Victorian-style seance story told exclusively through acting and sets. Dreadfully boring, dreadfully British. Nothing happens at all for the first hour.

Self-consciously bizarre, surreal, Gilliam-esque bit of fluff about a guy who builds a labyrinth our of a refrigerator box in his living room which is larger on the inside than the outside, takes on a life of its own and is full of peril and monsters. Seems like it is supposed to be a kids movie, but, has cursing and a vagina. Entertaining for what it is, though. (EDIT: Ah! Written and directed by Calvin and Hobbes's creator Bill Watterson. That makes perfect sense.)(EDIT 2: No. It's a different guy named Bill Watterson. Still, would have made perfect sense.)

Have you ever seen a Stephen King TV adaptation before? This is actually one of the better ones, which isn't saying much, since every King TV adaptation except for the few great outliers is terrible. Harry Anderson with a cheezy mustache, John Ritter with a full beard, Richard Masur's disembodied head talking, that should tell you all you need to know. Oh, also, it's 3 hours long.

If you're going to watch a slasher movie, it's going to be a slasher movie, no matter what. Given that, it might as well be "Maniac". Character-driven, for one thing, and told from an unusual first-person perspective of the villain, played by the always-strangely-likable-even-at-his-most-degenerate Elijah Wood. Plus a really authentic-sounding '70s-style analog synth soundtrack.

Ok, now I get why Eli Roth's name is known. His first film, a surprisingly good entry in the vacation-gone-wrong/gorgeous-teenagers-menaced-on-a-trip-to-the-woods gore flick, because the primary villain is not a monster but a flesh-eating disease. There's some unfortunate stereotypical murderous rednecks, and while they threaten to overpower it, they never do. Some predictability keeps this from being a great picture but it's definitely a cut or two above the ilk I expected it to be just like. Much better than Hostel, which I thought was more the work of a hack than most other people seemed to. I see why Eli Roth might have been considered a promising horror director at the time.

Ghost of a little girl holds the gorgeous members of a film production company captive in their office and kills them one by one in cartoonishly horrible ways. sub-mediocre, formulaic with occasional bits of humor. A charismatically bloviating Billy Zane as the director. Probably not quite "USA Up All Night" quality.

A brother and sister go to check up on their increasingly unhinged army vet brother, living up at their lakehouse, to find him having sealed himself inside, acting irrational and claiming he has a killed "pod" trapped in the basement. Increasing creepiness is negated by a sort of insensible final act.

Gaby Hoffman in a lesbian retelling of Rosemary's baby, except nowhere near as good.

Comedy. Hilarious satire of the "evil rednecks massacre gorgeous kids in the woods" genre, told from the actually good-hearted rednecks' point of view.

The cloyingly overcute Rebecca Rittenhouse, far less effective playing a nice character than she was playing an intimidating gorgeous snob in The Mindy Project, as a convoluted, forced sitcom idea of a "psychic" who has to constantly deal (and force her friends to constantly deal) with "visions" which seem less like glimpses of the future and more like plot devices to drive dramatic developments. Never has such a good cast (Kerri Kenney Silver, Chris Elliot, Nichole Sakura nee Bloom) been so wasted on vacuous rom-com piffle.

That charismatic guy who played Nick in "New Girl" stars pretty much by himself as a guy who has to complete a list of trivial tasks to inherit his mom's cabin (leave a nasty note for her boyfriend, call "the one who got away" and apologize, hike to her favorite spot). Which, if you find Nick from New Girl entertaining, is basically enough to justify a movie. Or, 2/3 of one, apparently, because finally they fall back on a boring, sentimental ending that seems to be there mostly because the movie did have to end at some point.

I'm halfway through this laughably implausible piece of shit. This movie takes itself sooooo seriously, all somber score and intense acting performances, as if it doesn't realize that a thriller about an evil mastermind high school student who apparently has the whole world cowering in terror before his evil mechinations to get straight A's would be totally absurd even if every scene didn't seem so thoroughly contrived and unrealistic. Like sure, a nice girl would act like a slut and try to come on to her teacher just because she was told by an evil genius classmate that the teacher was into her, and then, when the teacher absolutely rejects her, let the classmate dictate a love letter for her to give him that will change his mind which, just coincidentally, also happens to read exactly like a suicide note. Or, sure, a teachers wife would never, ever question why…

1994: Imagine a slasher movie based on a series of popular teen novels. Ok, you've got it. Not bad for what it is, just _is_ what it is.

The USA-Up-All-Night-iest slasher flick ever. The rare movie that is so trashy I kinda liked it for being so bad. That doesn't happen to me much. (edit: apparently this is some sort of cult favorite that I've never heard of because I generally have no interest in trashy movies.)

Anarchy: "Escape From New York" with less charisma.

Milla Jovovich, who must be Hollywood's least charismatic leading lady, fronts a correspondingly leaden take on ufo abductions or some such nonsense, made worse by half the movie being pretend "documentary" footage, followed or often even split-screened with "dramatic recreations" of the same scene for no adequately explained reason.

Ridiculous, hamfisted, but a charismatic cast kind of save this ridiculous attempt at making a "Get Out" for Latinos. An emergency order results in the arrest of all children of illegal immigrants, with an offer to drop all charges if they help out for three months at a creepy senior center. It only gets more ridiculous and unbelievable from there.

Robot "Mother" raises human "Daughter", the supposed last human, bred to repopulate the world following an unspecified apocalypse, until Hillary Swank stumbles in from outside. I give them credit for being able to maintain interest with a cast of just 3 characters, one of whom is a robot, but there was some fridge logic. It was enjoyable, and definitely big-budget and well-made. Still, nowhere near as good as "Ex Machina", although it seemed to want to be.

Give it points for originality... the Duplass brothers have managed to put out another unique film. A couple heads to a rural estate for what seems like it's going to be an excruciating (for the viewer) weekend of relationship dynamics, until they discover that, each time one of them enters the backyard guesthouse, they find it occupied by an idealized doppelganger of the other, and things continue to get pleasantly weird from there. Some unfortunate fridge logic and a few predictable turns and narrative lapses don't ruin it from being somewhat entertaining, and it certainly goes a few new places. I've got a thing for clone stories, having dated a few myslf, which probably helped give this one a leg up for me.

Ripped from today's headlines! A virtual assistant begins acting like a (non-diegetically) weird-looking girl's mother, soon convincing to kill everyone who's done her wrong. Basically, this is like an after-school movie, except with lower production values, and a bloodier ending.

Kind of suprised this isn't considered a "kids horror movie" classic, a la Goonies. 1980s kids horror movie, starts off sucking pretty bad for a good bit of its length but eventually goes so far over the top it lands in "so bad it's good" country. The special effects and creature are noticeably good for claymation.

Terribly edited movie in which a dead ringer for Prince invites a bunch of gorgeous 20somethings to his mansion to smugly torture them psychologically into killing each other with his investigative knowledge of their pasts and incredible insight into their character flaws, driving them to murder, interspliced with clips of Prince's ensuing interrogation by gorgeous police detectives.

effective cinematography and performances save what could have been pretty middling. A norwegian film with voiceovers that manage not to be as distrating as overdubs usually are, in which a postapocalyptic millionnaire invites the starving public to his hotel for a show where layer upon layer of deception unfold. Could have gone either way, but I liked it.

What a disappointment. Starts off beautifully, and initially is one of the most cinematically realistic portrayals of ordinary teenagers I think I've seen, up until the point where roughhousing with a sword results in an accidental death. At that point I was still loving it and expecting to love it all the way through. Then what could have been an exploration of the aftermath basically goes nowhere, as the accidental killer starts killing others for no reason, until he gets caught, and the movie just ends. The realism holds up throughout, which is nice, but in terms of plot there's no there there. The body of the first victim is never even discovered, there's no conequences, no development, no reason given, nothing.

irreverent, deeply irreligious low-budget spoof about a bumbling Satan, yes, *that* Satan, trying to scheme his way back into heaven. Kind of charming and funny. Guaranteed to offend the devout. Avoid if you are offended by scenes of your preferred deity having gay sex.