Movie Scum

Photo: Universal Pictures In hindsight, it's surprising that it took this long for me to get around to The Frighteners . With Robert Zemeckis and Peter Jackson still in their prime, as well as Michael J. Fox who arguably never left his prime (seriously, check out his arcs on The Good Wife ), I must have just presumed this movie was a stupid comedy with horror-like elements and moved on. Only now have I realized how great this movie actually is.

Photo: Sony/Columbia Pictures To be honest, I had chosen this movie primarily because it is a recent film beginning with an 'E' that is easily accessible and I fully expected to hate it. I knew nothing of Escape Room  other than what my almost 14-year-old has told me (she saw it twice in theaters) and the Saw -lite vibes I got from the trailers that I had seen. But shockingly, if not for trying to review random movies over the next two months, I'd probably have never gotten around to this one. But, as it turns out, I would have been missing out.

Photo: Anchor Bay Films "The real monsters were the people we met along the way." - Ancient Proverb (?)

Photo: New World Pictures A repeated line in the trailer for Children of the Corn is "it's an adult nightmare." Creepy kids? Religious cults? Middle of nowhere America, surrounded by corn? Yep, checks out. All nightmare fuel.

Like many of you in my age range, you probably have fond memories of roaming the aisles of the local video store and gazing at all the great VHS covers to try to pick that night's movie. Blood Diner  was definitely one of those films with eye-catching box art that has evaded me for years. I prefer it had stayed that way.

Considering Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem takes no more than fifteen minutes to murder a child by way of an alien chest buster, I was pretty stoked. And shockingly, it mostly held up to my grand expectations for it.

Photo: Orion Pictures 2019's Child’s Play is an odd duck in the remake world. We are all used to the blatant money-grab approach from studios to leverage existing properties for more money (see most of the Platinum Dunes remakes). Occasionally, you’ll even have a long dormant franchise that gets new legs from a big name promising a new take (like the upcoming Candyman or Spiral: From the Book of Saw ).

Photo: Sony/Columbia Pictures Short of the 1930s adaptation of H.G. Well’s novel The Invisible Man, I can’t really think of any other version or variant that is renowned or even good. While Paul Verhoeven ’s Hollow Man takes some interesting approaches, I can’t give it more than mediocre with a few flourishes here and there. Perhaps this week’s The Invisible Man directed by Leigh Whannell can strike a better balance.

Photo: Paramount The Terminator series continues to prove itself as a tough nut to crack. Of course, that’s not for a lack of trying. After James Cameron’s acclaimed Terminator 2 in 1991, additional films ranging from ‘meh’ to ‘eh’ have tried to continue the franchise by either shamelessly aping the original , creating an arrid and boring futuristic hellscape , or by including Nick Stahl . Suffice to say, none of these films inspired much confidence in the future of the series.

Even having seen the VHS cover for Chopping Mall more times than I can count, I never got around to this time capsule of 80s high-concept “horror” movies. No one will confuse Chopping Mall with high-art but it is a solid movie from its era that will make you wonder why they never made Chopping Mall 2 .

One of the key elements of a good mystery is immersion. It trumps a decent plot and interesting characters because the thrills are derived from a seemingly shared experience. As long as the audience feels like they’re solving a problem alongside the cast, they’ll go along with most anything. This does not include lackluster acting and an overly formulaic approach to storytelling…

For being a zombie movie, Cargo is not so much about zombies as it is making peace with situations that cannot be controlled.

Going in to see Ready Player One, I didn’t have any expectations. For one, I haven’t read the book – no, you can’t have my gamer card. Second, the idea that a movie can be carried solely by its numerous pop culture references is absurd to me; recent films that have followed this formula are proof of such, like the somewhat amusing yet ultimately shallow Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Thankfully, Steven Spielberg ’s nostalgia parade is more than the sum of its parts!

A movie about a killer app? That was the gist of the plot synopsis I read on the Redbox kiosk so I picked it up. I figured it would either be a) really, really bad or b) surprisingly good. In reality, it’s option c, for kind of competent.

Send... more... paramedics. For all the zombie movies I’ve seen, including the worst of George Romero’s output, I never got around to Dan O’Bannon’s Return of the Living Dead for one reason or another. Considering I wrote a senior-year high school paper on the original Night of the Living Dead, I knew of the existence of co-writer John Russo’s offshoot to the seminal zombie flick but never had much interest. But when one come across a pristine Blu-ray special edition to a highly-regarded film, what choice does one really have?

Much like when Guardians of the Galaxy was announced, I was entirely disinterested in Marvel’s announcement of Ant-Man . Granted, Marvel has a stellar record with their in-house films and the impossibly cheesy sounding Guardians turned out to be among their top tier. But still. A superhero who controls insects and whose main superpower is shrinking. Boo! Give me more Captain America.

In all honesty, up until the first teaser trailer for The Force Awakens dropped last winter, I was more or less ambivalent towards it.

You might be mistaken for thinking the Mission: Impossible series to be nothing more than Tom Cruise’s daily exercise excuse and to a certain point, that may be true. But this Americanized version of James Bond, with the requisite femme fatales, gimmicky gadgets, and exotic locations, still offers an exciting ride through the world of espionage and double-crossing.

With M. Night Shyamalan back in the news recently for relatively positive reviews for his newest film, let us not forget that he has made some shitty movies. One of those movies is The Happening .

Adulthood is scary. An imaginary foe constantly stalking you is even worse.