The Child in Time (2018)

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.

‘Exhibiting Forgiveness’ seeks to ask one question, “What do you do when your parents are the source of your pain?”

True crime media is notoriously obsessed with the “missing white woman” trope, and yet the vast majority of American murder victims are male, and well over half are people of color.

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.

Gritty and bleak are the best words to describe this film. There’s nothing happy about it.

Housefull 5 attempts something bold with two endings — but does the gamble pay off? Read this spoiler-filled review for a breakdown of both versions, standout moments, and why it might be the franchise’s most forgettable entry yet.