Exit 8 (2025)

Exit 8 was a mystery screening at my local cinema and I thought that based on the clue that it was going to be Passenger but Exit 8 was definitely on my watchlist so it was a win win as far as I was concerned. The premise is simple a man simply called The Lost Man tries to reach Exit 8 but if he ignore ‘anomalies’ then he goes back to Exit 0. Along the way he comes across a little boy (simply called The Boy), a man walking towards and past him called The Walking Man and they all have the same goal which is to reach Exit 8.

The Lost Man is the one that we are introduced to as he is on a train and observes a woman being shouted at because her baby is crying. He then gets a call from his ex-girlfriend who tells him that she is pregnant and wants to know what to do. The Lost Man is the smarter of the two men we meet. He is describing every little thing that he sees whereas The Walking Man doesn't seem observant, missing a key detail (a door handle in the middle of the door) and as a result misses the anomaly and seems to then be destined to stay in this situation.

Mystery films are a risk and this is the second mystery film of the year where someone has walked out. In fact three people walked out before the film was five minutes old. I’m guessing that they didn’t want to spend any time watching a film with subtitles. I can understand their reluctance but I think they are missing some absolute gems and this is definitely a film worth seeing. Considering that the film takes place in a bland white corridor it still manages to find interesting ways to keep the story going. 

I will be honest, as much as I enjoyed this film, I found the ending confusing. After reaching Exit 8 and seemingly about to make a decision with his ex-girlfriend, he decides to board the train from the beginning of the film and encounters the shouty man. Are we supposed to assume that he is going to try and put right the wrong of not standing up to the guy but the ending is too ambiguous to make sense.  

Despite the confusing ending, I really enjoyed this film. I would have seen it anyway even if it hadn’t been a mystery film but it was a nice surprise. It’s a singular setting which always works well for me and there is enough of a mystery to stay intriguing and the film progresses at a good speed and at 95 minutes the film doesn't outstay its welcome. 

Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026)

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy or The Lee Cronin’s Mummy as it appears on the screen does seem to be the latest attempt to try and resurrect the Mummy franchise given that the 2017 Tom Cruise version was a failure on every conceivable level. The set up of this version is that parents Charlie who is a journalist and his nurse wife Larissa (who is also pregnant at the start of the film) lose their daughter Katie who is kidnapped in Egypt. The film then moves forward eight years with the family now living in New Mexico when they get the call that Katie has been found and the film follows the family coming to terms with Katie’s return and her strange behaviour.

The performances are decent enough although the detective in Cairo is sort of sidelined for most of the film until she arrives at the family home to deliver some exposition because the video tape she has come across is in Egyptian. She then gets a scorpion down her throat that pierces through and prevents her from speaking that leads her having to stick her finger in her throat to talk. The kids apart from Katie weren’t particularly strongly written. Maud (the youngest daughter) had some good moments including pulling out her own teeth without anyone noticing or making a scene and there is one moment where she calls her teacher a c**t which did make me chuckle although it did seem a bit out of place.

A main issue with the film apart from the runtime is that it feels very disjointed. It moves from Cairo to Albuquerque which look the same so it would have made much more sense to set it somewhere that looks different to the desert of Egypt. Also Sebastian does nothing of any worth in the story. He only does something in the final act when he is possessed. The rest of the time he is just…..there. There is also the fact that the woman who kidnapped Katie decided to record what she was doing and she did it on VHS and that people still seem to have VHS players including Katie’s parents. 

In the climax of the film it did come across as a bit like an Evil Dead movie which makes sense as Lee Cronin did direct the most recent Evil Dead which I actually did like but that was the moment when a film about a mummy stopped being about a mummy and instead became about a possessed girl. It could be argued that happened at the beginning of the film but due to the director’s connection to that other film it seemed obvious at this point.

The film is too long. It’s 2 hours and 13 minutes and it could easily have lost 40 minutes. I thought that it was a decent film. If they had tightened up the runtime then this would have been a much better film. It might seem strange to put the director’s name in the title but apparently it was Jason Blum’s idea in an attempt to differentiate it from the Universal Mummy films which will be resurrected in due course. Ultimately this film isn't quite as good as Evil Dead Rise but it is better than I thought it was going to be and definitely deserved its 18 certificate because I don't mind admitting that I did look away a couple of times because it is quite gory and definitely felt gorier than Evil Dead Rise.