Tag: Thriller

Why Suzuki=Bakudan Delivers an Unforgettable Psychic Villain

There’s a bad moon rising in Suzuki=Bakudan, a crime thriller that’s more than a slow burn than anything else. You’re here to watch Jirō Satō’s performance’s performance more than anything else!

Suzuki=Bakudan movie posterAlthough I didn’t find the time to check out Suzuki=Bakudan (retitled Bomb for North America) during Japan Cuts, I’m glad to have caught it at Fantasia Film Festival 2026. Usually, crime thrillers aren’t my thing, but with Jirō Satō getting a lot of buzz, I had to see what the fuss was about. He plays psychic manipulator Tagosaku Suzuki, and he knows how to get under anyone’s skin.

Yes, those comparisons to the Joker from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight are justified. Though he doesn’t sport a grin, what he presents is closer to Jack Nicholson’s performance in The Shining, before madness took its toll on that poor soul’s mind. Because of the way he taunts the police, nobody’s sure if his psychic predictions are real. Unfortunately, those moments claim lives, and while the tragic scenes play out quickly enough to get the point across, the gruesome truth concerns what else he knows.

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When Home Bodies is Casey Walker’s Sophomore Film Debuting At Fantasia 2026, This Sci-Fi Thriller Is Sure to Haunt!

Two sheltered twins get an unexpected new family member in Casey Walker’s eerie sci-fi fable, Home Bodies, and it seems home schooling can lead to other unsettling concerns.

Home Bodies Official Poster
Played at Fantasia Film Festival on Thu July 23, 2026 9:30 PM at the Cinéma du Musée

* Potential Spoiler Alert

While waiting for news about Casey Walker‘s movie Ithaqua, also slated for release this year, I’m glad his surreal science fiction fable Home Bodies is getting lots of love at Fantasia Film Festival 2026. It’s a beautifully constructed and self-contained story set in the future, one where human experimentation is very real, and we should all be afraid, very afraid.

Blue (Ian Ho) and Red (Emma Ho) are twin siblings living a very sheltered life. They’re not allowed to go out, and while they get to grow up and be who they are, nobody’s filling them in on the birds and the bees, or teaching them how to socialize or the world beyond their four walls. And just how they’re “raised” is rather bizarre. All they have access to are neon coloured VHS tapes and a rather surreal television show called Barn. It’s best not to say too much about this Sesame Street wannabe, but that’s the gist I got.

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How Likely Will Speilberg’s Idea of Disclosure Day Happen? There’s a 1% chance.

With Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day streaming sooner than later, will it motivate our real world governments or someone to say they’re here? (Sorry Carol Anne)

Disclosure Day movie posterNow Streaming on AppleTV, Google Play and YouTube

Steven Spielberg‘s Disclosure Day is now streaming, and that’s about the only way I will see this movie. I opted not to see it in theaters because I knew it is nothing like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. What it offers is a textbook case of downsizing the UAP phenomenon rather than going big. That’s because I knew there would be no grand spectacle, no family drama, and no genuine hunt for the truth. Worse still, for a story built around disclosure, it never feels anchored to the evidence that has kept the subject alive for decades.

Or rather, there would be no return of the little grey visitors and the people they abducted to discover strange new worlds and other wonders. Instead, the message boils down to: “We’re here, we’ve been here for a while, we’re observing you, and we’re deciding whether humanity is ready for space.”

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DRAGN Is a Brutal Wake-Up Call About Drone Warfare

Peter Webber’s DRAGN blends slasher structure with modern techno-paranoia, imagining a deadly autonomous drone stalking corporate retreat attendees. While its POV sequences are effective and unsettling, the film never digs deeply enough into the ethical and emotional weight of its own premise.

Dragn Movie PosterCineverse
Available on VOD

Director Peter Webber and his screenwriting team, Barry Hutchison, Alex Lane, and Alexander Gordon Smith, have delivered a work that sits uncomfortably at the intersection of entertainment and contemporary anxiety. The release of DRAGN feels closely tied to the current global climate, where remote and automated warfare has become an increasing part of modern conflict. As these systems filter decision-making through distant interfaces, reducing lives to abstract data, the film’s premise of granting a drone the autonomous “choice” to execute feels less like speculative fiction and more like a reflection of present-day concerns.

In many ways, the bot in question attempts to be a Terminator for the age of algorithmized warfare. It is not a total failure, nor is it a triumph. Rather, it functions as an ontological inquiry: can we ever truly trust a machine programmed to bypass human empathy?

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When Unhinged Pasts Are Revealed, What’s Diabolic (2026) Is Sure to Scare

Diabolic blends trauma, control, and the supernatural into a hallucinatory folk-horror trip. While the film leans heavily on its past timeline, Phillips’ visceral style shines once the weirdness bleeds into the present.

Diabolic (2025) Movie PosterStreaming on VOD (YouTube, Apple TV+)

Aussie-made films can sometimes lean on the outback, or curiosity about Indigenous culture, but Diabolic takes a different path. Though the story plays out in the proverbial outback of Utah, I couldn’t help wondering why foreign investors were more interested in helping Daniel J. Phillips make this film than backing local creators. It’s not a detail worth nitpicking since the movie was shot in the land down under, but it becomes noticeable when the landscape feels slightly wrong for its intended setting. Maybe that’s part of the hallucinatory effect Phillips is aiming for.

After Elise (Elizabeth Cullen, The Bureau of Magical Things) leaves The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she thinks she’s safe. She’s moved on, but the nightmares keep coming. Elise has PTSD, and that’s the terrain the film explores more than anything else. Thankfully, her boyfriend Adam (John Kim, The Librarians) and her adoptive sister Gwen (Mia Challis, Outer Banks) are understanding. Trouble starts when they take a camping trip to get away and bring drugs along, hoping to knock down the walls Elise has built so she can finally feel whole and free from her past.

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Titan Manga’s Ghostly Darkness of Kanata Certainly Knows How to Haunt!

A thoughtful and unsettling look at Ghostly Darkness of Kanata, exploring how its eerie artwork and thematic focus on lingering spirits set it apart from Titan Manga’s growing horror catalogue.

Ghostly Darkness of KanataAvailable to purchase on Amazon USA

Titan Manga is not resting as more horror themed works are scheduled for release this year. The editorial team are picky and to give new talents their due is appreciated, especially after reading past works, like Shadows of Kyoto, which is self contained. But with Ghostly Darkness of Kanata (幽闇のカナタ), what it sets up is perhaps more to come. What I adore most is how it looks into why some spirits choose to remain on Earth rather than move on.

I also love how they are depicted. I’m sure Noct Koike (writer) and Chika Ishikawa (artist) had to come to an agreement over respecting traditional depictions, like not having visible feet, and considering how spirits appear to others. The artist’s work mirrors what I’ve experienced when investigating the unknown. Some spirits look like projections pulled from dirty celluloid film.

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