Fear morphs as society does. Generations are marked by what frightens them, and each fear is a snapshot of the world that produced it. Film is built to catch this, especially horror, a genre that exists to put fear on screen and hold it still. It’s why the classics don’t bite anymore. The slasher we threw on at slumber parties traded on the home invasion—a fear that better locks and security systems have quietly defused. We don’t fear the stranger at the door now; we fear being watched. So Halloween plays at a distance, like a postcard from an anxiety we’ve already outgrown.

Obsession runs on an old blueprint—”be careful what you wish for” is one of the oldest stories there is. So why does this version land when the fear underneath it is centuries old? Because Curry Barker knows exactly who he’s playing to.

Horror’s core audience is women, and that’s not incidental. The genre’s most durable trope is the final girl—proof that a woman can outlast the worst a film can throw at her. She isn’t a model of good behaviour; plenty of final girls come apart by the end. But her endurance is the point, and it’s why the genre keeps asking the same question: did she do anything wrong? Midsommar asked it. Jennifer’s Body asked it, flopped on release, then became a cult text precisely because a later audience recognised itself in it. Obsession has walked straight into this lineage. Almost every conversation about it circles the same drain—is Nikki the villain? Did she do something to deserve this?

Barker makes it extremely clear that Nikki is the victim — no ifs, ands, or buts. Honestly, the first time I saw the discourse around whether Bear was actually the villain, I was shocked it was a question at all. Before Bear makes the wish, Nikki outright tells him that if he has feelings to confess, now’s the time — the perfect window he’s been waiting for. And he doesn’t take it.

In interviews, Barker has said one of the reasons he cast Inde Navarrette was the “bro-y type of sassiness” she brought to Nikki pre-wish, which underlines how thoroughly Bear is “totally in the friendzone.” He’d intended those early scenes to play more girl-next-door, but Navarrette’s performance made him realize that having Nikki become that girl-next-door after the wish was far scarier. Pre-wish, Nikki sets her boundaries down firmly and clearly, and Barker never lets you mistake her for the one in the wrong. The bro-iness is so central to who she is that its disappearance is unmistakable — there’s no reading in which this is still the same Nikki. Barker and Navarrette drive home that everything she does after the wish is done without her consent.

There’s a clear, explicit intention behind Barker’s choice to tell the story through the male character’s eyes. We have no choice but to watch as Bear strips an innocent woman of her autonomy while refusing, again and again, to take responsibility for it. There’s something far more horrifying in following Bear’s journey instead of Nikki’s — we’re forced to sit with the man as he dodges accountability and bends a woman to his will rather than face what he’s done.

The film’s dread isn’t built on surprise but on its opposite. We know what’s coming; the unease comes from being made to wait for it, helpless. That’s what makes Obsession land with younger audiences — it reflects the world we actually live in. Having your autonomy stripped while everyone looks away is one of the most terrifying realities imaginable in a culture built to prize self-sufficiency.

But the most horrifying part is quieter: the entire time, the real Nikki is trapped in her own body, completely overwritten by an artificial, magically generated love for Bear. And you start to feel for Wish Nikki too — because she doesn’t want to love him either. She was made to. You can’t blame real Nikki for any of it; she isn’t the one acting. But I’d go further: you can’t blame Wish Nikki either. Barker said it himself — “Bear’s wish itself is cursed.” From that wish spawned a whole new psyche, cursed from the moment it existed. Wish Nikki’s entire being is locked onto Bear, and you can’t fault her for going to the lengths she does, because that’s what she was built to do. Her going “crazy” is actually the one sliver of autonomy she has left — and you can’t blame her for wanting to keep existing.

This is also where the Longlegs comparison finally means something. Longlegs floated free of any particular moment; its evil was abstract, ambient, nowhere and nowhen. Obsession is the opposite—rooted so firmly in now that you recognise its people. I’ve met men like Bear. So has everyone I know. If the One Wish Willow were real, something like this would happen. Watching Nikki not unravel but fundamentally rewire is frightening because of how plausible it is.

Good horror earns relevance by refusing to look away from what’s actually wrong. By that measure, Obsession doesn’t just survive its own hype. It justifies it.

Obsession is now showing in Malaysian cinemas.

The post Obsession Knows Exactly Who It’s Scaring appeared first on Goggler.

The row in front of me was filled with a group of kids no older than fourteen. They were talking during the previews, but I was willing to let that slide because the movie hadn’t technically started yet. But right off the bat, despite the very large “no photography/videography” notice that had appeared on the screen seconds before, one of the kids started filming. She unashamedly recorded the entire opening sequence. It appeared as if she was waiting for the title card, but gave up and put her camera down when it seemed to take forever to appear. Her phone, however, made a reappearance during the scene where Clark first enters the backrooms. She proceeded to take multiple photos, no doubt to post as an Instagram story to prove to people that she was there and that she actually “saw the thing.”

She wasn’t the only offender. Throughout the film, the kids were a massive disruption who would not stop talking (except one, who was asleep the whole time). They kept fighting over the communal popcorn they’d bought, and at one point, the debate got so heated that a kid hoisted the box above his head like Rafiki holding up Simba, blocking an annoyingly large portion of the screen. That was clearly the final straw for the man directly behind them, who delivered a resounding shush. It quieted the shenanigans, but only temporarily — before long the noise crept back up, until one of the friends in the group finally snapped and told them all to “shut up!”

Maybe part of me should have expected this. The Backrooms began in a niche corner — a single 4chan post — but has since cemented itself as an internet staple. From that creepypasta came not just Parsons’ web series, but a flood of memes and multiple video games that gained serious traction on Roblox and Fortnite, drawing in exactly this young crowd. But here’s the thing: as much as they think otherwise, Gen Alpha is not the target audience of the Backrooms. The film takes on the sinister, eerie tone of the shorts — which makes sense, given it’s a direct extension of the world Parsons has spent years building on YouTube. But these kids’ introduction to the Backrooms wasn’t Parsons’ videos. It was the game playthroughs. And what’s integral to those? Dramatic “I’m freaking out” reactions from the streamer; because a horror reaction video with no reaction isn’t much fun. That makes perfect sense for the medium. The problem is that these kids have grown so accustomed to those loud, view-baiting reactions that they’ve started mimicking them in the theatre.

But is that necessarily their fault? This generation never received cinema etiquette training the way we did — not to the point where it’s ingrained. Movies aren’t the medium they grew up on; videos and streams are, and that’s one more thing the pandemic quietly took from them. They’re used to consuming media at home, where a movie is often a second thought playing in the background while they look at another screen. And even the streams they watch are usually just background noise to something else. So when they walk into a Backrooms screening, two problems come with them. The first is the bad behaviour we’ve all clocked, again and again, and not just at Backrooms: the open chatting, the obliviousness to the theatre as a public space, the constant phones. It’s the clear product of an education these kids never got, and it has plagued every cinema hall since the pandemic.

This isn’t to say phone use is unique to Gen Alpha — it’s crept into adults too, as watching a film alongside a second screen at home became normal. But what’s most frustrating is the blatant disrespect, possibly not even conscious, in kids straight up recording bits of the film to post online. It’s disrespectful to the other people in the room, and to the art itself. Since Backrooms premiered, bootlegged clips have flooded TikTok and Reels and been chopped into memes, racking up millions of views without the slightest attempt to hide that the footage was illegally taken. Given how much of it is out there, no wonder these kids shrug off the anti-piracy disclaimers before the film — they’ve seen the clips already, so what are the odds anyone stops them? Plenty of them sneak in below the age rating in the first place, so the same flippancy carries right through to taking out a phone and recording in plain sight. And as concert culture trains everyone to document everything, the “I need to record this to prove I was here” instinct has bled into the theatre — in direct defiance of one of its oldest rules.

The second problem is the recreation of the big reactions they’re used to seeing their favourite streamers have. I went around asking friends about their own Backrooms screenings, and quickly realised my experience wasn’t unique. One told me a row of boys sat directly behind her were so loud that “every time there was a jumpscare they would scream so loud, making it scarier than it was.” Another said the group behind him was “rowdy and not really engaged, poking in with random remarks and chuckles at the worst times.” Because commentary-over-content media has exploded in popularity, people now carry that instinct into the cinema with them. I’ve nothing against commentary — it’s a big chunk of my own YouTube diet. But that commentary is made in private and put out for people to watch on their own time, not performed live in a public room. There’s now a constant need to be “funny” in the theatre — to elicit reactions to your reactions, to get people laughing at you laughing at the movie. And even if the first crack lands, every one after it lands a little less, until it stops being funny and just becomes a nuisance.

But then this got me thinking: wasn’t going to the theatre meant to be a communal experience? And if there’s one genre where that’s most true, it’s horror. No one wants to be scared alone. Even if you go by yourself, buying a cinema ticket means choosing to be scared in company — just not people you know. You’re there for a sense of community.

But theatres now seem split into two camps: people who think they’re entitled to talk because they paid for the ticket, and people who think they’re entitled to the experience they signed up for — which, for as long as anyone can remember, has been quiet company. There’s a right answer here. At its core, the theatre is a public space. You buy a ticket to sit with a community, not to carve out a private box for you and your friends.

Part of me feels bad complaining about children this much, because a lot of this genuinely isn’t their fault — they couldn’t control the pandemic. But the stubborn, repeated failure to register that other people are in the room starts to wear you down. And I’ve realised that both problems they bring into the cinema stem from the same place: these kids have never had to exist in an environment they don’t control. They’re not used to sharing space with anyone beyond family and friends. They make themselves at home in the theatre because they’ve never had to be anywhere that wasn’t home. And when outright lawbreaking happens in plain sight, alongside that blatant disregard for everyone around them, it’s clearer than ever what all that control has curdled into: entitlement.

Sympathy wanes after a realisation like that, and you’re left with the question: have we become too lenient? The pandemic took this etiquette away, but nothing says we can’t put it back. Right now, the only people I know who’ve had a decent Backrooms screening went at odd hours — and it isn’t fair that respecting the rules should mean hiding from everyone who doesn’t. “You do you, I’ll do me” might pass as a philosophy everywhere else, but bring it into a cinema and it stops being live-and-let-live. It becomes a wrecking ball.

A movie screening isn’t a private show. We aren’t here to watch you, or to find out how funny you are. We’re here to watch the film in quiet solidarity. That’s the backbone of the cinema experience — and it’s starting to crack. It’ll keep cracking if we let it.

Backrooms is now showing in Malaysian cinemas.

The post Quiet Solidarity Is Dying in Row F appeared first on Goggler.

The film’s most unique aspect is that it’s narrated by a Giant Pacific Octopus named Marcellus (voiced by Alfred Molina). Once a free cephalopod, Marcellus was captured and now lives in a public aquarium. He mourns the loss of the ocean and grates at being held prisoner by an inferior species who gawk at him in his tank. Marcellus is the spirit animal of anyone who prefers their own company to the maddening crowd. They say hell is other people and I bet Marcellus would agree. 

Like an eight-limbed David Attenborough, Marcellus observes his human captors. He grows fond of Tova, an elderly cleaning lady who, like Marcellus, prefers solitude to the company of her own species. When she gets injured and needs to train a young man named Cameron to replace her, Marcellus sees that the two bickering humans share more than either knows. Realising that Tova and Cameron are the keys to the other’s healing, Marcellus makes it his mission to connect them before he dies. 

The performances were great. Sally Field as Tova is excellent (isn’t she always?). Tova is just the right balance of wise grandmother, pernickety mentor, softly mournful widow, and broken-hearted mother. Lewis Pullman pulls off Cameron well, without sliding into unseemly teenage angst (honestly, he’s too old to be called “the juvenile” by Marcellus). And Alfred Molina as Marcellus has likely found his best role since Doc Ock. 

Now, I really like the heavy and hard-hitting stuff, especially when it comes to loss and grief. For me, The Leftovers and the Buffy episode “The Body” are peak television when it comest to sorrow and loss. But I acknowledge that not everyone gravitates towards such visceral and painful stories. I also recognise that’s what makes Remarkably Bright Creatures special and important. 

It’s a light, gentle movie that admittedly feels like something Lifetime would make rather than Netflix. At its heart is a simple story about loss, but also about finding healing and love – not just romantic love, which seems to be the only kind Hollywood knows and finds commercially viable, but love in other forms: love for one’s community, love across generations, across species. 

It’s a positive sign that a major streamer like Netflix would commission and support films like Remarkably Bright Creatures, which was based on the novel of the same name by Shelby Van Pelt. These days it seems that the only thing on our screens are images of pain and loss, all dialled up to 11. Maybe that’s why the cosy subgenre has been enjoying a boom. We’re seeing a real interest in cosy mysteries, cosy fantasy, even cosy horror. 

So it’s unsurprising that a quiet story about an elderly lady and a young man seeking connection is just the palate cleanser people are craving. Remarkably Bright Creatures offers a cosy drama that’s high on warmth and low on drama. It may deal with the grief of child loss and parental abandonment, and it may be told through the eyes of a cynical octopus, but at its core is a deep humanity. 

At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter that Remarkably Bright Creatures didn’t resonate with me emotionally in quite the same way that it did with so many others. I appreciate that this movie exists, that it offers comfort, even catharsis, to those who connected to it. And it was a good reminder that we are all more closely connected than we could ever have imagined. 

Remarkably Bright Creatures is now streaming on Netflix.

The post Remarkably Bright Creatures: An Octopus’s Guide to Cosy appeared first on Goggler.

I know I’m not alone in this. Enough of my friends have the exact same tendency. It’s almost like an emotional coin toss: some days you’re able to laugh it off, other days it ends in a fight because of the cold shoulder you hand to the person who answered honestly. We’ve all been there, curiosity never fails to get the best of us. But truly, maybe the better question, before asking anything at all, is this: how much of your partner’s past are you actually willing to accept?

The Drama takes this question and drags it into a far more extreme direction: how much are you actually willing to accept your partner’s past once you discover the worst thing they have ever done?

Our stunning protagonists, Charlie and Emma are a soon-to-be wedded couple, with an apartment that is to die for. Everything seems just about picture perfect, right down to a first kiss that literally takes place in an art museum as the alarm goes off. The “drama” essentially erupts when the couple spots their wedding DJ snorting heroine by the side of the road, which somehow spirals into a wine-tasting-slash-moral-debate with their married friends, Mike and Rachel, on whether they should they fire the DJ? Then the conversation turns into a confession session in which the arrow eventually points to a drunken Emma. As she finishes her sentences, the room detonates into an immediate: what the fuck? ”

To keep this somewhat spoiler free, I will not disclose Emma’s darkest secret, but it is definitely something you won’t be able to guess. Not by a long shot. More importantly, it is important to note that Emma, now in her thirties, is completely different from the young teenager she was when that secret took place. Yet in one instant, Charlie takes out the word “empathetic” from his wedding vows. 

We are living in an era where perfectionism is expected to be present, or if not, arrive easily. Romance is repackaged over and over again and presented to you like a checklist. There are to be no flaws and no fuckups. Our partners are supposed to be open-minded, understanding at all times, and get you flowers just because they want to. The stakes are high and must be met.

So much so that when something unexpected from the past enters the frame, we begin to wonder if that perfect reality ever truly existed. (What do you mean you used to be on Bumble premium???) But here’s the rub: humans are meant to grow, even as we are inevitably shaped by what came before. We’d like to believe we can outgrow our past. The Drama does a very good job at picking apart these contradictions and offering different versions of an answer. Evidently, growth here does not erase; it merely rearranges. If you look closely enough, all the characters who are supposedly occupying the moral high ground are still mimicking the faults they once married: Rachel remains mean-spirited, Mike remains a wuss, and Charlie still possesses the power to drive someone insane. 

Most of all, The Drama recognizes something deeply fundamental about humans. There’s a line from Celine Song’s Materialists (though not my favourite) that has stayed with me: People are people are people are people. It sounds simple, almost nonsensical, but it is true. There is no mould for who someone should be, or what they are allowed to become. Most of the time, you do not get to pick only the parts that make you comfortable. No one will ever arrive in love as a perfect package or a clean slate. The best you can do is to choose if you want to accept this version of them. Flaws and all. 

Because for all the time Charlie spends trying to reevaluate his fiancée, trying to mentally rearrange who Emma is after what she tells him, he still ends up finding comfort in smallest thing he knows of her: he plays and dances to Inside Out by Jesse Rae, the same song Emma would put on whenever he was frustrated. Somehow, even after everything, he still reaches for a habit she gave him. Emma, the woman he has practically worshipped for years, still exists in the gestures that made her lovable to him in the first place, which makes it feel almost absurd to believe that one confession should immediately cancel out every good thing she has been to his life. Because truly, how do you decide that someone becomes lesser because of something they did – or in this case, didn’t do – a decade ago? (Disclaimer: this is extremely context dependent, please do not take this statement as gospel.)

That said, not every truth deserves a graceful acceptance speech. You are not under any obligation to try to accept any version of anyone in your life. If something crosses your line, sever it. If you want to stay, despite everything, then stay knowingly. What matters is not forcing yourself into acceptance just because love sounds noble that way. There is little use driving yourself insane trying to manufacture peace when, deep down, you already know you cannot live with what you learned. Don’t be like Charlie, is essentially what I’m saying. 

What I have learned about love, especially since getting into a relationship, is that it is partly about accepting that people are always tethered to what they once were. Sometimes they relapse. Sometimes remnants remain. Sometimes they are genuinely transformed. Sometimes all three are true at once.

If you want a perfectly flawless partner, maybe try wishing upon a shooting star instead.

The Drama is now showing in Malaysian cinemas.

The post The Drama Is About Accepting the Shots Your Partner Has Taken appeared first on Goggler.

War Machine follows a basic, by-the-numbers plot. A nameless Staff Sargent (Alan Ritchson) joins the Rangers to fulfil his dying brother’s wish. He gets assigned the number 81 and becomes team leader. During a military exercise, they encounter a big metal something in the forest. Naturally, their first instinct is to blow it up. Turns out, this was an alien machine that crash landed. The machine gets mad (who wouldn’t?) and starts killing them. They run; it chases them through the forest, firing missiles and bombs at them. That’s it.

War Machine managed to tick most of the boxes for both a military and sci-fi movie. On the military front, the first ten minutes has plenty of tanks, army fatigues, and explosions in a generic desert. The Rangers’ training was a by-the-book montage of recruits running around obstacle courses and drill sergeants screaming like their only reference point was Full Metal Jacket. Honestly, while all this looked like a U.S. Army recruitment promo, I found Boots to be more inspirational military fare. 

Once the alien machine pops up, things swing towards sci-fi for 81 and his team. The sudden genre pivot was what initially drew me to War Machine. Think of other movies that took the risk of combining genres halfway through. Cowboys & Aliens did it in 2011 with its unusual (some might say unholy) mashup of the western and sci-fi. Or Shyamalan’s Signs (2002), which starts as a family drama before veering beautifully into a high-concept sci-fi mystery.  

War Machine had the same potential and could have been a movie from a whole different universe if handled with more skill by Patrick Hughes, who co-wrote, co-produced, and directed the movie. Unfortunately, Hughes seemed content to tell a perfectly linear and lukewarm story. The alien machine rampages; the recruits die one by one. 81 alone is impervious, protected by tank-grade plot armour and the fact that nothing can kill the sheer bulk of Ritchson/Reacher. Like any final girl, 81’s survival is guaranteed.

Hughes’s movie had a little of everything from sci-fi and a whole lot of nothing. The alien machine looked like a Temu version of the ED-209 from Robocop. It stumbled around, firing death at the recruits like the Tripods from War of the Worlds, but without the same visceral horror of bodies being vaporised by an unstoppable killer. This alien, and this movie, were neither homage nor tribute to any of the greats from science fiction or military.

Credit where it’s due, though, the action scenes were pretty good. Hughes packs in plenty of explosions and big set piece action sequences. Which were the only thing adding meat to a scrawny plot and even scrawnier characters. Too bad none of the recruits were fleshed out as actual people with any meaningful personalities or motivations. So when the machine (which also has zero personality or motivation) starts slaughtering them, it’s hard to care, especially when nobody has names.

The one good thing about War Machine, which I’m genuinely grateful for, is that the threat is firmly extraterrestrial. Too often we’ve seen the American military in movies fighting enemies from whichever real-world nation is currently on America’s (s)hit list of bad actor states. Hollywood isn’t helping tensions by cementing these geopolitical stereotypes on screen. So I’m glad that Hughes allows a small discussion where the recruits speculate if the alien is Chinese or Russian before putting the debate down. 

In the end, War Machine wasn’t a bad movie. Neither was it a good one. It was a perfectly middling Netflix product that won’t leave any impression. It offered nothing original (not even its name!) despite having a potentially potent concept that blended two powerful genres. I won’t be recommending this to my students. They might end up accidentally watching Brad Pitt’s 2017 War Machine instead. Then again, they’d probably have a better time with that one. 

War Machine is now streaming on Netflix.

The post War Machine Is All Firepower and No Soul appeared first on Goggler.

Where The Way of Water was expansive and exploratory – introducing new tribes, ecosystems, and the rhythms of life on the Pandoran oceans – Fire and Ash is confrontational. This one is all volatility, fracture, and consequence. The movie pulses with the tension of a world that can no longer pretend its crises are distant.

James Cameron isn’t just repeating the environmental immersion of Part 2. The shift from water to fire isn’t just elemental symbolism. It’s structural. If the second film was about adaptation – it was the Sullys learning about new ways and new cultures, it was them coming to terms with new environments – this one is about transformation through pressure and heat.

One of the clearest signs this isn’t a rehash lies in how it handles the Sully family. In Avatar: The Way of Water, Jake and Neytiri were parents trying to relocate and protect their children. Their arc was defensive. In Fire and Ash, that protection becomes insufficient. The family unit fractures under grief, guilt, divided loyalties, and the inevitability of growing up in a world at war. Cameron pushes these characters into far more complicated emotional territory, particularly with Lo’ak stepping into a position that finally crystallises his trajectory from misfit to leader. The movie’s emotional centre of gravity also shifts, decentralising Jake in favour of the children – particularly Lo’ak and Kiri – whose experiences represent the generational consequences of colonial conflict. Cameron isn’t repeating the arc; he’s advancing it.

The villainy evolves as well. Quaritch – already the most interesting resurrected antagonist in blockbuster cinema – becomes something closer to a tragic figure. In The Way of Water, he was a shadow, echoing a past Jake had tried to escape. In Fire and Ash, he becomes a mirror. The film interrogates the cost of vengeance, the disintegration of identity, and the unsettling question of whether a cloned memory can choose differently from the man who birthed it. The conflict between Quaritch and the Sullys gains layers, culminating in a resolution that feels both inevitable and unexpectedly personal.

Visually and technologically, Fire and Ash also forges new ground. Cameron doesn’t simply double down on the aquatic world-building of Part 2. Instead, he uses fire, heat distortion, volcanic geography, and new tribal cultures to expand the cinematic language of Pandora. The Ash People are not just another bioluminescent spectacle; they are a cultural and ideological counterpoint to the Metkayina, complicating the simplistic binaries of “good Na’vi vs bad humans.” Their worldview introduces moral ambiguity that the series has long teased but never fully explored.

But what ultimately makes Fire and Ash the perfect conclusion to the trilogy is its sense of narrative closure without thematic finality. It resolves the emotional arcs of the Sully family, particularly Jake and Lo’ak, while leaving the broader universe open for future chapters. Cameron smartly anchors the climax not in the fate of a planet, but in the fate of a family.

By the time the final sequence unfolds, it becomes clear why this trilogy works. This is not a cycle of repetition. It is a progression of elemental, emotional, and thematic states. Land, water, fire. Survival, adaptation, transformation. Jake Sully’s journey comes full circle not because Cameron repeats himself, but because he finally allows the character, and the audience, to confront what all this fighting has been for.

Avatar: Fire and Ash proves that the Avatar trilogy was never about spectacle alone. It was about evolution – of a world, of a family, and of a filmmaker pushing the limits of what blockbuster storytelling can achieve.

Avatar: Fire and Ash is now showing in Malaysian cinemas.

The post Avatar: Fire and Ash Is Not a Rehash, but the Perfect End to the Trilogy appeared first on Goggler.

Umapagan Ampikaipakan: You’ve said that both of these characters see Malaysia as the promised land. But coming from Malaysia, I know that we don’t treat our refugees very well. So for me, what you don’t see in the movie — because I know what really happens when they get there — hit me harder than what you actually see on screen.

Akio Fujimoto: Only you can understand them. (Laughs)

Umapagan Ampikaipakan: Can you talk to me about the title, Lost Land, and the Rohingya title, Hara Watan? What was the meaning you intended?

Akio Fujimoto: I want the audience to feel what the characters have lost — the pain they carry from losing everything they had. I want to share that with the audience. It’s like a common language between the creator and the viewer. In Rohingya, “hara” means lost, and “watan” means land, their motherland. But “watan” also relates to the body. So losing their country, their land, means losing a part of themselves.

Umapagan Ampikaipakan: Two of the things I loved were the music and the cinematography. Can you talk about your choice of composer and your decision to work with cinematographer Yoshio Kitagawa? How did they help you craft the look and feel of this movie?

Akio Fujimoto: With Yoshio Kitagawa, the first thing we discussed is that he usually shoots on a tripod — he shoots a lot of Mr. Hamaguchi’s films. But for this film, we asked him to use a handheld camera, which must have been a very new challenge for him. What we talked about was that the film couldn’t feel too fictional — we had to keep the audience grounded in the reality of the characters. He held to that principle throughout the shoot. As for the music, there was actually no discussion beforehand. The composer, Ernst Reijseger, simply sent me the music he’d completed, and I had to decide which pieces to use and where. It was a very creative process.

Umapagan Ampikaipakan: I also noticed that for the scenes with Shofiq and Shomira, you intentionally kept the camera angles low — from their point of view. Is that right?

Akio Fujimoto: Yes, it was the cinematographer’s idea to keep the camera at the same eye level as the two children throughout.

Umapagan Ampikaipakan: The other thing that I found really affecting was that you are never sentimental in the way you shoot this film — particularly in the way you approach death. We see it at various points: on the boat at the beginning, when one of the men helping the children is beaten by the traffickers, and then again with Shomira. But it’s all very matter-of-fact, and I think that’s exactly why it hits so hard. Can you talk about the decision not to sentimentalise those moments?

Akio Fujimoto: I interviewed a lot of Rohingya people and asked about their experiences. The topic of death always came up. I felt it was very important to depict that in this film. I wanted the audience to be able to pray for the people who die — because during the actual journey, there is no time to pray. You just have to keep moving, keep going forward. So at least in the film, I wanted people to truly see those who were lost, and to have the space to mourn them.

Umapagan Ampikaipakan: I was speaking to the people at the Japan Foundation in Malaysia, and they mentioned that you shot the movie across Southeast Asia. What was that like — travelling around and looking for locations?

Akio Fujimoto: We shot the film in the rural areas across three countries, and there were so many beautiful places that it was difficult to choose. That kind of landscape doesn’t really exist in Japan.

Umapagan Ampikaipakan: In your conversations with the Rohingya community, what was it about Malaysia? Why did they see it the way they did — why were they so determined to get there?

Akio Fujimoto: There are several reasons. One is that Malaysia is a Muslim country. Another is that many of their relatives and friends had already moved there, so they were being called to join people they knew. They felt they could be safe there. And there is also the practical reality that they can find work — perhaps on a construction site, nothing high-status, but work they can get.

Umapagan Ampikaipakan: How did you find Shofiq and Shomira? And what was it like working with them — getting those performances out of two children in such a demanding story?

Akio Fujimoto: We were looking for boys around junior high school age. We went to an elementary school where many Rohingya children attend, and we saw Shofiq there — he was just playing around, but we couldn’t take our eyes off him. He was so captivating. We felt he could carry the story throughout the film. Then we went to his home and discovered he had an elder sister. That’s when we met Shomira. We asked her if she’d be interested, she said yes, and we asked them both to be in the film right there on the spot. I rewrote the script from that point. As for the direction itself — there was nothing very special about it. Every day I explained the scene we were going to shoot and asked them to react or speak in a certain way. And it wasn’t just me; there was an interpreter, an assistant director, and all the crew who took care of those two. They felt comfortable in that environment, and I think that’s what brought out those performances. The Malaysian crew, in particular, looked after them extraordinarily well.

Umapagan Ampikaipakan: I think this film is very important for Malaysians to watch — because there are so many Rohingya and refugees living among us, and yet we don’t notice them, or we choose not to. We don’t know their stories because it’s simply not in the news. The newspapers don’t write about it. The online portals don’t cover it. So many Malaysians genuinely don’t know.

Akio Fujimoto: I understand completely. But I’m honestly not sure whether we should release the film in Malaysia — because it would put many of the cast at risk.

Umapagan Ampikaipakan: You’re absolutely right, and that’s the difficulty. I think the best route might actually be the Japanese Film Festival that the Japan Foundation holds in Malaysia every year. The audience that attends that kind of event — people who seek out that kind of film — they’re the ones you want talking about it. It might help in some way. And there’s also streaming, of course; if it goes on a platform like Netflix, people will find it. But it’s such a specific perspective to bring to this film. I was watching it alongside other journalists, and I don’t think they felt the Malaysian connection the way I did. I was in tears when I left, and they were asking me why. “You just don’t understand,” I said. When you screened the film at Venice and at other festivals, what kind of responses were you getting? What were audiences taking away from it?

Akio Fujimoto: At Venice, the theatre holds about 1,500 people and it sold out immediately. The audience was incredibly passionate. But they didn’t know who the Rohingya were — we had to explain everything from the beginning. What really helped was that Sujauddin Karimuddin, a Rohingya producer, came with us. He stood on stage and spoke directly to the audience about how deeply his people want to go home. That landed very powerfully. There was also an enormous response to the children — their performances received extraordinary praise. Which makes it all the more painful that we cannot bring them along to the next chapter. We can’t find them their next project. Not in the way we would want to.

We watched Akio Fujimoto’s Lost Land at the 2025 edition of the Tokyo International Film Festival.

The post No Time to Grieve: Akio Fujimoto on Lost Land appeared first on Goggler.

When I heard of Zootopia 2, I got excited, but cautiously. After all, how many sequels reach, if not top, the original’s glory? Well, whatever. We were going back to Zootopia! That model society of inclusion, where animals of all breeds live side-by-side. Now I’m not ashamed to admit that although I love the film, I didn’t realize until I read an interview with creator Byron Howard that Zootopia was a mammal-only place: no fish, birds, insects, or reptiles. But it wasn’t always that way, apparently.

Although we had to wait nearly a decade for this sequel, barely any time had passed for Judy and Nick. After busting Mayor Bellwether, the sly bunny and dumb fox become the ZPD’s first predator-prey partners. As the city’s centennial approaches, the first snake sighting in Zootopia in a century causes panic. Judy, with her usual Energizer Bunny enthusiasm, self-appoints herself and Nick to the case. And they discover some uncomfortable truths about their city. 

What I adore about the first film is how it used speciesism to explore prejudice. Zootopia appears utopian because different species live together. But the prey-predator dynamics of the animal kingdom mean that fear and assumptions of “the other” colour every interaction and relationship. Nobody, not even Judy, is free from prejudice and confirmation bias, no matter how open-minded they believe themselves to be. Zootopia opens powerful conversations about the insidious nature of discrimination in human societies. 

While the theme and threat of species prejudice were foregrounded in the first movie, Zootopia 2 explores with a more measured hand (or paw?) how historical injustices reverberate down generations. Judy befriends Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan), a viper who infiltrates Zootopia to right a great historical wrong done to his family and people. Judy and Nick learn that Zootopia’s founders, the Lynxley family, framed Gary’s grandmother, Agnes, for murder after stealing her original plans for Zootopia. The Lynxley dynasty then expanded its domain, Tundratown, into Reptile Ravine, displacing all reptiles. 

In Zootopia, snakes have a bad reputation among mammals for a single “crime” that occurred 100 years ago. And the framing of Gary’s grandmother had disastrous spillover effects. All reptiles are regarded suspiciously as security threats and are barred from the city. Like any imperialists, the Lynxley family understand that to retain power, they must constantly reinforce prejudice against “the other.” They weaponise this fear of the cold-blooded to ensure no scaly undesirable returns to claim what’s theirs.

Beyond the initial character assassination of the De’Snake family and all other reptiles, the Lynxley dynasty wages a perpetual project of historical erasure. They cannot allow the truth to surface: that Agnes De’Snake was the original creator of Zootopia’s plans, not the Lynxleys. The revision of history is often entangled with and fuels present-day discrimination and othering. Zootopia, a beacon of diversity, was founded on the literal expulsion, exclusion, and eventual erasure of an entire class of animals.

The dispossession and disenfranchisement of indigenous populations from their land is a heavy theme for an animated kids’ film. But the Zootopia franchise excels at tackling deeply uncomfortable aspects of humanity. And it doesn’t just dwell on the negatives. There’s always the counterbalancing message that our diversity doesn’t divide us; it’s what makes societies stronger and healthier. As Nick and Judy know, their differences don’t make any difference.

Side note: I’m glad that while Nick and Judy become police partners, they stay purely platonic. It was a bit touch-and-go at first, with the pair pretending to be a couple several times. Sure, an inter-species romance might be interesting if you ignore the biological gymnastics needed, but the world does not need another Scully/Mulder or Brennan/Booth romance. Friendship is rewarding enough. 

While I don’t think Zootopia 2 was as wonderfully charming as the original, it is still a solid sequel. There’s plenty of action, jokes and Easter Eggs (I got unreasonably excited by The Shining and The Silence of the Lambs references). And if the post-credits teaser is anything to go by, the third installment promises to soar to new heights.

Zootopia 2 is now showing in Malaysian cinemas.

The post Zootopia 2 and the Insidious Nature of Historical Injustices appeared first on Goggler.

The first part of Stranger Things, Season 5 is now streaming on Netflix.

The fall of 1987. Hawkins is scarred by the opening of the Rifts, and our heroes are united by a single goal: find and kill Vecna. But he has vanished — his whereabouts and plans unknown. Complicating their mission, the government has placed the town under military quarantine and intensified its hunt for Eleven, forcing her back into hiding. As the anniversary of Will’s disappearance approaches, so does a heavy, familiar dread. The final battle is looming — and with it, a darkness more powerful and more deadly than anything they’ve faced before. To end this nightmare, they’ll need everyone — the full party — standing together, one last time. Stranger Things was created by The Duffer Brothers and stars Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Priah Ferguson, Brett Gelman, Jamie Campbell Bower, Cara Buono, Nell Fisher, and Linda Hamilton.

Thank you for checking out The Goggler Podcast, if you have any thoughts or questions, just email us on podcast@goggler.my, or reach out to us via Instagram. You can also WhatsApp us on The Goggler Hotline, on +60125245208

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The post The Goggler Podcast #744: Stranger Things, Season 5, Part 1 appeared first on Goggler.

And it pulls that off because of three crucial ingredients… the “secret sauce” if you will…

Turning the Tables on the Predator

At its core, Predator: Badlands is lean. Almost ascetically so. There’s no sprawling ensemble, no planet-hopping mythology dump, no attempt to tie itself into the genetic chaos of Shane Black’s The Predator. This one is essentially a frontier thriller, featuring a handful of characters (none of them human – the first in a Predator movie), a harsh landscape, and a would be apex hunter dropped into a world that is completely over his head.

This simplicity is the film’s biggest creative advantage. By refusing excess, Predator: Badlands rebuilds the foundational tension that made John McTiernan’s classic work so well. Only this time, the tables are turned. This Predator is unknowable, not because the hunted humans are trying to figure him out, but because he’s actually dealing with something of an identity crisis. By taking us into the inner life of Dek, by denying us that familiar narrative comfort we have with this franchise, Dan Trachtenberg has made the Predator interesting again. The signature silence of these movies is still there. As is the dread. But this time, there are jokes.

A Predator That Feels Truly Alien Again

For years, the Predator has suffered from what we might call “cool-monster fatigue.” Familiarity blunted its edge. We knew all of the rules: infrared vision, honor code, skull trophies, cloaking devices, etc. Even its defeats felt predictable. 

Predator: Badlands smartly rewires that dynamic.

Without reinventing the wheel, the film treats the creature less like a franchise mascot and more like an actual character. By telling this story from the POV of the Predator, Dan Trachtenberg does more than just give Dek a backstory, he creates an emotional connection, forcing us to sympathize with the plight of this murder lobster. By showing us Dek’s face, as it ugly as it may be, Trachtenberg allows us to root for him in a way that feels more genuine than ever before.

Predator: Badlands restores a kind of awe to the creature. Not by upgrading it, but by unsettling our familiarity with it. That hunter/prey dynamic we’ve seen for so many years has become such old hat that we’re no longer scared by it. So why not change things up? Why not skip the sci-fi horror and make a fun action adventure instead?

Characters Who Aren’t Just Cannon Fodder

The surprise triumph of Predator: Badlands is just how invested you become in Dek, Thia, and Bud.

The protagonist – ballsy but vulnerable, skilled but not superhuman, and “not yet Yautja” – feels cut from the same cloth as the franchise’s finest human leads. Even Thia and Bud aren’t disposable archetypes but actual characters with motivations, frustrations, and internal conflicts. Their relationships create friction. Their decisions matter. When they’re pushed to the brink, the tension isn’t manufactured; it’s earned.

This emotional grounding doesn’t soften the film, but sharpens it. The stakes feel bigger precisely because the movie lets us sit with these characters long enough to understand what they stand to lose. And in this movie, for all three of them, it’s family in a variety of forms.

Why We Need More Movies Like This

Predator: Badlands succeeds because it understands that the Predator is a great narrative tool. Drop it anywhere, with the Vikings, in feudal Japan, in the theatre of World War II, and the story practically writes itself. What Predator: Badlands proves is that smaller, meaner, more atmospheric entries might just be the future of this franchise.

So give us more standalone tales, more one-and-done survival sagas, more anthology-style genre swings, that actually take a scalpel to the Predator mythos. If Predator: Badlands is any indication, this universe thrives not when it expands outward, but when it tunnels inward, one brutal, beautiful hunt at a time.

Predator: Badlands is now showing in Malaysian cinemas.

The post Predator: Badlands’ Secret Sauce and Why We Need More Movies Like This appeared first on Goggler.