Matt Donato

Ultimately, The Gallerist gets by on its zippy pacing, committed performances, and a tinge of meanness that holds enough suspense.

Anaconda is a disappointing follow-up for Gormican, who cannot crack the code on Sony's bewildering aquatic not-really-horror reboot. A cast of proven funny people are lost in a thick brush of hacky bits and ineffective storytelling, unable to machete their way through to a redeeming climax. There are brief bursts of creature-feature excitement and belly-tickling humor, but way more stretches of bafflingly unclear ambitions that feel like they're struggling to keep the "movie within a movie" gimmick afloat. It's Anaconda without the aqua-horror chills, throwback practical effects, and midnight-movie entertainment—what an odd choice.

The film’s themes may be fundamental in their commentaries on parental gender disparity or qualities about motherhood so many refuse to publicly acknowledge, but they still land like a haymaker. You’ve gotta hand it to Ramsay; she’s a fearless visionary when rocking on all cylinders—which, frustratingly, Die My Love only dishes out in smaller servings.

Bugonia is a film that tries to balance barbed sci-fi themes and conspiracy looniness funneled through Lanthimos’ trademark quirks, but it slips off the pommel horse on the dismount.

V/H/S/Halloween is an enjoyable assortment of vicious holiday horror shorts that might take a step backward after last year’s fantastic V/H/S/Beyond, but it’s hardly a throwaway sequel.

Varley's talents as a director are evident for the first half at least, but after that, The Astronaut becomes a head-scratcher.

Bambi: The Reckoning is an audaciously bloody but distractingly humorless creature feature.

The problem is that 40 Acres simply sprinkles its few unique ideas atop a shambling post-apocalyptic template.

825 Forest Road is a stodgy paranormal thriller that doesn’t boast enough character or intensity to reach the heights of its director’s Hell House LLC movies.

Screamboat isn't a good movie, but it can be an entertaining experience if you only care about indulgently bloody kill sequences.

We Bury The Dead is a sprawling but sparse zombie remix that's too far removed from the genre it's exploiting.

Performances are the spectacle, and both actors do a tremendous job translating the worst feeling any parent can experience. It all depends on your patience for slow-burn horrors, and if there's enough nightmare fuel to stay along for the ride.

It's a frustratingly one-note experience that boasts technique and potential, ultimately undone by a narrative blandness painted by numbers. Separately, everything works — the plan just never comes together.

Holder's wayward romantic indie chases meaning through quiet reflections that navigate hardship somewhat cleanly. While it's a delightful representation of Brooklyn's playground, scenes flow through motions like a wandering observer.

Kramer plays with surreal department store catalog visuals and body-swap quirkiness, leaning heavily on interpretive dance to convey meaning. There's nothing like it, but with such extravagant boldness comes risks, and they don’t always pay off.

Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare is a bleak, mean-spirited take on a childhood classic that trades Peter’s sparkle-bright magic for overbearing seriousness and disappointingly straightforward thrills.

Gudegast's film feels almost artificially programmed in its adherence to criminal caper tropes, unable to steal our hearts with the bromantic charms of cops and robbers with boundary issues.

Here, genre hybridization is a losing battle, sacrificing scares and intensity in favor of corny jokes about Instagram not yet being invented.

Michael Jai White's million-dollar presence and fancy fighting techniques aren't powerful enough to overcome dull scripting and odd performance choices.

Mr. Crocket is a bloody good time that takes all your favorite childhood television shows and gives them a hellish makeover.

It's a suspenseful family drama that drowns in the location's surroundings, unable to capitalize on its Shyamalanian influences.

Gaztelu-Urrutia’s expansion feels redundant and over-explained, but also sludgy and disjointed. It’s like being served a second dinner after you’re uncomfortably full; the flavors taste the same, but the experience is far less fulfilling.

Stream meanders, spending too much time saying so little. Quirks aren’t explained, we’re plopped into a scheme without much catchup, and the entire experience is bloated beyond reason. There’s a tighter edit of Stream somewhere, but it ain’t this version, much to my disappointment.

Terrifier 3 is a bounty of practical effects riches that cannot be denied, but its storytelling is scattershot in ways that hold the sequel back.

It's a Frankenstein'ed monstrosity made of different horror approaches, except instead of bringing something to life, unrevivable ideas remain limp and useless.

One or two jokes might cause a titter, but the other ninety-eight percent of this unfunny deflation has nothing to offer but hormonal awkwardness without the gut-busting payoff.

It’s more than just a failure of a remake — it’s disappointing on its own standalone merits, too.

Greedy People is somewhat tonally amiss, but not long enough for the experience to self-destruct. It's a fine working backward whodunit from the inside out.

The Soul Eater is by no means an offense to horror procedurals. Bustillo and Maury are clearly directing someone else’s script (derogatory), but they still smuggle their signature dread-shellacked brand in wherever possible.

It’s a generic blend of human drama and otherworldly horrors. Consumed never makes the most of its Wendigo punctuations, whether hampered by budgetary limits or to-the-point scripting that overstays its welcome at nearly 90 minutes.

While there's a randomizer sense to everything, frights abound, and there's a mercilessness that bites down hard. Execution may slip and slide, but Daniels doesn't waste his first crack at the ghoulishness of this Earth or deep below.

Duchess is a flat and forgettable riff on Guy Ritchie classics that doesn't have an ounce of the wit, charm, or glorious mayhem.

The Last Breath is competent to a point, without ever exceeding — or even achieving — baseline aquatic horror standards.

There's an endearing, homestyle warmth to the kooky sci-fi dramedy. Think Joe Swanberg's "Mumblecore" roots by way of Charles Band's late-night horror schlockiness – and I mean that with love.

The film has one mode, and it's never coy about its intentions to pry tears from your ducts as often as possible. If you're in the mood for a Shakespearean J-drama about mortality, stock up on hankies and let 'er rip.

Mileage will vary, dictated by your appreciation for methodical avalanches of sorrow driven by puritanical pressures. Everything is minimalistic, punctuated by the devastating context found in the research that helped shape Franz and Fiala’s screenplay. Some viewers will recognize dedication, others will have their patience tested.

Daddio is a repetitive and reductive experiment in dialogue-driven storytelling.

Reverse the Curse calls its shot with confidence but doesn’t possess the fundamentals to bomb a home run, barely getting on base with this out-of-synch heartwarmer that’s icy to the touch.

Brad Peyton oversees a futuristic action thriller that frequently plays like a clone of other cautionary tales about AI – but those movies, shows, games, and books don’t have Peyton’s secret weapon: Jennifer Lopez. She’s able to command the screen, bicker with software programs, and sell a convincing heroine’s arc from behind a mech-suit’s windshield.

The Garfield Movie is silly to a fault, feels seventeen hours long, and lacks any pulse of life.

Lazareth is sluggish, low-energy, and not particularly suspenseful, but most of all, it squanders a stellar Ashley Judd performance in a period where her silver screen appearances are becoming scarcer and scarcer.

If you haven’t feasted on Indonesia’s bounty of recent horror releases, don’t start here. Dancing Village: The Curse Begins is like elevator music in comparison.

Sting is sweet, silly and savage in sectioned bursts, but fails to pull everything into an intricately woven web of creepy-crawly terrors.

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 takes the Terrifier 2 approach for a sequel with an absurd dedication to glorious slasher violence. It's inarguably better than the original, but that’s not saying all that much.

Belktibia's feature debut comes with compelling sequences as a mother fights against what seems like the entire world, but murky motivations hold one back from getting fully emotionally invested.

Sweeney takes plenty of risks in a lead role that’s rigorous and emotionally demanding, but the film ultimately feels a bit surface level considering how it approaches horror.

A Road House movie shouldn’t be boring, especially this boring. A Road House movie shouldn’t have to enhance its fight choreography in post-production, nor should it be such a tonal mishmash. I guess Liman didn’t get the memo? His Road House remake is an uninspired chore that never properly unleashes Gyllenhaal or nails even the most basic functions of bar fight nostalgia porn.

History of Evil has something to say about the sad state of our nation–-and where it’s headed should we continue to regurgitate the same racist bile—it just doesn’t justify the means before its end.

The corroded mineral walls, dehydrated trees, and all of nature’s other décor are wonderfully shot, and the performances aren’t to blame, but The Seeding just doesn’t have the storytelling mindset to protect its characters from looking like fools instead of victims of horrific circumstances.

Kaluuya and co-writer Joe Murtagh preach a message from the heart, but the inner workings of The Kitchen ring more hollow than the remarkable visuals suggest.

Destroy All Neighbors is a horror-comedy with a fun premise and creative effects but it’s messy in too many ineffective and wrong ways, like listening to a 20-minute jam session that never finds its hook.

Role Play hardly spices up the subgenre with its saucy date-night games, never as action-packed as Mr. & Mrs. Smith or as sweetly sincere as the rom-com classics that inspire this undercover tale about finding that special someone worth killing over.

Pierre Morel's uninspired work behind the camera goes hand in hand with the film’s nondescript title, dragging viewers through a moodless, toothless action hybrid that, at its best, plays as forgettably inept even with ammunition flying in all directions.

You can’t fault an attempt to transform a viral sensation into the next bonkers realization of contemporary horror that exploits our ever-volatile online climate—but you can always fault a genre film that doesn’t do the chosen genre justice.

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines tastes a bit better than a nothingburger, but lacks seasoning that you’d hope for from something tied to Stephen King’s bibliography.

Dogman is one of those curios that you don't understand how it got made and just kinda marvel while it's happening, but once you try to put all the pieces together, nothing fits, and you're left wondering what the hell you just watched.

I’m not sure White ever cracks his own film’s code, but you can tell he’s passionate about whatever Outlaw Johnny Black becomes. That conveyance elevates what could have been an even messier modern Western with throwback appeal.

There’s not much to Elevator Game, and McKendry struggles to find the film’s extra gear, which underwhelms in its familiarity instead of finding comfort in the YouTuber satirization that has become popular with the rise of social media.

All Fun and Games is an appetizer of a movie served as the main course, lacking in creativity when it comes to turning childhood games into pure horror.

Meg 2: The Trench has all the excitement of fishing solo for two hours without a single bite. Wheatley is a shell of himself behind the camera, devoid of personality and originality.

Cobweb feels like an incomplete collection of horror ideas that aren't explored to their full potential, but it ultimately succeeds thanks to deranged performances by Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr.

Quicksand swings and misses as the next buzzy nature-born thriller. Beltrán can never decide if he’s making an upscale SYFY B-movie or an overserious examination of marriages so stale that self-destruction seems the only answer.

Bird Box Barcelona ekes by thanks to dependable and lived-in performances, but overstays its post-apocalyptic welcome across its almost two-hour duration.

Screenwriter Scott Teems reflects on Leigh Whannell and James Wan’s Insidious franchise by showing the Lamberts after a decade’s worth of otherworldly traumatic repression, which disappointingly gets away from what’s otherwise made this series so sinisterly supernatural.

Writers Kevin Biegel and Scotty Landes adapt Kreischer’s unbelievable viral story about robbing a train with Russian mobsters into a retrospective on the comedian’s tumultuous history with excess—a tonal misfire of fantastical absurdity clashing against emotional confessions.

Knights of the Zodiac fails to inspire enough excitement to meet the prospect of future sequels with its lackluster visual effects and rather clunky storytelling.

The Black Demon barely makes a splash in a pool filled with better shark attack movies, falling victim to a small body count, a grating protagonist, and disappointing digital effects.

You can find horror movies a lot better than The Pope’s Exorcist, but in an increasingly stale exorcism subgenre, you can absolutely do worse as well – and Russel Crowe’s Italian accent is unintentionally hilarious.

The Covenant isn’t Guy Ritchie’s best, but standout performances from Jake Gyllenhaal and Dar Salim as bonded heroes save an otherwise bloated military thriller.

Chupa is a rascally, if not the boldest or most artfully composed, coming-of-age fable that proudly represents Mexican culture.

The technical merits and performance strengths are beyond competent here, but that’s before the 90-minute mark washes everything in the dullest shades of unsustained tension.

Tetris tries its best to make a story about international video game rights into something infinitely more thrilling, with a smidge better than mixed results.

Leave tells a story about the monsters of humanity, but is shy about terrifying its audience—a tragic flaw that cuts the genre’s volume like unplugging an amplifier mid-performance.

Kurt Wimmer’s newfangled Children of the Corn is a rotten husk of a Stephen King adaptation.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey is noteworthy only for its name, as it turns out that blending slasher blood with Pooh’s honey together is like oil and water: it just doesn’t mix.

The Outwaters is found-footage fearlessness that needs to be seen to be believed, but will be met by only the most divisive of reactions.

It’s a shame. Jeff Ryan’s Mean Spirited voices relevant and vile concerns about social media soullessness, but its commentary is neutered by shaky execution.

There's nothing uniquely surprising or exceptionally rousing, which is a shame given the unfathomably dreadful predicament and an interesting turn of a performance from Dave Bautista. It's a film without sensation that feels like it's pulling its punches across the board – development is stunted, ideas lack passion, and the camera avoids visible violence – before the ending strolls off into the sunset with barely any goodbye.

It’s a sullen, trauma-driven approach to horror that’s far less traditional and reliant on human monsters amidst magical mysteries—not a killshot. This prolonged approach lacks decadent suspense or encompassing dread.

Kids vs. Aliens brings gloopy, grotesque practical effects to a childlike sci-fi thriller that fails to shine outside kill sequences and costumes.

There's Something Wrong With The Children is an energetic but expected kiddies-gone-killer tale that wades into some murky waters.

The Devil Conspiracy is a high-concept religious action flick with horror influences that sells its ambitions short but still entertains despite itself.

Missing owes its best moments to learning from 2018’s Searching, but is a bit of a downgrade in terms of Screenlife usage.

It’s in-joke heavy, tailoring an experience that tears iconic dialogue from classic predecessors and slathers on the meta-overload like popcorn swimming in clarified butter.

Casper Kelly psychotically spoofs the strangest of strange horror titles that turn anything into a murderous entity while unraveling deadly severe social commentaries. It’s abstract art, theater camp, found footage foolishness, hunt-and-stalk depravity — Adult Swim Yule Log is a whole lot of things but, even with a full 90 minutes, few angles feel fully fleshed out.

It's a heartbreaking tragedy, dreamer's comedy, and saucy stumble through double-edged "success" stories, but most of all? It's a bloated, brass-band-swingin' mess.

No lies; there are a handful of moments that strike a smile. That said, enjoyment is fleeting like the glee of biting into candy only to find, seconds later, that it's black licorice flavor.

A more pungent concoction of community terror and conjured trauma would be able to hold stronger, not disappointingly drift away like a lullaby into the wind.

The horrors of childbirth become entangled in a demonic subplot as Huesera fits neatly into the list of chilling pregnancy horror tales, but doesn’t add much new to it.

Sick is exceptionally paced and provides slasher thrills with breakneck intensity, but loses traction during a wobbly landing that needlessly overcomplicates an otherwise cutthroat thrill ride.

Too much of a good thing becomes John Ross’ curse, as Grimcutty renders his demonic scowl impotent after the umpteenth close-up. Stick your landing, not your opening—Grimcutty works itself backward into a forgettable cyber-folktale fate.

Dark Glasses is forgettable. It’s also an upgrade for contemporary Dario Argento.

My Best Friend’s Exorcism is gateway horror that puts storytelling above terror. It’s steady on its 1980s teenage-girl friendship drama, but other elements around the messaging stumble.

The Munsters is a wholesome labor of love that’s probably for the most diehard sitcom fans because for better and worse, Rob Zombie makes the Munsters reboot he wants to see.

Raven’s Hollow is drenched in 1800s allure as cursed mythology overtakes eastern American realism. Still, you’ve likely imagined far gnarlier nightmares based on Poe’s works than what’s delivered by these lackluster visual effects. To quoth Donato? Quite a bore.

Goodnight Mommy might be passable as a standalone, but it’s impossible to recommend over the original. Matt Sobel and ​​Kyle Warren venture somewhere new that still doesn’t differentiate nearly enough for its quieter approach.

The Retaliators tries to transform musical stardom into a rock n’ roll horror epic, but suffers from “too many cooks” syndrome as the end product plays disjointed and can feel like a music video demo reel.

Where Josh Ruben’s Scare Me soars thanks to tension delivered through imaginative monologues, LaBute’s latest is mostly benign chatter that rambles its way to an unimpressively expected conclusion.