Last summer, director James Wan gave us a terrifying dramatization of a true haunting in Burrillville, Rhode Island in “The Conjuring” and scared the pants off summer moviegoers. Yet again, his quality horror moviemaking transformed into huge box office payouts and introduced the world at-large to paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. Renowned in the…
As a screen icon, Dracula has been reinvented over and over again. And many more overs. He’s been everyone from Bela Lugosi to Judas Iscariot and fought veteran vampire killers that range from the brilliant Buffy to the middling Blade at his lamest. He’s drawn the acute attention of such filmmaking masters as Murnau and…
When Kylie Bucknell is sentenced to house arrest for her part in the robbery of an ATM, she thinks that living with her estranged, overbearing mother will be her biggest problems. The noncorporeal resident of the house, however, has other plans in this horror comedy from New Zealand, Housebound. Kylie (Morgana O’Reilly, “We Feel Fine”)…
In The Shower (now retitled “Killer Party”), a group of Los Angeles suburbanites gather for a baby shower, only to find themselves in the middle of a pandemic that appears to change people into roving zombies. Alex Drummond’s directorial debut is amusing, but the plot and action are stretched a little too thinly for a…
Just in time for the Halloween season comes The Paranormal Diaries: Clophill, another run-of-the-mill paranormal investigation film involving a group of people exploring a haunted locale with cameras that capture a whole lot of nothing until the last 20 minutes of runtime when the obligatory creepy occurrences abound. But while this basic description holds true,…
You can say this about Life After Beth, the indie zombie romantic comedy (zom-rom-com?) by first time director, Jeff Baena: Aubrey Plaza (2012’s “Safety Not Guaranteed”) makes for a great zombie. With her deadpan delivery and soulless eyes, she doesn’t have to do much to look and act like the dead reawakened. Don’t get me…
As Above, So Below is a found-footage tale chronicling a group of young explorers who descend deep into the bone-infested catacombs beneath Paris in search of treasure and historical artifacts. For a found-footage movie, it’s not too bad, with some real heart-stopping moments and genuine shock. It’s a little light on plot, despite the initial…
