Why do studios make sequels? The cynical among us, who have sat through too many sucky seconds in a series say it’s a cheap and easy way for the studios to cash in: if it sold once, it will sell again. Why else was Exorcist II: The Heretic made? Then there are those rare sequels […]
For a movie set on a gorgeous tropical island where the host has guaranteed to make your greatest desire come true, Fantasy Island sure does start off in a dark way by showing us a young woman being chased through a jungle by armed thugs. She makes it to the safety of the main resort […]
Hansel and Gretel is a classic fairy tale we all think we know. A brother and sister get lost in the woods. They get hungry. They find a house made of candy and eat their fill. Too late, they discover the house is the home of a witch who tries to cook them for her […]
With most of the award season films already released and no real big money box office tent poles scheduled to come out until at least March, movie studios have always treated January and February as the dumping grounds for films they don’t have much confidence in. Maybe they’ve been sitting on a shelf gathering dust […]
From the very opening credits, Underwater is an unnerving experience. Along with listing the cast and crew who made the movie, the credits are filled with news headlines and pull quotes that seem to be giving away all the juicy details of the movie you are about to see. You read about some evil corporation […]
A police officer enters a home to find an elderly woman in the kitchen dripping blood from her mangled, fingerless hands. A few seconds later the cop almost falls into the maggot riddled corpse of the man’s wife, propped up in an old armchair in front of the TV. What happens next? Nothing. At another […]
There are many reasons a person goes to see a horror movie. They want to be scared. They want to be thrilled. They want to be grossed out. Above all, they want to be entertained. Not many people go to a horror movie to be lectured, and while there should be no arguing against the […]
Not every horror movie needs to be a gore-filled, action-packed thrill ride; there’s a lot to be said for films that take the time to develop strong characters and build a slow-burn atmosphere of nail-biting tension that drives the audience to the edge long before anything actually happens on the screen. Lost Gully Road, directed […]
On the surface, Red Handed is the story of three estranged brothers whose trip to spread their dad’s ashes along the supposedly spooky Sazerac River gets derailed by a weird religious cult, lead by their creepy uncle (Michael Biehn in a glorified cameo), that plan to kidnap one of their children and use him in […]
First, let’s set aside that old movie fan trope about the novel being better than the book, or vice versa, that gets dusted off every time the “Based on a Novel by Stephen King” card gets flashed in the opening credits. It may be a fun way to pass the time waiting for the next […]
The idea, at least on paper, is terrifying. A woman, Marla Mae (Lisa van Dam-Bates), who has always wanted an IUD (intrauterine device) but for some reason has never gone to a clinic or seen a doctor, decides to let an old friend whose nickname is “Doc.” but who seems to have no other credentials, […]
It must have sounded great in the pitch meeting: It’s about an app you download to your phone that tells you how long you have to live. For most people it’s good news — “I’m gonna live to be 98!” – but one girl finds out she’s going to die in 2 days and so […]
It’s easy to see why a horror movie maker might want to set his story in a carnival haunted house: The jump scares come virtually prepackaged. If it’s a gag in the house designed to scare visitors in the film then it can also be used to scare the movie audience. As experience will tell […]
Sequels can be such a crapshoot. The good ones take a story you already love and advance it in new and interesting ways. The bad ones simply rehash the original in unoriginal ways, leaving the audience cheated of both their money and their memories of what made the first movie so good. Although there are […]
Directed by Maria Lee Metheringham, Pumpkins is a fun little movie. It’s not very scary, mind you, but there’s something special about it, something in the DIY ethics you feel in every frame, that makes you want to root for it despite its shortcomings. Set in the pasturelands of the north of England, Pumpkins tells […]