Overview: In pursuit of a serial killer, an FBI agent uncovers a series of occult clues that she must solve to end his terrifying killing spree.

Verdict: In M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap, an officer tells his battalion about one of the victims of the serial killer known as the Butcher. The wholesome father, dismembered and strewn about, is exactly the type of person who deserves to win awards for being a good citizen. Who wants to watch a movie about that guy?

Cooper (Josh Hartnett), the living embodiment of a dad joke, is a bit too enthusiastic about being dragged to a Lady Raven concert. (Shyamalan cast his daughter Saleka as the singer, in an egregious albeit loving act of nepotism).

After discovering that the show is an elaborate trap to catch the Butcher, Cooper ditches his daughter and begins a waltz through the bowels of the stadium. He sticks out like a six-foot, 46-year-old heartthrob in a sea of teen fangirls. Hartnett is the star, seesawing from charming to twitchy and sinister.

Shyamalan said in an interview that he filmed Hartnett close-up and directly addressing the camera to make him appear “abnormally connected” to the other characters. The film wears its campiness like a badge of honor.

Like the “really cool” trapdoor Cooper suggests he and his daughter go down, Shyamalan never explores deeper ideas like fatherhood, work-life balance, or suburban domesticity. For some, puzzling out the “big twist” will be enough to sustain interest in the enjoyable, if nonsensical, third act.

Overview: Deadpool’s peaceful existence comes crashing down when the Time Variance Authority recruits him to help safeguard the multiverse. He soon unites with his would-be pal, Wolverine, to complete the mission and save his world from an existential threat.

Verdict: Yes, the foul-mouthed Deadpool character from Marvel Comics is back after several years of retirement. Oh, that he would have stayed retired, but, no, fans of the fast-quip and razor-sharp comments, wanted him back, so actor Ryan Reynolds dons the clothing of the character and takes another stab at a movie. Director Shawn Levy (“Free Guy”) is at the helm.

This time around, Deadpool has a partner and that is “Wolverine.” Yes, you read that right. Hugh Jackman dons his “Wolverine” outfit, complete with razor-sharp claws, and joins forces with Deadpool. What do we end up with? Kind of a dead wolf that is brought back by Deadpool. Nothing more need be said.

As the story goes, Deadpool needs help taking care of things wrong in his world. Recruiting Wolverine seems to be a plus. How he does this is cringe worthy, and they end up against villains Cassandra (Emma Corrin) and Matthew Macfayden as an evil corporation guy, Mr. Paradox. The main characters are working in a timeline.

They get into battles with the bad guys, but what the problem here is concerns too many quips from Deadpool, too many grimaces from Wolverine and not enough plot to hold the film together. Storyline is there somewhere, though the scene in a Honda is quaint. Special effects are average.

Overview: When tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum) meets cocktail waitress Frida (Naomi Ackie) at his fundraising gala, sparks fly. He invites her to join him and his friends on a dream vacation on his private island. It’s paradise. Wild nights blend into sun soaked days and everyone’s having a great time.

No one wants this trip to end, but as strange things start to happen, Frida begins to question her reality. There is something wrong with this place. She’ll have to uncover the truth if she wants to make it out of this party alive.

Verdict: “I forgot to remember to forget,” sang Elvis Presley in 1955, and similar mental gymnastics are required to figure out what’s actually happening — or has been happening — in this upscale twisty-turny horror thriller. But although it raises serious and intriguing questions about hot-button issues and features a top-notch cast that couldn’t possibly be bettered, Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut winds up leaving us to ponder more moral conundrums than it can properly answer in the format of high-end genre film.

The premise is a very good and timely one (think of a female-fronted Get Out), but the script doesn’t exactly follow suit, taking the well-trodden M. Night Shyamalan route to its big reveal.

One of its plus points is the casting of the excellent Naomi Ackie as Frida, a stoic but dispirited gig-economy hospitality worker (is there any other kind?) who spends her evenings doom-scrolling on her mobile and wondering how to make the rent. Her gloom lifts somewhat at the news that millionaire tech bro Slater King (Channing Tatum) is going to be at one of her events, to the extent that she is warned not to be as forward with the talent as she has been in the past.

Frida is not perturbed, even though she has seen his Reels confession on Instagram, apologizing for his “regrettable behavior”. What this ever actually entailed will be left to the viewer’s imagination, but we do learn that King has decided to step down as CEO and spend time thinking about what he did while serving penance on his private luxury island. “I have chickens,” he offers as proof.

Frida has a soft spot for Slate, but she also seems to be a magnet for men with fragile egos, as her needle-sharp best friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) tries to tell her: “You’re not a human phone charger,” she snaps. “Have some self-respect.” Both women, however, get giddy in the company of Slater King, and matters accelerate when Frida snaps a high heel, bringing her to his attention.

There’s a cute Cinderella moment, and suddenly the pair are deep in conversation, even after the event has obviously ended. King has to return to his island paradise, but at the last minute he circles back to Frida. “Do you guys wanna come?”

This question is perhaps the essence of Blink Twice; that spur-of-the-moment decision that can go any which way. Being broke, and flattered, they do wanna go, and their introduction to the high life — along with three other similarly random women plucked to balance out King’s inner circle of men — is more than they could have imagined.

Time stops. Every day is a holiday, with endless refills of champagne, gourmet dinners, and psychedelic drugs on tap. Jess is cautious. “Don’t you think it’s weird?” she wonders. “I don’t think it’s weird,” says Frida. “I think it’s… rich.” Soon, however, the novelty wears off, and when Jess disappears, Frida wakes up to danger she might have put herself in.

Overview: While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.

Verdict: The seventh entry in the Alien franchise is directed by Fede Alvarez (“Don’t Breathe”/”Evil Dead”) as a horror story in outer space. Though competently made, it’s not offering anything new in the alien world– preferring to play it safe.

But to its credit is a throwback to the great original Alien (1979) and the outstanding second film. Its CGIs are marvelous, even if it’s dialogue is only serviceable and its supporting characters are only thinly developed. Alvarez co-writes the sci-fi thriller with Rodo Sayagues Mendez as if stuck in the past and not willing to get unstuck.

The exploited space colonist, the 20-something Rain (Cailee Spaeny), lives on an inhospitable corporate owned mining colony planet with no sunlight, with her friendly android “special needs” bad pun telling brother Andy (David Jonsson).

Her ex-boyfriend Tyler (Archie Renaux) and his sister Kay (Isabela Merced) are escaping from this corporate prison with the rebel space colonists Bjorn (Spike Fearn) and his girlfriend pilot Navarro (Aileen Wu), to a more livable and brighter planet, Yvaga, and invite her to take with them the year-long flight.

But before taking off, they must fly to an abandoned space station that has drifted above their planet to steal its hypersleep chambers, needed to secure the flight to Yvaga. But they are confronted by the sinister Xenomorph aliens and creatures called facehuggers, as things turn into a nightmare. In a powerful scene, with jump scares, the group is chased through the space station’s corridors by a bunch of leaping facehuggers (creepy creatures we have seen before in other sequels).

Overview: Bill Skarsgård takes on the iconic role of THE CROW in this modern reimagining of the original graphic novel by James O’Barr. Soulmates Eric (Skarsgård) and Shelly (FKA twigs) are brutally murdered when the demons of her dark past catch up with them.

Given the chance to save his true love by sacrificing himself, Eric sets out to seek merciless revenge on their killers, traversing the worlds of the living and the dead to put the wrong things right.

Verdict: “Do you think angsty teens will build little shrines to us?” Shelly (FKA Twigs) asks her fellow troubled-lover-on-the-run Eric (Bill Skarsgård) – which is an appropriate question, verging on too meta, to ask during a long-developed, sparsely attended remake of The Crow. That’s exactly what angsty teens did to the first adaptation of James O’Barr’s goth comic book from 1994, not least because of the real-life tragedy at its center.

The on-set death of star Brandon Lee, days before shooting concluded, made his performance doubly haunting, anchoring a movie that, in some ways, probably shouldn’t have existed. Somehow, we got to see it anyway – and ghoulish as it is, The Crow makes clear why Lee’s family signed off on that unveiling.

He’s an unforgettable presence: physically beguiling, scary, sad, funny. He earned those shrines from the angsty teens, whether goth kids in love with the makeup, theater kids digging the performative strangeness, or aggro kids digging the righteous violence.

Lee also helped assure that future versions of The Crow would seem like they shouldn’t exist either, for the exact opposite reason: Without Lee, and without the 1994 film’s immersive urban-decay visuals, any retelling would feel disposable. (In fact, even with one of those elements intact – returning production designer Alex McDowell created a different but similarly vivid world for The Crow: City of Angels – it felt like a dicey proposition).

The 30-years-later 2024 version of The Crow isn’t precisely an exception. As untrustworthy as fanbases can be, it wouldn’t be closeminded to dismiss this remake out of hand; the same was true of director Rupert Sanders’ last foray into unassailable youth-culture classics, his 2017 remake of Ghost in the Shell. The man must be a glutton for a particular brand of internet-era punishment.

Yet like his Shell remake, the Sanders Crow makes something oddly compelling out of a bad idea. The basic story remains the same: Eric and Shelly’s youthful passion is cut horrifically short by murder (though no sexual violence component this time around), and an initially befuddled Eric returns from the dead, imbued with physical invincibility and guided (vaguely) by a crow, eventually seeking revenge against his – and, especially, Shelly’s – killers.

But while the 1994 film jumped right into Eric’s year-later return, filling in the rest via flashbacks (in part a necessity given the circumstances of Lee’s death), the new one spends a fair amount of time with the couple before tragedy strikes. No longer a rock star and his activist girlfriend, Eric and Shelly now meet as haunted-past guests in a strict rehab facility that often resembles a stylized, Arkham-like asylum.

If this sounds a bit like the Joker and Harley Quinn, wait until you get a load of Eric’s face tats. That’s not just an opportunistic knock-off: Lee’s performance had Joker vibes, too, a kind of otherworldly drollery that isn’t worlds away from the Clown Prince of Crime. Between his tattoos and leather jacket, Skarsgård may look like he could be playing the young CW-series version of Jared Leto’s Joker from Suicide Squad, but he and Twigs unlocked a doomed romanticism that the earlier versions of Eric and Shelly didn’t have time for.

He’s not as magnetic as Lee, but his wounded dirtbagginess is complemented by Twigs, who plays Shelly as an artsy type who hasn’t yet located her muse (or genre). For a revenge thriller, the movie takes its time with their relationship. They’re not exactly going out for long and thoughtful dinners – their first real date is a rehab break-out – but their connection pulls the movie along.

The Crow also involves an overtly supernatural villain, after years of crime lords and corrupt cops who only looked and/or acted like demons (and often evinced a surprisingly keen knowledge of crow lore for supposed humans). Surprisingly, the movie doesn’t use this to build toward a bigger, more formidable showdown with the powered-up Eric. (The bad guy, for all of his creepy power, is still just Danny Huston in a suit).

For much of the movie, Skarsgård is endearingly clumsy with his body, pushing through bullets, breaks and slashes with more determination than skill. In a particularly emo touch, the 2024 Crow more overtly explains that the repeated mangling of Eric’s body, like those visited upon Wolverine, hurt and heal in equal measure. Even his craziest rampage, late in the movie, features blood-soaked body horror and slasher-style kills. (Why did it take so long to give the Crow a sword?)

Sanders sets that sequence at an elegant opera house, a neat inversion of the usual Crow environment of industrial-gothic wreckage. It’s one of only a few instances where the movie bothers to replace the defining Crow aesthetic with anything else in terms of memorable production design.

The rest of the time, it opts out; there’s something intensely jarring about a Crow movie that cuts to generic daylight, establishing shots of a real city skyline. Sanders dots the movie with more cost-effective dreamlike touches – the pink uniforms the rehab inmates must all wear, for example, or the in-between train-station world where Eric gets advice from a mysterious, purgatorial stranger (Sami Bouajila) – without ever achieving the hallucinatory liftoff of the first film.

It’s an unnecessarily timid decision, likely egged on by the sense that the filmmakers could create something more grounded in human emotion, rather than the uncanny or the nightmarish. Indeed, The Crow 2024 is, as indicated by that teen-angst line, more self-conscious about its youth-culture bona fides; there’s not a single sympathetic (human) character who registers as a genuine fully grown adult, even if the soundtrack largely jumps back to pre-grunge rather than trying to find the contemporary equivalent.

Overview: In pursuit of a serial killer, an FBI agent uncovers a series of occult clues that she must solve to end his terrifying killing spree.

Verdict: Those expecting to walk out of writer-director Oz Perkins’ “Longlegs” feeling all warm and fuzzy on a nice, breezy summer day should probably look for an alternative activity. Because “Longlegs,” which is already in the conversation as one of the best movies of the year, is equal parts inspired by “Se7en” and “The Silence of the Lambs,” which means you’re more apt to leave the theater feeling, uh, not great.

But if that sounds like your vibe and your game for a maniacal, off-the-wall Nicolas Cage performance, not to mention a hip nineties aesthetic usually reserved for a David Fincher movie, “Longlegs” is a masterful exploration of building dread and anxiety from some truly disturbing circumstances.

Perkins (son to Another Perkins of “Psycho” which is notable here) has delivered what will no doubt be the eeriest movie of the summer. A tense, serial killer procedural that builds on the atmospheric qualities of the filmmakers best movies, including “Gretel & Hansel” and the underrated gem “The Blackcoat’s Daughter,” “Longlegs,” contrary to what media reports will tell you, isn’t the “scariest movie of all time,” but is slow and methodical in its approach to the material. It’s a fully realized piece of artistry with two commanding lead performances that guide us down an icky, unnerving rabbit hole.

Led by Makia Monroe, who feels like the de-facto leading lady of the indie horror scene following turns in “It Follows” and “Watcher,” plays Lee Harker, a strange and often distant FBI agent who is tasked with tracking down a killer who goes by the name Longlegs. But he doesn’t fit the average profile and, in fact, doesn’t even conduct the killings.

He manages to build lifelike dolls that are delivered to children on their birthdays (always on the 14th) and soon thereafter the fathers slaughter everyone in their family. Longlegs is never even at the crime scene. Harker feels a connection with him and the borderline satanic killings, but can’t quite figure out why.

As Longlegs, Cage is wonderfully demented and a strange character who moves in the shadows, takes the back roads of rural Oregon and screams at the top of his lungs. Sporting a high-pitched, crackling voice, a pale white face, and puffy prosthetics, Cage is borderline unrecognizable, but the actor keeps things unpredictable and helps usher in one of the best cinematic serial killers alongside greats like Hannibal Lector.

Perkins isn’t rewriting the genre playbook (and plays with familiar themes of the occult and trauma), but Cage gives it an edge and he’s wisely not overused in the movie. We don’t even see his face until about 50-minutes into the movie. He just looms in the background, like a bad sickness you can’t shake.

He’s matched by Monroe and a solid supporting turn from Blair Underwood (who I was thrilled to see on the big screen again) playing Harker’s boss, Carter who might not always trust his colleagues intuition, but is game to follow leads and hunches that, as the movie progresses, reveals some unnerving discoveries.

Overview: Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as Kate Cooper, a former storm chaser haunted by a devastating encounter with a tornado during her college years who now studies storm patterns on screens safely in New York City. She is lured back to the open plains by her friend, Javi (Golden Globe nominee Anthony Ramos, In the Heights) to test a groundbreaking new tracking system.

There, she crosses paths with Tyler Owens (Glen Powell), the charming and reckless social-media superstar who thrives on posting his storm-chasing adventures with his raucous crew, the more dangerous the better. As storm season intensifies, terrifying phenomena never seen before are unleashed, and Kate, Tyler and their competing teams find themselves squarely in the paths of multiple storm systems converging over central Oklahoma in the fight of their lives.

Verdict: After the subtle, graceful, and sensitively directed humanist drama “Minari,” filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung pulls a massive 180 shift with the blockbuster-sized “Twisters,” a summer event/epic disaster movie that proves he has the chops to create extravagant action set pieces and popcorn-friendly spectacle, but at the expense of his intimate personal touches and affinity for anything resembling complexity.

“Twisters” attempts to do it all: cineplex thrills, deadly serious viscerally dramatic treatments to harrowing sequences, lighthearted laughs, a burgeoning romance, and deep trauma from the past. But all these tones don’t gel together quite convincingly and are either cliché or don’t work at all, especially in the laughs department, where most of the movie falls flat. Moreover, as written by Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant”), “Twisters” features creaky, sometimes cringe-y dialogue, holds almost no surprises, and escalates conventionally and formulaically after you’re introduced to all the players in the story. You know where this storm is headed and what precipitous weather you’ll get. And maybe that will appease “Twister” die-hards but may leave everyone else wanting.

“Twisters” starts with a prologue and muscular action set piece that’s supposed to be the lingering emotional weight of the movie and the psychic baggage and trauma the leads can’t shake. Storm chaser and near-PhD level researcher Kate Cooper (a mostly wasted Daisy Edgar-Jones, who is much better than this material), and her colleagues Javi (Anthony Ramos), Addy (Kiernan Shipka), Praveen (Nik Dodani), and boyfriend (Daryl McCormack), are trying to “tame tornadoes.” Yet, Cooper is nearly obsessed with pushing things into the danger zone so she can get a grant to pursue her dreams of calming tornadoes with a mix of science and technology. But bullish on it all, she goes too far, and most of her team is killed, including her paramour.

Chung’s movie then cuts to five years later. Haunted by the devasting incident, Kate has abandoned storm chasing to become a meteorologist in New York, the polar opposite of her Oklahoma stomping grounds. But like clockwork, Javi suddenly visits and lures her back into the field with the promise of big tech and big dollars behind him, plus a groundbreaking new tracking system that can do much good and potentially save lives. Initially reluctant, she’s soon persuaded to go back home, as Javi convinces her, no one has the natural instincts and savvy to read weather in real time like she can (a bit eye-roll-ish to be honest).

Once back in Oklahoma, Kate joins Javi’s corporately sponsored StormPar team and his stiff and humorless business partner Scott (David Corenswet) to start chasing storms and collect important weather data that could be a game-changer for early repones cyclone warnings. But there’s also a cowboy crew in town, led by a cocky and arrogant Tyler Owens (Glenn Powell), a famous “tornado wrangler” or, as one character puts it, “a hillbilly with a YouTube channel.”

Tyler’s crew is predictably wildcard and pretty much the cliched version of a ragtag motley crew squad. Uncouth and untrained, this troop relies on a mix of bravado and reckless fearlessness; yeah, man! There’s Boone (Brandon Perea), the videographer and social media lead; drone operator Lilly (Sasha Lane), a rugged mechanic; Dani (Katy O’Brian); and one sole, mildly eccentric scientist, Dexter (Tunde Adebimpe). Adding one more odd-man-out to the mix is Ben (Harry Hadden-Paton), a British journalist profiling Tyler for his smug and heedless antics. But none of these actors have more than one note to play.

Unsurprisingly, the two crews clash, the rock n’ rollers vs. the squares, with each team behaving in the familiar pattern of their one-dimensional shape. Tyler’s company is rash and volatile, lighting off fireworks in the middle of a tornado for adrenalin kicks and YouTube views, and Javi’s team are straight-laced metric nerds that are all business and no fun. And, of course, it’s windstorm season, so conveniently, there’s a tornado to be found every five minutes.

But everything is not what it seems on the surface, though often telegraphed in groan-worthy scenes; Tyler’s crew actually cares for the communities affected by the destructive storms, despite all outward looks to the contrary. Javi’s StormPar company is being bankrolled by a real estate tycoon and opportunist trying to profit off the locals’ misfortunes, which strains his relationship with Katie. Goodness, ethics, and bonds are tested, but it often feels like a black-and-white kindergarten version of morality lessons.

Eventually, as you can easily surmise, everyone joins forces, in the end, to fight the mother of all twisters and save lives. But the bulk of the film is an increasing series of escalating tornado dangers with a few side detours for melancholy reflection (haunted past alert!) and a slowly budding romance between Tyler and Kate, who clearly hated each other at first, much like any routine romantic comedy.

A spiritual sequel to Jan de Bont’s 1996 “Twister,” something of an escapist popcorn classic, and not directly tied to it, this new iteration more or less feels like a modern remake with many of the same kind of dynamics and colorful supporting characters. And maybe your nostalgia mileage may vary, but “Twisters” just isn’t as fun, entertaining, and light on its feet. Sure, it aims for those moments here and there, especially in the beginning, with Tyler acting like the most obnoxious form of vainglorious showboating and his team being the wild bunch, but “Twisters” often takes itself far too seriously.

Rather than delivering entertaining excitement, it goes grim and darker with distressingly dangerous, deadly, somber sequences (with some sequences just a little too exhaustingly drawn out). A little more countrified than the original, a soundtrack featuring Luke Combs, Miranda Lambert, Lainey Wilson, etc., this is really only the minor distinction from the original other than being a little too dour in spots.

So much of “Twisters” feels too familiar. Powell plays basically another version of the cocksure character he played in “Top Gun: Maverick,” and most of the characters have an insufferable “we have a need for speed!” mien. And with a “story-by” credit from filmmaker Joseph Kosinski, you can see the parallels to ‘Maverick,’ but it’s a poor man’s “Top Gun” sequel, missing the magic and expertly balanced mix of four-quadrant thrills and delights.