January/February Movies 2025

A new year begins and with it comes the lower caliber movies and Oscar bait. I didn't get out to see as much as I'd have liked to, but I did see some good stuff.

Let's dive in shall we?

Only saw one movie in January...

Wolf Man

Yeah, I really do end up seeing more horror movies than anything else it would seem and two werewolf ones only a month apart?

This one was light on action, more on tension. I remember sitting there on the edge of my seat worried about this family. Mostly the kid, because she was adorbs.

The Lowell family is headed to the deep woods to a cabin, left to Blake (the father) by his dad who has recently passed away. Those woods hold a dark secret...a creature of the night that howls at the moon. It attacks the family as they arrive and they make it to cabin just in time...or do they?

The wolf is on the hunt and dad's been scratched. He's slowly starting to turn into a werewolf.

The movie did one good thing begging the question and I'm stealing from a song from The Hunchback of Notre Dame...'what makes a monster and what makes a man.'

At the start of the movie, we get a little bit of backstory with Blake. His dad was tough on him and making him hunt and while trying to impress his dad, he goes off and comes across the creature. They survive the attack in a hunting blind.

Spoilers incoming...

Years later, Blake and his daughter are having a fun day out while mom works. They're setting up what a great dad he is and how loving, attentive, and compassionate he is. Jumping to the climax, The wolf that was attacking them is revealed to be his dad. They fight wolf to wolf as one is bent on killing mother and daughter while Wolf-Dad tries to protect his family. Nurture taking over the killer instinct.

Pacing was a little slow for my taste and you could have cut some more out and still had a decent movie. It was really dark, but still better lit than the battle with the undead White Walkers in Game of Thrones.

The tension made you want to see this family survive the night.

3/5

Onto February! Love, romance, and of course...death and killer robots. But before that comes a ghost story.

Presence

This...wasn't horror. It was more of a mystery than anything else. It was different than most movies coming out because the entire movie was a POV from the 'presence'.

A family moves into a new house. That house has a ghost and we see the movie through their eyes. Chris and Rebekah Payne are the parents and their marriage is in a bit of a crisis. Rebekah (Lucy Liu) works in finance and is committing fraud. She's also a little too focused on her athlete son, Tyler, and tends to ignore her teenage daughter Chloe.

The dad is trying to keep everything together, taking care of Chloe who had recently lost her best friend. She senses the presence and thinks it might be someone who died in the house or her friend.

A psychic investigates the house and says that the presence is trapped in an anachronistic period and could be from the future. She tells Tyler later on that she thinks the presence is there to prevent a tragedy.

As the events keep happening, Chloe is hanging out with Tyler's friend Ryan. They eventually sleep together and when she refuses after he tries to drug her, but the presence knocks her drink down.

You can see where it's starting to head. While the parents are out of town, Ryan comes by, drugs Tyler and tries to drug Chloe again.

Who's the presence? I'm not spoiling this one. But connect the dots or watch the movie.

The cast was decent. While it was a slow build, every step was important to what was going on.

4/5

Now for the romance!

Companion

I had seen this trailer multiple times. It had Huey from The Boys...looking and smiling creepily as a young woman burned her hand on a candle. That's all they showed. So, had my curiosity.

I don't dive too much into movie information as much as I used to, so I get fun surprises when I go see these movies. Basically, she was a robot companion.

It was supposed to be a romantic weekend, but things take a turn when Iris (the beautiful robot companion) kills their host for the weekend because he "jailbroke" her settings. What follows is the reveals of why (Josh rented Iris to kill their host so he and his friends could steal his millions in his safe).

Iris fights to escape and claim her existence, but isn't simple since Josh controls her with an app.

When Iris is told what she is and tries to free herself of Josh's control is where this movie takes off. It's an interesting take on androids and their place in the world in a potential future.

Sophie Thatcher was an absolute darling as Iris. You could tell that something was off with her before she was revevaled to be a companion robot. She was funny and charming and once she took control of herself became something more.

It was a fun comedy-horror movie that anyone who loves sci-fi and pondering questions of the place of AI and androids in the future could enjoy.

4/5

Finally...Heart Eyes. Love and death. Ain't it grand.

Heart Eyes

A serial killer that travels the country killing happy couples on Valentines Day. Brutally slaughtering anyone that's in a happy relationship.

It's your typical slasher-horror film. You have the killer and a couple (that's not really a couple but definitely vibing each other) trying to survive the night.

Aly is getting over a broken heart with a guy that moved on too quick. So heart broken it affected her work in advertising for a diamond company. In comes Jay to help her with the campaign. The heat is on as they spend the evening together but enter Heart Eyes.

Detectives Hobbs and Shaw (yes, really) are on the case. After an attack, Jay is pegged to be the killer. But when he shows up at the police station to finish the job, it looks like he might just be innocent.

Much like Scream half the fun of watching is the creative deaths, the other is trying to figure out who is behind these murders. Being the son of a sheriff deputy and lover of mysteries (books, shows, movies) I always enjoy trying to figure it out. I will say this...i was nearly 70% correct, but mostly nailed it.

Not that they didn't make it hard to piece together for the most part.

It was weird, but enjoyable. I love a good goofy slasher horror movie with a "who is it?" mystery.

Aly was a bit much at times and Jay was a little too perfect. While I did root for them, there was plenty to eyeroll over. The pacing was good, but there were parts where it felt like it could have been even shorter (1hr 37m runtime). You could have stretched out some of the start before getting into the long night and it would have been just a little bit more enjoyable in the parts that dragged.

3/5

Oh wait...One more.

CA: Brave New World

I'll make this one brief compared to the others.

It could have been so much better than what it was. Mackie is fantastic in the role, but the story was just weak. He deserved more. He deserved his own film because this one didn't feel like it.

The biggest problem was it felt like the movie was being forced to be sequels to other movies and set up things to come. This just wasn't just a continuation of Sam Wilson's story from Falcon and The Winter Soldier. It was a sequel to The Incredible Hulk and Eternals and set up X-Men stuff.

While I won't say what it should have been, I will say he should have faced a normal threat. He doesn't have the super-soldier serum and is just Captain America sans powers. He shouldn't be facing Red Hulk and Sterns. He needed an international threat that was on his equal level or just above so he could rise up and defeat it.

It's one of Marvel's misses in my book and could have been so much more.

2/5

And that was February. You now have suggestions for your next movie night when these arrive on whatever streaming service it may drop on.