Welcome Home Baby (2025). A paramedic in Berlin comes into an inheritance upon the death of her estranged father, a large sprawling house deep in the Austrian countryside. Austro German folk horror that starts off with a bang (well a self immolation actually), the rest of the film doesn't quite have the same oomph as the opening but there's still enough dread and menace to keep the audience interested. Director Andreas Prochaska presents us with some wonderful imagery, the dreamlike sequences are visually powerful, colourful and disturbing, he's less assured when it comes to the narrative though which can be confusing at times, the ending for instance is annoyingly ambiguous. B- Available on Lookmovie2 stream.
The Isolate Thief (2026). At the end of the American civil war, a young woman caretaker at a lonely Union outpost confronts a band of thieves looking for stolen gold. In recent years there have been a handful of pseudo feminist Westerns, women making a stand in what has traditionally been a macho/masculine genre and usually coming out on top against the odds. The Isolate Thief isn't quite up there with the best of them (a more substantial film for example was the 2014 movie The Keeping Room), some of the mysoginistic violence is hard to stomach, still it's a tense thrilling watch and worth seeking out. Stars Sean Bean and Mackenzie Foy. B Available on M4uhd stream.
Hungry (2026). A group of hapless tourists are stranded in the Louisiana swamplands and end up getting pursued by an angry hippopotamus. I suppose it had to happen, we've had piranhas, sharks, crocodiles and now a raging hippo enters the horror animal scene. B movie creature features can be fun if you have the right mixture of scares and black humour, it papers over the cardboard characters and iffy writing but Hungry does neither and the hippo in question isn't particularly frightening, Hungry is best avoided. D Available on Lookmovie2.
