Katie Rife

At least, maybe The Boy can lead some novices to better, more original horror movies.

While it doesn’t include any literal blazing piles of garbage, Trash Fire is spiteful and unpleasant from beginning to end, using every technique at its disposal — from stinging dialogue to grotesque prosthetics to morbid black comedy — to make the audience uncomfortable.

The problem isn’t that Halloween Kills is about nothing more than brutal nihilism; that’s a perfectly acceptable thing for a horror movie to be. It’s that it tries to be about so many things on top of brutal nihilism that it loses its grip early on.

Fear Street: Prom Queen fails to channel both the outrageous aesthetics and the brutal violence of the films it’s imitating, making this indifferently made exercise in YA horror supremely skippable.

This is one of those movies that shows rather than tells—always preferable, even in the moments when the big picture is still coming into focus.

The younger Meyers has a lot to learn about creating believable character motivations and relationships to anchor the aspirational fantasy.

This movie can’t decide how it wants to look or what it wants to say. You could even call the jumble of styles and tones “quirky,” were you so inclined.

The cast as a whole persists mightily throughout this shambling, frustrating, overplotted film.

The effect of Passengers is to turn frothy sci-fi romance into an astonishingly retrograde statement on autonomy and consent, and to turn one of the most likable actors in Hollywood into a total fucking creep. A date movie, this is not.

Overall, though, the director and co-writer’s merciless style is muffled by The Grudge’s over-reliance on clichéd jump scares; more damningly, only some of these are effective, even in terms of cheap thrills. This becomes especially true in the film’s second half, when the ghosts become at once more human and less creepy.

The setup of the mystery is more satisfying than its payoff, and the film breaks down into an uninspired grab bag of contemporary horror influences.

It’s a film that’s been thought out but doesn’t reach any new conclusions; that assembles some good elements, but doesn’t really consider how they all fit together. The truthful elements are not enough to overcome the clumsy and cliché ones, and in the end it’s a film that’s more satisfying before you know how it ends.

In a spy thriller, a woman who drinks her whiskey neat—girlbosses never dilute—and kicks men in the face wearing a stacked heel has become as much of a cliché as the womanizing secret agent. And The 355 does nothing to complicate, deconstruct, or refresh that cliché.

It’s not a waste of a concept, exactly, but it’s not the reinvention that the franchise needs, either. Rock’s involvement brings some new blood to Spiral, but after a promising start it ends up becoming a pretty okay Saw movie with some bigger names than usual.

Aside from the A-list cast, there isn’t much to differentiate Dark Places from an especially grim TV movie.

Every aspect of of the movie feels as if it’s been determined by algorithm, workshopped and test-marketed into a state of pleasant, fleeting dullness.

Family Business feels like trying to eat lunch in a room full of screaming toddlers who keep slapping the sandwich out of your hands.

While efficiency and originality are both pluses in genre filmmaking, neither of them should come at the expense of creating an immersive world that sparks the imagination, or characters the audience actually cares about. With both of those qualities so woefully underdeveloped, Escape the Field feels not only like a midseason episode, but a premature series finale.

The film is so full of jump scare fake-outs and shout-at-the-screen moments, it neglects to build sustained suspense — a far worse sin than its lack of logic, which can actually be kind of fun.

Viewers who thought nothing much happened in "It Comes At Night" are advised to steer clear.

Ava is a napping-on-the-couch movie through and through, with recognizable names and a sexy premise but no distinct personality.

Director F. Gary Gray, while experienced in both action and comedy, also struggles to keep the film’s picaresque plot on track.

Whatever pleasure there is to be found in watching a film like The Golden Glove is in the intellectualizing, and the film does prompt a series of provocative questions about the implicit contract between artist and audience.

The problem with Mainstream is it isn’t plugged deep enough into the culture it’s satirizing to really even know what its target is, let alone how to hit it.

It’s a muddled, contradictory, confusing mess, made even more so by the darkly cynical streak that runs through the film.

An argument can be made for not parsing the social messaging of films like this one too deeply, as the creative team probably didn’t. But Home Sweet Home Alone does merit such criticism, if only because there’s really not much else going on.

While the film boasts a refreshing premise — mob wives taking over their husbands’ territory when the men land themselves in jail — what lingers afterwards is the stale taste of its lukewarm execution.

The only really surprising—and, therefore, the most disappointing—thing about Morbius is the fact that it’s an honest-to-goodness horror film. But only for a few seconds.

She’s (Henson) a compelling leading woman, all in all. Too bad she’s stuck in such an incompetently directed mess of a movie.

Director Greg Mottola deserves some credit for trying to give the film a little bit of cinematic flair, something that’s lacking in many Hollywood comedies these days.

Overall, the comedy in Thunder Force is apathetic and airless, no matter how hard McCarthy tries.

At 112 minutes, this film is way too long for the amount of story contained within—which, again, would be a forgivable offense, had Amorim filled the extra time with something entertaining. Instead, all we get is inertia, as we wait with the main character for her fate to reveal itself.

Plenty of striking, clever, effective movies have been made simply by re-arranging and re-calibrating familiar genre elements. Hellions might have been one of these, if it was predicated on something slightly less shallow than “kids in masks + chanting + blood = scary.”

In short, it’s the “Imagine” video of movies.

The film uses minimal locations, minimal cast, and minimal blood for a story that, in another director’s hands, could play like Grand Guignol. But this sense of restraint — which, combined with some stylish choices on Polish’s part, can be quite elegant — is also what makes it largely forgettable.

It’s a female-driven fantasy, for sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not toxic. And God help the poor woman who believes it.

If you’re looking for something truly groundbreaking—or hilarious—Like A Boss isn’t it.

On the plus side, the film is high energy and moves quickly. And some of the zombie gore effects are fun, reaching nearly Raimi-esque heights of splatter during the climactic battle. None of it is really scary, though, especially since it’s so predictable.

Firestarter 2022 is a marginal improvement on the ’84 original, if only because it has a handful of redeeming qualities rather than virtually none at all.

Ridiculous, artless, and wildly entertaining, Dangerous Men is more than the sum of its fascinatingly misguided parts, although it will take a special sort of moviegoer to truly appreciate (or endure, depending on your perspective) its charms. Its instant cult-classic status is all but assured.

So what was Tyler Perry going for here? Based on the sanctimonious streak that runs throughout his work, one might posit that he was trying to wrap a gleefully outrageous thriller around a lesson on marriage, like a slice of bacon around a particularly bitter pill. Except, at some point, the bacon got hopelessly overcooked.

Turns out, what really turns series creator E.L. James on is well-heeled domesticity.

Somehow, the film’s 1674 is more convincing than its 1969, and the ideas being worked out in that brief segment are more compelling than the ones that make up the core narrative. But then it’s buried, and it doesn’t come back. Pity, that’s one time when resurrection would have been helpful.

Less a thrilling adventure tale than a trip to a teenager’s messy, sock-strewn bedroom.

Post-"The Canyons," this appears to be Ellis’ new, second-rate normal.

The saddest thing about all of this is that McCarthy and O’Dowd make a convincing onscreen couple, and both of them are strong enough actors to find the real, defeated people in this phony script.

Something worse than bad. It’s utterly forgettable.

Bright gestures vaguely at an allegory about police brutality and race, which may have been more impactful in the original script. It’s hard to tell. For his part, Landis has largely disowned the final product, which buries some glimmers of interesting ideas under a thick layer of adolescent tough-guy posturing.

Given the alternative between the big-screen CHIPS and an antiquated, low-stakes episode of the original TV series, we’d pick the latter in a heartbeat.

When The Bough Breaks resembles nothing more than a cheap fast-food burger served on fine china: Tasty, sure, and quite enjoyable in the moment. But once the credits roll and the primal centers of the brain stimulated by guilty pleasures like this one return to normal, all you’ll remember is that it looked prettier than usual.

When Wayans allows himself to deviate from his formula there are a few effective moments of un-self-conscious slapstick.

There’s really not much to recommend about this film: the animation lacks texture, the score is overwrought, the plotting is scattershot, and the character design is uninspired.

Dolittle is full of anachronistic pop culture references and poop and fart humor, jokes delivered in suspiciously low-impact style by the film’s animated animals.

The film, a slow-motion car crash of a cinematic mishap featuring terrible performances from normally good actors and a bafflingly half-baked script, delivers tenfold on the poster’s promise.

It’s way too much and a bunch of nothing at the same time, and even agents of chaos who take wicked delight in witnessing this type of pandemonium may find themselves worn out before the film’s predictably hyperbolic conclusion.

As far as animated films go, the script for Spark: A Space Tail is clunky but inoffensive, falling far short of your average Pixar production creatively but largely sidestepping attempts at tongue-in-cheek “adult” humor in favor of groan-worthy puns à la the title.

Pop-culture references, witty banter, broad slapstick, and sentimental speeches all fall equally flat.

While it isn’t the worst film the franchise has to offer, that’s only because the competition is so weak.

Yes, this is a movie for children. But using that as a justification for lazy work, as if kids are inherently too dumb to know the difference, isn’t just condescending. In a post-Pixar world, where audiences have become accustomed to quality animated family films, it’s a waste of money.

Mostly, the action, while bloodier than one might expect, is as goofy and dim-witted as the dialogue.

365 Days: This Day is barely a movie. It’s the emotionally bankrupt id of late capitalism, a braindead miasma of choreographed sex and nonsensical fighting driven by greed and violence masquerading as passion.

The worst part of The Haunting Of Sharon Tate is how seriously it takes its ham-fisted themes of fate and the nature of reality; the movie opens with an Edgar Allen Poe quote, for f*ck’s sake.

It’s not a great film by any means, but it is the epitome of a “Fantastic Fest movie,” meaning enjoyed best with friends and a few drinks.

The first of several low points in the series. At this point Kirsty’s out of the picture (at least temporarily), the original rules of Cenobite engagement are discarded, and Pinhead’s ultimate fate is sealed. So what’s left? You guessed it—a Gritty! Contemporary! Reboot!

Hellraiser: Deader starts off okay—But that’s just Stockholm syndrome.

Revelations completes Hellraiser’s transformation from an original and refreshingly adult concept into teens indiscriminately screwing and dying, hollowing out the soul of the franchise while functioning as a loose remake of the original.

What keeps it all from becoming high camp is the film’s eerie atmosphere and unsettling childlike quality, which sucks the viewer into a nightmarish alternate reality with such plainspoken innocence that we have no choice but to accept it at face value.

The Murder Of Nicole Brown Simpson is directed like a Lifetime thriller, relying heavily on stark lighting and ominous music to create suspense. (Neither is effective.)

Its clever comedic writing couldn’t quite overcome its sometimes subpar camerawork.

The film flounders a bit in its second half, as it struggles to maintain the tension of its inciting incident. But Harduin’s performance as Gloria goes off her meds and descends into her own private world would be impressive for an actress of any age, let alone a 13-year-old.

Donoso does put an effort into maintaining visual interest throughout this micro-budgeted character study, alternating between professionally shot, full-frame tableaux and intimate, grainy camcorder footage, accentuated with light touches of Brakhage-style experimental montage. However, it remains an undeniable—and inconvenient—fact that the most interesting aspects of If They Soak Me are all offscreen.

Fauna has some smart things to say about how the drug trade and its attendant stereotypes have changed the Mexican popular imagination. You just have to pay attention to follow the film’s many idiosyncratic twists and turns.

Experienced performers take the film partway, but the script kneecaps everyone—especially MacDowell, who suffers the worst of the film’s dialogue-based indignities. Happy or not, you might find yourself wishing it would end already.

At its heart, Dead Talents Society is an affectionate ode to East Asian horror cinema, and its earnestness — and silliness — are key to its appeal.

Although it has some delightfully grotesque monsters, Mr. Crocket is a kids’-show horror spoof that isn’t ready for primetime.

It’s not an unbearable film, but it’s not a particularly consequential one either, despite the boldness of its themes. In this case, a star’s big comeback comes not with a bang but a whimper.