Rob Grant’s Harpoon is another entry in the perennial argumentative-people-stranded-on-a-boat sub-genre, and it’s a cut above the average. It is, however, a stranger to subtlety, and juvenile at times, but it’s never boring and consistently bold in its narrative choices. Take the opening scene for example. Richard (Christopher Gray, “The Mist” TV series) storms over…
Remember the opening of John Carpenter’s “The Fog”? A salty old man tells a spooky story beside a campfire, perfectly setting the folkloric tone, and then Carpenter introduces his sinisterly serene seaside town like it’s a sleeping, snoring creature . . . Well, do not expect such magical mood-building with Mary, a damp fishnet of…
Haunt was written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, writers on “A Quiet Place”; and while this is similarly high concept, it couldn’t be more different in tone. It aims for brisk, bloody and blackly comedic, and on those terms it delivers. The conflict in “A Quiet Place” was as much psychological as…
It’s Sam’s (Hayley Griffith, “Five Years Later”) first day delivering pizzas, and what a day — and what a night — it will be. She must deliver to a property in an exclusive estate — specifically, the residence of a Satan-worshiping cult, led by the fearsome Danica (Rebecca Romijn, “X-Men 3 – The Last Stand”)….
Red Room starts somewhere in Dublin, as a woman named Kyra (Amy Kelly, “Red Rock” TV series) walks home alone at night. A lost cellphone rings on the tarmac. She picks it up. Distracted, she’s grabbed from behind and bundled into a van. She wakes up in a room, locked in chains, along with two…
Christmas Blood is rather a bland title. Perhaps in translating from the native Norwegian — the snappier “Juleblod” — they could have jumped to the unused moniker of “Silent Night, Deadly Night”: “Slayride.” Reinert Kiil’s film is very much in the same ballpark as the 1984 seasonal “classic” (there aren’t that many slasher flicks where…
There is a certain tension when it comes to reviewing comedy-horror. Criticize its more risible aspects and there’s an inherent get-out-of-jail-free card in the fact that it’s spoofing that which we usually take seriously. Therefore, what use is serious criticism? And serious Ugly Sweater Party is not. The blooper reel at the end of Aaron…
