a teenage daughter of her own (Isabel May). A new Ghostface killer appears on the scene, claiming to know Sidney from her youth and threatening the safety of her and her daughter. With help from Courtney Cox’s Gale Weathers (the only character to appear in all seven movies), Sidney sets out to unmask her latest psycho stalker. Also returning to the cast are Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown as Chad and Mindy, the niece and nephew of the original film’s Randy Meeks, who appeared in the last two entries. Prescott’s return is a welcome one after she missed the last film due to pay disputes, although the controversial non-casting this time comes in the form of Melisa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, who played the leads in Screams 5 and 6. Barrera was fired from the franchise for posting pro-Palestine tweets during the recent Gaza conflict, which the producers claimed were antisemitic, while Ortega reportedly left in solidarity with Barrera.
Neve Campbell has been playing Sidney for the last three decades now (try not to think too hard about that…) and by this point she’ll have absolutely no problem settling back into the role. The bigger challenge for the franchise now will be to find a way to keep the Ghostface killings, and the identity of the killer, as exciting and twisty as the previous entries. So far this one is getting mixed reviews, with praise generally for the tension-building in the action scenes, but a lot of reviewers expressing disappointment at the final unmasking. Still, that won’t stop fans of the franchise from turning up for the latest episode, because, you know, we do like scary movies…
- Scream 7 on IMDB
- Scream 7 on Rotten Tomatoes
Sirât
A Spanish film set in the Moroccan deserts, Sirât follows a father and son searching for their missing daughter/sister. Knowing that she was last seen at a rave, they follow her trail from one trippy, sweaty party to another, travelling with a colourful group of ravers and trying not to lose their minds along the way.
This has been nominated for two Oscars, for Best International Film and Best Sound. It is getting some incredible reviews (currently sitting at 92% on Rotten Tomatoes) with the consensus being that although this is not a comfortable watch, it is a unique and spectacularly sensory piece of cinema that will mess with your head. The endless dusty desert looks stunning, and the pulsing music evokes the party setting whilst also upping the tension.
I don’t know much else about the plot, as many of the reviews have been quite guarded about what exactly to expect, but this looks like cinema at its most cinematic. Definitely try to catch it if you can.
- Sirât on IMDB
- Sirât on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
Sirât is definitely the better film, but who doesn’t love a scary movie? My pick this week is Scream 7.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- The Secret Agent
- Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die – An entertaining yarn about the perils of AI, interspersed with flashbacks that play out like mini episodes of Black Mirror, this has Sam Rockwell on top form and a great supporting cast (especially Juno Temple and Haley Lu Richardson). There is a lot going on and some elements are more satisfying than others, but it does a good job of satirising our increasing reliance on tech while also making fun of the ridiculousness of AI art.
- Wasteman
Trailer of the Week
As a sequel to a fun but forgettable adaptation of a beat ’em up videogame, Mortal Kombat II has its work cut out. The curse of the videogame adaptation has been well and truly broken now, thanks largely to TV series such as Arcane, Fallout and The Last of Us, but beat ’em ups are particularly challenging to get right for long form storytelling. Any plot in the games is essentially just a thin excuse to get two of the characters punching each other in an arena. The 2021 Mortal Kombat film, and by the looks of this latest trailer its sequel even moreso, have tackled that problem head on by simply embracing it – other than a bit of backstory to introduce us to the characters, all the story is designed to set up some epic, well choreographed duels in colourful fantasy settings. And frankly what more could you want from this franchise? All the classic characters from the last film are returning, including Ludi Lin’s Liu Kang, Jessica McNamee’s Sonya Blade and Hiroyuki Sanada’s Scorpion. But the big new draw, as the trailer heavily leans into, is Karl “Effing Diabolical” Urban as fan favourite Johnny Cage, an action movie star with no real combat (kombat?) experience but a good knack for a nifty backflip. Urban is perfect casting, and the film has clearly been made for fans of the games – which is exactly what any good videogame adaptation should do. The film is out in the States on 8 May, but it won’t GET OVER HERE until a week later on 15 May.
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