[EXPRESSO] Backrooms (2026) | Liminal Architects

I’ll come clean, i’ve heard of this being another creepypasta phenomenon (apparently spurred at random by a single picture never meant to be more than that)… so i immediatly lost interest, as these come off as just another horror frenzy whipped up to make some quick buck in a way or another, so imagine my confusion when i saw the A24 logo for the Backrooms movie trailer.

I guess Ari Aster movies lose more money than they make nowadays, and for the record i never saw the titular web series by Kane Parson, which here directs and writes this film adaptation, nor i will be lambasting Backrooms The Movie because it’s from a Youtube turned horror filmaker, because it’s unfair, and – as i’ve noted before – this pipeline mostly seems to be working out decent or good work, weirdly enough.

The plot is set in the 90s, about Clark, a frustrated man that would like to pursue his dream career as an architect, but he’s stuck running an unsuccessful furniture store, and one day, while checking the electric grid for malfunctions, finds a hidden door in the basement room of the store, leading to a weird labyrynth resembling desolated office spaces, full of weird geometry and irregularly placed objects, that seems to span and lead into a seemingly infinite number or rooms….

Honestly, while you can tell this was spun from the “SCP-creepypasta-analog horror” side of internet trends, the Backrooms film does fare better than i expected.

It’s nothing special, again, and this is basically a “liminal space” iteration of the found footage formula, arguably the more normal film A24 ever distributed, but the plot has some surprises, the sound design is top notch, acting is good, it is entertaining, visually captivating and avoids overexplaining itself into absolute banality.

Decent.

[EXPRESSO] Passenger (2026) | Roadside Hitchin’

I was a bit concerned when i saw Passenger pushed by very little marketing even here, given it’s the new horror movie from respected director Andrè Øvredral (Trollhunter, The Autopsy Of Jane Doe, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, The Last Voyage Of The Demeter).

The plot involves a couple that has to leave their house and decide to start living on the road, driving their little caravan around the US, but when they stop one night to try and help the victim of some gruesome road accident, it turns out they involutarily picked up a sinister entity, dubbed by early travelers as the “Passenger”…

The premise isn’t bad at all, and i’m glad we have Øvredral directing, because he can actually do effective jumpscares, the photography is good, the characters are decent, the acting is pretty solid too, but Passenger as a whole isn’t even bad, it’s just disappointing, especially coming from a director that has already proved he can do better than this.

most of the script has either half baked ideas or just rehashes very generic horror elements, which is especially true of the “Passenger” itself, this derivative, generic ass looking and acting demon motherfucker, and even with the lore being an American roadside folklore mythology affair, it then pivots into religious territory… which doesn’t really fit.

There are some nice ideas like them using the cinema projector to visualize the entity, but the rules of the entity seems vague at best, often ignored anyway, the setpieces don’t really build upon each other, and overall the movie just doesn’t do anything original, interesting or that hasn’t been done WAY better before.

Passenger isn’t terrible or anything, it’s watchable, but also incredibly disappointing and frustrating, because you can see the better movie this could have been.

[EXPRESSO] Obsession (2025) | Yandere Simulator USA

Apparently there is a youtuber to horror filmakers pipeline/trend and it seems to be panning out fairly well (i haven’t seen Iron Lung yet), even if i never even heard of Curry Barker before, and to be frank i didn’t knew that going into the film, at all, nor it matters much to me.

Set in some modern pre-COVID american small town, Obsession tells the story of “Bear”, a very typical shy boy that works in a music store had a crush on one of his coworkers, Nikki, for a while, but couldn’t muster up the courage to confess even when he could, so he instead uses a “willow wish stick” novelty toy he originally bought on a whim to wish for her love absolute.

But like in every classic “be careful what you wish for” kind of story, Bear gets more than he bargained out of cracking that novelty item, as Nikki’s new sudden behaviour has her go to increasingly creepy, delirious, erratic and violent ways, basically going for that infamous “american yandere” experience, a suburbian flavour of Yuno Gasai for the yanks.

And while it’s funnier than you might expect, it still works tremendously off its simple and apparently “thin” premise, as it commits to it without resorting to cheap jumpscares or trying to destroy your eadrums with sudden volume increase and screaming or shit like that, it builds this tension between Bear and “Nikki”, as the guy is also – for lack of a better word – obsessed to get her affection one way or the other that he’s willing to simply go along with whatever insane or horrific event is thrown is way, despite his fear of Nikki growing stronger every day.

It’s a very good modern take on a very familiar formula, in short.

Recommended.

[EXPRESSO] Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026) | Sacrifice Unto Sebek

As the title implies, this isn’t really a remake of the classic 1932 Universal film, nor a reboot of the 1999 Frasier starring film (which is actually coming in a couple years, because we live in the past permanently in the future), but more of a new retelling of the mummy and its mythology.

Set in modern days, we have a family that – while briefly living in Cairo – suffers the disappearance of the youngest daughter, Katie, by a mysterious woman.

8 years later, the family is still heartbroken but had to somewhat moved on, until they receive the news from Egyptian authorities of Katie being found in a 3000 years old sarcophagus, which itself somehow survived a deadly plane crash.

Even stranger, Katie is found, heavily scarred, wounded, in a catatonic state but alive, so she is brought back into the family, but soon her behaviour becomes even more worrying and strange events afflict the family…

Lee Cronin’s take on the classic monster has some nice ideas to make it distinct and not just a rehash of the old mummy myth, modernizing with a touch of folk horror and some creepy ambience, but it’s not fully realized as it relies a bit too much on other horror cliches, to the point it basically pivots to be just another exorcism film with an Egyptian flavor topping.

Props for it actually taking place a lot in Egypt and involve actively egyptian characters (instead of just having scenes in Cairo at the beginning), plus there is some good gore, but it never becomes properly scary, nor it manages to escape some overdone trapping with exorcism/possession films, the good acting helps as the characters ain’t much more than functional, and the script could have used some trimming, as the runtime feels bloated.

The Mummy Resurrection (2022) [REVIEW] | Budget Mummies

Since we’re getting a new Mummy movie meant as a stand-alone thing unrelated to the old, forsaken Dark Universe, i’ve figured instead of reviewing again 2017’s The Mummy and boring myself to tears, i might be more interesting to review a random mummy themed horror film i found new on Amazon for 4 bucks and bought sight unseen.

No prior research, just unwrapped the thing from my library and saw it, for a change.

The result of this dice throw is both not good, but also kinda interesting and not as bad as i would have assumed.

Still bad, but the more interesting kind of “bad”.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] Ready Or Not 2: Here They Come (2026) | Competitive Shemhamforash-ing

The first Ready Or Not was a refreshing modern twist on the classic formula first pioneered by The Most Dangerous Game, as in, fiv-i mean seven years ago the modern “eat the rich” subgenre of horror wasn’t yet saturated to exhaustion, and of crap like HIM (not the band) or Blink Twice.

So making a sequel isn’t necessarily a good idea, especially since the approach is quite simple, as it double downs with more of everything, taking place immediatly after the ending of the first one, with Grace’s survival setting in motion a bigger ritual that involves the other elite families reunited to take part in a manhunt to obtain a seal of ultimate power, again against Grace, and her estranged sister that gets forcedly roped into this satanic mess.

I mean, to make my point, this released the same month as They Will Kill You, which is also an action horror comedy about a devil worshipping cult made of powerful rich assholes and the protagonist is in this mess because of her sister, though the context isn’t the same, the style is far more grindhouse, even the usage of the supernatural element is for slightly different purposes.

Even so, the question is inevitable, and i would say this is the better film, as the approach of more of the same actually works for this sequel, there’s simply more to the plot, to the characters, bigger stakes, a proper sense of escalation, less repetition and a better handling of its themes (even as they have become overly familiary by now) making for a fun and funny action horror romp.

Comparisons asides (i’d say just watch them both if you can), it’s a good sequel and i gotta admit, it’s still funny to see people explode like rubberbanded human watermelons.

[EXPRESSO] The Bride! (2026) | Mary Shelley’s Frankenmess

This was a film i did look forward to see, obviously, being a peculiar take on Bride Of Frankenstein, with the trailers showing off The Creature (the Frankenstein monster) and The Bride in a Bonny & Clyde, Syd & Nancy style dynamic as they travel a 30’s America of gangsters and trenched detectives.

The premise sees the ghost/spirit of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein herself, meta narrate about her “sequel” about the “Bride” of Frankenstein, in this case the corpse of a prostitute working undercover to gather info about a particularly violent mob boss, which is dug up after the Creature travels to America and seeks the help of Dr. Ephronious to make him a companion in order to soothe his unique loneliness.

The experiment is successful and so the Bride is borne, but it becomes difficult for the two monsters to go unnoticed, not only due to the police and the mob befuddled by a presumed dead woman showing up on the newspapers’ headlines, but also because Mary Shelley herself occasionally possesses the Bride’s body…..

the idea of a feminist take on Bride Of Frankenstein makes perfect sense, i do believe so, even if discordant by design, as it’s not only a horror-crime duet of deranged protagonists complementing each other’s delirium, but it’s also a gothic romance that often dips into comedy and even musical sequence that seems to tribute-spoof Frankenstein Junior.

It’s ambitious and – again- by design tries to combine together pieces that don’t really naturally fit, which is indeed “very Frankenstein”, but the execution honestly feels like a really hot mess of intentions, even more stitched together and messier than intended, downright clunky.

I do respect its ambition, even if the final result is indeed quite flawed, but also proper interesting and never quite boring.

[EXPRESSO] Keeper (2025) | ♬ Go to the woods and see ♬

After Longlegs and The Monkey, Oz Perkins is back with a new horror film (releasing just 2 days ago here), Keeper, but i’ve never heard much… well, anything about it, ill or good, but it might be me accidentally missing coverage, wouldn’t be the first time.

So i went in blind… and i kinda get why this didn’t generate much buzz, maybe, but first the plot.

A couple spends their anniversary weekend in a secluded cabin in the woods, and once there strange things start happening, revealing the house’s dark secrets..

I don’t think Keeper is a bad film, at all, but i’m willing to call it Oz Perkins first “trip up”, it is disappointing, because even if the final twist pays off, makes the build up worth it for an interesting turn… it doesn’t change that it has to do so with a character explaining the lore to us, instead of you known, just showing us, since it’s a movie and all of that, plus it it intriguing but nothing special enough to balance out and gliss over the fact the build up (and the premise in itself) seems to be made irritating and generic on purpose with how the cliches are placed.

Yes, obviously to play with audiences’ expectations (and with the horror archetype of the “cabin in the woods”), and it does work, but the story could have been more cohesive, or have people invested more by the narrative itself instead of the deliberate bold faced deception that also saps any mystery the story could have had when the loredump drops, to say nothing of how some subplots are simply kinda forgotten by the end.

It’s still far from unwatchable, mind you, thanks in no small part to Maslany’s great performance as Liz, but it’s also disappointing.

Snakes On A Plane (2006) [REVIEW] | Legal Drinking Age Snakes

I thought of reviewing Park-chan Wook’s So I’m A Cyborg But That’s Ok, since it February and we recently got his latest film, No Other Choice.

But then an Arrow Video newsletter made me aware of them doing a Blu Ray/4K UHD release of Snakes On A Plane, which i promptly preordered.

I mean, we already did Tromeo & Juliet for the Valentine’s Day review, and i’m not sure we’re gonna bring back “Snake Month” this summer, might as well celebrate good ol’ Snakes On A Plane‘s 20^th anniversary.

Yep, there’s no beating the “getting old” allegations, so strap that girdle up, take your pills, we’re going back to the very primordial soup, when Sharkenado wasn’t even a thought in the Asylum deseased pipeline of bullshit we’ll call a “mind”.

Oh, mind you, the Asylum did exist and in many ways proper started realizing who they really were due to Snakes On Plane, their had their proper epiphany in no small part thanks to this film, but we’ll discuss that when reviewing Snakes On A Train, sooner or later that review had to happen.

Continua a leggere

[EXPRESSO] Whistle (2025) | Must Have Been The Aztec Wind

I’m not bothering with the new Scream sequels, for reasons that should be obvious (including its collaboration with GenIA crap and gambling giant Kalshi), so instead i did went to see this little new-ish horror film called Whistle.

This one also isn’t breaking any new ground, being a very typical teen slasher, this time about an Aztec sacrificial whistle, said to be used in order to call upon Death itself and offer it the souls during ritual sacrifices. After causing the mysterious death of a high school basketball player, 6 months later the death whistle shows up in the locker of a newly transferred girl with a troubled past of drug abuse, and alongside some of her new classmates, she hears the hellish sound it produces, which also signifies Death itself will come for them sooner than it should….

Yeah, you’ve heard this before, and yes, this is basically another variation on/of Final Destination, just using the old “Aztec curse instrument” spin to avoid being a complete rip-off, but it likeable how it basically owns the fact is not doing anything original, it knows, so it doesn’t even bother to be mysterious, and decides it might as well have some fun and give audiences what they expect.

Unsubtle as fuck, by design, the characters also being very typical but mostly stereotypes stock as ever, especially the jocks, the plot hits very expected beat like clockwork, and while i do wish it didn’t straight up copy the finale of Countdown, Whistle does seek out to entertain more than scare, and it does manage to do that, thanks to a brisky pace, decent acting and honestly decent-to-good gore effects and grisly supernatural kills.

It’s entirely forgettable but also quite serviceable slasher interested only in being entertaining and gory more than anything else.