The best thing about Grizzly II: Revenge is how its hilarious marketing completely blindsides the audience. The lost 80s sequel to 1976’s thriller Grizzly has been promoted as a vicious horror starring a young George Clooney, Laura Dern, and Charlie Sheen. Those Oscar winners, and Charlie Sheen, certainly show up within the first few minutes to only be mauled by a man-eating grizzly bear by the following scene.
Liam Neeson has been playing a variation of the same soft-yet-secretly-badass character since 2008’s Taken, and Mark Williams’ action-thriller Honest Thief is no exception. Neeson treads well-worn ground as Tom, a former marine-turned-bank robber who wants to turn himself in and start a new life with his girlfriend, Annie (Kate Walsh). His attempts to make amends don’t exactly go as planned when the FBI agents sent to take him in decide to keep the money…
In Ravers, a bad batch of energy drinks are cracked into during a night-long party at an abandoned factory. Once consumed, the partiers begin twitching, “bugging out”, and eventually become violently belligerent with superhuman strength. Given that everyone is already shoulder-to-shoulder, with some who are already high on street drugs to begin with, the danger escalates quickly as our main heroes (including Becky, a germaphobic journalist) fight for survival.
Come Play feels like a natural throwback to traditional horror, where filmmakers build creative lore for a creature new to the genre. In this case, the monster is “Larry”: large, scaly, and looking for a companion. Larry zeroes in on Oliver (Azhy Robertson), a non-verbal outsider with Autism who struggles to make friends at school. We don’t know how long Larry has been observing Oliver for, but it must’ve been enough time for the creature…
By: Jolie Featherstone To Your Last Death is a high-tension trip in the line of recent genre-blending thrillers where a young woman cuts a swath through an army of those who would do her harm in a journey of survival and vindication. Think Ready or Not meets the Preacher graphic novel series, To Your Last Death throws a pacifistic activist into an ultimate death match where she must resort to a kill-or-be-killed mindset to survive.
Filmmakers like to carve out their niche. For instance, George A. Romero had the horror genre and, more importantly, he clung on to zombie culture. He was always experimenting with the undead. If his ideas didn’t pan out, he moved on to the next project with more ambition than before. In a similar vein, writer/director David Ayer (Suicide Squad, Bright) likes the action genre and, more importantly, he’s clung on to gang culture and its…
Ravage is essentially a campfire story for mature audiences: there’s a lot of build up, an unsettling suggestion of what could happen, and then a freaky follow through. What we learn throughout the film, however, is that writer/director Teddy Grennan and the film’s nincompoop producers are incapable of closing their set-ups. This is demonstrated by some earlier mini murders, making us apprehensive about its grand finale when a ludicrous torture chamber is invented and utterly…
Benjamin Ross Hayden’s futuristic sci-fi Parallel Minds begins with the invention of Red Eye 2, an improved ocular device that allows you to relive precious memories and record new ones. As the launch approaches, Red Eye researcher Margo (Tommie-Amber Pirie) works closely with the product’s head developer. In a shocking turn, the developer turns up dead; prompting a withered detective, Thomas (Greg Bryk), to look for answers behind the alleged murder. Margo assists him because,…
