PET SEMATARY: BLOODLINES 15

★★★★★ OUT NOW DVD, BD, DIGITAL, PARAMOUNT+

EXTRAS ★★★★★ Featurettes

If there’s one truism about Stephen King adaptations, it’s that no matter how bad one may be, there’s always scope for an even worse follow-up. Although this Paramount+ prequel to the 2019 Pet Sematary do-over is no The Mangler Reborn (at the very least, Bloodlines is competently made), it’s continually undermined by a clunky script full of tired tropes and stock characters. After four films, none of which has lived up to King’s harrowing novel, it’s high time Hollywood let this franchise rest in peace.

ALL YOU NEED IS DEATH 15

★★★★★ OUT 19 APRIL CINEMAS

Rich in atmosphere and mythology, this offbeat effort from Irish writer-director Paul Duane (Very Extremely Dangerous) is a literal folk horror. Protagonists Anna (Simone Collins) and Aleks (Charlie Maher) tour rural Ireland, collecting old songs that have been passed down through the ages, to sell on to a mysterious organisation. But when they hear a tune by elderly recluse Rita (Olwen Fouéré), sung in ‘whatever it was that came before Irish’, dark forces are unleashed…

Budgetary limitations aside, the film weaves an impressively uneasy spell.

SWEDE CAROLINE 15

★★★★★ OUT 19 APRIL CINEMAS

There are slim comedic pickings in this British mockumentary about competitive vegetable growers, for all the plucky charm that Jo Hartley (This Is England) lends to her titular role as an amateur gardener whose hopes of taking on the professionals are cruelly squashed. Not to be outdone, Caroline plants a mega-marrow, only to see her greenhouse raided: the cue for a somewhat strained farce in which a couple of private investigators (Aisling Bea and Ray Fearon) with a taste for bondage-based sex parties add an unnecessary element of crudité.

BLUE FINCH, CONIC, PARAMOUNT, PICNIK, UNIVERSAL, VERTIGO

KUNG FU PANDA 4 PG

Po things…

★★★★★ OUT 28 MARCH CINEMAS

It’s been eight years since we last saw Po, the adorkable panda with a penchant for martial arts, on the big screen. And it’s been 16 years since the franchise (one of DreamWorks Animation’s most resilient) debuted. But while Po is at the peak of his spiritual mastery, and on the lookout for a new Dragon Warrior to succeed him, there’s no grand reinvention of the material here. Instead, this is an amiable retread of the series’ tried-and-trusted formula.

Fellow masters the Furious Five are absent this time, making way for a streamlined buddy pairing between Jack Black’s Po and corsac fox thief Zhen (Awkwafina). Meanwhile, the new villain is The Chameleon (an enjoyably menacing Viola Davis), who can absorb others’ powers. Her ability to transform into formerly vanquished foes gives this fourquel a greatest-hits quality (though of the former baddies, only Ian McShane returns vocally).

Black and Awkwafina are as effortlessly funny as ever (and James Hong and Bryan Cranston are another good-value pairing as Po’s dads), while the somewhat conventional journey is never too far away from another zippily choreographed fight scene. KFP4 doesn’t push any visual/narrative boundaries in the way its DWA stablemate Puss in Boots: The Last Wish did. Still, it’s another breezy adventure that comfortably delivers on the necessary physical comedy and cartoony martial arts.

THE VERDICT Jack Black and Awkwafina are a fun pairing in a sprightly sequel that never leaves its comfort zone.

OUR SON 15

★★★★★ OUT NOW DIGITAL

Affecting turns from Luke Evans and Billy Porter as two fathers battling for custody over their eight-year-old son elevate Bill Oliver’s otherwise workaday drama. From the moment Porter’s stay-at-home dad Gabriel files for divorce from Evans’ workaholic Nicky, Our Son dutifully hits a string of familiar emotional beats – as if its cinematically uncommon scenario were enough to set it apart from its genre peers. Yet the two leads locate hidden depths in their respective archetypes – enough, perhaps, to wring an unlikely tear or two.