Katie Rife

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.

Callbacks to other “Insidious” films are half-hearted, and “The Red Door” seems to give up on trying to make all of the pieces fit after a while. What does work are a handful of scares in the film’s first half.

Horror remakes don’t have to be inferior rehashes, as films like Jim Mickle’s "We Are What We Are" (2013) and Luca Guadagnino’s "Suspiria" (2018) have demonstrated. But this Rabid nibbles where it should clamp down hard.

In The Shadow Of The Moon is a disappointing misfire all around, but no matter—like so many other Netflix original films, it’ll be reabsorbed into the streaming void soon enough.

The Night Clerk will be remembered, if at all, as a movie de Armas was way too good for — an unfortunate mile marker on her road to movie stardom.

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.

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

The script is just as lazy as the acting, leaning on a fitfully applied, Scream-esque meta subplot to justify why the hell we’re all here in the first place.

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

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.”

Incarnate is a comic-book movie in search of a comic book.

Black As Night is assembled in an uninspired YA style that only accentuates the weaknesses of its script, which is laden with stilted dialogue and cringeworthy voiceover.

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.

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

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

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

On a purely technical level, the film is fine, if overly reliant on indie-movie clichés. It features some good performances from proven actors, and touches on some interesting philosophical questions.

Like the book, the film version of Hillbilly Elegy goes for easy over honest every time, which is one reason why the former has been sharply criticized by those it claims to represent.

Take away the gorgeous setting, however, and you’re left with a romantic comedy that’s never romantic and only occasionally funny.