Pins and Needles
Studio: Filmhub
James Villenueve
Jun 21, 2025
A skinny premise that devolves right into a rip-roaringly unhealthy time, Pins and Needles is a survival thriller that throws its diabetic heroine right into a life-or-death disaster as she’s hunted inside the house of a mustache-twirlingly evil couple. It places its medical premise entrance and middle to drive the plot, however with one substantial difficulty: there appears to have been completely no understanding of diabetes or how one manages it. There’s suspension of disbelief, after which there’s simply ridiculous storytelling.
Even setting that apart, Pins and Needles is marred by astoundingly goofy performing, questionable character choices and motives, repetitive dialogue, and plot holes that transcend camp and veer into simply plain unhealthy territory.
Max (Chelsea Clark) is a organic analysis scholar on a highway journey for a distant examine with a classmate. In a little bit of exposition, she briefly explains her insulin-dependent diabetes and the way essential it’s to have her treatment. When a spike strip blows out their tires, they’re pressured to hunt assist at a bizarrely post-modern mansion within the wilderness. As soon as the occupants—Frank (Ryan McDonald) and Emily (Kate Corbett)—arrive, Max’s companions are ruthlessly dispatched, and he or she’s pressured to evade her pursuers. Max should navigate a residence’s chilly hallways, concealing a lab of horrific human wellness experiments. A looming medical disaster worsens this cat-and-mouse sport. How can she evade her hunters, get her treatment, and escape intact?
Pins and Needles prides itself on a breakneck tempo with a basic remaining woman trope, racing towards time to outlive. Whereas the premise could seem serviceable, the execution wastes any potential. The narrative regularly journeys over its personal setup. You could discover this overview retains mentioning Max’s insulin-dependent diabetes—that’s as a result of the movie does so each six minutes. The writers deal with the viewers as in the event that they want fixed reminders by way of voiceovers, flashbacks, and repeated dialogue. There’s additionally an exhausting quantity of “as you understand, Bob” exposition dumps. Some traces don’t even sound like they had been written for precise individuals, similar to: “I don’t know what it’s wish to not be the neatest man within the room.”
The medical science is shaky at greatest, and there’s by no means a transparent motive why Frank and Emily are experimenting on individuals or what their weird remedies are supposed to accomplish. Who’re they attempting to promote their formulation to, and why? Why would a diabetic scream when administering insulin? How typically does blood sugar should be taken?
Questionable character selections additionally undermine an in any other case respectable protagonist. Why is Max pressured to decide on between a flashlight and a knife when she has two palms? Why does she inject insulin in a clearly painful method whereas hiding inside ft of her pursuers? Why does she return to the home after escaping in a automobile? This isn’t simply weak storytelling—it’s poor filmmaking, straight-to-streaming or in any other case.
Villeneuve’s characters are so overloaded with tropes that their most memorable traits are how absurdly they’re carried out, particularly McDonald and Corbett. McDonald tries to channel a mix of Patrick Bateman, evil scientist, and Silicon Valley bro, and it simply does. Not. Work. Corbett, in the meantime, performs it with a bubbly psychosis that’s so over-the-top it circles again into being nearly entertaining. She tries to be grounded however over-delivers by about 500%. At one level, throughout a rage-filled try to strangle Max, she lets out what can solely be described as an precise “e-rawr!” Chelsea Clark does what she will be able to because the lead, however a horrible script in the end shackles her.
Author-director James Villeneuve turns in a cinematic lesson in how not to make a film. The shaky camerawork, poor visible high quality, and jarring modifying (assume unintentional soar cuts) really feel extra like a highschool movie mission shot on a mobile phone. I’m fairly positive a few of the gore results used literal spaghetti sauce—not a joke. The dubbing is painfully apparent in sure scenes, fully pulling viewers out of the second. The musical selections are tonally off, and scenes that beg for a soundtrack are left in awkward silence.
This was a tough watch. If not for the occasional burst of unintentional camp, there can be nearly no approach to endure it. The thought itself had potential in additional succesful palms, however the remaining product is an disagreeable expertise, even with its fleeting makes an attempt at satire. It’s robust to be this difficult on a movie, understanding how onerous productions could be, however this one feels phoned in from prime to backside. In an age of infinite streaming content material, Pins and Needles will seemingly get misplaced—and possibly that’s for one of the best. (www.filmhub.com)
Creator score: 1.5/10
