Movie Scum

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: 20th Century Fox With the news this week that Macaulay Culkin will be joining the upcoming season of American Horror Story , I thought about Big Mac’s films throughout the year and how horror-adjacent many of them are.

Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer The early 1990s were not a great time in the horror genre as the big slasher franchises had mostly run their course and the new teenage wave starting with Scream were still a few years away. Arguably, the biggest film to come from this barren time is 1992's Candyman , a smart and socially relevant tale with more heft than your later Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th installments.

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.

Not Fox News though. That can rot in hell.

Photo: STX Entertainment A fake boy and a fake dog? Interesting theme this week at the box office.

  Photo: Universal As I am wont to do, while on a recent excursion to my local Wal-Mart for some mundane item like socks or cat food, I wandered back into the electronics area, specifically to the DVDs. While I am many years removed from my bad habits of blind buying movies that I might have a passing interest in, I still like to peruse the new and new-ish releases for anything that catches my eye. On a recent trip, that title was Bulletproof 2.

New reports indicate that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series is still alive ... for some reason.

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.

Two weeks from Halloween opening. We can do it, guys.

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…