Enola Holmes 3 review – Netflix mystery franchise is starting to lose steam

Millie Bobby Brown returns, along with the creative team behind Adolescence, for an often thoughtful yet ultimately lesser threequel Despite the ever-increasing size and dominance of Netflix, the streamer has continued to struggle with its most obvious aim. While viewers might flock there for smooth-brained dating shows, tawdry true crime, Harlan Coben thrillers and junky romcoms, the platform is yet to be known for creating original movie franchises, the bread and butter of most old-fashioned Hollywood studios, for better or worse. The problem Netflix often faces is that to turn a big-budget bet into a cultural event, it requires more than a low-stakes click at home and a brief weekend’s worth of chatter. Big numbers might have met wannabe franchise-starters Red Notice and The Grey Man but a lack of real long-term interest has meant that sequels haven’t followed, while its most expensive film ever, Chris Pratt vehicle The Electric State, sank with both audiences and critics. It’s why ...

Sting review – low-budget alien-spider horror offers laughs and out-of-your-skin shocks

A fun-filled terror yarn featuring a flesh-eating alien secretly reared by a 12-year-old that delights in cutting its teeth on the apartment block’s pets

This killer-spider-from-outer-space movie feels like a cross between Alien and TV’s Only Murders in the Building. It’s a mostly fun throwback horror comedy set in a Brooklyn apartment block where 12-year-old Charlotte (Alyla Browne) finds a spider, puts it in a jar and calls it Sting. “Awesome,” she marvels when Sting doubles in size in two hours, hungrily tapping the glass for more cockroaches to chomp on. What Charlotte doesn’t know is that her new pet is a flesh-eater recently hatched out of an asteroid that crash landed on Earth.

At the screening I attended, someone a few rows behind couldn’t hack it and walked out after a few minutes. Which is a credit to first-time feature director Kiah Roache-Turner, who pulls off a couple of moments that will make you jump out of your skin using simple shadow tricks and oh-there-it-is! shocks. But really, the film’s mood is larky, with some big laughs as Sting cuts its teeth on the building’s pets. There’s a majestic fluffy white Persian cat, and a parakeet that steals the show acting-wise with its worried face as Sting scuttles out of an air vent.

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