This Film Is Not Yet Watchable – April 2025

The last few weeks have been really rough. I buried my brother-in-law, had a hell of a time helping my sister through her grief, struggled to connect with my nephew now that he’s obsessed with Geometry Dash, Minecraft, and any other app that can keep his gaze glued to a phone, and I’ve been out of work for so long that my unemployment is about to run out. Suffice to say, I’m in what I’ve called a “Morton Salt” situation for a while now.

At the same time, I’ve got to get myself back to some state of normalcy, if nothing else than for my own sanity. As such, I’m trying to get back on track with regular coverage here on the blog and the YouTube channel. That means the resumption of TFINYW on time. Today is the first new release day of the month (I would have posted this yesterday, but my flight home was delayed by over two hours and the airline made me gate check my carry-on, so no computer access during the layover), so I’m taking the time to deliver my own little April showers now in hopes that something more appealing starts to grow.

And for what it’s worth, this grouping doesn’t look too awful. Only 10 upcoming films have earned their dubious places here, and were it not for this month’s “winner” of the title of “The Worst Trailer in the World,” I could have honestly delayed the column by a solid week, as it’s the only entry coming out this opening weekend that made it onto April’s odious list. That’s got to count for something, right? On the whole, 2025 is already off to a better start than 2023 and 2024 (at least from a cinematic perspective; everything else is a gigantic dumpster fire), so maybe this is a sign of some much-needed improvement in the industry.

So, as I continue to recover from March’s onslaught, let’s wade through these shit-smelling previews with a clear goal in mind. These film are probably going to suck, but there is so much more good on the way, both for cinema and for life in general. I have to keep telling myself that, lest I drown in salt.

This is the April 2025 edition of “This Film Is Not Yet Watchable!”

G20 – April 10

Amazon made headlines in February when it acquired full creative control of the James Bond franchise (it already owned the distribution rights through its purchase of MGM). Well, if G20 is any indication of how they handle storytelling and action when it comes to international espionage, then 007 might be well and truly fucked.

Not only does the premise come off as completely stupid – terrorists hijack the annual G20 summit of the world’s largest national economies, complete with taking the various heads of state hostage, in an attempt to reset global markets and alleviate worldwide debt, a sort of schlocky spiritual successor to Fight Club‘s “Project Mayhem” – the execution is, from what we can see, so incredibly slapdash as to make Michael Bay feel embarrassed. Tons of CGI and lame explosions are bad enough, but the villains implementing deepfake AI as their means of controlling the world is completely hypocritical and self-serving for the film’s corporate overlords. Amazon knows that public perception of AI is underwater, so they try to associate it with what they consider to be the true enemy, people who want to take away the wealth of billionaires and bring economic relief to the poor. It’s a sly trick to make us in the audience hate both, but only take action against the people with guns, especially since they’re going up against a beloved icon in the form of Viola Davis. Amazon is still going to use AI to manipulate and exploit, but as long as you hate the same people they hate, they’ll take that as a win, because it means we as a people will never rise up against their nefarious use of technology.

As for Davis, I love her to death, but every second of this trailer you can see that she’s in pure DILLIGAF territory, phoning in every line with the enthusiasm of someone who took the role with the understanding that it would be a Kamala Harris biopic, and this is what they went with instead after she lost the election. Throw in some bullshit about her daughter being a TikTok brat and only the loosest reference to a military background, and you’ve got all the flimsy setup you need for the President of the United States to suddenly turn into John Fucking McClane. Never mind that Secret Service would have done everything in its power short of physically incapacitating her in order to prevent her taking up arms (or as the background song puts it, “guns guns guns guns guns”; pure poetry) for her own security, or that any aggressive action taken that results in collateral damage would have massive worldwide consequences, we just want the cross-cut of someone suggesting a “comfortable pair of heels” for our heroine before she literally rips off the bottom of her dress for more combat mobility, because “girl power” or whatever.

This is pure garbage through and through, and given the hoops Jeff Bezos has been jumping through to appease Donald Trump, it’s even more insulting to our collective intelligence that his company would greenlight a movie about a black woman POTUS being forced to save the world rather than a fat, orange, sentient turd. I weep for what will become of Bond if they think this is compelling action.

Drop – April 11

I’ve seen this trailer at least a dozen times over the last few months, and I still can’t bring myself to give a damn. I don’t care about a single mom’s first date in a long time, especially when it’s in a posh, penthouse, members-only type of restaurant. Clearly you’re doing better than me, so why should I feel the least bit of sympathy? The moment the Blumhouse logo comes up, the whole affair becomes an immediate red flag. Even the attempted subversion of beginning the preview with rom-com tropes before going into the suspense is undercut by the fact that Companion already did that this year, and did so in a much more compelling way, by showing us something fucked up rather than saying something is fucked up (“supplemented,” shall we say, by memes).

Once you realize that, the whole thing starts to fall apart. I know nothing about either of these characters, other than the fact that Meghann Fahy is a single mother, so I have no reason to engage with the threat to her, her child, or her date. Similarly, since I don’t use iPhones, there’s nothing to compel me to find anonymous text drops the least bit interesting. Beyond the most basic level of human empathy that makes me not want to see innocent people die, I have absolutely no rooting interest here. All I know is that some lady is at some fancy restaurant, where either she, her date, or both are clearly wealthy, and some shady force wants the date dead for reasons. Doesn’t affect me in the slightest, and that’s before we set aside the fact that the killer’s plan is so complicated and convoluted that it would have been easily snuffed out long before Fahy and Brandon Sklenar ever made it to the bar.

From the two-and-a-half minutes we’re shown, we already know that Drop fails at the most elementary aspects of suspenseful filmmaking. You have to have a solid hook, and iPhones aren’t it. You need a reason for the plot to take place, and we see nothing to that effect, only constant teases. You need a way for us to care about the people involved, and apart from a young son, we get zip. More importantly, especially for a thriller in such an intimate setting, you need to demonstrate visually why this claustrophobic trap could have any meaning outside of the narrow context of this one scenario. We are not given any indication that anything actually matters.

Compare this to something like Phone Booth. That film is over 20 years old, but I’d wager it holds up way better than Drop ever will, despite the former being centered on obsolete tech and the latter being set in the present day. In that earlier picture, and more importantly, in the trailer for it, we got to learn enough about Colin Farrell’s character to know he’s in some ethical muddy water, which may inspire violence against him. That creates nuance and the desire to learn more. I think this is the first time that I’ve ever brought out an old preview for contrasting purposes (and obviously given the film’s age, I can’t be 100% certain that this was the original theatrical trailer), but I feel you need to see this to get my point. Observe.

Beyond the establishment of Stu’s character, the tight space of the titular booth is contrasted with the open air vastness that is New York’s urban jungle to create true tension and mystery. The call is taking place at the center of the action, but it could be coming from anywhere, as Kiefer Sutherland has a sniper rifle and could be aiming from any of thousands of vantage points. Sutherland himself provides a human voice throughout, keeping the stakes high while also providing a constant, recognizable, and verifiably real threat. Drop, on the other hand, just has the annoying buzz of a cell phone’s vibrator function. If you close your eyes while watching Phone Booth, you can still sense the danger. If you do the same with Drop, for all you know Fahy is just masturbating furiously. At best, the buzzing sound is an annoyance, and it’s in no way threatening. At worst, it makes you want to throw shit at the screen, especially if you suffer from misophonia.

More importantly, the ancillary characters matter in Phone Booth far more than they appear to in Drop. The son and babysitter/younger sister are just off to the side, with still images used as leverage. Conversely, Phone Booth featured Radha Mitchell and Katie Holmes as active characters, live participants in Farrell’s mortal struggle. They were tangible, even when they couldn’t be directly involved in the proceedings. Speaking of direct involvement, we got Forest Whitaker as a police negotiator trying to suss out the truth of the situation, because there’s enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that Farrell himself is dangerous. In Drop, the bad guy demands that Fahy’s character kill off Sklenar or else, but clearly there would be evidence on her phone, the data and messages that can’t be remotely deleted, to prove her innocence should law enforcement intervene. That’s the disadvantage of doing this digitally. The land line of Phone Booth eliminates that. The call can possibly be traced, but that’s it. Everything else relies on visual cues and trusting the word of Farrell’s character in the moment. That’s how you actually get something to properly rattle your nerves, rather than a vibrate noise used as a cheap, almost rhythmic, jump scare.

This is what I mean when I say that Blumhouse continues to denigrate genre (and they’re STILL trying to coast on M3GAN‘s box office by naming its success in the preview for every single unrelated project they put out). They only care about the appearance of a scare rather than the actual creation of one. Freaking Joel Schumacher of all people (yes, Batman and Robin Joel Schumacher) knew that in order to get the point across, we have to care about the people involved. For Blumhouse and director Christopher Landon, apparently, all that matters is the literal “buzz.”

Gunslingers – April 11

Stephen Dorff and Heather Graham, together at last… yay?

I mean, the film appears to deliver what it promises, a bunch of people slinging guns and shooting each other. It’s about as deep as a puddle, but if that’s what you’re looking for, then go with God, I guess. Your reward appears to be Nicolas Cage going “Full Cage” in an outfit that makes him look like he was cast as a hipster version of The Riddler and just showed up to the wrong set one day and decided to just go with it, so at least there’s that.

I do chuckle at the fact that the Old West town’s name is “Redemption,” not just because it’s on the nose, but because of one of the few lighthearted moments I’ve had over the last fortnight. I went home to help my sister and nephew adjust to life without my brother-in-law, including a massive cleanout of her apartment (which is still in progress). One of the odder things they do is drink bottled water exclusively, never tap, which makes me wonder if there’s a plumbing issue that needs to be resolved. Anyway, the bottles get sorted out from the rest of the trash into separate bags to return for the deposits, which my nephew gets to keep as a small nest egg for himself. A few days ago we took about half a dozen bags in, earning $12 for our troubles. I giggled when we arrived, because the return place was just a small office in a rapidly emptying strip mall, with a construction paper sign reading “Redemption Center” in the window. We’d driven past it several times, and I eventually had to laugh because I honestly thought it was a makeshift church. Given the religious demographics of the area, it was something of an educated guess.

Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh yeah. Fuck this movie.

Sacramento – April 11

Did you like A Real Pain? Do you want to see it again, only completely neutered, not funny, and starring Michael Cera and Kristen Stewart?

Really? You do? Okay then, well, here you go.

Also, get help.

The Uninvited – April 11

Man, next weekend is gonna suck for movies. Anyway, here’s The Uninvited, not to be confused with the classic 1944 horror film or the disastrous 2009 Americanized remake of A Tale of Two Sisters (one of my all-time faves and my entry point into Korean horror). No, this one is a satire of ageism in Hollywood, as an old woman intrudes on a house party thrown by entertainment industry elites. It has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on its debut at SXSW last year, so I doubt the film is actually bad. It’s just that the trailer makes it look very boring. It also doesn’t help that we’ve had much flashier satires on the subject recently, most notably The Substance.

If I’m being honest, I’d probably get through this just fine, and maybe even enjoy it, as it employs great actors like Rufus Sewell, Pedro Pascal, and Walton Goggins, and some of the dialogue feels like a Tracy Letts stage play. I’m just kind of burnt out on holding a mirror up to Hollywood’s sins at the moment, and there’s nothing all that exciting about what’s been put out to entice audiences.

My actual work has dried up considerably over the last several months, as studios and production companies have shifted projects across the country and overseas for tax breaks. Mind you, staying in Los Angeles and paying regular taxes would not cause the productions to lose money, only for them to profit by slightly less obscene degrees, which is more than a fair tradeoff to keep tens of thousands of people employed. I credit this film for being made entirely in the area, but it feels like a missed opportunity to spotlight ageism rather than corporate greed in this case. Given that it took over a year to get distribution, that meta implication is likely more resonant than the morality play depicted in the actual flick.

The Wedding Banquet – April 18

Oh goodie, Asian AND Gay stereotypes? Where do I sign up?

*sarcasm detector explodes*

This is yet another outdated sitcom premise (let’s pretend we’re straight so our old-world relative will give us money) that got stretched into a feature, and I’m just done. It boasts a fine cast (Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran), but this is clearly not for me, nor is it for anyone who’s ever seen more than one rom-com, because the tropes on display are more tired than Rip Van Winkle. I’m sure the people who made this think they’re breaking down some imaginary barriers, but the only message I got from this trailer is, “Hey, gay people can run out of ideas, too!”

Sneaks – April 18

Oh wow. Wow does this look terrible. When you hear a title like Sneaks, you might get the mental image of a heist movie, or maybe a campy horror picture a la Critters. What you would never think of is “Toy Story, but for shoes.” I mean, The Simpsons literally did a parody of this in the form of Cards in an episode from 20 years ago. And yet somehow, Briarcliff, normally a haven for great independent cinema, is putting this trash out. From the first five seconds you can already tell that you need to steer clear, as the animation quality is in Norm of the North territory for how shoddy it looks.

But more importantly, there is absolutely nothing compelling about the plot. Some kid goes to a sneaker convention and wins a rare pair of celebrity-endorsed basketball shoes, and then they get stolen. The shoes are apparently brother and sister (How do they distinguish gender within identically-designed shoes? What counts as a penis or vagina in this context? How does that affect the comfort level and ability to wear these things?), and when they’re separated post-abduction, this somehow spawns an “adventure” to reunite that seems to have almost nothing to do with the kid who actually owns them. Never mind that by personifying sneakers we’re literally creating a scenario where a black child is enslaving sentient beings.

This is asinine on every level, and what’s worse is that it’s in service to one of the stupidest hobbies in creation. Yes, I said it. Come and get me, “sneakerheads.” You worship a product that costs hundreds of dollars even though they’re made in sweatshops, half the time you don’t even wear them, and the vast majority are ugly as sin. If this is your obsession, you are wasting your life. The poor children forced to make these things don’t even have basic foot coverings half the time, and yet you spend the equivalent of someone’s rent payment on what you imagine is a status symbol, even though showing them off requires people to not even make eye contact with you. Seriously, you might as well make a cartoon about Cybertrucks for as much of a waste of space as some of these people are.

Finally, this movie features a guy named Mustard. Fucking MUSTARD! I can already see him collaborating with Awkwafina on an album called “Getting Famous By Reading Bottles in a Sad Kitchen.” You want to know how bad this is gonna be? Briarcliff turned off comments on the video. The only reasons that this isn’t “The Worst Trailer in the World” for April are that a) I couldn’t get enough jokes out of my pure, unadulterated disgust, and b) I already had plans for the video when I went home for the funeral, one of the rare times I had to choose a target before taking everything in because I knew my free time would be extremely limited. But honest to God, this looks like a “shoe-in” (GET IT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!) for one of the worst films of the year.

The Accountant 2 – April 25

Didn’t see the first film, and apparently I didn’t need to, as it only has a 53% rating on RT. Clearly it was not a game-changer. Somehow, nearly a decade later, there’s a sequel, and I’d have to go to the bathroom twice to give two shits. Oh, Ben Affleck is joined by Jon Bernthal in this one? You don’t s—zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Until Dawn – April 25

Video game adaptations used to be extremely rare, mostly because they were universally terrible. Even the ones that had camp value like the 1995 Mortal Kombat were still objectively bad. However, now that we’ve had a few bona fide hits thanks to Sonic, Pikachu, and the animated Mario, it appears that Hollywood is trying to option every gaming IP possible, even when the stories lend themselves more to TV than film, evidenced by the longform successes of The Witcher, The Last of Us, and Fallout.

However, as we’ve all seen with just about every franchise and subgenre, quantity does not equal quality, and it’s just as true for video game movies as it is for everything else. For every win there are a dozen losses or more, including Street Fighter, Doom, the 2021 Mortal Kombat entry, the Tomb Raider abominations, every Resident Evil flick (except maybe the first one), and the entire filmography of Uwe Boll. Just last year Eli Roth denigrated his own legacy with the god-awful Borderlands. As usual, whenever some clueless studio suit sniffs profitability, all regard for source material and basic entertainment goes out the window in favor of trying to make a quick buck. Yeah, ask Five Nights at Freddy’s how that turned out.

The latest addition to the shit heap is Until Dawn, based on the 2015 Playstation game of the same name. The game itself is about solving cause-and-effect puzzles in hopes of guiding eight playable characters through the dangers that await them and trying to survive a very deadly night. The guiding principle is the “butterfly effect” of chaos theory, which is often intriguing, and by all accounts it worked for the game.

But here’s the problem. That game takes several hours and multiple playthroughs to complete successfully. Here, we have 90-120 minutes. That’s clearly not enough, and the film’s shoehorned time loop mechanic instantly evokes the other, much more regrettable Butterfly Effect, the Ashton Kutcher movie from 2004.

I have very little confidence in this, but I will at least highlight two potential points in its favor. One is that it’s embracing the blood and gore to get an R-rating. That lends a bit of credibility on its own, because it means the filmmakers aren’t afraid of their own material and understand that they need it to serve the game’s fans. Second is the fact that Peter Stormare is appearing in the film as Dr. Hill, the character he voiced in the original game. References and callbacks shouldn’t be the only source of enjoyment, but it is a nice touch here, and Stormare is an incredible actor who doesn’t get nearly enough praise for his work. I’m guessing the film will be crap, but I can still tip my hat just a tad for that.

***

And just like that, we’re on to “The Worst Trailer in the World!” Speaking of lame video game adaptations, this month’s victim was an easy choice. The cringe factor was cranked up massively from the very first teaser, and by all accounts, the movie is just as bad as advertised, opening to an embargoed 55% on RT less than 12 hours before release, and it’s already down to 47% in less than 36 hours.

A Minecraft Movie – April 4

If there was ever a time for me to ask for a pity like on a YouTube video, this is it. When my brother-in-law died last month, I told myself that I was going to do this video with my nephew as a way to connect and have a moment of levity in the midst of sorrow. Teddy appeared in my video for Disney’s Pinocchio remake a few years ago, the last time I went home for anything resembling something pleasant. It was a lot of fun, and his constant squirming and mugging for the camera led to me incorporating outtakes at the end from that point forward.

I was able to shoot and edit that video in the span of a day, and when it was done, Teddy’s father Tim, my now late brother-in-law (I always just referred to him as my brother, because he was adoptive family long before he married my sister and made our connections official), watched it with tears in his eyes, because his boy was on the TV, smiling and having fun. A year later he had a pretty bad medical episode that resulted in some short-term amnesia, so he forgot that the video even existed. When he was reminded of it and watched it again, it had the same effect. He was so happy to see his son on the screen having a ball, because he knew that his medical conditions wouldn’t allow him to play with Teddy and be as active of a parent as he wanted to be, a situation well beyond his control, but one he always rued.

So when he passed, I knew there was only one way I could properly honor him, by making another video with Teddy, one surrounding the terrible movie based on the game that he absolutely adores, and dedicating it in Tim’s memory. He wanted so badly to see his son grow up, and now he can’t, but he would have absolutely loved the chance to see another bit of programming with his pride and joy front and center. So yeah, it may sound cheap, but at least I can ask for the stupid “like” and viewership numbers to go up, so that Teddy can see that it had an impact. Maybe that will help him start processing his own grief, maybe it won’t, but it might put a smile on his face, and that’s all I’m going for. Just like the theme of the overall video, the idea is just to let the kid have this one.

***

Finally, as ever, we end on a note of hope with this month’s “Redemption Reel.” Hey, remember that silly anecdote about the bottle return center I mentioned earlier? Well, here’s a film that takes the basis of that giggle and applies it in full contextual force.

Sinners – April 18

Ooh, I’ve been waiting a while for this one. Ryan Coogler has already cemented his place among the greatest filmmakers of his generation, and this looks like one more great step forward stylistically. Plus, the idea of Michael B. Jordan playing a dual role sounds amazing. He’s such a great actor, and he’s always challenging himself. He played the greatest villain in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and he single-handedly revived the Rocky Balboa series, turning it into his own franchise. His talent is almost unrivaled, and this looks like another powerhouse demonstration of his skill.

The combination of racial commentary, supernatural horror, ultraviolence, and sweltering jazz that evokes the myth of Robert Johnson selling his soul for musical success is an incredibly difficult and ambitious balancing act, and in less capable hands I’d be in fear of a genuine flop. But Coogler has demonstrated time and again that he can handle fantastical elements and constantly shifting tones, mostly because he knows to ground things in his characters. Given the high quality of this cast (beyond Jordan we have the likes of Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell, and Delroy Lindo), I think we can expect that discipline to continue unabated.

This is easily one of the most highly anticipated movies of the year (why else would I post BOTH main trailers), and I pray it lives up to the hype. It was originally supposed to be released last month, but it was pushed back, swapping places with Mickey 17 on the Warner calendar. This is typically a red flag, but in this instance, there was good reason to make the switch. Sinners was shot on film with IMAX cameras, and in the digital age, there’s something of a scarcity when it comes to film stock for both shooting and printing. Making this change bought Coogler six more weeks to get the film prints finished. To me, that’s perfectly fine. To paraphrase video game producer Seamus Blackley (and I’m sure many other creatives in film, music, television, and gaming), the flick is only “late” until it’s released, but if it’s bad, it’s bad forever. Taking whatever time is necessary to prevent the project from being bad is always worth it to me.

***

That’s all for this month, everyone. As always, I sincerely hope you enjoy yourselves at the cinema, no matter what you go see. Oh yeah, I’m supposed to offer some sort of encouragement here, aren’t I? Um, drive fast, eat ass, and if things get too heavy, give yourself a pass. Sure, that works.

Join the conversation in the comments below! Do you plan on seeing any of these films? Was I too hard on any of them? What actors do you think would be great at pulling off dual roles? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) as well as Bluesky, and subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!