the magic circle

The Housemaid (2025). A recently released felon (Sidney Sweeney), takes a job as a housemaid in hopes of stabilizing her life, but lady of the house Nina (Amanda Seyfried) is abusive and unstable, and things escalate.

This is once again Paul Feig directing a dumb enjoyable trashy thriller about woman, following the Simple Favor movies with Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively. Glad you found your niche, dude! Keep it up! I think parts of this might be even dumber than A Simple Favor, and it didn't matter at all. The plotholes are gaping, and we do not care, because we are here for women who Survive and ultimately Fuck Shit Up, and that is what we get.

Also like A Simple Favor, there's a husband, although at least here he's plot-relevant.

( spoilers for that )

In addition to being dumb as fuck (affectionate?), I will say this movie would have been better if maybe 20 mins of it had been cut. The middle kind of dragged.

Interestingly, this was a slow burn success at the box office; I think it's up to about $335M worldwide, which is huge for a little thriller like this. I foresee a sequel in our future, and honestly I'm here for it.

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Iron Lung (2026). An adaptation of an indie video game, this is about a convict sent below an ocean of blood in a tiny submarine to look for... stuff.

This movie was self-funded, directed, and edited by Youtuber Markiplier, who stars. For all that, it's a pretty credible first effort. There's a lot of great atmosphere, and things go full Sam Raimi in the end in a way I enjoyed.

OTOH, I felt it really struggled with pacing and flow of information. Sometimes I had to infer key facts (like "what is his objective through the entire middle of the film") from stuff said way after the fact. Even worse, nearly all the exposition is delivered via distorted radio, and it was very frustrating to have the sense there was important stuff that I wanted to know that I straight up couldn't hear properly. There's also just too much plot and backstory and lore here for a movie with this little dialogue. The video game is barely an hour and has no characters; we don't need most of this!

Fellow youtuber hbomberguy (of the James Somerton plagiarism video fame) posted quite a long letterboxd review and made some points I appreciated, especially that Markiplier probably feels a certain personal connection to the idea of sitting in a small room trying to do an ill-defined job while unsure of one's purpose. Overall, though, my feelings align more closely with my charts guy Dan Murrell's take.

Anyway, I hope this movie is a gateway to more people discovering indie horror films. There's so much stuff out there, and a lot of it's good and weird and trying new things, like this is.

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Whistle (2026). Some teens, including newcomer Chris (Dafne Keene) and future doctor Ellie (Sophie Nelisse) blow an ancient death whistle that causes their fated deaths to happen early, one by one.

That description does not make it sound like a good movie, and in fact it isn't, but it was trying harder than these kinds of dumb supernatural slashers often are. The cast is all very charming; I have a huge crush on Nelisse, it was great to see Keene again, now all grown up (she was Laura Kinney in Logan), and honestly all the main teens are likable, even the obligatory asshole jock. Nick Frost and Michelle Fairley are also here! Frost in particular is very fun and I wanted more of him.

There are various notes (Chris's past drug use, cousin Rel's nerdy comics obsession) that clearly were trying to add up to something. With several more rounds of script edits, this could have been this year's Clown in a Cornfield: a surprisingly charming teen slasher, greater than the sum of its parts, and with a sweet queer romance. For the first forty minutes or so, I had real hope! The setup was good!

Unfortunately this movie didn't get those edits, so it sort of tries to say something about dying and living, but also people's "deaths" are disfigured versions of themselves gleefully chasing them to ground like cats playing with their food. The cousin feels like three different characters in a trench coat. There's a time paradox thing going on with Chris's future death that just confuses the issue. It does have a queer romance, and you could argue that seeing Keene and Nelisse finally kiss is worth the price of admission, but I found it underbaked. There's also a drug dealing youth pastor with a switch blade for some reason.

Unlikely as it is with a premise this dumb, this could and should have been better.