It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for your movie release heads up. Here’s what new feature films are coming to South African cinemas this weekend, in addition to more episodes of Bible series The Chosen, and this week’s R50 Throwback Cinema re-release at Ster Kinekor, Meet Joe Black.
The biggie release for the week is whimsical family comedy IF, which is going by full title Imaginary Friends locally. Directed by A Quiet Place’s actor-turned-filmmaker John Krasinski, Imaginary Friends sees a young girl named Bea (Cailey Fleming) gain the ability to see people’s abandoned imaginary friends, referred to as “IFs”. Bea then discovers that her neighbor, The Man Upstairs (Ryan Reynolds), has the same power, and they set out to reunite the IFs – voiced by the likes of Steve Carell, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Louis Gossett Jr., Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, and Maya Rudolph – with their humans.
Read our full Imaginary Friends review here.
On the opposite end of the genre spectrum there’s horror prequel The Strangers: Chapter 1. After their car breaks down in an eerie small town in Oregon, a young couple (Madelaine Petsch and Froy Gutierrez) are forced to spend the night in a remote cabin. Panic ensues as they are terrorized by three masked strangers with no mercy and motive. Renny Harlin directs this dark home invasion tale, with Chapters 2 and 3 already filmed and waiting for release at a future date to tell a complete three-part narrative.