JANUARY 31 — Even with the proliferation of streaming, it still looks like the standard industry practice of having a slow January in terms of big movies is very much in place. 

Oscar hopefuls are usually released in November and December, and December will also usually see a last big push for box-office hits because of the holiday season, which then leaves January and February as a bit of a void (and more of a dumping ground for studios to release movies they don’t really believe in) before some of these Oscar movies get re-released around March due to the hype that surrounds them because of Oscar fever.

One would have thought that this pattern wouldn’t apply to streaming platforms because of their subscription model, but things have looked the same because there really aren’t any big, star studded originals being pushed by them during this time as well. 

It looks like genre movies are coming to the rescue again because the more interesting films that are being released right now are still genre movies, like the recently opened Send Help, which I’ve yet to see but hopefully will be able to write about next week.

Here are three new genre movies, one playing in cinemas and two on streaming platforms, which I think deserve to be watched, especially if you’re a genre film fan.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

Just around six months after the release of 28 Years Later, which was one of my favourite genre films last year, comes its sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, this time directed by Nia DaCosta, whose previous films include the Candyman sequel from 2021, Hedda and The Marvels. 

And just like how radically different 28 Years Later was from the first two films, The Bone Temple is another radically different entry in this increasingly interesting franchise, this time following our protagonist Spike (Alfie Williams) after he was adopted into the Fingers gang led by Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), with another story running concurrently involving Dr Ian Kelson (a superb Ralph Fiennes) and his relationship with the Alpha zombie Samson (Chi Lewis-Perry).

DaCosta brings a darkly absurdist and surprisingly gory sensibility to this new film, and it works beautifully to bring out the film’s main thesis – as scary and dangerous as the zombies/infected might be, humans can be far more evil, as evidenced through the antics of this tracksuit wearing Satanist gang called Fingers. 

It is, again, a beautiful film, and while not as heartbreaking as 28 Years Later, still breaks your heart in its own little way. 

I look forward to whatever left turn that writer Alex Garland and producer Danny Boyle has in store for us in the next film!

The Rip

Quietly released this month and quietly climbing to number 1 on the Netflix charts with an impressive 40.4 million views during its first week, it has remained number 1 on the US Netflix charts in its second week and remains in Netflix’s Top 10 across 93 countries. 

Pretty impressive achievement for a low-key old school cop thriller directed by Joe Carnahan, if you ask me. 

Having built a reputation as a solid genre craftsman, especially when it comes to cop thrillers, I was sorely disappointed by Carnahan’s last film, the pretty terrible Shadow Force. 

Thankfully he’s back to his solid best with this one, bringing back memories of his excellent early movies like Narc, Smokin’ Aces, The Grey and even later ones like Copshop.

Headlined by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, this actually plays like an action movie that people would want to see in cinemas instead of on streaming. 

Playing Miami cops placed in a situation that practically begs for any member of their team to be corrupt, Carnahan expertly sets the whole thing up to induce paranoia even for the audience, and when the action bits start happening, the excitement never drops. 

With Jaume Collet-Serra and now Carnahan making mid-budget Netflix action movies, let’s just hope that they’ll get to make more of this in the near future, because I’m definitely not complaining.

Mother Of Flies

The Adams Family (father John Adams, mother Toby Poser and daughters Zelda and Lulu Adams) have been quietly making their brand of DIY, homemade films since 2013, and quite a few of these have turned out very good indeed, like their breakthrough film The Deeper You Dig from 2019 and what I think is their best film to date, Hellbender, from 2021. 

Their last two films, Where The Devil Roams and Hell Hole saw them stretch out a bit to make larger scale films with outside collaborators, but their newest film, Mother Of Flies is back to “family only” mode again, and it rips!

Continuing on the path they took with Hellbender, which involved witchcraft and mostly shooting in the woods with striking and artful visuals, this film tells the story of father and daughter pair Jake (played by John) and cancer-stricken Mickey (played by Zelda), who go into the woods to seek out a healer named Solveig (played by Toby) to try and cure Mickey, after science and modern medicine has failed to cure her and doctors have given her only six months left to live. 

A small, homemade film that doesn’t feel cheap at all, its evocation of Nature and evil is just as striking as what we saw in Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist or Robert Eggers’ The Witch, which makes this one an awesome lo-fi achievement.