Film Review: The Conjuring: Last Rites

It isn't exactly scary, but it will appease fans looking for an emotional finale for their horror mom and dad

The first Conjuring movie (2012) is an absolute master class in dread, horror, and freaky vibes. It's not only my go-to spooky movie, it's also one of my favorite films just in general. The other movies in the Conjuring universe—the sequels and movies like The Nun and Annabelle—are kitschy at best, and they're ones I'll rewatch only occasionally. But the o.g. Conjuring is near perfect.

Flashforward to my anticipation of The Conjuring: Last Rites. It's meant to be the conclusion to this fictional film series based loosely on the investigations and experiences of famed paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. I always take the "based on" with a grain of salt, as ghosts do not exist. The cinematic portrayal of them, however, is extremely likable. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are absolutely delightful as tortured ghost hunters, and their chemistry is palpable. It's rare that you see on-screen characters that seem to truly love each other, and Ed and Lorraine do just that.

What sets Last Rites apart from the other films in the franchise is that this movie is about them and their family, not the tortured families who happen to inhabit deeply possessed buildings and their paranormal struggles. Here, we're in the 1980s, and the Warrens' daughter, Judy, is starting to become embroiled in their investigations. Like her mother, she is also an empath and possesses psychic abilities. As the family becomes concerned when she gets engaged to her boyfriend, Tony, the family is pulled into another paranormal case—this time one that the Warrens first encountered decades ago.

The Smurl family lives in a coal-mining-soaked town in Pennsylvania, and their demon origin story begins with a haunted mirror, one that the Warrens have experienced before. It seems like the setup of every other Conjuring story, yet something is missing. The haunting that's taking place at the Smurl house is creepy, to be sure, but it never really feels threatening. The stakes never feel high. I think this could be because the house is small, and its neighbors are jam-packed around it—there's only about six feet between them. I have strong opinions on what houses work well within the haunted house trope, and these babies need room to breathe. They need at least a few acres or so, and they need isolation. It's why you'll never see a haunted studio apartment or a haunted beach condo. You need to be able to climb a staircase and feel absolutely alone, and hear echoes and shouts from across the building that you can't readily identify.

When it comes to the scares in The Conjuring: Last Rites, there are a couple of good ones, but nothing that stands out like the spooks in the original. You learn the routine pretty quickly: A character is alone, the music stops, and then you get a jump scare of some unidentified demon.

We never learn the backstory of the demons in the Smurl house, unlike the tortured witch Bathsheba in the original. I think this greatly detracts from the emotional heft of the haunting. Turns out the demons lived on the "land" that the house occupies, so the lore is downgraded, and you never feel any stakes. Also, unrelated: One day I will write a paper on haunted houses as a metaphor for working-class people and the failures of capitalism, but today is not that day. It will revolve around how even though a family feels physically threatened, being unable to afford a non-haunted house or even to escape the mortgage of a haunted house is truly the most horrific part of this beloved genre.

You do get Easter eggs throughout the film, however, so hardcore fans of the Conjuring universe will appreciate that. At one point, you see the evil doll Annabelle blown up to 15 feet tall in a scene that made me laugh more than anything else. Speaking of laughter, I saw this movie in 4DX, which is the interactive, shaking-seats-and-gusts-of-wind experience. It is not, in fact, interactive, and it mainly just made me laugh. It takes you out of the experience, especially when the man next to you is shaking and spilling popcorn in his seat.

I wanted very badly to love this movie, as I've mentioned before, because I've been chasing the high of seeing the first Conjuring since 2012. Perhaps it was lightning in a bottle, or maybe I've become so much of a horror movie cynic that I'm incapable of being truly scared. There are moments of true high camp in this, and I found myself laughing more than shuddering despite the multiple different pools of blood, demonic jump scares, and priests hanging themselves.

This movie does work as a denouement to the fictional Warren storyline, though. The characters of Ed and Lorraine, and now Judy, are good people, and you're always rooting for them to save another family, even when they're so ready to be retired. When the Warrens are faced with possession and death, the stakes suddenly become much higher. I did find multiple parts heartwarming, especially towards the end, when they look toward the future and a life without ghost-hunting. If you're not into sentimentality for these characters, you'll be extremely bored at multiple points.

Judy and her boyfriend are (seemingly) set up as perhaps the next generation of demon hunters, but I suppose time will tell. In the meantime, I will be watching the original Conjuring every spooky season like clockwork, when the leaves start to fall and the temps get a little chilly.

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film Review: Honey Don't!

The second installment of Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke's lesbian B-movie trilogy is exactly what it describes itself as: very gay, very B-movie, and very noir

Honey Don't! is getting a lot of negative press and reviews out there, and I feel compelled to defend it. I was lucky enough to see an advanced screening to a packed house, and the middle-aged man sitting next to me walked out with 20 minutes left. Come on! That's ridiculous. It's a tight 90 minutes, the vibes are excellent, it's funny, and it's entertaining. Will it win Academy Awards? No. Will it enlighten you about the human condition like The Shawshank Redemption? Nope. What happened to having fun at the movies for an hour and a half and enjoying a cool character study?

To be fair, I knew this movie was made for me the moment I saw the trailer. Aubrey Plaza and Margaret Qualley in a lesbian neo-noir movie set in the desert by the makers of Drive-Away Dolls? Sign me up. Granted, as a lesbian myself, I feel biased in my interest in this film—other queer people may also agree. We're not used to leading romances in movies that often, so when one pops up, we'll defend it to the death. Hence my tome.

The main criticisms I've seen of Honey Don't! are that the plot goes nowhere and that nothing makes sense. To which I say, have you rewatched The Big Lebowski or Raising Arizona lately? I have, as they're some of my favorites, but it's not like those movies are crystal-clear plotwise. Some may feel it's a cop-out to enjoy a movie purely on ~vibes~, but I'm easy to please.

Honey Don't! is exactly what it was marketed as. It's a slightly comic ode to film noir, as it follows a stunning, cold-as-ice personal investigator as she gets involved in various murders and a religious cult in a sun-drenched, wind-swept Bakersfield, California. There's a subgenre of film noir (which literally means "dark film") called film soleil, which means "sunny film" and is characterized by hot, desert settings with powerful women and vicious crimes. You just swap out the dark, brooding alleys in Chicago for the sun-baked, wind-whipped desert streets of the west and sand-blasted old Camaros. It's kind of like how Midsommar still manages to be absolutely terrifying in broad daylight.

Film noir characters are also trope-based and predictable. Margaret Qualley as Honey O'Donahue is absolutely captivating, and I would read a dozen books that followed her hard-boiled adventures through rural California. She wears trousers with a purpose like Kate Hepburn, all hipbones and hands in pockets, and she struts through police stations and crime scenes like she was born to do it. I'm impressed by her screen presence in something like this film, but she's equally as captivating in something completely different tone-wise like The Substance. Her accent is light-years apart from her southern drawl in Drive-Away Dolls, veering more into a Bogart-ian, transatlantic lilt that's fun.

The film revolves around Honey's investigation of a young woman's mysterious murder, and as she pokes around, she manages to get involved with a French-financed sex cult and a surprise serial killer. There are more red herrings in Honey Don't than the tinned fish section of a Swedish Bi-Lo, but that's half the fun. It's also way gorier than I anticipated.

In his article "A Guide to Film Noir," Roger Ebert lists out some of the defining tenets of the genre, and the one most applicable to Honey Don't! is rule #9: "Relationships in which love is only the final flop card in the poker game of death." Aubrey Plaza, starring as a timid police officer, strikes up an affair with Honey throughout the movie. Their romance and chemistry are real, and their physical relationship in a desert town full of dangers, sleaze bags, and betrayals reminds me of last year's Love Lies Bleeding with Katy O'Brien and Kristen Stewart.

But in a classic film noir twist, it turns out Plaza is the real killer, but not before several lurid sex scenes that ratchet up the tension in the film. Aubrey Plaza is fantastic in this role, as she's playing a sort of trashy and sleazy character that's a bit different from her usual parts. Honey, cunning private dick that she is, discovers that Plaza was, in fact, the culprit behind all of the missing women in town, and in a final act of dysfunction, is forced to kill her in self-defense. I didn't see it coming, so I thought the twist was good. See Ebert's rule #3: "Women who would just as soon kill you as love you, and vice versa."

All my thoughts on Honey Don't! probably won't convince anyone to change their mind who saw it and didn't like it, but I do hope I can inspire folks who are a little more forgiving in their approach to movies to give it a shot—at the very least give it a chance when it hits streaming. It feels like a modern Raymond Chandler short story, something you can stay on the surface level of and still enjoy, even if the plot isn't locked up tight or the performances won't win Oscars. It's got dark humor, and Chris Evans as a horny sex preacher at a church called Four-Way, giving his best Righteous Gemstones impersonation of a sinful cult leader, is top-tier stuff

Honey Don't! may not be for everyone, but I'll keep defending this sun-drenched mess. I watched it a second time and liked it even more, but it's a shame folks will keep walking out of theaters when they go to see it.

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10 for straight people, 9/10 for lesbians.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film Review: Weapons

The director of Barbarian brings us another scary-as-hell, deeply unsettling horror film—this time about an entire classroom of children that goes missing in the middle of the night

Zach Cregger of Barbarian fame has a new movie out, and I purposely went into it not knowing a single thing about it. Over the past few weeks, I was goaded on by several friends-of-friends in the Atlanta film industry who kept hyping it up. Fun fact: Tons of things are filmed in Georgia because of generous tax benefits, so you'll often see movie set signs around town on any given day.

If you've seen Barbarian, you probably know what you're in for with a Cregger film, and if you haven't seen it, let's be honest: Weapons—in all its gory, stomach-churning, and dread-inducing glory—probably isn't on your radar.

Still reading? Okay, good. It's just us horror besties now. And if other folks are still here, I'll try my damndest to convince you to see it.

The premise is simple: One night, at 2:17 a.m., 17 children from the same elementary school class run out of their respective houses and vanish into the night without a trace. Their parents are distraught, the community is reeling, and the teacher and sole surviving student are questioned thoroughly. Is it aliens? Is it a monster? The absolute seeming impossibility of something like this happening is what gets you hooked.

This is where things get a little interesting for your average horror movie. Instead of the usual flow of spooky events → big bad reveal → thrilling denouement, Cregger breaks up the narrative into character-focused chunks. He's mentioned in interviews he was inspired by the fragmented storytelling in Paul Thomas Anderson's epic film Magnolia and Jennifer Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad.

Everything's connected, of course, and each vignette brings you closer to understanding what's really going on, all without spoiling it too early. It's a fine line to toe, but Cregger manages to balance everything for the first two-thirds of the movie. Up until the final act, it actually feels less like a horror film and more like a thriller/procedural. You can tell something is definitely not right in this town, but there are only tiny glimpses of supernatural things—and maybe even those are red herrings. If nothing else, this film is a testament to the importance of locking your car doors (the haircut scene in the front seat gave me chills).

Everything changes, though, when we meet Gladys. Gladys, the 2025 Longlegs-esque villain that I guarantee will be all over DragonCon and Halloween costumes this year.

I love an old evil crone stereotype, and with Gladys, we get it in spades. From the chopped-up Chappell Roan wig and lipstick-smeared-around-the-lips grin to the bald horror of seeing her wigless, she's frightening. And the best part? Gladys is played by Amy Madigan, who you probably recognize from Uncle Buck and Field of Dreams.

With her arrival, we also get the backstory to why all the children disappeared, and it's absolutely wicked. Alex, the only boy who didn't disappear from his class, lives with his perfectly normal parents. One day, he finds out that his great-aunt Gladys will be coming to stay with his family. Very quickly, she hypnotizes the parents so they're in a trance, with Alex forced to feed them soup to keep them alive. This sounds weird, but the way it's depicted on screen is absolutely terrifying.

Turns out, Gladys is some sort of witch, and she was trying to steal the mother and father's energy to regain her youth. Or heal herself. It's not 100% clear.

When that doesn't work, she realizes she needs the big guns, so she dispatches Alex to collect talismans from the kids in his class. At 2:17 a.m. that night, they exit their homes and make their way straight to the basement, where Alex is forced to feed them soup as well. The best performance in this movie is actually this little boy being forced to deal with inhuman levels of evil while keeping a perfect poker face for both the school and his enemy/great-aunt/kidnapper Gladys.

It becomes apparent that it's a classic witch-stealing-the-youth-and-vigor-from-little-kids trope, but the twist is in how she does it. She can literally turn people into weapons, heat-seeking creatures who can attack other people until they drop dead. She can also get them to hurt themselves, as we see numerous times with various sharp objects that make you cringe.

Weapons' climax is where folks will lock in. It's easily one of the most bananas endings I've seen in a long time in a theater, and it was clear everyone else in the theater felt the same way.

Alex manages to outsmart Gladys and uses her black magic against her, resulting in the 17 missing kids breaking out of the basement and racing after her through the houses and backyards of their neighborhood. The chase is chaotic, intense, and incredibly violent—it is also clearly inspired by the chase scene in Point Break with the surfer gang. (I definitely wasn't expecting this movie to reference a Keanu Reeves flick when I walked in.)

The film ends with the 17 tiny children mobbing the evil Gladys and physically ripping her to shreds in a few seconds of gore that made my stomach turn. To be fair, she deserved it. But I can't stop thinking about the extra trauma these kidnapped kids now have on top of being placed in a trance and trapped in a basement for weeks.

While reading about other people's takes on Weapons, I noticed some are leaning into it as a metaphor for school shootings, and how when kids die, the community looks to place blame somewhere. In the film, the community becomes enraged at the children's teacher, assuming she planted the seed of their disappearance and is hiding what actually happened.

I don't think it's that deep. I think it's the tale of collateral damage around a horrific supernatural force hell-bent on saving her own life at any cost. Personally, that's the way I like my horror movies.

Also, the scene with the potato peeler is going to be etched in my brain forever.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Bonuses: Julia Garner from Ozark is fantastic as the school teacher; watching possessed kids bomb Naruto runs in the middle of the night was a little hilarious.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film Review: 28 Years Later

The third entry in the series is a breathtaking glimpse at brutality, humanity, and hope

The week prior to seeing 28 Years Later I reactivated my long-dormant account my local video rental store to catch up on the series, since 28 Days Later isn't streaming anywhere. I reacquainted myself with the rage virus (it's important to remember that the infected in these movies are NOT living dead zombies, but deeply ill human beings with a horrible disease) and remembered that the focus in the series (like all good post-apocalyptic media) isn't on the monsters but on the people left behind. I think some folks forget this key part of dystopian storytelling.

If you want just a run-of-the-mill shoot 'em up of infected, play Call of Duty: Zombies with unlimited ammo. The nuance is in the horrible reality and choices that human must live with in a post-apocalyptic society, and the thrill and terror comes in knowing that we're only a failed power grid away from having to make similar choices.

I loved this movie, and was in awe of its intellect, direction, acting, and storytelling. It takes the traditional zombie film and adds so much lore expansion that it ends up surpassing the genre entirely.

28 Years Later opens with a throwback to outbreak day as a young British boy named Jimmy watches The Teletubbies as a horde of infected break into his house. He manages to escape to the local church where his father is welcoming judgment day, allowing himself to be killed while Jimmy escapes yet again. (This is the first part of a bookend that we'll revisit later.)

Flash-forward 28 years and we're in what appears to be a thriving small community that's separated from the mainland by a tidal causeway. Things seem nice, if a bit old-timey. Spike, a 12-year-old boy, is being taken to the shore to go hunting with his father Jamie in a sort of rite of passage, and the two embark on their voyage to raucous celebration and cheer. Spike's father sees the voyage as a sort of respite from his ailing wife, Isla, played by Jodie Comer, who is suffering from a disease that the local population cannot name nor cure.

Hunters and searchers are free to go visit the mainland, but one rule of their society is that you do at your own risk—no rescue parties will ever be launched. When Jamie and Spike make landfall, the countryside, which is England untouched by industry, pollution, or commerce, is a vibrant green. They're out for only a short while before they come across the first new evolved form of infected appear—the slow and lows, which are large, slow-moving, and consuming enough calories from the ground to survive on non-human protein like worms. (This reminded me of the bloaters and shamblers from the Last of Us, and it's fascinating to ponder how these two IPs have influenced each other by leapfrogging around various installments over the years.)

This is such an important point, since in prior films the infected died after around 7 months due to starvation. The existence of the slow and lows means that the virus is evolving and mutating. Once again, you have to keep remembering that the infected are not dead—it's so easy to forget and just think things don't make sense.

Seeing the feral groups of rage-infected human is fascinating because they're living together in what appears to be harmony—a sort of society, almost. Humans, no matter what, are still social creatures. And their depiction in 28 Years Later is far different from the brain-thirsty, mindless hordes of zombies in other movies.

Okay, back to the plot: Spike hesitatingly makes his first kill on one of the slow and lows, and he and his father continue on their journey. They next encounter an Alpha version of an infected—enormous, smarter, and more cunning. Also, he's possessed of a comically large phallus that's impossible to ignore in every single shot it's in.

The existence of an Alpha infected is not only incredibly cool, but also makes total sense given its place in the grand scheme of humanity. Maybe he's just the examplar of an evolutionary new type of human—homo sapiens ira, ira being the Latin word for 'rage.'

The Alpha hunts in such a menacing way that Spike and Jamie are forced to sprint back to the island over a half-flooded causeway, cutting it close to the wire before making it in.

This scene is my absolute favorite in the movie, as it's visually stunning to watch, the panicked running kicking up saltwater as the northern lights and bioluminescence in the waves throw colorful shadows all over the scene—all while the looming Alpha bears down on them with cruel efficiency.

Fun fact: 28 Years Later was filmed with hundreds of iPhones. Contrast this with the fact that the original 28 Days Later was also filmed on a portable camera, and it's fun to see just how much video technology has changed in three decades.

Back on the island, the town celebrates Spike's victory as Jamie lies about how courageous Spike was. The scene is very Wicker Man-esque—in fact, the entire vibe of the isolated and strangely violent island society is very folk horror. The town seems frozen in time because it is, as society is regressing to hunter-gatherer-type activities along with very clear gender roles.

In this isolated island world, Queen Elizabeth II will forever be the monarch hanging in frames upon their walls. Underscoring this thematically is director Boyle's decision to splice in footage from Henry V films, along with the incredibly creepy recitation of the poem "Boots" by Rudyard Kipling.

Later on that evening, Spike sees his father cheat on his mother with a townswoman, which disillusions him as to his father's god-like status. While on their mainland sojourn, Jamie told Spike about a doctor that lives alone and isolated on shore, but mentions that he's crazy and anti-social.

Spike, stewing in his anger and disillusionment, takes Isla the next day and escapes to the mainland in search of this doctor, hoping to help his mother heal from the disease that's affecting her mind and body.

On their search for the doctor, they meet up with a Swedish soldier who was shipwrecked, and he's the sole survivor after members of his team were killed by the infected. There's a fascinating scene where the soldier discusses everyday normal things like online delivery and smartphones, which Spike has absolutely no knowledge of. Another thing it's important to remember about this universe is that only the UK is ravaged and quarantined—everywhere else in the world it's the modern day with all of its conveniences and technology.

The trio comes across an abandoned train that's echoing with shouts of pain and investigate it. An infected woman, feral after years of living with the rage virus, is alone and in the process of giving birth. From start to finish, this scene is absolutely WILD and moving and shocking. Isla, an empathetic mother, approaches gently and actually assists in the birthing process.

For a brief moment, it's just one woman helping another, as has been happening throughout all of human history. The infected woman delivers a regular infant (though most definitely a carrier like the mother in 28 Weeks Later). As the mother begins raging again, the soldier shoots her, and Isla grabs the baby and keeps moving as an Alpha then in turn kills the soldier. Isla and Spike, a new baby in tow, continue on their journey to find the doctor.

This point is where people begin to either start loving or hating 28 Years Later. Up until now, it's been a straightforward look into a new civilization and a raucous infected bow-and-arrow turkey shoot. Pretty standard.

But once Isla and Spike encounter Dr. Kelson, the film turns into an incredibly moving treatise on family, loss, and grief. Meeting Dr. Kelson is a delight, as it's a bald Ralph Fiennes-covered-in-iodine jump scare (a very welcome one, of course!).

Kelson has been living alone and coexisting amongst the infected, in a sort of Jane Goodall-type way. When he saves Isla and Spike in their first meeting, he blows a morphine dart at the Alpha rather than shooting an arrow at his heart. This is the first time I can recall in a "zombie" type movie that someone is approaching them with a nonlethal motive. Again, this could be because they're not zombies, and as a doctor, Kelson appreciates a person's humanity, however little of it there may seem to be.

Kelson is not crazy, despite Jamie's insistence, and over the past 30 years has been building an elaborate Bone Temple as a monument to the countless dead in the UK. He bleaches and sterilizes bones for this process, and the result is towering pillars of femurs, arm bones, and skulls, and it's very reminiscent of catacombs in Europe.

Kelson evaluates Isla and realizes it's metastatic cancer. With her wishes, he euthanizes her while Spike is slightly sedated, returning with her cleaned skull so that he can place it atop the piles of skulls.

This scene is wild, to be fair, but it works for a number of reasons. Isla is finally no longer suffering. Spike is learning first-hand how cruel and horrible and indiscriminate death is. He also is realizing that in this world, no matter grief-struck you are, you cannot stop—you have to keep moving, keep evading, and keep trying to live.

He returns to the island and drops off the infected child, whom he's named Isla, and leaves a note saying that he's going to off on his own for a while. The island that had raised him, he has realized, is not the only way forward.

The movie could have ended here, and it would be completely fine. But we get a few minutes of Spike wandering through the green countryside before being overrun by infected. Then, a posse of jumpsuit-clad long-haired blonde men jump to his rescue—it's Jimmy from the beginning of the movie all grown up! And he and his gang kick butt Power Rangers-style and save Spike.

Now, as a non-British person, I neither knew this was a strange allusion to British entertainer Jimmy Savile nor do I feel qualified to really speak as to how jarring this was for British people to watch. Savile worked with children and was a known predator and abuser, but I didn't know any of this until watching TikToks later about it. For a more in-depth discussion of it, check out this article.

I thought this bizarre ending was truly surreal and definitely very different tone-wise, but it didn't hamper my enjoyment of the movie. I've not been able to stop thinking so many different parts, and I can't wait to watch it again.

And good news for fans—28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is set to release January 16, 2026 as the first installment in a new trilogy. And yes: that is roughly 28 weeks later from now. We see what you did there, Danny Boyle.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film Review: The Phoenician Scheme

This is a solid, well composed entry in the Wes Anderson canon, though it lacks the emotional depth of some of his older films

Critiquing Wes Anderson films, in all their symmetric and stylized glory, has become similar to critiquing genre films—you have to understand and at least appreciate them to make a fair assessment. If you hate gore, spooky nonsense, and final girl tropes, you probably won't like a new horror movie. Similarly, if you despise Anderson's twee and color-saturated aesthetic sensibility, you'll probably never jive with an Anderson joint. And that's okay! We just have to know what we're getting ourselves into.

All this to say, of course, that I'm an O.G. Wes Anderson fan. I've been chasing the high of seeing The Royal Tenenbaums for the first time ever since I was 19 years old. Over the years, I have looked forward to whatever new and weird thing he's doing, resting assured that he's maintaining his style and peculiar sensibility.

The story

2025's The Phoenician Scheme is the latest entry in his oeuvre, and it centers on a ruthless business magnate named Zsa-Zsa Korda (played by Benicio del Toro). After a failed assassination attempt, he reevaluates his life, reaching out to his estranged daughter, Liesl, a novitiate nun played by Mia Threapleton (a nepo baby, I recently found—Kate Winslet's daughter!). As they reconcile, they hit the road to acquire some investors, accompanied by a Swedish entomologist named Bjørn (played by Michael Cera, but more on this development later). Traveling around the world, we encounter classic Andersonesque bit characters, from the elderly-yet-spry Sacramento Consortium to the classic Frenchness of Marseille Bob.

Like in Anderson's other films, there's a very strong Dad element to the plot. In this case, Liesl is coming to terms with her less-than-moral, long-missing father, who for some reason wants her back in his life. It's very clear throughout the movie that Korda is trying to make amends, though it comes across as a bit heavy-handed. Case in point: showing that he's growing as a character by saying lines like, "Fine, I won't use slave labor."

As you'd expect, there is the usual treasure trove of running gags, from Liesl's bejeweled corncob pipe to the dainty basket of artisanal hand grenades that Korda offers to everyone like fine cigars. These small bits absolutely scream Wes Anderson, and their inclusion helps make the world more whole. (The artisanal hand grenade bits reminded me of my love for Portlandia and the sketch with Jeff Goldblum selling handmade decorative knots.)

The characters

Del Toro's Korda just doesn't do it for me. It may be because I don't think he has a sense of humor. The entire time I just wished that Gene Hackman or Owen Wilson was steering the ship as Korda. Also, it could be something to do with portraying a selfish, Art-of-the-Deal-type protagonist in the current climate that makes it hard to escape into a fun movie.

The best characters that appear on screen are Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston as two business brothers from California. Korda challenges them to a game of basketball/HORSE with the winners fronting money for the scheme, and the resulting 5-minute scene is hilarious, charming, and almost surreal. The two brothers, sporting '50s-era Stanford and Pepperdine workout shirts, go to town on Korda and his associate, talking smack and taking names.

Because of Korda's near-death experience, he dreams often of heaven, God, and judgment, and in these brief black-and-white sequences, you can occasionally spot a silent Willem Dafoe, an enjoyable task kind of like finding Waldo in an artsy movie. In my screening, people were literally laughing and pointing every time he appeared.

Michael Cera's big Anderson debut

Just as Voltaire once said, "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him," so too, "If Michael Cera didn't exist, Wes Anderson would have invented him." I can't believe it's taken nearly 30 years to get him in an Anderson movie, but to be fair, in the early 2000s he was only a teenager.

In The Phoenician Scheme, he does a lot of heavy lifting, playing first a heavily accented, bespectacled Swedish tutor, then, it's revealed, an American spy, complete with a manly swagger and cigarette. He's an absolute delight, even when he's just standing awkwardly around in the background of different scenes—an anthropomorphic set piece expertly curated like so many other parts of the movie.

The music issue

Alexandre Desplat is (as usual) in charge of the music in The Phoenician Scheme, but his score and picks skew more classical than modern pop. I know this was probably done intentionally, but when I think back to my favorite moments from Anderson films, they're tied irrevocably to absolutely cinematic and top-tier needle drops, from Nico's "These Days" in The Royal Tenenbaums to the plaintive chords from Seu Jorge's Bowie tributes in The Life Aquatic. Even Asteroid City has some classic Western bops to tie us into the setting's place and time. The Phoenician Scheme lacks all that—and consequently a firm grasp on the exact time period, as well, again most likely on purpose—resulting in much less emotional heft for me.

Overall

It was perfectly fine, though I didn't laugh nearly as much as I was expecting to. There are so many characters and plot throughlines that nothing gets very much explanation—everything is a mile wide and an inch deep. To be fair, though, this movie does a lot.

The end of the movie sees Korda's Phoenician Scheme to completion, with him sacrificing his wealth to make it work. As as result, he's lost all his money, and he, Liesl, and his sons move to Paris to open a bistro. Honestly, I was way more into this tiny aspect of the story, even though it was only on screen for a few seconds. I'd love to see the misadventures of a titan-of-industry-turned-chef and his ex-nun daughter running a successful restaurant in France, like a Wes Anderson version of The Bear. Who knows? Maybe that's next.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film Review: Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning

Your mission — if you choose to accept it — is to enjoy the spectacular stunt pieces while ignoring the uncharacteristically bad dialogue in this final film of the series. 

30 years after the very first installment, Tom Cruise has put the finishing touches on his Mission Impossible franchise with The Final Reckoning. Clocking in at nearly 3 hours, it's stuffed to the brim with the usual spy-versus-spy hallmarks — double agents, military air, land and seacraft, death defying stunts, and, of course, Tom Cruise running at full speed across bridges and highways. But first, let's recap how we got here.

The plot

I asked a friend if I needed to go back and rewatch Dead Reckoning so I could be fresh with my plot lines, and she laughed and said no. It's true — these types of blockbuster films are popcorn movies in the same vein as Fast and Furious. I did anyway, of course, and honestly had forgotten where we last left Ethan and company back in 2023. So, real quick: Ethan and his team are once again (and as usual) at odds with the U.S. government, working solo to prevent a worldwide nuclear war. The primary antagonist is a malevolent AI called The Entity, who has a once-and-future-type relationship with the secondary bad guy, Gabriel, who is as bland as they come and honestly unrepresentative of the kind of evil-doers this franchise is known for (RIP Phillip Seymour Hoffman).

The Final Reckoning picks up with Ethan and his crew chasing after a series of robotic MacGuffins in absolutely wild locales, from the depths of the Bering Sea to the skies above the jungles of South Africa. Recapping the plot is ridiculously complicated, however, and the first hour of the film is mainly just exposition in various board rooms with U.S. government higher-ups, including a criminally underused Janet McTeer. The tasks are, as you'd expect, the most impossible of any task Ethan has been given, and the stakes, as per usual, are the end of the world. 

What works

Tom Cruise saved cinema back in 2022 with Top Gun: Maverick, and I firmly believe that there's no living actor more committed to the craft of moving making than he is. His love for this franchise in particular is clearly evident. Even though I have some gripes with this movie (which I get into below), it's a hell of a ride, and completely entertaining.

Seeing the crew all together — Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg — after 30 years is impressive and adorable, and it doesn't feel like they're acting when they're talking and reminiscing, there's that much chemistry. 

There are also some incredible casting choices that keep surprising you every few minutes. Hannah Waddingham plays an admiral in charge of an aircraft carrier, and that was definitely not on my 2025 bingo card. It was awesome. 

Tramell Tillman, better known as Mr. Millchick from Severence, shows up as a sub commander and absolutely steals every scene he's in, providing some much-needed comic relief.

A mustache-less Nick Offerman plays an army general who's all bluster and bluff, but ends up saving the day.

The best set piece in years

Under a constantly ticking clock  — of which there are literally many in the film — Ethan is given carte blanche with the U.S. Navy to head to the frozen wastes of the Bering Sea to retrieve the source code of the evil AI. The only catch? It's locked deep inside a sunken Russian sub called the Sevastopol, sitting 500 feet under the surface in frigid waters. 

As a scuba diver, I realized instantly how insane this mission is. 500 feet is at the limits of human diving ability — the average vacation diver gently coasts along beautiful reefs at 30 feet — and it appears Ethan has no experience or training in underwater technical diving. 

But have no fear! The badass divers of the friendly American sub give him a crash course, a dry suit (warmer than a wetsuit), and a final reminder to constantly breathe out during his ascent to the surface or else his lungs will explode. (This scene also had a fantastic appearance by Katy O'Brian, who you might remember from Love Lies Bleeding and The Mandalorian.)

After Ethan suits up, he's shot into the freezing cold, inky black water to take on the submarine. For the next 15 minutes, there's no dialogue, the tension is ratcheted up to 11, and you could hear a pin drop in my IMAX theater in between the shrieks of expanding metal and watery deluges.

It's hard to explain just how incredible this scene is — even looking on Google for images, you can't capture the claustrophobia or fear that permeates every shot. Even if you hate the rest of the movie (which some people might!), this set piece alone is worth the price of admission. 

After Ethan finally retrieves the source code, he attempts to escape out of a torpedo tube, but his life support equipment doesn't fit. In typical Ethan fashion — or maybe Tom Cruise fashion? It's getting harder and harder to tell them apart – he sheds his dry suit, his oxygen, and his mask, then on a single breath ascends to the surface. 

I think my jaw literally was open for 5 solid minutes.

Yes, this action should have killed him. Yes, he has hypothermia. Yes, he literally drowned. Yes, he has the bends. But fortunately the team is at the surface with a portable decompression chamber and a knowledge of CPR. Some folks will absolutely lose it at this point, calling it unrealistic. But that's the movie for you. Of course he wasn't going to die. 

Some fans will argue that the plane stunt in the final act overshadows the sub stunt, but I disagree. But the plane sequence is objectively incredible, as well — Ethan basically wing walks for 20 minutes on two different biplanes, managing to unseat both bad guys and take control of the aircraft by himself. 

What doesn't work

I think my primary gripe with The Final Reckoning is the bad guy(s). First, having a malevolent AI not only has been done, but The Entity in this film is incredibly impersonal. Skynet and the various terminators in the Terminator franchise had a constant boot-on-your-neck threatening feeling that actually was kind of scary. The Entity is mysterious, all-knowing, and playing fast and loose with the world's nuclear powers. I guess that objectively is scary, but it never hooked me in. Much like how creative works produced with AI lack no heart, a villain that's just AI similarly has no heart. Not even an evil one.

Speaking of nuclear threats, it's wild that it's the primary doomsday weapon in the film. It just seems out of place and very Cold War, and today's generation will never fully know just how scary that threat has been. 

Gabriel, the supposed link to Ethan's past life before the IMF, is somehow connected to The Entity, but it's never really explained, and he just doesn't give off evil vibes. He's probably my least favorite villain in years. Give me somebody to really hate!

Finally, the dialogue just really threw me off. It's over-the-top bad — and I have a very high cheese level when it comes to action movies. It's so bad it keeps you from emotionally investing in the outcome, and my viewing partner was scoffing or laughing at every other line.

The Final Reckoning somehow has the militaristic scope and shock-and-awe factor of a '90s Michael Bay movie, but without the actual emotion of a Michael Bay movie — and this is coming from someone who usually cries at Armageddon on every rewatch, so I mean this without irony or sarcasm. Yes, I realize how silly this sounds, too.

All of this to say, of course, that if you can get over the fact that there's not a compelling emotional heft to the film, you'll have a grand time with a bucket of popcorn and an icy beverage. I comforted myself by telling a friend, "If I want good dialogue, I'll go watch a Jim Jarmusch movie!" and then proceeded to fan girl about the stunts and action sequences. That's what makes a Mission Impossible movie, anyway — the scenes where Tom Cruise defies death and manages to blow our minds with what's possible to film.

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The Math

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Video Game Review: Assassin's Creed Shadows

A fine addition to the Assassin's Creed world, Shadows lets you explore the fascinating world of Sengoku-era Japan

The long-awaited new Assassin's Creed entry, Shadows, takes players to feudal Japan in the 16th century and introduces two main heroes—the formed enslaved Diogo who takes the name Yasuke and becomes a samurai, and Naoe, a young female shinobi (ninja) hell bent on revenge. They team up to tackle a secret band of bad guys, as per Assassin's Creed style, and along the way you learn about this era of Japan and its history, art, and culture.

I was a bit hesitant at first to get excited about this game because I had loved Ghosts of Tsushima so much, a game also set in medieval Japan (though a few centuries earlier). The games have a lot in common, especially their quiet devotion to aspects of Japanese culture but totally different vibes, so I'm glad I got over my hesitancy. 

I mentioned a while ago how much I love Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and it's the video game I've played the most in my adult life. Roaming around Ancient Greece and playing as the formidable Kassandra is one of the highlights of gaming for me, and no other Assassin's Creed has held my attention quite like it.

Shadows comes in at a close second, I think, now that I've dropped 50+ hours into it.

A convoluted tale of revenge

The first main character you meet, Naoe, is a young shinobi who witnesses her father's death at the hands of a masked group of marauders. With his dying breath, he asks her to retrieve the mysterious box that they stole from him. She sets out on a Kill Bill or Arya Stark-worthy quest of vengeance against the group known as the Shinbakufu, masked evildoers that must be revealed and destroyed.

Along the way, she meets and teams up with Yasuke, a former enslaved man who ended up in Japan via the Portuguese (the first group of Europeans to reach Japan). If this sounds familiar, it's because the recent adaptation of Shogun gave modern audiences an extraordinary look into this era when Japanese people were interacting with Portuguese traders.

I won't get into spoilers about the ending of the game, but those familiar with Assassin's Creed games will understand that it all gets a little confusing. At a certain point, you're just doing assassinations and side quests, and it's easy to lose track of the latest target's backstory and motivation and how it relates to the main storyline. Fortunately, for me most of the fun in these games just comes from roaming across the countryside and happening across people, places, and events.

Two main characters with wildly different playing styles

You begin the game playing as Naoe, and she's lithe, fast, and flips around from roof to roof with incredible grace. She stalks the shadows and gets into places quickly and quietly, and when fighting she jumps, rolls, and dodges like the wind.

After a few hours of story play, you get to unlock Yasuke, and the difference hits you like a ton of bricks. Yasuke is sheer power and force, and can literally run through walls. The shoji doors in interior buildings hate to seem him coming, and he's constantly breaking them down like a bull in a china shop.

What he lacks in grace, however, he makes up for in absolutely wild gameplay. Using him, I can regularly fight and beat enemies with a higher rank than mine, something I definitely can't do with the willowy Naoe.

His strength comes at a slightly funny cost though—he struggles climbing up even small walls, and when it comes to the iconic and gorgeous "leap of faith" that AC characters do into haystacks, he more or less falls, and always follows up with a self-deprecating statement like "It is harder than it looks," "Any landing you can walk away from is good enough," and "Next time will be better."

While playing, both characters get to use an assortment of awesome weapons, from samurai swords and daggers to kusarigama (a blade on a chain) and teppo (early guns). Despite how cool they are, I found myself primarily using the sword.

The world is gorgeous, expansive, and full of nature and nuance

Roaming feudal-era Japan is a pleasure for the senses, and the game delivers visually, sonically, and emotionally. The seasons change every so often, and you get rewarded with flowers, red leaves, and even snow-covered roads as you gallop around Kyoto. Much of the game is spent on horseback, and some of the things you encounter will simply take your breath away. You'll pass by a small village and see a man sweeping his stoop and it's like something out of a Kurosawa movie.

There's vendors, food sellers, rogue ronin, and monks inhabiting this world, and it feels very lived in. One of my favorite parts is all the animals you come across. There's the requisite deer and eagles, of course, but feudal Japan is absolutely chock a block with dogs and cats. As a cat person, I stopped (almost) every time to get in a little scritch. Evidence:

Photo of shinobi stopping to pet a calico bobtail cat

Photo of samurai loving on a tabby bobtail cat

You explore and pillage Sengoku castles, climbing up the multiple levels and gaining entry to the upper floors to access coveted legendary loot. One of my favorite parts was discovering that castles used "nightingale floors"—wooden floorboards that chirp/creaked very loudly to alert that an intruder was near.

You also get to explore Shinto temples and shrines, allowing you to pray and pay respects as needed.

Building your hideout is like getting a free Sim City Zen garden for free

When I played Valhalla for a bit, which is set in the Viking era, I didn't quite understand building the village, so I skipped it. (I also didn't really jibe with that game at all, but that's another story.) But in Shadows, I'm completely hooked. Your hideout is a respite from gameplay where you can upgrade weapons, chat with NPC team members, and landscape and build to your heart's content. At different vendors throughout the world and after certain achievements, you gain access to new things to add to your hideout, from types of bamboo to dogs, cats, and even giant sakura trees.

I found myself concerned with roofing choices, shoji wall materials, and whether a mossy boulder placed just so was the right choice. In other words, I loved it. Sometimes, I'd just head to my hideout at night to walk around the property and bask in the fire light while I pet my chow. (I've basically made it into an animal rescue, too, what with the sheer amount of cats and kittens I've amassed.)

Designed for 9th generation consoles, the tech behind it is stellar

In terms of pure visual spectacle, this may be the very best next-gen game I've played so far. While it has the same mechanics as Odyssey, the difference in graphics, gameplay, and functionality is lightyears apart.

The graphics alone are breathtaking, especially when it's raining. Rendering water can be especially challenging, but it looks so good in Shadows that you can even tell when wood is wet—absolutely wild.

My quibbles

I have two primary quibbles. The first is how much the game pushes you to use the existing roads. I get the point—it introduces you to roadside sidequests. But in other AC games, I literally will choose the shortest distance between two points and muscle my way up mountains, across bodies of water, and through dense forests. AC Shadows doesn't really let you do this.

When you can climb no further, especially on mountains, you start sliding down. It's frustrating. Running at an angle may help, but I've basically just stopped trying. And if you try to run your way through dense forest, the foliage doesn't really clear and everything looks like this:

Fortunately, they added a recent update bringing back Follow Road auto-riding, so I'll just set my destination and go wash the dishes or something until I arrive.

My other quibble is with the Objectives screen. Usually in AC games it's a list, but in Shadows it's this weird overlay map thing, and there's no sense of urgency or hierarchy I find. The Shinbakufu is in the middle, and that's the primary goal, but everything else is hard to figure out what's important. It seems players are mixed on this—folks either love it or hate it. I find myself missing a text list, but I am a writer after all, I suppose.

This format also is related to the non-linear gameplay that results in my losing interest occasionally, as it's always: get a target, track them down, kill, repeat.

Overall, I have loved playing Shadows, and intend to keep spending time in feudal Japan long after the main quest has finished (I accidentally lost 20 hours of gameplay, so I have had to rebuild my world a bit). The sneaking and fighting is incredibly fun, and the glimpses I get into this historical period have been informative and meaningful—and I love being able to say that about a game that's primarily just assassinating people.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Film Review: Hell of a Summer

A camp slasher homage that gets an A for effort, but doesn't really deliver thrills or chills

Hell of a Summer has a pretty neat origin story: Finn Wolfhard (most famously Mike from Stranger Things) and Billy Bryk became close while filming Ghostbusters: Afterlife, realized they both shared a love of horror movies, and decided to write and direct one together. Both in their early 20s, Wolfhard and Bryk have done an admirable job of creating a horror/comedy with style despite being so young. I'm impressed with the cinematography, tone, and casting with Hell of a Summer, and to its credit, it's a breezy hour and twenty-eight minutes long, managing to get in there, tell its story, then wrap things up neatly. 

The story is a pretty familiar one to lovers of the camp slasher genre: A group of newly appointed young camp counselors show up early at Camp Pineway, and as they party and hookup before the campers arrive, an evil killer stalks them slowly and methodically one by one. There's even a nerdy outcast/red herring named Jason, in a wink to the audience. He's 24, a loser, and by all accounts the one everyone thinks is the bad guy. He's not though, but it keeps the plot moving at a brisk clip. The mask that the killer chooses to use, as this is super important in any slasher film, is a halloween devil mask. Not terribly original, but it's a hallmark of the genre. Kids probably won't be buying it in Halloween stores in the same way they flock to Ghostface or Freddy, though.

I love a camp slasher, from the original Friday the 13th to Sleepaway Camp — heck, I even love any glimpse into a spend-the-night camp, especially the masterpiece that is Wet Hot American Summer. Hell of a Summer strives to match the camp vibes of its inspiration, but for me somehow falls a bit flat. Apart from a swimming scene and one Chekhov's bow-and-arrow, the action could have taken place anywhere. The movie is set in the present, but there technology seems slightly out of date — cathode ray tube TVs abound, though that could be just because camps tend to be lost in time usually and contain a collection of dusty old tech that's been passed down through the ages. 

In terms of tone, it's definitely got the same sort of cynical Gen Z sense of humor that Bodies Bodies Bodies has. One kill scene revolves around a counselor's severe nut allergy and a jar of unopened peanut butter. There are a few interesting deaths, but a surprising number actually occur off screen, which is a bit strange for an R-rated movie. There are several very funny parts, and I laughed out loud multiple times. It seems Wolfhard and Bryk are very self-aware of their generation, and they make running gags of veganism, online popularity, and more. The usual trope of teens-hooking-up-and-then-dying is still there, but it's much more progressive than its horror movie forebears. There's wild tales of sex, but consent and equality come into play in a way that the 1980s could never. 

Cribbing from Scream, the killers are not paranormal or deranged, but simply sociopathic seekers of social media fame. We've seen this before, of course, and I wish the bad guys had been a little more interesting.  The one thing missing from this film is a sense of dread — the kills happen very quickly and with very little build up, which is a key part of making the audience squirm. Contrast this with last year's excellent In A Violent Nature, which is told almost entirely through the killer's eyes in real time. That one managed to put a new spin on the genre, and it was groundbreaking in its approach. It also had some incredibly creative and disturbing kill scenes, which counts for a lot in a genre known for gore. 

All in all, it's a fine first film for these two young men, but it's not one that is going to enter the canon, I'm afraid. 

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The Math

Score: 5/10

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Book Review: Sunrise on the Reaping

This Hunger Games prequel explores Haymitch Abernathy's backstory—a gift for die-hard fans, even if it follows the usual formula

In 2023, we got President Snow's prequel: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. And now, in 2025, we get the painful history of Haymitch and what he experienced during the 50th Hunger Games (which takes place about 24 years before the first book in the series).

Haymitch is reaped from his home in the coal-mining District 12, and as it's the especially evil Quarter Quell, joins 47 other teens from around Panem.

If you've read any Hunger Games books, you're well aware of the formula they adhere to: Homey Domestic Scene, Tramautic Reaping, Travel, Parade, Training, Arena, Brutal Fighting, Multiple Violent Child Deaths, and Victory. Yes, it's a format, but it's somehow always entertaining. Collins writes not only overarching themes well —rebellion, hope, sabotage— but also the small details of a character's inner world. That's what makes the books so different from the movies. Both are great, of course, but the novels are primarily one character's inner monologue as they experience horrific events.

Our boy Haymitch is footloose and fancy-free prior to his reaping, in love with a girl name Lenore Dove and working part-time for a bootlegger. It's interesting reading Sunrise on the Reaping when you know Haymitch will end up the sole survivor of his Hunger Games, and it's utterly tragic knowing that he ends up an alcoholic to escape the trauma that followed him out of the animatronic arena.

The best part of the book is also maybe what some people will complain of—the surprise appearance of other beloved characters. Other folks have called it fanservice, which is an exceedingly overused term when it comes to criticizing gargantuan works of IP. Personally, I loved it.

When my girl Effie Trinket turns up as a college student, it was like seeing a lost-long friend. I shrieked! And when Mags makes bean stew for the District 12 tributes, I wished I could have been in the kitchen with them. It's the small, memorable moments that make the world so lived-in and addicting to read.

Did the world need to see all of the various backstories of these and other characters, including a young Plutarch Heavensbee and a (younger) Beetee? Personally, I love every single glimpse into the Hunger Games world, so for me the answer is a resounding Yes.  One thing about me is: I'm always, always going to read a new Hunger Games book. But some of the things we learn about the featured characters also help subtly explain both their motivations and actions years later in Catching Fire—like how Haymitch knew about the rebellion and the plot to rescue Peeta and Katniss.

But the opposite argument is that we didn't necessarily need to be reminded that these games are brutal, that President Snow will absolutely destroy everyone you love, or that rebellion is somehow always brewing in the Districts AND the Capitol.

And yet we keep eating these books up. Every generation of these characters somehow carries on the flame of rebellion in the face of absolute brutality. And as for us readers, we'll continue to be here for every iteration with mockingjay pins on our bags and three fingers raised in salute.

The Math

Baseline Score: 7/10.

Bonuses: Effie Trinket, no one on Earth could ever make me hate you.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.