[8] A 14-year-old goes home with a guy in his 30s. What follows is a nightmarish power struggle. Hard Candy is an intense character-driven thriller that succeeds primarily for the incredible performances of Patrick Wilson (Watchmen) and Ellen Page (Juno). The screenplay dives into murky moral waters, asking us to empathize with a young girl who inflicts torture and a grown man who may or …
[8] Frank Darabont dives back into the Stephen King well and comes out with a winner. The Mist is about a disparate group of people who end up trapped together in the local grocery store when a strange, scary mist suddenly engulfs the town. Anyone who travels out into the mist is killed by mysterious, unseen creatures. In addition to the apocalyptic angle, you can …
[8] Neil Marshall follows up his auspicious feature directorial debut, Dog Soldiers, with this all-female plunge into the claustrophobic depths of Appalachian caves. The Descent reminds me of From Dusk Til Dawn in that it’s really two completely different movies jammed together at the middle. The first half is harrowing enough just watching the women climb, crawl and wiggle their way deeper and deeper into …
[8] This monster movie from the creators of Lost and Felicity combines low-budget ingenuity with high-budget production values for a thrilling movie going experience. The whole film is hand-held ‘found footage’ documenting a group of friends’ attempted escape from Manhattan after the city is attacked by a raging leviathan. The monster’s design is fresh and original, and the young cast do very good jobs running …
[8] A pregnant woman waiting for the ambulance to pick her up from home must suddenly fight for her life when a scissor-wielding mad-woman invades her house with the aim of cutting her unborn baby from the womb. The concept of this French flick is unsettling enough, but what got me the most was the sheer volume of bodily fluids that ooze, drip and splash …
[7] Joel Schumacher (The Lost Boys, Flatliners) directs this weird, gloriously convoluted horror flick involving Nazis, the occult, and zombies — all on a farm in New England, beginning during World War II and ending today. As usual, Schumacher casts a hunk in the lead (God bless him). This time, it’s Henry Cavill from Man of Steel and TV’s The Tudors. Cavill and the cast …
[8] I was beginning to wonder if torture could ever be depicted in a movie without the movie becoming “torture porn”, without any other cinematic merit. This French horror flick answers my question. In Martyrs, torture isn’t just a dirty gimmick. It’s the thematic subject of the movie, where the reasons for torture are more disturbing than the act itself. The narrative structure is unconventional, …
[8] An austere Swedish import that is both a touching coming-of-age story and a disturbing horror film. Let the Right One In centers around twelve-year-old Oskar, a bullied boy who befriends a strange new girl whose arrival into the community just so happens to coincide with many strange disappearances. Oskar falls in love with the girl, all while fearing her tyrannical father — not realizing …
[8] Crazed hunters pursue an American mountain cyclist through the misty Austrian wilderness until all parties fall prey to a super-sick and twisted, almost supernatural character referred to as Mortis. Director Federico Zampaglione puts a few fresh spins on this mash-up of familiar tropes and proves downright masterful at building atmosphere and suspense. The scenes involving Mortis (Nuot Arquint) are a rare treat for horror …
[5] George Clooney and Cate Blanchett star in Steven Soderbergh’s homage to war-time film noir, right down to the black and white 4×3 Academy aspect ratio. Clooney plays an American military journalist who tries to figure out who shot his driver (Tobey Maguire) in Berlin, after Germany fell but before the atomic bomb. Then Clooney discovers he and Maguire have bedded the same woman, a …
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