Tag: writers block

[EXPRESSO] The Nameless Ballad (2026) | Teenage Pop Rock God

The Nameless Ballad on paper is an interesting change from Federico Zampaglione previous film, The Well (which i quite liked), as this later movie is an old fashioned ghost/haunted house story.

Sam Gallo is an upcoming musician that, when hit by writer’s block, is sent by his agent to an isolated villa in Italy, so he can focus on overcoming this creative slump, but there he starts seeing strange visions, especially after he finds a chest containing a diary of an Italian woman, a key to the villa’s piano and an unnamed, apparently unfinished composition….

The premise is decent, the main actor is solid, a couple of good jumpscares, but it becomes soon dull and slow moving (even for just 90 minutes), the more it goes on the more it basically falls apart, case and point the tragic backstory that explains more about the haunting… and almost made laugh, as it feels like accidental parody and makes the movie as a whole feel – frankly – stupid.

Even the theme of the music industry exploiting its talents is handled in such a juvenile, trite way that you’d almost want to side with the label to be contrarian…not that you will care about anyone’s fate, besides the dog, best character, i’m not even joking.

It feels like a big “Frankengum”, pieced together from chiclets found under other people’ classroom desks, masticated once more in the vain hope that if you keep chewing the flavour will come back.

There’s a difference between a deliberate old fashion approach and just being…. just dated, decrepit, reeking of that moth balls/napthalene scent you’d find when rummaging through your grandparents’ wardrobe. Kinda tragic because it’s obvious Zampaglione genuinely cares about the genre, he isn’t being cynical or anything, but nothing really works here, to my disappointment.

[EXPRESSO] Hokum (2026) | Banshee Burner

Review confession time: i’m not familiar at all with Damian McCarthy as a director or otherwise, but i also didn’t do much research and i just trusted the very good general reception.

I’m glad i did, but let’s not skip steps.

Hokum is about Ohm, an american writer struggling to write the epilogue of his successful Conquistador book trilogy, that goes to Ireland in a hotel where his parents had their honeymoon, moved by the appeareance of the ghost of his mother, and there to lay to rest their ashes.

He decides to pass the night in the hotel in order to see if he could push past his writer’s block, while mostly being abrahasive and dismissive of the hotel staff (especially the old irish folklore about witches a local old man tells to some children) while also getting plastered, and things turn for the worse when he wakes up again, alive just because one of the staff found him hanging from his room ceiling in time…

It’s definitely a slow burner that does take its time, but with elegance, a great atmosphere, without really using jumpscares, but some really unsettling creepy apparations (the rabbit one is indeed some really creepy shit), and surprisingly this time around isn’t so much about a monster or old folklore repurposed to rappresent grief (though that obviously play a part), but an actual proper supernatural tales of horror and mystery old as the hills, that manages to actually have a compelling narrative that does play on multiple angles but also avoids having a twist that undoes or invalidates previous key scenes, the kind often done to play with expectations, just in order to win the guessing war with the audiences, regardless if it makes for a better movie or not.

Pretty good stuff, recommended.