FEBRUARY 28 — It’s been a pretty slow February when it comes to big new movies in Malaysian cinemas, with the exception of those targeted at the Chinese New Year crowd, of which we had quite a few. 

With no big Hollywood movie in sight throughout the month, it’s really been up to genre films to stir up some excitement for me to go to the cinema to watch some films, and I basically had to wait almost a month to compile the ones I’m most excited to talk about and share with all you dear readers out there.

Some of these have already been released on digital, with probably only two titles still playing in local cinemas, so you can just pick and choose however you want to watch these movies, if they sound interesting to you.

Blades of the Guardians

Hands down the biggest movie to open in February, at least for those of us in Asia, where names like Yuen Woo-Ping, Jet Li, Wu Jing, Nicholas Tse and Tony Leung Ka-Fai are big enough to excite us the moment the film’s poster and trailer dropped. 

Despite the number of underwhelming duds he’s had recently, like The Thousand Faces of Dunjia and the pointless sequel Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, the now 80-year-old Woo-Ping is back to doing good things again with this one. 

The narrative, as is the case with most wuxia movies, is at once simple and convoluted, with plenty of characters popping up that the audience will struggle to remember.

But no one comes in to wuxia movies expecting story first, because we’re all buying tickets to this to see the fights, and even though I still think some of the iQIYI movies, like the Eye For An Eye films, Black Storm and Blade Of Fury, are better in terms of the fight scenes, Blades of the Guardians is still one of the best wuxia films in recent memory. A solid 7 out of 10 entertainment, now we wait for the next instalment!

Send Help

Whenever a new Sam Raimi (director of the original Evil Dead films) film rolls into town, you can bet that I will be one of the first to rush to get tickets to watch it in the cinema. 

Even when doing a big Hollywood blockbuster like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, he’s managed to slip in elements that made fans love his signature style, which in that particular case was zombies. 

His new film, Send Help, will particularly delight fans of Drag Me To Hell with its mixture of gore and dark comedy.

Putting a toxic male boss, Bradley (a deliciously frat bro performance from Dylan O’Brien) and a mistreated female employee, Linda (Rachel McAdams giving what’s probably her finest performance yet) together on a remote island after a plane crash, the film plays like a gloriously loony mash-up of Swept Away, Triangle Of Sadness and Six Days Seven Nights. 

One of the most entertaining films you’ll see this year, this one’s a blast!

Whistle

When it comes to horror films, formula and familiarity is very much a given, and are widely accepted by fans of the genre, as long as the films are delivered in an exciting enough manner. 

This is definitely the case with Whistle, the latest film from The Nun director, Corin Hardy. 

Clearly inspired by the Final Destination franchise, this is another one of those teens-die-because-of-curse films, with all the formula and familiarity one will come to expect in its plot. 

The curse this time comes from blowing an ancient Aztec whistle, in which a group of teenagers who dared each other to blow the whistle, take turns to die in creative, agonising ways. 

Sort of a mash-up of Talk To Me and Final Destination, the surprisingly creative kills here ended up making this wholly predictable movie quite worthwhile. Definitely stream this one!

Primate

Johannes Roberts is definitely a second- or third-tier name when it comes to modern-day horror directors, but his is still one I’ll always look out for because even though not everything he touches turns to gold, he’s made enough enjoyable movies, like F, Storage 24, the 47 Meters Down films and The Other Side Of The Door to make me look forward to whatever his new project may be. 

Primate is another solid banger in his filmography, a movie about a pet chimp gone wild because of rabies. 

Paced like a rollercoaster with only the bare minimum of time spent to set up the characters, Roberts takes full advantage of the film’s R rating by showcasing plenty of jaw-snapping, head-crunching, bone-crunching and even face-tearing violence, delivering a snappy, muscular and efficient thrill ride, making this a B-movie that has no right to be this slick and this good.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.