The Girl With All The Gifts

A young girl born a zombie helps lead a platoon of soldiers and mean scientists across Zombie England, one of those constant locations for horror flicks these days. Anyway, I don't like fast zombies but the kid angle of the whole thing is pretty well done.

RATING: 70%

Halloween

Are you kidding me? It's fucking great. How have we not reviewed this movie before? If you haven't seen it in a while, do yourself a favor and watch it again. It totally holds up. And if you've never seen it before, what the fuck are you doing reading this? Go watch this movie. Go on, git!

Rating: 99.9%

(Image from moviepilot.com)

Raw

A vegetarian freshman gets majorly hazed at one of those super prestigious veterinary schools you're always hearing about, and after she is forced to eat a pickled rabbit kidney she basically goes hog wild for meat of the human variety.

RATING: 89%

Scream 4

Most of the meta chatter in Scream 4 is about remakes. It makes sense, given that horror movies were in a serious remake rut at the time of Scream 4's release. And while the movie keeps telling us that it's a remake, it actually turns out to be a much better concluding chapter for the Scream series than Scream 3 ever was. Every surviving character returns except for Sidney's father, who never really made much of an impact in the series and only ever appeared briefly in parts 1 and 3. The story does a good job of showing us what's happened to these characters in the ten years since their last brush with death. It's a good send-off for the series and I sincerely hope that it's the final chapter.

Rating: 66%

(Image from collider.com)

Darling

You ever see one of those movies that it's totally obvious that the people making it thought it was brilliant? This is one of those. A woman babysits a haunted house but it's very scary according to the loud violin score and literally nothing else that happens in the movie.

RATING: 8%

Scream 3

One of the things that always bothered me about Scream 3 was that a lot of it was centered around the production of Stab 3. In Scream 2, they had only just released the first Stab film. So we're just supposed to accept that another Stab film has come and gone, depicting the events of the previous Scream film? Stab gave Scream 2 the opportunity for some meta commentary on slasher films and the success of the original Scream. Stab 3 and the hijinks in this movie mostly transform Scream 3 into a parody. Also, in light of recent events and allegations, it seems pretty gross to have plot elements pertaining to a young woman being sexually abused by a Hollywood producer being used as the backstory for the latest killer.

Rating: 59%

(Image from scream.wikia.com)

It Follows

A unique horror movie about an STD (sexually transmitted demon) who stalks you at the speed of walk after you catch him and then eventually tries to kill you. It looks great and sounds great, but to me it just wasn't... scary? Points for being a Michigan movie though.

RATING: 77%

Scream 2

Scream 2 was released almost one year to the day after the original Scream and it shows. It seems to have been made to capitalize on all of the elements of the original that surprised audiences and critics, while failing to deliver on some of the aspects that made the original so good. The humor is amped up and the cast features even more hip, young television actors. It's also very meta, with the characters recognizing and pontificating on the fact that they're in a sequel. Moreover, it features commentary on the success of the original film with the introduction of the film-within-the-film, Stab, which dramatizes the events of the first film. It fails to deliver a story on par with the original, recycling the framework from the first film without injecting enough original content.

Rating: 65%

(Image from ca.movieposter.com)

Scream

I've mentioned Scream many times on this site. It's a movie that was responsible for reviving the horror genre in the 1990s and launching a wave of imitators. It was the Pulp Fiction of horror movies, if you will. It holds up pretty well today but it has definitely begun to show its age. The hairstyles and fashions in the film stand out now, what with it being almost twenty years old. And you have to remind yourself that almost no one owned a cellphone at the time, because that's literally a plot point in the movie. I particularly enjoyed watching the movie again recently because I forgot just how awesome Sidney Prescott was, she had plenty of 90s sass and humor along with the strength to kick a little ass when confronted with a jerk in a Halloween costume. It was also enjoyable to be reminded of all of the little plot details around the edges of the film. You remember the teens and the rules and the iconic costumes, but you forget that a lot of the movie was about the main character coming to terms with her mother's death and the reality of her mother's sordid past. Also, the motivation of the killers (spoiler alert?) reads like something you'd see on a Men's Rights Activism message board nowadays, so you're happy to see them get killed at the end.

Rating: 85%

(Image from scream.wikia.com)

Drácula

There was a brief period of time when it was cheaper to shoot a movie multiple times in multiple languages rather than to dub a single film into another language for a foreign territory. That's how we ended up with a version of Dracula shot on the same sets as the Bela Lugosi version only with a different cast speaking in Spanish. It's almost the exact same movie, except for a few different camera setups, some slinkier costumes for the ladies, and a couple of scenes that got mentioned but not shown in the English language version. Some hipsters might try to convince you that this version is better than the Bela Lugosi version but they're full of shit. The truth is, they're both good. The Spanish language version is actually a great companion piece to the English language version. It might even be fun to see the two versions spliced together.

Rating: Muy bien%

(Image from pinterest.ca)

Tusk

A podcast jerk travels to the depths of Manitoba for a story and winds up being turned into a walrus by a lonely old crazyman. This isn't as good as Smith's previous horror entry, Red State, but it's still weird and broken in the same good way. It coulda been about 15% better if Johnny Depp's part was cut down to a couple minutes.

RATING: 58%

Get Out

A black guy (well, I mean a guy who just so happens to be black) goes with his girlfriend to meet her white family (well, I mean her family that just so happens to be white) and things end up getting a little creepy. You know, body snatchers style not to get too spoilery.

RATING: 91%

Under The Shadow

This is a great movie set in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war. A woman whose husband gets deployed at the front line is left alone with her daughter, but after an unexploded missile hits their apartment building things start getting freaky. Actually, I guess the missile hitting the building is freaky too. There might be Djinn or there might be brain whatsits, but it's very very tense either way!

RATING: 85%

The Invitation

I've been to some awkward dinner parties in my life but this takes the cake!

RATING: 67%

mother!

In this movie, which seems pretty mundane at first, a couple adjusts to life in a real fixer-upper while the husband guy tries to write. He invites in some unexpected guests who smoke and throw parties without asking and also puke naked into toilets. It's a pretty straightforward flick for a long time, but of course Aronofsky gonna Aronofsky, so the last twenty minutes will probably fuck you up but good.

RATING: 77%

Evil Bong

I really don't think I need to explain anything here.

RATING: 16%

Final Destination 5

Who know a franchise's fifth entry could be its best? A bus full of business colleagues are taking a trip when one of them has a vision of a terrrrible bridge collapse. He convinces them all to run off the bridge and waddaya know, it collapses. The death scenes in this one are especially creative, featuring a gymnasticking, a Buddhaing, *and* a LASIKing.

RATING: 71%

Dracula

It's the granddaddy of all vampire movies y'all. Bela Lugosi's portrayal of Count Dracula would go on to be the archetypal depiction of a vampire. The accent, the cape, the medal, the brooding sexuality. Yes, people in the '30s thought Bela Lugosi was sexy. Despite not being as popular as Frankenstein, released a few months later, Dracula was not only a success but a launching pad for the first wave of Universal's monster movies.

Rating: 77%

(Image from Wikipedia)

It

Some kids in the 80s fight a killer clown and his cadre of fear shapes. It leaves out a lot of the bizarre space/dimension/turtle mother stuff that the novel had but maybe they're saving it for the sequel?

RATING: 79%

When Halloween Was Forever

Some goblins release Samhain, the pumpkin-headed spirit of Halloween, from his prison inside an ancient Irish relic. Now free in New York City, Samhain pledges to stop time and make Halloween night last forever. Can an army of ghosts and goblins fend off the Ghostbusters long enough for Samhain to spread eternal darkness across the entire world? Nope. They can, however, make a memorable episode of The Real Ghostbusters, the animated spin-off of the mega-hit movie Ghostbusters. Watching the episode now, you might find it hard to get past some of cheap animation and continuity errors, but as a child I couldn't get enough of characters like Samhain and the Boogieman.

Rating: Nostalgia%

(Image from Netflix)

The Final Destination

Some friends (they don't seem like friends!) are enjoying a trip to the local stock car race (ok?) when one of them has a vision they'll all die in a terrrrrible bleacher collapse. He gets all his pals kicked out and whaddaya know, the bleachers collapse. Anyway this was a 3D movie so expect lots of impalings and other things flying right at your face but hey look if you didn't make the third entry in your horror franchise the 3D one then you missed out pal. All 13% here goes to the incredible death a racist gets.

RATING: 13%

Shocker

I know this movie has its defenders, but I couldn't help but think it was meant to be seen as a parody. Written and directed by the late, great Wes Craven, Shocker seems to cherry pick elements from other, better Wes Craven films. There are a lot of similarities between Freddy Krueger and Horace Pinker, Shocker's unstoppable villain, and yet I'm not surprised that Pinker failed to make much of a cultural impact. I'd tell you the plot, but it really doesn't matter. Don't waste your time on this one.

Rating: 52%

(Image from movieposter.com)

Final Destination 3

Some rollercoaster buds are enjoying their senior trip to an amusement park when one of them has a vision they'll all die in a terrrrible rollercoaster accident. You can probably figure out where it goes from there, although this time they have the neat gimmick of a camera predicting how they'll each die.

RATING: 60%

The Mutilator

Here's a tip: if your father never forgives you for accidentally killing your mother when you were a child, then maybe it's not such a good idea to go to his cabin on a secluded island. There's a chance he might be hiding out in said cabin, looking to kill you and all of your little buddies. Just sayin'.

Rating: 66%

(Image from popculturebeast.com)

Final Destination 2

A girl starting a road trip with her friends has a vision of a terrrrible car crash so she ditches her pals and whaddaya know, her friends all die in a terrible car crash. I get that these movies need to keep coming up with ways for the characters to "fight" death, but I'm really not sure why any of them take the creepy mortician's riddles seriously.

RATING: 38%

Dressed to Kill

A sexually frustrated housewife attempts to seduce her therapist. After he turns her down, she picks up a guy at an art galley. Unfortunately, she soon finds out that he has a serious case of VD. She doesn't have a lot of time to fret over it though, as she gets hacked to death with a straight razor in the elevator of the guy's apartment building. So then it's up to her son and a prostitute who witnessed the murder to find the killer. I guess there's a lot of people out there who hated this movie when it first came out, calling it overly violent and misogynistic. Nowadays, a lot of people would probably hate this movie because of its less than PC handling of sexuality and gender dynamics. Personally, I'm not one to let dated attitudes stand in the way of a good murder mystery.   

Rating: 71%

(Image from rogerebert.com)

Final Destination

A kid has a terrrrible vision of his class trip's plane exploding so after he gets all his friends kicked off the flight whaddaya know, the plane explodes. Phew, close one! Nah, just kidding - death slowly comes for all these kids via wild Rube Goldberg devices and good old-fashioned blind bus drivers.

RATING: 61%