She breathed in the salty air and pulled off the band that held her hair in a ponytail. The sky, a deep foreboding grey; the sea, dark and ominous, with waves growing choppy - she inched into the water. The wind howled, whipping her ebony-black hair in horror. Deadpan, she paused, gazing at the horizon where the sky and sea collapsed.

“Do I really want to watch one girl struggle to get a rock off another for an hour, thirty minutes?” Was the question I asked myself before hitting the play button. But then, I was kinda intrigued by its premise - a deep-sea survival thriller with only a few characters and minimal dialogue and I badly wanted to see how well the director could work with it. Survival films, when done right, can be intense, claustrophobic and emotionally raw no matter how minimal it seems. Well, after my decision to give it a go, I hoped I was going to be gripped.

Judging from the title before venturing in, I was expecting a holiday thriller film whereby secrets of family members will be revealed, there will be an emotional moment, suspense and then a blissful reunion for a resolution but what I didn’t expect was the deliciously wicked experience it surprised me with. I was horrified and thrilled to my bones. Eli Roth, I had to make a mental note of the name for this purpose, the director of this film really brings to life a film that surprisingly balances humor, brutal kills and a slasher vibe that feels nostalgic yet fresh.

I like it when a horror film doesn’t rely on cheap jump scares but would rather dig its claws in with dread that creeps beneath the skin and this movie pretty much leans into the latter. With a premise that’s as anxiety-inducing as it is fascinating, this film creates an atmosphere where fear becomes a physical limitation. I went in expecting a solid, tense thriller, it delivered but not more than I expected anyway.

I never knew I was going to learn a whole lot from reading just one book. The author here delivers a profound and deeply personal exploration of identity, migration and the African diaspora through the lens of a journey across China. I mostly don’t enjoy nonfiction as I feel most of them, especially the ones I’ve come across come in essay forms and they’re boring. But there is something different about this one. Maybe it’s in the author's picturesque descriptions of events or prolly her ability to adopt a fictive approach in her narration. There’s also a unique voice to this book. One that blends journalistic precision with emotional depth. I mean you literally feel the events as if you time traveled to those times and watched everything unfold.

Directed by Scott Mann, this movie is one of those high concept survival thrillers that relies more on atmosphere, tension and nerve wracking visuals than plot complexities. It takes a very simple idea of two friends trapped on top of a 2000-foot TV tower and just stretches it to an anxiety filled 107 minutes. I expected to be bored after reading the intro as the movie mostly concerned the survival of the girls atop the tower but surprisingly, I wasn’t bored out at all. My palm sweated and my stomach twisted the whole time, which of course is evidence of a good film.