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MaitlandOnMovies (Substack)

MaitlandOnMovies (Substack) is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Maitland McDonagh.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
Worldbreaker (2025) Maitland McDonagh Anderson has an eye for harsh beauty and he’s an efficient storyteller. In the annals of post-apocalyptic baptism-of-fire stories, this one at least has more on its mind than the simple pang of childhood’s end.
Posted Jan 27, 2026  Edit critic review
Mother of Flies (2025) Maitland McDonagh "Mother of Flies" is plenty creepy and walks the thin line between thoroughly professional polish and being just rough enough around the edges to feel queasily real.
Posted Jan 22, 2026  Edit critic review
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) Maitland McDonagh Moving beyond the pastoral survival horror of '28 Years Later,' 'The Bone Temple' is a well-realized nightmare world in and of itself ... [and] deserves significant credit for not relaxing into man-against-monster smackdown....
Posted Jan 15, 2026  Edit critic review
Primate (2025) Maitland McDonagh 'Primate' doesn’t aim high and doesn’t add much to the annals of animal horror films ... [b]ut it’s efficient, it delivers what it promises and, for gorehounds, it has just enough blood’n’guts.
Posted Jan 08, 2026  Edit critic review
We Bury the Dead (2024) Maitland McDonagh [D]isturbing yet somehow pastoral ... "We Bury the Dead" starts the new year with meditative horror, one that is as visceral about dead relationships as it is about dead people.
Posted Jan 02, 2026  Edit critic review
Influencers (2025) Maitland McDonagh What's great about [both "Influencer" and "Influencers"] is ... they are actually quite harsh about the culture of influencers.
Posted Dec 28, 2025  Edit critic review
The Housemaid (2025) Maitland McDonagh [A]n admittedly dynamic mid-movie twist ... breaks from the linear narrative. [But] the story really doesn’t have the heft (or any sort of plausible conclusion) to justify the length. I never connected with the characters sufficiently to care about them.
Posted Dec 20, 2025  Edit critic review
Resurrection (2025) Maitland McDonagh RESURRECTION isn’t tailored for a mainstream commercial market; its audience is moviegoers looking to see something both unfamiliar and subtly unsettling, as the world of dreams often is.
Posted Dec 12, 2025  Edit critic review
Five Nights at Freddy's 2 (2025) Maitland McDonagh The story is muddled [with] ... inexplicable specifics along with baffling contradictions of time and geography plus a plot seemingly designed by M. C. Escher....
Posted Dec 04, 2025  Edit critic review
The Thing with Feathers (2025) Maitland McDonagh It’s about coping, wrapped in a fantastical context that I found more compelling than most stories rooted in the brutal ordinariness of loss and grief.
Posted Nov 28, 2025  Edit critic review
Dream Eater (2025) Maitland McDonagh 'Dream Eater' may trod familiar ground but it’s a tidy little story efficiently told.
Posted Nov 20, 2025  Edit critic review
Keeper (2025) Maitland McDonagh [T]hese days I often find myself appreciating a smart filmmaker doing a variation on a theme I’ve seen many times before. But 'Keeper' genuinely surprised me with its magician-like misdirections and its eventual connect-the-dots precision.
Posted Nov 13, 2025  Edit critic review
Predator: Badlands (2025) Maitland McDonagh Bear with me for just a minute as I say, “Huh. 'Predator: Badlands' is a BUDDY movie!” — pretty much the last thing I expected. But it is, and kudos to all involved: It actually works.
Posted Nov 06, 2025  Edit critic review
House of Ashes (2025) Maitland McDonagh Her movie has visual style to spare — colorful, vertiginous, even seemingly gialli-inspired at times — and it has a strong point of view of the terrible topicality of the attacks on women’s bodily autonomy.
Posted Oct 30, 2025  Edit critic review
Shelby Oaks (2023) Maitland McDonagh [A] skillfully made pastiche of horror-movie tropes and influences. Writer-director-producer Christopher Stuckmann ... both knows and loves the genre. Unfortunately, "Shelby Oaks" is also a slow burn that doesn’t deliver an incendiary payoff.
Posted Oct 23, 2025  Edit critic review
Frankenstein (2025) Maitland McDonagh [A]n impressive achievement. ... [D]el Toro’s Frankenstein is steeped in death and, like the cream of the movie crop, driven by the creature.
Posted Oct 16, 2025  Edit critic review
Death Line (1972) Maitland McDonagh RAW MEAT isn’t just going for the shocks...but aims to capture a real sense of a sociopolitically fractured time. ... [It] is both eerie and deeply sad, with a more heartbreaking poignancy than one would ever expect from a film of this [U.S-release] title
Posted Oct 09, 2025  Edit critic review
Coyotes (2025) Maitland McDonagh Sitting on the classier side of this [nature-strikes-back horror] subgenre, COYOTES ... plays its hand well: The coyotes are just being coyotes — they’re not a genetic-engineering experiment gone wrong.
Posted Oct 02, 2025  Edit critic review
V/H/S Halloween (2025) Maitland McDonagh [H]andsomely produced, well-acted and creepy[,]...even the couple that are a bit "Tales from the Crypt"-ish, albeit if "Tales from the Crypt" had gotten a spectacular deal on corn-syrup blood and pig intestines. ... [T]here isn’t a weak link in the chain.
Posted Oct 01, 2025  Edit critic review
Good Boy (2025) Maitland McDonagh [The fim is] unsettling without overshadowing the delicate veil of melancholy that surrounds Todd ... [and] more wistful and bittersweet than it is morbid. It’s a story not only of things that go bump in the night, but of the cold nose that bumps back.
Posted Sep 25, 2025  Edit critic review
Dead of Winter (2025) Maitland McDonagh Set in a cold blue rural Minnesota, 'Dead of Winter' is an accomplished blend of conventional thriller and Midwestern quirk. ... [Director Brian Kirk's] steely, unblinking eye distracts from anything the plot doesn’t address or glosses over.
Posted Sep 23, 2025  Edit critic review
Night of the Reaper (2025) Maitland McDonagh [I]t delivers a convincing sense of time and place and, de rigueur, some bloody murders. It isn’t one for the ages, but hardcore Halloween buffs might want to give it a slot in their annual spooktacular movie-marathon lineup.
Posted Sep 18, 2025  Edit critic review
Queen of Manhattan (2022) Maitland McDonagh [S]et during the adult-film industry’s golden age, some 12 to 15 years of primarily the ‘70s with a bit of ‘60s and ‘80s on either end ... it’s a nicely evocative trip back to that rightly fabled time and place. If anything, it’s not gritty *enough*.
Posted Sep 17, 2025  Edit critic review
The Long Walk (2025) Maitland McDonagh [T]he walkers progress through stages of mentality and personality that eventually takes each to their core. I wouldn’t call it "My Dinner with Andre" on a forced march, but it’s much more psychologically literate than one might expect from the premise...
Posted Sep 11, 2025  Edit critic review
The Man in My Basement (2025) Maitland McDonagh [T]he shifting psychological/sociopolitical landscape [is] clear but not overstated... Kudos to the cast, notably Dafoe and Hawkins; if the story had been played as a spare two-hander...in a single room I suspect they could have made it equally compelling
Posted Sep 09, 2025  Edit critic review
The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025) Maitland McDonagh Wilson and Farmiga are old-school troupers, professionals to the core who ... bring a lot to the table.... [But t]he more horror movies you’ve seen, the less impressed you’re likely to be, despite the admirable polish of the execution.
Posted Sep 05, 2025  Edit critic review
Somnium (2024) Maitland McDonagh Cain is a director to keep an eye on. Her gorgeous visual sense is stronger than her solid but not-quite-polished script ... [b]ut I’ve no doubt she’ll smoothen things in whatever her next screenplay is and I look forward to it.
Posted Aug 28, 2025  Edit critic review
Lurker (2025) Maitland McDonagh Through vibrant performances...and neophyte Russell’s confident yet restrained direction... the film transforms a recognizable obsession narrative into something that speaks to a larger cultural shift in ordinary people’s public presentation of themselves
Posted Aug 21, 2025  Edit critic review
Went Up the Hill (2024) Maitland McDonagh [T]his atmospheric and unexpectedly disturbing ghost story transgresses across themes of abandonment, fucked-up eroticism, fucked-up homoeroticism and mesmerizingly fucked-up narcissism. And I use “fucked-up” in the most approvingly holy-shit way possible
Posted Aug 14, 2025  Edit critic review
Weapons (2025) Maitland McDonagh 'Weapons' excels at what I go to horror movies for: not the jump scares or splatter effects but that niggling creepiness that worms its way into your brain and makes itself at home.
Posted Aug 08, 2025  Edit critic review
Ziam (2025) Maitland McDonagh I enjoyed 'Ziam' partly because it’s a departure from the zombie lore I’ve known since I was a child and partly because it’s fast-paced, good-looking and, without slowing down the narrative, invests enough in the main characters that you care [about] them
Posted Aug 07, 2025  Edit critic review
Together (2025) Maitland McDonagh [A]s an oozing and dripping, leaking and creeping example of body horror, Australian writer-director Michael Shanks’ movie resonates beautiful-ugly in your mind’s eye in a way that would do Cronenberg, the prince of body horror, proud.
Posted Jul 29, 2025  Edit critic review
Monster Island (2024) Maitland McDonagh I confess, I found 'Monster Island' fun. Is this movie going to shift my perspective on anything? No. But it’s a good time at the flicks and the creepy creature design is convincingly bipedal, gilled and scaly.
Posted Jul 24, 2025  Edit critic review
I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) Maitland McDonagh ...simultaneously ordinary and confoundingly plotted.... [T]he attenuated ending has the stamp of audience-test reshoots, which isn’t bad in and of itself but in this case created new plot problems with looped-in dialog near the end. I mean, why?
Posted Jul 17, 2025  Edit critic review
Tenebrae (1982) Maitland McDonagh Argento fashions a shifty, misleading piece of storytelling, one that pivots in a huge way two-thirds through.... [The movie's] outwardly neat and tidy world is no such thing. Its sleek and shiny surface lies lightly over a world of bloody chaos.
Posted Jul 11, 2025  Edit critic review
Jurassic World Rebirth (2025) Maitland McDonagh I get that it’s popcorn movie with a sliver of a message about the dangers of genetic engineering ... [and] I hope and trust it will entertain many people. But overall, it’s a *kaigu eiga* — monsters stomp Tokyo et al. — made on a massive budget.
Posted Jul 01, 2025  Edit critic review
M3GAN 2.0 (2025) Maitland McDonagh ... a nicely nasty piece of work within the parameters of its PG-13 rating. Like 'Alien' (1979) and the tonally very different 'Aliens' (1986), this sequel is less sci-fi horror and more sci-fi action ... but it works entertainingly well on its own terms
Posted Jun 26, 2025  Edit critic review
28 Years Later (2025) Maitland McDonagh It's not a film for all tastes — it’s gory, and that’s *me* saying that — but the world-building is excellent, as is the cast, and it contains moments of both natural and macabre beauty.
Posted Jun 19, 2025  Edit critic review
Best Wishes to All (2024) Maitland McDonagh While I can’t really say this movie worked for me, I have to give it serious props for committing. I get what "Best Wishes to All" is doing: It’s a seriously warped comedy-of-manners minus most of the comedy.
Posted Jun 12, 2025  Edit critic review
The Ritual (2025) Maitland McDonagh [W]hat we can accept in [fiction] doesn’t play as well when we’re supposed to accept something like demonic possession as being real. Imagine a “true-life movie” about Bigfoot and you might have some idea of what the filmmaker put himself up against.
Posted Jun 05, 2025  Edit critic review
Re-Animator (1985) Maitland McDonagh [First seeing it in 1985,] I didn’t recognize any names on the poster or, for that matter, on the screen. I don’t even remember the audience reaction. But I do remember leaving the theater thinking, “Holy shit, THAT is something I haven’t seen before.”
Posted May 29, 2025  Edit critic review
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) Maitland McDonagh [I]t delivers what it promises, and then some. And the sheer technical bravura and heartfelt performances ... make me unable to say it’s not a good movie, for what it is.
Posted May 22, 2025  Edit critic review
The Surrender (2025) Maitland McDonagh Dark family drama and horror aren’t an unusual mix, since they’re both steeped in intense emotions.... [W]hatever you expect from either genre, [filmmaker Julia Max] brings something distinctively weird and nightmarish.
Posted May 21, 2025  Edit critic review
Final Destination Bloodlines (2025) Maitland McDonagh [P]erhaps the series’ most ambitious and elaborate set piece ... that long opening sequence [is executed] in such balletically choreographed fashion it’s mesmerizing. ... [And as well,] 'Bloodlines' is the dignified final screen work of Tony Todd....
Posted May 15, 2025  Edit critic review
Clown in a Cornfield (2025) Maitland McDonagh Yes, 'Clown in a Cornfield' is a bloody stalk-and-slash movie, but it’s a smart one that rings just enough changes on the formula to make it fun — even for longtime horror fans who’ve seen a lot of them.
Posted May 08, 2025  Edit critic review
Unman, Wittering and Zigo (1971) Maitland McDonagh [A] psychological horror film about a boarding school, as only the English could make. ... [I]t’s a hard wooden ruler across the face.
Posted May 02, 2025  Edit critic review
Until Dawn (2025) Maitland McDonagh Sandberg ... throws in horror-movie homage after homage, so 'Until Dawn' might delight genre cognoscenti just for that. Not me, who was at best mildly amused, but others. Still, the horror is truly horrifying and the giblets ... fly with abandon.
Posted Apr 25, 2025  Edit critic review
Sinners (2025) Maitland McDonagh [Coogler] well realizes politics isn’t something that happens off in ivory towers but insinuates itself into everyday life...[and] doesn’t need to show us Klansmen burning crosses; seeing a KKK robe and hood on a bed makes the point without pontification.
Posted Apr 18, 2025  Edit critic review
All the Lost Ones (2024) Maitland McDonagh Like a near-future newsreel. ... The right-wing militia led by Conrad (Devon Sawa) is on a cleansing crusade and takes no prisoners, making blatant what writer-director Alex Garland suggested in the similar scenario of 'Civil War' (2024).
Posted Apr 17, 2025  Edit critic review
Drop (2025) Maitland McDonagh [A] tight bit of psychological horror rooted in a too-common dilemma — the PTSD residue of domestic abuse — and a familiar but still effective trope: The wounded-but-resilient woman forced to turn full fang-and-claw mama bear when her child is in danger.
Posted Apr 10, 2025  Edit critic review
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