Starring: Kevin Singh, Claire Theobald and Donovan Workun
Directed by: Simon Glassman
Rated: Unrated
Running Time: 99 minutes
Yellow Veil Pictures

Our Score: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Having worked in local news, I’ve always appreciated the “can-do” spirit of local advertisers. Whether it’s pure DIY ingenuity by a tiny agency doing its best, or the awkward business owner subbing in for a slick national spot, there’s a charm to it. Enter “Buffet Infinity,” a VHS-style collage of local news, ads, and a story that feels easy to explain, yet strangely hard to fully convey.

As the film begins, we’re introduced to this unnamed town through a string of commercials. A pawn shop where the owners seem to enjoy filming more than selling, an insurance company with one of the dimmest spokespersons imaginable, a sandwich shop hyping its homemade sauce, and then there’s Buffet Infinity. At first glance, it’s just a buffet with a few items and low prices. Nothing suspicious…except for a monotone voiceover that feels more like bored improvisation than bored script reading.

But things begin to spiral as local news teasers and segments weave into the mix. It becomes clear that Buffet Infinity is more than a flashy new business. It’s an all-consuming presence that may be tied to strange disappearances, biblical shifts in nature, and possibly even a cult.

“Buffet Infinity” feels reminiscent of Panic Fest’s “VHYes,” but where that film leaned into a straightforward ghost story within the VHS chaos, this one uses sketch comedy to build something more layered. Absurdity reigns supreme as Buffet Infinity evolves from mundane burgers and salads to offering global cuisine and a sandwich that rivals the Tower of Babel. But underneath the jokes is a sharp critique of corporate expansion.

What makes the film work is how it forces you to piece together its story through seemingly trivial segments. Even the dull lawyer’s commercial plays a role. Slowly, the horror reveals itself: a force that enters a community, consumes it, overwhelms local competition, and then pretends it’s always belonged. Growing up, that force might have been Walmart. Today, it could be data centers, taxpayer-funded entertainment districts, or the endless spread of Amazon warehouses.

“Buffet Infinity” is an indie, anti-consumerist comedy that feels as old as Reaganomics but as current as Silicon Valley branding. It uses retro aesthetics for laughs while delivering a story about very real, very modern anxieties. Not every segment lands, and it can take a bit to find its rhythm, but its originality carries it. And when it hits, especially with the Buffet Infinity ads themselves, it’s an absolute riot.

Like all great films, Renny Harlin’s solidly enjoyable “Deep Water” is about an airplane that crashes right into a big pile of sharks. And let me tell you, those sharks are fucking hungry.

You’d think the sound of a 747 (or whatever) splitting open above their favorite dinner spot might scare these makos away, but these credible-enough CGI predators quite literally smell blood in the water, and the wreckage is still flaming when they start chomping on the survivors like god’s perfect jump-scares. Even the tiger sharks that ate so many of Quint’s compatriots from the USS Indianapolis in “Jaws” had the courtesy to wait 30 minutes; in this economy, I guess no one can pass up the chance for a free meal, especially when the food is a little richer than usual.

Perhaps that explains why Harlin was lured back into the water after all these years. He’s largely been slumming it since last venturing into the ocean with 1999’s “Deep Blue Sea” (which continues to rival “Jaws” for cinema’s most indelible shark-related deaths, and tragically remains the only movie ever made to end with LL Cool J rapping about how his hat is like a shark’s fin). It certainly explains why Harlin’s “Deep Water” — which is not to be confused with “Deep Water” where Ben Affleck fixates on his snail collection while Ana de Armas cucks him to oblivion — feels so much closer to a real movie than any of the Redbox junk and “The Strangers” sequels that Harlin has been churning out this century. In a word: money. In three more confusing words: Gene Simmons’ money. 

Indeed, the Kiss frontman — aka Chaim Witz, aka “The Demon” — has invested in a well-funded production company along with Arclight Films chairman Gary Hamilton, and their first order of business was to resurrect the “Bait 3D” sequel that was originally set to shoot in 2014 before it was scrapped because of its “uncomfortable similarities” to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Good news: The only “uncomfortable similarities” that remain in “Deep Water” are the ones it shares with the B-pictures of yesteryear (e.g., patience, emotionality, people dying from horniness), which strike a nerve because they’re so rare to find in the age of straight-to-streaming disaster slop like “Thrash.” 

Most of the film’s other resemblances, of which there are many, prove less distressing. For example: The ensemble script, credited to Shayne Armstrong, Pete Bridges, S.P. Krause, and Damien Power, feels less indebted to “The Towering Inferno” than it does to the human simulacra of Garry Marshall’s overstuffed holiday trilogy, but I have to admit I found some charm in how ruthlessly “Deep Water” deploys its archetypes. 

That starts with Aaron Eckhart’s Ben, who’s the closest thing this movie has to a protagonist. A hard-jawed first officer who grimaces even when he’s trying to reassure a frazzled child before takeoff, Ben signs up for a flight to China just because it will keep him away from his wife and kids; the guy is so obviously haunted by something that you half expect him to start radioing the flight control tower about his ghosts. That makes him a perfect foil for the fun-loving captain Rich (Ben Kingsley, loose but still imperious), an errant father and repeat divorcé whose itinerant lifestyle suits his preference for singing bad karaoke to a gaggle of flight attendants over staying in one place with a single woman. 

The other characters make these guys seem complicated by comparison. Three cheers for “Mad Max: Fury Road” actor Angus Sampson, who scores above-the-billing credit for his performance as Dan, the single worst person ever born onto this earth. A rumpled and sweaty human stinkrag, Dan’s entire job in life is to be so utterly loathsome that otherwise good people might shrug their shoulders when he’s devoured by a shark right in front of their faces, and business is a-booming. He moves through “Deep Water” with all the grace of a turd floating through a community swimming pool, harassing Northeastern Airlines employees for a cocktail even after the plane has plunged into the ocean. 

Naturally, it’s only because Dan lies about having a lithium bag in his suitcase that the plane goes down in the first place, a catastrophe that Harlin stretches into a strong, phobia-triggering setpiece that’s even scarier for its step-by-step clarity than for all of the bodily harm it visits upon the passengers. Yes, people still get ripped out of a hole in the fuselage like always, but not until after they’ve been obliterated by flying snack carts and diced apart by shards of broken glass. 

While the crash might lack the dark comic glee that Sam Raimi brought to a similar accident in the recent “Send Help,” Harlin is very selective about his approach to “fun” in this film — while “Deep Water” is always dumb as hell, it’s also heavy with the sort of unleaded sentiment that’s seldom found in pre-summer popcorn fare. Braindead but heartfelt, this is hardly the only disaster movie that wants you to delight in some deaths and get choked up over others, but even the “deserved” kills in this one are tinged with tragedy (spoiler alert: Dan has three kids!), while the tragic ones are sad enough to suggest that “Deep Water” takes itself more seriously than most audiences will. 

That approach can be hard to square with a movie whose characters all seem a few AI tokens short of passing the Turing test. Kelly Gale and Ryan Bown play a pair of comically hot newlyweds who — in a move equal parts insane and understandable — decide to join the mile-high club even though they’re flying with their two young children from previous marriages (both of whom become integral to the story in their own ways). Meanwhile, there’s Kate Fitzpatrick as a sassy and spiteful version of the old woman who wants to show you pictures of their grandkids the whole flight; Li Wenhan and Zhao Simei as star-crossed gamers on the same e-sports team; and Lakota Johnson as a comically aggro American meathead who still wants to pick fights with his fellow passengers on a piece of sinking fuselage surrounded by dorsal fins. There’s also a handful of beautiful flight attendants who all kind of bleed together and/or out.

It’s impossible to care about any of these people in the traditional sense, or to even think of them as people in the traditional sense, but Harlin invests in them with a conviction that proves endearing, if not quite contagious. Plotted like modern schlock but paced almost like a classic ’70s disaster movie, “Deep Water” mines real investment from its thrills by focusing on the little things that movies this stupid usually forget: The respectful friction between Ben and Rich as they figure out how to ditch the plane, the geography between the various pieces of the cabin after it shatters, the way the sharks circle around their victims the way they used to in old cartoons. 

It all feels very purposeful, which makes it that much worse that the kills are telegraphed the same way anytime (I’d expect more from the man who gave us Samuel L. Jackson’s most iconic screen death), and that the movie kinda just bobs in the ocean as it builds to its not-so-grand finale. Admirable as it is that “Deep Water” tries to play things straight, Harlin’s film would have benefited enormously from a neurologically enhanced super Jaws in the third act. Ben Kingsley could have rapped for us at the very least. But if this isn’t quite the best shark movie since “Deep Blue Sea” (that honor still belongs to “The Shallows,” or maybe “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” if you stretch the rules a little), it’s a lot higher up the food chain than it should be. 

Grade: C+

Magenta Light Studios will release “Deep Water” in theaters on Friday, May 1.

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Hokum, 2026.

Written and Directed by Damian McCarthy.
Starring Adam Scott, Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, Florence Ordesh, Will O’Connell, Michael Patric, Brendan Conroy, Austin Amelio, Ezra Carlisle, Mallory Adams, and Sioux Carroll.

Synopsis:

A horror writer visits an Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes, unaware the property is said to be haunted by a witch.

In writer/director Damian McCarthy’s audacious haunted hotel ride Hokum (the follow-up to the filmmaker’s horror grab bag Oddity, which demonstrated a wealth of solid ideas that never quite fully came together, even if the result was undeniably atmospheric and spooky), Adam Scott’s seemingly celebrated writer’s-blocked Ohm Bauman hates happy endings and he is currently struggling to come up with his latest downer of a finale.  As the rest of the plot begins to kick in, one begins to wonder if Damian McCarthy will feel the same way. For a film eager to please with the occasional jump scare and familiar folklore, including witches and ghosts, the story itself is rather dark, with one harrowing revelation after another.

There is also a stroke of brilliance in casting Adam Scott, as the miserable novelist is amusingly a jerk to nearly everyone he comes across, pulling from his persona as a comedic actor, playing a character as miserable as the disturbing books he writes (he is working on something called The Conquistador Trilogy, and it seems to be popular enough with those around him recognizing his identity and wondering how it will end). It is also worth mentioning that a framing device shows glimpses of the creative process behind this ending, featuring a man and a young boy (Austin Amelio and Ezra Carlisle, respectively) stranded in a desert, facing harsh choices. Admittedly, this makes for a jarring opening (brilliant editing transitions notwithstanding), though by the end it becomes clear why these scenes are necessary to the overall narrative.

Nevertheless, Ohm has retreated to the Irish countryside hotel that was once a honeymoon for his deceased parents, possibly having delayed his wanting of spreading their ashes there while also hoping the setting will bring him some inspiration. As mentioned, he isn’t interested in making any friends, telling a bartender (Florence Ordesh) who is opposed to his cruel book endings that maybe she will enjoy one of the “shitty movie adaptations” sanitized with a happy ending (doubling as a humorous industry inside joke), brushing off a nearby homeless wanderer living in the woods (David Wilmot) speaking of potions made from goat milk that can open the mind into seeing and experiencing the supernatural, physically harming a fan bellhop (Will O’Connell) writing for free in his spare time (which the self absorbed author quickly puts down not being a real writer), and irritating other hotel staff.

Soon after establishing Ohm’s rude relations to these characters, there is a tragic incident that occurs that won’t be spoiled, both revealing more about the state of his mind while also pushing the story forward roughly two weeks, just in time for the hotel’s closing time for the season, and a mystery involving the disappearance of that aforementioned bartender. On the one hand, you see Damian McCarthy working overtime to find small contrivances and the machinations at work to get this plot into motion, with Ohm finding himself alone in the hotel at night to investigate, feeling guilty and partly responsible for what happened.

It takes a bit of time to accept that the film is rushing past something severe that just happened to the writer, transitioning into horror mode. Damian McCarthy still has some ways to go as a screenwriter, in that he overstuffs his movies with concepts and ideas that don’t always feel smoothly executed. However, that is more than made up for with otherwise confident storytelling, unafraid to gradually reveal the answers to major plot points fairly early on. Even having most of the information, how this will end is anyone’s guess, and part of what makes this such an electric fright show at times

By giving viewers answers to some of those other questions, it allows for greater focus on Ohm as a character and on his past, which is, perhaps unsurprisingly, riddled with trauma. Ohm also has to contend with a witch who may or may not be contained in the abandoned honeymoon suite, as he hopes to find traces of the missing woman, while also reckoning with the past and how it has negatively influenced who he is today and his nihilistic writing.

With unsettling reflection shots from the corner of a TV screen, a terrifying animatromic at one point divulging some back story, the sheer dread that comes from this isolation, other supernatural presences, some truly creepy production design spanning creepy miniature statues (sometimes homed in on to showcase their unsettling voyeuristic eyes) that play a part opening up other areas of the suite (parts of the film are akin to watching Adam Scott solving puzzles inside a Resident Evil game), and a tense sequence in which the novelist desperately tries to alert someone for help once he becomes locked in an area, the direction is strikingly confident, propulsively eerie, and certainly makes entertaining use of the numerous ingredients. Hokum is fiendishly fun without losing any sense of what it wants to say about its lonely, abrasive, troubled writer.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist