Each October I try to provide capsule reviews of 31 films made or released in the current year which I haven't yet seen. Sadly I failed to reach the magic figure of 31, but here are the 17 I did cover, split over two parts:
Buddy (USA 2026: Dir Casper Kelly) I have distant memories of catching episodes of the US TV series
Barney & Friends when it aired in the UK TV during the 1990s. Barney, the central character, was a huge purple dinosaur who, every week, played with a group of stage school moppets who together sang songs and learned wholesome lessons about obedience and friendship.
Casper Kelly has appropriated the ‘Barney’ setup for his latest movie. The ‘Buddy’ of the title (authentically voiced in true ‘Barney’ style by Keegan-Michael Key) is a giant orange unicorn who, as the lead in an eponymous regular late 1990s TV show, preaches love and understanding to his perma smiling playmates, Freddy (Delaney Quinn), Oliver (Tristan Borders) and Wade (Caleb C.J. Williams). In the first ‘episode’ Buddy throws a dance party for his chums, although one of them, Josh (Luke Speakman) would rather read his book ('A Wrinkle in Reality', a take on the actual book ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ and appropriate in terms of what happens next).
By the next episode, Josh is missing, replaced by the perky Hannah (Madison Skyy Polan); his book, discarded in the trash, covered in blood and discovered by Freddy during a group hug, is the first sign that all might not be well in Buddy-land. From here on in the outsize host begins to exert his narcissistic influence until several of the kids make a break over the wall in search of an Oz type city called Diamond City.
Kelly then offers a parallel story set in today’s America, where mum Grace (Cristin Milioti) seems to be having a kind of suburban relapse, going quietly nuts as she thinks she may have mislaid one of her children, much to the annoyance of her terrible husband (Topher Grace). These two stories will eventually coalesce as Buddy seeks to track down the renegade kids and restore order to TV land.
Buddy is so delightfully unhinged you won’t mind that the elements making up the movie seem a little loose. Unlike other ‘twisted childhood’ films (of which the 2019 The Banana Splits Movie is probably the closest here) Kelly’s feature is truly subversive, and its production values render the whole thing scarily convincing. Bloody, funny and endlessly inventive, this is great filmmaking.
Salmokji: Whispering Water (South Korea 2026: Dir Lee Sang Min) Korean horror cinema continues to throw up some of the most inventive films in the genre, and Lee Sang Min’s second feature proves a point.
Road View Media, an online mapping company responsible for committing South Korea to a series of photos for GPS purposes, have hit on a problem. In one of their perspective images of the Salmokji Reservoir, there is a photo of a woman’s head surfacing from the water. Nobody knows how the photo was uploaded, but the company appoint a team to travel to the location to take a replacement set.
Leading the team is producer Han Su-in (Kim Hye-yoon), cameramen Song Kyung-tae (Kim Young-sung) and his brother Kyung-jun (Oh Dong-min), and two assistants, Jang Seong-bin (Yoon Jae-chan) and Moon Se-jeon (Jang Da-ah), who both run their own supernatural online show. Their interest in joining the expedition is not coincidental: the Salmokji Reservoir, a real Korean location is, according to one of the cast, “the crossroads of life and death”, a place where others have gone missing, most recently company CEO Woo Kyo-shik (Kim Jun-han) who, depressed following his wife’s death, stopped returning calls after journeying to the area.
If the photographic team start their journey with a light heart, a series of misadventures, faulty equipment and GPS tracking, plus some weird visual tricks, have them quickly reevaluating the watery area for what it really is; a submerged graveyard where no one thought to remove the bodies before flooding the area (hello Poltergeist). And the spirits of the departed, in true, K-horror tradition, are vengeful wraiths who create a smokescreen of trickery to lure their victims who, despite the equipment available to them, are powerless to identify the threat facing the group.
Salmokji: Whispering Water was a box office smash in South Korea, and rightfully so. It may be a little overcomplicated at times, but the director manages to create a plausible atmosphere of slow dread punctuated by some visceral shocks. In a reverse way to the real life Aokigahara ‘Suicide’ forest in Japan, which gave rise to a number of films which interpreted its legend, the haunted waters of this film have inspired the real location to become a spooky tourist attraction. Weird but true.
Passenger (USA/Canada 2026: Dir André Øvredal) Young couple Tyler (Jacob Scipio) and Maddie (Lou Llobell) are about to give up the loft life of NYC for one on the road, literally cashing it all in and buying a large camper van. At least that’s the plan. In Tyler’s eyes the next stage of their life is perfect; he’s got the ring stashed away for a surprise proposal, and the beach is calling. Maddie on the other hand is riven with doubts, even though she goes along with the plan, and six weeks later they’re both living the ‘van life’ favoured, apparently, by an increasing number of Americans.
Now if you’ve seen the excellent Nomadland you’ll know that for some this life choice is one borne of necessity rather than desire. And there’s a sour edge to the dream when the pair hang out at a kind of van festival where Maddie sees a wall of missing persons flyers, people who have vanished while pursuing life on the road. She also sees a motif of three scratches which crops up again and again; it’s ‘hobo code’ for something unsafe. “The road can be a scary place” warns one festival attendee, telling them never to drive at night. Too late: they’ve already pulled over to assist the occupants of a crashed car, only to find that ‘something’ has latched onto their van, or more precisely them. A something that wants them dead but first is happy to drive them out of their minds, the ‘dark opposite’ of the happy traveller.
Øvredal, a director with an impressive CV of fantastic features, is a secure pair of hands to breathe life into a story which, on paper, must have looked like a kind of souped up Jeepers Creepers. It’s a film of two halves; in the first Maddie’s doubts about her new life are underscored by the rising threat of the external environment; the insecurity of their existence, initially felt only by her, manifesting in a series of scenes in which the supernatural threat starts to tinker with her mind.
But once Tyler catches up with things the second half becomes an overfamiliar race with the devil, with a series of admittedly well mounted set pieces as the pair try to stay alive. Where Passenger succeeds is in that first half, but the second feels safe and predictable. As other critics have mentioned, the horror genre these days is renowned for taking chances with narrative and setup; Øvredal’s film feels like a return to the safe plotting of yesteryear, which seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity.
Wow. this guy might be my new favourite horror filmmaker, if his latest freakout is anything to go by. Hailing from the Pacific North West, McCarthy, who also acts, produces and writes, has a habit of tapping into the zeitgeist, or at least borrowing the names of successful movie series for his projects and adding classic fright flicks to the title; for example 2022’s
Conjuring: The Beyond and the following year’s
Insidious Inferno. See what I mean?
Ouija Hell House once again calls to mind two separate franchises and is related to neither. Single mum Danielle (former Mrs Universe - yes it is a thing - Laura Hunter) relocates to her late grandmother’s house following a divorce, keen to make a new start. With her are daughters Michelle (Hailey Stubblefield) and younger sister, non verbal Sierra (Victoria Hunter, Laura’s daughter).
To add to the post-divorce trauma, deeply sarcastic Michelle is also still getting over the death of her friend from a drugs overdose. Danielle is hopeful that her family can make a fresh start in a new home, but mopey Michelle feels otherwise, not helped by Sierra filming everything (adding a much not needed ‘found footage’ aspect to the film).
But we’ve seen a prologue where a grocery delivery guy, arriving at the same house, has encountered, to his immense bad luck, a rotting corpse in the bathroom, a smoke belching demon and three undead young women. Oh and a Ouija board, the same board that Danielle discovers, hoping that a quick spin of the planchette is what’s needed to establish some mum/daughter bonding time. Bad idea; the demons return, mum and Michelle get a bit possessed, and mayhem ensures.
Topped off with an outrageous twist which sharp eyed viewers may pick up on from earlier in the movie, Ouija Hell House makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, which is the best thing about it. It feels like a throwback to shot on VHS features of the 1980s; there’s gratuitous nudity via a weird bathroom scene, crazy video footage, a dreary synth soundtrack and narrative strands which crash and burn at every opportunity. I bloody loved this and, post Halloween, I’m off to watch all this guy’s available features, including a 2021 movie entitled Jesus Was Evil, in which ‘a pair of beautiful female missionaries go on an infidel killing spree.’ I cannot wait. On another site Laura Hunter describes her role of Danielle as “exciting and deeply meaningful”. She obviously hasn’t watched it.
Capture (USA 2026: Dir Bruce Wemple) Now if someone complemented you on your photographic equipment by saying you had a killer camera, you’d be flattered, right? Well in Bruce Wemple’s latest it’s a comment best taken literally. His last two movies were the underwhelming
The North Witch and
The Hangman, both from 2024, and it looks like he hasn’t improved much.
Kaitlyn Lunardi plays Abby, an adopted young woman who’s a bit of a mess up, with some alcohol and substance issues, currently hiding out at her foster sister’s apartment and going nowhere. Out of the blue she discovers that she’s inherited the house owned by her natural parents, a fixer upper which is clearly way too big for a single woman; but stubborn Abby ignores any advice to sell up and move on, deciding to make a go of it.
Searching the house, Abby finds a camcorder and a box of tapes which contain recordings of her parents, who made a decision to buy the house to accommodate Abby’s mother’s counselling practice, and sessions with her patients, including one very odd character named ‘Kevin’ (Will Maizel). She learns that the house, and her parents, have a terrible reputation in town, but also that a force has been released via her mother’s work which may now reside within the gaff.
Despite a prologue which suggests some supernatural activity is at work, Wemple then presents us with a fairly tepid domestic drama into which the spooky bits are somewhat awkwardly added. The idea of the ‘ghost in the machine’ isn’t new and thus has to be handled carefully; here it’s a rather clumsy device.
But Wemple still manages to elicit some scares and a brooding atmosphere, if you can ignore the basic silliness of the setup, and gives us a great downbeat ending, entirely in keeping with the rest of the film.
Bodycam (Canada 2025: Dir Brandon Christensen) More ‘found footage’ hokum which promises much and delivers less and less as it progresses.
Police Officers Jackson and Bruce (Jaime M. Callica and Sean Rogerson respectively) are called to a domestic incident at a house in an area populated by ‘tweakers’ (people who abuse methamphetamine) who wander around outside, listlessly, like zombies. While Jackson is used to the neighbourhood – his mother lives there – Bruce is twitchy, becoming more so as they enter the property, which lies in darkness. Inside there is screaming, a big hole in the floor with the word ‘rise’ daubed above it; the cop, clearly nervous, pulls the trigger too quickly, and a woman and baby lie dead. In another room a distraught woman faces the cops and then cuts her own throat with a broken bottle.
Faced with a dilemma, Jackson wants to call it in but Bruce is keen to cover up the misdemeanour. This locks the pair into a long night of the soul in which they are unable to escape the impact of their actions or the neighbourhood in which it took place. Brandon Christensen, who last year gave us slasher Night of the Reaper, wraps his film up in social commentary, the occult, mindflip exercises and, ultimately, outright horror.
But the setup, while authentic (filmed in the poorer suburbs of Alberta, Canada) is fairly one note. There’s sorrow in this movie (Jackson’s sister died young in the area) but it’s not given room to breathe, and smothered by a need to keep the two cops on the run, at the expense of much needed drama. As the title suggests, the shot on bodycam format is effective, but I found the increasing hysteria of the piece unconvincing.
Best Served Cold (Philippines 2026: Dir Richard V. Soames) The first Shocktober trip away from the USA and Canada takes us to the Philippines, a country which has been making horror films since 1927, and most memorably gave us the ‘Blood Island’ movies.
Best Served Cold, from its title onwards, ain’t going to win any awards for subtlety, but it’s a lot of fun. Best friends Gwen (Elisse Joson) and Moira (Alexa Miro) have come to Ibiza for the former’s bridal shower. But Gwen is starting to get cold feet, and asks her husband to be, Marvin (Paolo Varela) for a postponement; she still has some living to do. And that living extends to getting flirty with tour guide Joaquin (Derrick Dover) who invites the pair, and their friends, to a private resort; how can they say no?
Run by Dionis (Raymond Humphries) and his wife Corazon (Monika Truong), the luxury hideaway has everything they need for a leisurely combination of good food, sun and (PG) sex. Corazon is an excellent cook, serving bespoke meals for the guests. But right upfront the pair disclose – to the viewers, at least – their true calling; they’re cannibals, part of a network of well to do flesh eaters who took their spiritual inspiration (and appetites) from a certain plane 1972 plane crash in the Andes, where survivors were forced to eat their dead passengers in order to survive. Reckoning that their Filippino guests are the equivalent of truffle pigs, they look forward to killing the group and serving them up for their discerning cannibal guests.
“Are we in some international travelogue movie gone wrong, that turns into a horror flick?” asks camp Elliott (Macoy Dubs), one of the group responsible for hooking them up with the resort owners. Which is precisely what happens in Best Served Cold, as the film morphs from beautiful people enjoying themselves to frightened sunseekers running for their lives. And while the first half of the film looks like it ain’t going to deliver, the whole thing goes all Pascal Laugier by the end, as limbs are hacked off, people get covered in the ketchup and a pitched battle takes place between the cannibals and their intended dinner.
It’s perhaps a little long and occasionally too languid in pace but the best thing about Soames’s movie is the surprising pivot from teen adventure to bloodbath. Not bad at all.
Infirmary (USA 2026: Dir Nicholas Pineda) There are two types of ‘found footage’ films; those which feature gangs of young people wandering around somewhere supposedly haunted and screaming their heads off, and the other where the ‘action’ rolls out more sedately using CCTV and long shot video footage,
Paranormal Activity style. On paper Pineda’s debut feature sounds like an average example of the second type, using a location more favoured by the first.
Ex soldier Edward (Paul Syre Lee) is on his first night as a security guard at an abandoned psychiatric hospital. After clearing his papers with administrator Ms Downey (Danielle Kennedy) he meets the brusque, seen it all before security chief Lester (Mark Anthony Williams), asleep on the job in their first encounter. Lester wastes no time in belittling quiet Edward, who likely is suffering PTSD, if his solo military workouts in empty corridors are anything to go by.
Lester shows the rookie around, including a hazing ritual where the new recruit is briefly locked in a morgue cabinet, while the history of the facility is explained; patients were subject to intense testing by Mrs Wilshire, the increasingly unhinged former head of the hospital. Scattered about the place, as well as the usual discarded equipment and medical files (presumably patient confidentiality isn’t the same in the good old US of A) are some anatomical dummies used for practice sessions; these will later take on a creepy relevance.
Pineda avoids the usual boredom induced by movies like these by having Edward and Lester both flawed and believable, an ability to create atmosphere with a still camera fixed on half lit corridors and, best of all, Berlin based Stephen Bolch’s organic, pulsing soundtrack (recording as ‘Theatre of Delays’) which brings the movie to life; or whatever form it could be described.
Technically there’s nothing new going on here but it’s done with panache and the ability to depict the liminal spaces of old, abandoned buildings. Pretty good.
Bury the Devil (Canada/USA 2026: Dir Adam O’Brien) Julia (Emmanuelle Lussier Martinez) is a paid carer to an older woman, Evelyn (Dawn Ford) who presents with symptoms of dementia. As Julia prepares her client for bed, she learns that the older woman had a daughter named Sarah, an ex husband, Randall (Bill Rowat), and was an artist, who painted various weird canvasses that decorate Evelyn’s large and rather gothic home.
Julia’s own personal life, including an overbearing father who phones her constantly, and ongoing regrets about her late mother, means that she remains caring but slightly nervous. She’s about to get more twitchy when Evelyn, who should be in bed, starts appearing throughout the house. Worse still, Evelyn’s ex husband turns up at the front door, as a storm gathers, claiming that his former wife may not be who she claims to be, and that Julia is in danger.
Thus the stage is set for a tense stand off between Randall and Evelyn, together with a team of would be exorcists, to try and capture a malevolent spirit that has torn the family apart. And through all of this Julia struggles to protect her client, while gradually realising that she is involved in a battle for the soul far outside her understanding.
Bury the Devil is filmed as a one-shot movie (it isn’t but the joins are very well disguised), which allows the camera to explore both the house and the people in it, whiplashing between rooms and floors as the feature reaches its climax. Apart from this and the excellent cast, who all give 100% to their roles, the real star here is the house, a sprawling, dark and dangerous structure which is the perfect backdrop to events within it. Martinez and Ford are both exemplary, onscreen for pretty much the whole thing and perfectly believable. I really loved this film; atmospheric and disturbing, I strongly recommend it.
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