Canadian

What should have been a crappy thriller is actually saved by unexpectedly solid acting. This is the kind of film a younger Jodie Foster might have been in, in between her more prominent roles. It's not "The Accused", it's not even "Panic Room", but it might be "Red Eye".

A young woman working late on Christmas Eve has car trouble and winds up trapped in her building's underground garage with the increasingly unhinged attendant. That's it, that's the entire plot.

Where this movie breaks away from the pack is the slow and deliberate way the villain slowly metamorphosizes from a bumbling nice-seeming guy to an absolute psycho, and the performances, which require a surprising amount of range and depth for a film like this. Both characters somehow manage to convey some depth and variety of emotion; when the villain tells her, "I like you. I would never hurt…

An entertaining zombie comedy that plays something like "Pleasantville" if it was directed by Tim Burton, or "Lassie" if it was written by George Romero, or just the most twisted Disney picture ever. Small-town politics and "boys life"-type adventures play out in an alternate 1950s where a zombie apocalypse has been overcome with technology that prevents them from wanting to eat living people, resulting in them becoming docile and being adopted as servants or pets. And we all know how reliable technology is...

It's fun, pretty well done, the usual Canadian slight cut above average, and keeps just enough of both the stock zombie film tropes and stock wholesome, saccharine '50s family picture tropes to create amusing irony while it charts its own path.

This entry in the "something's wrong with the children" horror subgenre is demented. It seems in terms of story and production like a scary movie aimed solidly at children, and yet, it's far too scary for any child. And it's strange enough, and likable enough just for so thoroughly being what it is, that I'm reluctant to give away any spoilers.

It gets undeniable points for originality—if nothing else, what's wrong with the children in this one being different from what's wrong with them in any other film like this. I don't know who looked at a children's playground and saw, in their mind, the idea for this movie, but to them I say, bravo for being so weird... weird enough that I don't even want to give away any more details of the conceit than I have.

Truly, the whole endeavor is just a little bizarre, and it's…

This is one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen... to a point.

This movie about a suicidal man driving around in a car looking for an opportunity to kill himself when the ghost of a young girl appears in his passenger seat starts as an execrably "indie", pretentious, artsy, low-budget enterprise of the sort I usually hate. And for maybe the first very long half hour, that's what you get. I looked at the clock at the 30 minute mark and questioned whether I could do another 90 minutes of it. Lots of film effects, not much else happening.

But, first off, I noticed something strange: this low-budget pretentious crap movie about a guy driving around in a car had a full-on orchestral score more appropriate for "Raiders Of The Lost Ark". So I began to pay attention. And after the dreadfully long first act... it actually got…

Family of trappers living in the wilderness, Dad and daughter are into it, Mom's maybe getting tired of it, when a wolf starts raiding their trap line, and to say any more would spoil it. Rack up one more above-average flick for the Canadians. What starts off seeming like "wilderness family gets threatened by natural or unnatural monster" veers off into becoming a seriously dark backwoods noir that only very slowly builds to where it's going. It's far from perfect—sags in the middle a bit, and feels a little like something was left on the cutting room floor somehow—but, draws on Canada's apparently abundant pool of oddly engaging unknown actors, and manages to develop into something fairly original. Could be a low-key cult classic. By the very end, it tilts full-on into gore, but only at the very end, and by being somewhat demure up until that point—such as only…

Assassin takes over other people's bodies to kill her targets. Another small-but-satisfying Canadian sci fi thriller, well-cast with a bunch of no-name actors. David Cronenberg's son, and I called this one as Cronenberg-related without knowing I was right, although I wasn't sure, because this was a little better than Cronenberg Jr's last film. Still self-consciously strange, strangely retro, and with some brief unexpectedly gory scenes this time, but definitely showing some maturity and self-assurance that was missing last time. I liked it, and had one of those rare endings that I actually liked better after I thought about it for a minute... it wasn't a good enough film that a bad ending wouldn't have ruined the whole thing, but it was a good enough film that a good ending redeemed the whole thing. If Cronenberg Jr's next film is as much better than this as this was than his…

Ok, slightly better than your average captivity/stalking in the back woods movie, but I don't know how much of that to chalk up to quality (usually totally lacking in this sort of movie) and how much to me being personally suckered by having a the psycho captor/stalker be a hot lesbian instead of a grungy redneck. Still, the acting is decent, the minimal cast (4 characters in the whole movie, two of whom are only seen for a few minutes) is good. It's Canadian, surprise. Also, at one point, one of the characters plays a strangely good single-note blues song. I've really got to look it up and see if it's a real song, or just written for the movie, or what. [Edit: Found it. Bloodlet by Munroe.]