Latest news with #JamesWan
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘M3GAN 2.0' reviews say the sequel is both too much and not enough
She's baaaaaack. Everyone's favorite viral dance craze-creating android goes from villain to (anti)hero in M3GAN 2.0, the follow-up to 2023's breakout horror hit. Once again produced by genre titans Jason Blum and James Wan, the sequel introduces a T-1000 to M3GAN's T-800 — a military-manufactured A.I. powered weapon named AMELIA. Other returning players include Alison Williams as M3GAN's maker, Gemma, and Violet McGraw as her niece, Cady. Director Gerard Johnstone is also back behind the camera for another round. More from Gold Derby Marge lives! Here are 3 other 'Simpsons' characters that returned from the grave - and 3 who stayed dead Fast cars vs. killer dolls: 'F1,' 'M3GAN 2.0' gear up for box-office showdown While the first M3GAN caught a pop culture wave, sequels to surprise successes can sometimes go astray. And the reviews for her upgrade suggest that going bigger didn't necessarily result in a movie that's necessarily better. M3GAN 2.0 currently has a 63 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and registers at a middling 55 percent on Metacritic. Size definitely doesn't matter to Associated Press critic, Mark Kennedy. "Most of the same team that gave us the refreshing horror-comedy original two years ago have not only gone super-big, but also changed the franchise's genre," he writes, noting that the sequel goes the full-on action spectacle route. "[It] sometimes feels like the moviemakers just threw money at the sequel and tried to ape other franchises by going massive." Like many critics, David Rooney makes the Terminator 2 comparison explicit in his Hollywood Reporter writeup. "The humor is forced to compete with seriously overcomplicated plotting in a sequel that entangles its horror comedy roots with uninspired espionage elements, becoming a convoluted mishmash with shades of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Mission: Impossible and the Austin Powers franchise," he notes. Rooney's also not a big fan of AMELIA's moves. "Too often, the star attraction takes a back seat to the much less entertaining Amelia, an icy blonde killing machine like so many icy blonde killing machines before her, with none of M3GAN's sardonic wit." Representing the middle ground, Paste's Jesse Hassenger expresses more appreciation for the franchise's genre pivot. "It's a savvy move to introduce Amelia, a killer robot weaponizing the original Megan specs to serve as a potential tool of the military-industrial complex," he writes, praising the "ridiculous fun of seeing Megan suit up for a bunch of unlikely spy missions." But the too-muchness inevitably gets to him as well. "Even with a fair number of sci-fi ideas riffing lightly on mech-suits, neural implants, anti-tech crusading, and the capacity for artificial beings to grow and change, there is no reason for this particular lightweight movie to run two full hours." Still, there are those reviewers who don't regret taking the ride — including The Wrap's Michael Ordoña. "The new movie thankfully avoids pretty much every possible pitfall of a sequel, especially the usual fate of horror follow-ups being merely bigger and bloodier rehashes," he observes. "Of course, bigger isn't always better; but here, bigger is accompanied by different." Best of Gold Derby Tom Cruise movies: 17 greatest films ranked worst to best 'It was wonderful to be on that ride': Christian Slater talks his beloved roles, from cult classics ('Heathers,' 'True Romance') to TV hits ('Mr. Robot,' 'Dexter: Original Sin') 'It almost killed me': Horror maestro Mike Flanagan looks back at career-making hits from 'Gerald's Game' to 'Hill House' to 'Life of Chuck' Click here to read the full article.
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
9 Movies And TV Shows With Competitions As Twisted As Squid Game
After three seasons and a little under four years of making us question what we would do for millions of dollars, Squid Game has come to an end. The final season debuted earlier today, and in a disturbing way I'll address with my therapist in the future, I want more of those twisted mind games. And I know a lot of you do too. Squid Game was an elite depiction of how human morality becomes fluid in the face of self-preservation and greed. Gamifying survival is the basis of almost every video game, but it becomes terrifying to watch when real people are involved. In movies and shows like the Saw franchise and Black Mirror, normal people will sacrifice children, vote for strangers to be killed, and rip people's guts out—just to save themselves. If you want more of the type of deadly competition that made Squid Game Netflix's most popular non-English TV series ever, here are nine movies and TV shows to scratch that sick itch of yours. Before dystopian mindfucks like Black Mirror and Squid Game turned survivalism into lethal games, Saw had people desperately ripping keys out of other victims' stomachs to unlock bear traps poised to rip their own heads off. Created by the twisted minds of James Wan and Leigh Whannell, the franchise mostly centers around sociopath Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), who kidnaps morally flawed people and forces them into deadly games to test their will to live. People have tried to gouge their own eye out to retrieve a lock combination, crawl through a furnace to recover a syringe with a nerve gas antidote, and even fill a bucket with their own blood to survive. Squid Game turned childhood games into nightmares. Saw turned nightmares into living hell. In Escape Room, six strangers are tricked into a game of survival after being invited to participate in what they believe is a fun, immersive puzzle game for a cash prize. Each room is a deadly trap crafted sadistically around their past traumas. One person survived a plane crash, so one of the rooms heats up like a plane fire. Another person survived a car accident, so the room simulates a smoky, toxic crash environment. All of this is happening while they're being watched and manipulated by a shadowy organization (sound familiar?). Similar to Squid Game, players have to balance common human decency with staying alive—and that usually leads to people sacrificing someone to save themselves in an icy cabin, or letting someone fall to their death in a zero-gravity room. If you miss the interpersonal turmoil of Squid Game, run to Escape Room. The first time I watched Funny Games, I was 9. I'm now 37, and I had a nightmare about it last night. Put simply, Funny Games is Squid Game if the torture was more targeted and there was no cash prize to assuage the pain. In the film, a family's vacation is terrorized by two young men who force them to play sadistic games—like a deadly round of 'Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe' in which their lives hang in the balance. In Squid Game, the twisted logic that governs who lives and who dies sometimes gives way to no logic at all, as when remaining players are forced to sleep in the same quarters and even the time between 'games' becomes a deadly free-for-all. Similarly, in Funny Games, the rules can shift on a whim, with bone-chilling consequences. Make sure you watch the 1997 version of the film after you're done with the final season of Squid Game to enjoy one of the best psychological thrillers ever. Not every Black Mirror episode is centered on a deadly test of human morality dressed up like a game. But, when the dark futurism of the Netflix series is conveyed in lethal competitions, it exposes unsettling truths about the humanity we all share. There's the episode 'Shut Up and Dance,' in which blackmailed people have to complete humiliating and illegal tasks like fight another blackmailed victim to the death or unknowingly be the getaway driver for bank robbers. Another episode has people ride stationary bikes to exhaustion in order to earn virtual currency to enter a televised talent competition. Squid Game gamified survivalism, while Black Mirror made it less of a competition and more of a sick test with no winners. There's workplace drama in corporate America, and then there's The Belko Experiment. The Greg McLean-directed psychological thriller pits 80 American office workers against one another as they're trapped in a corporate building and forced to kill each other—or be killed—before the end of numerous countdowns. All human decency goes out the window when four people's heads explode after no one is killed before the first countdown is done. By the final countdown, the only person who can live is the one with the highest kill count, essentially transforming office workers into killers by manipulating their primal instincts to live. There's no Red Light, Green Light kids' game or sleeping quarters for socializing like in Squid Game. But The Belko Experiment does mirror the Netflix juggernaut in its depiction of the moral degradation that slowly happens as people realize their fellow man's death directly affects the betterment of their own life. Squid Game's perverse competition takes place on a secluded island hidden from the outside world. In Alice in Borderland, Ryohei Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) and his friends fight for their survival in a parallel world called Borderland. That similarity alone illustrates how divorced from reality one must be in order to do the inhumane to win a game. In the series, people play deadly competitions to earn 'visa days' that help them stay in Borderland. If their visa expires, a laser shoots from the sky and kills them instantly. People will lock others in a room to burn them alive, form alliances even though only one person can win, and voluntarily keep playing after being given a chance to escape—because they feel they have no life in the outside world. As we see in Squid Game, when societal norms are no longer around to keep people in line, their true selves roam free in the deadliest ways. This Amazon Prime teen thriller series is one of the most underrated shows of the 2020s. Based on the Lauren Oliver novel of the same name, the show follows a group of graduating high school seniors so entitled, they engage in an illegal and, yes, deadly game to give themselves some excitement in their lives before they go off and become boring adults. These kids willingly get buried in a coffin, jump off a cliff into pitch-black water, and enter a cage full of venomous snakes—all for a chance at winning $50,000 in a competition no one knows who runs. And this is a yearly tradition. As weird as it may sound, The Prisoner is one of my favorite comfort TV watches. Sure, it's a psychological thriller about a former British Intelligence agent who is psychologically tortured on a creepy island. But Patrick McGoohan's performance as Number Six has some of the greatest emotional range you'll ever see on a screen. The Prisoner doesn't have the deluge of blood and gore that accompanies the morality tests of Squid Game. It does, however, showcase a similar stripping of one's mental stability as those in control work to expose their subjects' true, carnal motivations in life. In one of the best episodes of the show, Number Six is placed in an Embryo Room where he's forced to relive different stages of his life—or possibly die. Unfortunately for Patrick, there is no cash prize at the end of his torture, just an ambiguous future he may never escape from. Circle features the type of social experiment that would fit perfectly in Squid Game. In the film, 50 strangers are unable to move from their spots in the dark room they mysteriously wake up in, and are forced to collectively vote on who dies every two minutes. If they don't, a sinister device in the center of the room randomly kills someone. They only have 120 seconds at a time to essentially play God. The most depraved aspect of the show is the logic they develop for determining who deserves to die. Some align on the thinking that children and the elderly should die because they're weaker. Others choose people based on their race. They even turn on a pregnant woman. These mind games have real consequences—like they do in Squid Game—and it begs the question: Are you really a winner in a game where you lose your humanity? 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Gizmodo
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
James Wan Offers a Mildly Discouraging Update on That ‘Train to Busan' Remake
Released in 2016, Yeon Sang-ho's Train to Busan proved there were still plenty of fresh thrills to be mined from the zombie genre. It spawned an animated prequel and a sequel, and nobody was surprised when an American remake, to be titled The Last Train to New York, was announced. A 2023 release date made things official… almost. Obviously, The Last Train to New York—which at one point had Timo Tjahjanto (May the Devil Take You, this year's Nobody 2) attached to direct and Gary Dauberman (It and It Chapter Two) penning the script—has yet to actually get off the ground. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, would-be producer James Wan said The Last Train to New York is still 'a passion project' for his company, Atomic Monster, while also making it sound like it's very much on the back burner right now. 'Everything about it is really exciting,' he said. 'I hope that could get off the ground eventually. Got to be honest with you, I'm not quite sure where it sits right now.' If The Last Train to New York ever happens, it sounds like horror fans should expect more of a reimagining than a remake—though you have to suspect 'zombies on the subway' will still play a big part of the story. 'Creatively, it takes place in the same world as Train to Busan,' Wan told EW. '[The zombie outbreak is] happening epidemically around the world. So if Train to Busan is this particular slice of the story in South Korea, we want Train to New York to be the one set in America.' There's been no shortage of zombie tales for the gruesomely inclined lately—28 Years Later just hit theaters—and American remakes of foreign horror hits don't always succeed. However, The Last Train to New York does sound intriguing. Are you holding out hope it'll eventually come into the station? Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Gizmodo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
James Wan Knows You're Dying for Details About That R-Rated ‘M3GAN' Sexbot Spin-Off
Everyone's favorite kill-crazy toy not named Chucky is back in theaters June 27, and if M3GAN 2.0 captures audiences like the 2023 original did, a third film seems all but guaranteed. But before a trilogy might happen, another film in M3GAN's universe will arrive: SOULM8TE, the previously announced R-rated spin-off that will examine the dangers of AI from a more grown-up perspective. In new interviews, producer James Wan and M3GAN star Allison Williams (an executive producer on SOULM8TE) spilled a few beans on what to expect. Both Wan and Williams told Entertainment Weekly that SOULM8TE came from the inevitable questions raised by a world with the means to create an eerily lifelike AI doll. 'We will give you a different person and a different story and an R-rated world to do this in. Let M3GAN be M3GAN, and leave her out of this completely,' Williams said. 'It felt irresistible to then say, if a M3GAN existed in our world, someone would take that tech and put it in the form of a female-bodied person whose sole purpose on the planet is to pleasure a person. We extrapolate from there.' Wan said SOULM8TE is 'basically set in the same AI world but seen through a more grown-up perspective, one that embraces all the great erotic thrillers from the '90s. It's like Fatal Attraction but with robots.' There will be humor baked in, but not on the level of 'sassiness' as what the M3GAN films bring to the table. Look for SOULM8TE—directed by Kate Dolan (You Are Not My Mother) and starring Evil Dead Rise's Lily Sullivan as the terrifying AI companion—to spice up theaters January 2, 2026. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
India.com
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- India.com
This 1 hour 43 minute film is the 'scariest' movie ever, you will scream after every scene, don't watch it alone, name is lead actors are...
This 1 hour 43 minute film is the 'scariest' movie ever, you will scream after every scene, don't watch it alone, name is lead actors are... For nearly two decades, Insidious (2010) has been bringing spine-chilling nightmares to the screen. Created by veterans Leigh Whannell and James Wan, the long-running franchise is written by Leigh Whannell, and stars Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, and Barbara Hershey. The story revolves around a married couple whose boy inexplicably enters a prolonged state of unconsciousness and becomes controlled by demonic entities. The horror film was premiered on September 14, 2010 at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and was released theatrically on April 1, 2011. Less than 12 hours following the screening, the U.S distribution rights of the film were picked by Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions. In 2011, the film was also screened at South by Southwest. Insidious Box Office Collection Insidious garnered positive reviews from masses and critics. The film opened with $13.3 million, and hold the number 3 position at the US box office. Made in a budget of $1.5 million, the film grossed a total of US$54 million in the US and $46.1 million internationally. After Insidious became a success both commercially and critically, the film had its both sequels and prequels, including Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013), Insidious: The Red Door (2023), Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015), Insidious: The Last Key (2018), Insidious: The Red Door – July 6, (2023). Insidious 6 no longer releasing in 2025 However, the sixth installment of Insidious was originally planned for release on August 29, 2025, but the film won't be meeting that date. In fact, it won't be released until 2026. Reportedly, the film will also be expanded upon with the spinoff Thread: An Insidious Tale, which doesn't yet have a release date. The spin-off would have Nanjiani and Moore play a husband and wife who cast a spell to move back in time in order to prevent the death of their young daughter. For now, no news on the project has been out since the initial announcement.
