[EXPRESSO] Chainsaw Man The Movie: Reze’s Arc (2025) | I R I S O U T

I guess the thing now for shonen (or shonen-esque, as Chainsaw Man doesn’t quite fit the bill) anime films is to adapt an arc so it can bridge into the following TV seasons, because Demon Slayer did it.

Okay. Why not? I’ll take this over compilation films any day.

In case you aren’t familiar with the series, Chainsaw Man is about Denji, a homeless boy used and betrayed by the yakuza, whom becomes a human-devil hybrid that can sprout chainsaws from his body, after his dog, Pochita (actually the Chainsaw Devil) saves his life by fusing with a dying Denji.

He’s then recruited by Makima, commanding a special unit of Devil Hunters on behalf of the japanese government, which is tasked to kill devils that show up threatening the peace, and also search for the whereabouts of the incredibly powerful yet elusive Gun Devil.

In this specific case, the movie cover’s Reze story arc, with the first season finale seeing Denji confront Katana Man and his allies that were seeking revenge.

The first season did receive some backlash for the animation, but honestly i think MAPPA did a good job with that as well (even if some episodes did suddendly look like ass at times), so expectations were high, even more as it’s a pretty good adaptation of a hit series that didn’t just luck out with its timing, i’ll say that much.

The movie does have better, more consistent quality animation and the decision to adapt this arc pays off in terms of more cinematic flair to the insane action scenes, while also giving the needed time to introduce Reze and his relationship with Denji, it is her story, after all, as much as his.

Pretty good stuff, and the opening theme by Kenshi Yonezu is once again fire.

The Spooktacular Eight #29: The Beast With Five Fingers (1946)

Something else we never covered here in Spooktacular Eight (or the blog, if i remember correctly), the “killer hand subgenre” of horror.

Ok, “subgenre” is being very generous, “microgenre” is more correct, as there’s notmuch to cover, “Hand” from the Addams Family doesn’t count, so it’s mostly this (kinda, not really, for reasons i will explain), 1963’s The Crawling Hand, 1981’s The Hand and 1999’s Idle Hands.

No, ironically Manos doesn’t count either, so doesn’t the classic scene with Ash’s hand in Evil Dead 2, nor does more recent stuff like Talk To Me, despite a hand being relevant to the plot and not just a thing that happens in a random scene of the movie, or just a segment of an anthology like in Dr’s Terror House Of Horrors (1965).

But by that logic i shouldn’t count 1924’s Hands Of Orlac (of which this could be considered a sorta of remake, not the first anyway) or this movie either….but before that, plot.

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[EXPRESSO] After The Hunt (2025) | Woke Chungus Season

Luca Guadagnino’s new movie is out here as well, After The Hunt.

The plot sees a philosophy professor at Yale finding herself in a thorny situation when, close to receiving a professorship in the teaching subject, a student of hers confesses that the professor’s assistant raped her, but him denies the accusation and rebukes of the student also blatantly plagiarizing her thesis.

It’s a battle of optics-vs-ethics, academy drama and also a bout of pretending that the movie its actually trying to present the characters so you won’t be able to label anyone as “right” or “wrong”, as the script so obviously takes sides it’s almost funny in how paper thinly disguises what it actually thinks, like if we have high profile actors discussing philosophy it will have make movie and dialogue smart.

Even more intellectually insulting are the weak attempts to backpedal towards the end, with the rushed as hell epilogue set 4/5 years laters that feels like it realized last second this is all old hat, and not really worth rediscussing when the current situation is so much worse … not that the epilogue itself helps in anything but making the whole thing even more of a farce.

Also, it’s confusingly toothless for a Guadagnino directed film, that should be provocative and uncomfortable but feels comforting as in, this is reheating the #metoo talking points in a meandering, meaningless and way too late to the party fashion it’s almost “cute”.

If it wasn’t so goddamn boring and shallow, heck, i had my issues with Eddington but even that was more entertaining and aware of the themes and events of the recent past and how they factored in the current sociopolitical scenarios.

Some great performances mean little when the film feels engineered for fishing nominations more than anythin else.

The Spooktacular Eight #28: Suburban Sasquatch (2004)

Enough of Mark Polonia’s stuff, let’s go deeper into the homegrown cinema territory with a “classic” by David Wascavage, Suburban Sasquatch.

Sometimes you think you know a certain genre, then see shit like this or Fungicide that makes you realize, yes, we can go lower than an early Polonia Bros direct-to-video film made in the late 90s, there is a 10^th circle of movie hell… or heaven, depending on whom you ask.

If you ever wondered what those Donald Trump VS Bigfoot VS Nazi Shark fuckin movies would have looked like if they were made in the 90s, and were somehow worse than Curse Of Bigfoot… well, wonder no more, because while this was made in 2004, it looks like the first Feeders film or something like that, it’s that territory of shooting your own shit with pocket change (and some “locally sourced” weed as stand-in for salaries) as budget, with your friends as “actors” and location shooting meaning you most likely recorded the footage (“filmed” is too strong of a word) somewhere in some woods or field near your home, or inside a friends’ house.

This is HIGH amateur hour stuff, my fellows bad movie buffs, so amateur it hurts.

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[EXPRESSO] Eddington (2025) | Divide Schmivide

Ari Aster doing a COVID-19 crime western comedy thing?

Sign me in!

Set during the 2020 pandemic, we see the local sheriff (played by Joaquin Phoenix) of the small town of of Eddington, New Mexico, get spiffy against the local mayor (played by Pedro Pascal) for the mask mandate, and it escalates to the sheriff deciding to run for mayor himself, sabotage his rival on social media, while the climate gets worse due to events such as the George Floyd’s murder, etc.

I will respect that Aster doesn’t give a shit about making movies that unearth a recent, hugely divisive period of reality people would rather move on from, and yes, this is a cornucopia of deliberately unlikeable characters, from Q-anon pilled conspiracy theorists in-laws, hypocritical liberal youths into activism as long as there’s some pussy to gain from it, cult leaders, grifters, etc.

Problem is, it’s an unfocused mess which satirizes everything but does so in such a shallow and frankly unsatisfying manner, regurgitating stuff we already know and are still living through, with barely a plot to hold onto, something to actually build to, or characters that actually have any depth, feeling even more cartoonishly stupid than they’re meant to, and somehow able to make actors like Pascal and Phoenix come off as bad, which is sadly impressive.

It’s more frustrating than anything else, as the actual jokes that work are too few and far between for an almost 3 hours long movie, and while it picks up a little midway through, it borders on being an completely boring, unfunny movie.

It all feels like an uncomfortable but also flavourless remasticated portrait of 2020 and today’s America; plus, while i did suggest it might take some time to revaluate Beau Is Afraid…. i’m not so sure about Eddington.

[EXPRESSO] The Black Phone 2 (2025) | Nightmare Lake Camp Winter Massacre

The Black Phone 2 it’s a direct sequel, yes, but one to a movie with a definitive, unambigous ending, as Blumhouse figured it could order a sequel regardless since the first one was a critical and financial success, with most of the same cast and director too.

I guess why not since the Nightmare In Elm Street series has been MIA since 2010, so might as well turn a sequel that really didn’t need to exist into a replacement of sorts for that, with a dash of Friday The 13^th.

Yeah, it’s the MEGAN 2.0 kind of sequel, minus the fact that this is still a horror film, just a different one than the first.

At the end of the first movie, Finn did manage to kill the serial killer known as The Grabber and escape from his murder basement, becoming famous as the killer only survivor.

4 years after, Finn’s sister, Gwen, is suddendly getting dreams of getting phone calls from a black phone and seeing visions of 3 boys getting chased in a winter mountain camp called “Alpine Lake”, alongside ones of the deceased serial killer…

It’s actually good, they did manage to actually pull off this kind of sequel by working around what was done in the script for the first film (in this case by leveraging the supernatural aspect), managing to spun a follow up that might actually have been intended to exist all along, bring back the villain and have a solid atmosphere, good characters and some creepy shit.

It’s a bit longer than it needed to, the 80s filter it’s a bit excessive, but it also does enough to add its own flavor to the formula, and despite the concept it works, giving even more closure and being even more “sequel proof”. Hopefully.

the Midtober Post Of Pokemon, Halloween Movies releases and Stuff

So yeah, let’s do a “checkpoint” post.

Movies wise, most of the big or relevant releases here have been pushed for a Halloween or Halloween adjacent release, meaning it will all be crammed in 2 weeks and so far it has mostly been drought (aside from Ari Aster’s Eddington and the new Guadagnino film, After The Hunt), so it’s gonna be a mess to play catch up.

At least the Chainsaw Man film comes out a week before Halloween, where not only they decided to release the Toxic Avenger reboot (guess i’m gonna watch this one, after all), but the very same days also premiere here the new Luc Besson Dracula film (a weird proposal i must say), Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein and the new Lanthimos sci-fi comedy Bugonia.

Also, i have to get around to see Alice In Borderland Season 3, i meant to but still haven’t at the time of writing.

in terms of Switch 2 releases, i will be doing EXPRESSO reviews of Pokemon Legends ZA (which i got today because Nintendo itself broke D1) and later Hyrule Warriors: Age Of Imprisonment, at my own pace but since the full reviews will be late (especially late in the case of the new Hyrule Warriors game), these will come out as soon as possible.

Maybe i’ll whip up a hands on of that Bubsy 4D, since they released a sizeable demo on Steam and apparently it’s good, actually good, not just comparatively better than shit.

[EXPRESSO] Together (2025) | Unitology Romance

A couple in their 30s, Tim and Millie has decided to move to into the usual house in the middle of the woods, making a radical change in their lives, basically being very distant from their former friends, acquaintaces and workplaces, while also going through a rough patch.

As they try to adapt to their new home, they stumble upon a hole in the ground where they meet with a supernatural force that brings them together, literally, as their bodies become magnetized to each other, and their flesh starts fusing as one…

Together is directed and written by Michael Shanks, and if nothing else the main performances by Franco and Brie are more than good enough to help carry this movie through its flaws.

For example, it just feels it was haphazardly built upon the setpieces, with everything else around it feeling like crutches that exist only to provide some token structure, uneven pacing while the main basic theme of “codependency body horror” remains surface level from start to tend, the character’s motivations seems murky and contrived, confused as its messaging, to the point some might read the final twist as a trans allegory… though was probably never meant as such.

Plus, the main concept itself is very basic for the subgenre, the idea is decent enough (though it allegedly rips off the short “A Folded Ocean” by Ben Brewer) but the execution confusingly making wonder if the film itself it’s afraid to result uncomfortable….a body horror movie, mind you.

Yet, Together has a decent atmosphere, it’s decently directed, it’s technically quite sound too, and it’s not boring, it’s – again- decent, definitely not a bad debut film but just feels like it’s “close but no cigar”, with issues that a couple of rewrites (or more experience) could have fixed.

The Spooktacular Eight #27: Possessor (2020)

While unearthing gems or trash champions of yore is fun, i also want to cover more modern films in this rubric, and today we remedy that by reviewing a film that i feel somehow was ignored or put to the sides, more due to its unfortunate release timing than anything else.

I mean, if 2020 didn’t hit the world with a pandemic, maybe this and the Invisible Man remake/reboot would be better known, not that they’re “obscure” or were treated as pariahs by the press.

“This” being Possessor, a sci-fi horrot thriller by Brandon Cronenberg, yes, the son of body horror maestro David Cronenberg, who’s still making movies of varying quality, like the more recent The Shrouds (and the 2022 Crimes Of The Future movie that isn’t actually a remake of his older film of the same name).

The premise is immediatly gripping, set in a cyberpunk-ish future where an assassin, Tasya Vos, carries over her murderous assignment by possessing other people bodies, but finds herself fighting for control of her lastest host body, belonging to a man named Colin, the boyfriend of a wealthy CEO’s daughter, whom is also being forced at his data mining company in a menial role.

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The Spooktacular Eight #25: Vampire Circus (1972)

Is it?

Tis time to feature something from the ol’ Hammer Films catalogue, indeed.

Something vampire related but also not from their beloved Dracula series.

And i believe this is it, a fairly forgotten entry in their catalogue, Vampire Circus from 1972, directed by Robert Young, whom also worked on Hammer House Of Horrors but wasn’t a mainstay director for Hammer like Terence Fisher or John Gilling, mostly focused on working for TV, and is now mostly remembered for directing most of the highly regarded episodes of Robin Of Sherwood.

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