Three Bad Movies Make A Post: Mommy knows best.

The Mortuary Assistant (2026): Compared to some of the worst new movies I’ve seen in the past couple of months, I can at least praise Jeremiah Kipp’s videogame adaptation for not attempting to paste over the holes in its budget with AI slop – while this isn’t good, at least it has a degree of self respect.

Unfortunately, that’s about all the film has going for it: the photography is flat and ugly in a particularly boring, digital style, the sets look terrible, the plot neither makes sense nor is it told in anything amounting to an even vaguely interesting manner, and consists of all of the clichés of past mortuary horror movies anyway, and the acting is dreadful throughout. There’s a complete lack of imagination on display here I found genuinely dispiriting.

Dolly (2025): Dolly was shot on film and really, really wants you to know it. And shot on film it is indeed, just not shot particularly well, or doing much to demonstrate how its analogue ways are much better than comparable digital photography would be. What’s texture good for when you don’t actually use it?

Being shot on film is also meant as a signifier of this being a throwback to grindhouse days, but there’s nothing the film does actual grindhouse cinema didn’t do better, or deeper, or broader. Even Dolly’s self-conscious nastiness doesn’t quite work, because it is so self-conscious, more concerned with looking like the real thing than simply being it. So it ends up being like a plastic copy of the sort of film it wants to be.

Anatema (2024): I’m genuinely not sure if this mix of religious horror clichés of all times and places directed by Jimina Sabadú is meant to be a comedy, or us just really bad at being a horror movie. In any case, cribbing from movies that aren’t all that great to begin with (hello, most of the Conjuringverse), but doing it badly does not for a decent movie make, even though this, admittedly, has a couple of ideas borrowed from Italian horror (say, The Church) you could still make a fine movie out of. You’d just have to commit to a tone and style, instead of racing through a bunch of greatest hits while actors mug and this viewer sighs.