"He's Not The Messiah, He's A Very Naughty Boy!"

Experience the epic conclusion. Dune: Part Three only in cinemas and IMAX December 18.

Directed by Denis Villeneuve and written by Villeneuve and Brian K. Vaughan, Dune: Part Three is based on the novel Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert and delivers the epic conclusion to Villeneuve’s trilogy.

The film stars Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Jason Momoa, Florence Pugh, Rebecca Ferguson, Isaach De Bankolé, with Charlotte Rampling, with Anya Taylor-Joy, and Robert Pattinson, and Javier Bardem, and features newcomers Nakoa-Wolf Momoa and Ida Brooke.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: The Witch (2015)

Robert Eggers' The Witch: A New England Folktale is a masterpiece of engrossing storytelling, a rare intelligent horror film that relies on character and atmosphere rather than cheap jump scares and excessive gore.

In New England of 1630, farmer William (gravelly-voiced Ralph Ineson) is exiled from his village for his particular interpretation of the Christian religion, and takes his family to live in an isolated farmstead on the edge of a creepy forest.

He and his wife, Katherine (Game Of Thrones' Kate Dickie), ban their children from going into the forest, telling them they must stay within the boundary of the farm.

One day, their teenage daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) is playing peek-a-boo with the family's newest arrival, baby Samuel (Axtun Henry Dube/Athan Conrad Dube) when the newborn suddenly disappears... and the family's real troubles begin.

William claims the child was taken by a wolf, but increasingly the family come to believe it was the work of witchcraft.

The Witch can be seen as a metaphor for the current problems in America, something unknown strikes at the heart of the devout family, then retreats back into the woods and watches the flames of paranoia engulf the insular community, occasionally fanning the fire from its hiding place in the trees.

Much of the horror, in fact, comes from the religious intolerance  at the core of the family's fundamental beliefs; in a very real sense they make their own fear by cultivating brutal ideas about eternal damnation, sins of the flesh etc that confuse and terrify the younger members of the family.

The family does more to tear itself apart than the overt actions of whatever is in the woods.

It is easy to see from this how such shocking events as the Salem Witch Trials could come about, with random (but ultimately explicable) events and misspoke words (taken at face value) ultimately leading to burning people at the stake.

As William's family try to move on from the loss of Samuel, good intentions turn to disasters. Then we find ourselves questioning the initial motivations of these deeds and we have to wonder how much of their situation arises from William's own pride and hypocrisy?

By no stretch of the imagination is The Witch a mainstream schlock horrorfest. If you thought The Boy was a slow-burner, then this is positively glacial by comparison (even though the first 'incident' happens within the opening ten minutes), but it all helps build the tension and draw you in.

So dismal is the family's world that much of the time it looks almost like a black and white movie - which makes the odd moments of red all the more striking and important - and the script's period dialogue gets a bit mumbly at times (although not approaching the near-comical levels of Tom Hardy's character in The Revenant), but there is no missing the intent of what is being said, even if the odd sentence eludes you.

The acting from all concerned is incredible, accentuating the sense of verisimilitude that makes the events all the more believable.

To really get the most out of The Witch, you need to close the curtains, turn out the lights, turn off all your mobile devices, and allow yourself to sink into the stark 17th Century setting, focusing on the unfolding drama on the screen rather than whatever drama is unfolding in the Twitterverse.

Overall, the film is more a well-researched historical drama and psychological thriller than a blockbuster horror flick.

With period folklore shaping the 'supernatural' elements of the story, The Witch is worthy to stand alongside The Wicker Man, Blood On Satan's Claw and, even, The Blair Witch Project with its understated, but unnerving, approach to the genre that is absent many modern horror tropes.

Now I love a good monster movie as much as the next man, but I do wish there were more subtle and smart horror films like The Witch being made to balance out the genre's offerings.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: The Gorge (2025)

To date, I've pretty much loved everything I've seen on Apple TV: the puzzle box that is Severance is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, one of the best TV shows ever; Slow Horses is near-perfection; the retro-futurism of Hello Tomorrow is wonderful; The Morning Show is great, engaging drama; and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is a fascinating insight into the kaiju-filled world of the Monsterverse.

So, I wasn't worried clicking on The Gorge, especially as it has the added bonus of starring the flawless Anya Taylor-Joy who is incapable of making a bad movie. Even her co-star, Miles Teller (despite appearing as Reed Richards in the worst Fantastic Four movie of all time... and, yes, I'm including the unreleased Corman version), is generally seen as a safe pair of hands.

I couldn't have been more wrong. 

The Gorge is two hours and seven minutes of utter tedium. Our stars are a pair of elite snipers - Levi 'Married To His Job' Kane and Drasa - tasked with guarding a mysterious, smoke-filled, gorge and preventing whatever is down there from getting out.

Each stands guard in a tower on either side of the gorge, both forbidden to communicate with the other side.

The trouble from the get-go is that both characters are walking clichés (very early on Teller's Levi is sitting on a beach, cuddling a random dog, and I said to myself: 'I bet he writes poetry'... and an hour later, when Levi and Drasa finally get to meet he starts telling her about his poetry).

But it's also very obviously slightly racist/sexist because while both are supposedly the best at what they do, the implication is that Levi - representing America - is slightly better than - not-America - Drasa (who doesn't even warrant a surname), has slightly better technology, and so on.

For the first, painfully long, hour the couple are getting used to their new jobs and, as the months pass, starting to break the rules and communicate across the gorge.

This segment could easily have been compressed into 15 or 20 minutes, which might then have made what follows a bit more bearable.

Eventually, after a sneaky romantic rendezvous, they find themselves in the gorge, getting to the bottom of the mystery.

The trouble is there's a very strong chance that if you'd been thinking about what might be going on yourself you probably would have come up with something way more interesting than the 1950's B-movie explanation we get served up with.

At one point, I'd even wondered - when they were fighting giant insects - if The Gorge was somehow connected to Monarch: Legacy of The Monsters. But no such luck.

And the thing about the monsters our heroes find hidden in the mists is that we don't see enough of them. Perhaps horror-leaning director Scott Derrickson (Doctor Strange, The Black Phone) should have put more focus on the critters and less on the turgid banality of the padded first act.

There is absolutely no need for this Asylum-movie-on-an-Apple-budget to have been over two hours long. An hour and a half would have been fine and might have kept the pace (and my engagement) up a bit more. 

It's not that toothless creature feature The Gorge is really that bad, it's more a case that there's nothing memorable about it, from its generic stunts and forgettable monsters to its uninteresting explanation and predictable resolution.

Split (2016)

Split is a strange film. Like its central character, it has multiple personalities. It begins as a Hitchcockian kidnap thriller, but very quickly starts to seed its narrative with suggestions of something more, something much more "superhero (or in this case 'supervillain') adjacent".

I've been burnt way too often by M. Night Shyamalan movies that I now tend to avoid them on principle, life being too short for repeated unnecessary disappointment or frustration.

Which is why I'd originally planned to give Split a wide berth, until it was revealed that Shymalan was working on a sequel to one of his superb early movies, the inventive superhero origin tale Unbreakable. However, this new film - Glass - was also going to be a sequel to Split.

Well, that I was it. I now had to see Split. And I'm glad I did... even if just for the final few seconds.

Three young students (Anya Taylor-Joy, Jessica Sula, and Haley Lu Richardson) are kidnapped and held prisoner by Kevin (James McAvoy), a man with 23 distinct personalities, each with its own voice, strengths, and weaknesses.

Gradually, the young girls learn that they are being prepared as sacrifices for a 24th personality - called The Beast - which is due to manifest soon.

Just shy of two hours in duration, there's no escaping the fact that Split is a patchy affair.

Possibly my total immersion was hobbled by the "Shyamalan Factor", I was always looking for that bonus plot twist (Is this real? Are the girl's real? Is his psychiatrist real? Is this is all a figment of one of the girls' imaginations?), when it's actually played pretty straight.

All the kidnapees are quite resourceful, but the Final Girl is clearly set up to be Taylor-Joy's outsider, Casey Cooke, as we learn more about the roots of her resourcefulness in flashbacks to hunting trips in her youth with her father and creepy uncle.

There's a lot of the claustrophobic horror of Silence Of The Lambs here, as well as moments that reminded me of Hannibal, but McAvoy's Kevin is drawn from the world of comic book science (like David Dunn) rather than the real world verisimilitude of Hannibal Lecter.

However, given that McAvoy is obviously the star of the feature, I found Casey's story dissatisfyingly unresolved, unless I missed a key point somewhere, particularly in respect to her vile uncle (Brad William Henke).

With the impending release of Glass, which unites the two movies, Split is the supervillain origin story to Unbreakable's superhero story, but it doesn't come across as a self-contained work.

Where the Bruce Willis movie feels like a self-contained work, Split feels like chapter of a longer story.

This makes me wonder if Casey is poised to return in Glass, tying up the loose threads of her story, along with Bruce Willis' David Dunn and James McAvoy's Kevin Crumb?

Thoroughbreds (2017)

Estranged childhood friends Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Amanda (Olivia Cooke) reunite in suburban Connecticut when Amanda's mum hires Lily to tutor her troubled daughter.

Emotionally-stunted Amanda is awaiting trial for animal cruelty, but Lily has her own secrets.

The two girls bond over Lily's contempt for her brusque stepfather, Mark (Paul Sparks), and they come up with a scheme to kill him.

The young women approach local hustler Tim (Star Trek's Anton Yelchin) to do the deed while both girls are away (Lily on a spa weekend with her mother, Amanda in therapy).

Of course, things don't go according to plan, and eventually Lily and Amanda have to take matters into their own hands.

Written and directed by Cory Finley, Thoroughbreds is an amazing piece of cinema. For a work heavy with gorgeously-mannered dialogue it whips along faster than a speeding bullet, belying its mere 88-minute duration to feel almost like a short.

Of course, much credit must go to its two flawless, charismatic leads - Split's Anya Taylor-Joy and Bates Motel's Olivia Cooke - who make this theatrically intimate, deliciously dark, character study look effortless.

Kudos also to the late, lamented, Anton Yelchin in his final film before his tragic death at way too early an age.

This trio of young talent would make the film worth the price of admission alone, but Finley's script is also tight and layered, without a wasted word or gesture.

It's an examination of friendship and sacrifice seen through a dark mirror, a twisted tale about guarded, emotionally-distant young women finding purpose in life.

One slight word of warning (the sort of thing that in a sane world wouldn't be necessary) is that in some places Thoroughbreds has been marketed as a comedy - it's not. Some of the banter between the leads is naturally witty, but overall I wouldn't even call this a dark comedy.

It's an indie drama centring on pitch-perfect performances from incredible actors.

The Secret Of Marrowbone (2017)

Escaping their abusive father in England, a young family using the name Marrowbone relocates to America, to start their lives afresh in the mother's isolated childhood home - which has been unoccupied for 30 years.

Soon after arriving, the children - Jack (George MacKay), Billy (Stranger Things' Charlie Heaton), Jane (Mia Goth), and Sam (Matthew Stagg) - meet Allie (Anya Taylor-Joy), who lives on a neighbouring farm, and a firm friendship is forged over the summer.

Unfortunately, after the summer, the mother falls ill, and having told the children to stay secluded until Jack turns 21 (to avoid being separated by the authorities), she dies.

The Marrowbone family cuts itself off from the nearby town, and Jack now only gets to see Allie infrequently, when he leaves the home to buy supplies or to steal precious moments with his beloved.

However, the family's skeevy lawyer, Tom Porter (Kyle Soller), who also has the hots for Allie, senses something is afoot at the Marrowbone house and, driven by his desire to woo Allie (despite her making it clear he's barking up the wrong tree), pries into the mysterious family's life... with disastrous consequences.

Having failed to make it to the cinema at the weekend to get my required dose of Anya Taylor-Joy goodness in Glass, I turned to this seemingly overlooked psychological horror-cum-family drama from the other year.

Thematically it reminded me strongly of Ian McEwan's 1978 novel The Cement Garden - which has had a lasting impact on me since I read it about three decades ago - with its similar focus on an adultless family living in hyperreal isolation, with elements of Psycho and Lovecraftian horror (but not the cosmic monsters and weird cults kind) mixed in for good measure.

Although set in the late '60s (the 1969 Moon landing is being shown on a TV in a store in town), the Marrowbone kids are carving out a very Waltons-esque existence of tatty dungarees and Spartan living conditions.

For two-thirds of the movie, Marrowbone feels like an enormous Gothic tease, eschewing jump-scares entirely in favour of continually heightening its atmosphere and tension, building - seemingly -  to a climax that never comes, suggesting ghosts and weirdness when none are truly evident.

That is, until the plot twists unravel thick and fast at the turning point that throws us headlong into the final act.

To be honest, if you've watched enough movies in your life, the revelations aren't that original, which is probably why this film hasn't received the interest it perhaps deserves.

However, they are handled deftly by writer/director Sergio G Sánchez, who brings out top-notch performances from all of his cast.

As with many clever films, once you know the "secret" of Marrowbone there's a strong urge to watch the film again to see how it all works.

And that can't be a bad thing.

The New Mutants (2020)

After a mysterious event wipes out her reservation, young Native American mutant Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt) wakes up in a secure medical facility.

The strange and isolated hospital's only member of staff, Dr Reyes (Alice Braga) explains to Dani that she, and four fellow metahumans, are being held there so they can come to terms with controlling their nascent superpowers.

The other residents are lycanthropic Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams), abrasive sorceress Illyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor-Joy), explosive speedster Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton), and surly hot-head Roberto da Costa (Henry Zaga).

There are no fences around the facility, instead it is encased in an energy dome that is seemingly generated by Dr Reyes.

The whole set-up feels a bit odd, but the youngsters believe that the tight-lipped doctor is training them on behalf of Professor X and that they are being groomed to become future X-Men.

However, the group soon find themselves plagued by manifestations of their nightmares and worst fears, a combination - given their barely controlled mutant abilities - that is clearly a recipe for disaster. 

I had rather hoped that The New Mutants' long-delayed, and much dissected, storied journey to release was purely down to its misfortune of "falling between the cracks" during the Disney buy-out of Fox.

I imagined it was an unfortunate culture clash between the end of Fox's X-Men franchise and the larger (Disney-owned) Marvel Cinematic Universe.

But, honestly, writer-director Josh Boone's film is a mess. It's not that the movie - finally released in the UK on Blu-Ray this week - is bad per se, it's just weak and lacking a certain je ne sais quoi.

Except for the money splashed on screen for the climactic showdown, The New Mutants feels like a TV pilot. However, of course, The Gifted did it first... and undeniably better.

Although it's difficult to get truly invested in the underdeveloped characters and their ill-defined superpowers, there are no weak links in the very small cast, even if Henry Zaga's Roberto barely registers in the greater scheme of things.

They all do the best they can with very underwhelming material.

Visually, The New Mutants has some impressive moments - although most of these were already known from the trailers - but, ultimately, most don't amount to anything. They feel like shots that were created just to sell the movie, not advance the plot in any fashion.

The simplistic storyline sets up a shadowy, omniscient antagonist and then, come the final, big showdown, that all gets swept aside as the mutants battle against the runaway power of one of their own.

It's also established unequivocally that all the protagonists have killed people, either accidentally, or in Illyana's case, deliberately, with their powers, because they can't really control them, so why are we supposed to feel happy at the inevitable denouement that sees them walking free from captivity?

Sure, if you want to take this seriously, they shouldn't be imprisoned, but they need some kind of supervision.

A final shot of the X-Men's Blackbird landing outside the medical facility would have sufficed.

Coming in at around 90-minutes, The New Mutants is an easy watch, and doesn't drag, but it's not particularly satisfying or rewarding.

Probably purely for the presence of Anya Taylor-Joy, I'd been hoping for a hidden gem that was so good the Marvel Universe couldn't ignore it and would have to, somehow, weave its characters into Kevin Feige's MCU plans going forward.

Instead, The New Mutants is best (and easily) forgotten.

The Northman (2022)

Having witnessed the murder of his father, King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke), by his uncle, Fjölnir (Claes Bang), the young Viking prince, Amleth (Oscar Novak), rows away pledging vengeance.

Years later the princeling has grown up to be a mighty berserker (Alexander Skarsgård) in the Land of The Rus.

After a raid, Amleth is visited by a mysterious seeress (Björk) who reminds him of his Fate to slay his uncle and free his mother, Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman), from Fjölnir's clutches.

Amleth learns that Fjölnir has been usurped and now lives as a chieftain in Iceland, so he stows away on a boat of captive slaves, disguising himself as part of the cargo.

On the boat to Iceland he meets and befriends Olga of the Birch Forest (Anya Taylor-Joy).

Arriving at Fjölnir's homestead, at the foot of a mighty volcano, Amleth passes himself off as 'just another slave', but is soon guided mystically to a cave where he receives another vision.

This one sends him to retrieve the magical Night Blade, which will be the instrument of his vengeance.

Working with Olga, Amleth then begins in earnest his campaign against the man who slew his father.

Inspired by historical Viking sagas, directed by Robert Eggers (of The Witch and The Lighthouse), and with such a phenomenal cast (including my favourite, Anya Taylor-Joy), The Northman should have been a shoo-in to take my "film of the year" crown (as I have seen it declared by several of my geeky peers).

But there's something not quite right about the flow of the core narrative.

Amleth's quest is such a stop-start affair that the choppy pacing at the heart of the film is really jarring.

There's so much to love about this movie - it features an actual magic sword, for crying out loud - that the patchy, and rather bloated, middle third is such a disappointment.

Speaking as an armchair director, I'm pretty sure The Northman would have benefitted from tightening its two hour 17 minute running time by a good 20 minutes.

Conversely, the ending is superb, tackling head-on central themes of many Viking stories (namely, fate and revenge) in a setting more than reminiscent of the climax of Revenge of The Sith.

Eggers, from a script he co-wrote with Icelandic author Sjón, deftly handles the magic-realism of the Nordic acceptance of everyday sorcery as he weaves a tale only slightly more grounded than The Green Knight.

Alexander Skarsgård has already proved himself as a great physical actor in shows like True Blood and movies such as The Legend of Tarzan.

Here he is outstanding as Amleth, a Scandinavian Conan the Barbarian, from moments of brutal aggression to when he's employing his stealth and cunning to get the better of Fjölnir's men, his presence dominates every scene he is in.

The Conan vibe is most front-and-centre in the scene where Amleth obtains the Night Blade, which strongly echoes Conan's retrieval of the Atlantean sword in 1982's Conan The Barbarian.

With its powerful lead and its atmospheric use of the landscape and mise-en-scène, The Northman is this close to brilliance that it's hugely disappointing that the juddering middle act comes dangerously close to derailing the whole thing.

The script reaches a point where it could have gone either way, and Eggers' cannily pulls out a twist that - for me - saved the film and strengthened the theme beautifully.

In the end, I enjoyed The Northman (more than I thought I would when I was about halfway through), but I was expecting better from this cast and crew.

The Menu (2022)

Obnoxious foodie Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) and his companion, Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), join 10 other guests for a once-in-a-lifetime meal "experience" at Hawthorn, an exclusive restaurant on a small island in America's Pacific Northwest.

Notoriously eccentric, reclusive, globally celebrated Chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) has prepared a lavish tasting menu for his special guests. 

With Tyler and Margot on the trip to the island are three "power eaters", yuppie businessmen Bryce (Rob Yang), Soren (Arturo Castro) and Dave (Mark St Cyr); an older wealthy couple and repeat clients, Anne and Richard (Judith Light and Reed Birney); renowned restaurant critic Lillian Bloom (Janet McTeer) and her obsequious magazine editor Ted (Paul Adelstein); and a fading middle-aged movie star (John Leguizamo) with his assistant Felicity (Aimee Carrero). 

From the get-go, Seth Reiss and Will Tracy's script for The Menu, perfectly directed by Mark Mylod, is a cutting satire of pretentious attitudes to food consumption, with Margot being the only character that doesn't really buy in to the ambience of Hawthorn.

As each course is served up, the situation gets weirder and darker - not only for the guests, but the staff - and, rather cheekily, the grimmer things become, the funnier the film gets.

Kudos, in particular, to maître d' Elsa (Hong Chau), whose constant deadpan expression only helps accentuate her pithy barbs and snarky double entendres.

It soon becomes clear to the visitors, isolated on the island until the ferry returns to transport them back to the mainland after the meal, that the dining "experience" is more of a hostage situation, with overtones of a death cult.

Amidst rising tension, secrets are revealed and the reasons each guest was invited are laid bare, accompanied by shocking consequences that have been orchestrated by Slowik as part of his grand design. 

As the mental sparring partners at the heart of the story, Ralph Fiennes is terrifying as the insane, sadomasochistic overlord of the restaurant and Anya Taylor-Joy continues to demonstrate why she is one of the greatest actors of her generation.

While there are shades of The Hunt and Midsommar in The Menu's commentary on class and culture, it crafts something quite unique in its constant ability to surprise while still retaining a convincing air of realism to the increasingly gonzo occurrences at Hawthorn. 

This is a dish of weird fiction served with great glee, where it's not necessary to understand single morsel to get the shock, horror, and point of The Menu.