Mr. Earth
Swing and a miss. A random man is picked to represent Earth before a tribunal of aliens evaluating whether to destroy it. Better-made than I expected, but, the first half…
Jules
Odd, fun little sci-fi/light comedy about an alien landing in an old man's flower garden in Pennsyvania. Ben Kingsley, Jane Curtin, and Harriet Sansom Harris, still a heavy hitter in…
Don’t Turn Out The Lights
A bunch of kids on their way to a music festival are trapped when there RV breaks down on a wooded stretch of road, a bunch of random hallucinatory things…
The Perfect Babysitter (2025)
TV-movie-of-the-week-quality thriller about a psycho babysitter bent on tormenting a family.
The Other
Subpar, but not awful, horror thriller. Mute adopted girl harbors a horrible secret that possesses her mother. It's her psychotic twin who she ingested in the womb. Don't worry, I…
The Unbinding
A talky, overlong mocumentary about a "haunted object" research team that encounters a strange wooden effigy that seems to possess supernatural powers. I feel bad slagging it off, because it's…
Transmission (2023)
A montage of late-night channel surfing slowly reveals a story involving aliens, a horror filmmaker's mysterious unfinished film, a haunted videotape, and a local outbreak of violence. Told entirely as…
Shivers
A phallic/fecal-looking parasite that causes uncontrollable, violent sexual urges spreads throughout an exclusive apartment complex. How's that for an opener? I just can't be objective about early David Cronenberg. I've…
30 Days Of Night: Dark Days
This unnecessary but not-completely-dreadful sequel keeps a lot of the visual style of "30 Days Of Night"—a movie I'm pretty fond of—so it scores points by me for that. This…
Sting (2024)
Surprisingly fun horror about a young girl who takes a spider from space as a pet, which causes problems as it grows. Starts off with a "Goonies"-type "kid movie" vibe…
Time Was
Young woman decorating a house to flip it falls for her designer. LGBT romance movie turns out to be a supernatural Christmas movie.
The Pines Still Whisper
Turgid folk thriller. A paranoid, controlling woman and her daughter live in a remote cabin. Strangers show up with the same tattoo on their necks as the mother. Drama ensues.
Saw II
I thought the first Saw was interesting, not great but good. I lasted maybe 20 minutes of this. It's just violence as entertainment... like, essentially gladiator games, except, it's supposed…
Masking Threshold
I'm sure this seemed like a cool idea at the time—the inner dialogue of a delusional scientist tormented by sounds only he can hear, as he slowly goes insane and…
The Twisted Death Of A Lonely Madman
Overwrought indie pic, filmed in black and white for extra artsiness, about an agoraphobic man who sits around his apartment obsessing over an actress. Of course, he eventually kills someone…
Little Nicky
Adam Sandler—get this—talks in a stupid affected voice! Hilarious, right? Actually, if not for him, and the fortunately mostly very short cameos of every single painfully unfunny person from about…
Holmes & Watson
The still-inexplicably-famous Will Ferrell does his usual job of unfunnily hamming it up, in this case sucking the talent out of a pretty star-studded cast of extras in this period…
Spread (2024)
Reasonably agreeable redemptive comedy about a progressive woman who gets a job turning around a porn magazine. Lots of charismatic actors. I've spent worse 90 minute stretches in front of…
Oh, God
A very '70s movie that I remember from my childhood as a comedy—c'mon, it has George Burns as God, appearing to John Denver as a man picked to be his…
Rain Man
Other than Dustin Hoffman's tic-filled, fairly convincing performance as an autistic savant, there's really not as much here as I expected. The constant tics get old fast, and Tom Cruise's…
But I’m A Cheerleader
Cute coming-of-age LGBT comedy about a Christian girl, improbably played by a young Natasha Lyonne, being set to conversion therapy. Some stunt casting, with LGBT icons like Mink Stole and…
10/31
Pretty cheezy horror anthology film that looks like it was made in the 80s, complete with tediously familiar eurodisco synth soundtrack. Witches, slashers, an obvious Elvira ripoff, etc. Kind of…
Fear Itself (series)
Strangely boring horror anthology series. Well-made, and some of it started off seeming like it was going to be interesting, but, while it wasn't terrible, somehow it had a bit…
Night Visions (series)
Fairly watchable Canadian early 2000s Twilight Zone-type anthology. Lots of recognizable faces & reasonably respectable actors involved (David Paymer, Miguel Ferrera, Mare Winningham, a million more. That sort of caliber.)…
The Deeper You Dig
Take a fairly boring tale of a mother of a missing girl, the man who accidentally killed her, and the girl's ghost all being mildly annoying to each other in…
Men (2022)
English folk horror. Very well directed but ultimately gives up narrative in favor of phantasmagoria, for an ultimately unsatisfying watch. I firmly enjoyed this movie for about 2/3 of its…
Panic Button (2011)
High-concept, sub-par execution thriller is basically "Saw" on an airplane with a social media morality play spin. Four people are put on a private jet, ostensibly because they won a…
The McPherson Tape (aka “Alien Abduction”)
Despite my hatred for "found footage" horror films, my interest was piqued by see that this was a "found footage" film from 1989—predating ostensible genre inventor "The Blair Witch Project"…
Banshee Chapter
I have no idea how they got Katia Winter and Ted Levine (who, by the way, once personally scared the shit out of me in a real life encounter) for…
Janus (2024)
Bottom-of-the-barrel zero-budget indie sci-fi about a mad scientist who kidnaps people to clone them for some reason. Notable only for having a twist ending I saw coming about 30 minutes…