The Drama: A Marriage of Discomfort and Empathy
This is not a film, it’s a drop tower. A drop tower that you don’t get off of for the vast majority of its 106-minute runtime.

Yamatogaoka Academy is the final resting place for notorious delinquents. Ostensibly, the purpose is to reform delinquents, but behind the scenes, a national conspiracy is being hatched. Sexy Mask, a naked, righteous thief, suddenly appears at Yamatogaoka Academy and boldly confronts the discipline committee, who are repeatedly committing evil deeds, but falls into their trap and finally falls into the hands of their enemies. The discipline committee intends to further control the school by making this savior an object of public scrutiny throughout the school. The discipline committee, which has turned into a ravenous beast, makes Sexy Mask perform the most humiliating forced excretion as a heroine before violating her, and then tries to record the act on video...
This is not a film, it’s a drop tower. A drop tower that you don’t get off of for the vast majority of its 106-minute runtime.
When it comes the horror genre, I am VERY hard to please or impress, much less scare. Coming from a current mindset of appreciation for chilling, unsettling, tension-inducing efforts such as "Hereditary", "The Conjuring" (ONLY the first one to date, mind you), "Lights Out", "The Babadook", "Midsommar", "Talk To Me", "Oddity", "Bring Her Back", and the like
Disney's newest Latine animated musical, 'Encanto', features a super colorful cast, fun music, and a surprising conflict about intergenerational trauma.
I write for a diversity-focused film review blog, so I’ll be honest: I really wanted to like Pretty Lethal. Starring Maddie Ziegler, Lana Condor, Iris Apatow, Avantika, and Millicent Simmonds, Amazon Prime’s new thriller seemed like it would be a girl power movie about dancers with a horror action twist. Sort of a Suspiria for teens. But with shallow and unlikeable characters, a confusing plot, an overreliance on violence, and cringey dialogue, any fun the movie started out with was quickly lost. What was left was a faint echo of greater horror movies about dancers made before.
Nightbooks, the newest entry in children's horror, honors classic horror films, focuses on themes of acceptance, and has awesome production design.
Life may find a way, but is it worth testing its fierceness and how far it will go?