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V/H/S/85 (2023)

“V/H/S/85” is a mixed bag, a collection of hits and misses that, when viewed as a whole, offers a decent if not earth-shattering addition to the franchise.

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V/H/S/85

“V/H/S/85” saunters onto the horror scene with the casual confidence of a B-movie that knows it’s not winning any Oscars but still packs the aisles on a Saturday night. This entry in the storied “V/H/S” franchise plays out like a mixtape recorded off the radio: some tracks hit the mark, leaving you nostalgic and energized, while others have you questioning the DJ’s choices. It’s a film that’s comfortably nestled in the middle ground of the series, neither reaching the dizzying heights of its predecessors nor plumbing the depths of its lesser siblings. It’s as if “V/H/S/85” is content to exist as a love letter to the era of big hair, bright colors, and video nasties, even if some of its segments leave viewers scratching their heads.

“Total Copy,” serving as the frame narrative, wraps its arms around the anthology with a grip that’s firm yet gentle. It’s the kind of story that reminds you why you fell in love with horror in the first place: interesting tales told around the flicker of a campfire (or in this case, the static of a VHS tape). With its commendable story and practical effects that harken back to a time when CGI was just a twinkle in Hollywood’s eye, “Total Copy” does its job. It sets the stage, introduces the players, and occasionally reminds you to adjust the tracking on your VCR. It’s okay, a solid opener that promises thrills, chills, and a little bit of nostalgia.

“No Wake” and its later continuation, “Ambrosia,” are like two halves of a magic trick performed in slow motion. Separately, they might leave you puzzled, wondering why the magician is holding a rabbit with no hat in sight. Together, however, they form a more comprehensive narrative that, while not without its faults, offers a glimpse into the creative potential of the series. The decision to split them feels like an experiment in storytelling, one that might not have been entirely necessary but offers an interesting perspective on narrative cohesion. On its own, “Ambrosia” especially feels like being given a puzzle with half the pieces missing, leaving you to wonder what picture you’re supposed to be assembling.

“God of Death” wanders through its runtime like a lost soul searching for purpose, only finding its direction when it’s almost too late. It’s a segment that teases greatness but ultimately feels disjointed, as if it were unsure of its own mythology until the final act. The journey is murky, and while the destination offers some semblance of clarity, one can’t help but feel that a more direct path could have led to a more satisfying conclusion.

“TKNOGD” stands out for all the wrong reasons, moving at a glacial pace that makes you wish you could fast-forward through the doldrums to get to the good parts. The special effects serve as brief moments of respite in an otherwise tedious trek through narrative quicksand. It’s a segment that, despite its best efforts, fails to ignite the spark of terror or wonder, leaving behind a trail of missed opportunities and viewer impatience.

Then there’s “Dreamkill,” the shining star of “V/H/S/85,” a segment that grabs you by the scruff of the neck and doesn’t let go until the credits roll. It’s a breath of fresh, albeit blood-scented, air that reminds you of the chilling allure of films like “Sinister.” With its well-crafted story, impressive practical effects, and a genuine sense of dread, “Dreamkill” stands as a testament to what the anthology could have been, offering a glimpse into the dark heart of horror that beats beneath the surface.

In the end, “V/H/S/85” is a mixed bag, a collection of hits and misses that, when viewed as a whole, offers a decent if not earth-shattering addition to the franchise. It’s like tuning into a late-night horror show; you’re not always sure what you’re going to get, but the thrill of the unknown is enough to keep you watching. While it may not be the strongest entry in the “V/H/S” series, it still manages to capture the essence of what makes these films so endearingly watchable: a love for the genre, warts and all.

V/H/S/85 (2023)
3.5 ScreenDim Score
Summary
V/H/S/85" is a mixed bag, a collection of hits and misses that, when viewed as a whole, offers a decent if not earth-shattering addition to the franchise.

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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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