[EXPRESSO] The End Of Oak Street (2026) | Amblin’s Dynostopia

When i first saw in theathers the trailer for The End Of Oak Street showcasing dinosaurs i was sold, even more as it is from director-screenwriter-producer David Robert Mitchell (It Follows, Under The Silver Lake).

So someone knew how to market the film, clearly not who decided, a week before release, to release a promo on social media with talking dogs (not even dinosaurs) doing a podcast, made with generative IA to promote the film… to whom i don’t know, because even the less online, average person will see that and just go see something else.

Congrats to somehow managing being clowned on by the marketing team for fuckin Paw Patrol The Dino Movie, when you have to sell people on a 80s themed scifi mystery where Anne Hathaway knives dinosaurs to defend her family.

The End Of Oak Street is indeed about this family living in a 80s suburban community, which one day wakes up to see their entire block now surrounded by prehistoric vegetation and overrun by dinosaurs, as if displaced by some cosmic anomaly, with them now trying to bend together and survive in this new reality….

On one hand, it’s another movie taking place in the 80s, and unsubtly grabbing unto an Amblin-style nostalgia for the era, and you might feel disappointed if you expected it to hold some crazy twist that turned this into more bonkers territory (or a different ending).

On the other hand, it is a FAR better dinosaur movie than all the Jurassic World films combined, there’s a lot of prehistoric creatures being represented, the family drama is actually as solid as the survival itself, you do care about these characters, and it exactly as long as it needs, not bothering to give overly long explanations that will never satisfy anyone anyway.

Here Comes The (Virtual) Boy Again

So because i’m a major league doofus, i actually preorder not the 20 bucks cardboard VR thingie to play the Virtual Boy on Switch/Switch 2, but the entire fuckin replica that costed me 80 bucks, because ultimately i’m a kindred soul to the protagonist of Shangri-La Frontier, we go hunting high and low for the kusoge, for the odd, for the grime undesired depths of the videogame scene.

Of course i’ve heard of the Virtual Boy, i’ve seen the AVGN episode, i’ve seen Nintendo itself take potshots at its failure too eventually in stuff like Tomodachi Life, but i was still curious, and there were some games i wanted to play on it proper, especially since this oddity never came out in Europe, so

I’ve played modern VR games occasionally at some arcades, so i was super curious to see for myself how the Virtual Boy measured up today via a big ass replica of the console itself, even if can’t load any games by itself and it’s an accessory needed to play via Switch or Switch 2, but sure as hell that beats me bothering to collect the original console and its library, i have to draw the line somewhere.

Gotta say, i was kinda impressed.

Kinda.

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[EXPRESSO] Send Help (2026) | Triangle of Sodness

Sam Raimi is back to cinemas with Send Help, which tells the tale of Linda Liddle.

Linda works as strategist for her company, and has been promised a vice-president role by the late CEO and father of the current one, Bradley, but she is shunned and humiliated by him when it becomes known he will put his incompetent friend, Donovan, in charge.

He still decides to invite her to a corporate flight as a gesture before axing her, but fate has is that the plane crashes, and only Linda and Bradley survive it, finding themselves stranded on a deserted island. Linda isn’t too fazed, as she also knewn a lot of survivalist tactics and skills (enough to try her hand at competing in a survival reality show), as even back in the office she was the actual employee holding the company together with their ability to actually get shit done, much to the disgust of the nepo baby that is Bradley.

The two end up having to work together, and put together their mutual hatred in order to survive and eventually get rescued…. or not.

While the plot it’s basically a mixture of familiar beats you’ve seen before, mostly Cast Away and stuff like Triangle Of Sadness, but mashed together very well, tackling the overdone “eat the rich” angle of late (alongside the obvious themes of workplace toxicity and corporate misoginy) but with a clever and funny script, many twists and some terrific performances by Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien.

It’s also so very a Raimi movie, full of his sensibilities, which include a lot of projectile vomiting, ropes of blood shooting everywhere (to name the tamer ones), and his comedic horror sensibilites are full on display and recognizable as ever, great to have him back in full form.

Recommended!

The Spooktacular Eight # 30: Zombie Ass: Toilet Of The Dead (2012)

Can’t believe we’re finally doing this, but after post-poning it for years and basically featuring every other Noburo Iguchi film, it’s time to go deeper into the septic tank with one of the lesser known films from the well known (among the expected circles) gonzo gorefest-pink film-tokusatsu extraordinarie director, his Zombie Ass: Toilet Of The Dead.

What a fuckin title. Can’t say you didn’t know what it was about when you walked in.

I would love to play the “what has this blog gone to?” bit more but i was this close to feature Monsturd in a previous Spooktacular Eight, but didn’t, not yet, hope this literal zombie shit fest will do as i also consider it kinda the “cut off” film for Iguchi, even though he didn’t actually stop making films like these, heck, the same year as Zombie Ass he also directed the aptly titled segment “Fart” for ABCs Of Death, and his last movie is 2023’s romance anthology Tales Of Bliss And Heresy.

So while his career didn’t die, i guess the foreign fan and specialized press interest around japanese horror gorefest with ludicrous premises, excessive displays and absurd special effects kinda petered out around that time, and i would assume this would be the case in Japan too, though that didn’t stop other directors to put out similar stuff like Bloody Delinquent Chainsaw Girls live action adaptation (which i didn’t know got two sequels in 2019, taking notes).

Enough foreplay, what is Zombie Ass: Toilet Of The Dead about?

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[EXPRESSO] Dangerous Animals (2025) | Three On A Sharkhook

New shark movie with a big budget, a widespread cinematic release and it’s not a Jason Staham trashfest romp, another gonzo shark movie about an Esper Shark (TM) or something done with lunch money-allowance budget?

What has the gone world to?

Apparantly something good and conceptually simple, i guess that’s why it took so long for someone to make a good shark movie that also plays the “Uno reverse” card on the concept without overcomplicating it or being outlandish.

Meaning that Dangerous Animals is about a serial killer that hides his murderous calling by posing as a shark cage experience activity for tourist in Australia (which fittingly all good modern shark movies seem to hail from), killing people and filming as he feeds them to the sharks.

His next victim is a surfer girl, Zephyr, living a nomadic sort of lifestyle, whom finds herself kidnapped by the killer in preparation for his macabre rituals…

it’s so simple that a shark movie like this hasn’t been made before, but on the flipside it’s actually pretty good, thanks to a good budget, very solid acting and good characters, with a resilient leading lady/final girl and a good psychotic villain that does have a humourous side that actually makes him more believable as he use it alongside some charm to better camouflage his true self, without going overboard and making him feel cartoony or excessive.

It’s also pretty gory without going into full splatter territory, going for a more realistic tone to the chases and attempts of his victims to escape his grasp, making for a very tense film that is less predictable than one would expect, yet very satisfying even when it hits the expected notes, one also basically devoid of filler, exactly as long as it needs.

Pretty good.

The Callisto Protocol PS4 [REVIEW] | Ape Espace

When a beloved new IP is run into the ground and compromised by EA, that tried to squeeze Call Of Duty money out of a horror franchise and even had microtransactions inserted in the last mainline title…. seeing the publisher basically give up and do nothing with it for years is frustrating, even more so when the finale was followed up by a DLC retconning the ending.

And the inevitable homicide by EA of Visceral Games, after the routine danse macabre of shuffling them into developing completely different games of a completely different genre, lamenting how the star shaped peg doesn’t fit into the durian shaped hole, was the cherry on the corpse sundae.

So of course this leaves a specific hole in the market for “spiritual sequels” to fill, and mind you, this was announced before EA announced their own remake of the first Dead Space.

And on paper, The Callisto Protocol sounded exactly what fans of the series like me wanted, a “fuck you” to the vampiric publisher that wasn’t serving an audience starved for that action-horror sci fi dish, done outside of their control, with even some of the original creators of the series involved.

This is the kind of underdog story that we wanna see, as apparently everyone hates EA, and only EA for some stupid reasons, but alas this is not quite what actually happened.

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