Movie Reviews

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.

Fairly mediocre woodlands pursuit pic. Bachelor party on a camping trip in the woods when someone starts shooting at them. They run. The shooter keeps shooting. For another 90 minutes.

There's two kinds of horror movies. There's the ones that start with "a kill" and the ones that don't. This one does. That's how you know it ain't literature. That said, I really want to like this movie, not least because so many people do. And, it does have a few things going for it: really good early John Carpenter-like cinematography, a really good 70s analogue synth early John Carpenter-like score, and in Maika Monroe the most likable heroine since Jamie Lee Curtis. I get why people like it. However, it also lacks, er, just about anything else. The "plot" is as thin as it gets, thinner than "Final Destination" which was thinner than an onion skin. Basically, a curse is passed along where if you are a gorgeous teen who has sex with another gorgeous teen who is cursed, you get followed by a creature bent on killing you…

OK, the setup is, a silent cowboy is essentially trapped in a Chuck E Cheese, battling sentient, murderous animatronic characters. Oh, wait, also: the cowboy is Nicholas Cage, which changes everything. This film knows exactly what it is, and remains unapologetically true to itself all the way through. Such a ludicrous idea doesn't need to be excessively overdone, and so it mostly isn't, it's just done and the natural excess of the whole idea is let speak for itself. I really kinda love this movie. Plus, you've got a movie in which Nicholas Cage has to be Nicholas Cage without uttering a single word of dialogue, which, ok, I can take or leave Nicholas Cage, but he's the man for the job in this case.

Seriously funny, geeky series about an alien abduction support group in Beacon, NY disappointingly ends after 2 seasons in a cliffhanger but is nonetheless well worth watching if you're into geeky sci-fi humor. Should be a cult favorite.

Surprised to find out this was David Cronenberg. Seemed more like Robert Altman doing one of those "look how horrible film industry people are" films that's primarily entertaining only to film industry people. I did notice it was among the more engrossing of those, but, still. Even the likable cast (Robert Pattinson notwithstanding) couldn't really keep me interested. Julianne Moore won some sort of big award for her performance as a vapid aging star in this. It was almost as weird as seeing her as a porn star in "Boogie Nights", and she basically managed to make even that work somehow, so, ok.

Overdubbed polish film with only its slightly odd, foreign tone and charming cast to set it apart from the usual psycho-picks-off-campers-in-the-woods flick.

Spike Lee does a horror movie, after a fashion, as well as his best impression of a European art filmmaker, in this remake of 1973's "Ganja and Hess". After a scuffle, a well-to-do doctor returns from the dead with a thirst for blood, plot gets tough to follow after that. Ok, I guess, considering I've never liked a Spike Lee movie. Definitely looks good visually without seeming too try-hard on that front. If this had been someone's first-time outing I'd have been impressed; from a very experienced director I say "meh". Great soundtrack, though.

Taylor Schilling's kid speaks Hungarian in his sleep. He's possessed by the soul of a psychopathic murderer out to claim the final victim who got away. That is all. Taylor Schilling makes it ok, actually.

I'm generally not a fan of "so bad it's good" films, but, my god. Except for the White Zombie-sounding tracks in the otherwise analog synth soundtrack, this 2017 film is a note-perfect simulation of gloriously over-the-top 1980s USA Up All Nite-style supernatural gorefest fare. Two gorgeous secret agents descend into a prison modeled after Dante's Inferno and full of psychotic and/or supernatural killers. Bill Moseley, Sid Haig, Adrienne Barbeau, Dee Wallace, Michael Berryman, and every one of them chewing the scenery like they're loving every minute of it ... this one is kind of the exception that proves the rule. It's very, very hard to make a camp movie like this that I can sit through, but this one takes it so far, and takes itself so ridiculously seriously, that it accomplishes what few can. I would never recommend this as a movie for anyone else to watch, but for…

Just re-watched this movie, which I remembered as being pretty good, after many years. It's funny how different it plays in post-Trump America. It could almost be a parable. And the stereotypically smug, condescending, aloof liberal (to judge by their horror at someone owning — gulp — a gun!) city couple doesn't come off as innocent as they did the first time I watched it... to the extent that I was a little disappointed that, rather than make a controversial observation, aloofness simply wins in the end over brute physicality and living perhaps just a little too much in-the-moment, and apparently without even being really changed in any substantial way by the experience. But, after a slow start, the acting is every bit as good as I remember, and the movie actually raises a lot of interesting things to think about, all of which elevates it above the exploitation flick…

Fridge logic abounds as a sheepish yuppie gets convinced by a suddenly-reappeared-after-years old friend to spend a weekend at a mysterious self-improvement program in this rip off of "The Game" x "Fight Club". Mediocre film that might have worked if you have never seen those is ruined further by a nonsensical coda at the end.

Comic artist, just released from an insane asylum, kills those he feel ruined his life. Entertaining enough comedy-horror. First you need to know it stars Barry Bostwick and Karen Black, which tells you part of the story, and then that it stars Kevin Corrigan, which tips the film into the hoped-for one of the two places it could go given that first fact. Kevin Corrigan, who, yes, you do know who he is, has pretty much only ever been in watchable movies, near as I can tell.

You know, I kind of liked this movie. What should have been a standard C-grade teens-getting-picked-off-in-a-remote-location horror movie packs some genuine creepiness in there, as teens in the deserve inadvertently summon a... well, it never explains exactly what the "Hisji" evil entity really is, but it can fuck with electricity and confuse the hell out of its victims before offing them. More about building mood than jump scares or gore, and while it isn't a great film, or even a very good one, it definitely has that going for it, and I liked it for that. Way less crappy that, say, "Candyman". In fact, not really crappy at all, just kind of... only-moderately-unambitious, at worst. The AV club has a pretty good review at https://film.avclub.com/one-of-the-biggest-horror-movie-scares-of-the-year-happ-1835452053, saying all the scares happen in well-lit scenes, and that this is not "don't go in the basement" horror, which is a good way of…

Pedestrian, entirely forgettable police procedural/haunted house flick as the story of a film crew (natch) filming inside a haunted house was murdered is told in flashbacks as Maria Bello interviews the lone survivor.

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

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.

Middling thriller about a young couple who rents a house from a landlord who has cameras all over it and a soundproof cell in the basement.

Woman survives intrigue and lust in the woods in post-zombie-apocalyptic drama with almost no zombies. Drama, not a horror film. Pretty good actually.