Just as things started to get intriguing, what happened? The credits rolled. While I’m not completely surprised by the cliffhanger ending, I was mildly annoyed by it. Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy this sequel that somehow managed to walk a fine line between funny and suspenseful. I won’t call it scary, because it’s still a little PG in that regard. However, the story was entertaining, as were the characters, most of which were reprising their roles from the first film. I wasn’t sure that a sequel could break new ground, but given that Five Nights At Freddy’s is both a popular video and book series, I suppose there are many places that the story can go. Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, and Matthew Lillard reprise their roles and are joined by McKenna Grace, Freddy Carter, and Skeet Ulrich, which makes for a surprise Scream reunion. That said, if I am being honest, Ulrich felt criminally underutilized in this project. I expected that he would play a bigger start in the story, and I was really hoping for more interaction between him and Lillard in order to better signify the Scream homage.

From the moment I saw the trailer for Caught Stealing I immediately was taken back to the late 1990s, when so many films were trying to emulate the success Pulp Fiction had by mixing comedy and violence.  I mean, the kinetic energy of the trailer was giving me the same vibes I got when I first saw Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and The Boondock Saints. This isn’t a bad thing at all; heck, I miss these kinds of films. Lately it seems all the action films now are bad John Wick knockoffs or the woke superhero films that lack anything resembling artistic merit. I had every intention on seeing Caught Stealing in theaters, because this just looked like the kind of film I’d have fun with, but unfortunately this had such a short window at the theaters that it was gone before it had a chance to even find an audience. The quick turnaround with these films moving from theaters to streaming is enough to make your head spin, and the film studios wonder why they are taking losses, and this isn’t even a big-budget film despite having a solid cast and a relatively well-known director at the helm.

It is hard to believe it has been nearly a decade since Mel Gibson last directed a film. Hacksaw Ridge remains one of my favorite war films made in the 21^st century, and I thought for sure it signaled the return for Gibson, since he’s been in Hollywood jail since 2006. He’s managed to get some work in some bad direct-to-streaming films, though I feel the last great film we’ve gotten to see him on screen was 2018’s Dragged Across Concrete, which didn’t exactly set the box office ablaze. I’m bummed by this, because really he’s one of the few surviving icons from the 80s and 90s that I believe still has some talent and could give cinema a few more great films, that is if Hollywood could just give him that chance. He’s been attached for years to doing another Lethal Weapon, but I have a hard time believing that will happen, and then he’s been working on his sequel to The Passion of Christ, which in theory could give his career the boost he needs to go on to some bigger and better projects, bur unfortunately I’m just not too optimistic about that.

“You should be so proud of her.”

Shelby Oaks is something special when you look at it objectively; it’s a film that was crowd funded by the YouTuber Chris Stuckmann, who wanted to take a shot at making a movie of his very own. The original goal was to raise $600,000, but by the time his Kickstarter was closed, he was able to raise over 1.4 million to make his film. Before he’d even begun filming, this is already an impressive achievement considering how many established filmmakers struggle to get funds together to make their own films. For Shelby Oaks, over 14,000 people contributed to funding the dream for this directorial debut, so again, in my book Chris Stuckmann already won for being able to pull this off. Now the film has a producing credit from Mike Flanagam attached as an executive producer and Neon in charge of the films distribution … so needless to say, there is a great deal of hype around this film.