In some ways, Theresa “Tree” Gelbman (Jessica Rothe, “Wolves”) is your average college student. She parties, she drinks, and, at the end of the night, she doesn’t always end up at home. In other ways she’s your average sorority girl (the pathetically one dimensional way sororities are portrayed in movies, at least). She maintains shallow…
Both the original “The Houses October Built” and its sequel, The Houses October Built 2, open with quotes about the dark, primal volatility of human nature. The first cites Walter Jon Williams’ well known “I’m not afraid of werewolves or vampires or haunted hotels, I’m afraid of what real human beings do to other real…
One would probably imagine that a creepy concoction such as writer-director Simon Verhoeven’s (“Men in the City”) bubble gum, horror/thriller Friend Request would take advantage of its exploitative ingredients to cultivate a half-way decent internet-based frightfest aimed at the under 30-something crowd. After all, where can one go wrong with a slasher featuring curvaceous collegiate…
It can be a tricky thing to review horror films. The red-headed stepchild of the movie business, horror is an incredibly subjective genre for fans. Despite repeatedly being let down by film after film, we return to the theater with each new offering, hoping for a gem — a new classic. Remakes are especially daunting…
Victorian London has been an effective setting since virtually the beginning of cinema, perhaps unsurprisingly since it was during this period that moving pictures first appeared. From the first adaptation of “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” to Basil Rathbone’s incarnation of “Sherlock Holmes,” from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Lodger” to Johnny Depp’s…
Written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of “Sicario” and “Hell or High Water,” Wind River is a murder mystery about the death of a young Native American women, found frozen in the snow. Part character study, part police procedural, and part political statement, it is a deeply disturbing film that contains graphic…
From “Black Christmas” through “Silent Night, Deadly Night” and onto “Krampus,” there is a fine tradition of Christmas-themed horrors running through the decades, and Red Christmas, the feature debut from writer-director Craig Anderson, fits comfortably into the canon. The Christian festival of family and giving is the perfect backdrop for an ultra-violent cautionary tale about…
