Entertainment

The only ground left for Karol G to break? Her own

Published

1 month ago

December 1, 2025

The only ground left for Karol G to break? Her own

In February of last year, Karol G boarded a private plane out of Burbank with 16 passengers on board. Just minutes after takeoff, the Colombian singer — one of the biggest global stars in Latin and pop music — saw smoke pouring out of the cabin. The pilots signaled for emergency landing maneuvers; her life flashed before her eyes.

“I was with my parents on the plane, my whole family, and all of us were like, ‘No, it can’t be like this,’” Karol G said, recalling the horrific day in an interview from the top floor of the L.A. Times’ offices in El Segundo, overlooking the Los Angeles International Airport flight path.

“It was really terrifying, visually,” she continued. “Seeing smoke inside the plane, every alarm going off, it was crazy. We were saying goodbye to people. I was just thinking about my one sister that was still in Colombia, that if something happened, what’s that gonna do to her? We were just sitting, waiting.”

The pilots quickly brought the plane down to a safe landing in Van Nuys, mercifully avoiding the fates of peers like Jenni Rivera, Aaliyah and Ritchie Valens.

A year and a half later, the now-34-year-old Karol G released “Tropicoqueta,” her fifth LP. The 20-track album spills over with so much abundant life — searing emotion and refined songcraft, winking humor and quaking bass, Latin music history and “la hora loca” of her Colombian community’s block parties — that it stands in defiance of that near-miss with death.

“Tropicoqueta” is up for Latin pop album at the 2026 Grammys, where Karol G previously won for música urbana album in 2024. (She’s a multiple winner at the Latin Grammys as well.) She also has a Coachella headline slot coming in April, making her the first Latina to top the world’s most influential festival. And at an incredibly fraught moment for Latinos and Latin culture in the U.S., she’s bringing a hemisphere’s worth of history and hopes with her onstage.

“It’s kind of my mission. I see it like my purpose,” she said. “I have a big, heavy responsibility on me being the first Latina to headline Coachella. I need to go and represent my Latina community and speak for my people and for women. It’s a good opportunity to get to more people around the world, and I think it’s my opportunity to get them involved in the place that I come from.”

Carolina Giraldo Navarro is from Medellín, Colombia. As a teenager, her powerhouse vocals and brash charisma stood out onstage, and in a community famous for its raucous all-night street parties, like the ones she documents on “Tropicoqueta’s” self-titled closing track, she was serious about her music career: She had a brief teenage stint on Colombia’s version of “The X Factor” and went on to school in New York in the mid-2010s to study the record business. Later she racked up hits collaborating with Ozuna, Bad Bunny, J Balvin and others just as her home-base genre of reggaeton ascended to a global phenomenon on its own terms, in its native language.

Karol G turned heads not just for being a young woman in a hypermasculine genre, but for how she both mastered and expanded the genre from the moment she emerged in it. On her breakout 2017 hit with Bad Bunny, “Ahora Me Llama,” she brought both formidable bars as an MC and a poignantly melodic touch to that trap brooder. 2020’s “Bichota” became a mission-statement single for its bulletproof confidence and how she packed every line with fresh filigrees of hooks.

Her world-conquering 2023 LP “Mañana Será Bonito” had a post-breakup fervor of self-rediscovery, the first all-Spanish-language album by a woman to top the Billboard 200, home to her highest-charting Hot 100 single (the No. 7 “TQG,” with Shakira) and a Grammy winner for música urbana album. That year, she played two nights at the Rose Bowl to 120,000 fans, becoming the first Latina to headline a worldwide stadium tour.

What ground was left to break on a new album? Only her own.

“Tropicoqueta” is an adoring, comprehensive sweep through the generations of Latin music that made her. The LP starts with “La Reina Presenta,” a blessing from Mexican pop icon Thalía, a formative influence who passes the torch here over her classic “Piel Morena” — “You, showing me your new music? What’s the one I liked again? Play it, it’s so good,” Thalía says on the track.

Then come 19 more songs that cover the sweep of Latin music, past, present and future. There’s the sweltering bachata of “Ivonny Bonita,” with a guest turn from Pharrell; dips into the regional Colombian folk genre of vallenato; a veritable mariachi symphony on “Ese Hombre Es Malo”; and a heartrending duet with Marco Antonio Solís (of Mexican rock legends Los Bukis) on the regal “Coleccionando Heridas.” Even on the sly club-merengue “Papasito,” the album’s lone song partially in English, the tune and its charmingly retro video wink at, inhabit and critique the north-south love affair tropes that the first generations of Latina pop icons had to contend with and made magic within.

“I think it’s the riskiest album in my career because I didn’t know how to put all these genres together and have it make sense,” she said. “After ‘Mañana Será Bonito,’ I had a lot of pressure. I had everyone, like, asking, ‘What’s next after this album, what’s next after all of these hits?’ I was like, ‘Oh, my God, what is gonna be next?’

Reggaeton and urban pop artist Karol G at El Segundo, CA

(Bexx Francois / For The Times)

“But on this album, my people inspired the concept,” she continued. “I just wanted to go back to my roots, back to the music that I grew up listening to. In my house, I used to listen to everything because my father was a singer. He used to play for us salsa, merengue, bachata, reggaeton. I started thinking that I wanted my people to feel nostalgic and in a different time in life. With ‘Colleccionando Heridas,’ especially, there are moms with their girls and their grandmas listening together because grandma loves Marco Antonio Solís, moms love the song and girls love Karol G. To be music that all the family can listen to, that’s a super special thing for me.”

“There is something that goes beyond doing a musical collaboration with a colleague. It is to live a magical experience, full of sensitivity and authenticity,” said Solís, who performed a moving duet with Karol G at the Latin Grammys. “That has been my experience with this great artist and human being, who deserves to be in that place that only corresponds to her.”

“Tropicoqueta” wears its history lightly on record (though Karol G coaxed the legendary Cuban American journalist Cristina Saralegui out of retirement for a context-heavy interview about the album). It’s laced with a few ultramodern cuts as well: If the reggaeton bounce of the Nina Sky-sampling “Latina Foreva” felt slight as a standalone single, it takes new form on an album tracing just how a banger like that came to be. “Un Gatito Me Llamó” is the most revved-up club track she’s ever tried, and “Si Antes Te Hubiera Conocido” just brought home the Latin Grammy for song of the year, where Karol G gave a feisty speech in defense of its genre range.

“Lately, a lot of professional people have an opinion of what people should and shouldn’t do, what they should and shouldn’t like, how they should dress,” she said while accepting her award. “I started to feel like nothing I was doing was good and like I was losing my magic, like I was losing the wonder. This happened during a strange time in my life, and the only thing that was left from all of that for me was to go back to the root and the intention and return to the purpose of what I’m doing because I love it, because I like it and because I was born for this.”

“Tropicoqueta” sounds like a hundred different genres because, to be true, it had to.

“In Italy recently, I was in an interview, and there was a guy that told me, ‘Latin music is reggaeton.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, but it’s not just reggaeton.’ He was like, ‘No, I cannot tell them apart.’”

“Like, I know this is hard to explain,” she said, giggling at the comprehensiveness of his ignorance. “But we are a universe of cultures and different sounds.”

Fittingly, at this year’s Grammys she’s the front-runner in the more genre-broad Latin pop album category. (Her frequent writing partner, Edgar Barrera, is up for songwriter, non-classical.) And though nods in the big three mainstream categories didn’t materialize, that wasn’t a total surprise for an LP so meticulous about playing with classic Latin genres.

“I’m always gonna celebrate everything that I’ve got in my life, because I’m the only one that knows how hard it [was] for me to get to this point,” she said. “If I don’t get another Grammy, I don’t take it, like, super personal. But meeting Beyoncé at the Grammys was pretty special, right? The first time that I won the Latin Grammy, it was huge, celebrating with a lot of people that I grew up listening to, just saying, ‘Hi, I’m Carolina from Colombia,’ that was kind of unreal for me. It’s still unreal for me.”

In case this wasn’t abundantly clear, Karol G is one of the most commercially, creatively significant artists on the planet, of any genre, full stop. She needs no institution’s imprimatur, and there’s no corner of the industry promising anything she hasn’t already achieved.

Yet she still feels ambitious, hungry even, about the two weekends in April next year, when she will headline the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, wrapping up a bill with Sabrina Carpenter and Justin Bieber as her main-stage mates.

Karol G last played the fest in 2022, a trial run for the history-sweeping philosophy of “Tropicoqueta.” “When they first invited me, I was like, ‘I can’t believe that I had this opportunity, because there’s a lot of artists that couldn’t perform in there, even having legendary songs.’ That’s why I decided I’m gonna celebrate the songs that opened the door for me. That’s why I did ‘Gasolina,’ Ricky Martin, Selena Quintanilla. It was a way for me to honor what all the different artists did for me to be there. I think I had a ‘before’ and ‘after’ with Coachella.”

While she’s tight-lipped about how next year’s set will update her raucous stadium tour, she did promise “a lot of different worlds for this show. I want to show all the evolution that I’ve had in my whole career, a really huge, innovative show.”

For her, there’s still something tantalizing about topping a mixed-genre bill before an audience that may not have heard her music at all. Is it weird to be one of the biggest musicians on Earth and yet still, in some circles, be introducing herself?

“I love that. If you are on tour, you know that the people there are waiting to see you, and they already know the songs,” she said. “But festivals give you the opportunity to open doors for more people that don’t know your music, who don’t know nothing.”

Coachella is just one place she’s opening more of her life to. In her May Netflix doc “Karol G: Tomorrow Was Beautiful,” she spoke about being sexually harassed and retaliated against by a former manager when she was a teenager.

“It’s always a challenge, you wake up and you think you forget things, but you’re never gonna forget,” she said, recalling that painful era in her career. “That part was specifically hard to put out, but my team were saying, ‘There’s a lot of people that are going to understand you, and they have their own crosses behind them getting really heavy. So maybe if they see through you, they’re gonna get more power to hold them.’ It was hard, but I think I’m an instrument of something.”

She also headlined the NFL’s halftime show in its Brazilian debut in September, an homage to her South American neighbor’s rhythms and plumage bookended by the United States’ flagship expression of sporting and economic muscle. “We don’t really do American football in our Latino countries,” she said. “So when the NFL called for that specific show, I told them I’m gonna bring the flavor of this album. ‘You are American football, but I’m Karol G and my album is about my roots.’ They were like, ‘No, we love that. Actually, that’s what we want.’ I loved that show, it was an opportunity to keep growing our movement.”

So what does she make of the right-wing backlash to her peer Bad Bunny — an outspoken American citizen of Puerto Rican descent who declined to tour the U.S. due to ICE raid fears — performing in Spanish at next year’s Super Bowl?

“It’s crazy. I think it’s only a few people that think that way, and most are really enjoying the decision to have him on the stage,” she said. “The people that are saying no, they’re powerful and they have a voice, so people listen and they make it like a big deal, but I can tell that Bad Bunny is going to kill it. He’s ready for that. He’s part of both worlds — Puerto Rico is an American territory, and at the same time, is Latino. I think, for the moment that we are having as humans, it’s great to have him represent everything. They’re just gonna make him do it even better and higher.”

What first made the likes of Bad Bunny and Karol G remarkable has, subtly, emerged as a key feature of their massive international appeal. No one blinks at Karol G headlining the world’s biggest festivals singing entirely in Spanish, drinking deeply from Latin music history. Reggaeton is the backbeat of the Global South and thrills the North; “Tropicoqueta” was a gift of the music she adored growing up with, it belongs to the world now too.

“When you start doing music, you just do music that you love, and everything is so good. But then you get teams, and they have expectations about numbers. They have expectations about streams, consumption, everything. That puts a lot of pressure on the artist,” she said. “You can get lost between the purpose and the results, and this can change all the art. So I tried all the time to be focused on my purpose, on what I want to do.

“Like, I don’t want to do an album in English, because maybe it’s time to do a crossover thing, because it’s gonna get more people. No, I don’t want to do it that way. It would be falling expectations of who I am. I just want to do that if I feel that,” she said. “‘Mañana’ killed for streaming. But the things that ‘Tropicoqueta’ brought me are super different. I thought I was doing an album for my Latina community, and it brought me fans from all over the world that I didn’t expect. That’s why you have to take care of the purpose instead of the result. The success, the love, that’s gonna be gone one day. The unique, real thing that I have forever is the feeling for my music. This is the one that I have to take care of the most.”

The Envelope December 4, 2025 cover featuring Karol G

Movie Reviews

Film review: IS THIS THING ON? Plus January special screenings

Published

6 hours ago

January 7, 2026

Press Room

Is This Thing On?

Cinematic stories of disintegrating marriages are fairly commonplace—and often depressing emotional endurance tests, besides—so it’s interesting to see co-writer/director Bradley Cooper take this variation on the theme in a fresher direction. The unhappy couple in this place is Alex and Tess Novak (Will Arnett and Laura Dern), who decide matter-of-factly to separate. Then Alex impulsively decides to get up on stage at an open-mic comedy night, and starts turning their relationship issues into material. The premise would seem to suggest an uneven balance towards Alex’s perspective, but the script is just as interested in Tess—a former Olympic-level volleyball player who retired to focus on motherhood—searching for her own purpose. And the narrative takes a provocative twist when their individual sparks of renewed happiness lead them towards something resembling an affair with their own spouse. The screenplay faces a challenge common to movies about comedians in that Alex’s material, even once he’s supposed to be actively working on it, isn’t particularly good, and Cooper isn’t particularly restrained in his own supporting performance as the comic-relief buddy character (who is called “Balls,” if that provides any hints). Yet the two lead performances are terrific—particularly Dern, who nails complex facial expressions upon her first encounter with Alex’s act—as Cooper and company turn this narrative into an exploration of how it can seem that you’ve fallen out of love with your partner, when what you’ve really fallen out of love with is the rest of your life. Available Jan. 9 in theaters. (R)

JANUARY SPECIAL SCREENINGS

KRCL’s Music Meets Movies: Dig! XX @ Brewvies: As part of a farewell to Sundance, Brewvies/KRCL’s regular Music Meets Movies series presents the extended 20th anniversary edition of the 2004 Sundance documentary about the rivalry between the Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre as they chart different music-biz paths. The screening takes place at Brewvies (677 S. 200 West) on Jan. 8 @ 7:30 p.m., $10 at the door or 2-for-1 with KRCL shirt. brewvies.com

Trent Harris weekend @ SLFS: Utah’s own Trent Harris has charted a singular course as an independent filmmaker, and you can catch two of his most (in)famous works at Salt Lake Film Society. In 1991’s Rubin & Ed, two mismatched souls—one an eccentric, isolated young man (Crispin Glover), the other a middle-aged financial scammer—wind up on a comedic road trip through the Utah desert; 1995’s Plan 10 from Outer Space turns Mormon theology into a crazy science-fiction parody. Get a double dose of uncut Trent Harris weirdness on Friday, Jan. 9, with Rubin & Ed at 7 p.m. and Plan 10 from Outer Space at 9 p.m. Tickets are $13.75 for each screening. slfs.org

Rob Reiner retrospective @ Brewvies Sunday Brunch: Last month’s tragic passing of actor/director Rob Reiner reminded people of his extraordinary work, particularly his first handful of features. Brewvies’ regular “Sunday Brunch” series showcases three of these films this month with This Is Spinal Tap (Jan. 11), The Princess Bride (Jan. 18) and Stand By Me (Jan. 25). All screenings are free with no reservations, on a first-come first-served basis, at noon each day. brewvies.com

David Lynch retrospective @ SLFS: It’s been a year since the passing of groundbreaking artist David Lynch, and Salt Lake Film Society’s Broadway Centre Cinemas marks the occasion with some of his greatest filmed work. In addition to theatrical features Eraserhead (Jan. 11), Inland Empire (Jan. 11), Mulholland Dr. (Jan. 12), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Jan. 14), Blue Velvet (Jan. 19) and Lost Highway (Jan. 19), you can experience the entirety of 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return on the big screen in two-episode blocs Jan. 16 – 18. The programming also includes the 2016 documentary David Lynch: The Art Life. slfs.org

Death by Numbers @ Utah Film Center: Directed by Kim A. Snyder (the 2025 Sundance feature documentary The Librarians), this 2024 Oscar-nominated documentary short focuses on Sam Fuentes, survivor of a school shooting who attempts to process her experience through poetry. This special screening features a live Q&A with Terri Gilfillan and Nancy Farrar-Halden of Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah, with Zoom participation by Sam Fuentes. The screening on Wednesday, Jan. 14 at 7 p.m. at Utah Film Center (375 W. 400 North) is free with registration at the website.

Entertainment

Spotify digs in on podcasts with new Hollywood studios

Published

8 hours ago

January 7, 2026

Press Room

Spotify digs in on podcasts with new Hollywood studios

Just down the street from Roc Nation, SiriusXM and Sony Music, Spotify is joining Hollywood’s Sycamore media district with a brand-new podcast studio facility.

The new, invitation-only space will be the company’s second studio location in Los Angeles and will cater mostly to video podcasts.

When Spotify moved into its campus in the Arts District in 2021, podcasting was primarily an audio experience, and the DTLA studios reflected that. But as the listening format began to evolve into a visual one, Roman Wasenmüller, Spotify’s vice president of podcast and video, said the company needed to revamp and expand its facilities to meet the growing demand.

The Arts District studios will remain open and focus on audio content while the new Hollywood location will provide a “video-first environment.” The nearly 11,000-square-foot space includes five different studio areas that can accommodate a variety of setups, including cozier interview settings and vast recording spaces for big groups. And unlike other rentable studios around L.A., the space will be staffed by Spotify employees, who can help produce the show.

“It was just clear to us that we need more facilities than we had before, but also at the same time, we just need to figure out what the right setup would be so that we can succeed in this new world of podcasting,” said Wasenmüller.

The Hollywood location will partially function as a homebase for the Ringer, an L.A.-based media brand focused on sports and pop culture. The company was founded by sportswriter Bill Simmons and was bought by Spotify in 2020.

Recently, Spotify announced that several of the Ringer’s video podcasts will start streaming on Netflix in early 2026. Shows like “The Rewatchables,” “Ringer-Verse” and “The Hottest Take” will soon be recorded at the new outpost.

These studios won’t be exclusive to the Ringer. Wasenmüller said the space provides the opportunity for creators of all kinds to host interviews and guests while they are in Los Angeles.

Traveling while podcasting has always been a challenge for Chris Williamson, the host of the self-improvement and philosophy podcast “Modern Wisdom.” The 37-year-old recalls struggling alongside his producer to make filming possible in various Airbnbs and warehouses.

“There’s been a number of times where I’m passing through L.A. and I’ve desperately needed a spot to record with someone. This new space would have been perfect. I would have made a lot of use of it,” said Williamson. “It’s just another indication that [Spotify is] putting their money where the priorities are. If I’m in town, I imagine that I’ll be dropping into [the studios] regularly.”

Williamson is a member of the Spotify Partner Program, which is also seeing a sizable expansion, as the platform continues to invest in the podcasting industry. The monetization program was launched last year, and it allows creators to directly monetize their content on the streaming platform with ads and revenue from video podcasts. Spaces like the new Spotify Sycamore Studios are also available exclusively to members of the Spotify Partner Program. Since its introduction, monthly podcast consumption on the platform has nearly doubled.

As a member of the program since it began, Williamson said he’s seen a significant increase in revenue, adding that he was able to make more than seven figures in 2025, with an average of six figures monthly.

“It was like a human centipede where Spotify paid us to put more video on Spotify, which meant that we got bigger on Spotify and that meant they paid us more money,” said Williamson. “It was this sort of self-reinforcing circuit, and it helped.”

Over the last five years, the company estimates that its investments in the podcast industry have generated more than $10 billion in revenue. There are nearly 7 million podcast titles available for streaming, with some of the company’s most popular shows including Amy Poehler’s “Good Hang” and “The Joe Rogan Experience.” Though Spotify has continued to invest in podcasts, it has not been immune to volatility in the business. The company’s podcast division has previously undergone restructuring, including layoffs, cutting back shows and dissolving previously purchased production companies like Gimlet.

Founded in 2006, Spotify has become the world’s most popular audio streaming subscription service with over 713 million users. The streamer, based in Sweden, is available in more than 180 markets and has a library of over 100 million tracks and 350,000 audiobooks. Spotify shares closed at $571 on Tuesday, down 3.7%.

“Podcasts are now absolutely in main culture. When we started in podcasting, it was a very niche medium,” said Wasenmüller. “But now you look at where it is [today] and podcasting is a main medium across all big platforms like Netflix and YouTube. Even the [Golden] Globes are having a podcast category for the first time. There’s something big happening. To a certain extent, it’s the future of entertainment.”

Movie Reviews

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Home’ on Starz, a paranoid thriller where Pete Davidson gets trapped in a creepy retirement home

Published

18 hours ago

January 7, 2026

Press Room

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Home’ on Starz, a paranoid thriller where Pete Davidson gets trapped in a creepy retirement home

The Home (now streaming on Starz) pits Pete Davidson against the residents of a creepy retirement community, and it isn’t exactly a Millennials-vs.-Boomers clash for the ages. “Best generation, my f—in’ dick,” our headliner mutters under his breath at one point, and that’s an accurate representation of this quasi-horror movie’s level of articulation. Filmmaker James DeMonaco (director of the first three The Purge movies, writer of all of them) takes a halfway decent idea and turns it into an uninspired, vaguely brownish-colored movie version of the stew you make out of all the leftovers in the fridge, and that you can’t revive with just a little more salt.

THE HOME: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Hurricane Greta is about to slam into this community, and this movie would love you to come to the conclusion that it’s the result of the collective might of boomers’ farts after they ate too many Wagyu tenderloins basted in the metaphorical gravies wrung from the pores of younger generations. Maybe that’s why Max (Davidson) is so skinny, but it’s definitely why he’s so P.O.’d. He breaks into a building and expresses his angst via some elaborate graffiti art that gets him arrested – again. His foster father finagles a deal for him to avoid jail time by performing community service at the Green Meadows Retirement Home and that doesn’t seem too bad since he’ll be a janitor and not a nurse on diaper duty. And at this point it’s established that Max has some trauma stemming from his foster brother’s suicide, the type of trauma that’s requisite to pile atop any and all protagonists of crappo horror movies at this point in the 21st century.

It’s worth noting that Green Meadows is a halfway-decent retirement community – not as posh as the one in The Thursday Murder Club, and not as repugnant as you might expect for a low-rung horror flick. BUT. There’s always a BUT. He arrives at the home and looks up and sees peering out a window the face of a gaunt old man with eyes that ain’t quite right. I’m sure it’s nothing! Management gives him the nickel tour, and gives him the first rule of The Friday the 13th Murder Club: DON’T GO ON THE FOURTH FLOOR. And yes, that’s also the second rule of The Friday the 13th Murder Club. Max will stay in a room at the home so he can be available 24/7 in case the job requires a 2 a.m. mop-up, and also so he can have lucid dreams that may or may not actually be dreams about weird shit happening around these here parts.

But everything goes fine and Max quietly manages his trauma and nothing incredibly gross and/or violent happens and he lives happily ever after the end. No! Actually, he catches a glimpse of old people in bizarre masks having miserable sex, and hears horrible screams of agony coming from, yes, the fourth floor. Max seems to be getting along OK, and even makes a couple of friends, like Lou (John Glover), who summons Max to clean up a big mess of feces when it’s actually a little welcome party for the new super. Ha! Max also has conversations about Real Stuff with Norma (Mary Beth Peil), both sharing the pain of the people they’ve lost. Eventually the fourth floor misery noises get to be too much and Max picks the lock and investigates, and it’s full of wheelchair-bound elderlies in states of drooling, semi-comatose madness. After Max gets his hand slapped for violating the first/second rule, that’s when the bullshit ramps up. Let’s just say this bullshit has some Satanic vibes, and poor Norma doesn’t deserve what happens to her, although Max seems ready to do something about all this.

PETE DAVIDSON THE HOME STREAMING — Photo: LionsGate

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The Home is sub-Blumhouse drivel nominally referencing things like Rosemary’s Baby, Eyes Wide Shut, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in order to make it seem smarter than it is. Other recent scary movies set in nursing homes: The Manor, The Rule of Jenny Pen.

Performance Worth Watching: A moment of praise for the makeup and practical effects people, who provide The Home with more memorable elements than any of the cast performances.

Sex And Skin: A bit. Nothing extensive. But definitely unpleasant.

THE HOME STREAMING MOVIE — Photo: Lionsgate

Our Take: In The Home, DeMarco tries a little bit of everything: flashbacks, dream-sequence fakeouts, jump scares, body horror, surveillance-tech POVs, occult gobbledygook, creepy sex, conspiracies, climate change dread, generational divide, paranoia, deepfake-ish dark-web weirdness… it goes on, and none of it is particularly compelling or original. It’s most effective in its grisly imagery, with a couple of memorable deaths that might tickle the cockles of horror connoisseurs, and DeMarco’s generous deployment of pus and eyeball gloop shows a variation on the usual bodily fluids that’s, well, I don’t know if “satisfying” is the right word, but at least we’re not drenched in the same ol’ blood and barf. Small victories, I guess.

Most will take issue with the casting of Davidson, who in the majority of his roles to date has yet to show the intensity that anchoring a thriller like The Home demands. He puts in some diligent effort in the role of the guy who routinely goes what the eff is going on around here?, and his work is a cut above merely cashing a paycheck, which isn’t to say he’s necessarily good. Miscast, maybe. The victim of half-assed writing, more likely, this being a paranoid creepout that never gets under our skin, with attempts at cheeky comedy that fizzle out and social commentary that dead-ends into obviousness. Having Davidson piss and moan about “F—ing boomers” ain’t enough.

The plot works its way through its hodgepodge of this ‘n’ that plot mechanisms to get to a conclusion that’ underwhelming and over the top at the same time; the initial bit of exhilaration quickly dissipates and we’re left with the sense that the movie just hasn’t been good or diligent enough in its storytelling and character development to earn this catharsis. It’s just spectacle for its own gory sake. This mediocrity might just inspire Davidson to retire from horror movies.

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Our Call: Hate to say it, but 1.7 decent kills does not a horror movie make. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.