In 2023, filmmaker Jeremy Rudd directed, wrote, and produced a 50-minute slasher horror short film called “Die’ced”. Almost immediately ideas sprang up for a feature length version. Rudd brought back many of his original cast members and crew, added about 25 minutes to the runtime, and with the help of horror distributor Dread, has made and released what he is calling “Die’ced: Reloaded”.

“Die’ced: Reloaded” shares some obvious similarities with the first Terrifier movie. It was made on a limited budget. Most of that budget went toward the gloriously gory makeup and effects. And for much of the film the story can feel like an afterthought. But for the most part it knows what it wants to be – an exceptionally brutal slasher set in the 1980s and made in a style reminiscent of the 1980s. In that way it succeeds. “Die’ced: Reloaded” would feel right at home on VHS in the horror section of a video rental store.

Rudd kicks things off with a fitting introduction to his big baddie, Benjamin Newman (played by Jason Brooks). When we meet him, Benjamin has spent the last 17 years in an insane asylum after brutally butchering his family. Diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, Benjamin believes he is a kid and finds childlike joy in killing. And for reasons never explained (but to make him a little creepier), he wears a ghastly mask made out of a paper plate.

A few miles away in a Seattle suburb, a high school teen named Cassandra (Eden Campbell) lives with her brother Tommy (Collin Fischer) and their father (Nigel Vons). The siblings have had a rough go since their mom up and left them. The mystery around their mom’s exit is something the movie could have built up better, and it’s begging to be explored further. As it is, it’s a plot point that doesn’t get much attention until it’s too late.

On October 31st (because what better time to have a killing spree), Benjamin gruesomely slaughters his doctor and nurses before venturing off to the above mentioned Seattle suburb. Once there he breaks into a house, murders its owner, and then steals their scarecrow costume. Not far away, Cassandra heads out for a Halloween party where she and her disposable best friend character drink some beer and chat meaninglessly about boys. But the high school tedium is short-lived and the inevitable slaying quickly begins.

While there’s barely enough story to fill its lean 75 minutes, it ends with a wild spray of information that could have added more meat to the rest of the movie. Instead it feels tacked on and underdeveloped. As for the 1980s setting, there’s so much more they could have done with that wildly distinct decade. But there’s not much that stands out, aside from the cool synth-pop score by composer Night Wolf.

But those things aside, “Die’ced: Reloaded” maintains a certain B-movie charm that’s hard to deny. And despite its obvious budget constraints, Rudd, along with his special effects coordinators Jason Brooks and Joe Castro, know what slasher fans want. They make sure there is enough fun to be had and more than enough gore splattered around to make overlooking the film’s other issues a little bit easier. “Die’ced: Reloaded” a available now on VOD.

VERDICT – 2.5 STARS

Shark movies are a dime-a-dozen these days and it seems like we get several new ones each year. We’ve reached a point to where it’s rare to find a shark movie that offers something original. “Dangerous Animals” certainly does, although reducing it to a simple shark movie is patently unfair. It’s more of a high-stakes blend of deepwater horror and serial killer tension. And it’s driven by a brilliantly menacing Jai Courtney.

Directed by Sean Byrne, “Dangerous Animals” tells a taut tale that is unquestionably outrageous yet never feels outrageous in the moment. That’s because Byrne has a good grip on screenwriter Nick Lepard’s material and he knows how to immerse his audience in the kind of movie he’s making. There’s a nastiness to it that approaches exploitation yet Byrne (smartly) doesn’t take things too seriously. It results in a visceral and at times darkly funny genre cocktail that stands as one of the bigger surprises of the year.

Hassie Harrison plays Zephyr, a free-spirited American surfer living out of her van on Australia’s Gold Coast. Old baggage from her past led her to become a loner. But we see a small crack in her self-established walls when Zephyr meets Moses (Josh Heuston), a sweet and smitten real estate agent who also enjoys surfing. After spending the night together, Zephyr takes off to wrestle with these newfound feelings she has.

But before their potentially cheesy love story can get off the ground, things take a terrifying turn. While parking her van near the beach for the evening, Zephyr is attacked, sedated, and kidnapped. She wakes up in a metal room with another young woman named Heather (Ella Newton). We quickly learn they’re in the belly of a ship belonging to the burly Tucker (Courtney).

Tucker takes vacationers out to sea for private underwater shark encounters. But that’s just a facade. In reality he’s a maniacal serial killer who gets his kicks chumming the water and then feeding his victims to the sharks. To make it more unsettling, he films their gruesome deaths with an old VHS camcorder. And let’s just say he has a pretty large home movie collection. But the determined and resourceful Zephyr proves to be Tucker’s biggest challenge and she’s not willing to go down (literally) without a fight.

Within the first ten minutes it becomes obvious the title “Dangerous Animals” is referring to more than the well-known ocean predators. The much bigger threat is Tucker who is as mesmerizing as he is sadistic. Courtney is a psychotic force of nature, delivering a brawny, unnerving performance that’s laced with a disarming charm. Byre gives Courtney room to create a truly memorable villain, leaning into his star rather than over-explaining his character’s psychopathy.

“Dangerous Animals” hits its mark thanks to its straightforward storytelling approach and a truly sinister undercurrent. The film is a nail-biting thriller at heart but with a chilling horror movie edge. Add in a dash of sharksploitation and a career best performance from Jai Courtney and you’ve got a wildly entertaining feature with a gnarly B-movie bite. See it on the big screen; see it with a crowd. “Dangerous Animals” opens June 6th exclusively in theaters.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

Alex Scharfman writes and directs “Death of a Unicorn”, a bonkers horror comedy that is another in a long line of ‘eat the rich’ satires. The movie’s title serves as a good nuts-and-bolts overview of the story. But the film’s ultimate interest is in skewering the uber-wealthy through an outlandish scenario that may be a bit uneven in spots, but that ultimately finds a good rhythm amid the slew of gags and gore.

The movie opens up with Elliot Kintner (Paul Rudd) and his daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) on their way to a weekend retreat hosted by his boss, Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant). As they drive through the forest-covered mountains (filmed in beautiful Hungary) we learn quite a bit about them. First, they seem to have very little in common – she is a committed young leftist; he’s a corporate stooge. Making matters worse, their relationship has been strained following the recent death of his wife and her mother.

For Elliot, this weekend gives him a chance to reconnect with his daughter. But it’s mostly about impressing the sickly Odell who is dying of cancer and considering promoting Elliot to the top spot in his pharmaceutical firm. That becomes a running conflict for most of the movie – Elliot’s obsessive ambition for a new position versus his responsibilities to his hurting daughter.

But everything turns upside-down after their car collides with and appears to kill (of all things) a unicorn. As Elliot scrambles to compose himself, Ridley checks on the animal, having some out of body experience in the process. The two make the bizarre decision to load the unicorn carcass in the back of their SUV and drive on to the Leopold’s lavish enclave where they pretend like nothing happened.

But let’s be honest, how does one keep a dead unicorn in the trunk a secret? Through ways I won’t reveal, the Leopolds find out about the unicorn and are just as shocked as Elliot and Ridley. But when it’s discovered the unicorn possesses unexplainable curative attributes, a cured Odell immediately sees dollar signs. So he puts his on-site science team to work replicating the unicorn’s magical properties. Ridley is against what they’re doing but has no allies, not even her father who’s still looking out for his promotion.

But little do they know, the unicorn’s parents are looking for their foal. And when the one-horned creatures find their baby dead, “Death of a Unicorn” quickly evolves into a graphically violent revenge movie that manages to get funnier with every hyper-gory kill. Admittedly it gets incredibly silly. But Scharfman knows what he’s going for, and the movie’s obvious self-awareness is a key reason it works so well.

Another reason it works is the fully committed cast. Rudd and Ortega have a natural father-daughter chemistry that their relationship needs. Meanwhile it’s the Leopolds who provide the laughs. Grant is so good in these roles and it’s no different here. But even funnier is Téa Leoni as Odell’s glaringly phony wife Belinda and Will Poulter as their spoiled and pampered nitwit son Shepard. The latter two delivery one funny line after another, exposing their characters’ insensitivity and entitlement in laugh-out-loud fashion.

Despite how “Death of a Unicorn” may sound, it’s effortlessly easy to get onboard with the wackiness. Scharfman knows how to lure us in. And his keen management of tone and steady flow of humor keeps our expectations in check. Admittedly it would have been nice to see a little more serious attention given to the daughter-daughter relationship at the story’s core. And the movie’s message is far from profound. But it’s hard to complain too much when you’re steadily laughing at the many gags and playfully gasping at the gory retribution.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

Before he became the legendary director behind “Jaws”, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, “Jurassic Park”, “Schindler’s List”, and “Saving Private Ryan”, Steven Spielberg found success in an unexpected place – an ABC television movie of the week. At only 24 years-old, the ambitious and immensely talented Spielberg made “Duel”, a movie that would be the launching pad for one of the great filmmaking careers of our time.

While technically not Spielberg’s first feature-length film (that honor goes to the self-made “Firelight” which has never been made public), “Duel” is considered to be the filmmaker’s first officially released movie. As you watch, the very technique and craftsmanship that would define his extraordinary career is present in its early stages. It results in propulsive action thriller built upon the classic tenets of good old-fashioned suspense.

The script was written by Richard Matheson who was adapting his very own short story that was published in Playboy magazine. The film is light on dialogue, with Spielberg intent on letting the two led vehicles do most of the “talking”. The rest is left to Spielberg’s wizardry that utilizes both visuals and sound to drive this harrowing and high-octane nailbiter.

Spielberg cranks things up with an outstanding opening credits sequence that features a camera mounted on the front of a car as it drives through Los Angeles, out to the freeway, and eventually down a mostly barren two-lane rural road. Behind the wheel is David Mann (played by a pitch-perfect Dennis Weaver), a mild-mannered traveling salesman driving his Plymouth Valiant as an AM radio talk show plays in the background.

A few miles into his trip he encounters the film’s antagonist – a rusty and grime-covered 1951 Peterbilt tanker truck with thick smoke billowing from its stack pipe and license plates mounted on its front bumper like trophies from his past victims. We never see the face of the truck’s driver, only getting a few glimpses of his arm (and later his brown boots). Even scarier, we never get a sense of his motive for the terror he’s about to unleash.

Their encounter starts with David passing the truck only to have the truck pass him less than a mile later. The truck driver then slows down, forcing David to pass him again. As David speeds along the truck bears down on him, riding his bumper and blaring his horn. Quickly what resembles an instance of road rage boils over into a dangerous game of vehicular cat-and-mouse.

As you ride along with “Duel” it’s impossible to miss the Hitchcockian vibe which is felt in everything from the crisp direction to the score (composed by Billy Goldenberg). Spielberg insisted on shooting the film on location and he did so in only thirteen days. It ends up making a significant difference by creating a palpable sense of authenticity. Meanwhile Weaver is a terrific centering point, selling us on his character’s fear by his physical intensity and through internal monologues which emphasize David’s rattled state of mind.

“Duel” first aired on November 13, 1971 and was an instant hit. In fact, it was so popular that Spielberg was brought back to shoot a few more scenes, lengthening its runtime to 88 minutes in preparation for an eventual big screen release in 1983. What’s great is that the movie still holds up well today in large part thanks to its taut and straightforward story and the way it’s told by a savvy young director with an extraordinary vision that would only get better in the years that followed.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

Denis Villeneuve has done the impossible by adapting Frank Herbert’s seminal science-fiction novel series “Dune” for the big screen. Of course he’s not the first to attempt it. But Villeneuve’s two films have fully captured Herbert’s epic vision which has long been declared “unfilmable”. Villeneuve makes some meaningful alterations. But he never loses sight of what Herbert intended and what Dune fans love about the universe.

The success of Villeneuve’s films has also opened the doors for further explorations of Herbert’s vast Dune mythology. And that leads to “Dune: Prophecy”, a big-budget HBO series streaming exclusively on MAX. “Prophecy” is a six-episode prequel that focuses on the origins of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood – a matriarchal sect who hold great power and influence in the universe. Outwardly they individually pose as Truthsayers for each of the major Houses. Secretly they’ve developed a breeding program to manipulate royal bloodlines to their own advantage.

But as its title teases, “Dune: Prophecy” has some interesting connections to the Villeneuve films. I won’t spoil them all here, and to be honest showrunner Alison Schapker wisely doesn’t show all of her cards in this first season. Let’s just say much of the second Dune movie revolves around a specific prophecy devised and planted by the Bene Gesserit on the spice-rich planet of Arrakis. Is Schapker setting up the Missionaria Protectiva’s work on Arrakis which inadvertently gave rise to Paul Atreides as the Kwisatz Haderach?

Taking place 10,148 years before the birth of Paul Atreides, “Prophecy” shows us the fledgling Bene Gesserit through the story of two sisters, Valya (Emily Watson) and Tula (Olivia Williams) Harkonnen. The story follows their troubled childhood, their introductions to the sisterhood, and ascent to Reverend Mothers. Though slow out of the gate, lovers of Dune lore will find a lot to soak up especially in the later episodes when things get clearer and connections to the films begin to develop.

Another key part of the series involves House Corrino and its leader, Javicco (played by Mark Strong). He is the sitting Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe who finds himself managing the fragile peace between the Houses. That peace is put in jeopardy with the arrival of the mysterious Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel), a soldier believed to have died with the rest of his regiment following a surprise attack on Arrakis. As Desmond methodically wins Javicco’s trust, more is revealed about his dark past and self-serving motives which eventually intersects with the Sisters.

This only scratches the surface of “Dune: Prophecy” and its story which opens far more doors than it closes. But this is television, and with a second season already in the works, we have a lot of Dune to look forward to on big and small screens. Hopefully a second season will offer even more connections to the Villeneuve films while taking the time dig into more unexplored corners of Herbert’s vast world. Schapker and company shrewdly set the table for that.

“Dune: Prophecy” most certainly isn’t the best entry point for newcomers. The series almost demands at least some working knowledge of the Dune universe, particularly as seen through the lens of the Villeneuve films. The series clearly has “Game of Thrones” aspirations which in some ways hamper the early episodes. But it helps in other key ways, namely in its similar grand ambition that shines through in the storytelling, the terrific production design, and costumes. Add in an incredible ensemble and the meatiness of the source material and you have a prequel series that kicks off something that could be truly epic.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

Writer-director Christian Gudegast made his directorial debut back in 2018 with “Den of Thieves”, a crime thriller and heist film that sat in various stages of development for nearly 15 years. It was a suspenseful and action-packed feature that was far better than the reception it received from critics and even at the box office. Now seven years later, Gudegast is finally back for his sophomore effort, “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera”.

The first “Den of Thieves” left its story in an interesting spot and it certainly opened the door for a sequel. “Pantera” brings back the previous film’s two central characters and once again makes them the centerpiece. Gerard Butler reprises his role as the gritty and worn LAPD detective Nicholas “Big Nick” O’Brien. And O’Shea Jackson Jr. returns as Donnie Wilson, a once small-time criminal turned big-time thief after escaping to Europe with $30 million.

“Pantera” kicks off with the two characters in much different places. Donnie is living large in Europe but he hasn’t left behind the thrill of the heist. The film opens with him and his crew pulling off a daring job in Antwerp, Belgium, swiping diamonds for a broker named Jovanna (Evin Ahmad). Back in Los Angeles, Nick is fresh off a painful divorce and is still licking his wounds after being duped by Donnie. Nick is determined to track him down but the embarrassed police department would rather put it all behind them.

But Nick’s luck changes after he gets a tip that Donnie’s money is being moved to and from a bank in Panama. The cash trail leads him to Nice, France where Donnie and Jovanna have their sights set on an $850 million score in the highly secured World Diamond Center. The pair put together a crack team of fellow thieves and begin constructing a plan to infiltrate the heavily guarded diamond exchange and break into its impenetrable state-of-the-art vault.

Now here comes the swerve. After landing in Nice and paying a visit to the local police station for some intel, Nick tracks down Donnie and surprises him with a visit. But rather than arrest him, the disheveled and frustrated Nick tells Donnie he wants in on the job. And just like that Donnie finds himself right back in the middle of the game. But this time the stakes are even higher, especially after Donnie learns the diamonds he stole belonged to the Sicilian mafia.

From there Gudegast patiently yet meticulously maneuvers us through the surprisingly rich story. This time there are several more players besides our team of thieves. The cops, the mafia, even some angry ex-crew members, all have roles to play. Interestingly, the action takes a backseat this time around, with more time put into the various character dynamics especially between Nick and Donnie. Butler and Jackson Jr. play off each other well and they’re more equals this time around.

But of course everything is ultimately building towards the big heist which Gudegast lets play out at a tense real-time pace. He not only builds suspense but he’s able to sustain it through most of his film’s nail-biting final act. It’s capped off with an action-fueled payoff along with a couple of unexpected twists that leave the door cracked for a third film if this one does good numbers. And hopefully we won’t have to wait another seven years for it to come.

“Den of Thieves 2” comes across as more polished than its predecessor, yet it maintains some of the same grit that was a big part of the first film. This time we’re treated to a number of beautiful European vistas and it has a slightly lighter tone. There are a few times where we can feel its length. And it’s not always easy to understand what our thieves are doing, especially amid the big heist. But “Pantera” still makes for a worthwhile sequel and a solid expansion in what has become a genuinely exciting film series.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS