I am not happy.

Lilo & Stitch (2025) is the latest victim in Disney’s increasingly joyless remake assembly line, and it’s safe to say: Elvis isn’t the only one rolling in his grave.

This remake isn’t just disappointing—it’s borderline offensive in how it mishandles the original’s emotional core. The 2002 Lilo & Stitch was vibrant, offbeat, tender, and unlike anything else Disney had done at the time. It blended themes of loss, found family, and alien chaos with humour, cultural specificity, and actual personality. The 2025 version, by contrast, feels like it was assembled by a neural network trained exclusively on Disney+ thumbnails.

Let’s start with the changes. You know how the original had a quirky, grounded warmth—characters who felt like real people, despite the extraterrestrials? That’s gone. Now we have a smoothed-over, overly lit, airbrushed version of Hawaii that looks more like a sanitized tourist brochure than a lived-in home. The rough edges that gave the original heart have been sanded down and focus-tested into oblivion.

Lilo no longer rants about how not giving Pudge the fish his weekly peanut butter sandwich will make her an abomination.

Lilo no longer beats the crap out of Myrtle—now she just pushes her off stage.

I have a whole list of these but I’d be sat here for hours typing them out.

Stitch, meanwhile, looks like he escaped from a low-budget Sonic the Hedgehog fan film in 2014 and wandered onto the wrong soundstage.

The physical comedy doesn’t work because Stitch doesn’t have weight. He’s a floating CGI asset dropped into scenes like an afterthought. He might as well have “property of Disney+” watermarked on his forehead.

The film clocks in at around 100 minutes, but somehow still feels longer. And yet, some scenes feel rushed, like the filmmakers were just ticking boxes. It’s like watching an abridged version of a movie you actually liked, directed by someone who skimmed the Wikipedia plot summary the night before shooting.

Let’s pause to remember what made the original Lilo & Stitch special: it was weird. It was messy. It was emotionally honest in ways Disney usually avoids. It had Elvis on the soundtrack, and actual stakes in the relationships.

This version? It’s afraid of weird. It’s terrified of emotional honesty. Everything’s been rounded off, polished up, and stripped of any quirk that might alienate a potential viewer in the Midwest. Even Nani feels reduced—her complex role as a struggling guardian-sister rewritten into Generic Young Woman Who Tries Hard. There’s no edge. No bite. No soul.

Worse, this film treats the original audience like we don’t matter. It gestures toward nostalgia with a few half-hearted references, but mostly screams: “This one’s for the new kids!” But here’s the thing—kids deserve better than this. Kids are smart. Kids loved the original Lilo & Stitch because it was different.

This isn’t different. This is safe, stale, and sanitized.

Now, about the voices.

Let’s start with Jumba. In the original, he was a gloriously bizarre mad scientist with a vaguely Eastern European accent and gleeful menace. In this version, he has—drumroll—an American accent. It’s jarring and takes you right out of the movie. Why American? Who knows. Maybe the studio thought kids couldn’t handle anything foreign-sounding. But it completely flattens the character. He’s no longer chaotic brilliance—he’s just a weird uncle who works in IT and recently discovered protein powder.

And it’s just Zach Galifianakis. Not putting on a voice. Not even attempting an accent. Just… Zach.

Then there’s Pleakley.

They’ve dumbed him down—way down. In the original, he was campy, neurotic, and weirdly endearing. Now? He’s just dumb. Like TikTok-filter dumb. Like “he wears a cowboy hat because he misunderstood the word ‘cowboy’” dumb. (Yes, that’s a real joke in the movie.)

This might have worked as a 15-second YouTube short back in 2010. Here, it’s just another brick in the wall of tonal flatness.

So what are we left with?

A visually flat, emotionally shallow, hyper-sanitized remake that mistakes content for connection. A film that rips out the heart of a classic and replaces it with a plastic replica—perfectly shaped, but utterly lifeless.

Yes, the lead actress is good.

Yes, kids might enjoy it.

Yes, someone on the production team probably had the best of intentions.

But intent doesn’t make a movie good. And this movie?

Is. Not. Good.

After a twelve-year hiatus and a seemingly endless chain of false restarts, Final Destination has clawed its way out of the cinematic grave for another dance with the Reaper in Final Destination: Bloodlines. Directed by Adam B. Stein and Zach Lipovsky, Bloodlines is exactly what you’d expect from the sixth installment of a franchise that peaked with a guy being liquefied by a pool drain: bloody, occasionally clever, mostly ridiculous, and… fine. Just fine.

Not great. Not awful. Fine.

The film centers on Stefanie (played with respectable mid-level scream queen energy by Brec Bassinger), a college student plagued by violent nightmares. These visions, as is tradition in Final Destination lore, turn out to be harbingers of doom. Stefanie, sensing her family might be next in Death’s never-ending group project, heads home in a frantic bid to save them. What follows is a familiarly structured series of panic attacks, suspiciously timed gusts of wind, household items conspiring to kill people, and a vaguely metaphysical game of “hot potato” with the concept of fate.

Let’s start by giving Bloodlines its flowers, because while it’s not reinventing the wheel, it’s at least keeping it spinning.

One thing this film does well—surprisingly well, actually—is its gore. The kills are gnarly, as they should be. In Final Destination fashion, they remain Rube Goldberg nightmares soaked in tension, where every creaky step, loose screw, or casually misplaced fork could mean sudden and excruciating death.

There are also some genuine surprises sprinkled in. The film plays a little fast and loose with the death order, and a few kills subvert expectations just enough to earn a slow clap.

And then there’s Tony Todd. The man, the myth, the mortician. Returning once again as the ominous voice of Death (or at least its HR representative), Todd brings his usual silky-voiced gravitas. His appearance here is brief but memorable, and without getting too spoilery: it’s a graceful, oddly sweet exit. It’s clear the filmmakers wanted to honor his contributions, and they succeeded. He’s the soul of this franchise, and Bloodlines knows it.

Unfortunately, once you get past the splatter and the sentiment, Bloodlines starts to fall apart under closer scrutiny. The main issue? It just doesn’t feel… spooky.

Earlier entries in the Final Destination series succeeded because Death felt like a character—unseen, omnipresent, angry. There was a dread that lingered after the jump scares. A fan would turn on by itself and you’d flinch. A nail sticking out of a board would have you clenching. The world became dangerous. Everything was a trap.

But in Bloodlines, Death doesn’t really feel like it’s hunting anyone. It’s more like it set some booby traps and then went out for a smoke break. The dread is missing. Instead of that creeping inevitability, you just kind of wait around for the next blood geyser. It’s not ineffective, but it lacks that eerie atmosphere that made the original films so memorable.

Even the signature premonition sequence—the grand disaster that kicks off each film—is a bit underwhelming. In a franchise that gave us collapsing rollercoasters and racetrack carnage, this one feels a bit… budget.

It wouldn’t be a Final Destination movie without a cast of doomed young people whose names you forget five minutes after they die. And Bloodlines continues that proud tradition with a roster of characters that are, at best, functional.

Stefanie is a solid protagonist—smart enough to figure out the pattern, vulnerable enough to still make questionable decisions, and just engaging enough to keep us watching. But everyone else? Walking meat puppets. There’s the sarcastic best friend, the sweet-but-doomed younger sibling, the skeptical uncle who definitely wasn’t going to make it past Act Two. You know the drill. They’re not bad, but they’re barely there.

Worse, the dialogue often sounds like it was ripped straight from a horror writing workshop in 2011. There’s a lot of “You don’t understand!” and “It’s happening again!” and at least one person yells “It’s not real!” moments before… y’know…

Bloodlines attempts to add some lore to the franchise, which is usually a red flag—and, surprise, it mostly is. The premise suggests that Stefanie’s family is cursed, and that Death’s design has somehow taken root in her bloodline. Cue vague metaphysical references and cryptic dreams about clocks and blood and, of course, Tony Todd standing in a doorway looking disappointed.

This new mythology is meant to expand the world, but it mostly just muddies it. What made the original formula work was its brutal simplicity: someone cheats death, death gets petty and takes them out one by one. Done. This new “family curse” angle tries to deepen the lore but ends up raising more questions than it answers. Why this family? Why now? How does the substance of the dreams tie into the mechanics of Death’s design? The movie gestures toward answers but never really delivers.

And again, let’s circle back to that lack of spooky tension. Even if the new lore worked, the absence of Death as a truly menacing force undermines the whole thing. Without that looming, invisible threat, Final Destination becomes just a snuff film with better lighting. Think “Saw” if Jigsaw just set up devious Rube Goldberg machines instead of his usual games.

This deserves repeating: the send-off for Tony Todd is genuinely lovely. In a franchise not exactly known for its emotional nuance, it’s surprising how well this moment lands. It’s quiet, respectful, and weirdly touching.

It also unintentionally underscores how much the franchise has relied on him to give it weight. Without Todd’s booming voice and cryptic warnings, Bloodlines feels a little hollow. Like Death itself called in sick and left some interns running the shop.

Final Destination: Bloodlines isn’t bad. It’s a serviceable entry in a franchise that’s always been a bit hit-and-miss. It has the kills. It has the chaos. It even has a few surprises. But what it doesn’t have is the atmosphere—the creeping, skin-prickling feeling that you’re being watched by something you can’t escape.

Instead, it plays like a checklist:

✔ Dramatic premonition

✔ One character who becomes obsessed with figuring out the pattern

✔ Final girl running around with conspiracy walls

✔ Surprise kill after a fakeout

✔ One or two deaths so ridiculous they almost feel like satire

It’s fine. And maybe, after so many years, “fine” is good enough. But for fans who’ve been waiting over a decade for Death to reclaim its throne, Bloodlines feels like more of a warm-up than a comeback.

Let’s be real: when you hear the name Nosferatu, you expect a certain level of eerie, gothic horror. You expect shadowy alleyways, haunting silence, and the slow, dreadful realization that something ancient and evil is creeping toward you. What you don’t expect is a bloated, overly self-serious art piece that stretches itself so thin you can practically see through it.

And yet, here we are.

Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu is what happens when a filmmaker is so focused on making a “serious” horror masterpiece that they forget to actually make it scary. Or engaging. Or, in some cases, even coherent. Sure, the film hits a few of the familiar beats of Dracula—because at the end of the day, that’s all Nosferatu really is, a bootleg Dracula with the serial numbers filed off—but it stretches itself over such a plodding runtime that it loses any real impact.

The result? A film that thinks it’s profound, but is actually just pretentious.

Let’s start with the title character himself: Count Orlok. Played by Bill Skarsgård, who has proven himself more than capable of being a terrifying horror villain (IT, Barbarian), Orlok in this version isn’t so much terrifying as he is just… weird.

First of all, that damn moustache. Who in the production department thought Nosferatu, one of the most unsettling vampire designs in cinematic history, should have facial hair? This isn’t The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Orlok isn’t some quirky Wes Anderson side character—he’s supposed to be an unholy thing, not the guy running the front desk at an Eastern European hotel in 1912. It’s genuinely baffling, because every time Orlok is on screen, instead of feeling dread, all you can think is, Why does he look like an evil landlord?

Aside from his questionable grooming choices, Orlok just isn’t that scary. He’s certainly grotesque, and Skarsgård does his best to channel something monstrous, but his version of the character often just comes off as a guy standing ominously in doorways. It’s less otherworldly terror and more your socially awkward coworker who doesn’t blink enough.

Then there’s Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen (the film’s stand-in for Mina Harker). Look, Depp is clearly trying here. She’s throwing herself into this role with everything she’s got, but the way the film frames her makes her come across less as a tragic gothic heroine and more like a freak (and not in the fun, Tim Burton way).

The movie can’t seem to decide whether she’s supposed to be innocent, tormented, possessed, or just plain unwell. Sometimes, she’s staring blankly into space like she’s in a perfume ad. Other times, she’s writhing in ways that suggest she might be in a different kind of horror film. If her performance seems confused, it’s because the script does her no favors. A stronger script might have given her more to work with, but as it stands, she spends most of the movie alternating between looking bewildered and looking like she’s trying to seduce Orlok for some reason.

And speaking of terrible character decisions…

Can we, as a society, please stop butchering Mina’s role in Dracula adaptations? Please?

Once again, we get a version of Dracula (Nosferatu, same thing) where Mina—sorry, Ellen—doesn’t get to be the intelligent, determined woman who outwits the vampire. No, no, that would be too much effort. Instead, the writers decide the best way to “empower” her character is to make her sacrifice herself to stop Orlok.

Why? Because horror movies still can’t grasp the idea that women in gothic horror stories don’t always have to die for the sake of emotional weight. The original Nosferatu did this too, so it’s not like this is new, but it’s still bullshit. It was bullshit in 1922, and it’s even more bullshit now.

The worst part? The way the movie frames her death as this grand, tragic moment, as if it’s some kind of profound statement. It’s not. It’s just lazy writing disguised as gothic storytelling.

Willem Dafoe, bless his unhinged little heart, seems to be the only person in this movie who realizes what kind of film he’s in. While the rest of the cast is drowning in self-seriousness, Dafoe is over here treating every line like he’s in a campy stage play, and honestly? It’s the best part of the movie.

Dafoe is always at his best when he’s allowed to lean into the absurd, and here, he takes that opportunity and runs with it. Every moment he’s on screen, you can feel the energy shift—suddenly, the film has life, because he refuses to let it wallow in its own misery. The downside? Every scene without Dafoe feels twice as slow by comparison.

Now, let’s talk about the changes this film makes to the classic Nosferatu/Dracula structure. Some of them could have been interesting, but instead, they feel completely arbitrary.

• Jonathan Harker (or Hutter, or whatever they want to call him in this version) is barely relevant. He exists, sure, but you could remove him entirely, and nothing about the story would change. He’s that pointless.

• Orlok’s motivations are vague at best. Why is he doing what he’s doing? What does he actually want? Unclear. He just sort of exists to be creepy and torment Ellen.

• The pacing is horrendous. The movie stretches itself out like it’s some slow-burn masterpiece, but it never earns that level of indulgence. Every scene lingers too long, every conversation takes twice as long as it should, and by the time anything interesting happens, you’re already mentally checked out.

At the end of the day, Nosferatu (2024) is a film that tries way too hard to be an artistic masterpiece but forgets that Nosferatu is, first and foremost, supposed to be scary. The horror is watered down, the pacing is sluggish, and the performances are a mixed bag of trying too hard and not trying hard enough.

Yes, there are some solid gothic visuals. Yes, Willem Dafoe is fun. But those things don’t make up for a film that’s so self-indulgent that it forgets to be entertaining.

And that damn moustache. I will never forgive them for that damn moustache.