Guns Up (2025)

The initial reaction and review of Netflix's newly released romantic comedy featuring Haley Lu Richardson and Ben Hardy. Spoilers included!

This current year, as well as the past several, has seen a slowly building increase in something the horror genre has required for quite a while in this critic's opinion...originality. I've stated before that I am very hard to please when it comes to this vein of the film industry's offerings, always leaning more towards that which sends chills through my very being in lieu of buckets of blood and gore.

With such a raw look at the 15th century, it seems that Disney was really trying to step outside of its element with this motion picture. 

Bigg County Restorations is a zany new pilot from comedians Joe Bell and Mikaela Watkins. In a spot-on parody of History Channel shows like American Restoration and Pawn Stars, Paul Bigg (John Jezior) works to restore kitschy decor for celebrities while his good-for-nothing adult children, Britney (Mikaela Watkins) and Junior (Joe Bell) go on wacky adventures while slacking off on the menial tasks they’ve been assigned. In the pilot, Britney and Mikaela’s day goes off the rails pretty fast.

A refreshing twist is that all the kids’ powers are…kind of useless. There’s a kid who can only move in slow motion, a kid who has every power in the world but can only use them randomly, and our main character Missy who has no powers at all. The thesis of the film seems to be that it doesn’t matter what kind of powers you have, its the way you use them, which is good for the warm and fuzzies.

Knives Out doesn’t just defy the whodunit narrative, it uses the weaknesses to its advantage. It’s well aware of the genre’s faults and tropes