destroy all neighbors Archives

Welcome to the January 2024 review round up. This is a new feature where I put together multiple, shorter reviews of recent releases on one page. I will still do full reviewers for larger releases, so these will mostly be smaller movies you probably haven’t even heard of, but may come across on streaming and wonder if they are worth your time. For January, I’m looking at the action movie “The Bricklayer”, the thriller “Wanted Man“, the comedy “Self Reliance” and the horror comedy “Destroy All Neighbors“. Because I’m keeping all these reviews brief, there are no major spoilers to worry about. Let’s get started!

The Bricklayer (2024)

Based on a novel by Noah Boyd, “The Bricklayer” is directed by Renny Harlin and stars Aaron Eckhart. This is the story ex-CIA operative Steve Vail (Eckhart), called back into the fold to deal with old friend, Victor Radek (Clifton Collins Jr.), who has a vendetta against the CIA. Radek has been framing the CIA for a series of assassinations. Vail is assisted by CIA agent Kate Banon (Nina Dobrev). Vail retired from the agency and became a bricklayer, hence the name of the film. You may recognise Harlin’s name as he was the director of a few classic action movies back in the day, namely: “Die Hard 2”, “Cliffhanger” and “The Long Kiss Goodnight”. Though he also directed “Cutthroat Island”, one of the most infamous movie disasters of all time and Nightmare on Elm Street 4 which was in my view the first bad Nightmare movie.

The movie is fairly true to form to Harlin’s strengths and weaknesses. The action is decent and reminiscent of late 80’s action films. That is where the good ends though. The basic premise is okay and has a bit of complexity to it due to the source novel, but it’s pretty much by the numbers and all the twists are highly predictable. The biggest problem though is the dialogue which is just painful. There is an attempt to work in a lot of action movie tropes, but they often don’t seem to quite fit in to what is going on and it makes the whole thing awkward. The relationship between Vail and Banon runs every cliché in book of buddy cops and frankly the Bricklaying gimmick and Vail’s love of Jazz is just sort of there for the sake of it, adding nothing. This is a 4/10, skip it.

Self Reliance (2024)

Directed by, written by and staring Jake Johnson, “Self Reliance” is a comedic take on the Hunting-People-TV-Show trope. (Think: “The Running Man”, or more recently”Guns Akimbo”). The twist here is that this is a character based comedy and not an action movie. “Tommy” (Johnson) is a fairly washed up loser, who lives with his mother, works a boring office job and is still pining for his ex girlfriend (Who left him for being boring). One day he is greeted by Andy Samberg in a limo who gives him an opportunity. Take part in a dark net reality TV show where people try to murder him for 30 days. The loophole is they can only kill him if he is by himself. The prize is a life changing million dollars. Feeling he can use the loophole he agrees, but it turns out not to be as easy as he thought.

This one is pretty good. The concept is an original take on an established trope and the story provides a good mixture of character based comedy and outright wackiness. There’s no real action or horror to it though. People do occasionally try and murder Tommy, but these are all firmly comedic encounters. To help his chances he writes a cryptic post on Craigslist to try and find other contestants to team up with and through this meets “Maddy” (Anna Kendrick). The pair instantly have chemistry and this brings a lot of heart to the story and helps to nudge Tommy’s character growth in the right direction, despite things not quite working out. Overall though while it may not be quite as entertaining as Guns Akimbo was, either for action or comedy moments, it is still a solid pick for a movie night. This is a narrow 6/10.

Destroy All Neighbors (2024)

Now we go right past “quirky” and all the way to “Utterly insane” with “Destroy All Neighbors”. This is a Shudder original, directed by Josh Forbes and staring Jonah Ray and Alex Winter. The story follows “William Brown” (Ray) who is an assistant engineer at a local music studio. He lives in a low cost apartment with his girlfriend Emily, surrounded by eccentric neighbors. The building manager is nice enough, but a total cheapskate when it comes to maintenance. William has been working on his prog-rock album for years, but is struggling with the ending and has become obsessed and neurotic. Into this enters “Vlad” (Winter), a beast of a man that spends his days listening to loud EDM music, lifting weights and grunting. William reaches breaking point after being fired from his job and returning home to a particularly annoying Vlad. The result is a series of accidental murders… a few zombies… and perhaps the ending to his album!

This is a true B-Movie, so don’t expect top level special effects. The gore on display is far more comedic than terrifying, but it works perfectly for the movie. On the surface this reminded me of another Alex Winter B-Movie comedy Horror “Freaked” from 1992. However a lot of the funniest moments here actually come from the films send up of Prog Rock. The movie has a fairly slow start, but when it kicks off the pace and comedy picks up rapidly and by the final scenes I was rolling around laughing. If you want a funny movie, with comical gore and musical references, this could be for you. It won’t be for everyone though. Chances are you are already swaying one way or the other and your instincts will be correct. For me, thanks to the hilarious final act I rate this as a very strong 6/10.

Wanted Man (2024)

“Wanted Man” is written, directed by and staring Dolph Lundgren. He’s actually made a few movies like this in recent years, but this is the first one I decided to check out. Dolph plays “Travis Johansen”, a veteran cop close to retirement with a very 80’s action movie cop attitude. He has a somewhat xenophobic attitude towards Mexicans, bordering on racism. It’s clear though that Travis is not actually a bad person as such, just a little ignorant. His cop and ex-cop friends though share his attitude and perhaps take it further. Johansen is sent to Mexico to look into the fatal shooting of some DEA agents, but stumbles into something far more dangerous than he was expecting. He will have to face conspiracy and betrayal while he tries to protect the last remaining witness.

This is a short, fairly straight forward story that we’ve seen similar versions of before and from far more capable actors/directors. It’s not terrible, it’s just very bare boned. Dolph was never the best actor even among 80’s action stars and while many of his peers have been able to transition to playing older, more character drama based variations on their old archetypes, this seems to be something Dolph may not be quite ready for, at least not as a self-directed lead. The ideas here though are pretty reasonable, but as I said, very familiar. Most notably it can be compared to “Gran Torino” (2008) and “Rambo: Last Blood” (2019), both far better films. Outside the character growth the plot is very straightforward, leaving little else to say about it. Not a total waste of time, especially given its short running time, but you can easily skip it. 5/10

With the 2023 wrap up out of the way, it’s time to take a look at what movies are coming to our screens in 2024. I’m doing this in two halves, so this is just the first six months. It’s worth noting that several of the big names were actually due out in 2023 but got pushed back due to the various strikes. Dune: Part Two for example was a movie a lot of people were excited for in 2023, but it got pushed back, unnecessarily in my view, due to the strikes. Specifically they wanted the actors available to promote it. These days it’s debatable if the actors actually help or hinder a movies promotion given their tendency to make divisive comments in interviews. Then again, the last Dune movie didn’t perform that well despite meeting audience approval so I understand them not wanting to take the risk.

It’s also worth noting how few superhero movies are hitting the screens this coming year and neither the MCU nor DCU/DCEU have an official entry this year. The DCEU is dead now and James Gunn’s DCU doesn’t launch until 2025. Marvel meanwhile only have MCU adjacent content with their revival of the Fox X-Men universe via Deadpool 3 and three more entries in Sony’s more miss than hit “Venomverse”. This is probably for the best, given the disastrous box office both franchises have had in 2023. It remains to be seen if this little break will help the recent decline in the popularity of superhero movies or hasten it. Disney are putting out two MCU shows next year mind, but I doubt “Echo” or “Eyes of Wakanda” will help much.

First Quarter.

The first few months of 2024 offers several highly anticipated movies, several of which were originally slated for 2023. I’ll start off with a list and then break it down by month. Note, a lot of the movies I’m listing here aren’t big Hollywood Blockbusters. With the writers strike, the major studios took a big hit and as a result have less than normal to bring out. However, often the best movies aren’t from the major studios, so I’ve included a lot of smaller films I think have potential. Some of them aren’t even horrors!

Note: I’m updating this list with review scores as I watch stuff!

JANUARY
Night Swim – January 5th (Horror)
The Bricklayer – January 5th (Action/Thriller) – 4/10
Destroy all Neighbors – January 12th (Horror/Comedy) – 6/10
The Beekeeper – January 12th (Action/Thriller) – 6.5/10
Self Reliance – January 12th (Comedy) – 6/10
I.S.S. – January 19th (Thriller/Drama/Sci-Fi)
Wanted Man – January 19th (Action/Thriller) – 5/10

FEBRUARY
Lisa Frankenstein – February 9 (Horror/Comedy)
Argylle – February 12 (Action/Thriller)
Madame Web – February 14 (Superhero)
Land of Bad – February 16 (Action/War)
Drive Away Dolls – February 23rd (Thriller/black comedy)

MARCH
The Fall Guy – March 1 (Action/Comedy)
Dune: Part Two – March 5 (Sci-Fi)
Imaginary – March 8 (Horror)
NEW ADDITION: Roadhouse – March 8 (Action)
Damsel – March 8 (Fantasy)
Kung Fu Panda 4 – March 29 (Family/Comedy)
Mickey 17 – March 29 (Sci-Fi)
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire – March 29 (Fantasy/Comedy)

January.

First up is the Blumhouse horror Night Swim (Which will be already out by the time I post this), this is a movie that was originally due out in 2023 but got postponed. The movie itself looks so so, but it does mark the new partnership between James Wan and Jason Blum who merged their companies on January 2nd this year. This will create a real powerhouse for horror in the coming years especially considering their partnership with Universal. Later in the month Jason Statham’s launches us firmly into 2024 in solid style with the fun looking action movie “The Beekeeper“. It’s classic Jason Statham, if you hate those movies you can probably skip it but if you enjoy them you can expect to be in safe hands.

There’s quite a few lower profile movies for January too that look interesting. Those after low budget horror fun though should check out the trailer for “Destroy all Neighbors“, which looks like “Psycho Goreman” levels of fun with more than a hint of Alex Winter’s “Freaked” (And not just because Winter is in this too). Another interesting one for January is the comedy “Self Reliance” which looks to subvert “Hunting Humans/Running Man” trope. This has been done a few times now (For example the excellent “Guns Akimbo”), but the trailer looked fun and they seem to have found a new angle to it.

Finishing up the line up is a couple of action films in “The Bricklayer” and “Wanted Man” and the science fiction triller “I.S.S.”. The Bricklayer (Which is already out), looks pretty good from the trailer and is from seasoned action director Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger, Die Hard II, Long Kiss goodnight). Wanted Man is directed by and starring Dolph Lundgren. Dolph has directed a few action films now and all hover between 5-6/10 on imdb, so don’t expect too much. I.S.S. meanwhile is a sci-fi/thriller based on the idea of what would happen on the International Space Station should nuclear war between Russia and the US kick off on Earth.

February.

February sees our first Superhero film for 2023 and…. yeah, it doesn’t look good. “Madame Web” appears to be Sony scrapping the very bottom of the barrel of the characters they have available. Traditionally Madame Web is an elderly blind woman in a wheelchair that helps guide Peter Parker. I’ve never been a big fan of creating a “Spider-Family” when one of the things that made Peter Parker Spider-Man was having to solve his issues by himself. Madame Web at least was always very hands off, effectively just a quest giver. But it’s still just a gimmick hanger on character and not the kind you would make a movie for. This character is joined by three more Spider-Knockoffs, the only one I care about at all is Julia Carpenter, since she debuted it “Secret Wars” back in the 80’s, when I was heavily reading Marvel Comics.

On a potentially positive note we finally get the Henry Cavill spy thriller “Argylle“, though a word of caution on that one: I’m pretty sure that is a bait and switch. The trailer only shows Cavill playing an in world, fictional version of the character and as the trailer reaches the point of introducing the “Real” Argylle…. it ends. Yeah, it’s totally not going to be Henry. My guess is that the author of the fictional in world books that is central to the story is the real Argylle, in what would effectively turn the story into a “Long Kiss Goodnight” remake. This may or may not cause a backlash depending on if the movie is actually any good! Fortunately the trailer did look action packed and fun, so regardless of who the real Argylle is, it may be entertaining.

Filling out the rest of February are some real wild cards. Probably the most notable is Ethan Coen’s “Drive Away Dolls“. The trailer looked stylish but I honestly couldn’t tell much else about it. Then there’s the action movie “Land of Bad“, which looks like a typical soldiers in action type movie but those can sometimes be very good, so we’ll see. Finally, there is another comedy horror, “Lisa Frankenstein“, the plot is somewhat similar in basic concept to horror cult classic “May”, but with the comedy dial turned up to eleven. Lisa, like may is trying to construct her perfect man, but this time she starts with a re-animated corpse and is basically trying to replace bits of it to make it less… dead. Not sure if it will work in practice, but concepts like this are always a fine line between hilarious and terrible.

March.

March is where things really get interesting in 2024, with a number of highly anticipated movies. This includes the delayed “Dune Part II” finishing off Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s first Dune novel. The trailer for this looks superb and it may be the safest bet of the year for quality. The month also sees a fourth Kung Fu Panda movie, but more interesting for me is “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire“, the fourth canonical Ghostbusters movie and direct sequel to “Afterlife”. The movie sees the franchise return to New York and there is more than a chill in the air. The remaining OG-Busters return once more, though it is unknown how large their roles are this time. My guess is you won’t see much of Venkman in this.

We also get a reboot of “The Fall Guy“, an 80’s TV series now turned into a movie. There seems to be little in common between this movie and the series, but the trailer did look pretty good. Perhaps this will be the new “Equalizer”. A potential movie to look out for in March is Bong Joon-ho’s science fiction adaptation “Mickey 17“. I don’t know the source material (The novel “Mickey7”), but the synopsis sounds interesting and this is an Oscar winning director with a strong list of science fiction and horror movies to his name. The very capable Robert Pattinson takes the lead roll in the movie, so there is a lot of potential. Capping off March is a pair of trope subersions with Netflix’s take on the fairy tale movie “Damsel” and the imaginary friends gone bad horror “Imaginary”. The latter of those is the first of two movies about imaginary friends this year.

Second Quarter.

The second quarter of 2024 features a run of big budget action based movies and a fair amount of horror along with a lot of franchise returns. In all (Of the movies listed), nine are either franchise sequels, prequels, spin-offs or reboots and only six are original films, four of which are horrors. Here’s the list:

April
NEW ADDITION: Monkey Man (Action) – April 5th
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire – April 12 (Action/Kaiju)
The First Omen – April 12 (Horror)
Abducting Abigail – April 19 (Horror)
NEW ADDITION: The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare – April 19th (Action)
Civil War – April 26 (Action/Thriller)

May
Horrorscope – May 10 (Horror)
If – May 17 (Horror
Furiosa – May 24, 2024
Garfield – May 24, 2024
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes – May 24, 2024

June
The Watchers – June 7, 2024 (Horror)
Ballerina – June 7
Bad Boys 4 – Jun 14
Inside Out 2 – June 14, 2024
A Quiet Place: Day One – June 28
Horizon: An American Saga (Pt 1) – June 28

April

Already controversial film “Civil War” hit’s theatres April 26th. Hard not to feel that movie is cynically cashing in on extreme tensions across the US in what is sure to be the most controversial election of all time. Fortunately even in the trailer they make it clear the film is pure fantasy since it has California teaming up with Texas! April also gives us a new entry in the “Monsterverse” franchise, “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” this time it’s a full on Godzilla and King Kong team up movie and it remains to be seen if they can actually make this work. Certainly the scene of Godzilla running in the trailer was… strange. After the success of the Japanese Godzilla Minus One in 2023, it’s uncertain whether the audiences are still on board with a heroic running Godzilla teaming up with a heroic Kong.

For horror we have an ill advised old franchise prequel “The First Omen“, which just to be a little more confusing is a prequel to the reboot Omen film from 2006 and not the one from 1976. yes they made a prequel to the film that has a 5.5 (62k votes) on imdb rather than the one with a 7.5 (129k votes). Go figure. Though a prequel to the ’76 film would basically just be Rosemary’s baby. All feels a bit pointless to me, but maybe it’ll be a surprise hit. April also sees the release of Universal monster thriller “Abducting Abigail“, a movie little seems to be known about, but seems to be about people kidnapping someone that is actually a monster.

UPDATE: Two new movies have been added to the slate in April that are worth mentioning, both are action films. First is “Monkey Man” from Universal, released April 5th and from the looks of the excellent trailer is a action film/superhero origin movie. That is followed by Guy Ritchies latest movie “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” with Henry Cavill. Ritchies output last year was nothing short of spectacular so I expect good things here as well. It seems April just got kicked up a notch!

May

May brings more questionable sequels with the first Mad Max film without Mad Max in: “Furiosa“. It’s also the first Max franchise movie to feature extremely heavy CGI and it was very noticeable in the trailer (And not in a good way). One sequel that actually looks decent though is “Kingdom of the Planet of the Ape“. Honestly it could go either way, but the trailer was promising. May also brings “The Strangers: Chapter 1“, a prequel to a home invasion film I wasn’t particularly impressed with. In my review of “The Strangers” the only positive I had about it was a surprisingly good performance by Liv Tyler. Another horror out in May is the deliberately misspelled “Horrorscope” about people having their fortunes read and then dying in related ways to that fortune. Straight forward gimmick; we’ll see how it lands.

May sees Garfield back on the big screen, now with Chris Pratt voicing the lasagna loving feline. The new film is called “The Garfield Movie” not to be confused with “Garfield: The Movie” from 2004. June also features a potentially big animated feature with “Inside Out 2“, though Disney doesn’t have the best track record with animation in recent years, so remains to be seen if it will be as much of a success as the original film. Disney can’t claim genre fatigue on their animation since everyone else seems to be doing well in that department. One movie that I think may be a hit this year (One of two for Ryan Reynolds), is “IF“, this years second movie about imaginary friends. These are good imaginary friends though, so don’t expect them to murder anyone. This is pure fantasy/comedy and the trailer looked great.

June

As we roll into the summer we get a pair of franchise action movies with the fourth installment of Michael Bay’s Bad Boys franchise “Bad Boys 4“. Not much is known about that one right now, so there is a chance it’ll get delayed. Before that though we get “Ballerina” a John Wick spin off set between the third and fourth movie of that franchise. The movie does include Keanu Reeves reprising his role, but the actual lead is Ana de Armas. It’s unknown how much of a role Wick will have in it. The third movie vying to be an early summer hit is Pixar’s “Inside Out 2“. While the original was a big hit, we all know how things are going for Disney right now and this isn’t Toy Story. It seems unlike “Anxiety” will be as popular a character as “Joy” was.

On the horror side of things June brings “The Watchers“, the directorial debut of Ishana Shyamalan, M. Night’s daughter. Hopefully she isn’t also obsessed with building movies around a single twist. The big horror movie of June though is the Quiet Place prequel “A Quiet Place: Day One“. If you read my review of the previous movie you’ll know I really liked the prequel section and was indifferent to the rest, so I’m actually on board with this one. Stepping away from horror, the final movie of note in June is Kevin Costner’s latest Western Epic “Horizon: An American Saga“. This is a self funded two part movie with the second due out in august. The total run time is apparently eleven hours, though it was originally meant to be four movies and seems to now be just two. The final length remains to be seen… But probably not by me!

End of Part One

Part two launches right into the summer holiday season and beyond. Right now its pretty barren terrain thanks to last years writers strike. They delayed a lot of films due out last year to make sure they had some content, but that could only stretch it so far. Also the end half of the year is where films are more likely to be delayed again, so it is a lot more speculative. Suffice to say part two will be shorter! Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope it’s given you a few films to look forward to.

Tag: destroy all neighbors

Review Roundup – January 2024