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Maleficent (2014)

“Maleficent” is a film that, against all odds, manages to be both a visual masterpiece and a decent retelling of a story we all thought we knew.

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Maleficent ScreenDim Review

“Maleficent,” the film that dared to drag one of Disney’s most deliciously evil villains into the harsh light of protagonist glory, surprisingly doesn’t completely face-plant. Instead, it offers a twisted fairy tale that’s as visually stunning as it is begrudgingly engaging, despite its earnest attempts to soften a villain who was perfectly fine being terrifying.

Angelina Jolie, with cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass and a smirk that could freeze hell over, absolutely owns the role of Maleficent. She brings a depth to the character that the script barely deserves, turning a simple tale of revenge into a complex story of betrayal, heartache, and the kind of redemption arc you’d usually roll your eyes at—if anyone else were leading the charge. Jolie’s performance is so magnetic that it almost, almost makes you forget the film’s occasional lapses into saccharine territory.

The plot is as predictably Disney as getting a song stuck in your head: a young, innocent girl (Elle Fanning’s Aurora) is cursed by a not-so-wicked witch with a heart of not-quite-stone. The twist? The witch starts feeling maternal. Yes, the film takes our fearsome Maleficent and gives her a backstory that justifies her malevolence with a broken heart. Because heaven forbid a woman just wants to be evil without a sob story, right?

Yet, under the direction of Robert Stromberg, “Maleficent” shines when it least tries to adhere to the traditional fairytale narrative. Stromberg, wielding CGI like a kid in a virtual candy store, crafts a world so lush and vibrant that it feels like stepping into a dream. Or a high-budget video game. The creatures of the moors, from tiny flower pixies to massive tree warriors, are rendered with such loving detail that you can’t help but wish they had more screen time as opposed to the humans.

Supporting Jolie is a cast that does what they can with what they’re given. Fanning, as Aurora, is all wide-eyed innocence and benevolence, bringing a much-needed lightness to the shadowy moor that Maleficent calls home. Sharlto Copley, playing King Stefan, tackles his role with a scenery-chewing gusto that borders on the maniacal, serving as a stark reminder that no one does unhinged quite like he does.

The real scene-stealer, however, is the visuals. The cinematography is a feast for the eyes, with each shot framed to perfection, showcasing the fantastical world in all its glory. From the dark depths of Maleficent’s haunted forest to the sunlit beauty of the human kingdom, the film ensures that if you’re not entirely sold on the story, you’ll at least be busy gawking at the scenery.

Despite its flaws—like a script that sometimes reads like a motivational poster for misunderstood villains—“Maleficent” is undeniably entertaining. It takes a well-known story, adds a few twists, and spins it into something that, while not entirely new, is refreshingly different from the typical fairy tale fare. The music, composed by James Newton Howard, carries the emotional heft that the screenplay occasionally lacks, weaving a sonic tapestry that complements the film’s grandeur.

“Maleficent” is a film that, against all odds, manages to be both a visual masterpiece and a decent retelling of a story we all thought we knew. It takes a character who was once the epitome of unadulterated evil and turns her into something more nuanced, more complex, and, dare I say, likeable. It’s the sort of film that, despite your better judgment and your initial resistance, charms you into submission. So go ahead, give it a watch—just don’t blame me if you end up siding with the dark fairy over the sunny princess. It’s that kind of movie.

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Films

Bring Her Back (2025)

“Bring Her Back” is like a horror film that’s been assembled from really good individual scenes without anyone checking whether they actually fit together into a coherent whole.

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Bring Her Back

This horror film has more unexplained mysteries than a David Lynch fever dream, but at least the gore is properly mental.

SPOILER WARNING: Loads of spoilers here.

Don’t get me wrong – this isn’t complete shite. The gore is properly brutal, the kind that makes you wince and immediately check that all your limbs are still attached. The performances are genuinely solid across the board. And Laura, the main antagonist, is the sort of character you absolutely love to hate, like a particularly effective parking warden or someone who talks loudly on their phone in quiet train carriages.

But Christ alive, the story makes about as much sense as a chocolate teapot in a sauna.

Laura apparently kidnaps Oliver from his bedroom, according to a missing poster. Now, I’m no expert on child abduction, but last time I checked, scaling buildings and making off with random children isn’t exactly a beginner-level criminal activity. Did she just happen to have a ladder handy? Cat burglar training? A very understanding Uber driver? The film doesn’t bother explaining how someone manages to nick a kid from what we can assume is a family home without anyone noticing.

And speaking of Oliver – or Connor, or whatever his name is this week – how exactly did he get possessed in the first place? Did the demon put in an application? Was there an interview process? A background check? The film treats demonic possession like it’s as common as catching a cold, but never bothers explaining how any of this supernatural bollocks actually works.

Then there’s the question of whether Laura actually murdered Andy and Piper’s dad, or if that was just convenient manipulation. Because if she did kill him, that raises a whole other set of questions about her murder methodology. If she didn’t, then what are the odds she’d randomly acquire a kid who happens to be both female and partially blind? That’s not luck, that’s winning the evil plot lottery.

And where the hell are all the mothers? Andy’s mother – no idea what happened to her. Piper’s mum – no idea what happened to her. We find out Andy’s dad is a bit of a dick so are we meant to assume he was abusive to both mothers and they both leave without the kids? What the hell happened there?

The more you think about the logistics of what’s supposed to have happened, the more your brain starts to hurt. It’s like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle where half the pieces are missing and the other half are from a completely different box.

But here’s the thing – when the film stops trying to make sense and just gets on with being properly horrific, it actually works quite well. The knife scene is absolutely brutal, the kind of thing that makes you grateful you’re watching it on a screen rather than having to clean up afterwards. The table eating scene is similarly mental – properly disturbing in all the right ways.

And the actors – fair play to them – they sell the hell out of this confused narrative. They’re committed to making this mess feel real, even when the plot is doing backflips to avoid explaining itself. Laura, in particular, is brilliantly hateable. She’s the sort of antagonist who makes you genuinely invested in seeing her get her comeuppance, which is no small achievement when you’re working with material that’s held together with narrative duct tape.

“Bring Her Back” is like a horror film that’s been assembled from really good individual scenes without anyone checking whether they actually fit together into a coherent whole. It’s got all the right ingredients – decent acting, proper gore, genuinely creepy moments – but it’s been mixed together by someone who’s apparently never heard of things like “logic” or “cause and effect.”

Review 0
4 ScreenDim Score

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Films

Smile 2 (2024)

Still better than most horror sequels, mind you. But that’s like being the tallest person in a room full of sitting people – technically accurate, but not exactly a ringing endorsement.

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Smile 2

Yes, I’m late to the party on this one.

The story follows a pop star who gets infected by the smile curse, which sounds like it should be a tabloid headline but is apparently a legitimate supernatural threat. Naomi Scott does a perfectly decent job as someone slowly losing her mind to demonic grinning, and to be fair, she sells the hell out of the increasingly unhinged behaviour. The supporting cast all do their jobs competently enough – nobody embarrasses themselves, nobody phones it in.

But here’s where it all goes tits up: the film spends most of its runtime building up tension, creating genuinely unsettling scenarios, and making you invested in what’s happening to these characters. Then, just when you think you’re getting somewhere, it pulls the old “actually, the last thirty minutes were all in her head because demons” trick.

It’s the horror equivalent of those dreams where you think you’ve woken up but you’re still dreaming, except instead of being clever, it’s just bloody annoying. You know what’s not scary? Being told that the scary thing you just watched wasn’t real. You know what doesn’t create tension? Undermining your own narrative with the supernatural equivalent of “it was all a dream.”

This isn’t innovative storytelling; it’s lazy writing disguised as psychological complexity. It’s what happens when writers can’t figure out how to resolve their plot properly so they just declare that half of it didn’t actually happen. It’s like playing chess with someone who keeps moving the pieces and then claiming the rules were different all along.

The gore is adequate enough – nothing that’ll make you lose your lunch, but sufficient to remind you that you’re watching a horror film and not an episode of “Holby City” with occasional grinning. There are some properly unsettling moments scattered throughout, particularly a sequence where smiling people materialise in the protagonist’s flat and only move when she’s not looking directly at them. It’s properly creepy, like having the world’s most sinister game of Red Light, Green Light happening in your living room.

That bit actually works brilliantly – it’s the kind of nightmare logic that makes you genuinely uncomfortable without resorting to cheap jump scares or explaining itself to death. More of that, please, and less of the “surprise, none of this mattered” bollocks.

But then we need to talk about the product placement, because bloody hell, someone at Voss Water must have pictures of the filmmakers doing something embarrassing. I counted the distinctive bottles appearing on screen at least eight times, which is approximately seven more times than necessary to establish that people in this film drink water. It’s so blatant it becomes genuinely distracting – you start watching for the next Voss bottle appearance instead of paying attention to the actual horror.

It’s like they’ve confused a horror film with a particularly expensive advert for overpriced bottled water. Every time someone needs to hydrate, out comes another perfectly positioned Voss bottle, gleaming in the light like some kind of Norwegian beacon of commercial desperation. You half expect the demon to start grinning because it’s just remembered to stay properly hydrated.

I understand that films need financing, and product placement is part of modern cinema. But there’s a difference between subtle brand integration and basically turning your horror film into a pop-up shop for premium water. When your supernatural thriller starts feeling like a lifestyle magazine, you’ve probably gone too far.

If you enjoyed the first “Smile,” you’ll probably find this tolerable enough. If you were hoping for something that built meaningfully on the original concept rather than just repeating it with better production values and more water bottle cameos, you might come away feeling like you’ve been sold a slightly more expensive version of something you already owned.

Still better than most horror sequels, mind you. But that’s like being the tallest person in a room full of sitting people – technically accurate, but not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Smile 2 (2024)
3.5 ScreenDim Score

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Films

28 Years Later (2025)

It’s not terrible, exactly. It’s just… eh.

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28 Years Later (2025)

I finally got around to watching 28 Years Later.

The film is a long-awaited return to the franchise and after finally watching it? “Eh.”

“28 Years Later” is supposedly the triumphant return to Danny Boyle’s vision of Britain overrun by rage-fuelled infected maniacs. What we actually get is two hours of a sulky teenager making decisions so monumentally stupid they’d embarrass a goldfish with severe brain damage.

Remember “28 Days Later”? Remember how it made you genuinely terrified of infected people sprinting at you like caffeinated cheetahs? Well, forget all that, because this film has about as many infected as your average Tesco on a Tuesday afternoon. Which is to say: virtually none, and the few that do show up look like they’re having an off day.

The plot, such as it is, revolves around a family living on an island who’ve managed to survive nearly three decades of apocalypse. Fair enough. Then their teenage son has one argument with his dad and decides the logical response is to burn down a barn and drag his starving mother across infected-infested mainland to find someone who might be a doctor. Or might be completely mental. Or might just murder them for sport.

But here’s the thing that really gets my goat: the film can’t decide what it wants to be. The first half hour is genuinely tense. You’ve got proper infected doing proper infected things – namely, trying to tear people’s faces off with the enthusiasm of a toddler opening Christmas presents. There’s suspense, there’s horror, there’s the kind of relentless dread that made the original films worth watching.

Then, the moment our teenage genius embarks on his poorly thought-out road trip, it’s like someone changed the channel to fucking “Countryfile.” Suddenly we’re watching people trudge through fields having deep conversations about feelings while the apocalypse takes a tea break. The infected apparently got bored and wandered off to find a more interesting film to be in.

There’s an entire subplot with a Swedish soldier, which can be cut out and the film would be no different. Pointless doesn’t even begin to cover it.

On top of this, there’s a moment where the kid almost gets attacked by an infected (no, they’re not zombies, I will die on this hill – zombies don’t run) and it turns out the mother saved him, and again it just… doesn’t go anywhere? You’re forced to ask once more, what was the point of that?

What becomes painfully obvious is that this isn’t really a film at all – it’s an expensive advert for the other two films they’re planning to make. Every scene feels like homework for future instalments rather than something worth experiencing right now. It’s like buying a starter that turns out to be mainly a menu for dishes you might be able to order next year.

Good grief I need to tell someone about that ending.

The film concludes with what can only be described as a parkour demonstration set to a heavy metal version of the Teletubbies theme song. I’m not making this up. People doing backflips while killing infected to the tune of “Tinky Winky had a bag.” It’s so bizarrely inappropriate it makes you wonder if someone spiked the editor’s coffee with industrial-strength hallucinogens.

I wanted to like this. The original “28 Days Later” was brilliant – it made infected people genuinely terrifying again after years of shambling zombies who moved like arthritic pensioners. This sequel takes that legacy and turns it into a meditation on family dysfunction with occasional bursts of half-hearted apocalypse.

If you want proper infected horror, watch the original. If you want family drama, watch literally any other film. If you want to waste two hours of your life wondering when something interesting is going to happen, then by all means, watch “28 Years Later.”

It’s not terrible, exactly. It’s just… eh. Which is somehow worse than being properly shit, because at least properly shit films give you something to get angry about. This just leaves you feeling like you’ve been mildly disappointed by a vending machine that’s eaten your money and given you nothing in return.

I’ve seen worse, but I’ve also seen better.

28 Years Later (2025)
3.5 ScreenDim Score
Summary
It's not terrible, exactly. It's just... eh. Which is somehow worse than being properly shit.

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