My Review of Whistle (2026)

 

Written by Owen Egerton 

Directed by Corin Hardy

Chrys: "What if I don't want to die?"

Ivy: "Then you shouldn't have been born."

So far this year and with one exception, every 2026 movie I've watched so far had been in the horror genre. That might not change any time soon as there's other movies I need to catch up this month.

This one was released last month but I caught up with it late last night. You've got a bunch of high school students, a religious hypocrite and a cursed whistle. The ideas were perfectly sound but the execution left a little bit to be desired.

The cursed whistle in question turned out to be a death whistle. If you want to die, just blow into it and death would soon follow. This was explained by occult collector Ivy Raymore (Michelle Farley). She explained it following the death of her grandson, Mason (Stephen Kalyn). It was needed exposition for this movie.

The group of students who had the misfortune to deal with the cursed whistle were a mixed bunch. There was Chrys Willet (Dafnee Keen), who had substance issues as well as dead parents. She was living with her cousin, Rel Taylor (Sky Yang). Throw in a jock named Dean Jackson (Jhaleil Swaby), his girlfriend Grace Browning (Ali Skovbye) and a love interest for Chrys named Ellie Gains (Sophie Nélisse).

With this group, they are mostly decent characters but largely they're scrambling to beat the cursed whistle while also having to deal with an annoying youth pastor/drug dealer Noah Haggerty (Percy Hines White). As a human antagonist, Noah's pretty annoying to watch, which did make his comeuppance a bit more satisfying to watch.

The love story between Chrys and Ellie drove some of the second half of the movie. The two of them were able to work together to outsmart the cursed whistle and there's decent chemistry between Dafnee Keen and Sophie Nélisse.

- A mid credit scene had a new student blow the whistle in front of the whole school. Nick Frost briefly appeared as the teacher Mr. Craven.

- Olmec alluded to Mexico, which was where the whistle originated from. Chrys was short for Chrysanthemum.

- Standout music: Divinyls Back To The Wall.

- Chronology: Months passed between the opening kill to the main story to the aftermath of the story.

Whistle (2026) was an okay teen horror film. Decent enough cast, main love story and scares. It's diverting, won't tax your brain but I'll be surprised if it's on anyone's favourite horror movie list by the end of the year.

Rating: 6 out of 10 

My Review of The Van (1996)

 

Written by Roddy Doyle 

Directed by Stephen Frears 

Bimbo: "I'm going to kill it."

Larry: "What?"

Bimbo: "I'm going to kill the poxy van."

In the final part of The Barrytown Trilogy and I'll admit that while I do like this movie, it's probably my least favourite of the three. Saying that, it's still a worthy watch.

As someone who's not a big football fan, I also have some flashbacks to how much of a big deal Ireland's performance in the World Cup in 1990 was for the country. It's a bit of a plot for this movie as well.

The focus here was on a baker named Brendan "Bimbo" Reeves (Donal O'Kelly). He lost his job but gained a van and decided to go into business with his friend, Larry (Colm Meaney). The business being to sell fish and chips to the locals. As business ideas went, it was a guaranteed success.

In fact for a good portion of the movie, there was a good team up with Bimbo and Larry as well as the former's daughter, Diane (Neilí Conroy). That was until the van itself got shut down due to poor hygiene, thanks to the rather officious health inspector, Des O'Callaghan.

There's a breakdown in friendship between Bimbo and Larry and there was also a look into the former's marriage to Maggie (Ger Ryan) but again, the focus was largely on Bimbo and Larry. The latter in particular resorted to extreme measures in order to get their friendship back on track.

- Again because of rights issues, Colm Meaney had to play Larry instead of Jimmy Rabbitte Sr.

- Neilí Conroy's brother, Rúaidhrí also appeared as Kevin and Brendan O'Carroll popped up as Weslie.

- Standout music: Frederick Loewe's Wand'rin' Star.

- Chronology: Once again, we're in Barrytown, Dublin, during the 1990 World Cup.

While it is the weakest of The Barrytown Trilogy, I still would recommend watching The Van. It's a good enough closing story to this trilogy of films and both Colm Meaney and Donal O'Kelly are on good form.

Rating: 7 out of 10 

My Review of The Snapper (1993)

 

Written by Roddy Doyle

Directed by Stephen Frears

George: "Sharon, please, I have to talk. I'm tormented!"

Sharon: "You're tormented? You've made me the laughing stock of Barrytown, I can't go out without being jeered at. You're tormented? You prick ya!"

If I ever compile a list of Top 10 Irish movies (and I really should at some point), I promise that this particular movie will be very high on that list. I've seen it a ridiculous amount of times and it's without a doubt the best movie in The Barrytown Trilogy. I genuinely mean that.

Had rights issues not been a thing, this would've been directly connected to The Commitments but alas they were, so the Rabbitte family became the Curly family for this movie alone. Don't worry, that doesn't negatively impact the overall story as such.

Our protagonist would be twenty year old supermarket worker Sharon (Tina Kellegher). She's just found that a drunken one night stand with her best friend's father has resulted in an unexpected pregnancy. Of course there's her own family to break that news to.

Ireland in the 1990s wasn't always the most progressive with issues like this but here, Sharon had a support system. Both her father, Dessie (Colm Meaney) and Kay (Ruth McCabe) accepted that they were going to be grandparents and Sharon's five siblings also seemed to be unfazed about her being pregnant as well.

Sharon even had the support of her friends - Yvonne (Karen Woodley), Jackie (Fionnuala Murphy) and Mary (Deirdre O'Brien). Except when it was revealed that it was Yvonne's creepy father, George Burgess (Pat Laffan) that slept with Sharon and was the father of her child. That certainly created an even split in the friends group.

Anyways, the rest of the film dealt with Sharon being something of a local pariah with tension in her own family before the movie ended up with her giving birth to a girl. Of all the names and in spite of her insistence that it was a Spanish sailor who did the deed, Sharon willingly chose to name the girl Georgina. I don't think she thought that one through to be fair.

- Sharon's siblings for the movie were Craig (Eanna MacLiam), Darren (Colm O'Byrne), Sonny (Peter Rowan), Lisa (Joanne Gerard) and Kimberley (Ciara Duffy).

- Brendan Gleeson popped up as Dessie's well meaning but slightly dim friend, Lester. 

- Standout music: Lick The Tins Can't Help Falling In Love.

- Chronology: Set in 1990s Barrytown, Dublin. The book came out in 1990 itself.

I absolutely love The Snapper. Yes, it's a topical film that came out at a rather pivotal time in Ireland but it's also a deeply funny and heartfelt movie as well. Both Tina Kellegher and Colm Meaney are brilliant throughout the whole thing.

Rating: 9 out of 10 

My Review of The Commitments (1991)

 

Written by Dick Clement And Ian La Frenais And Roddy Doyle

Directed by Alan Parker

Dean: "You don't think, eh, well, like maybe we're a little white - for that kind o' thing."

Jimmy: "Do ya not get it, lads? The Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once, say it loud. I'm black an' I'm proud!"

Seeing as it's the month of March, I do want to try and get a few Irish films in as best I can and there's a certain trilogy that I've been meaning to review for a while now. Yup, it's The Barrytown Trilogy of course.

Starting with this one, what do you do with a group of strangers who want to form their own soul band? That was something that working class lad Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) was about to find out as he really wanted to break into the music scene and couldn't do it all by himself.

Nope, he needed a band who could play instruments and could sing soul music like he could. This band would be called The Commitments and it's members were definitely a lively bunch of people, who brought their own talent and chaos into the group.

The back up singers included Bernie McGloughlin (Bronagh Gallagher), Natalie Murphy (Maria Doyle Kennedy) and Imelda Quirke (Angelina Ball). All three women would be seduced by trumpet player Joey Fagin (Johnny Murphy). This caused a certain degree of tension within the group itself.

The rest of the group included lead singer Deco Cuffe (Andrew Strong), guitarist Outspan Foster (Glen Hansard), keyboardist Steven Clifford (Michael Ahearne), alto saxophonist Dean Fay (Félim Gormley) as well as bassist Derek Scully (Kenneth McCluskey) and drummer Billy Mooney (Dick Massey). It's a large group of characters to focus on.

As a band, The Commitments actually did have talent and were even securing some good gigs until one of them lead to disaster and the band's eventually dissolution. There's a nice montage towards the end that showed how each of the groups lives changed and in most cases, for the better tbh.

- The other two movies in this trilogy are The Snapper (1993) and The Van (1996). Colm Meaney played Mr Rabbitte in this movie but different characters in the other ones.

- If you're a fan of The Corrs (it was the 1990s), Andrea had played Sharon Rabbitte while her siblings had smaller roles here.

- Standout music: Mustang Sally, Dark End Of The Street and Try A Little Tenderness.

- Chronology: Roddy Doyle's book came out in 1987 and it's set in the Northside of Dublin.

The Commitments gets The Barrytown Trilogy off to an excellent start. It's a riot of a film with a brilliant cast, a brilliant soundtrack and a nice exploration into the working class and aspirations for more. How can anyone not be entertained by this one?

Rating: 8 out of 10 

My Review of The Beauty: "Beautiful Betrayal"

 

Written by Ryan Murphy And Matthew Hodgson 

Directed by Michael Uppendahl 

Diana (re Cooper): "The rebirth has begun."

And we're into the finale - or will it be series finale? If it's the latter, then Ryan Murphy learned nothing when he ended the likes of Ratched and Grotesquerie on cliffhangers. Hopefully the same fate isn't awaiting this one.

To this finale's credit, it's an improvement on the penultimate with three plot strands being weaved into one another with decent results. Even the Bella plot suddenly became a lot more interesting as a result of this episode.

Bella met up with the hunky Conor (Carson Rowland) who offered to sleep with her to pass on the Beauty. Conor also took an extra dose and Bella became horribly mutated as a direct result. It's probably the most sci-fi looking moment we've had in the entire show.

Bella's grotesque transformation was not only pitiful to look at but it became another reason for Byron to grow a conscience. Yes, our villain of the piece finally realised that his little product was causing a 17% rate of damage. What also spurred this change of tack? Oh yes, Byron's dopey sons.

Being good looking did nothing to improve Tig and Gunther's IQ as they decided to inject Franny with the Beauty. Franny now looked like Nicola Peltz Beckham and she wasn't happy about being younger. In fact, her reasoning for it not only made perfect sense in general but it was the thing to get through to Byron. That also put both Byron and Tig at odds with each other.

Tig aligned with Diana and they had a reverse for the Beauty that Cooper was willing to try. The cliffhanger being everyone reacting to the reversed version of Cooper. Do we get Evan Peters back next season? Will there even be a next season? 

- Franny II was styled the same way that Isabella Rossellini was in Death Becomes Her. It was a nice nod.

- Ray was killed off screen and Gunther didn't seem to be part of Tig's attempts to usurp Byron.

- Standout music: Guns N' Roses Sweet Child O' Mine.

- Chronology: From where the penultimate episode left off.

Beautiful Betrayal made for a strong enough finale. The main plots looped together rather nicely but has the show done enough to get a second season? I bloody hope so.

Rating: 7 out of 10

My Review of The Beauty: "Beautiful Beauty Day"

 

Written by Ryan Murphy And Matthew Hodgson 

Directed by Michael Uppendahl 

Student (re Tina): "She got the shot."

To get this one thing out of the way first - I would have taken these last two episodes, condensed parts of this one and merged it with the last episode. This was a complete filler episode that probably needed to happen earlier in the season or not at all.

I mean it did pick up from where Cooper had been transformed into a pre-teen and Jordan doing her best to reassure. The reality was that Jordan had no idea if Cooper would ever grow up and I think Cooper knew that as well.

On the other hand, I liked the bond that Jordan has formed with both Jeremy and the Assassin. Some snarky banter, both of them seemed surprisingly sympathetic to Cooper's current predicament. Cooper remained determined to actually stop Byron in his tracks.

Then there's Beauty Day. It came and went and The Beauty itself was spreading like wildfire among the American population. The focus on most of this episode was on the unfortunate Bella Grant (Emma Halleen).

Bella wanted to get The Beauty having witnessed a formerly dumpy classmate named Tina get the desired results as well as an influencer she followed online. Bella's parents on the other hand weren't going to let her do, rightly pointing out the possible side effects of the treatment.

The last scene saw Bella being openly envious of her friend Ruthie (Annabelle Wachtel/Paige McGarvin) being turned so dramatically by the process. Ruthie explained to Bella there was another way fot her to get the treatment. Then the episode abruptly ended.

- Bella's father was using Ozempic and this episode was rather critical of that too.

- Emma Halleen who played Bella previously appeared in American Horror Stories episode, Bestie. 

- I think people were way too calm about Tina being aggressive and even that classmate starting his transformation in the middle of class.

- Chronology: A week since the events of Beauty Day.

Beautiful Beauty Day was pure filler as an episode. It's fine for what it is but it didn't need to be it's own episode. I would've merged these last two episodes together.

Rating: 6 out of 10 

My Review of I Swear (2025)

 

Written And Directed by Kirk Jones

John Davidson: "The problem is not Tourette's, the problem is that people don't know enough about Tourette's."

After the uproar of last week's BAFTAs, this movie was something I needed to watch. I'll admit that I don't have an extensive knowledge on Tourette's but I was familiar with real life campaigner John Davidson. This movie was about the earlier part of his life.

The movie began with his early days as a 12 year old and when played by Scott Ellis Watson. He had aspirations to be a footballer but it was around this time his Tourette's had started to come into play. It was something that also saw his parents Heather (Shirley Henderson) and David (Steven Cree) desperate as well.

The movie mostly focused on an older version of John, played by Robert Aramayo. We saw the strain between John and his mother while a chance reunion with John's old school friend, Murray Achenbach (Francesco Piacentini-Smith) had John moving in with the latter's mother, Dottie (Maxine Peake).

The relationship between John and Dottie was by far the best thing about the movie. Dottie's experience as a nurse factored into her empathy for John. Dottie seemed to be able to help John in ways that his mother wasn't able to. She helped him get a job in the community centre and John formed a close relationship with his boss, Tommy (Peter Mullan).

As the movie progressed, John had to witness Tommy's death, had been a victim of an assault and had interactions with the law. They weren't as understanding of his condition. He also learned to live on his own and even stepped up for the community centre after Tommy's death.

Towards the end of the movie, we saw the ways in which John was able to live with his condition and even saw the positive impact he was making within his community as more people were trying to understand Tourettes. From this movie alone, it's hard not to admire John Davidson.

- The end credits of the movie had clips from the John's Not Mad documentary as well as others.

- A lot of this movie did focus on John's meeting with the Queen and how that went down.

- Standout music: New Order's Blue Monday and Oasis's Stop Crying Your Heart Out.

- Chronology: This started in the early 1980s Galashiels, Scotland with most of the movie set in the 1990s and 2000s.

I would definitely recommend watching I Swear as a movie. It's a brilliant look into the condition and into the life of John Davidson. Robert Aramayo gave one hell of a performance throughout as do Maxine Peake, Shirley Henderson and Peter Mullan.

Rating: 8 out of 10 

My Review of Industry - Season 4 (2026, HBO/BBC)

 

Written by Mickey Down And Konrad Kay And Joseph Charlton

Directed by Mickey Down And Konrad Kay And Michelle Savill And Luke Snellin

Whitney (to Henry): "Everybody wants you. You're worth everything. Everybody wants you."

I started this show as the fourth season was making the rounds on HBO and BBC respectively and managed to catch up with the current season as it was heading into it's final three episodes. I really have become a convert in such a short space of time.

With Pierpoint no more and the sexiness that was Harry Lawtey's Robert Spearing absent, it was really a case of Yasmin and Harper being the last two standing. Both women were in separate places at the start of the season and were further pulled apart by the end of the season.

In fact both women really went in very different directions. With Yasmin, her marriage to Henry really did both her and Henry no favours. In fact I was rooting for them to divorce and was more than happy when the finale granted my wish. However where Yasmin ended up, post divorce just showed how far she's fallen as a person.

Yasmin and Henry getting into bed with Tender and it's CFO Whitney Halberstram (Max Minghella) certainly compromised their morality. There's a Talented Mr. Ripley vibe between Henry and Whitney that nearly crossed into some homoerotic tension. As a villain, Whitney's brilliant to watch and there's something delightful in seeing Henry getting the better of him by the finale.

As for Harper, this season might have been her at her least scheming and most sympathetic. She's largely working with Sweetpea and newcomer, Kwabena Bannerman (Toheeb Jimoh) and even formed a partnership with Eric before things went spectacularly bad for the latter. Was that a permanent exit for the character? I'm not so sure.

For this season, Harper was on the right side. She knew something was up with Tender and actively made the right moves in order to try and expose Whitney. She even tried to pull Yasmin back from the dark path the latter was heading towards. I don't think I've ever been more Team Harper than I was with this season.

- Episode titles were PayPal of Bukkake, The Commander and the Grey Lady, Habseligkeiten, 1000 Yoots, 1 Marilyn, Eyes Without A Face, Dear Henry, Points Of Emphasis and Both, And.

- Lot of new characters this season including escort Hayley Clay (Kiernan Shipka), journalist James Dycker (Charlie Heaton), Labour Minister Jennifer Bevan (Amy James-Kelly). Those three got a lot of screen time. Claire Forlani and Kal Penn also popped up this season.

- Rishi really went off the deep end in his grief and addiction, which led to a mid season exit for the character.

- Henry turned forty in the second episode, had visions of his dead father (Jack Farthing) and admitted that he's slept with men in boarding school.

- HBO and BBC confirmed that the fifth season will be it's last one.

- Chronology: Mostly set in 2025 and 2026 and mainly in London though the fifth episode was set in Ghana.

I really have gotten into this show in such a short space of time and this fourth season made for some captivating television. The dynamics between Henry/Whitney and Harper/Yasmin were the best thing and there's timely commentary on various issues to boot. Honestly, this show has gotten better every season. I can't wait to see how it'll end.

Rating: 9 out of 10