[EXPRESSO] Hope (2026) | In The Sleepy Little Town Of

Na Hong-jin (The Yellow Sea, The Chaser, The Wailing) is back with Hope, a massive action monster film that it’s actually best enjoyed by going to see it while knowing as little as possible about it, but it easy enough to keep spoiler free and the premise is actually fairly simple.

In the small village of Hope Harbour (situated nearby the Korean Demilitarized Zone), the police chief and his rookie deputy find themselves having to fend off a mysterious creature that has brutalized the livestock, is actively destroying the village and its people, while a hunting party in the woods find themselves stalked….

It doesn’t sound like much, yet there is more to it, as this is basically both a tribute and a mockery of the american action film, taking inspiration from Bong Joon-Ho’s The Host but also being somewhere tribute and parody of the 50s b-movie creature feature (there even the bumbling sheriff protagonist equivalent), with the characters being both cartoonish yet relatable in their incompetence, the director able to switch the tone on the fly and make the comedic bit not feel dissonant, to make intense action scenes Hollywood style then kinda “spoof” them at the same time.

It’s incredibly captivating and its turns more towards sci-fi, but as impressive as it is how it can handle multiple tones, how it builds to reveal not only the real scope and the stakes, but also how it actually manages to make its 2 hours and 40 minutes runtime a relative breeze, there’s always something happening, the action is incredible, and you always want more of everything.

My only gripe is that the CG for creatures can be underwhelming at times, but even with this, i highly recommend what is now one of the best films i’ve seen all years.

[EXPRESSO] Whalefall (2026) | Of Monstro And Men

Figures the best movie i see all week is the one that might sound like an Asylum turducken proposal, since it was marketed heavily on the premise of a guy scuba diving that not only sees a giant squid, but accidentally gets swalloved by a sperm whale that was hunting and already gobbled said squid, and is forced to try survive the inexpected Pinocchio style innerwhale exploration.

Sure you can word it to sound stupid and outrageous, but even without the squid it’s already a terrifying and novel premise for an underwater survival thriller, you really can’t get much more claustrophobic than the insides of a living creature, and the many moments of body horror it brings.

Yeah, there’s not too much to premise itself, that is gist, with the protagonist having just 1 hour of oxygen left to escape, but already the context makes it clear the themes underlining the spectacle of the survival itself, since the scuba diver, Jay, decides to go under in spite of everything else because he hopes to find the body of his estranged father, whom afflicted by cancer, decided to drown himself.

He wants to get closure due to the troubled relantionship he had with him even before the cancer, but in these moments of desperation, Jay recalls the many lessons his very stern father taught him (often teaching him the importance of the ocean and its creature), confronting his repressed feelings and coming to also understand – a bit more – why he was like that.

Not wholly original but its very effective, as the emotional core of the film sustains the intense, gripping and often disgusting survival, the few main characters are pretty well defined (and very well acted by Abrams and Brolin) and i feel is as long as needed.

Hidden Dragon and Crouching Tiger and Sengoku Zombie [MANGA REVIEW] | Warring States Undead (Undead)

Zombies. The horror comfort food, that if an apocalypse actually happened without them, people would somehow make them happen just to not have that Y2K style survival book and mental training for a Walking Dead roleplay go to waste.

After all, we stuck them even in Pride And Prejudice, we had them destroyed by Abraham Lincon, and Sankarea exists to ask questions we shouldn’t really ask.

So of course we were gonna have them mixed with historical fantasy, going basically the Onimusha route but during the Warring States era of Japan (as depicted in popular media like Samurai Warriors more than actual historical drama), specifically reenacting the legendary rivalry between Kenshin Uesugi and Shingen Takeda… in modern day.

Mugen Tenshou: Hidden Dragon and Crouching Tiger and Sengoku Zombie is indeed the manga that dares asks: what if Sengoku era zombie samurais happened today, with a darkness castle emerging out ot nowhere, undead warriors of old, and of course Oda Nobunaga emerges as the Demon King that had been planning this while lying in Hell for centhuries?

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[EXPRESSO] Other Mommy (2026) | Doppel Mutter

Know what, i can’t claim that the trailers for Other Mommy were misleading, this indeed the kind of slapdash, jump scare ridden thing you’d expect, boiling down to someone trying to make an entire horror movie about a screenshot of Other Mother from Coraline someone forwaded them.

Bela is a regular kid… well, aside the fact she is friends with an entity that lives in her house and she has come to call “Other Mommy”, because she looks like her actual mother.

The entity has had enough of just being “second banana”, so it manifests in increasingly dangerous fashion trying to sway the girl to her side…

In a way i was surprised because the movie doesn’t play any cheap trick of the “Unsorry Mommy” being just in the child’s imagination or not, this thing is real, tangible and will explode your brain into confetti, and there’s no half the movie predicated on the parents slowly realizing the entity is actually real.

… But that isn’t nearly enough to make this even mediocre, let’s not accept “things do happen” as an actual standard when there’s little to no plot, the characters are paper thin stereotypes, the jumpscares limp, most of the “weird morphing” fees like rejected Backrooms-esque material.

It’s never proper scary, though it’s hard to even feel any tension because not a single character reacts appropriately to anything that happens, they all just shrugh it all off, regardless.

There’s little to no logic (or depth) to almost anything, and frankly this feel like an untentional “supernatural entity” variation of the Pickle Rick episode.

It’s not boring per sé, nor is it “the worse thing ever”, it’s not, yet at just 93 minutes feels stretched, and it’s also not quite unintentionally hilarious, just a “slightly different than expected” kind of garbage.

[EXPRESSO] Onslaught (2026) | Die Dudermensch

On paper, this should be an easy win, even if it’s a bit weird A24 is distributing what is really a genre offering reminescent of 80s exploitation grindhouse action flicks like The Exterminator.

Onslaught is about Celeste, an US army sniper, whom has defacto retired into a parking lot in the New Mexico desert to deal with her PTSD, complicating her troubled family life.

That is, until a trio of genetically engineered super soldiers, created by a former Nazi scientist, escape from the secret experiment bases they were held in, killing everyone in their path, and eventually moving their systematic massacre to Celeste’s parking lot..

Apparently this is a continuation from Adam Wingard’s 2014 movie Guest, which i didnt’ see, and on its own, Onslaught, despit some stylistical apt choices and some good old school practical gore effects, doesn’t really live up to its own title, in every aspect it lacks the substance, it never displays or conveys the raw fury it promises, nor manages to properly develop some of its ideas.

Maybe it would be easier to accept the movie for what it is instead of what could have been…. if it didn’t deliberately AND aggressively built up the final “onslaught” to be some this thing you need to brace for, and frankly you really don’t, it’s not even that excessive.

Even the literal super soldaten are kinda of a letdown, i liked the idea of these being de facto militarized slasher villains… but that is really as far as it goes.

It’s entertaining, the action is fun, the characters mostly stock but okay, and it’s barely above 90 minutes, so it’s not boring and knows to keep things as long as they need to, but you’d wish the movie didn’t set itself up for disappointment as it did.

PO’ED: Definitive Edition PS4 [REVIEW] | Mein Soufflè!

I have played a few FPS in my days, not too many, but sure as hell i never played PO’ED, never even heard of the frigging thing until the AVGN episode about the 3DO, to be honest, as i never knew anyone growing up that had that thing (which i assume is the case for almost everyone else), and i never even stumbled upon the PS1 port.

So i was curious, realized that Nightdive did actually do a remaster in their KEX engine for this oscure mid 90s FPS, and i got during a PSN sale.

It just called to me, as the forgotten weird ass FPS where you play as a chef and use frying pan to kill alien ass monsters, i knew i had to play it.

The story is all explained in a letter text dump where the protagonist, a chef named Ox, writes to his mum how that sweet paying gig on a spaceship …didn’t go as planned, as aliens infiltrated the ship, killed all the mercs, so he’ll have to take on some fresh meat.

And he’s indeed – title drop – Pissed Off, as he writes in the few text scrolls/letters.

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[EXPRESSO] Heart Of The Beast (2026) | The Dog Stars

Managed to see an early screening (it comes out regularly on the 24^th here) of Heart Of The Beast, David Year latest, and i won’t lie, i didn’t go into this expecting much.

After all, this is exact movie the trailers made it seems, and the kind you could really predict beat for beat when you hear the premise: a retired wounded soldier, James Belmont, and his dog, Odin, a scarred mine detection dog with titanium teeth and a prostethic leg, are taking a hunting-camping trip in the forests of Alaska, and just chilling.

They meet J.K. Simmons playing an old gold prospector that also was relaxing in the woods, have a beer, but when the duo sets off the next day, they crash their plane, and will have to survive the wilderness as they try to reach a safe place, working together as always…

It’s exactly what you’d think it would be, but dispenses immediatly with the “did the dog die?” question, which is both preaching to the choir but also being fairly honest, as the movie doesn’t really pretend to be anything else, to its credit.

Yet, i won’t lie, despite being fairly slow, arguably a bit too slow paced, basically a bit of “think of the American military, won’t you?” propaganda, and predictable to a tee (as its emotional beats), it’s done surprisingly decent, thanks to Pitt’s performance (and Odin’s too), the direction sticking to its realistic survival premise with confidence, and unlike Liam Neelson, we don’t get just implication of wolf punch, we actually get to see the duo fight ‘em.

Plus, the final resolution trying to tug at your heartstrings in the expected way… actually is effective, i can’t deny that.

Nothing special or unforgettable, but Heart Of The Beast is a surprisingly decent film.

[EXPRESSO] Resident Evil (2026) | Rising Rookie

Is Capcom just gonna reboot RE for films every 5 years from now on?

Regardless, i feel we got very lucky this time, for the better, even if i did quite like Welcome To Raccoon City.

As it, they gambled by letting Zach Cregger (Weapons, Barbarian) direct and basically let him do whatever he wanted, but boy it paid off.

Instead of rehashing the storyline and characters of RE 1 and-or 2, this reboot has an original story and follows Bryan, a medical courier that is tasked to deliver a high risk item to the mountain town of Raccoon City, immediatly, but gets way more than he bargained for…

While there are some recognizable monsters from the series, this reboot takes many liberties with this as well, and it does for better, making something new instead of reharshing the old stuff, aside still doing some visual callbacks, it mostly makes its own identity, yet manages to evoke the games tone more faithfully than ever, as Creggers balances extremely well both tense scenes and comedic bits, stemming from genre savyness as well as the absurdity of it all for a protagonist that’s just…. a normal guy, giving a more realistic feel to a story that still over the top as a horror b-movie or videogame would be.

It’s a very funny movie that does indirectly celebrates its roots, but can also deliver some scary shit, some of the best jumpscares i’ve ever seen in a LONG time, alongside some really spectacular gore, some proper scary shit, very cool creature designs and a very likeable main character.

It’s a very good movie and so far the best one the series has ever got, “ironically” because it doesn’t shackle itself to treating the B-movie material of the games as some sort of Bible.

Sky Blue (2003) [REVIEW] | Cyberpunk Rain

I was gonna do a review of the new Ghost In The Shell anime series by Science Saru, but i’m gonna reserve a full lenght dissertation for something else, and while i’m feeling the upcoming Neuromancer TV series, that is dropping in January 2027.

So instead lets give a look to something else in the cyberpunk sphere, something that’s not often talked about and not even Japanese, with Moon-saeng Kim’s Sky Blue (AKA Wonderful Days), a 2003 South Korean animated film, which i’m fairly sure won’t ring any bell.

After all, i heard about it…. by not actually hearing about it, but instead discovered it while browsing online for cheap anime UK DVDs in a pre-Brexit situation, and one i kept stashed away in one of big ass disc cases for an occasion such as this.

I must say, maybe it is 20 years of aged hindsight, but the 2000s might have been a more interesting period for animation than most care to remember, because there were directors even in South Korea interested in adult animation and experimenting with the new technology…. to mixed results.

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[EXPRESSO] The Mortuary Assistant (2026) | Flat Possession Rate

Based on an indie horror game of the same name i’ve heard about but haven’t had the pleasure of playing yet, The Mortuary Assistant has a solid concept, with Rebecca, a mortician in training (with a past od drugs and alcoholism) that has graduated to assistant, being called in by her boss, Raymond, to do an unplanned night shift, with weird requests like embalming then cremating a corpse, but soon strange things start happening…

I’ll be honest, i was just expecting a lesser version of Autopsy Of Jane Doe, and i don’t know how much or if this rappresents the eponymous videogame, but i can sure recognize boring garbage when i see it.

It even starts off decently, but then constantly degrades, between boring flashbacks, tiresome hallucination scenes, or the demon tormenting… well, more dick around (often saying frankly laughable shit) to the protagonist, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear even when the plot stops for lore and-or exposition dumps, nor do we know why the entity doesn’t outright kill the downright stupid protagonist you won’t care about, as she keeps falling for the same obvious trap.

there’s no atmosphere, no tension, the acting is mediocre at the very, very best, everything (entities-monsters included) is just plopped there with no grace or gusto, the thin plot grinds to a halt so we can have lore and make it clear this was based on a videogame, stopping to find video tapes or solve a demonic puzzle by matching symbols or something.

It’s being professionally put together and sporting solid effectds doesn’t matter when it’s all so flat, stupid and boring, never actually scary, especially when its topped off with one hell of a non-ending that i’m not even sure was meant to sequelbait, but will just piss you off even more.