Entertainment
Serial Killer Recklessly Escalates In A Perfect New Found Footage Sequel
By Robert Scucci
| Published
One of my favorite found footage horror flicks that you’ve never heard of is 2025’s Looky-Loo (my review here), written and directed by Jason Zink (the guy behind Straight Edge Kegger). I was fortunate enough to be contacted by Jason ahead of its release back in 2024 to review the film, and it blew me away. It’s very well shot because the “found footage” comes from an aspiring filmmaker, meaning he knows how to edit his footage, and whatever camera he’s using doesn’t fall into the “scared kids running around the woods with their parents’ camcorder” trap that so many found footage films succumb to.
The footage presented to the viewer in Looky-Loo, as far as I can tell, is carefully curated by the titular serial killer because he’s trying to build out his own mythology and wants the attention. Think BTK killer, but if he knew how to use CapCut. Looky-Loo: Part II builds on this lore and keeps things interesting by showing us just how far off the deep end the killer has gotten since we last saw him. That’s saying a lot because the first film succeeds in traumatizing its audience, but only before hinting that there’s plenty more where that came from.
When Zink reached out to me again to hear my thoughts on his upcoming sequel, I was obviously primed for more of the same, just slightly escalated. He’s working the whole thing into a trilogy, so I figured we’d get a slow burn, leading to another cliffhanger. I was surprised when Looky-Loo: Part II got right into it with zero buildup to prepare you for the continuation of our killer’s rampage.
Looky Loo Wants To Be Famous
Looky-Loo: Part II wastes no time building out the mythology of its titular character and includes a letter to the viewer that spells everything out. The letter accomplishes two things. It tells the viewer that he will continue to kill, and it passive-aggressively taunts the authorities, stating that “so many more ladies ended up on the cutting room floor than the FBI knows about.” He goes on to explain that one such victim was strangled with a guitar string while she sat in her recliner, something he refers to as “Compelling footage, but cut for time.”
Right off the rip, Looky Loo is talking like an accomplished filmmaker who just so happens to be a serial killer, not a serial killer moonlighting as an amateur filmmaker. That should tell you everything you need to know about the murderous menace’s mental state. He thinks very highly of himself, and he believes what he’s doing is high art. In reality, he’s stalking women, entering and snooping around their homes when they’re not around, and returning when he’s comfortable enough with their routines to go in for the kill.
But here’s what Looky Loo doesn’t want to admit. He’s getting sloppy.
In the first film, one thing that really stuck with me was how he used his camera for reconnaissance. At first, it seems like he’s just filming his voyeuristic activities for the thrill of it. But if you really think about what he’s doing, he’s playing things smart. He films very specific things when he goes into a house. You catch glimpses of calendars, he goes through junk drawers and medicine cabinets, looks for potential murder weapons, and comes up with potential escape routes.
He’s also scoping out places to hide once it’s time to strike. He takes the footage home and reviews it so there are no surprises. In other words, he’s sizing up the joint from a safe distance once he has what he needs, giving him intimate knowledge of his victims’ daily habits and floor plans. He’s planning everything out in advance, giving him a horrifying advantage over his victims.
Our Killer’s Sophomore Slump
In the lore that Looky-Loo: Part II establishes, there’s now a popular snuff film playing at drive-in theaters that features footage from the first film. The sequel itself opens in the home of his next victims, an older married couple who don’t match his usual victim profile. Up to this point, Looky Loo has always gone after young, attractive women, but there’s a personal stake in this opening sequence. He’s playing a news broadcast featuring a man saying that if he ever got his hands on the killer, it’d be game over. When the camera zooms out, it’s clear that this is the same man Looky Loo currently has bound and gagged.
After finishing off the man and his wife, Looky Loo reaches into a puddle of blood and writes “Part II” on the refrigerator, because in his mind this is just another film project, and this is the most badass way to come up with a title card.
I’m not going to go into the granular details and do a full breakdown of Looky-Loo: Part II, but there are a couple of things to consider about our killer’s mental state that I clocked while watching the upcoming sequel. He’s getting careless. He doesn’t appear to be constantly editing footage anymore, which suggests he’s less cautious when entering his victims’ homes. He gets spotted and nearly overpowered on more than one occasion. He starts interacting with objects in his victims’ houses that could easily blow his cover before he’s able to satisfy his sadistic urges.
Looky Loo’s check engine light is illuminated, which tells you he’s not even taking care of his getaway vehicle despite planning to escalate. He shows up in public places with his camera, presumably in plain clothes, though we only ever see his shadow. Again, careless. There are also several sequences involving a woman who is either his next victim or someone he hires so he can work out his fantasies in a controlled environment before doing it for real. In these scenes, she sits awkwardly on a bed, reads his poetry, and tries on various outfits and wigs that match his preferred victim type. Strangely, she doesn’t seem scared, but almost sympathetic toward him.
Like its predecessor, Looky-Loo: Part II has sparse dialogue and features long tracking shots, heavy breathing, and the sound of footsteps scraping along the sidewalk. Occasionally, while hiding in somebody’s closet, he turns off the camera to conserve battery life. When he starts recording again, it’s clear that time has passed, and he’s about to do something terrible now that everybody is asleep and completely unaware of his presence in the one place they’re supposed to feel safe.
Most disturbing, though, is the same sick rush I had while watching this film that I had with the first one. Zink makes the deliberate choice to have viewers follow the worst protagonist imaginable. He’s a horrible person. He’s mentally unstable. He’s done nothing but stalk and kill throughout the entire runtime. But the important thing that you need to consider is that Looky Loo is the protagonist, so you feel compelled to see his story through, and, to a degree, see him succeed, because that’s how storytelling works. The protagonist is usually the hero. Here, he’s the exact opposite. Everything he does is reprehensible, but you stay invested because it’s the story you’re following. In a way, his sick and twisted fantasy of being famous comes to life because you’re watching him build out the lore in real time, and you can’t help but hope it’s a great story.
That’s what makes the Looky-Loo films so messed up and fun to watch. By design, you’re forced to root for the bad guy, and that’s exactly what he wants.
As of this writing, Looky-Loo: Part II is wrapping post-production, and a release date has yet to be announced. To prime yourself for what’s to come, you can stream the first Looky-Loo for free on Tubi.
Entertainment
Star Trek’s Most Ambitious Villain Helped Create The Franchise’s Most Complex Hero
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
When Star Trek: Voyager first came out, the most fascinating character was the Doctor. While Robert Picardo’s performance was superb, it’s fair to say this character was mostly fascinating on a conceptual level. We had seen things like hypercompetent Starfleet captains and exotic aliens before, but what we hadn’t seen was a fully holographic chief medical officer. Voyager’s Emergency Medical Hologram seemed like the perfect embodiment of the Star Trek ethos. He’s a technological strange new world and new life, all rolled into one.
However, what casual audiences didn’t realize is that the Doctor wasn’t completely unique. Long before Picardo’s character ever sawed bones in the Delta Quadrant, Captain Picard dealt with another extraordinary hologram: Moriarty, the brilliant foe of the famous investigator Sherlock Holmes. Over on The Next Generation, Geordi LaForge accidentally created this villain as a sentient hologram when he asked the holodeck to create a challenge worthy of the android Data. Later, Star Trek: Voyager executive producer Jeri Taylor revealed that, in-universe, the holographic Doctor was created because Starfleet took advantage of the same accidental breakthrough that created Moriarty!
It all started in “Elementary, My Dear Data,” the Next Generation episode in which the titular android and Geordi LaForge recreated Sherlock Holmes’ adventures on the holodeck. Thanks to his positronic brain and his encyclopedic knowledge of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes novels, Data is able to easily solve every mystery that is thrown at him. That’s when Geordi makes a seemingly simple request. He asks the Enterprise computer to develop a holodeck foe that could actually defeat Data, one of the smartest beings in the entire galaxy.
The computer obliges and creates a sentient version of Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’ greatest foe. Following Geordi’s instructions, the Enterprise computer included much of Data’s vast programming, which resulted in the holographic character becoming self-aware. Moriarty ended up threatening the Enterprise on two different occasions, and Picard eventually got rid of him by trapping the unknowing villain in a simulation where he thought he had left the holodeck and could explore the stars. This was meant to be a happy ending for Moriarty, but in the show’s typically bleak fashion, Star Trek: Picard later showed us a different, more hostile version of this character created by a malevolent Section 31 AI.
How A Villain Created A Hero
What does all of this have to do with Robert Picardo’s holographic Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager? Elementary, my dear reader! Very early in Voyager’s development (the show didn’t even have a name yet), executive producer Jeri Taylor was inspired by Moriarty to create a new character. As reported in A Vision of the Future-Star Trek: Voyager, Taylor wrote down notes for a holographic doctor “who, like Moriarty, has ‘awareness’ of himself as a holodeck fiction. He longs for the time when he can walk free of the Holodeck.”
A few days later, she wrote down additional notes that contain a startling bit of Star Trek lore. “The Holo-Doctor represents a new, state-of-the-art technology which has capitalized on the serendipitous incident which created Moriarty, and has programmed a holographic character which has self-awareness of his situation and limitations.” While Moriarty is name-dropped on Voyager a couple of times, the show never mentioned what Taylor’s notes seem to confirm: that Lewis Zimmerman could never have created the Emergency Medical Hologram program if not for Geordi LaForge accidentally creating Moriarty on the holodeck.
From Villain To Leading Man?
If that’s not strange enough, there was a period of time when Voyager’s producers were considering making Moriarty a mainstay character on the show. As reported in Star Trek–Where No One Has Gone Before, Taylor’s notes mentioned that “everyone agreed that was a little too broad, and we couldn’t figure out why anyone would take him along.” After dismissing the idea, they decided “that having a holographic doctor with the full consciousness of being a hologram might be fun, and we’d never done anything like that before, except for Moriarty.”
There you have it, gentle reader. Without the character of Moriarty on Star Trek: The Next Generation, we’d never have the Doctor on Voyager. In this way, Trek’s most ambitious villain helped create the franchise’s most complex hero. Thanks to Jeri Taylor’s notes, we also know that, in-universe, Lewis Zimmerman would never have been able to create the Doctor if not for Geordi accidentally creating a sentient Moriarty so Data could have fun. In retrospect, this does make Zimmerman’s arrogance that much weirder. After all, he has a lot of attitude for someone who owes his entire career to the two biggest book nerds in the galaxy!
Entertainment
Moon phase today: What the Moon will look like on April 19
After days of almost (and complete) darkness, the Moon is finally starting to reappear. We’re currently in the Waxing Crescent phase of the lunar cycle, which means each night until the Full Moon we’ll see it get more illuminated from the right side.
What is today’s Moon phase?
As of Sunday, April 19, the Moon phase is Waxing Crescent. Tonight, 5% of the moon will be lit up, according to NASA’s Daily Moon Guide.
Despite more of it now being illuminated, the percentage of surface is still too little to be able to spot any surface details. Check again tomorrow.
When is the next Full Moon?
The next Full Moon is predicted to take place on May 1, the first of two in May.
What are Moon phases?
NASA states that the Moon takes about 29.5 days to orbit Earth, during which it passes through eight distinct phases. We always see the same side of the Moon, but the amount of sunlight reflecting off it changes as it moves along its orbit, creating the familiar pattern of full, partial, and crescent shapes. We call these the lunar phases, and there are eight in total:
New Moon – The Moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (in other words, it’s invisible to the eye).
Mashable Light Speed
Waxing Crescent – A small sliver of light appears on the right side (Northern Hemisphere).
First Quarter – Half of the Moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-Moon.
Waxing Gibbous – More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.
Full Moon – The whole face of the Moon is illuminated and fully visible.
Waning Gibbous – The Moon starts losing light on the right side. (Northern Hemisphere)
Third Quarter (or Last Quarter) – Another half-Moon, but now the left side is lit.
Waning Crescent – A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.
Entertainment
Ryan Gosling’s R-Rated Netflix Thriller With An MCU Budget Is Worth Its Weight In Shootouts
By Robert Scucci
| Published
After watching 2021’s Kate, the almighty algorithm threw 2022’s The Gray Man onto my radar, and I can’t say Ryan Gosling has ever disappointed me, so I figured I may as well give it a shot. He has a built-in level of charisma that lets him do his thing, and most of the time it lands. Going into the Russo brothers’ film expecting to see $200 million well spent on action sequences, with the added bonus of Gosling in the mix, I didn’t quite know how things would play out, but I had a hunch I wouldn’t feel let down.
But here’s the problem with straight-to-streaming action thrillers. Films like The Gray Man never get much time on the big screen, and they kind of need it if you want to enjoy them at the highest level. Across roughly 400 theaters, the film only brought in $454,023, which isn’t really its fault. It had a very short run across a disproportionately small number of screens, meaning it was never meant to recoup its budget this way. It’s a Netflix Original, designed to pull huge numbers on streaming.
The reason I see this as a bad thing is because this is an expensive movie. MCU expensive. Waterworld expensive. When that much money goes into blowing stuff up in spectacular fashion, I want to see it on a giant screen. Living in an apartment, I don’t have a fancy audio setup because my neighbors would murder me if I did, and my 44-inch TV is fine for most things, but less than stellar when entire city squares are getting leveled with all guns blazing.
Long story short, The Gray Man is a lot of fun, but it would be even more fun if you could watch it the way it was meant to be seen.
Let’s Not Get Bogged Down By The Details
The Gray Man also has an extremely convoluted plot. Not in a “too many twists” kind of way, but it’s a “load up the guns, spray and pray” kind of movie that would have been better served by simplicity. It’s executed well, but as side characters keep getting introduced in the second and third acts, part of me gets annoyed that I can’t fully shut my brain off because there’s always a new name or face to keep track of after the blasting has already started.
Ryan Gosling is a black ops agent known as Sierra Six, formerly Courtland Gentry. He was locked up as a minor after murdering his abusive father, and CIA officer Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton) decides he’s the perfect candidate for a second chance. The deal is simple: Courtland works for him in exchange for his freedom, knowing he’ll be dealing with some very dangerous people.
Once things get rolling, Sierra Six teams up with Agent Dani Miranda (Ana de Armas), and the first mission we see involves assassinating a target named Dining Car (Callan Mulvey). Complications arise when the job goes sideways and Dining Car reveals he’s also part of the Sierra program before succumbing to his wounds. A flash drive gets passed off with vague instructions, and the wild goose chase begins, centering on CIA officer Denny Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page), who sends a swarm of operatives after Six and Dani to retrieve it.
Along the way, we get more backstory on Six’s relationship with Donald and his niece Claire (Julia Butters), who Six previously worked security detail for. This obviously becomes important later because more collateral has entered the equation. The scenes between Six and Claire offer a surprisingly wholesome break from the chaos in Prague, and they’re a welcome addition.
From here on out, you pretty much know the deal. Double crosses stack on top of double crosses, things explode, and there’s so much inter-agency confusion over who’s good and who’s pulling the strings that you almost wish they’d ease up on the exposition and just keep blowing stuff up.
Solid, Pulse Pounding Action Thriller
The Gray Man’s budget absolutely shows on screen from start to finish. The action sequences are gorgeously shot (something that’s not always consistent across Netflix Originals), and at one point Sierra Six is standing on top of a moving tram, firing through the roof while tracking targets through reflections in nearby windows as the city flies past. This comes after he’s handcuffed to a railing in a town square, picking off attackers before they even get a chance to take him out.
Ana de Armas wielding a shotgun after throwing hands is also worth your time because she fully commits when the moment calls for it.
The only real issue I have is the film’s tendency to overload its premise with complexity for the sake of it. Most people don’t turn on action thrillers to do mental gymnastics. At least I don’t. I love psychological thrillers when I want things to get murky, but with action movies, I just want to sit back and watch things explode.
The convoluted plot isn’t a dealbreaker, just a nitpick. Some people enjoy sprawling shadow government conspiracies. It’s just not really my thing, so take that with a grain of salt. It’s still a great watch, just not one you can fully sink into the couch for and completely turn your brain off.
The Gray Man is a Netflix Original, and you can stream it with an active subscription.
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