[4] Mary Lambert returns to direct the sloppy, uneven sequel about new characters who discover the burial ground with resurrection powers from the first film. She’s working with a solid cast that includes uber-baddie Clancy Brown (Highlander, Carnivale), Anthony Edwards, and T2 rising star Edward Furlong. There are a handful of inspired moments in the movie, including some beautiful outdoor cinematography from Oscar-winner Russell Carpenter, …
[7] Charles Laughton plays H.G. Wells’ mad scientist in the first film version of The Island of Dr Moreau. It’s a reasonably faithful adaptation until the halfway point, where it gets as loose as the Demi Moore version of The Scarlet Letter. Wells’ provocative suggestions about man’s animal nature remain largely submerged in the movie’s Saturday matinee atmosphere. Leading man Richard Arlen (so striking in …
[3] A doctor working on a cancer cure in the Caribbean discovers a snake venom that turns his patients into zombies. Beneath the Lewtonesque title is a gitchy rip-off of James Bond meets the Scooby Doo Mysteries. It’s not nearly as bad as it could have been. The script moves remarkably well on its fumes of inspiration, the soundtrack is groovy, and some of the …
[7] A frantic man (Ezra Godden) stumbles into a Spanish coastal village where the inhabitants are metamorphosing into sea creatures. As far as Lovecraft adaptations from Stuart Gordon (From Beyond, Re-Animator) go, I like this one best. The script is tight and Gordon demonstrates remarkable directing chops in sustaining tension and suspense for what is, for the most part, one big chase. Godden is engaging …
[3] A young housekeeper learns that her boss’s daughter is instructing zombies from a nearby graveyard to kill at her command. There are some neat moments and ideas in this mess of a movie, scenes where the housekeeper dreams she is dancing with a scarecrow, and the climactic zombie siege for example. But the film falls victim to a horde of B-movie ailments, including wooden …
[5] Blair Witch is a sequel that plays out more like an amped up remake of 1999’s now-classic The Blair Witch Project. More kids are going into the Burkittsville woods where the legend of the Blair Witch is still very much alive. This time, it’s so that a young man can find out what happened to his sister (one of the characters from the original …
[4] An American family moves into a British mansion with an old woman (Bette Davis) whose young daughter disappeared over thirty years ago. When the American family’s two daughters begin hearing and seeing things, it quickly becomes obvious that Davis’ daughter is trying to communicate with them through supernatural means. The mystery is so paper thin here, you’ll be ahead of the movie the whole …
[6] Zack Snyder (300, Man of Steel) made his feature directorial debut with this remake of George Romero’s 1978 classic zombie sequel. This time around the rag-tag team of survivors holed up in a mall during the zombie apocalypse includes Sarah Polley (The Sweet Hereafter) and Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction), but you don’t get to know either of them nearly as well as you got …
[8] Michael Mann (Miami Vice, Heat) brings Thomas Harris’ novel Red Dragon to the big screen, introducing movie-goers to Hannibal Lecktor for the first time. Manhunter stars William Petersen (CSI) as an FBI profiler trying to stop a serial killer dubbed ‘The Tooth Fairy’ before he kills again. To stop the mad man, Petersen’s character decides to solicit the help of another mad man — …
[7] Fede Alvarez (The Evil Dead remake) directs the hell out of this claustrophobic thriller about three horrible, stupid, awful twenty-somethings who break into a blind Gulf War veteran’s home to steal $300,000, only to realize they’ve severely underestimated their opponent. Hollywood hasn’t released a thriller this tense in a long time — that’s the good news. The bad news — at least for me …
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