Mistletoe Magic (2020)

Films about casinos have long been a favorite of Hollywood. This is unsurprising, as they're often tied to magnetic characters whose lives revolve around luxury, spectacle, and even danger.

Gretel & Hansel falters due to its razor thin story and lack of characterization. It loses sight of horror’s key rule: In order to create an effective tale, characters and emotions must be emphasized.

Honey Don't! is a chaotic queer noir that's part detective story, part midnight movie madness. Margaret Qualley is fantastic as the wise-cracking private eye Honey, with Aubrey Plaza and Chris Evans adding their own dry humor to the mix. The mystery itself is pretty loose, but the film makes up for it with crackling sexual tension, weird side characters, and razor-sharp dialogue. It's messy and uneven, but in the best possible way.

While doing research on a fishing boat, a scientist encounters a parasite.

These confines won’t really encourage you to read the film as a metaphor for the nerve-inducing experience we’ve all been through over the last year, however — and in the interest of maintaining your dignity, you probably shouldn’t. While the sociopolitical commentary may have worked for the similarly-themed Buried (2010), in which we find Ryan Reynolds on his own buried alive in the Middle East, but this futuristic take on the premise is best left as a piece of distracting entertainment. Nevertheless, the atmosphere is no less suffocating, literally and dramatically.

Four more classic horror films that are entertaining even if occasionally absurd.