Hellmington centres on Detective Samantha Woodhouse, distressed over the recent death of her father and tormented by a forgotten yet mysterious case of the disappearance of a former high school classmate. In order to piece together the puzzle of the latter, Samantha reconnects with her past while she’s in town for the funeral; including meeting old acquaintances and people who were close to her late dad.
Through Black Spruce, most of the time, is on the right track. Unfortunately, its disappointing streaks are during the final stretch of the film.
The “found footage” horror sub-genre has had its fair share of stinkers, but movies don’t get much lazier than 1st Summoning, an entry that seems to be as anti-audience as it is anti-climactic. Here’s a movie that sheepishly grits its teeth, waiting for viewers to pity it.
A Breath Away emerges in the midst of a growing number of films dedicated to portraying the horrors of environmental disaster. Timely as it is horrifying, A Breath Away is an emotionally-charged thriller that broadly follows the algorithmic pattern set by previous disaster films, and has little to say ideologically about its central issues.
By: Trevor Chartrand Written and directed by Jon Keeyes, The Harrowing is a supernatural thriller that lacks nail-biting tension and edge that would keep viewers hanging on every word. Despite some decent visual effects and cinematography, the film fails to truly inspire fear from its audience.
An adventure is difficult to endure when it’s lacking thrills or fun. A film made by unenthused people is hard for an audience member to get wrapped up in. Antidote, a supernatural thriller starring mixed martial arts powerhouse Randy Couture, is an example of both unsavoury moviegoing situations.
Number 37, which recently premiered this summer at the Fantasia Festival, proves an old argument: some films should not be remade. In this case, director Nosipho Dumisa has updated and resituated Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller Rear Window within the generic contours of the gangster sub-genre.
A J.J. Abrams production is like the latest hipster eatery: they take a lot of effort to put together and people apparently like them, but once you have experienced one, it becomes apparent just how incredibly overrated they are. This is why I’m always so wary of these productions, and why his latest produced feature has been such a surprise – Overlord, directed by Julius Avery, is actually enjoyable!
Extracurricular (DIR. Ray Xue) As the Canadian pop-punk band Sum 41 once sang, “motivation, such an aggravation.” That seemed to be Ray Xue’s complaint as well when he was directing Extracurricular, which is the only way to explain why anything in this film happened. Long time readers may recognize the number one rule of TAD: if a film is having its world premiere here, it will be terrible. This is not a knock against any of…
