CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS: 1-30-26
- 21 minutes ago
- 19 min read
[Get the exclusive video version of these weekly reviews each Friday by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon!]
My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I'm ready to review five new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, January 30th, 2026.
I get to say something I haven't been able to say in a long time with this level of enthusiasm: Sam Raimi is back. Like really back. Bloody, twisted, funny, unhinged, fully himself back. And Send Help is the proof.
Sam Raimi has been one of my favorite filmmakers for a very long time. This is a guy who started out making The Evil Dead for basically no money, shooting it over weekends with his friends, and somehow turned that scrappy, feral little horror movie into an entire career that includes one of the most influential horror trilogies of all time, a massive run of superhero blockbusters, a revisionist western, a baseball love story, and some genuinely great thrillers.
This is not a one-note director. This is a filmmaker with range, style, and personality.
When Raimi is good, he's really good. The Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness, Drag Me to Hell, The Gift, and especially A Simple Plan, which I still think is his finest hour and one of the best American thrillers of the last few decades. That movie is airtight, morally complex, and devastating, and it shows what Raimi can do when he reins in the mania just enough to let the characters and tension breathe.
But let's be honest: the Marvel years dulled his edge. And Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was, in my opinion, the worst movie he's ever directed. Hollow, soulless, studio-driven, and almost entirely devoid of Raimi's personality. It felt like a job, not a film. A checkbox assignment. And that hurt, because Raimi is not a checkbox filmmaker.
Which is why Send Help feels like such a relief.
This film is Raimi returning to his R-rated roots for the first time in 25 years, making his first true horror movie since Drag Me to Hell in 2009. And man, does it feel good to have him back in this space.
Send Help is a darkly funny, brutally gory, psychological survival thriller that functions as a two-person pressure cooker and lets Raimi unleash every ounce of his kinetic visual style, his love of bodily fluids, and his wicked sense of humor.
The setup is deceptively simple. Linda Liddle, played by Rachel McAdams, is a smart, capable employee in a company's planning and strategy department who has been passed over, ignored, and condescended to.
Her boss, Bradley Preston, played by Dylan O'Brien, is a full-on nepo baby nightmare. Sexist, smug, entitled, and utterly convinced of his own superiority despite having earned absolutely nothing.
When a private plane carrying the two of them crashes during a storm on the way to a business trip to Thailand, they wash ashore on a deserted island as the sole survivors.
And that's when everything flips.
Bradley is badly injured and essentially useless. Linda, meanwhile, reveals herself to be resourceful, resilient, and prepared in ways that are both surprising and deeply satisfying. She builds a shelter. She finds food. She starts fires. She takes control.
And suddenly, the workplace hierarchy that Bradley has clung to so desperately means absolutely nothing. He keeps trying to assert authority, reminding her that he's her boss, and she keeps reminding him, very clearly, that they are not in the office anymore.
What follows is a shifting, escalating battle of wills that moves from dark comedy into something much more unsettling. The movie becomes less about surviving nature and more about surviving each other.
Will they learn to cooperate? Will they turn on one another? Will rescue come? And if it does, does Linda even want it?
Rachel McAdams is phenomenal in this movie. Truly phenomenal. I love everything about how she plays this character, from the frumpy office clothes to the lonely personal life where she goes home, drinks wine, hangs out with her pet bird, and watches Survivor.
That detail is not incidental. Linda is a Survivor superfan. She has auditioned for the show. She knows the rules. She knows how isolation works. She understands alliances, power shifts, and endurance.
And the fact that Bradley and his equally awful coworkers find her audition tape and mock it on the plane before the crash is both cruel and crucial. Because once they're on the island, all that knowledge pays off.
McAdams thrives in this new world, and you can feel her character slowly realizing that for the first time in her life, she is not only capable, but dominant. Dylan O'Brien is terrific as Bradley. He is charming, funny, deeply hateable, and just vulnerable enough to keep things interesting.
O'Brien has quietly become one of the most reliable actors of his generation, and he's especially good at playing three-dimensional villains you despise but can't stop watching. Between this and Anniversary, he's really locked into something fascinating.
And then there's the Raimi stuff. Oh man, the Raimi stuff.
There is a full-on, unhinged boar-hunting sequence that is one of the most Sam Raimi scenes he's ever directed. It's suspenseful, hilarious, disgusting, terrifying, and soaked in blood. Gallons of it.
Blood spraying everywhere, bodies colliding with the camera, chaos unfolding in exaggerated, operatic fashion. It's classic Raimi. The kind of scene where you can practically feel him giggling behind the camera.
Rachel McAdams gets absolutely drenched in blood and bodily fluids throughout this movie, to the point where she's starting to rival Bruce Campbell for on-screen liquid abuse.
Between the boar hunt and a spectacularly nasty vomiting scene that unloads all over Dylan O'Brien, this movie earns its R rating proudly and loudly. If you're a gorehound Raimi fan, you are eating very, very well here.
The plane crash itself is another standout. Loud, terrifying, brilliantly edited, and staged with Raimi's trademark tilted angles, aggressive camera movement, and sensory overload. Blood flying everywhere, chaos in every frame. It's one of the most dynamic plane crash sequences I've seen in years, and it's pure Raimi.
There are also smaller moments that show how dialed-in he is visually. Early on, when Linda and Bradley first meet in the office, she has a bit of tuna fish stuck below her lip. Bradley notices it, recoils, and Raimi immediately zooms in on the tuna, then smash-cuts to extreme close-ups of Bradley's face as he smells it, his eyes distorted through a fisheye lens.
It's gross, funny, uncomfortable, and completely subjective. We're seeing the world through this guy's warped perspective, and Raimi makes a mundane moment feel like body horror.
There's also a Bruce Campbell cameo. I won't spoil it, but it's there, and if you're paying attention, you'll catch it. Raimi traditions are honored.
As the film moves into its final third, the possibility of rescue complicates everything, and a major secret is revealed that I genuinely did not see coming. It's hilarious, surprising, and adds an extra layer of tension and thematic bite to the climax.
The ending is bloody, outrageous, suspenseful, and deeply satisfying. You root hard for Linda Liddle, and the fact that her name is Linda "Liddle" just adds to the dark irony of it all.
At times, the movie reminded me of Misery, Cast Away, The War of the Roses, and even reality TV survival competitions, all mashed together and filtered through Raimi's demented sensibility. It's about power, resentment, survival, and what happens when the structures that protect terrible people are stripped away.
This is Sam Raimi fully unleashed again. R-rated. Gore-soaked. Hilarious. Suspenseful. Satirical. Smart. Personal. And unmistakably his.
Send Help is one of the most entertaining films he's made in years, and it's great to have him back doing what he does best. I highly recommend it. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Moses the Black is one of those movies that you watch and immediately think, "That's a really interesting idea," and then, unfortunately, you spend the rest of the running time waiting for that idea to fully take shape. And it never quite does.
The film is written and directed by Yelena Popovic, who previously made Man of God back in 2021, a movie that clearly established her interests as a filmmaker. She is deeply drawn to stories of faith, belief, devotion, and the struggle to live a moral life in a brutal world.
Before she moved behind the camera, Popovic worked as an actress, and you can feel that actor-first sensibility in her films. She cares about internal conflict. She cares about spiritual perseverance. She is fascinated by religious figures and how faith intersects with suffering and violence.
In Moses the Black, she takes that fascination and transplants it into a modern crime drama set on the West Side of Chicago. On paper, the concept is undeniably intriguing.
The film is a contemporary reimagining of the life of St. Moses the Black, a fourth-century bandit who became a monk, filtered through the story of a hardened Chicago gang leader trying to escape a life of violence.
Ancient sainthood meets modern street warfare. Egyptian desert spirituality collides with gang-infested city blocks. That's a bold swing. The problem is that the swing never quite connects.
The story centers on Malik, played by Omar Epps, who is released from prison and returns home determined to avenge the murder of his closest friend. Malik is haunted, angry, and worn down by years of violence, but he's also tired of the cycle he's trapped in.
His grandmother leaves him a small icon of St. Moses the Black, and that becomes the catalyst for a series of visions in which Malik is visited by the saint himself, played by Chukwudi Iwuji. These visions push Malik toward a spiritual reckoning and force him to confront the possibility that redemption, not revenge, might be the only way forward.
Meanwhile, the streets are closing in. Malik's old crew is restless. Younger, more volatile members, including 2wo-3ree, played by Wiz Khalifa, are itching for retaliation. A rival gang led by Straw, played by Quavo, threatens all-out war.
A corrupt cop applies pressure from another angle. Malik is pulled in every direction, caught between the violence he knows and the faith he doesn't fully understand but feels increasingly drawn toward.
At its core, the film is about whether a man can truly change, and whether faith can break a cycle of brutality that feels inevitable.
That's a powerful theme, and it's anchored by a really strong performance from Omar Epps. He has always been a terrific actor, and this is one of his most substantial roles in a long time.
Epps brings quiet weight to Malik, conveying exhaustion, guilt, and longing without overplaying it. He makes Malik believable as both a feared gang leader and a man on the edge of transformation.
There are other solid performances as well. Corey Hendrix is good as Mike, Malik's right-hand man trying to keep things from spiraling completely out of control. Wiz Khalifa, who is also an executive producer and contributed music to the film, is surprisingly effective on screen, bringing an unsettling unpredictability to his role. The cast commitment is not the issue here.
One of the strongest elements of the film is its use of Chicago itself. The locations are authentic and thoughtfully chosen. These are not the usual postcard images or overused backdrops. The streets feel real. The neighborhoods feel lived-in.
There is a grounded sense of place that gives the crime elements genuine texture and credibility. As someone who lives in Chicago, I appreciated seeing parts of the city that rarely make it onto the screen, and Popovic clearly has an eye for finding them.
And ironically, that authenticity becomes part of the film's biggest problem.
The gritty realism of the street-level crime story clashes hard with the mystical, symbolic visions of St. Moses the Black. Popovic never quite finds a way to blend those two modes into a single, cohesive cinematic language.
The fantasy elements feel imposed rather than integrated. The visions don't organically grow out of Malik's reality; they interrupt it. The symbolism is heavy-handed, and the film repeatedly stops trusting the audience to grasp its themes without having them spelled out.
There are intense scenes, strong confrontations, and moments where the movie threatens to click into place, especially when it focuses on Malik negotiating, attempting to make amends, or trying to steer his people away from violence.
But just as often, the film undercuts itself by pushing its message too aggressively. The visuals don't align with the ideas. The tone shifts awkwardly. The spiritual allegory and the crime drama never fully merge.
This is clearly a personal film for Popovic, and I respect her tenacity and conviction. She is not afraid to take a strong point of view, and she is committed to exploring faith in spaces where it's rarely depicted seriously. That ambition is admirable. But ambition alone doesn't make a movie work, and here the execution simply isn't there.
Moses the Black ends up feeling like a collection of compelling components that never coalesce into a unified whole. Good performances. Authentic locations. Big ideas. And yet, the movie remains choppy, uneven, and ultimately unsatisfying. The message is sincere, but it's delivered with a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel.
I admire the intent. I admire the effort. I admire Omar Epps for anchoring a difficult role with grace and restraint. But as a film, Moses the Black doesn't come together, and I can't recommend it. - ⭐️⭐️
Shelter is yet another grim reminder that whenever Jason Statham's name appears at the top of a cast list, dread is a perfectly reasonable emotional response. I know there are people who love what he does. I am not one of them. I never have been and, at this point, I never will be.
Statham is a profoundly limited actor with about three or four gruff settings he can toggle between, and those settings almost always involve punching someone, stabbing someone, or shooting someone, usually while maintaining the same facial expression.
When he has a strong director and a solid script, he can be effective. I've even written about that here on this very blog. But Shelter is absolutely not one of those cases.
This is a terrible, tired, aggressively dumb action movie, and what makes it even more frustrating is that it arrives less than three weeks after director Ric Roman Waugh unleashed another disaster, Greenland 2: Migration.
Two terrible, brain-dead action films from the same director in less than a month is almost impressive in its consistency. Waugh, who is also responsible for the Has Fallen series, continues to crank out the most generic, joyless, by-the-numbers action sludge imaginable, and Shelter fits perfectly into that depressing filmography.
The setup couldn't be more familiar if it tried. Statham plays Mason, a former elite assassin and government operative living in self-imposed exile on a remote Scottish island. He's been hiding for over a decade, cutting himself off from the world, and the movie wastes no time letting us know he's a tortured soul.
He has a beard. He drinks heavily. He lives in a lighthouse. He plays chess by himself. He has a dog. His supplies are delivered and left outside so he doesn't have to speak to anyone. That's the checklist. Every lonely-man-with-a-dark-past cliché is ticked off within the first fifteen minutes.
Naturally, a violent storm brings a young girl, Jesse, played by Bodhi Rae Breathnach, into his life. Her uncle, who had connections to Mason's past in British intelligence, has died, and she's left stranded and injured.
Mason rescues her, nurses her back to health, and in doing so exposes his location. Once he goes into town to get medical supplies, surveillance systems pick him up, and suddenly the British government, MI6, hired assassins, and assorted armed forces are all hunting him down.
Bill Nighy plays a high-ranking official overseeing a massive surveillance and assassination program that Mason once helped create. Naomi Ackie plays an agent tasked with tracking him down. Daniel Mays pops up as a tech expert who leaves his cancer meds out so that Jesse can discover them, which results in one of the most ridiculous moments in the film.
And what follows is exactly what you think it's going to be: chases, shootouts, poorly staged hand-to-hand combat, and endless revelations about Mason's shadowy past.
There is not a single surprise in this movie. Every beat is telegraphed. Every emotional turn is forced. Every action cliché is dragged out and dusted off yet again.
The hand-to-hand fight scenes are sloppily choreographed and badly edited, filled with unnecessary close-ups and jittery camera work that actively obscures whatever physical skill the actors might have. Waugh has never been good at staging action, and this movie does nothing to change that reputation.
There is one halfway competent car chase on the Scottish island involving a stolen police car and a rival assassin, and that's about as good as it gets. Everything else is dull, chaotic, or unintentionally laughable.
The supporting cast is criminally wasted. Naomi Ackie, who was phenomenal in Blink Twice and terrific in Mickey 17, spends most of the movie standing in a control room yelling orders at giant screens.
Bill Nighy, one of the finest actors alive, sits in his office tapping on keyboards, drinking, and barking into phones. Watching performers of this caliber reduced to background noise is genuinely depressing.
The emotional core of the film, which is supposed to be the bond between Mason and Jesse, never works. Statham is a brick wall. He has no warmth, no flexibility, no chemistry with the young actress.
Breathnach, unfortunately, doesn't help matters. Her performance is wildly overplayed, with constant tearful close-ups and shrill emotional beats that feel badly directed and deeply forced.
The dynamic between them brings to mind Man on Fire, which wasn't a great movie to begin with, but looks like a masterpiece compared to this.
There's also a nightclub sequence that perfectly encapsulates how empty this movie is. A massive shootout breaks out in a crowded club filled with assassins, armed mercenaries, and flashing lights, and I found myself distracted not by the action, but by how unbelievably bad the music was.
That's how boring and uninvolving this movie is. I was more annoyed by the DJ's playlist than concerned about the characters' survival.
By the time the film limps toward its climax, with badly choreographed fights and overwrought dialogue that audiences actually laughed at, all emotional investment is long gone. The final showdown between Mason and a supposedly legendary assassin is flat, poorly executed, and utterly forgettable.
When the movie ended, the audience I saw it with quietly groaned and shuffled out, clearly aware they'd just wasted nearly two hours of their lives. And that's the most infuriating part. Shelter had no business being released theatrically.
This is the kind of disposable, straight-to-streaming action junk that clogs up algorithms, not movie theaters. Especially when far better, more original films struggle to get proper releases.
So yes, Shelter is yet another completely forgettable, idiotic Jason Statham vehicle. It's the second Ric Roman Waugh movie in under three weeks that deserves serious consideration for worst film of the year, and we're barely into 2026. Avoid it. Do not seek it out. - ⭐️
Arco is one of those movies where, almost immediately, you think you know exactly what you're watching… and you're not wrong. This feels, in almost every frame, like a Japanese animated film, deeply inspired by Studio Ghibli and especially the work of Hayao Miyazaki.
The soft lines, the environmental themes, the gentle sense of wonder mixed with melancholy, the child's-eye view of a broken world, the flying suits, the floating civilizations, the loneliness of kids in futuristic spaces — all of it feels straight out of that tradition.
And yet, Arco is not Japanese at all. It's French. Written and directed by Ugo Bienvenu in his feature debut, and co-produced by Natalie Portman, who has clearly put her weight behind getting this film seen. And to Bienvenu's credit, even though the influences are obvious and sometimes overwhelming, the movie is absolutely gorgeous to look at.
The animation here is spectacular. Truly. From a purely technical standpoint, Arco is a stunner. It's beautifully drawn, softly colored, fluidly animated, and packed with visual ideas that are consistently engaging.
There's a reason it's been nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards, and there's a very real chance it could win. On craft alone, it would not be a shocking choice.
The story itself is fairly straightforward. In the distant future, humanity lives in an eco-friendly, solarpunk-style utopia floating high above the Earth.
Ten-year-old Arco isn't old enough to legally use the rainbow-colored, diamond-powered suits that allow people to travel through time and space, but curiosity gets the better of him. He steals his sister's suit, takes it for a joyride, and promptly loses control, crash-landing in the year 2075.
That's where he meets Iris, a lonely young girl living in a very different version of the future. Her world is environmentally devastated. Cities are sealed under domes to protect people from wildfires, pollution, and ecological collapse.
Her parents are physically absent, appearing only as holograms, and she's raised by a gentle, well-meaning robot nanny named Mikki. Iris and Arco bond quickly, united by isolation, curiosity, and a shared sense of being overlooked by the adults in their lives.
The film then becomes a quest to repair Arco's damaged suit and get him home, while they're pursued by a trio of bumbling, obsessive conspiracy theorists who witnessed Arco's arrival and are desperate to prove that time-traveling "rainbow riders" are real.
Along the way, the story expands to include large-scale environmental disasters, including an intense wildfire sequence that raises the stakes considerably and pushes the film into more dramatic territory.
For kids, this movie absolutely works. It's accessible, colorful, exciting, and packed with humor. The characters are clearly defined, the emotional beats are easy to follow, and the themes of friendship, environmental responsibility, the consequences of technology, and hope for a better future are presented in a way that younger audiences can grasp without difficulty.
There are genuinely sweet moments between Arco and Iris, and the robot nanny Mikki is a particularly charming creation.
The English-language voice cast is also a major asset. Natalie Portman and Mark Ruffalo do lovely work as Iris's hologram parents, and there's fun, lively support from Will Ferrell, America Ferrera, Andy Samberg, Flea, and others.
The voice work adds energy and personality, and Portman's involvement as both a producer and performer clearly helped bring this film to American audiences.
Where Arco struggles a bit is with originality. There's no getting around the fact that this movie owes a massive debt to better, more groundbreaking filmmakers. The Ghibli influence isn't subtle; it's baked into the DNA of the film.
The blending of science fiction, environmental collapse, child protagonists, and gentle melancholy has all been done before, and often with more emotional depth and narrative elegance.
That said, imitation isn't always a bad thing when it's done with this much care and craftsmanship. While Arco doesn't reinvent the wheel, it spins it beautifully. The animation is consistently dazzling.
The action sequences are exciting without being overwhelming. The humor lands. And there are moments that are genuinely moving, especially when the film leans into the emotional reality of children growing up in a world shaped by adult negligence.
So yes, it's derivative. Yes, you can feel its influences constantly. But it's also undeniably well made, visually rich, and heartfelt. It has a clear message, strong technical execution, and enough warmth to carry it through.
Arco is absolutely worth seeing, especially on the big screen where its animation can really breathe. And given its awards momentum, there's a strong chance it walks away with the Oscar. If that happens, you'll at least know why. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Iron Lung is yet another example of a movie put together, directed, produced, edited, and starring a YouTube personality who has decided that theatrical filmmaking is the next logical step in their career.
In this case, that personality is Mark Fischbach, better known to his millions of followers as Markiplier, a name that alone tells you exactly where this is coming from.
He's a hugely popular internet figure, a gaming personality, a social media celebrity, and a YouTube superstar who made his name playing indie horror games, doing comedic sketches, and cultivating a massive, devoted audience online. He's incredibly successful at that.
There is no denying his reach, his popularity, or his influence in that world.
What Iron Lung makes painfully clear, however, is that being a wildly successful YouTuber does not automatically translate into being a compelling filmmaker or a capable lead actor in a feature-length movie designed for theatrical release.
This film is based on the 2022 indie horror video game of the same name, and Fischbach adapts it himself, finances it himself, stars in it himself, edits it himself, and releases it under his own studio banner.
That kind of control can sometimes lead to something bold and personal. More often, it leads to indulgence, and Iron Lung is nothing if not indulgent.
The premise is admittedly intriguing. Set after a cataclysmic event known as "The Quiet Rapture," in which all known stars and habitable planets vanish from the universe, humanity is left clinging to survival on decaying space stations.
When an ocean of blood is discovered on a desolate moon, a convicted criminal is sealed inside a tiny, poorly constructed submarine (nicknamed the Iron Lung) and sent on what is essentially a suicide mission to explore it. The sub is claustrophobic, blind, and unreliable.
The pilot must rely on crude instruments, maps, and a grainy external camera while descending into an alien nightmare.
That setup has promise. Claustrophobic sci-fi horror is fertile ground. Isolation, dread, cosmic unknowability, and psychological breakdowns can make for powerful cinema when handled with discipline and restraint.
Unfortunately, Iron Lung has neither.
This is very much a video game movie in the most limiting sense. It feels like a video game because it is one, and it never quite escapes that aesthetic. The pacing is monotonous. The storytelling is thin. The structure feels padded and repetitive.
And worst of all, the movie is over two hours long. Two hours and seven minutes, to be exact. That is an absurd length for a movie with this premise. There is absolutely no justification for this material to stretch beyond 80 or 90 minutes, and yet it goes on and on, suffocating itself long before the blood ever does.
There are moments that almost work. The sense of confinement is occasionally effective. There are a few clever visual ideas. There's a mild sense of dark humor here and there.
Fischbach himself is a likable screen presence in a general, broad way, and that probably goes a long way with his existing fanbase. But likability is not the same as depth, and charisma is not the same as performance.
He simply does not have the range or gravitas to carry a film like this on his shoulders, especially one in which he appears in nearly every frame.
The much-publicized use of fake blood (over 80,000 gallons, reportedly more than The Evil Dead) feels like a perfect metaphor for the movie itself. Excess for the sake of excess. A record broken without any real artistic reason.
The blood is there because it can be there, not because it deepens the horror or enriches the experience. It's a gimmick, and once the novelty wears off, there's very little left.
The special effects are uneven at best. The monsters and cosmic horrors lack weight or imagination. The atmosphere never quite becomes oppressive enough to justify the runtime. And the script is thin, repetitive, and completely predictable.
We've seen this kind of trapped-in-a-vessel sci-fi horror many times before, and we've seen it done far better.
This also continues a troubling trend of social media stars mistaking online popularity for cinematic ability. Just because millions of people watch you play video games or perform skits does not mean you're ready to make a serious feature film for theaters.
Last year's House on Eden, directed by another YouTube personality, was one of the most unwatchable movies of 2025, and Iron Lung isn't nearly that bad—but that's a very low bar. It's still a deeply disappointing, overlong, and ultimately forgettable movie.
If you're a devoted Markiplier fan, if you love watching people play video games, if you're deeply embedded in that corner of internet culture, you may find something here that resonates with you. If you're looking for thoughtful, disciplined, genuinely scary science fiction horror, this isn't it.
I don't doubt Fischbach's sincerity, his work ethic, or his popularity. I respect his philanthropy and his success in his chosen medium. But sometimes success on YouTube should stay on YouTube.
Iron Lung is proof that theatrical filmmaking is a very different beast, and one that requires skills this movie simply does not demonstrate. - ⭐️1/2
Thanks for reading, and please SUBSCRIBE to my weekly NEWSLETTER!
And consider joining me on Patreon as a paid subscriber to help keep this thing going.
Thanks again!