Platypuschow

Plot

A cult is about to waken H. P. Lovecraft's most feared creature.

Cast

Unfamiliar with those involved

Verdict

When you go into any ITN movie you should naturally assume the worst, whatever you think it's going to be it'll almost certainly be worse. Then the Lovecraft element, nobody seems to be able to do his work or anything even vaguely resembling it justice and therefore also going in you have to assume it'll be bad. Therefore a ITN Lovecraft title? Never really stood a chance did it?

To its credit it starts well enough, the production values feel higher and the cast aren't your usual suspects and that's for the most part a good thing. Sadly it doesn't last, ITN's ability to tell a coherent story rears its head at around the 1/3 mark and the film falls into illogical chaos.

It's easy enough to follow, but it's all over the place. It's unoriginal, not engaging and screams yet another movie cashing in on the good name of H. P Lovecraft.

Building to a messy predictable finale Monster Portal is as poor as the title suggests it would be. There are plenty of passable Lovecraftian tales, choose one of those after this travesty.

Rants

Without Danielle Scott, Chrissie Wunna, May Kelly etc is it really an ITN film? It feels weird at this stage. Same cast, every film, when none of them are present it feels.......wrong! And yet probably the best decisions considering movies they're in are consistently terrible.

The Good

Based on the works of a horror genius

The Bad

Most of the CGI is of a very poor standard Story is a mess This is far from Lovecraftian.

Plot

Three couples and a lonely friend visit an isolated escape room in the middle of the desert run by a mysterious Ukrainian performance artist.

Cast

Outside of Annie Hamilton I knew nobody involved, and even then she's a background player and a face you'll remember but not be able to put a name to.

Verdict

Safe Space was the missus's pick, after last weeks horrendous In The Lost Lands (2025) she had a lot to make up for and after reading the premise she thought this was that horror sub-genre we love so much but is hard to put a name to. Well it's not, it's not even horror, it's barely even a movie at all.

The film opens with character development and got our attention, the characters were a cluster of stereotypes, a combination of uninspired, boring and unlikeable and then when things start to happen (And I use that very very loosely) it falls apart. It kept my attention because I was interested to see how they were going to put it all together but by the half way point I realized they weren't going to be able to and this would just be a disjointed arthouse mess with ambiguous meanings.

I cannot stress how bad Safe Space is, when the credits rolled the pair of us looked at one another in disbelief. I joked that she now can't be trusted to pick movies and we spent the next few minutes picking the film apart, trying to make sense of it, but there was no sense to make.

I cannot fathom who Safe Space is aimed at, what genre it falls under, or how anyone would find this even remotely entertaining.

Rants

I would rather watch in The Lost Lands again than endure 5 more minutes of this. I think I'd rather watch Birdemic and it's sequel, directors cut editions! You know what, I'd rather watch every Sharknado back to back without breaks, having only shaved toe nail clippings and sloth pee as my snacks. What were these people thinking?

The Good

Gets your attention initially

The Bad

Your attention is grabbed, for the wrong reasons Bland characters Makes no sense Pretentious nonsense.

Plot

Trapped in a remote cabin, a film crew finds themselves stalked by three masked men who know the isolated forest and their every move.

Cast

Made by the creators of the very underwhelming Haunting of the Murder House (2022)

Verdict

Despite being punished by dozens of awful found footage movies I still believe it has it's place in the industry and look forward to that rough diamond nestled in the mountain of dirt that I come across every once in a while. Is the Last Cabin diamond or dirt? Very much the latter.

Found footage is usually supernatural, usually ghost themed and it's always refreshing when they try something else. I've seen found footage aliens, dinosaurs, zombies, bigfoot and beyond with mixed results and this one is a found footage slasher.

Three people go to a log cabin at night and come under attack from mask wearing psychopaths with no clear motivation. What you expect to happen, happens but very slowly and with very weak death scenes.

At first it got my attention, then as events unfolded it lost it as it descended into generic found footage territory. Nothing really happens, you don't see a vast amount, the character development is non-existent and every found footage trope here is used excessively except the night vision one which they skipped or perhaps didn't have the budget for?

A lazy, generic, bland found footage film that brings absolutely nothing new to the table and will appeal to folks new to the genre and with non-existent expectations.

Rants

Remember when it felt like filmmakers made an effort? Where they were movie fans themselves, knew the landscape, knew what had been done and knew what the fans wanted? Now it feels like instead of even trying to make anything new they intentionally recycle all the stuff that's already out there. Such a shame, this kind of thing is why I'm sleepwalking through movies because I've seen it before. Give us something new you lazy unoriginal folk!

The Good

Kind of like the cover art For about 15 minutes I was entertained

The Bad

Lazy and unoriginal Really breaks down at around half way Nothing really happens Poor kills.