Love Hurts (2025)

On the one hand, it's unfair to dismiss a film because it compares unfavourably to another film it wasn't necessarily trying to compete with. On the other hand, I ended up watching Love Hurts soon after watching Fight Or Flight, and it was immediately obvious that the latter film seemed to get everything right that this film, sadly, gets wrong.

Ke Huy Quan plays a realtor, Marvin Gable, who seems very content with his life. He's a mild and cheery fellow, happy to have left behind a life that was surprisingly stuffed full of violence and death. But that life won't stay left behind, and Marvin finds his life upended when Rose Carlisle (Ariana DeBose) reappears. This leads to Marvin being hunted down by a number of killers employed by his brother, Alvin (Daniel Wu), which makes it very difficult for him to keep his past a secret.

I am not surprised that this is the first film directed by Jonathan Eusebio. I am also not surprised that writers Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard, and Luke Passmore don't really have many other features of note to their name. That's the main feeling you get when watching Love Hurts, it's a film made by people ready to make the most of a talented stunt team in the hopes of distracting viewers from a very weak and very familiar plot. It's a shame that the stunt team didn't get the memo. 

There's a lot here to appreciate, and I am never going to claim that I could do even a quarter of the physical stuff that many of these performers can do, but Love Hurts is disappointingly repetitive and unimaginative when it should have been an opportunity for everyone to bring some crazy ideas to the table and see how many gags could be squeezed into every main action sequence. As many others said before I even saw this, Love Hurts is a film that you end up willing to do better for most of the runtime. And that's mainly down to Quan in the lead role.

Trying to make the most of his recent success and praise, Quan is someone who is very easy to like. He puts himself across as very sweet and unassuming, and he has a fantastic athleticism that deserves to be showcased in front of the camera. DeBose carries herself through the film with the kind of carefree and cool presence that makes the connection between the leads easy enough to believe in. As for the villains, they're a good mix of real menace (Wu) and quirky killers (Marshawn Lynch, André Eriksen, Cam Gigandet, and Mustafa Shakir). Lio Tipton also has a supporting role, playing a colleague who ends up caught up in the madness unfolding around our hero, but the way that the movie pushes her closer to the character played by Shakir is just far too silly. And it would be remiss not to mention the cameo from Sean Astin, which leads to a genuinely sweet and moving payoff, thanks to the baggage brought to the film by the shared legacy that he and Quan have as lifelong Goonies.

I liked Love Hurts, but I felt as if I had to work hard to like it in spite of itself. It's a mess, it's disappointingly unable to maintain any decent energy or momentum, and many of the fights feel like the same moves being used over and over again (not saying they ARE that way, but they feel like it). Maybe everyone can put their heads together and have another go at making something worthier of Quan's time and energy.

6/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing, and ALL of the links you need are here - https://linktr.ee/raidersofthepodcast
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share 

Violent Night (2022)

Take a good handful of Bad Santa, add some Home Alone, and then mix in an overflowing bowl full of Die Hard (as well as Die Hard 2: Die Harder) and you get Violent Night. If that sounds like a great time at the movies for you, and I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t, then you are bound to enjoy this. Maybe not from the first scenes though.

David Harbour plays Santa Claus. Not someone who thinks they are Santa Claus. Not a Santa Claus wannabe. He IS the man in the big red suit. He even has the reindeer, the magic to get up and down chimneys, a a sack that magically fills with gifts for children. And, of course, the infamous “naughty or nice” list. He’s grown jaded though, so many kids nowadays just seem to want videogames or cash for Christmas. Young Trudy (Leah Brady) is a rare exception. All she wants for Christmas is for her parents (Jason, played by Alex Hassell, and Linda, played by Alexis Louder) to repair their relationship. Jason is working on that, but it may involve finally standing up to his rich and powerful mother (Gertrude, played by Beverly D’Angelo). Gertrude is so rich and powerful that the planned family Christmas gathering is interrupted by a group of armed robbers (headed up by John Leguizamo’s “Scrooge”) who plan an efficient and ruthless redistribution of her millions. They didn’t account for one thing though. Santa Claus is in the house, and he’s about to go to town on all of them.

Director Tommy Wirkola has been delivering excellent movies now for some time, and many horror fans have been a fan of his work since the wonderfully bonkers Dead Snow movies, so it’s no surprise to find that this is funny and gory throughout. That is what Wirkola does so well. What is a bit of a surprise, although he has some experience in the genre, is just how good the action beats are. This is a film that stays perfectly balanced between the fantastical and bone-breaking reality. The cast all nail the tone of the whole thing, and they’re helped by a script that improves greatly once you realise that it’s not being coy about the central concept.

Writers Pat Casey and Josh Miller previously served up the Sonic movies (as well as sharpening their candy canes with 12 Deadly Days for TV), and they grow in confidence once they have set everyone and everything in place. The first scenes featuring Harbour felt a bit odd to me, as I wasn’t entirely sure how we were meant to view his interpretation of Santa, but things then move along nicely, with sharp dialogue and plot construction, to get us all where we want to be . . . watching a film that is pleasingly unabashed about it being a Santa-centric Die Hard. The references and gags come thick and fast, and the fights are well-staged and impressively creative, but nothing is done in a way that feels too smug or self-indulgent. 

Harbour is a surprisingly brilliant Santa, allowed to be sweet and loving one minute, capable of deadly violence the next. He doesn’t look ripped, but certainly looks capable of handling himself (especially when he has the right weapon to hand). Leguizamo is just as brilliant as the main villain, able to be the standard baddie that we need, but also able to deliver a standard Christmas movie tale of seasonal tragedy with a straight face that stops that moment being as ridiculous as it could be. Brady is a sweet youngster, and gets more involved in the action while the third act plays out, Hassell and Louder are decent, D’Angelo is a canny bit of casting, of course, and the other person I need to mention is Cam Gigandet, comfortably giving me the best Mark Wahlberg parody since Andy Samberg (no accent, but it’s obvious from his very first line that he’s definitely written as “a Mark Wahlberg” type). Edi Patterson is also fun, playing the scheming sister of Hassell’s character, and there is fun to be had with the variety of evil henchmen, including a sociopath played by Brendan Fletcher and the oblivous-of-the-pain-they-have-coming characters played by André Eriksen and Mitra Suri.

You also get a score and soundtrack that works perfectly alongside the blood-spattered snowy visuals, and some super-cheesy one-liners that work because, well, you just have to admire the commitment to the concept. I am not sure if people will view this as a new holiday classic, but I know some might. I will certainly be aiming to add it to the roster of other films I like to watch during this time of year.

8/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Prime Time: Assimilate (2019)

Zach Henderson and Randy Foster are two young men who decide to film life in and around their small town, trying to get a piece of that YouTube fame (or whatever generic video uploading site is standing in for it). Nothing happens in their town, or so they think. Some new bugs have arrived, bugs that bite people. And once someone is bitten, it’s only a matter of time until they change. With everyone radically changing around them, Zach and Randy end up teaming up with Kayla, desperately trying to avoid assimilation while they figure out the best way to fight back against what looks very much like an invasion of creatures that snatch/swap bodies. Because, yes, this is a teen-friendly reworking of Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers.

Director John Murlowski is an odd figure. His filmography covers a wide range of movies, from one of the many Amityville series entries to the infamous Santa With Muscles, and he has helmed a couple of movies that have pleasantly surprised me (including that Amityville movie). This premise seems like an easy one to get right, and Murlowski does a good job with the material, working from a script that he co-wrote with Steven Palmer Peterson. It’s far from perfect, and may be the least of the films based on this material, but it’s tense and entertaining throughout.

The life cycle of the invader is pieced together well, with characters figuring things out as they face increasingly immediate threats, and the way the town is overtaken is impressively quick and plausible. People are changed, that’s obvious, but the aim is to get the new creations outnumbering the original humans as quickly as possible, and a lot of the changes happening so brazenly make things seem more ridiculous when our leads try to convince others of odd happenings.

Joel Courtney and Calum Worth do well in their roles, playing Zach and Randy, and they come across as likeable enough throughout, even when doing the whole “let’s film everything around us and comment on it” spiel that could have easily been built up to turn this into a painful found footage take on the material, and I am very glad that route wasn’t taken. Andi Matichak is equally good in the role of Kayla, a character also given a little brother to try and protect, just to up the stakes, and all three leads are served well by the script. Some of the supporting players have to overdo the change from normal to blank slate, but Cam Gigandet stands out as a local Sheriff who may or may not end up being a dangerous enemy.

Although I didn’t love this, I liked it well enough. And I like it more when I think of the choices made for what NOT to do. No doing the whole found footage thing is a big plus. Not cramming the film with songs to help sell any accompanying soundtrack album. Having the special effects used pretty sparingly, and therefore making them more effective. There are other films in which these things - format, FX work, banging tunes - can, and have, been used to great effect, but this feels like everything was done to make the film teen-friendly without moving too far away from the simplistic brilliance of the central concept. It features youths at the heart of it all, but never dumbs things down or tries to be “too cool for school”. And the third act adds one or two pleasant surprises.

6/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews