ExpendableMan

My Bloody Valentine is a blood-soaked throwback to the slasher movie craze of the 1980s. A remake of one of the lesser-known genre entries, it's a film that's easy to be cynical about, but it's actually a lot of fun if you approach it in the right way. It's got a masked killer, an attractive young cast, a cheesy 3D gimmick that's aged badly, and a lot of hammy dialogue. It's the kind of thing you can imagine being signed off by studio executives looking for a low budget, zero-risk slice of derivative carnage for the spring break crowd, but it's more entertaining than you'd expect. It's clearly been made by slasher fans, and the hyper-violent, ultra gore make it into a proper beer and pizza movie.

Supernatural hunk Jensen Ackles plays a traumatised twenty-something, returning to his hometown to sell a mine left to him by his dad. Said mine was the site of two horrific back-to-back events a decade earlier, and he's keen to be rid of his cursed inheritance. The only problem is, almost as soon as he turns up, a psychotic murderer in a gas mask goes on a pick-axe rampage. Who's behind the mask? Who will survive? And what will be left of them...yadda yadda yadda.

So far, so very derivative, but My Bloody Valentine isn't just a cynical bit of money-grabbing. The film commits entirely to the gleeful, head-splitting fun and it escalates rapidly. There's one of the most gratuitous nude scenes in genre history near the beginning (which apparently was the actress's idea), along with a soapy 'guess-the-killer' plot and it never lets off the accelerator. You're rarely more than ten minutes from the next pick-axe impalement and the whole thing flashes by.

No, it's not big, or clever, but the escalating body count and gratuitous fun is cathartic and enjoyable. These are not realistic death scenes, they're campy, over-the-top nonsense, while the mining town setting is a refreshing change from usual genre locations like high schools and colleges. This won't change your life, but it is an underrated slasher pic and a fun way to bludgeon an hour and forty minutes.

If 2022's Prey demonstrated that Dan Trachtenberg was the first director in decades to really 'get' Predator, then Killer Of Killers cements that position. This animated movie is really just a starter, designed to whet the appetite before Predator: Badlands comes out later this year. But like all good tasters, it's in danger of overshadowing the main course.

The best Predator movies are essentially genre films where a Yautja turns up partway through. The classic original was a purebred 80's military action flick, and if Arnie and his team spent the entire thing fighting insurgents in the jungle and didn't even get a whiff of the alien hunter, it still would have been a good movie. Ditto Predator 2, where Danny Glover's hardboiled cop took on warring drug gangs in the searing heat of an overcooked Los Angeles, and Prey arguably did it best, by plonking a particularly big Predator in the American west.

Predator: Killer Of Killers takes the theme to its logical conclusion; dropping the monsters into various historical settings and watching the carnage unfold. This anthology film consists of three gripping stories, pitting Viking warriors, Samurai and WW2 pilots against the monsters and is at its best when it remains firmly on Earth. The Samurai chapter is my personal favourite, a near-silent mini-epic of familial drama and scheming in the court of a warlord, and contrasts the alien hunter with a ninja who possesses similar skills. Heads roll, bodies are sliced in two, and men are impaled on spears and stuck to walls. It's a non-stop bloodbath and it's riotously entertaining.

Killer Of Killers does these three acts very well, and it's only the final act where the separate storylines converge that things start to wobble. Trachtenberg can't resist throwing a bit more lore into the mix, and the final scenes find him exploring the Predator homeworld and this decision will undoubtedly prove divisive. The climax is strangely reminiscent of the arena scene from Attack Of The Clones, and some of the plotholes are impossible to avoid (how exactly does he know how to fly that thing?).

As a whole though, Killer Of Killers is a very entertaining way to spend an evening. The otherworldy finale is going to put a few people off, but you can always turn it off after the Second World War episode. It's a proper beer-drinking, crowd-pleasing, nacho-eating night at the movies and it's a blast.

Hats off to Michael Biehn too, who has finally completed the trifecta and appeared in a Predator, Alien and Terminator movie.

I really wish this was better. Exterritorial promises to be so much more than it is; a more action-oriented, German alternative to Flightplan, but it turns into a plodding and dull, conspiracy-brained thriller.

Jeanne Goursard stars as Sara Wulf, an ex-soldier applying for a visa at the US Consulate in Frankfurt alongside her six-year-old son. She turns her back for five minutes and he disappears, but when she speaks with the staff, they have no record of him showing up with her. There's also no sign of him on the security cameras. Has she been the victim of a sinister plot? Or is she experiencing a post-traumatic delusion, caused by the deaths of her colleagues in Afghanistan?

It's a classic Hitchcockian set-up, but Exterritorial never fulfills its potential. Sara is a determined heroine, but the film is more concerned with delivering a twisty-turny plot involving kidnapped Belarussian dissidents and drug smugglers, than delivering a string of bone crunching setpieces. Bizarrely, it even takes a few minutes to criticise influencer culture. You find yourself patiently waiting for Sara to unleash her fury and batter her way through dozens of henchmen a la Liam Neeson in Taken, but it never happens. There are a few sporadic fisticuffs, but the focus is mainly on sneaking past cameras and spying on people in canteens.

By the time it reaches the big anticlimax, Exterritorial has felt significantly longer than it actually is. This is very much an old-school thriller, in love with genre pieces of years gone by, but it also commits the worst possible crime for a suspense film; it's boring. Goursard is a likeable heroine but good lord, this one dragged.