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Jesse Hassenger

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Jesse Hassenger is a Brooklyn-based writer and critic. His work can be read at The A.V. Club, Polygon, The Week, SportsAlcohol, and others. His dumb jokes can be read on Twitter @rockmarooned.

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Return to Silent Hill (2026) 18% 2/5 EDIT “It turns out, making a horror movie where the hero is more casually curious (or oblivious) than scared is a tricky proposition.” – Guardian Jan 21, 2026 Full Review Mercy (2026) 23% C- EDIT “If this is the future of crime thrillers, everyone needs their screentime severely curtailed.” – AV Club Jan 21, 2026 Full Review 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) 93% B+ EDIT “It’s a neat surprise that Nia DaCosta extracts more dark humor from the series than Danny Boyle.” – AV Club Jan 14, 2026 Full Review Greenland 2: Migration (2026) 51% 2/5 EDIT “This sequel doubles down on its predecessor’s earnestness, to the point of alternating between grimly offing side characters at random and then getting all maudlin about its own pitilessness.” – Guardian Jan 14, 2026 Full Review Primate (2025) 79% B EDIT “On a cold January night, you’re in good genre-exercise hands.” – AV Club Jan 14, 2026 Full Review We Bury the Dead (2024) 86% B EDIT “We Bury the Dead isn’t as boldly stylized as either of Danny Boyle’s forays into zombieland, but it does benefit from location shooting, the steady clarity of Hilditch’s compositions, and Ridley’s haunted yet determined performance. ” – Polygon Jan 14, 2026 Full Review Stand by Me (1986) 88% 8/10 EDIT “Reiner has never been a flashy visual stylist but Stand by Me is strikingly well-composed and, even better, Reiner subtly brings out the movie’s many strengths: the intuitive child performances, the script’s dark edges, and the laughs in between.” – PopMatters Jan 12, 2026 Full Review Marty Supreme (2025) 93% B+ EDIT “Marty is basically a younger, more wiry version of a protagonist from a mid-’00s Will Ferrell sports comedy.” – AV Club Dec 23, 2025 Full Review The Housemaid (2025) 74% B- EDIT “An exercise in throwback hopscotch, with touches of ’90s domestic-interloper thriller and the Hitchcock mysteries that inspired them.” – AV Club Dec 23, 2025 Full Review Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025) 66% B+ EDIT “It's hard to complain that Cameron serves up slam-bang set pieces at regular intervals.” – AV Club Dec 23, 2025 Full Review Hamnet (2025) 86% B+ EDIT “The uncertain and the undeniable come together in a stunning final act of communication that feels more like communion.” – AV Club Dec 23, 2025 Full Review Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025) 77% B- EDIT “Silent Night, Deadly Night takes the material seriously without any suffocating fealty to its low-rent aesthetics.” – Polygon Dec 23, 2025 Full Review Influencers (2025) 96% B+ EDIT “It’s the same principle that made the James Bond movies look so opulent: Yes, explosive action and special effects can show off a big budget, but just providing a travelogue of sorts for the audience also feels inherently cinematic.” – Polygon Dec 23, 2025 Full Review Five Nights at Freddy's 2 (2025) 16% 1/4 EDIT “By all evidence, Cawthon is singularly unqualified to write towards human experiences that aren’t marble-mouthed attempts at references. ” – Guardian Dec 4, 2025 Full Review One Battle After Another (2025) 94% A- EDIT “One Battle After Another hurtles into the present without compromising Anderson’s sense of fractured, constantly rearranged, weirdly personal American history.” – AV Club Nov 14, 2025 Full Review Roofman (2025) 87% B EDIT “It's nice to see Cianfrance working in a less melodramatic key, with conflict at a low simmer, and he doesn’t cop out on the reality of the situation. ” – AV Club Nov 14, 2025 Full Review Is This Thing On? (2025) 86% B- EDIT “Is This Thing On? obviously prides itself in dropping into the action without a lot of exposition, yet Cooper can’t resist circling back for some arguments that fill in those missing details.” – AV Club Nov 14, 2025 Full Review TRON: Ares (2025) 53% B- EDIT “It’s not quite Speed Racer-style psychedelia, but it’s electric enough for lamentation: Why can’t any of Disney’s superhero movies look like this?” – AV Club Nov 14, 2025 Full Review After the Hunt (2025) 37% B EDIT “After The Hunt isn’t really after a Rashomon-style multi-perspective rumination on the nature of truth. It zeroes in on the more philosophical question of what the characters actually want, and whether it can cure their dissatisfaction. ” – AV Club Nov 14, 2025 Full Review A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE (2025) 75% C+ EDIT “Despite Bigelow’s by now well-practiced way with control-room immediacy and the material’s avoidance of easy-relief endings, there’s still a lingering sense of Hollywood in the air.” – AV Club Nov 14, 2025 Full Review The Running Man (2025) 62% B- EDIT “The movie succeeds on the level of invigorating pop entertainment more often that not, at least until it overstays its welcome in a distended, herky-jerk final half-hour.” – AV Club Nov 14, 2025 Full Review Now You See Me: Now You Don't (2025) 60% 3/5 EDIT “Thankfully, the actors seem specifically delighted to be in a series that doesn’t require a lot of fake gravitas, just straight-enough faces when someone intones that in these troubling times, we need magic more than ever. ” – Guardian Nov 14, 2025 Full Review Keeper (2025) 53% 4/5 EDIT “Part of what makes Perkins’ film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. ” – Guardian Nov 14, 2025 Full Review Train Dreams (2025) 95% 8.5/10 EDIT “Train Dreams is set over the course of a lifetime, and in this way it is not just about the passage of time but the loss of it. ” – Paste Magazine Nov 7, 2025 Full Review Predator: Badlands (2025) 86% 7.0/10 EDIT “The movie works in its moment. It seems to know that an obvious, crowd-pleasing helping of franchise nonsense at least needs to have some kind of meat, however synthetic it may secretly be.” – Paste Magazine Nov 6, 2025 Full Review
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