We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
Four pieces of 2025 genre entertainment.
PREDATOR: BADLANDS (2025)
For decades, the writers of the Predator comic books and novels have been building out the world of the Yautja, the name author Steve Perry gave to the Predator species in 1994, but little to none of that information ever made it into the movies about the creatures. Now that the franchise is in the hands of director Dan Trachtenberg, who seems to have dug into a good amount of the extended lore, that’s finally starting to get worked into the films. “Yautja” is now film-confirmed canon, and a language has even been developed for the alien species. This was necessary because, with his third addition to the franchise (following Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers), Trachtenberg has decided to give us a Predator movie that’s unlike any we’ve seen before: with Predator: Badlands, he has made an epic sci-fi adventure film where a Predator is the protagonist! He is the character we follow and root for throughout the story.
This lead character is Dek, played by 6’2” Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, a “runt” of a Predator who is considered to be so small (for his species) and weak that his own father orders him to be executed. His brother spares his life (at the expense of his own) and sends him to the planet Genna, home to a supposedly unkillable creature called the Kalisk. A monster that even Dek’s father fears. Dek believes that if he can kill the Kalisk, he will finally prove his worth to his father and his clan.
The Kalisk isn’t the only dangerous thing on Genna – actually, the whole damn planet is full of danger, populated by deadly plants and monstrous creatures. A human being wouldn’t last long in this place, but a Yautja has a better shot, and Dek benefits from the fact that he crosses paths with a synthetic being called Thia, who was ripped in half by the Kalisk when she and a group of other synths created by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation from the Alien franchise to capture and study the beast. Played by Elle Fanning, Thia is quite cheery and chatty for a synth, and she hopes to be reunited with an identical synth called Tessa, who is also on Genna, also played by Fanning, and not nearly as nice. Strapped on Dek’s back like a backpack, Thia advises him as he makes his way across the planet – and, along the way, they’re also joined by a monkey-like creature that she names Bud.
There’s plenty of action in this movie, but it all involves Dek tearing through alien creatures or cutting up synths. There are no humans in the movie, which means no human blood, resulting in a PG-13 rating. Going along with that rating, Badlands has a lighter tone than a Predator movie tends to have, making this movie stand out from the pack even more. A lot of die-hard fans of the franchise might find this one hard to accept.
The tone was fine with me, but I have to say that Predator: Badlands ranked lower than a lot of the other Predator movies for me simply because the type of movie this is, this alien-populated sci-fi adventure, just isn’t as appealing to me as movies like the original Predator, Predator 2, Prey, etc. are. I still thought this was a really cool, fun movie, but it’s not something I’ll feel compelled to watch as often as some of the other Predator movies.
SINNERS (2025)
Writer/director Ryan Coogler did his best to keep his movie Sinners shrouded in secrecy. At first, all that was revealed was that this would be a genre movie starring Michael B. Jordan. Everything else about it was kept so tightly under wraps that when it was looking for a studio to call home, executives and buyers were forced to go to the offices of WME, the agency that represents Coogler and Jordan, to look at the script and get details. The project ended up at Warner Bros. with a budget of around $90 million – and before long, we heard that it was a vampire movie set in the 1930s. And it is, but there’s more to it than that.
In some ways, Sinners made me think of the works of Zach Cregger (Barbarian, Weapons) in that it doesn’t seem like it was completely planned out. The story seemed to be branching out in ways the writer may not have even expected. Most of the running time focuses on twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Jordan) coming back to their home town, catching up with lost loves (played by Hailee Steinfeld and Wunmi Mosaku), and getting ready to open a juke joint for the local Black community. Then the movie cuts away to an Irish vampire named Remmick (Jack O’Connell) being pursued by Choctaw vampire hunters who don’t have anything to do with the rest of the movie. The vampire action really kicks in when Remmick and some buddies show up at the juke joint, which leads to a section of the film that’s reminiscent of From Dusk Till Dawn, with one moment being straight out of John Carpenter’s The Thing. But the action doesn’t end with the vampires, because there’s also a shootout with KKK members.
As wild and scattered as things feel sometimes, and as reminiscent of other movies as some set-ups are, the story still holds together and Sinners ends up feeling like something that is uniquely from the mind and heart of Ryan Coogler. And it doesn’t just deal with vampires and the KKK. At the heart of everything is the legend of people who are born with the gift of making music so true, it can pierce the veil between life and death and conjure spirits from the past and the future. Smoke and Stack’s cousin Sammie (Miles Caton) has that gift – and that supernatural musical ability is actually why the vampires are drawn to the juke joint in the first place.
There was a lot of talk about how much Sinners would need to earn at the box office to break even, with publications giving a wide range of estimations, running from $170 million to $300 million. That’s an extremely dull subject as far as I’m concerned. It’s something for the studio number crunchers to worry about; it’s only something I have interest in if I’m rooting for something to get a sequel, and I can’t see Sinners getting a sequel. Whatever the case, the movie made $367 million at the box office and earned a lot of passionate fans.
That’s the important thing: it’s a heartfelt, entertaining, bloody movie that found its audience.
THE LONG WALK (2025)
Stephen King was a freshman in college when he wrote the novel The Long Walk in 1966-67, but he didn’t get it published (under the Richard Bachman pen name) until 1979 – and various filmmakers have tried to bring the story to the screen over the decades. This was one of the many King adaptations that George A. Romero was up for at one point. Frank Darabont, who made the King adaptations The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist, had the rights in hand for years. Andre Ovredal worked on it for a few years. Multiple scripts were written. But in the end, it was the duo of director Francis Lawrence and screenwriter JT Mollner that got an adaptation into production... and they did a pretty good job with it, even though they changed some of the details.
Set in a dystopian America that looks like it has reverted to the days when King first wrote or got the novel published, the film centers on a group of fifty young men who are competing in an annually televised walking marathon. They have to maintain a walking speed of three miles an hour and they keep walking until they can’t. When they can’t, they’re executed by the soldiers that are riding alongside them every step of the way. Clearly, King was not feeling entirely positive about the future of the United States when he wrote the book, back in the early years of the Vietnam War – and there have been plenty more things to worry about since then, so this vision of a dystopian country getting hyped up for a deadly competition remains relevant.
The lead character is Ray Garraty, played by Cooper Hoffman, and as he walks in the marathon he interacts with several of the other competitors, including David Jonsson as McVries, Garrett Wareing as Stebbins, Tut Nyuot as Baker, Charlie Plummer as Barkovitch, and Ben Wang as Olson. Lawrence did a great job gathering the cast for this movie; all of the young actors do solid work in their roles and make us come to care about their characters. Which is a tough situation to be in, because the nature of the Long Walk means that all but one of them is going to be dead by the time the end credits roll.
King is known to have trouble with his endings. The novel The Long Walk has a very dark and disturbing ending that probably wouldn’t have worked for a movie because it wouldn’t have left things on a satisfying note at all. The ending of the movie is very different, but still doesn’t entirely work. When the all-powerful military man known only as The Major (Mark Hamill) comes to congratulate the last remaining walker, things sort of fall apart. An attempt at a too-easy, crowd-pleasing Hollywood ending is mixed with a hint of downer, and it left things on a sour note for me. The ending may leave some viewers wondering why they bothered to watch the movie at all – although, to be fair, the same probably would have happened if they had stuck with King’s ending, too.
The Long Walk isn’t entirely satisfying, but Lawrence and Mollner did a commendable job with the adaptation.
DEXTER: RESURRECTION SEASON ONE (2025)
Well, technically this was the first season of a “new show” called Dexter: Resurrection, but I consider it to be the eleventh season of the classic show Dexter, which started in 2006 and ran for eight seasons, wrapping up in 2013. Fans weren’t satisfied with how things ended in the series finale, so in 2021 – 2022 we got a limited series follow-up called Dexter: New Blood – which counts as a one-season show on its own, but it was Dexter season 9. Another attempt was made to bring the whole thing to an end in the Dexter: New Blood finale... but fans hate these attempts at endings and want to see the show continue. So star Michael C. Hall and Clyde Phillips have decided to give them what they want with a new on-going Dexter series. In fact, they wanted to give fans a double dose of Dexter with Dexter: Resurrection and the prequel series Dexter: Original Sin, with the two shows alternating on Showtime.. but after the first season of Dexter: Original Sin (a.k.a. Dexter season 10) wrapped up, Showtime ordered another season, then reversed that decision and cancelled Original Sin so all the focus could be directed toward Resurrection. It’s a bummer that Original Sin won’t continue, and Phillips was not happy with the “We want more! No, never mind” approach Showtime took to the cancellation. But at least we have Resurrection, and it’s a glorious thing to have.
Dexter Morgan (Hall) is a serial killer who targets serial killer thanks to a “Code” of justice instilled in him by his late adoptive father Harry Morgan, a policeman who still guides Dexter as his ghostly conscience and is played by James Remar. New Blood ended with Dexter encouraging his son Harrison (Jack Alcott) to shoot him in the chest and remove his influence from his life, and that was supposed to be the end of Dexter. But, resurrected by fan demand, he recovers from his chest wound after ten weeks in a coma. Harrison has now landed a job as a bellhop at a hotel in New York City – but when the kid smashes in the head of a sexual predator to stop him from raping a guest and disposes of the corpse in the same manner his father would, the news of this death reaches Dexter and he realizes he needs to be there for his son. So he heads to New York City – and on his trail is his old pal Angel Batista (David Zayas), a former Miami homicide detective who suspects Dexter may be the serial killer known as the Bay Harbor Butcher, who killed a whole lot of bad people – and cost some innocent people their lives – in Miami back in the day. And, of course, he is.
Dexter refers to his urge to kill as his Dark Passenger, and when he arrives in New York he is appalled to find that a serial killer who targets rideshare drivers has earned the nickname the Dark Passenger. He sets out to bring that guy’s killing spree to an end – and in the process, he discovers that billionaire Leon Prater (Peter Dinklage) has also discovered the true identity of the Dark Passenger. Prater is a serial killer enthusiast who not only collects murder memorabilia, he also digs up the identity of currently-operational serial killers and invites them to get-togethers at his penthouse. Dexter kills the Dark Passenger (Marc Menchaca) and takes his place at the latest get-togethers, which introduce him to killers like the Tattoo Collector (Neil Patrick Harris), the Gemini (David Dastmalchian), Lady Vengeance (Krysten Ritter), and Rapunzel (Eric Stonestreet). Dexter takes it upon himself to put these folks out of business, which is a fun way to keep him busy throughout the season.
When Dexter isn’t mingling with and knocking off serial killers, he’s trying to dodge Angel, bonding with his son, working as a rideshare driver, setting up a new apartment in the basement of a man named Blessing (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine), and hoping NYPD detectives Claudette Wallace (Kadia Saraf) and Melvin Oliva (Dominic Fumusa) won’t figure out that his son committed the murder at the hotel. We also spend some time with Harrison and his interactions with co-workers like Elsa (Emilia Suárez) and Lance (Darius Jordan Lee), considers going to college, and meets a girl named Gigi (Emily Kimball).
Another notable character is Charley, Prater’s head of security, who helps him with his serial killer hobnobbing hobby. Charley is played by Uma Thurman.
Dexter: Resurrection is a great continuation of the show, and I would rank it as one of the best seasons of the overall series. It was very interesting and highly entertaining for the whole ten episode run, and it’s wonderful to see Hall fully embracing the fact that people want to see him keep playing Dexter for a while longer. It sounds like he’s in it for the long run and I’m excited to see where things are going to go from here.
There was some sadness in the last couple of episodes, but the fact that Dexter regularly has imaginary conversations with characters that have been killed off does dilute the sadness a bit. A character might die, but there’s a good chance we’ll see Dexter talk to them again sometime down the road.
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