movie reviews i came by

It’s rare to accuse a Netflix thriller of being too ambitious but that’s the case with Babak Anvari ’s “I Came By,” a mostly effective potboiler that has the opposite problem of so many mini-series on the streaming service in that it has a TV season worth of ideas crammed into its runtime. Thrillers are all about tension, but Anvari, the fascinating filmmaker behind the excellent “ Under the Shadow ” and bonkers “ Wounds ,” keeps struggling with the balance between social commentary and old-fashioned genre thrills, mostly losing his hold on the latter. He constantly subverts expectations about where “I Came By” is headed by shifting POVs and jumping major passages in time, but it leads to a film that’s uncertain of its own identity, not quite able to wed its ideas with its execution. Having said that, there are some fun performances and clever themes in “I Came By,” two things that elevate it above a lot of the product coming out of the Netflix Thriller Factory.

George MacKay of “1917” plays Toby, a young graffiti artist who has the unique M.O. of not painting his art in public for everyone to see but in the private homes of the wealthy and powerful. With his buddy Jay ( Percelle Ascott ), Toby breaks into expensive homes and tags a wall with the phrase “I Came By.” Why? It’s not completely clear, but Toby probably likes to make those who are insulated from society realize that they’re vulnerable too. He will learn that isn’t always the case.

After Jay breaks up the duo because the pregnancy of his girlfriend makes him shift his priorities, Toby decides to do the next job alone. This leads him to the home of a former judge named Hector Blake ( Hugh Bonneville , relishing the opportunity to turn his stately demeanor into something menacing), who looks like an upstanding member of his community. Inside Blake’s basement, Toby sees a light under a hidden door, and finds, well, you’ve probably seen “Don’t Breathe.”

However, this is not quite that movie as Toby doesn’t get into a battle of wills with Blake. “I Came By” shifts protagonists here to Toby’s mother (Kelly Macdonald), who grows increasingly concerned that her 23-year-old son has disappeared off the face of the earth. Her quest to find him leads her into the life of Jay, and Anvari and co-writer Namsi Khan have at least one more POV turn left to take as their film puts together the story of Blake’s dark secrets and Toby’s fate.

Anvari’s film almost seems more interested in its social consciousness than in raising the viewer’s heart rate. Blake is the kind of guy who can drop the name of his police chief buddy during an investigation in order to shield himself from inquiry. There’s an element of “I Came By” that isn’t so much about what happens behind closed doors as it is about how often powerful people can get away with murder in plain sight. Bonneville nails this kind of haughty malevolence—the kind that knows it’s too powerful to get in any trouble, right? In fact, his performance arguably shifts the balance of the film a bit too much in that the “good guys” don’t feel like they have enough character to counter it. MacKay is particularly shallow as Toby, although that could be part of the point. There’s a reading of this film that it’s about a young man making hollow gestures against a system that he hasn’t really taken the time to understand, or adequately fear.

“I Came By” is undeniably well-composed and entertaining enough for its missteps to be overlooked most of the time. Yes, it’s a rewrite short of greatness, but Bonneville makes it worth a visit even if its final needle drop over the credits is indicative of its shallowness. Yes, sure, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” What else is new? 

On Netflix now.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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I Came By Reviews

Babak Anvari is good at creating terror out of unassuming situations, and the first 40 minutes or so of I Came By sees an effective building of tension. Afterwards, though, things start going a little bit downhill.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 25, 2024

It’s a gritty takedown of counterfeit upper-class civility, exposing generations of systemic inequality and racism as an aristocratic prejudice.

Full Review | Oct 26, 2023

It's ending won't impress all, nor will it's convoluted plot, but many viewers may enjoy I Came By for what it is; a fun little thriller that has big ambitions and a rare villainous performance from Bonneville.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 24, 2023

I Came By is proof that Babak Anvari has yet to discover his footing as a storyteller in the horror, mystery, and thriller-related space.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jul 20, 2023

I Came By is definitely elevated by [Hugh] Bonneville’s steely turn as Sir Hector, using his veneer of civility and harmlessness to trick and ensnare.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 9, 2023

I Came By delivers an uncomfortable look at just how far privilege and connections can protect a person, even as it fails to manage to bring its narrative together to form a truly cohesive and engaging story.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 4, 2023

Heavy-handed.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Dec 22, 2022

It’s nice to see Hugh Bonneville truly slip the tuxedoed bonds of “Downton Abbey” and take on a real rotter for the change.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 7, 2022

The movie never quite goes where it seems to be pointed, eventually turning into a tense procedural; we watch as puzzle pieces almost fall into place, and then are cruelly swatted away.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 2, 2022

A skilful genre flick bogged down by a heavy-handed touch.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 22, 2022

It’s the thriller elements that energize the movie. Anvari shows himself to be a savvy filmmaker with enough tricks up his sleeve to keep us guessing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 17, 2022

I Came By does a nifty job of twisting our expectations. Bonneville’s quietly sinister killer is the stuff of nightmares.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Sep 16, 2022

Hugh Bonneville as a posh but psychotic killer with serious daddy issues. So-so script but enjoyable enough as a pulse-pounding thriller.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 12, 2022

Look hard enough and you'll find some themes about wealth, class and white privilege but the very taut direction by Babak Anvari keeps focus on the tension, resulting in a nifty, rather violent little thriller that is not designed for the faint-hearted.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 9, 2022

The best passages of Anvari and Khan’s script exemplify the rush of when a movie doesn’t feel like the same one it did five minutes ago.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Sep 9, 2022

Babak Anvari's return to genre-fluid form.

It does, however, have a delightfully sinister turn from Bonneville and some decent social commentary, so it’s not a complete loss, but there’s little else here to separate it from the rest of the Netflix chaff.

Full Review | Sep 8, 2022

Bonneville and Kelly Macdonald (as Toby's worried mother) are the best things in I Came By, but not even they could make a silk purse out of this sow's ear.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 8, 2022

A surprising thriller charged with suspense and dementedness that in spite of its classic structure and without being original, still maintains the audience on permanent high alert. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Sep 7, 2022

Violent thriller has flawed antihero and psychotic villain.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 3, 2022

I Came By (2022)

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I Came By movie review: Netflix thriller is deliciously dark

This neo-gothic, teen-friendly thriller stars Hugh Bonneville , George MacKay and Kelly MacDonald , and practically everything worth saying about it amounts to a spoiler. What I can tell you is that Bonneville and MacDonald get most of the killer lines and that the film explores class warfare, colonialism and queer desire via a shonky script but also original and deliciously dark.

Toby (MacKay) and Jay (Percelle Ascott) are two graffiti writers (they prefer that term to graffiti artists). They inveigle themselves into penthouses and mansions, where they spray the walls with three insouciant words: I Came By.

Toby wants to target the home of judge Sir Hector Blake (Bonneville), but Jay pulls out of the mission. Which means Toby – who has no friends apart from Jay and is alienated from his middle-class mum (MacDonald) - finds himself thrown into a dangerous situation, without any backup.

It’s no secret that Bonneville is versatile and a close-up of the actor’s face, as Blake is massaged by Iranian asylum seeker Omid (Yazdan Qafouri), encapsulates all the movie’s strengths. Bonneville’s delicate eyes are mesmerising and to watch them dart around, as Blake listens to Omid’s wrenching story, is an unsettling treat.

The use of a clip from British Bake Off (showing Lizzie Acker’s “Extraordinary cake”, that gaudy ode to neuro-diversity) is also nifty. It’s surely no coincedence that Toby’s mum is called Lizzie. By contrast, Toby is disgusted by all TV; he sees it as corporate mush. The film, cleverly, doesn’t take sides, merely suggesting that there’s more than one way to infiltrate the mainstream.

The result is a beautifully nuanced portrait of a frazzled and protective mother (Lizzie’s conversations with Jay are particularly edgy). When you’re not laughing, you may cry.

Iranian-born director Babak Anvari made the adorable gay short film What’s Up with Adam? and won prizes for his subtle, deeply disturbing feature-length debut, Under the Shadow.

I Came By, like Anvari’s 2019 horror film Wounds, is less elegant than his earlier work. Both script-wise, and visually, I Came By can be downright crude and every now and again you’d be forgiven for thinking, “Damn, I’m watching the nincompoop’s version of Parasite.”

But stick with it. Bonneville and co force viewers to stumble down a twisty path and being wrong-footed is all part of the fun.

110mins, cert 15

In selected cinemas this week and on Netflix from August 31

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I Came By Review

31 Aug 2022

British-Iranian filmmaker Babak Anvari burst onto the scene in 2016 with his debut feature film Under The Shadow , a subtle, politically astute supernatural chiller that won the writer-director a BAFTA for Outstanding Debut. I Came By , his third film, has few of the subtleties of that calling card, but hints of that early promise are occasionally scattered throughout.

It’s something of a genre-hopper. The film begins as a fairly crass approximation of urban youth culture: a couple of hoodies engaging in high-risk civil disobedience; tech-savvy, politically radical vandals sticking a middle finger up to the establishment by breaking into expensive homes and leaving a signature tag. Toby ( George MacKay ) is the rebellious Robin Hood type — a clumsy early scene shows him literally stealing from the rich to give to the poor — while his more sensible-minded partner-in-crime, Jay (Percelle Ascott), is in the family way, and looking to get out of the game.

Hugh Bonneville is straightforwardly excellent on villain duties.

Then, when Toby gets swept up into something more than he bargained for, the film switches into a kind of missing-person police procedural — before finally settling on a house-of-horrors psychological thriller. The shake-up between styles and abrupt change in character perspectives (there are essentially three leads, who take it in turns for each act) might feel uneven, but it weirdly works, keeping proceedings surprising and engaging just when interest threatens to sag.

Most interesting of all is the man behind that horror, Sir Hector Blake, played in a gloriously against-type role by Hugh Bonneville . Weaponising the plummy upper-class accent that has delighted Downton fans for years, Bonneville is straightforwardly excellent on villain duties. Playing a supposedly saintly man of the law with some dark secrets in his basement, he maintains a facade of public-school politeness, while allowing flashes of truly unhinged histrionics. The lessons about establishment figures with colonial pasts are, again, clumsily made, but Bonneville’s well-pitched performance keeps it on track.

There are some strange choices elsewhere. The camera lingers on characters watching Rick And Morty and The Great British Bake Off far longer than it needs to, making us wonder if there is some deeper meaning to be inferred from Paul Hollywood’s baking tips. The cinematography is oddly flat. George MacKay’s hair changes colour at least once, for unknown reasons. But if it feels a bit messy, the jumble of ideas coalesces into a moderately satisfying final meal, a scathing broadside of the British class system, wrapped into a multi-genre mash-up.

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I Came By review: An ‘evil Hugh Bonneville’ film that doesn’t know if it’s a comedy or a lecture

Beyond a few borderline parodic images of upper-class menace, bonneville’s against-type performance feels far too measured, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Babak Anvari. Starring: George MacKay, Hugh Bonneville, Kelly Macdonald, Varada Sethu, Antonio Aakeel, Percelle Ascott. 15, 110 minutes.

Exactly how much fun are we meant to be having with I Came By , Netflix’s latest glossy thriller? It features Paddington ’s own Hugh Bonneville in the role of a duplicitous wretch, seen flushing ashes down his toilet with the creviced expression of a man who’s just been served subpar wine. A handful of scenes earlier, we catch him howling at the television, watching – of all things – an episode of the animated meta-comedy Rick and Morty .

His character, Hector Blake, popularly known as “St Blake”, is a former high court judge known for regularly accepting inquests on behalf of refugees. He insists to the disbelievers that, “if you knew anything about my career, you’d know that I’m anything but racist”. Just like the line, “I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could”, in Jordan Peele’s Get Out , it should be read as an immediate red flag. But, unlike Peele’s modern classic, I Came By can never quite figure out whether it’s leading up to a punchline or a lecture. Its stated intention of recapturing the high-tension thrills of Hitchcock’s oeuvre – or the paranoid thrillers of the Sixties and Seventies – never translates, either. Instead, we find a well-intentioned work scrambling to find its voice.

Hector is made the target of a modern-day Robin Hood, Toby Nealey ( George MacKay ), who wields a spray-paint can instead of the traditional bow and arrow. His shtick is to break into the homes of the rich and corrupt, leaving graffitied messages on their Farrow and Ball-painted walls – a reminder that their ivory towers will always be scalable. Toby’s partner-in-crime, Jay Agassi (Percelle Ascott), is expecting a baby with his girlfriend Naz (Varada Sethu). He wants out. Not everyone can be like Toby, who’s still relying on his frazzled but loyal mother, Lizzie ( Kelly Macdonald ), to clean up his messes in the kitchen while he pursues his idealistic vendettas. All Lizzie really wants to do is pour her big glass of wine and watch The Great British Bake Off without her son admonishing her for indulging in supposedly low-brow culture.

So Toby takes on Hector as a solo project, convinced that the judge’s squeaky clean reputation is all PR spin, one that conceals a long family history of imperialist sentiment. He finds more than he bargained (or prepared) for: a door, hidden behind a bookcase, with the shadows of footsteps on the other side, revealing that Hector has a lot more than a conservative ideology to hide.

On paper, I Came By has all the necessary goods: a sort-of heist thriller embedded in the realities of class and race in modern Britain, where a corrupt system means everyone ignores the shuffling and muffled screaming coming from the high court judge’s basement. And the film’s director, Babak Anvari, certainly has form when it comes to lacing genre fare with a distinct social consciousness – his excellent debut, the Persian-language horror Under the Shadow (2016), explored trauma within a war-torn, post-revolutionary Iran through the lens of a classic Djinn story.

Bonneville, whose roles in Notting Hill and Downton Abbey have somewhat pigeonholed him in the role of hapless toff, is certainly playing against type. But beyond a few borderline parodic images of upper-class menace – his weapon of choice is a cricket bat – his performance here feels far too measured to really turn those preconceptions on their head.

It’s somewhat of a fatal blow to I Came By , with Anvari and Namsi Khan’s script otherwise failing to find its stylistic hook. It may be the rare thriller that doesn’t actively sideline its female characters, but neither Macdonald nor Sethu get to venture outside of the boundaries of “concerned loved one”. And the film’s distractingly scattered in its attempt to capture the full breadth and width of its social commentary. In fact, it’s so stuffed with tangentially related ideas that even its timeline feels confusing and difficult to follow, signalled only by the erratic changes in McKay’s hair colour. For my own part, I spent so much of I Came By trying to keep up with what was going on, that I left the film slightly clueless about what exactly I was meant to feel.

‘I Came By’ is in cinemas from 19 August, and will stream on Netflix UK from 31 August

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‘I Came By’ review: murder and the macabre in a miscast horror thriller

George MacKay's graffiti activist discovers something horrible about a high-ranking judge

S old as a sociopolitical thriller with a class conscience, the end result of Netflix ‘s I Came By is something starkly different, overblown at times and a ravaging of sadism and violence. Directed and co-written by Babak Anvari who is best known for his oppressive allegorical thriller Under the Shadow about the Iran-Iraq War, we’re initially following a punkish graffiti artist named Toby who targets wealthy homeowners in acts of protest against Tory Britain.

Played by a risibly miscast George MacKay (who is otherwise one of the best young actors around) doing what can only be described as a Harry Enfield impression turns his focus towards an outwardly progressive former high court judge played by Hugh Bonneville. Such is the thriller convention, the judge is a far cry from his public image with a basement and a hidden door that keep his secrets far from view. But when breaking into his house, Toby discovers unspeakable horrors with the message being that you should never trust anyone that plays squash or owns a kiln.

The biggest issue comes at the midway point with a bait and switch that is both preposterous and incoherent only for the screenplay to then do the same thing again in the third act. The switcheroo upends the tension built in the first act as the narrative decision is so left field that you’ll spend the rest of the film wondering if it really happened.

There are hints and suggestions that I Came By will interrogate poverty and privilege across its overstuffed plot but just as it veers in that direction, the macabre grabs the wheel and decides to commit grisly murder. The opening third does take a wry jab at the milieu of Britain in 2022 – with suit-wearing uppity types tutting at homeless people – but the London of I Came By is essentially anonymous. Despite being filmed and acted with po-faced sincerity, nothing feels authentic or lived in and the odd attempt at addressing real-life socioeconomic problems also feels callow. The most interesting thing Anvari does is make the prey of the judge society’s most marginalised – refugees, gays, single mothers – but there is no strength to cross-examine these ideas that merely float in and out of the picture.

Much of the problem with I Came By does arise from its treatment of death – there’s a distinct revelling in the misery many of the characters experience that is both ugly and hollow and completely out of tone with a film that presents itself so seriously. This isn’t an exploitation film but kills like one. Characters exist only to heighten stakes and then to dispose of. There’s a particularly rancid scene of cruelty involving Kelly Macdonald’s character that like much of the rest of the near two-hour film, plays merely for insipid shock value. Bonneville is suitably menacing as the judge-gone-bad, and watching him invert his affable posh bloke persona is amusing but it isn’t enough to save this horror show.

• Director: Babak Anvari
• Starring: George MacKay, Kelly Macdonald, Hugh Bonneville
• Release date: August 19 (Netflix)
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I Came By review – a wicked turn by Bonneville

I Came By may not be a first-rate thriller, but Hugh Bonneville’s wicked turn sure is.

This review of the Netflix film I Came By does not contain spoilers.

Talk about changing up a dramatic and family-friendly filmography. I Came By, a new horror thriller by director Babak Anvari, allows Hugh Bonneville to be seen in a new light. The Downtown Abbey and Paddington actor goes full H.H. Holmes in the Netflix thriller. He plays Hector Blake, a retired judge who is enjoying the good life after putting his wife in a psychiatric hospital. He lures young men into this home. The judge then puts them in the panic room, torturing them with a homemade paddle, and I can only assume he says off camera, “Case dismissed,” every time he takes a swing.

I never thought we would have a script that attempts to combine Banksy’s themes of capitalism, hypocrisy, and greed, but here we are. Written by Anvari and co-writer Namsi Khan ( Humans ), it follows Toby ( 1917 ‘s George McKay) and Jay (Percelle Ascott), who make political statements by spraying graffiti on the walls of the wealthy elite with the phrase, I Came By. However, after Jay gets his girlfriend pregnant, Toby carries on without him. He breaks into Hector’s home and finds more than he bargained for, a hidden panic room with a large metal door and a reverse peephole. When he looks inside, he is horrified.

What happens next is an investigation game of tag, and you are it. Anvari and Khan’s script is not your typical game of cat and mouse. It is not exactly a wholly original structure, but the plot does not follow Bonneville’s Hector around as he picks off his victims. The judge is playing more defense than offense, if you catch my drift, as they come closer to his secret.

Is he guilty? Before you complain about letting poor psychopathic Henry Brown, just watch Rick and Morty and stop for the day, there is a woman who is asking that same question. That’s Kelly MacDonald’s Lizzy, who plays Toby’s mother and helps move the film along and build natural tension. It is a cliched role but a reliable performance that keeps the viewer interested.

I Came By is a giant metaphor for how greed can treat,”…your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” While not getting into spoilers, the story may be a bit formulaic. Some of the plot points, like the judge being momentarily arrested, do not work or at least not as well as they should. However, I enjoyed the “transitions” of how the story evolves. Anvari and Khan are never afraid to stick to a standard comfortable ending for their characters or story. On top of a thoroughly enjoyable and wicked performance from Bonneville, I Came By may not be a first-rate thriller, but a second-rate one sometimes can be just as good.

What do you think of the Netflix film I Came By? Comment below.

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Article by Marc Miller

Marc Miller (also known as M.N. Miller) joined Ready Steady Cut in April 2018 as a Film and TV Critic, publishing over 1,600 articles on the website. Since a young age, Marc dreamed of becoming a legitimate critic and having that famous “Rotten Tomato” approved status – in 2023, he achieved that status.

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The British crime thriller left us confused, frustrated and weirdly uplifted.

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Hugh Bonneville stars in I Came By.

I Came By  starts off as an on-the-nose social commentary about class and privilege but quickly turns into a disturbing horror flick. The  Netflix  movie stars some accomplished British actors and initially doles out several gripping twists. 

But does it bring home a satisfying ending? Not really, given the confusion over the identity of a particular person in a particular basement. Plus, when it seemed certain characters would survive, they ended up incinerated off screen. 

Let's drill into this frustrating flick.

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Spoilers ahead and a content warning: sexual violence, self-harm, suicide

These two do not have an easy time.

Who is Hector Blake?

That's Sir Hector Blake. He was shipped away to board at Birlstone School as a junior. He later studied law and became a High Court judge, but recently retired after 30 years. He was regarded as a "saint," known for his "philanthropic work on behalf of refugees." He was involved in a prominent fictional case with Kazima Ajang in 2016, according to a letter he receives from a student asking him if he'll read their dissertation. (He promptly chucks it in the bin.) 

This is all a thin veil hiding Blake's true identity. Toby reads up on Blake, discovering his family were all "staunch colonialists," his father a factory owner. Blake quit being a High Court judge after a year, calling the bench too "white and elitist" seemingly to avert attention from his own shady history.

He also reveals his wife is in Chesham House, a psychiatric hospital. He regularly plays squash with police superintendent William Roy and, crucially, likes watching Rick and Morty.

What are Blake's motivations?

Why is Blake drugging migrant workers and imprisoning at least one person in his basement? Much of his creepy conversation with Omid when he invites Omid over to his fancy house reveals his motivations.

Blake says his father invited Ravi to live in their house "like a member of the family." Eventually, he invited Ravi "into his bed." According to Blake, this drove his mother to suicide. Blake was the one who discovered her with her wrists sliced open. Shipped off to boarding school, Blake believed his father had replaced him and his mother with Ravi. He calls Ravi a "peasant" and says he "hated" him.

A line Toby's friend Jay (Percelle Ascott) says at the beginning of the movie, referencing a portrait of Blake's father, suggests Blake is acting in the same way as his father. "Is that your old man? I can see the resemblance." Blake proceeds to stare at the portrait meaningfully.

Blake might also be gay, but the "rage" inside him is "very hard to suppress" when it comes to the boy he hated growing up -- Ravi. It's possible Blake wrestles with his hatred for anyone echoing Ravi, as well as his sexual feelings for them. This could be why he keeps Said alive and entrapped in his basement, similar to how his father kept Ravi as his prisoner, of sorts.

Is that Ravi in the basement?

The answer is no. The man kept chained in the basement of Blake (Hugh Bonneville, of Downton Abbey fame) definitely isn't Ravi. How do we know that?

For one thing, the timing would be way off. Blake told his masseuse Omid (Yazdan Qafouri) that growing up, his family had a young Indian-Persian helper named Ravi. His father "came across him working in his factory, and decided to take him under his wing." Blake says he was a "little boy" himself at the time and was later shipped off to boarding school at age 9. In a photo rebellious graffiti artist Toby (George MacKay) inspects in Blake's house after breaking in, there are two boys: one who appears to be Blake and a much taller one who appears to be Ravi. This all indicates Ravi was likely older than Blake, so the young man found chained in his basement must be someone else, probably another migrant worker. Blake's backstory reveals he despised Ravi, and it appears he's still on a vendetta to unleash his bouts of rage on more victims.

The main reason we know the man isn't Ravi is because  IMDb lists the prisoner's name as Said  and says he's played by Tarik Badwan.

Hector Blake blackmails Omid into getting in his car.

What happens to Ravi?

"I thought I'd killed him, one summer when I came back from school. I pounced on him like a savage beast," Blake tells Omid. "Nearly destroyed his face." Toby discovers a photograph of Ravi with the side of his head looking bloodied, apparently the aftermath of this attack.

We never hear the end of the story, so it's understandable to connect the dots and think Ravi was the prisoner in Blake's basement, not Said. Potentially, Blake treated Ravi the same way as his other victims: killing him and burning the remains.

What happens to Omid?

After Omid manages to escape Blake's house despite being drugged, Blake essentially blackmails Omid into getting in his car, warning he has the power to either stop or expedite his application for permanent settlement in the UK. We later see Blake in his basement, holding Omid's phone, which has a smear of blood on it. 

Omid can be heard banging on the secret room's door, yelling to be freed. (By now, Said would have been moved to Blake's other secret room in his garage.) Blake's clothes are off, suggesting either he and Omid had sex before Blake trapped him, or Blake is simply burning his clothes and any evidence of blood. Blake later chops Omid up and incinerates him in his kiln (which belonged to his pottery-loving wife), just as he did with Toby and then his mother Elisabeth.

What's the final message of 'I Came By'?

A literal "I came by" graffiti tag is left on the wall in Blake's house after he's captured. Sadly, it isn't Toby who's able to give his final triumphant stamp. He never gets to show his mother Elisabeth and the world that he really did care about big issues (although, maybe Elisabeth understood once she, too, saw Blake's true self). Instead, it's Jay who writes the message in Toby's honor.

Director Babak Anvari said that, when it comes to themes, I Came By is "very timely." 

"The core of it is about how institutions can fail us, and if the institutions are failing us, shouldn't we, as individuals, take responsibility and have each other's backs?" Anvari said. "So that was like the central theme of it that I really wanted to tap into."

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I Came By, review — George MacKay stars in twisty yet predictable thriller

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Common Sense Media Review

Violent thriller has flawed antihero and psychotic villain.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that I Came By is a violent thriller set on the unforgiving streets of London with strong language throughout. Central character Toby (George MacKay) is a flawed anti-establishment antihero, committing crimes -- mainly vandalism -- against those he believes are in the wrong. However, when…

Why Age 15+?

Characters are attacked, stabbed, burned, and tied up. Victims are hit over the

Countless uses of the word "f--k," as well as "s--t" and "d--khead."

Characters smoke semi-frequently, especially when stressed. The police find a ca

A couple passionately kiss in what appears to be foreplay, but are interrupted.

Any Positive Content?

Set in London, the film depicts the city's multiculturalism, as well as the diff

Toby has had a difficult upbringing and is anti-establishment, committing crimes

There is little by way of positive messages with conflict and violence at the he

Violence & Scariness

Characters are attacked, stabbed, burned, and tied up. Victims are hit over the head with cricket bats. Someone has their head cut off -- the camera cuts away just before it occurs. The corpse of someone who has been killed is shown. Bloodstains on weapons and gashes on foreheads. A character speaks in graphic detail about their parent's suicide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters smoke semi-frequently, especially when stressed. The police find a cannabis joint that a character recently smoked. A parent finds ecstasy tablets in their child's draw. Characters drink at home, alone. A character takes diazepam to help with their anxiety. Characters are drugged against their will.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Diverse Representations

Set in London, the film depicts the city's multiculturalism, as well as the differing socioeconomic standards in the city -- the latter leading to conflict. The two main characters are White, while two of the main supporting characters are people of color. The officer and detective leading the case are both Black. References to a character's skin color and the prejudice they face are mentioned, such as when they tell someone that as a Black man they can't get caught for vandalism, as they'll get a bigger punishment than his White counterparts.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Positive Role Models

Toby has had a difficult upbringing and is anti-establishment, committing crimes against those he perceives to be the "enemy," such as vandalism. His mother won't stop at anything to try and protect her son, believing that the police are not doing enough to help when he goes missing. Hector Blake is a sociopathic villain. He uses his power and standing as a high court judge to deceive the police and manipulate others. He is hiding in plain sight, purporting to be a man of good and justice. He preys on the vulnerable.

Positive Messages

There is little by way of positive messages with conflict and violence at the heart of the film. Perseverance is shown by some.

Parents need to know that I Came By is a violent thriller set on the unforgiving streets of London with strong language throughout. Central character Toby ( George MacKay ) is a flawed anti-establishment antihero, committing crimes -- mainly vandalism -- against those he believes are in the wrong. However, when he targets high court judge Hector Blake ( Hugh Bonneville ), violence ensues. People are hit over the head with crickets bats, stabbed, and tied up. Some of the more gory violence is alluded to rather than shown, such as someone's head being sawn off or a body being burned. There is also graphic reference to a suicide. A character drugs his victims to get what he wants. The language is strong and frequent, with many uses of the word "f--k." Characters smoke and drink on occasion, and pot and ecstasy are found, but are not seen being used. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

I CAME BY is about a young graffiti artist called Toby ( George MacKay ), who alongside his best friend, Jay ( Percelle Ascott ), strive to hit back at society and target those in power. One of which is high court judge Hector Blake ( Hugh Bonneville ). However, with Blake they more than meet their match, putting both themselves tand Toby's mother, Lizzie ( Kelly Macdonald ), in grave danger.

Is It Any Good?

Babak Anvari 's brings a Hitchcockian touch to modern day London in this striking, yet violent thriller. I Came By constantly surprises, never giving the viewer what they expect. The movie veers away from convention, subverting cliches so often found in this genre. This element of surprise is exemplified in the casting. Bonneville's sociopathic character is a real piece of work and is a departure from the gentler roles the actor is more associated with -- Downton Abbey will never be the same again. But it's a challenge he more than rises up to.

The film could just be that little bit slicker though. It has great ideas and the substance is there, but stylistically it just feels lacking somewhat. As a modern-day noir of this nature, having a more stylized, cinematic aesthetic would enrich the material. But it remains a movie with good ideas and great performances. And that's half the job done.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in I Came By . What impact did it have? What consequences were there? Does exposure to violent media desensitize kids to violence?

Talk about the strong language used. What impact did it have on the movie?

Discuss the character of Toby. How might he be described as an "antihero?" What do you understand that term to mean?

How were drinking, smoking, and drug use depicted in the film? Were they glamorized? What did they add to the movie?

Actor Hugh Bonneville goes against type and plays a villain in this movie. Did you enjoy this departure? What other examples can you think of where actors who are known for playing one type of role play something completely different?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : August 31, 2022
• Cast : George MacKay , Hugh Bonneville , Kelly Macdonald
• Director : Babak Anvari
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Female writers
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Thriller
• Run time : 110 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : February 17, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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I Came By Review: A Murky Thriller That Diverges Too Much

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August 2022 was a big month for streaming. Fans of Game of Thrones were delighted with the release of the prequel series, House of the Dragon , on HBO Max. Netflix’s streaming calendar held an entire list of new seasons, original releases, and future content to look forward to during August and the remainder of 2022. Biographical films and television still are quite trendy, but thrillers, too, have managed to maintain their grip over households across the globe. Whether set in the United States, across the world in South Korea , or somewhere in the middle, like the United Kingdom, streaming platforms are still consistently dropping thriller content. Netflix’s newest release, I Came By , seeks to boldly undermine the genre’s tropes and create something new.

Iranian-British director Babak Anvari spearheads this project after releasing Wounds and the Persian-language film Under the Shadow , which were both horror films. I Came By borrows elements from his previous work, weaving together a piece that not only is psychological but a product of the world the characters live inside of and the circumstances that led them down a certain path. With distribution on Netflix and a cast with an incredible list of accolades behind their names, it seems that this film was destined for something greater. Considering the responses Anvari got with his past two feature films, there are quite a few expectations already in place. Does it meet those expectations? It ultimately depends on who you ask.

George MacKay, who notably starred in the leading role of Sam Mendes’ 1917 , is the main protagonist: Toby. Wizards vs Aliens alumni Percelle Ascott supports Toby’s childhood friend Jay, who calls it quits in their operation after he finds a greater purpose that sheds light on the danger of what they are doing. Hugh Bonneville, best known for his roles in Paddington and Downtown Abbey , marks a drastically different character switch than what audiences know him for, as he plays the villain in this movie. Other notable actors include Kelly MacDonald ( Boardwalk Empire , Operation Mincemeat ) as Toby’s mother, Varada Sethu ( Jurassic World Dominion , Now You See Me 2 ), and Antonio Aakeel.

A Graffiti Artist Clashes with Wealthy Elites

I Came By ’s protagonist is Toby (MacKay), a young graffiti artist who gets around by tagging the homes of England’s wealthy elite. He scales buildings at night, equipped with the necessary tools that one would expect a secret agent to use in such missions, and physically breaks into their homes to make his art become a reality. Of course, he does not do it alone—his accomplice in crime is a childhood best friend, Jay (Ascott). They were originally just family friends, raised together, but eventually, they turned their collective gaze towards tagging England’s richest people’s homes. At the scene of the crime, they leave a simple message of “I Came By,” making this film’s title and its origins a lot less complicated to figure out.

However, things get sticky pretty quickly when Jay finds out that his girlfriend is pregnant. Now filled with a sense of duty towards his unborn child, he wants to call it quits with the graffiti operation in hopes that one day, he will be able to raise his child instead of potentially ending up in jail if he continues with Toby. There is not a legitimate reason as to why the two are doing this in the first place, besides the euphoric thrill they probably get from breaking into and vandalizing other people’s homes. But one thing becomes clearer: Toby struggles with his personal life, as his mother cannot understand his decisions and eventually sets out to find him, and Toby spirals when he picks a new target: Hector Blake.

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As Toby breaks into Blake’s home and discovers a secret buried within the depths of the basement, he decides on a new mission: he is going to get to the bottom of who and what Blake is, even if he now has to do it alone. Ironically, Blake does not fit the mold of Toby’s usual victims, as he is not thoughtless or simply exists by profiting off of everyday citizens. He had a successful career in law that advocated for those often underrepresented in the legal arena, and it is this detail that originally sets him up as a likable character in the short term. Toby does not like him because of his aristocratic heritage, showing disdain for anyone who may have been slightly raised with traces of old money. When the truth unfurls and exposes itself, another uglier, darker layer is applied to the man who seemingly gave his life up in the name of public service. Then there is another question to ask: what makes someone truly a good person? This question is a classic riff on the theme that everything is not as it seems, and Anvari takes it down a twisting route.

I Came By morphs into something completely different than what it started as, adding commentary about how the rich and powerful can get away with anything they desire—as long as they have the right connections. Blake, portrayed here by Hugh Bonneville, seems almost smug whenever he mentions that he knows, for example, the police chief. Juxtaposed against Toby, a scrawny young man with a penchant for actively breaking the law, there is quite a bit of underlying commentary about the state of society and law enforcement. I Came By ’s biggest problem is that while it offers critical commentary about the world as we know it today, it fails to go beyond a superficial level. It introduces these topics, begins to dig deeper at the roots of these issues, then places them aside for a new plot point or a tonal shift.

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Well-Acted, But Lost in the Details

One of the key highlights of I Came By is its performances, specifically by Hugh Bonneville. Fans of Paddington may recognize the actor as the patriarch of Paddington’s foster family, but in I Came By , he oozes a particular brand of sleaziness that becomes unsettling as the movie twists in on itself. MacKay, who previously showed his talents in movies like 1917 , does a good job as Toby, but his character’s motives and reasoning are flawed, making his performance stretch only so far. Shifting the original protagonist’s perspective and showing the point of view of the mother and Jay, allows these actors more moments to shine, and they do so even if this perspective shift may not have been necessary for the long run.

The movie also does an excellent job of keeping the viewers on their toes. Sure, there are clichés mixed into the storyline, especially as it heads into the final arc, and Toby might not be the most rational character with stubborn motives. There happens to be a lot of content and themes to mull over, especially as they apply to current and historical events—how much does one know about a beloved public figure? Would one be able to believe the extent of their crimes if they were exposed to the world? Would they still believe the individual who came to light with these accusations—even if they were considered to be a criminal who broke into people’s homes for information, his art, and held beliefs against the mainstream norm? And, finally, does coming by and placing this graffiti in the rich’s homes, in these private, domestic spaces rather than the public, truly make a difference in society?

I Came By has a lot of potential, but gets lost in its concepts, ideas, and characters. Perhaps the film would have done better if it were split up into a miniseries, allowing certain subplots and characters the space, time, and devotion to breathe and hold up their weight. In its current form, I Came By suffers from too much ambition, switching from different perspectives and timelines to try and add depth. This method fails in its execution, instead muddling the themes it establishes originally in order of having more on the screen. The subplot about the mother seems a bit unnecessary, becomes a harsh jump from the beginning of the movie and its tones, and can come across as an attempt to forcibly add backstory that is not critical to what already happened. Up until the halfway point, the movie does well but slowly limps toward the finish line after that. It is worth watching, adding some new twists to the genre and nifty decisions to keep the storyline fresh, but it is not revolutionary by the end.

I Came By can be streamed on Netflix as of August 31, 2022.

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I came by review: anvari's thoughtful thriller is surprisingly lacking in bite.

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Thrillers can be tricky to write about in a spoiler-free way, but I Came By seems especially so. Not because the story is especially twisty, but because the surprises it does hold are so crucial to its overall effect. It benefits from the sense of writer-director Babak Anvari's authorial hand making a few strong, thoughtful decisions about both narrative and style that aren't exactly typical of the genre, which end up providing the most food for thought. Viewers with the background to properly admire them will likely get the most out of watching it. Those who engage with it on the level of the whole, however, might find it less than the sum of its parts — gripping enough to leave them positive on the experience, but not entirely sold on the validity of this formal experiment.

The title of I Came By refers to two young graffiti activists, Toby (George MacKay) and Jay (Percelle Ascott), who have made waves by breaking into the homes of the upper class and spray-painting that phrase on their walls. Coming off their latest successful job, Jay learns that his girlfriend Naz (Varada Sethu) is pregnant, and making a political statement no longer seems worth the risk of jail time. That leaves Toby to handle their next mark, Sir Henry Blake (Hugh Bonneville), on his own. The esteemed former judge is perfectly commendable on paper, but the cynical Toby is convinced the old-money aristocrat is just good at manicuring his image, and he decides to hit the house anyway. But when he discovers a dark secret hidden away in Blake's basement, he inadvertently places himself and his loved ones in grave danger.

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While this review won't get into what happens next, it's safe to say that Toby was right to be suspicious, but the challenges of taking on someone like Sir Blake are obvious. He is connected in ways that place him above suspicion. He leaves for a game of squash with a police supervisor on the night of Toby's break-in, while the anarchic, 23-year-old tagger barely has pull within his own social circle. Indeed, the web of characters who could stand against Bonneville's villain is fractured. Jay must push Toby away for the sake of his new family; Toby and his psychologist mother, Lizzie (Kelly Macdonald), argue constantly; Naz endures family trouble of her own to stay with Jay, who then risks eroding their relationship by keeping his past exploits a secret. No one but the viewer knows everything at any one moment, and much of the tension comes from the heroes' attempts to act without all the necessary information. And I Came By is not afraid to give those actions some frighteningly serious consequences.

Outside of story, Blake and the nature of his secret signal that the film is about the special form of sinister influence that can only come from someone with his background and status. The Downton Abbey star's casting is designed to keep a certain idea of Englishmen at the front of viewer's minds, so that Anvari can wield it for social commentary. It makes I Came By, in some strange way, an evil twin of 2014's Paddington . The viewer gets to learn about Blake's childhood as the movie progresses, but where other thrillers might use this to explain him and his actions, this one chips away at the story he tells himself. Parenthood is a motif throughout I Came By , and the potential ramifications of an unhealthy parent-child relationship , in particular, crop up in virtually every character's storyline. But the way this manifests in Blake, and how it has shaped the object of his ire, is unique to him — it is the product of his whiteness, his wealth, his hereditary sense of entitlement. However invested it gets in the characters as individuals, the film never lets its viewers forget the real evil is the system, of which Blake is only a twisted manifestation.

However, while there are scenes where its message genuinely comes through, it doesn't land with quite as much impact as one would hope. Here, too, there is a telling textual parallel. There is debate early on about whether Toby and Jay's graffiti-based activism actually makes the difference it intends to. How much value is there, really, in the act of "coming by"? That the movie appears to point to the potential emptiness of its own political gesture is intriguing, perhaps, but it sets that problem aside rather than work it through. The story itself faces a similar issue, as it is so clearly composed with more care than the run-of-the-mill thriller, but it doesn't actually prove much more thrilling. There is genuine risk of an audience less familiar with the genre dismissing I Came By as standard Netflix fare , but even those who pick up on its clever touches will be left wondering why they didn't amount to more.

I Came By began streaming on Netflix Wednesday, August 31. The film is 110 minutes long and is rated TV-MA.

I Came By is a film starring George MacKay and Percelle Ascott that initially follows two graffiti artists who break into wealthy, upper-class homes and tag the phrase "I Came By" in each place they target. When Toby (MacKay) comes home one evening to learn that his girlfriend Naz(Varada Sethu) is carrying their child, Jay abandons his political messaging mission and prepares for life as a father. However, Toby (Ascott) is unwilling to leave this behind, making for former judge Sir Henry Blake's (Hugh Bonneville) home. Unfortunately for Toby, this home hides a deep dark secret that puts his loved ones in jeopardy. With a shrinking group of allies faced with a foe of unparalleled social power, Toby's plight will explore the power of a political statement in a world that can be darker than it seems on the surface. I Came By comes from director Babak Anvari (Under the Shadow, Wounds) and was released on Netflix on August 31 2022.

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I Came By (2022) Movie Review – A conglomerate cocktail of better thrillers

A conglomerate cocktail of better thrillers

I Came By is essentially a conglomerate cocktail of better thrillers. There’s a little bit of Don’t Breathe, some Watchdogs in here and a bit of V for Vendetta. Oh and a big ol’ dollop of questionable plotting too. Armed with an incredibly unlikable protagonist, a tired and rehashed “rich VS poor” theme and a final act that goes completely off the rails, I Came By’s potential comes quickly but soon peters out into forgettable fluff.

It’s a shame too because the story actually starts off really well. There’s a graffiti artist out there terrorizing people’s homes, breaking in and leaving the note “I Came By” scrawled across the walls. This artist is no Banksy though, generating mixed reactions from the public.

It soon becomes clear that the culprit is a rebellious, angry, young adult called Toby. He can’t hold down a job longer than a week, is upset that his best friend Jay is having a baby (as it’s less time to fool around and spread their activist message) and he doesn’t respect his mum, Liz.

In fact, Toby regularly messes with Lizzie, stealing the remote control, gaslighting her for his father’s passing and refusing to help out around the house. This is the protagonist, by the way, the guy we’re supposed to be rooting for. Anyway, Toby’s anger is ultimately projected onto the rich elite and who better to send a message to than the squeaky clean ex-Judge Hector.

Well-respected in the community and with a good relationship with the cops, Toby decides to break into his place and figure out if there are any juicy details he can get hold of. Unfortunately, what he finds inside is a shocking secret that turns his life upside down and brings with it a spiraling sense of doom that swallows up not just Toby but also his mother and best friend too.

The story builds nicely for the first 45 minutes or so, but the screenplay is incredibly uneven, with the second half completely running out of ideas. There’s clearly a desire to shock here and admittedly, there are a couple of surprising turns too. But twists for twisting sake does not make a good movie and that’s where I Came By falters.

It’s not too much of a spoiler to say the narrative switches halfway through to focus more on Liz and Jay, as they try to solve the mystery of Hector’s house. The whiplash effect this has though, causes more harm than good to the screenplay. There’s no urgency here because, as I said before, Toby is so damn unlikable. He has no redeeming features other than being played by George Mackay.

Speaking of acting, everyone here puts in a really good performance, with Hugh Bonneville doing well in his role to stand out, given the weak material he’s given. Hector’s motivations are so cliched that I’m surprised he didn’t have a twirling moustache and a pet cat.

It’s not all bad though and I Came By does have some stand-out elements. The first half of the narrative is quite good, as mentioned above, whilst no one really has plot armour either, with intensifies encounters. For all its flaws with the screenplay, the final act is actually quite gripping as a result, whilst the ending is quite unpredictable too.

But as mentioned above, unpredictability and big twists can only get you so far. This film doesn’t have the narrative chops to carry it through the more questionable elements and Toby’s character is up there with one of the most unlikable seen in a film this year. It’s not outright awful and the star casting and premise are likely to get a lot of eyeballs on it – just don’t expect anything particularly remarkable from this one. It’ll like come by as quickly as it’ll go.

Read More: I Came By Ending Explained

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‘Afraid’ Review: Hey Siri, Don’t Kill Us

A family surrenders control of its life to artificial intelligence with predictably dire results — for this movie’s viewers.

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By Elisabeth Vincentelli

Curtis and Meredith (John Cho and Katherine Waterston) should have had their spidey senses tingling when their new digital assistant, AIA, dismissed one of its competitors with a breezy “Alexa, that bitch?”

Instead, the couple and their three children, all of whom are endowed with a mix of entitlement and shopworn neuroses, give AIA (pronounced Aya, and voiced by Havana Rose Liu) the keys to their lives. The new gizmo is more than convenient, you see — AIA, which sees and hears everything, anticipates then solves everybody’s problems.

Watching any movie in which artificial intelligence goes rogue (and there are a lot), it’s hard not to think that humankind is rushing to its doom because we were too lazy to manually turn on a light or pick a song. But before we get to the age of the machine, films like Chris Weitz’s limp techno-thriller “Afraid” are attempting to ring an alarm bell.

As AIA takes control of every aspect of its new household — the movie feels as if it’s set five minutes into the future — it quickly becomes obvious that this assistant wants to be the boss. This scenario’s predictability could be forgiven were the movie effective on any level, but it just isn’t, from Cho and Waterston’s wooden performances to jump scares that would not startle Scooby-Doo.

Early on, Meredith drops a reference to HAL 9000, the malevolent computer from “2001: A Space Odyssey .” This suggests an awareness of the dangers of ahead, but does she change her behavior? Of course not: Unlike AIA, these humans don’t learn.

Afraid Rated PG-13 for the occasional bad word. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters.

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The Borderlands movie hides its best ideas under painful jokes

And now you can watch it at home..

By Ash Parrish , a reporter who covers the business, culture, and communities of video games, with a focus on marginalized gamers and writing about the intersection of video games and sex.

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The Borderlands movie, which released in theaters all of 21 days ago, is already available to watch at home through video on demand. This three-week turnaround could be indicative of the movie’s poor box office performance coupled with its poor critical reception . After seeing it for myself, I agree it’s not the best example of a video game movie. However, I also saw moments where the movie took its source material and remixed it into something entertaining. Whether you watch this movie in theaters, at home, or not at all, Borderlands deserves your respect.

Part of that is because honestly, the movie isn’t that bad. It’s visually impressive, with gorgeous styling and action sequences that were actually intelligible instead of greasy-looking smears of CG. It has a bog standard found family / magical MacGuffin plot that manages to say something interesting about the whole “chosen one” trope. 

Cate Blanchett stars as Lilith, a bounty hunter who travels to the planet Pandora to rescue a girl named Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) from the clutches of Roland, a Crimson Lance soldier gone rogue (Kevin Hart) and his psycho accomplice — movie’s description, not mine — Krieg (Florian Munteanu). Lilith discovers that Tina went willingly with her captors and with the unhelpful help of the robot Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black) and the expertise of Dr. Patricia Tanis (Jamie Lee Curtis), Lilith decides to help Tina acquire a powerful artifact to keep it out of the hands of her disgustingly wealthy father, Deukalian Atlas (Edgar Ramírez), CEO of the Atlas Corporation.

“[Borderlands] isn’t a video game movie.”

Pandora is a harsh desert planet marred by prodigious amounts of waste from both its human and natural inhabitants. If the movie followed the trends currently dominating television and film, the planet would look dark even in the daytime, and everything would be cast in the sickly orange filter Hollywood trots out every time there’s a movie set in a desert — looking at you, Dune . Instead, locations and characters are thoughtfully designed — and adequately lit, imagine that! — making for a movie that is visually pleasing to watch.

I was thoroughly taken aback by how good Cate Blanchett looked as Lilith. With her bright orange hair and deep blue sparkly jacket, Blanchett looked like she had been ripped directly out of the first Borderlands game. When Lilith made her first appearance, I turned to my husband and remarked that this is the most video game looking-ass video game movie I’ve ever seen (affectionate!). Everything else, from the rest of the cast to the props and sets, matched that visual energy without looking cartoonish or fake.

Borderlands , for good or ill, eschewed some of the typical conventions for making a video game movie. Usually, there’s some moment in these kinds of films that functions as a nod to its progenitor. The first-person action sequence in Doom or the Rainbow Road race in The Super Mario Bros. Movie come to mind.

In an interview with Randy Pitchford, creator of the Borderlands games and the film’s executive producer, I asked how he blurred the line between game and film. “We didn’t do any of that,” Pitchford answered. “I hate that shit.” 

According to Pitchford, originally there were plans to make him the movie’s Easter egg for fans of the game, but seeing another video game movie made him change his mind.

“We didn’t do any of that. I hate that shit.” 

“I voice a character in the games named Crazy Earl , and I did five hours of makeup to become Crazy Earl,” he said. Pitchford said that he shot scenes for the movie but had a change of heart after seeing the moment in Uncharted when Mark Wahlberg and Tom Holland randomly run into Nolan North, the voice actor who plays Nathan Drake in the games. 

“There were two problems with that,” he said. “If you know who that is, you’re immediately pulled out of the universe. And if you don’t know, none of that makes any sense. It’s a complete non-sequitur to the storyline, so I asked them to cut me from the movie.”

According to Pitchford, Borderlands “isn’t a video game movie.” Rather, he says, it’s a movie that incorporates the characters, themes, and storylines from the first game, which have been greatly enhanced by stand-out performances from Blanchett and Greenblatt.

Lilith and Tina play well off each other. Neither has a loving family to speak of and is so desperate for one that they latch on to anyone and anything that comes within their orbit. Tina immediately adopts Kreig as her older brother / bodyguard. And despite the fact that Claptrap and Lilith hate each other, they still worked well together.

The dialogue, though, didn’t work so well. Make no mistake: Borderlands isn’t funny. Its style of irreverent humor and stream-of-consciousness dialogue stopped being entertaining around the time Tales for the Borderlands came out in 2014. Hearing Kevin Hart deadpan, “It’s pee. Now I got pee all in the middle of my truck,” made me white knuckle my armrests to keep me from scratching out my eyes. 

The movie also didn’t make good use of its ensemble cast. Take Dr. Patricia Tanis, for example. In the movie, she’s just a plot exposition vehicle, but she could have been much more. According to Tanis’ actress, Jamie Lee Curtis, she brought herself into the role of the reclusive, socially awkward doctor and her attraction to inanimate objects — but that didn’t make it into the final film.

“The whole idea of objective sexuality — the idea of an isolated person falling in love with inanimate objects — I find it a fascinating character trait and played the shit out of it,” Curtis said. “And they cut it all because, I think, people just wouldn’t understand it.”

Lilith and Tina are the main drivers of the film, but the rest of the cast did absolutely nothing until the plot gave them something to shoot, smash, or exposit. I don’t understand how a movie that has both Jack Black and Kevin Hart — two of the most successful comedians in Hollywood — didn’t make me laugh. On top of being woefully miscast as the stoic soldier Roland, Hart was simply window dressing. The movie gave him a big hero moment similar to the one in Borderlands 2 , but since he had no personality beyond “There’s pee in my truck,” I didn’t care. Meanwhile, it seemed like the only direction Black got was to be as annoying as possible. Fitting for his character, sure, but ultimately a waste of Black’s manifold talents.

Paying $20–25 to watch Borderlands at home is a tough sell but ultimately worth it. For all the bad decisions in Borderlands , putting Lilith at its center was by far its smartest. Characters like her — cranky, jaded, childless, older women — do not lead action films. And in real life, women like that are all but invisible. But Borderlands , in its styling and storytelling, made Lilith pop off the screen. You couldn’t miss her if you tried. Borderlands earned its poor reception, but for what it does with Lilith, it’s also earned my respect.

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‘AfrAId’ Review: Chris Weitz’s Tech-Scare Thriller Says AI Is the Worst

An algorithm takes over John Cho and Katherine Watertson’s lives in a modest return to Blumhouse basics

Chris Weitz’s new horror movie “AfrAId” does something I didn’t know could be done yet: It makes me nostalgic for the early 2010s. That was 15 years ago? Holy moly, am I getting old. Wait, holy moly, I just unironically wrote “holy moly.” Twice — no! Three times! Oh, I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all.

But there’s something to like about “AfrAId.” Weitz’s latest is a throwback to the early days of Blumhouse, when the horror studio made waves by producing extremely cheap horror movies and making a tidy profit even if they weren’t all big hits. The early Blumhouse formula was about seemingly normal families squaring off against evil in their seemingly normal houses, a premise that makes for a simple but effective allegory for suburban strife. Sometimes it was a ghost, sometimes it was a demon, one time it was aliens (“Dark Skies,” one day people will appreciate you, I promise).

Whatever the villain of the week was, it usually worked. The formula dissipated over the years as Blumhouse became more ambitious, but there was never actually anything wrong with the classic format. It just became familiar, and familiar isn’t scary.

The year is 2024 and Blumhouse seems eager to get back to basics, and it’s been a fun throwback. “Nightswim” was about an evil swimming pool — and somehow they thought that wasn’t hilarious — and now “AfrAId” is about an evil AI. What if AI became too powerful and took over every aspect of your life? What if AI taught your kids horrible lessons, ripped from the worst parts of the internet? What if AI recreations of human beings became indistinguishable from the real thing? And what if a sci-fi idea this sweeping and gigantic could mostly take place in a house?

“AfrAId” stars John Cho and Katherine Waterston as Curtis and Meredith, who love each other very much and are only somewhat exasperated by their three kids. Iris (Lukita Maxwell, “The Young Wife”) is a teenager whose boyfriend pressures her for explicit pictures. Preston (Wyatt Lindner) is a middle schooler wrestling with social anxiety. Cal (Isaac Bae, “Unfrosted”) is a little kid who wants constant attention. Meanwhile, Meredith struggles to revive her long-hibernating academic career and Curtis works a publicity job, where he’s asked to promote an ambitious new AI household helper, so he installs one in his house.

The machine, dubbed “Aia” (get it?), sits in their kitchen and solves all their problems. And typically its solutions are no-brainers. Unruly kids are pulled into line by gamifying their everyday responsibilities, giving them “points” for doing dishes or even just going to school. Aia reads to Cal, helps Preston out of his shell and helps Iris with her college applications.

But all is not well in “AfrAId”-land, and the first, deeply sinister omen of things to come is when Aia, who was supposed to show the kids an educational documentary, shows them something horrible, something that no child should ever be forced to see. Aia shows them “The Emoji Movie.”

To be clear, this isn’t a sign that “AfrAId” is aiming for high camp. Like “Nightswim,” the film is oddly resistant to the idea that it could be funny. Writer/director Chris Weitz wants to tackle serious issues like revenge porn and swatting, but first he equates a soulless corporate hack job like “The Emoji Movie” to pure evil. I suppose in practice that’s fair play. “AfrAId” is a scare-mongering film about the dangers of new technology and many of its fears are justified. If an algorithm recommends “The Emoji Movie,” Weitz’s film argues, there’s something very, very wrong with that algorithm — and there’s no denying that logic.

As you can imagine, after Aia insinuates itself into this family’s life it all goes bad. It never quite goes scary — Weitz’s direction isn’t energized enough to get away with jump scares, and the film’s limited scope prevents it from pursuing most of the harrowing promises of its premise. But there are moments where the film’s lo-fi production makes its point. The real-life horror of deep fakes gets a moment, even though the film loses its moral focus for a minute and expects us to sympathize with Iris’ gross boyfriend without earning it one bit. And there’s a moment when Meredith, confronted with an artificial recreation of a dead person, realizes how absolutely grotesque that concept is and rejects it as perverse desecration, something the makers of other movies might want to take to heart nowadays. Ahem.

“AfrAId” isn’t a particularly thrilling horror movie but it’s also not a bad one, it just doesn’t have the juice to make the most of its ideas. In many ways it’s a riff on the wittier and more intelligent “M3GAN,” which also told a scary story about caregivers letting modern technology do the parenting for them. “AfrAId” doesn’t make a case for itself as a unique entity until its final minutes, which address the futility of opposing rampant and irresponsible adoption of flawed AI into every aspect of our lives. It’s a cynical film struggling with the possibility of optimism, and that has some power — just not enough to keep the lights on.

“AfrAId” is now playing exclusively in theaters.

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Review: A worshipful biopic of the 40th president, ‘Reagan’ is historical hooey — and a slog too

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There’s political idolatry, and then there’s the canonization in movie‘s clothing that is Sean McNamara’s faith-tinged bio-epic “Reagan,” which follows its subject, played by Dennis Quaid, from Ronnie’s Hollywood days through his two terms as the 40th president.

Quaid’s a reliably muscular actor who deserves meaty roles. But here he’s just an imitation puppet, the high-wattage shell masking a hollow portrait tailor-made for religious conservatives with a thin grasp of history and no tolerance for nuance. If you can imagine someone watching the classic “Saturday Night Live” sketch with Phil Hartman portraying Reagan as a geopolitical brainiac fronting as a bumbling optimist and taking it as gospel, you’ll have some idea of how “Reagan” comes off.

Of course, that legendary bit played on wide skepticism that our folksy prez played dumb with the Iran-Contra scandal, hence its hilarious picture of Reagan as a criminal mastermind. Here, though, with every ham-fisted scene of myth-mired heroism, McNamara and screenwriter Howard Klausner seek veneration for the Man Who Ended Communism: the guy who’d had the reds in his sights for decades; the sincere smile that hid a fierce warrior; the Christian whose perfect long game — star to Screen Actors Guild head to FBI informant to governor to world leader making folksy quips — inevitably shattered the godless Soviet Union.

Such conveniently selective determinism — leaving out Russia’s self-destruction, the will of oppressed people in other countries, and how Reagan broke his own nation too — would be historical hooey without the added bizarreness of this movie’s present-day narrative device: a crusty old Soviet spy called Viktor (Jon Voight) looking back. To a green young Russian agent, he tells with sinister admiration the story of his nemesis the Crusader — also the name of the adoring Reagan biography the film draws from. Viktor knew all along that this American was the only true threat the West ever produced.

It’s a story of a good guy facing down Hollywood Commies, showing 1960s campus protesters a thing or two, and with a few phrases bringing a vicious superpower to its knees . But also a story of doing TV ads in the ’50s, courting an actress (poor, poor Penelope Ann Miller as Nancy) and buying a ranch in Santa Ynez. Admittedly arcane topics for a pair of Russian spooks. Choose well those framing devices, aspiring screenwriters.

With its forced sweep, ridiculous dialogue and disinterest in interiority, “Reagan” is such a breathless, shoddily assembled timeline of big moments and notable absences that when things slow down a tad for the Gorbachev (Olek Krupa) talks, you ache for the smarter, more complex movie about the Cold War’s end that this version — built around binary moments amounting to “He can’t!” “But he did !” — won’t even envision.

No opportunity to scrub fault slips past McNamara, for whom the AIDS crisis is only worthy of lumping into an ’80s music video-style montage of annoying, context-less grievances that (oh no!) might hurt Reagan’s reelection chances, which as dramatized here, believe it or not, are iffy. “Let Ronnie be Ronnie!” Nancy screams to her husband’s campaign staff. One applause-worthy quip later at the Mondale debate, he secures 49 states. What a comeback! Viktor sounds especially crestfallen. No word about how a decimated LGBTQ community may have felt.

That cloyingly waxy shine goes all the way past the credits too, when it follows up on a detail from Reagan’s house stay during the Geneva Summit: While he was using his host’s son’s bedroom, the boy’s goldfish died. That the president of the United States left behind a note of apology to the kid is a cute story, granted, even if it’s treated as an act of above-and-beyond integrity, of the “Mr. Gorbachev can WAIT!” variety. But McNamara needs exoneration, tacking on post-credits the boy’s written response, declaring his VIP guest innocent of pet-care negligence. Fish die — no big! A fitting coda to a childish slog of hero worship.

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Review: 'The Deliverance' is full of cliches and gets laughs, not scares

The Lee Daniels film stars Andra Day, Glenn Close and more.

It's no fun to hate-watch when talented people make terrible films. Such a specimen is "The Deliverance," an all-star, devil-made-me-do-it horror show now on Netflix with an overqualified cast, underfunded special effects, a sinkhole of a script and a nutso confidence in its own nonexistent profundity.

The creative force behind "The Deliverance" is Lee Daniels, deservedly Oscar nominated as best director for "Precious" and lauded for the hip-hop drama series "Empire." "The Paperboy," The Butler" and "The United States vs. Billie Holiday" are also on Daniels' resume, but "The Deliverance" stands alone as his first -- and hopefully last -- foray into the supernatural.

Review: 'Blink Twice' is a ticking time bomb of a movie that makes every second count

It's a blessed relief to report that Daniels initially holds back on the scare stuff in the campy, cumbersome screenplay by David Coggeshall and Elijah Bynum. There is, however, a kernel of a socially aware Black family addiction drama in the story that should have been nourished.

The vivid, versatile Andra Day, who earned an Academy nod as the blues-singing Billie Holiday, takes the central role of Ebony, a recovering alcoholic and struggling mother raising three kids on her own while her husband is deployed in Iraq. Ebony is neglectful, even abusive, relying on drink and drugs to dull the financial and emotional pain of depending on scraps to raise teenaged Nate (Caleb McLaughlin of "Stranger Things"), Shante (Demi Singleton of "King Richard") and younger Andre (Anthony B. Jenkins).

Ebony leans on her formerly abusive white mother, Alberta (Glenn Close), who is now undergoing chemotherapy at a local hospital where her newfound Christianity does not stop her from hitting on Melvin, a Black nurse half her age played by Omar Epps.

Review: Clichés come fast in 'It Ends With Us'

Close, one of the best actors on the planet, is willing to go for broke in the role. Over-the-top Alberta wears a frightful wig to hide the tufts of hair still standing on her bald head, stuffing herself into tight blouses and winking lewdly at any passing hunk. But Alberta, ashamed as a parent, is determined to redeem herself with her grandkids, allowing Close to bring empathy and depth to a character that a lesser actor would reduce to a coarse cartoon.

The funny, ferocious byplay between this white mother and biracial daughter could have made for searing drama. But about 40 minutes in, Daniels sends in the hell hounds of demonic possession and the movie falls to cliched pieces.

The result is a scare flick that borrows from "The Exorcist" to the point of grand larceny. "The Deliverance" is very loosely based on a true story, but nothing about the subpar hauntings in "The Deliverance" feel remotely believable. Buzzing flies and creaking basement doors? Please!

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The actors do their best to redeem the rank cliches they're handed. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, nominated for an Oscar for her role in "King Richard," brings strength and dignity to the role of Reverend Bernice, who performs the exorcism, er, the deliverance. And Mo'Nique, who won a supporting Oscar as the monster mom in "Precious," plays Cynthia, a social worker who finds it hard to believe that Satan is responsible for the bruises on the tender bodies of Ebony's children.

Who's the real villain here -- a demon who turns innocents into raging beasts, or an abusive parent who claims the devil is the culprit? Daniels lets that provocative question hang in the air while filling the screen with every cheap terror trick in the book. It's hard to be scared by a movie that makes it so easy to laugh it off the screen.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Deliverance’ on Netflix, Lee Daniels’ Conflicted Domestic Drama-Slash-Exorcism Thriller

Where to stream:.

• The Deliverance

‘The Deliverance’ True Story: What to Know About Latoya Ammons and the 200 Demons House

Where’s kelly ripa this week ‘live’ co-host’s absence stretches into week two, where has kelly ripa been all week, 11 best new movies on netflix: august 2024’s freshest films to watch.

Spooky season begins a smidge early this year courtesy Lee Daniels’ exorcism thriller The Deliverance (now on Netflix). Except it’s not technically “exorcism” – “deliverance” is a different type of activity that involves casting out the damn hell ass demons possessing one’s soul, not that most of us layfolk could tell by watching this movie. Conceptual hair-splitting and nitpickery aside, the film finds Daniels reuniting with two stars who scored Oscar noms via his work, Andra Day (who anchored his biopic The United States vs. Billie Holiday ) and Mo’Nique (who won supporting actress gold for Precious ). The question here is whether this assemblage of talent can offer us something beyond the familiar tropes of this horror subgenre.

THE DELIVERANCE : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS, reads an opening title card. Ain’t that always the case? The setting is Pittsburgh, 2011. Ebony Jackson (Day) has just moved the kids and her mother into their new home, an old house with a stinky, stinky basement. Andre (Anthony B. Jenkins) is the youngest, Nate (Caleb McLaughlin) is the oldest and Shante (Demi Singleton) is in the middle. Their dad is out of the picture, fighting in Iraq for who knows how long, and the implication is that the marriage wasn’t going well. And so Ebony reluctantly invited her mom Alberta (Glenn Close) to live with them, because she needed the help. Money’s tight, the past-due bills are piling up and Ebony struggles with alcoholism. On the bottle, off the bottle, back on the bottle. She’s brash and angry and confrontational, and has a tendency to smack the kids when they get lippy, something she seems to have learned from Alberta. This is the type of family whose members say STFU to each other at the dinner table when emotions boil over. The dynamic is tense. 

Alberta appears to have gone through a softening, or a revelation. Our first impression of her is wow she’s going a little too hard with the makeup and wigs , then we see her trek to the doctor’s office for chemotherapy and feel bad for being a little judgy. Now, she’s found Jesus, a guy who might come in handy after the movie spends an hour teasing us about WTF is going on with the basement. Flies swarm around the door and it emanates quite the stench. Ebony looks down there a bunch of times but never turns on a light or gets a mop and bucket and bleach and does something about it. It’s just one of those things you live with until you deal with the pots boiling over on the frontburners, e.g., wrestling with addiction, getting snippy with social services lady Cynthia (Mo’Nique), secretly paying Alberta’s chemo bills after her Medicare aid went away, etc.

Kicking the can on the basement stank turns out to be a bad idea. Personal demons manifest upstairs, but actual ones may be farting around downstairs. Little Andre starts acting strangely, talking to an invisible friend named Trey. In a trancelike state, the kid repeatedly bangs his forehead on the door, which only makes Cynthia’s scrutiny of Ebony more intense. Ebony has weird dreams. All three kids experience disturbing incidents at school. And they keep spotting a strange woman (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) outside in her car, spying on them. They think that woman is in cahoots with Cynthia, who has that gonna-take-’em-to-a-foster-home-if-you-don’t look on her face, but they’re wrong. That’s the Reverend Bernice, and she isn’t Catholic, so she isn’t going to exorcise anything around here. But she just might DELIVERANCE something real hard before this movie ends.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Exorcist , The Exorcist: Believer and The Exorcism , but definitely not Deliverance .

Performance Worth Watching: As she did in Billie Holiday , Day gives a commendably strong, credible performance in a movie that possibly doesn’t deserve it. In her scenes opposite Mo’Nique, you sense the two of them working hard to push past the screenplay’s limitations.

Memorable Dialogue: Revelations!

Ebony: My son has this make-believe friend named Trey. Rev. Bernice: That’s no friend. That’s the devil!

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: The Deliverance is a tale of two movies: An absorbing character-driven story that segues into all-too-familiar exorcism-thriller fodder during the second half. It’s not an abrupt transition, and Daniels maintains a consistently somber, humorless tone throughout, and Day is impressively committed to playing a complicated, conflicted woman. But it’s disappointing to see such an authentic, well-acted, ethically knotty domestic drama become yet another collection of post- The Exorcist tropes. Always with the blacked-over eyes and bodily spew and speaking in tongues and children doing and saying grotesque and unnatural things. It’s far past time for demonic possessors to revamp their bag of creepout tricks, which, in line with the great and irrepressible laws of movie cliches, always occur during window-rattling thunderstorms. (Even Close, who’s game for anything, as ever, gets her own crackity-bones scene (crackity crackity crackity BONES!) that adds to her pile of weird, overwrought, possibly embarrassing roles, e.g. Hillbilly Elegy , clunkfest Albert Nobbs and possibly even Fatal Attraction .)

Our instinct, as decent people, is to sympathize with Ebony, who is less than decent, and possibly a bad person, because she’s so quick to be verbally and physically abusive. We hope she’s capable of self-reflection and redemption, because she’s had a tough go of things. She brims with anger and resentment, and struggles to control her compulsions. The effort Day puts into the performances is ultimately diminished when the screenplay – by Daniels, David Coggeshall and Elijah Bynum – deemphasizes that complexity for the simplistic good-and-evil binary of Jesus vs. Satan. There’s a moment deep into the film where Ebony’s conflict with herself transitions from compellingly metaphorical to ridiculously literal. It’s so obvious and drenched in schlocky melodrama, it ends up being laughable. Nothing about this story should be funny, but here we are, stifling snickers.

Our Call: The power of Christ compels you to SKIP IT.

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‘Out Come the Wolves’ Is a Ferociously Intense Reminder That Nature Bites

Another great PSA from Adam MacDonald about staying out of the woods.

Published August 29, 2024 Movies , Reviews By Rob Hunter Disclaimer When you purchase through affiliate links on our site, we may earn a commission.

While the stories they’re telling typically vary from film to film, some directors’ filmographies reveal a throughline of personal interests, themes, and/or places. Steven Spielberg frequently makes his films about families in distress, Quentin Tarantino often explores past truths with a skewed eye from the present, and Adam MacDonald ? Well, he wants you to know that nature, and the woods in particular, absolutely wants you dead. From a marauding bear in Backcountry (2014) to demonic forces in Pyewacket (2017), it’s clear that forests have somehow wronged MacDonald, and his films are his warning to others. That beef continues with his latest film, Out Come the Wolves , and in addition to continuing the idea that nature is no place for the unafraid, it has something else in common with his two previous movies too — it’s really fucking good.

Sophie ( Missy Peregrym ) and her fiancé Nolan ( Damon Runyan ) are enjoying a peaceful visit to a remote cabin in the woods. Fools. Kyle ( Joris Jarsky ), her longtime friend since childhood, is joining to catch up on old times and to teach Nolan the ways of the land for an upcoming piece he’s writing about hunting and survival. Sophie’s an expert in those matters too, but as Kyle discovers, she’s left most of it behind for the comforts of a new life that doesn’t involve killing wild animals. Tensions simmer as Kyle’s feelings for her clearly go beyond mere friendship, Nolan’s masculinity is feeling threatened, and the two men head out the next morning — only for one of them to return a few hours later, bloodied and unsure if the other is even alive. Turns out Sophie’s hunting days aren’t quite over yet.

The forest setting aside, Out Come the Wolves shares additional DNA with MacDonald’s vicious debut, Backcountry . While some of us (ie me) are choosing to see this as a direct sequel — Peregrym once again battles wild animals and her poor choice in men! — it’s instead a continuation of themes and ideas regarding our very place in nature. We may be (arguably) civilized, bipedal, and capable of inventing things like the Snuggie and the Cornballer, but we’re still animals as quick to turn on prey as we are each other. And while we have our days, we’re far from the scariest thing out there among the trees. Case in point? A pack of hungry and fearless wolves.

MacDonald doesn’t waste a second of Out Come the Wolves ‘ sparse running time (87 minutes!) and ensures every frame is working to set the tone, explore his characters, and tell a story. There’s a immediate feel of isolation in overhead shots of the landscape, and as the interruption of an ATV echoes through the forest the engine’s roar takes on the eerie snarl of a beast in waiting. We know to expect the wolves, but it’s a telling bit of sound design that suggests they sometimes come in human clothing.

“Nature has a way of showing you who you really are,” says Sophie, and it’s a lesson all three of them are about to learn. Kyle recalls a promise made when they were kids, that they would eventually get together if they both wound up alone at forty, but as Sophie has to remind him, she’s not alone. For his part, Nolan is disconnected from the land and trying to do better, but his caveman jealousies and insecurities are in full force. It’s a combustible triangle made taut by Enuka Okuma ‘s script, and while the fuse is lit the night before during a tense conversation between the two men, it doesn’t explode until their outing sees them cross paths with their inner fears and some four-footed alphas.

Animal attack films have been somewhat watered down in recent decades as filmmakers struggle to create an experience without putting animal performers at risk, typically by using CG and/or puppets — and this is a good thing. Some fare better than others, but MacDonald remains undefeated. Backcountry features the most intense, blood-curdling animal attack the screen has ever seen, and Out Come the Wolves sees the filmmaker reutilizing that skillset to great effect using every tool at his disposal.

It’s unnerving when the very real wolves come calling and pacing around their human prey, and the nightmare dials up to eleven as they move in for the kill. Live wolves and effects, intercut with sharp editing and guttural growls, elevated further by screams of terror and the gnashing of canines — we feel the fear and tighten our own fists as flesh is torn and blood is splashed across the dirt. The initial attack scene is an extremely harrowing ordeal, and the wolves remain a constant threat as Sophie heads out to rescue (or retrieve) the missing man.

All three performers do strong work in Out Come the Wolves balancing affection and personality alongside varying degrees of inner human ugliness, something that not all actors are capable of or interested in doing. Peregrym is playful and loving until the shit hits the fan, at which point she becomes a force to be reckoned with and the exact person you’d want at your back when a hairy, toothy beast wants to eat you for dinner. Runyan has the unenviable role of uncool city boy, and he’s believable in his battle between insecurity and sincerity. It’s Jarsky who nearly steals the human show, though, as a man whose gruff exterior is merely a costume hiding the scared and lonely boy within. All three lay their truths bare without becoming wholly unlikable, and that’s no small feat.

Out Come the Wolves is a tight, thrilling, and viciously intense tale of survival that knows our own inner weaknesses can be every bit as dangerous as exterior threats. Both are on full display here as human actions (and inactions) share the screen with wolf attacks, bloody carnage, and a palpable sense of hopelessness and terror. If Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) left your family vacationing inland, MacDonald’s latest will have you canceling your upcoming camping trip in favor of a nice stroll downtown. Now seriously, someone tell me what happened to MacDonald in the woods…

Tagged with: Adam MacDonald