Mark Hanson

Scott Mann’s film succeeds by simply committing to and steadily ratcheting up the ludicrous awesomeness of its premise.

Any ambiguity over the veracity of the story’s events is quickly jettisoned to adhere to the demands of the leaden slasher-film plotting.

With The Whale, Darren Aronofsky brings a hollow sense of dignity to his schematic brand of cinematic misery porn.

Whatever satire of white elite society is intended by The Forgiven has been blunted by monotony.

It’s disappointing to see a film with such a weird premise as Nightbitch ease into an orthodox storytelling mode.

It’s hard to deny that Michael Mohan’s preposterous fable doesn’t exert the dark pull of voyeurism itself.

William Brent Bell’s film proves that not every horror concept has the potential to be franchised.

The shadow of Risky Business looms large, and distractingly, over Manuel Crosby and Darren Knapp’s film.

The film’s rote action-movie plotting is calibrated in a ponderously straight-faced way so as to give it some semblance of gravity.

As a peek into the relationship between sports, media and capitalism, National Champions feels like a beginner’s playbook.

Taurus is in the business of self-aggrandizement, but this is a film that understands that stardom is inherently aggrandizing.

Dashcam is nothing if not consistent, as it’s every bit the empty provocation as the troll at its center.

Throughout, Efron seems almost determined to wipe away the last vestiges of his youthful looks.

The film lacks for the methodically escalating stakes that makes the best examples of the genre so entertaining.

In spite of the film’s strikingly lived-in sense of place, the script’s melodramatic storytelling works against that verisimilitude.

The film feels like a missed opportunity to interrogate society’s fervent need to make pariahs out of people for their past mistakes.

The film circles a thorny premise, which makes it all the more disappointing that it results in a conventional clinch.

While its plot is strictly by the numbers, Clean is elevated by its stylistic flair and propulsive pace.

Johannes Roberts’s prequel ultimately remains buried by its indifference to unchecked corporate power.

This film’s approach to slasher film mayhem is liable to induce some serious déjà vu.

Regrettably, the one star of Anaconda that gets the shortest shrift is the most important one: the snake.

The film is too blinded by manufactured sentimentality to see the more compelling what-if scenario lying right in front of its eyes.

The film is a disastrous amalgamation of modern-day tech-savvy thrills and Clancy’s conservative expressions of patriotism.

The Carpenter’s Son fails to even offer decent frights, unless one finds the preponderance of CGI snakes particularly scary.

Lee Daniels does such a good job investing us in the human drama of The Deliverance that it almost feels unnecessary when the supernatural elements inevitably take over in the final act.

Given that Mel Gibson makes little attempt to instill any sense of physicality to this dispiritingly paint-by-numbers affair, it becomes easy to understand the marketing of the film’s 4DX theatrical option as an act of overcompensation.

The film allows the scion of one of Hollywood’s most notable families to interrogate her relationship with celebrity in self-aware fashion.

Like any number of Exorcist wannabes, David Midell’s film is a special kind of hell.