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28 Years Later - A Sequel That Proves Time Doesn't Heal All Scripts

There's something almost admirable about 28 Years Later: it takes 28 years of expectation, fan devotion, and cinematic legacy... and vaporizes it in under three hours. Truly, that's a talent.

Sold to us as the long-awaited return to a landmark horror universe, what we're given instead is a limp, soulless echo - a film so preoccupied with looking important that it forgets to be anything at all. Horror? Absent. Suspense? Missing in action. Emotion? Lost somewhere in a sea of grey cinematography and empty stares.

This isn't storytelling. It's brand resuscitation dressed up in melancholic trailer bait.

The plot meanders with the urgency of a Sunday stroll, characters whisper vague concerns into the void, and at no point does the film commit to actually frightening - or even mildly unsettling - its audience. It's horror in name only; a meditative dirge with just enough blood to make the posters look edgy.

And then there's the marketing. Oh, the marketing. Promises of a return to form, of dread, of psychological intensity... All smoke, no fire. The trailer was the most thrilling part of the experience - which, in retrospect, feels like a clever decoy to trap the hopeful.

In truth, 28 Years Later isn't a film. It's a slow, atmospheric sigh stretched over two hours. A beautifully shot, narratively bankrupt epilogue to a story that once had teeth.

/10 - for wasting not just time, but legacy.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning - When the Messiah Wears Ray-Bans and Runs in Circles for 2 Hours and 50 Minutes

Congratulations to the marketing department: they've managed to sell 2 hours and 50 minutes of bloated, self-indulgent action fluff as an "epic conclusion." In reality, The Final Reckoning is neither final nor much of a reckoning - unless you count the slow existential crisis you'll have halfway through.

Tom Cruise - sorry, Ethan Hunt - returns to once again shoulder the unbearable burden of saving the planet, reality, and presumably the very concept of cinema itself. At this point, he's less of a secret agent and more of a high-speed prophet sent to deliver humanity from some vaguely defined digital apocalypse, all while wearing aviators and looking heroically exhausted.

The plot? If you've seen literally any action film in the past decade, congratulations - you've already predicted every single twist, betrayal, and dramatic stare-down in this one. The script seems engineered by an AI trained solely on action movie clichés and Mission: Impossible trailers.

Dialogue is mechanical. Stakes are synthetic. The suspense is so forced, it should come with a health warning. And yet, scene after scene plays out like a montage from Cruise's highlight reel, as if the actual purpose of the film is to showcase how many ways one man can sprint while the world explodes behind him.

Let's talk about the runtime - 2 hours and 50 minutes of what feels like an ego project stretched across a green screen and soaked in overproduced sound design. You don't watch this film - you endure it. By the third act, I was emotionally numb and checking my watch with the same urgency Ethan Hunt usually reserves for defusing nuclear bombs.

The Final Reckoning isn't a spy thriller. It's a cinematic monument to Tom Cruise's refusal to age, let go, or pass the torch. Less Mission: Impossible, more Messiah: Inevitably.

2/10 - only because IMDb doesn't let me rate it "2 hours and 50 minutes of my life I want back."

I haven't been this emotionally uninvested since I accidentally watched a screensaver for two hours thinking it was a minimalist art film.

Materialists is a film that bravely asks the question: "What if nothing really happens, and everyone just looks vaguely annoyed for 110 minutes?"

Céline Song, fresh off a beautifully quiet debut, now boldly directs us into a vacuum - not the metaphorical kind that explores existentialism, but the literal kind that sucks in plot, stakes, and momentum with admirable consistency.

Dakota Johnson pouts with the energy of someone trying to remember if they left the stove on.

Chris Evans is present, mostly in the way decorative furniture is present: technically there, but not particularly involved.

Pedro Pascal, a man of range and charisma, is here too - though mostly as a reminder that talent can't survive an atmospheric pressure drop this steep.

The film is named Materialists, which I assume is meant to be ironic. Because you will absolutely leave the theater feeling emotionally bankrupt. The script floats from scene to scene like a paper boat on still water - gently, aimlessly, and eventually sinking from sheer inertia.

Dialogue? It exists. Much like ambient noise in a dentist's office: technically audible, but best ignored for your sanity. Plot? Only if you count the slow erosion of your will to keep watching. Tension? As taut as a broken shoelace.

It's not that the movie is bad in the traditional sense - no, that would have at least made it memorable. Instead, it's aggressively inert. A cinematic equivalent of a shrug, performed at glacial speed, with all the emotional resonance of a beige wallpaper sample.

To sum up: Materialists is the perfect film for people who find sleep too stimulating. It's a bold experiment in whether a film can be so understated it ceases to exist halfway through and nobody notices.

Avoid unless your idea of a good time is staring into a gorgeously shot, soulless void.

1/10 - only because IMDb won't let me give it the score it truly deserves: a soft sigh and a long walk away.