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Top Gun
Top Gun is out. For the IPAD! Oh man I got your hopes up didn’t I?! I just made myself sad. In other news, yes Top Gun is out for the iPad not one of your nex gen systems. I’m a little late the game was released almost a month ago but I thought I’d fill you in. You can pick it up for 5 dollars.
The video shows you pretty much everything you need to know, and you can check out the features past the break. Like in most games nowadays you start out as a rookie in the Top Gun U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School. Once you graduate flight school the real game begins. Key Features
*iPad Optimized – Feel the need for speed with increased resolution, new exclusive content, and a redesigned user interface.
*Strap Yourself In – With Maverick and Iceman’s instruction, navigate the “Danger Zone” while engaging and obliterating enemy bogeys in the most action-packed jet shooter game for the iPhone and iPod touch to-date.
*Avoid the “Danger Zone“ – Incoming air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles as well as aerial and ground-based obstacles create multiple “Danger Zones“ that must be avoided. Flirt with the edge to rack up more points!
*Torch Your Enemies – Steer the fighter jet using the accelerometer to find enemies, draw a lock on to them and take them out.
*Push Your Weapons to the Limit – Strafe enemy ground emplacements with the F-22’s Vulcan cannons or take out MiGs with target-locking anti-aircraft missiles.
*Become the Best of the Best – Fly through 15 missions in a variety of environments, including oceans, deserts, canyons and city centers during the day or night.
*Earn Medals and Achievements – See who the real Top Gun is by earning medals and achievements while progressing through the game.
*Assign Your Own Handle – Create any moniker you like: Maverick, Iceman, Goose, etc.
*Blast to the Beat – Fly and battle to “Danger Zone” and other hard-hitting tracks
*Request a Flyby At Any Time – Top Gun features internal clock triggers, including a real-time day/night cycle.
*It’s Classified – Top Gun features unlockable content and Easter eggs. Volleyball anyone?
Let’s start with the good news. Lockbox looks far better than its misleading marketing materials suggest, a supernatural horror movie so darkly lit and color graded that you’ll have to squint your way through jump scares. It’s also anchored by reliable genre performers. That’s also about where the good news ends with this rote adaptation of Knifepoint Horror Podcast story “Winthrop.”
The empathetic Carla Gugino gives her all as Ellen, a saint of a woman with boundless patience who takes on life’s hard luck with a kind smile. After giving up her career as a fashion designer to become caretaker for a dying mother, she’s then forced to reinvent herself once more when her caretaker role ends. That catches us up to the events of Lockbox, where Ellen is asked to take in a cousin she hasn’t seen in quite some time who’s dealing with severe PTSD.
Just as Ellen finally establishes a real connection with Winthrop (Lou Taylor Pucci), it’s interrupted by the arrival of peculiar neighbor Vahna (Katharine Isabelle), who spells clear trouble. When Vahna shows up dead, it sets in motion a supernatural battle of possession.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
Director Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism, Prey for the Devil) and screenwriter Justin Yoffe approach Lockbox in the broadest of brushstrokes, dooming it from the start with clunky storytelling and woefully underdeveloped themes of heady topics like PTSD. Winthrop is a character that comes loaded with emotional baggage and trauma that’s piled on throughout his tragic life, but much like its title, his interiority and history are treated like a tightly guarded secret meant to prolong the supernatural mystery.
The problem here, though, is that Lockbox is too sparse to sustain mystery at all, and it instead robs Winthrop of characterization. It winds up trapping the talented Pucci without anywhere to go, toggling between wounded animal and mentally disoriented.
From there, Lockbox bounds through plot developments without any sense of stakes or purpose, peppered by a smattering of haphazard paint-by-numbers jump scares. The only unwavering constant is Ellen’s resolute faith, and Stamm seems to leave it entirely to Gugino to guide confused audiences through this inconsequential story right up until its supernatural climax.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
To give more credit, Lockbox at least injects an unconventional exorcism here; just don’t expect much in the way of explanation. When the film finally reveals the meaning behind its title, it dangles a fascinating carrot it has zero interest in delivering. More than a severe lack of fleshing out its characters beyond plot drivers or devices, this faith-based flick also seems terrified to offer any worldbuilding whatsoever.
Yoffe’s script stretches the short story beyond its means instead of fleshing it out, and Stamm fills out the gaps with cheap CGI scares and overwrought performances; Isabelle’s Vahna is beyond cartoonish in her villainy. It’s also pretty nonsensical, treating only Ellen’s faith with the utmost sincerity and largely squandering its typically reliable talent. So much so that the final imagery, pure sunkissed saccharine sentimentality, leaves you with the feeling that this horror movie might be better suited as an entry in Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Lockbox releases in select theaters on July 3, 2026.
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