With the advent of streaming, the volume of movies released has increased exponentially, making keeping up with them all pretty challenging. I try my best, but there isn’t always time to write longer reviews for each of them. So instead, here’s some quick takes on four movies that started streaming in the last week or so; one bigger budget action comedy and a trio of indie horror titles to kick off Halloween.

Mayday

During the Cold War, cocky American Naval pilot Troy Kelly (Ryan Reynolds, playing the same character he always does) is sent on a top-secret reconnaissance mission over Russian airspace. His jet is detected and shot down in a genuinely thrilling sequence, leaving him stranded in hostile territory. Well, mostly hostile. Luckily for him, he is discovered by obsessive Americophile Nikolai Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh, in a Russian accent that comes and goes), who takes him in and offers assistance.

High tech US spy planes don’t fall out of the sky every day, and so the Russian government has of course noticed, sending forces into the woods to find him. Himself a former KGB agent, Ustinov knows they’ll be coming and so helps Kelly to stay one step ahead of them while also working to get him out of the country in the hopes that doing so will earn him asylum in America.

While the movie starts out with such over-the-top “Rah! Rah! America!” vibes as to be uncomfortably close to propaganda, that thankfully turns out just to be setup for a more honest representation of the gray areas of conflict. Aside from a scene that sees the duo hiding in a Russian official’s closet, much of the comedy is middling at best, with one’s enjoyment of the jokes being overly reliant on how tired of Reynold’s usual schtick the viewer has become. The spy plot is intriguing however and the big action set pieces are expertly handled by writing / directing duo John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. Few will come away from Mayday thinking it a new action-comedy classic, but it’s still a fun way to spend a couple hours which would have been even more fun to have seen on a big screen. ★★★½

Rated PG-13 for violence and action, some strong language, suggestive references, and smoking.

Mārama

After receiving a mysterious letter offering answers about her Maori roots, Mary (Ariāna Osborne) travels to a remote manor in Victorian Yorkshire. There she finds Nathaniel Cole (Toby Stephens), a wealthy widower, living with his son Arthur (Jordan Mooney) and granddaughter Anne (Evelyn Towersey). He explains the author of the letter has passed from disease, but finds her intriguing and offers her a job as young Anne’s governess. Mary accepts, hoping to get further answers, but the truth she seeks may prove more disturbing than she could have imagined.

Taratoa Stappard’s folk gothic is dripping in atmosphere, using genre tropes, an eerie score, and a strong cast to good effect. But pacing and editing issues mar the experience and while the flourishes of Maori culture and the film’s interest in the horrors of colonization freshen things up a little, this is by and large still the same old musty manor we’ve seen countless times before. Those new to the gothic genre will likely find some of the plot developments surprising, but everyone else will have figured out the ending long before Mary does. Still, there’s enough good here to make this worth a watch. ★★★

Not Rated. Contains strong violence, gore / bloody images, rape, thematic content, and brief mild language.

Deathwoods

After his live-in girlfriend ghosted him Scott (Anthony Dain) has been down in the dumps. To try and cheer him up, his friends decide to take him on a weekend camping trip in the woods. Unfortunately for him, said friends are all assholes, apart from the equally depressed Michelle (KateLynn E. Newberry) who has been brought along as a potential romantic match. Even more unfortunate, the woods are being stalked by a masked maniac, intent on murdering anyone in their path.

The kills are vicious and the gore effects are often surprisingly well-crafted, but much of Deathwoods is a slog to sit through. Almost every character is a complete moron and the acting is a decidedly mixed bag. The leads are decent enough, and a group of hostile rednecks that enters the forest becomes amusing in a campy, early-John-Waters-film sort of way, but most of the rest aren’t missed after they’re dispatched.

Worse still, directing duo Jake Kopronica and Deryk Wehrley prove utterly incapable of generating fear or suspense, though they do pull off one genuinely effective archery-related jump scare. Die-hard slasher fans and gorehounds may find something of value in this—the drive-in movie theater cards “from the management” at the opening are kind of cute—but most viewers will want to stay out of these woods. ★★

Not Rated. Contains graphic violence, gore, nudity, sexual references, strong language, drug references, and thematic content.

Penny Lane Is Dead

As they prepare to head off to college, a trio of friends led by Penny Lane (Bailey Spalding) head out to her family’s remote beach house for a goodbye party of sorts. The festivities are interrupted however when Penny’s dysfunctional cousin Kat (Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn) decides to crash the get together. The group reluctantly admit her, but she quickly wears out her welcome by playing a reckless prank. They finally throw out only for her to return with her much older, clearly dangerous boyfriend and two of his cronies and the night takes a dark and deadly turn.

The cast are uniformly great and aside from a few flashes of obvious CGI the film looks more expensive than it likely was. That said, if you’ve seen one home invasion / revenge horror movie you’ve kind of seen them all, and writer / director Mia Kate Russell doesn’t really offer up anything new here. She does manage to generate decent amounts of dread and suspense, but the villains are SO distressingly cruel that when their expected comeuppance is finally delivered it winds up being much too underwhelming to be satisfying. ★★★

Not Rated. Contains strong bloody violence, gore, sexual content including rape, pervasive language, thematic content, and drug use.