In his feature film directorial debut, Drew Goddard (a writer for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Lost” TV series, and the film “Cloverfield“) has taken a tired film formula — the teen slasher flick — and turned it on its head. The Cabin in the Woods is “The Truman Show” meets “Friday the 13th” meets “The…
I don’t know about you, but I was perfectly happy with the 1990 Schwarzenegger sci-fi actioner “Total Recall.” At least I thought I was. The now available trailer from Sony/Columbia Pictures has me believing otherwise. First, it stars Colin Farrell and two of the hottest women on Earth, Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel. Secondly, it…
Be careful who your neighbors are. In House at the End of the Street, the neighbor is the survivor of a brutal axe murder — a parenticide, in which his sister killed their parents. In the bizarre trailer, mother and daughter (Elisabeth Shue, Jennifer Lawrence, respectively) are the “lucky” renters next door who are plagued…
Ti West’s fourth motion picture undertaking, 2009’s The House of the Devil is an ’80s-style horror film clearly inspired by the classic shockers of yesteryear, and it even begins with a grindhouse-style opening title sequence that would make Quentin Tarantino smile. West wanted to emulate the likes of “The Amityville Horror” and “The Texas Chain…
Claustrophobia is one fear we all have. Human beings love being able to move about and frolic. In fact, I love it so much that even riding a crowded train can become painful experience. So it’s surprising that the thought of being trapped inside a box has never crossed my mind. That is to say,…
Fear in real time. That’s the most tantalizing hook the horror genre has offered since “The Blair Witch Project” opened the “found footage” floodgates more than a dozen years ago. That genre reinvention eventually led to the 2007 Spanish horror masterpiece “[Rec],” my pick for the scariest movie of the past decade. That movie was…
With a built-in audience of mostly 14-17 year-old girls, director Gary Ross (“Pleasantville,” “Seabiscuit”) puts forth The Hunger Games — a rather faithful version of the first novel in Suzanne Collins’ best-selling trilogy, telling the tale of a post-apocalyptic North America divided into 12 districts. And with the country having gone through a rebellion years…
