From John Wick to the Anti‑Action Movie
For the past decade, the modern action boom has been defined by escalation: bigger set pieces, higher body counts and heroes who slice through waves of enemies. The John Wick creator film Normal, written by Derek Kolstad and directed by Ben Wheatley, deliberately swerves away from that formula. Wheatley has called it an anti action movie because the violence does not primarily spring from a super‑competent protagonist mowing people down. Instead of the main character “forcing everything through,” Normal plays like a hostile environment that turns against everyone, including people we like. The result is still a high‑octane crime thriller, but the catharsis is complicated. Rather than cheering on an invincible hero, audiences are left uneasy, laughing one moment and recoiling the next, as the film quietly dismantles the power fantasy baked into most action spectacles.
Final Destination Energy: Dread Instead of Heroic Payoff
Normal’s most radical twist is how it structures its set pieces. Wheatley compares the movie’s accidental deaths to a Final Destination‑style chain of mishaps, where freak occurrences kill characters instead of clean, heroic takedowns. That shift turns traditional action rhythm on its head. Instead of building to triumphant finishes, scenes often end with shock, abrupt loss and darkly comic timing. You may think a character is being set up as a long‑term ally, only to see them abruptly dispatched by environmental chaos. The movie still delivers the visceral kicks audiences expect from a crime thriller, but it embeds them in a mood of dread and inevitability. The town of Normal becomes the real antagonist, a lethal puzzle box that punishes anyone who steps into it, and in doing so, it questions whether violence on screen is ever truly under the hero’s control.
RZA’s One Spoon of Chocolate and Grindhouse‑Style Revenge
If Normal pulls action inward, RZA One Spoon of Chocolate charges in the opposite direction: loud, stylized and knowingly pulpy. Written, directed and produced by RZA, this revenge action thriller follows Shameik Moore’s Unique, an elite former soldier and ex‑convict trying to restart his life in a small Ohio town. A racist sheriff, missing young Black men and a buried conspiracy pull him back into violence. The Red Band trailer leans hard into grindhouse style action: unashamed film grain, overt violence, snappy editing and a swaggering tone reminiscent of the exploitation‑flavored cinema RZA and Quentin Tarantino both love. Billed as “revenge has never tasted so sweet,” the film mixes blistering fights with winking one‑liners and genre riffs. It is a self‑aware crowd‑pleaser that embraces blood‑soaked payoff while also highlighting the social rot that makes its vengeance feel both satisfying and bitter.
Satire, Self‑Awareness and the New Revenge Playbook
Normal and One Spoon of Chocolate sit on different ends of the stylistic spectrum, but both are intensely genre‑aware. Wheatley’s anti action movie undercuts the fantasy of the invulnerable hero; chaos and accidents rob Ulysses of narrative control, turning him into a fallible figure swept along by carnage. RZA’s film, meanwhile, leans into the revenge action thriller template—a wronged veteran, a corrupt town, a bloody reckoning—then amplifies its grindhouse excess until it borders on satire. Stylized gore, razor‑sharp banter and Tarantino‑tinged flourishes let viewers revel in the violence while staying conscious that it is a constructed, almost cartoonish catharsis. Both projects treat action tropes like toys to be dismantled and reconstructed. Whether through dark irony or gleeful exaggeration, they invite audiences to laugh at, question and still enjoy the conventions they grew up loving.
The Furious and the Spectrum of Modern Action
At festivals like Panic Fest, you can see how wide the action spectrum has become. Kenji Tanigaki’s The Furious represents the other pole from these deconstructions: a straight‑ahead, bone‑crunching martial‑arts showcase built around a simple rescue plot. Mute handyman Wang Wei teams up with journalist Navin to dismantle a human‑trafficking ring, and the story mainly exists to string together punishing, expertly choreographed fights. Viewers are promised “nonstop bone‑crunching action” that will leave them wincing and cheering, and star Miao Xie is positioned as the next big martial‑arts breakout. Placed alongside Normal and One Spoon of Chocolate, The Furious shows how audiences now have choices: pure impact, satirical grindhouse, or anti‑action dread. What unites them is a hunger for fresh angles—whether that means doubling down on classic thrills or twisting them into something stranger, funnier and more unsettling.
