If you’re looking for a movie that’s going to scare the pants off of you, Mauro Iván Ojeda’s The Funeral Home isn’t it. Only the most sensitive and lily-livered viewers will be genuinely frightened by this Argentinian tale of hauntings and family drama. But what it lacks in terror, The Funeral Home makes up for in moderately creepy weirdness and old-school, vintage visuals.
Bring Me a Dream annoys me from all angles, but I’m also frustrated because I’m not qualified to criticize its lack of originality. The horror-thriller reminded me that I have never seen a Nightmare on Elm Street movie (aside from Freddy vs. Jason which is more of a collaboration than a standalone film). However, I’m familiar enough with the Freddy Krueger character to see similarities between Krueger and Bring Me a Dream’s derivative boogeyman the Sandman….
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.
Filmmaker Yeon Sang-Ho established an extremely dangerous threat with Train to Busan, his crowd-pleasing zombie movie which has since been claimed as a contemporary horror classic. His follow-up, Peninsula, continues the story of the deadly virus that continues to sweep South Korea through a team of characters who are all desperate for a new beginning. They believe their new future awaits them if they help retrieve $20,000,000 left in Incheon – a sum that will…
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…
Don’t count out Mass Hysteria as just another holiday comedy. What appears to be a silly, seasonal National Lampoon-copycat at first turns out to be a pretty funny and original horror-comedy worthy of an annual watch around Halloween.
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.
