Movies
‘God Is a Bullet’ Review – Maika Monroe and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau Shine in Unrelenting Gauntlet of Violence
Writer/Director Nick Cassavetes channels the same grit of Alpha Dog for his latest, God Is a Bullet, adapted from Boston Teran‘s based-on-true-events best-selling novel. Only this time, the filmmaker doubles down on the bone-shattering violence… and the runtime. God Is a Bullet uses the sleazy criminal world, a talented pair of leads, and visceral violence to offset a straightforward narrative.
Bob Hightower (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) lives a simple life in an affluent suburban town. He’s a desk cop and a doting dad who still has a close relationship with his ex-wife. That changes when Bob finds his ex-wife brutally murdered and his teen daughter kidnapped by an insidious, satanic cult. The only lead to finding them comes from Case Hardin (Maika Monroe), a former cult member turned escapee. Case sees Bob’s predicament as a chance for closure, particularly when sparing his daughter from her fate. The pair embark on a dangerous bid to stop cult leader Cyrus (Karl Glusman, Watcher) once and for all and retrieve Bob’s daughter before it’s too late.
The first act in the lengthy 2.5-hour thriller plunges Bob, and the viewer by proxy, into the deep end of Case’s nihilistic world, a seedy underbelly of depravity. Cassavetes captures the brutal sexual assault of Bob’s ex-wife and her subsequent murder with an unflinching eye, and it’s only the inciting event. As a prickly, assertive Case ruthlessly acclimates Bob to her world, flashbacks trace her traumatic past to her steely present. Only when Case seeks help from former pal The Ferryman (Jamie Foxx) does her icy demeanor thaw just enough for Bob to find common ground with his opposite.
Bob and Case’s tenuous alliance provides the foothold into this grisly revenge story, and that only deepens as their gruesome, grim encounters with various members of Cyrus’s righthand enforcers yield more bloodshed. Maika Monroe impresses with a detached aloofness and strong will that makes Case laugh at her tormenter as he kicks her teeth out or willingly gives her body over to violence while giving glimpses of heartbreaking pathos buried beneath the heavily curated defense walls. Through Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s determined yet noble Bob, those walls slowly erode, resulting in a fascinating pair of protagonists that easily retain rooting interest no matter how far they venture into hell.
While the protagonists effectively get complex arcs over their harrowing journey, the same can’t be said for the antagonists. Cassavetes may have an eye for staging brutality that induces sympathy pains, and it builds to a breathtaking fireworks extravaganza of explosive violence in the third act; but the filmmaker mistakes violence for personality in his villains. Karl Glusman feels miscast as Cyrus. The actor nails intimidation through a highly volatile short fuse. Still, when surrounded by sleazier henchmen played by Ethan Suplee, Brendan Sexton III, Garrett Wareing, and Jonathan Tucker, it’s hard to grasp why the paper-thin villain has such a chokehold on the criminal underbelly. The cult aspect is not explored beyond quick flashes or glimpses of ritual aftermath. An argument could be made that it’s ultimately Bob and Case’s story, not Cyrus’s, but the lengthy runtime only highlights the hollowness of the villains.
God Is a Bullet is a gauntlet of gory, sometimes stomach-churning violence. Cassavetes only eases up enough to let the quieter character moments between Bob and Case breathe before throwing them into the dark, black abyss of even more unthinkable violence. The filmmaker’s staging and the natural charm and charisma of Coster-Waldau and Monroe, no matter how buried under grit and tattoos, offsets the otherwise familiar setup. It’s visually engaging, but its runtime only exposes the underdeveloped story facets and characters. Even more so with a lengthy epilogue tonally at odds with the rest of the grimy feature. It makes for an uneasy yet fascinating watch, and Cassevetes’ approach to the violence ensures a cult following for this cultish revenge tale.
God Is a Bullet releases in theaters on June 23, 2023.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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