Jesse Hassenger-Staff Writer

Jesse Hassenger

June, 2025
  • 216
    articles
  • 2
    News
  • 173
    Features
  • 26
    Lists
  • 4
    Guides
  • 11
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About Jesse Hassenger

Jesse Hassenger is a contributing writer at Polygon. A longtime film and culture critic, his work also appears at The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, The Guardian, GQ, Decider, and The Daily Beast, among others. He co-hosts The New Flesh, a podcast about horror movies.

Latest

Survivors of a plane crash, led by a pilot played by Aaron Eckhart, stand in the remnants of their downed plane, looking out at the unseen ocean, in a scene from the shark thriller Deep Water
Deep Water isn't a sequel or equal to the director's standout shark movie, Deep Blue Sea

Renny Harlin is back in shark-filled waters, but Deep Water doesn't run particularly deep

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Anne Hathaway, as pop star Mother Mary in the movie of the same name, clasps her hands over her mouth in horror, with stylized lights blurred in the background
The man behind The Green Knight has delivered a ghost story like no other

In Mother Mary, David Lowery seems fixated on the less horrific dimension to ghost-like entities

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In a scene from the Sam Raimi film Crimewave, Bruce Campbell, a bowtie and with slicked-back hair, smirks at the camera, playing a character known as
40 years ago, Sam Raimi and the Coen brothers teamed up to make a movie hardly anyone saw or liked

Here's the thing, though: Crimewave is actually pretty fun, and it's streaming for free!

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No Other Choice
A brutal new thriller 16 years in the making is finally streaming, and it couldn't be more relevant

The movie has been in the works for years and it still feels up-to-the-minute

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A young girl faces the camera in close-up, grinning unwholesomely in a way that shows off her grayish teeth and blood dripping from her mouth, in a scene from Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026).
Lee Cronin unwraps a wilder, gnarlier version of The Mummy than any previous movie

This is a much gorier take on mummy movies than Brendan Fraser's action-adventure franchise

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In a scene from the 2016 thriller Green Room, Amber (Imogen Poots), one of several young adults trapped at a white-power club, issues a warning while Pat (Anton Yelchin) looks on in the background.
10 years ago, Green Room predicted a future more terrifying than a horror movie

Jeremy Saulnier's intense siege thriller still hits hard and sharp

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Natalie Portman, Danny McBride, and James Franco, dressed in medieval fantasy gear, brandish their weapons in a scene from Your Highness, with the unarmed Zoey Deschanel standing alongside them in a red dress.
15 years ago, Danny McBride went on an underrated quest for fantasy-comedy glory

Your Highness closely followed Pineapple Express, but didn't land the same way

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A woman played by Phoebe Dynevor, largely submerged in water and holding on to the wreckage of a destroyed house, cries out for help in a scene from the Netflix shark thriller Thrash.
Thrash lets Netflix take another enthusiastic bite at shark thrillers

It isn't one of the best recent creature features, but it gets the job done

In a scene from the 2016 horror film The Invitation, Will (Logan Marshall-Green), the bereaved lead character in the 2016 film The Invitation, is shown in close-up. He has long hair, a beard and mustache, and his eyes look lightly watery, as if recalling a sad memory.
10 years later, Karyn Kusama's psychological thriller feels more relevant than ever

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the movie about a death cult plays differently now that so many real-life people have joined up

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FACES OF DEATH - Still 9
Faces of Death (2026) is a well-made reboot that may disappoint true horror sickos

This firmly fictional 2026 remake has an irresistible premise and a polished execution

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In a scene from the movie Forbidden Fruits, a trio of fashionably dressed mall employees (Lil Reinhart, Victoria Pedretti, Alexandra Shipp) stand in a row, carrying big drink cups and various shopping bags, looking at something in the distance
A witchy new horror-comedy crosses The Craft with millennial anxiety

Forbidden Fruits is one for the Taylor Swift fans who grew up watching Mean Girls

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Sucker Punch
15 years later, Sucker Punch stands as one of Zack Snyder's best

It doesn't all work, but it sure beats him monkeying with established characters

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Primate movie
Johannes Roberts is one of our best B-movie craftsmen

Primate, now on streaming, is a well-crafted killer-chimp B-movie

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Alpha (Mélissa Boros), a French teenager, lies on her back in profile, in a party scene from the film Alpha (2025).
Gen Alpha's first body horror film is here

Alpha is the perfect title for a movie about a contemporary teenager haunted by a mysterious virus

1
Inside Man
Denzel Washington has made a lot of cop thrillers, but only one with Spike Lee

Lee and Washington have worked together five times, and even their most mainstream collaboration has plenty to say

A raffish Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) addresses his compatriots in a forest in a scene from Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
Guy Ritchie has become the master of the franchise non-starter

His movies may not spawn sequels, but they leave audiences wanting more, which might actually be better

6
A close-up of Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) suited up in an astronaut helmet in a scene from First Man (2018).
Before throwing a Hail Mary, Ryan Gosling went into a more serious space with First Man

This isn't Gosling's first time playing a moody astronaut

An alien in human form, played by David Bowie, adjusts his glasses in close-up in a scene from The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976).
50 years ago, David Bowie defied the rules of pop-star cinema with this space oddity

The Man Who Fell to Earth sounds like a Ziggy Stardust movie, but it's much stranger

3
Red Riding Hood
The director of Twilight made a better YA horror romance that far fewer people saw

15 years later, Red Riding Hood is even better out of the context that created it

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Douglas Fairbanks, playing a swashbuckler disguised as a pirate, is bound with his hands behind his back as he faces the princess (Billie Dove) who loves him
This classic pirate movie just turned 100, has eye-popping stunts, and is streaming for free

That thing where a guy slides down a sail using a knife? That's one century old

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