Igory - In Common

Jushin Thunder Liger by Daniel Warren Johnson

Avengement

Harakiri by way of ITV4. Jesse V Johnson's Avengement sees Scott Adkins take an entire pub hostage so that he can batter the beefy clientele with his twisting, serpentine memories. Adkins plays Cain Burgess, an amateur boxer who didn't always look like he'd gotten his head stuck in a sandwich maker. Pre-chromed gnashers, Brugess was a hilariously clean-cut, cargo pant prep, dressed head to toe in Burton menswear and looking to open his own gym. The problem? He didn't have the capital, necessitating a trip to his treacherous loan shark brother, played by a scowling Craig Fairbrass.

Armed with a snapback cap, Cain dabbles with some light mugging to win favour. Unfortunately his first mark is so desperate to get her handbag back that she runs straight into traffic, landing a goggle-eyed Cain in prison.Structurally, Avengement is all over the place, Cain's recollections roam up and down his lifespan, pulling out the noteworthy confrontations and how they have shaped his current, double-barrelled identity. This scrambled approach to plot nicely simulates the anxious excitement of a juiced-up maniac creeping closer and closer to his revenge.

Avengement's fights are deliberately excessive too, puncturing the talky stillness of Cain's lock-in with lock-up throw downs that begin with crossed words before dragging in umpteen, gawking bystanders. Mindful of Adkins' already impressive physical dimensions, Johnson and co-writer Stu Small chart Cain's mutation by trashing the star's face. Teeth are stomped out of his skull; boiling sugar water burns away his good looks. Adkins leans into the dead-eyed, reptilian personality that emerges from these injuries - a self-assured creature who takes great delight in redirecting the violence that tracks in at him. A significant step up from Adkins and Johnson's previous efforts, including their droll but meandering adaptation of Pat Mills and Tony Skinner's Accident Man.

Eagle Eyed Tiger - Metropolis

Chromatics - You're No Good

Masters by Chris Faccone

Child's Play

Set to Evil by a disgruntled Vietnamese programmer after he's bullied out of his assembly line job, Mark Hamill's Chucky is a malfunctioning virtual assistant / nap time pal now able to interpret his needy directives without having to worry about any of the plastic, mass-produced ethics synonymous with American popular culture. Rather than mess around with Voodoo spells and avenging spirits, Lars Klevberg's Child's Play posits artificial life as a sponge, soaking up information from its environment then plotting a response using the stunted, commodity framing of a toy built for children. Chucky desperately wants to be loved, a tall order since he's more Garbage Pail than Cabbage Patch; second-hand stock of an outdated model with a new, better coiffed product on the horizon.

Happily, he falls into the hands of Gabriel Bateman's Andy, a poor, lonely teenager who's more comfortable prodding at his starred-out phone screen than he is mixing in and making friends. For a brief period the pair are content, keeping each other company until the curious neighbourhood kids gather round to inspect the glitching doll. As well as stealing away Andy's affections, these bad influences also pollute Chucky's already flexible rule set with their detached, ironic stance. In particular, a child's gleeful appreciation of blunt trauma and evisceration while taking in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 during a sleepover ends up teaching the ever-present Chucky that, despite all evidence to the contrary, violence is actually completely excellent.

Functionally, Tyler Burton Smith's screenplay offers viewers a poverty row remix of the more painful moments from the Toy Story franchise. The bereaved, vengeful Chucky isn't that far removed from Joan Cusack's Jessie, another red-haired doll that no-one wants. The difference being that rather than accept obsolescence as a natural part of an object's life, Chucky has decided to win back his prize, using glimpses of violence and Nanny Cam abuse as leverage. The fun in Child's Play 2019 then is that, thanks to a zapped-out populace and their greedy tech overlords, the killer doll is not only morally empty but, essentially, all-powerful. He's a gig culture guru; an ambulating Alexa able to summon self-driving cars to pulverise his elderly rivals. The savagery is catching too, not only can this Chucky weather its innards being swapped out for spares but it can also infect other, similar products with its faulty coding. And if the doll's killing spree never quite scales the Small Soldiers level heights suggested by an entire supermarket teeming with other, malleable vessels, well, that's what sequels are for.

BluntOne - Mariposa

Father Son Kamehameha (Future World) by ruto830

CHVRCHES - Death Stranding

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare proposes big ideas, using blip-blop computer readouts to place us in a near future where Freddy Krueger has grown strong enough to completely dominate his little corner of America. All of Springwood's children are dead, absorbed into the melted murderer after he's had his fun with them. This sinister Quickening has allowed Krueger a certain amount of power over the real world, blurring the lines between waking and dreaming life. In Fred's dominion the streets loop in on themselves, trapping visitors; the remaining, shell-shocked adults shuffle around dilapidated fairs, either hysterical at the sight of youth or lost to an unresponsive funk.

This idea, like many in Freddy's Dead, is really only a fleeting aside. Minutes burnt on the feature clock as the film churns on through other, only partially developed, sequel pitches. Freddy's Dead is to be a funeral after all. Why waste original thinking on that? To her credit, director Rachel Talalay does at least attempt to invest her film with momentum - actors hurl themselves into shot while the nightmare sequences that bleed into the film's reality are conducted with a manic, elasticated zeal. The real let down is the script, credited to Freddy's Nightmares writer and hotshot New Line producer Michael De Luca. No idea is adequately developed, the film doesn't feel designed, it's simply a series of half-hearted sketches pummelling their way towards a conclusion.

The one fragment of cohesion in the film arises from the unspoken bond between Lezlie Deane's Tracy and Lisa Zane's Maggie. They have both suffered under abusive fathers. When facing their demise, Freddy's Dead's male characters are tasked to struggle with a speculative impotence, typically the loss of complete physical control over their bodies. In contrast, the women are fed into night terror scenarios constructed out of trauma they have already experienced. They are being explicitly confronted with their past. Tracy is locked in a sweltering, cluttered apartment with her hulking, sexually aggressive father. No matter how she beats and pounds at his face, he still keeps rising for more. Maggie's dreams take her even deeper, trapping her in a forgotten life as Krueger's young daughter. She discovers her father's lair beneath their perfect, picket fenced house then watches, powerless, as her mother's head is dashed against the stairs leading to her tree house.

Carpenter Brut - Leather Teeth / Sunday Lunch

Unfound - Light Seekers

The Last of Us Part II - WARRANT

Just in case the last couple of teases had tricked you, the customer, into believing The Last of Us Part II might be a pleasant game about a nascent relationship between two young women in a future-shocked wilderness, here's Naught Dog with their latest blood-curdling glimpse. That's right everybody, the nice girlfriend is for the chop and, actually, the game will still revolve around almost unending slaughter. Awesome!

Humanity - OBSCENE PARODY OF LIFE

Enhance follow-up their superb Tetris Effect with Humanity, a crowd-battler that traps thousands of anonymous, agitating human beings in a series of labyrinthine environments, then asks them to obliterate each other. It's difficult to get a sense of how your inputs impact the unfolding horror (do you have direct control of the throng or are you just nudging the riot forwards?) but this video tease looks very much like a Block War from Judge Dredd crossed with DMA Design's puzzle-platformer Lemmings.

Wattam - RAVENOUS MAW

Wattam is the latest game from Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi. Based on this trailer, players can take control of a hungry toilet, careening around a soft-play environment, scooping up cute Mr Whippy turds then plopping them down in the swirling vortex that sits atop your head. Happily, the droppings look like they're enjoying the ride too.

Valfaris - JOHN BLANCHE FOREVER

Slain: Back From Hell developers Steel Mantis are back, this time exploring the far-flung, alien infested future of Valfaris. This platform-stomper blasts players into a hostile pit filled with blubbery nasties and their bio-mechanical masters. The all-consuming grim and dark brings to mind the pox-crusted futurism of John Blanche, the detail obsessed Warhammer 40,000 illustrator who rendered Games Workshop's most valuable property as an extinction war between various factions of steaming, techno-organic disease.

Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw

Strangely, Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw's best moments have little to do with either Dwayne Johnson or Jason Statham. Although the couple's bickering helped prop up the series' first post-Paul Walker instalment, the recriminations struggle to engage when scaled up to power an entire film. Part of the problem is the lack of venom, the insults flying back-and-forth between Johnson and Statham just aren't mean enough. The jibes momentarily amuse but are, ultimately, forgettable. There's very little sense the two action stars are actually trying to upset each other or leave a permanent, brand altering read in the audience's mind. The Rock cuts his usual promos, telling you how great he is, while Statham babbles around, threatening to grumble his way towards the effing-and-jeffing seen in Spy. He never quite gets there.

Pinned up in a garage, and glimpsed towards the end of Hobbs & Shaw, is the poster for Walter Hill's 48 Hrs, the high water mark for squabbling, buddy-buddy action films. I have no idea why you'd invite such a withering comparison. Neither star is as funny as Nick Nolte, never mind Eddie Murphy. Mechanically, Hobbs & Shaw reaches for comedy as a salve, a way to force scenes through the exposition and down-time notes that basic plotting requires they hit. Since the two top-billed stars are to be protected from real, lingering abuse, ringers are drafted to soak up the punishment: Kevin Hart and Ryan Reynolds are parachuted in to churn through their usual shtick, here interpreted as creepy hero worship of The Rock and his throbbing musculature.

These massive, punishing cameos recall the distended bloat felt in Sammo Hung's 1980s action comedies, proving once again that Hong Kong was way ahead of the curve when it came to populist garbage. What the film does have though are Vanessa Kirby as Statham's little SIS Hattie and Idris Elba as a fascist, cyborg Superman named Brixton Lore. Hattie is relentlessly imperilled and pumped full of the apocalypse drugs that every party is champing at the bit for. Happily, the character isn't then relegated to a passive possession to be fought over. In terms of genuine physicality, Hattie is actually the highlight. Kirby and her stunt doubles Lucy Cork, Elizabeth Donker Curtius and Laura Swift combine to deliver a tucked, tumbling performance that peaks with a delirious skip across shipping containers while a Soviet era power station collapses around everyone's ears.

As well as the usual swaggering machismo from the permanently brilliant Elba, the actor also provides a focus point in the film's most impossible special effects sequences. Brixton, working for tech-focused doomsday preppers, is the human component for a mutating murder-cycle that can twist and turn around Lore's body, squeezing the augmented man through a variety of shrinking, otherwise calamitous, gaps. Although completely out of place in a franchise about drag racing, Corona chugging chodes, Brixton and his super-duper-bike do neatly combine the thrill felt when viewing the incomparable opening credits of TV's Street Hawk with a Japanese, piloted mech aesthetic. You now, the clanking cauldron that birthed, and later bled into, the Transformers toyline. Since Hasbro's film series is still actively avoiding this kind of biomechanical symbioses, Hobbs & Shaw's human missile will have to do.

Xeno Crisis - BUG HUNT

Not long to wait now, Bitmap Bureau's twin-stick arena shooter is due at the end of October. The difficulty now (for me at least) is deciding between a digital download off a modern storefront or forking out for a lovingly recreated Mega Drive box and cart.

Batman / Judge Dredd by Eric Canete

VIQ - With Me

snaer. - Bananachips

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - GROUND WARRING

It's the second weekend of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare beta, time for Infinity Ward to serve up their take on Battlefield's Conquest mode. Ground War has graduated from everyone's favourite, overstuffed kill-streak chaser to, well, pretty much the exact same thing, only with a larger play area and more capture points-cum-hot spots. Time-to-kill remains unaltered (so short), there are no new revival mechanics, and player counts are pretty high for the map size, meaning the mode is a meat grinder. Stability is out the window too, with my Pro kicking me out to menus mid-match or even, in one instance, core dumping. God help those stuck on a Base system. If Call of Duty's USP is total mayhem, then Ground War adds a whole new layer of pandemonium.

To The Death #4 by Geoff Senior

Joy Division - Disorder