Years ago, during the annual Purge — a 12-hour event held on March 21 during which all crime, including murder, is legal — a teenager survived the brutal slaughter of her entire family. She endured an unimaginable night of terror and torture, and now, as an adult in The Purge: Election Year, Senator Charlie Roan…
I was not alive to experience the impact “Jaws” had when it came out, but I am certainly aware of its influence and have seen it many times. So, going into The Shallows, I kept hearing from various outlets that it was “just like ‘Jaws’” or “the best shark movie since ‘Jaws’.” Granted, that isn’t…
Richard Vanuk (Daniel Falicki, “Devils in the Darkness”) is a guy who struggles. He’s struggling to pay his rent and keep his landlord’s thug son off his back. You could say he’s struggling to stay sober, but I think it’s more accurate to say he’s struggling to keep enough alcohol in the house to keep…
I’ll be the first to say the 2012 Tom Cruise actioner, “Jack Reacher” was a pleasant surprise. So much so that I wouldn’t have minded a sequel. Well, Paramount Pictures has delivered that sequel with Jack Reacher: Never Go Back. In the first trailer (provided by Paramount Pictures), Reacher’s (Tom Cruise reprising) tough guy bravado…
I feel horror movies have grown more derivative than innovative as of late. The recent influx of supernatural horror has begun to wear out the genre’s tropes, and while every once in a blue moon we get a critical and audience darling like “The Conjuring” that’s only after we finish wading through a litany of…
As I have written before regarding movies of this ilk, the trick to any decent film featuring magic, or an element thereof, is to walk a tightrope between being just a bit smarter than the audience (or at least SOME members of it) and not being too accessible as to reveal too much to them….
The mythically nostalgic allure of the adolescent summer spent at the lake crosses paths with the trashy, twisty nastiness of the psychosexual thriller in Careful What You Wish For, an entertaining, though highly derivative jaunt through the usual genre motions. For some reason, the protagonist is played by a Jonas brother, but Nick proves capable…
