Three Films Make A Post: Blood, sweat and tutus.

Pretty Lethal (2026): A small troupe of perpetually quarrelling ballerinas – I’d be thankful if someone could explain the minor ballerina genre movie wave of the last twelve months or so to me – get on the bad side of some Hungarian gangsters and ex-ballerina Uma Thurman and thus have to apply their skills rather differently from their usual norm. Though, it turns out, ballet is a martial art.

For easy direct-to-streaming cinema, Vicky Jewson’s little film is a decent enough watch, pleasantly short and clearly sure of the kind of thing it wants to be. I’d rather have preferred it to have taken its own silly set-up a little more seriously instead of going the lazy route of being ironic about it, but of the three “ballerinas doing violence” movies I’ve seen in the last year or so, this is at least the most entertaining. Which doesn’t say too much, but hey, I take what I can get.

Afterburn (2025): A solar flare destroyed the Eastern hemisphere, leaving Europe a mess of minor warlords and grey ruins. Treasure hunter Jake (Dave Bautista) works for the perhaps not quite as terrible would-be king of Britain (Samuel L. Jackson), somewhat unwillingly, and is tasked to liberate the Mona Lisa from the continent. The plot will involve an evil Russian general (Kristofer Hivju) with fascist world (or what’s left of it) domination on his mind, as well as a beautiful freedom fighter (Olga Kurylenko). Also, a plot twist concerning the Mona Lisa nobody will ever have seen coming (ha).

I genuinely admire both Bautista and Kurylenko quite a bit, and always feel a bit sad when they waste their talents on something like this deeply uninspired action movie by J.J. Perry. Their presence, as well as Jackson’s willingness to put some effort into even the lamest nothing of a role, do their job of pulling this from being completely uninteresting into the realm of the vaguely watchable. Though for a guy coming from stunt and action work, Perry’s not terribly adept at directing stunts and action.

Raw File (2025): I found this piece of low budget POV horror about an investigator (Monica Oprisan) and her trusty cameraman (the voice of Alexander Bishop and the camerawork of director Aaron Dobson) having a very bad night in a large apartment complex while looking into a curious suicide to be a pleasant surprise. Once this gets going, the film shows some actual ambition: neat bits and pieces of lore and worldbuilding that cross ideas of the demonic with those of high strangeness are slowly revealed, some actual action is staged, and everything is presented without overstaying its welcome, leaving me pretty happy.

Three Films Make A Post: Winning is all in the execution.

The Killer’s Game (2024): J.J. Perry’s undemanding action comedy mostly recommends itself through a series of increasingly strange set pieces – blandness certainly isn’t a problem here – and through featuring a bunch of actors I always have time for: Dave Bautista, Ben Kingsley, Sofie Boutella, Terry Crews, Alex Kingston, Scott Adkins (with an outrageously silly Scottish accent) and more – all seemingly having fun doing their part with comically broad stereotypes, general silliness, and bloody murder.

Bautista and Boutella are actually able to sell their romance well enough you can’t help rooting for them – that’s more than most action comedies manage, if they even try.

Project Silence (2024): Keeping with bread and butter fun, Kim Tae-gon’s film about super soldier military dogs on the rampage on a bridge mixes elements of the disaster movie with those of horror and action film, stirs in some sneering at the political caste and a bit of conspiracy business and makes an enjoyable enough movie out of it.

This isn’t one of those Korean movies that first fulfil all genre expectations to then go off into the more interesting directions they have in mind, but one that’s simply aiming to be a straightforward piece of genre cinema. It does this with enough of a sense of pace and style to never overstay its welcome.

The Sadness (2021): For thirty minutes or so, I actually found myself believing the (a couple of years ago) hype Rob Jabazz’s extreme version of the infected style zombie movie had going for it. For a time, Jabazz’s slick direction, the very human performances by leads Berant Zhu and Regina Lei, and the gratuitous (at times sexual, generally grotesque) violence really promise something rather special, but the film quickly loses steam, going off on tangents of ultra-broad satire, and the kind of edge-lord business meant to shock that these days only manages to annoy me. Still looks great, mind you, and you could probably make a great fifty minute long short from the film’s best material.

Day Shift (2022)

Pretending to be a freelance pool cleaner, Bud Jablonski (Jamie Foxx) is actually a freelance vampire hunter, selling the teeth of the undead for profit (and no, the film never explains how this system actually works, or who is buying the stuff). He once was a union vampire hunter but was thrown out of the organization for irresponsible behaviour.

Because our hero is just that kind of a guy, he’s also separated from his family, not for lack of love but because he’s irresponsible and uses his work as an excuse for his absenteeism. Though I am not too sure the film actually understands this. Also, he never had the vampire talk with his wife Jocelyn (Meagan Good) and little daughter Paige (Zion Broadnax). Right now, Jocely threatens to move away unless Bud can come up with enough money for Paige’s school tuition and braces. Apparently, you only learn you have to pay five thousand dollars tuition a week before they come due.

Clearly, the only way to solve these problems is to get back into the vampire hunter’s union, which Bud manages with the help of mythical vampire hunter Big John Elliott (Snoop Dogg, who is pretty awesome in this one). Of course, the union boss hates Bud and insists on desk jock Seth (Dave Franco) accompanying and watching him.

Which becomes particularly difficult because Bud has killed the actual daughter of budding master vampire Audrey (Karla Souza), who does not take well to this sort of thing.

From moment to moment, there’s fun to be had in the series of unthinkingly deployed clichés director J.J. Perry calls a movie. You can certainly see the extensive experience Perry has with stunt work, and get quite a few good to great action set pieces (which is more than you can say about the clearly much more costly The Gray Man which also comes to us via Netflix like this one), as if someone had thrown a bit of money to a direct to video action movie. Which at the very least keeps the film from ever becoming boring. In fact, once the triple action sequence climax starts, things become downright entertaining to watch, with well choreographed action filmed with vigour and without permanent cutting away.

All of which would make for a pretty awesome piece of horror comedy action cinema if not for a terrible script that can only ever think of anything as a set-up of a joke but doesn’t understand that your world building can only be a decent basis for jokes when it actually hangs together. That doesn’t mean it can’t be absurd – see something like the Men in Black films for how to do it right – but once your world only seems to be the set-up for jokes, those jokes should at the very least be pretty good. Day Shift believes a guy repeatedly pissing himself when he encounters vampires to be the epitome of humour, and so has its problems distracting from the fact that its world makes little sense, its characters are buddy cop movie clichés without any changes made to them and certainly no development, and that its plot can’t seem to focus for a second. How shoddy is the plotting? The film plays the old “the bad guy blackmailed this pretty woman to get close to our hero” card with a character Bud has met exactly one time before her “betrayal”.

Particularly painful is the late movie revelation that vampires in this world don’t actually have to murder people and still keep free will and their old personalities. Which, if you – unlike writers Tyler Tice and Shay Hatten – think about it for a second, means Bud is randomly murdering potentially innocent people for their teeth for a living.

Yet, there are still these very fun fights (including a cameo by house favourite Scott Adkins) keeping Day Shift generally watchable and entertaining.