Movieacados! I consider myself to be fairly ‘in the know’ when it comes to movies. I pay attention and even seek out movie news to a level best described as ‘keen’ but without spoilers if they can be avoided and I do my best to avoid spoilers… I nope out at first hint of incoming spoilers, like if you are somewhere and you see someone inexplicably walking down the road fingers planted in ears “I’m not listening lalalalala I’m not listening”, that is probably me avoiding spoilers. Spoiler avoision aside, I follow news on studios, directors, casting and more than one actor and to a lesser extent: trailers. I follow trailers less since I want as little spoilers as possible, no more giving the end away like the second Avengers trailer thank you very much. Even cool things that do not ‘spoil’ the story are much cooler if you see them for the first time in the movie like when Darth Maul pulls out the double lightsaber the first time would have been so much cooler if I did not see it in the trailer.

But even my eyes are not everywhere, and try as I may I cannot keep up with all the new news. So a few times a year I get completely blindsided by a new movie that I should have had at least some level of awareness off but for whatever reason did not. Now when I say blindsided that might be a little bit of an overstatement, but I legit had no idea another 28 ______ Later movie was coming out this close to the 2025 release and yet this Friday here comes 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. Admittedly I am a little out of the loop on these movies having only seen the first one, but I should have had an awareness of this movies existence much sooner than a couple of days ago. At the very least as a genre fan (particularly horror) I should have known something about it around the time 28 Years Later came out under normal circumstances, but for whatever reason I did not until I looked to see what was being released for this weeks prompt topics (I imagine it is a series of mishaps where I just missed an ad, or a trailer or whichever by like 6 seconds each time). And honestly, as much as I don’t like feeling like I missed something, missing something often often leads to happy surprises, and I love happy movie surprises more than I dislike the missing something feeling. Finding the existence of a movie in this manner is like finding money. You find like 10 bucks and you feel like the most lucky person in the universe (still ironically can’t afford a movie ticket at most theatres with 10 dollars), finding movies is a very similar feeling.

And this all leads into this weeks prompt: What movie(s) can you remember to be happily surprised in their existence? Essentially it should be a movie that you had no awareness of (and given your tastes you probably should have known about it) until either it was released and/or you discovered it’s existence, watched it and enjoyed it immensely.