Matt Donato

Morgan’s feature debut is as stunning, diabolical and boundary-pushing an emergence as any filmmaker could hope to achieve.

Molli and Max in the Future is the textbook definition of an indie darling that executes well above its obvious production restraints, as unique and boundlessly ingenious a film you'll find in today's media landscape.

It's a hilarious low-low-budget, rough-around-the-edges oddity that makes me very happy, and I hope someday it'll make you feel the same crisp beaver-beatin' joy.

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.

Erik Bloomquist’s direction is composed, and his co-written screenplay with Carson plays on politician-slamming themes, yet Founders Day is still a second-tier slasher that crosses too many plotlines in an overly complicated small-town massacre.

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.

Gray plays to the simplest pleasures of heist cinema and wins us over because sometimes it’s alright to simply be dependable and straightforward.

The Conference is one of the better slashers released this year if you’re in the mood to watch liars and brown-nosers get hacked, skewered and brutalized to bits, pulling overtime at the right moments.

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.

It's A Wonderful Knife might make its points with steel blades, but that doesn't negate the saccharine earnestness that assures this one as a new Christmas horror favorite with a heart three sizes bigger than you'd expect.

When Evil Lurks is a capital “H” horror film that risks it all and hits the jackpot, pummeling its audience into submissions and still leaving us asking for more.

In the hit-and-miss subgenre of horror anthologies, V/H/S/85 is a shining beacon. Filmmakers are given the space to explore a gamut of ideas, none of which feel restrained to fit a specific anthology mold.

For what it’s doing and for how visually appealing it can be, Dark Harvest delivers October ickiness with a crooked smile.

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.

Wake Up makes its impression like a candy bar with a razor blade at its core. It's a sweet little treat for action-horror fans that hurts so good, as long as you're in the mood for visually traumatic, hopeless vibes.

Eileen is a nifty little shapeshifter of a thriller made of tremendous parts, just lacking a bit of steam upon exit.

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.

Though Green may alienate some audiences with choices nowhere near as terrifying as William Friedkin’s original, something about the film’s heart endears beyond another exorcism retread satisfied to follow the same blasphemous beats.

Totally Killer tries to skirt responsibilities by having you laugh at its self-awareness, which works as much as it doesn't. Kiernan Shipka will be the reason people talk about Totally Killer, even if the film's foundation of paper cards is one strong gust away from collapsing at any second.

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.

Dream Scenario is a sprawling dissection of subconscious desires and how marketable popularity spells doom for its subjects, showcasing Borgli's flexible originality without sacrificing emotional investment.

While its minimalist approach keys into creepy unknown anxieties about our extraterrestrial neighbors, Duffield’s signature dose of emotional heft floats away into the clouds this time around.

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.

Bad Things wants to be quirky, callous and cutthroat before an explosive ending, but never aggressively combusts as we’d hope—even with chainsaws and flesh-cutting blades in play.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter should delight horror fans raised on Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, and offers an R-rated bite of vampiric brutality for genre fans with a stronger bloodlust. Øvredal does well to transport his cast to a time when scary stories were told around lanterns in the dead of night, and even if the moodiness evaporates due to a protracted runtime and the foregone conclusion of Dracula’s landfall, the director accentuates the basics of violent feeding sessions in hair-raising fashion.

The Sacrifice Game is cool, calm, and collected despite bringing so many subgenres to the party, achieving tonal unity that should please crowds and leave them craving whatever comes next for Wexler and company.

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.

There's something to be said about the way Sakamoto depicts how the newer Japanese generation is left to fight for success amongst themselves — misled by older handlers and governing bodies — but you're ultimately here for ha-has and beatdowns, and neither disappoints. If there was ever an action movie that'd slay at a teen girl sleepover, it's Baby Assassins 2.

A soulful ghost story that does an unexpectedly solid job speaking to younger audiences about the afterlife, nailing the film’s appropriately spooky gateway-horror ambitions.

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.

Vannicelli weaponizes therapy-speak where other titles become preachy, uses role-playing as an abusive confusion tactic, and provokes a rather alluring mindf*ck that doesn’t have nor need all the answers to captivate viewers.

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.

With a steely reserve and killer instinct, Extraction 2 thrives as a buffet of brutality that plays back the mercenary thriller hits with a fresh coat of camouflage paint.

It’s better as a comedy than as a wickedly sharpened thriller, making The Blackening one of those surefire “see it with a crowd” pleasers.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts proves that the Transformers franchise is accelerating in the right direction, delivering solid Autobots action and a solid voice cast behind the infamous robots in disguise.

The Wrath of Becky is still a fun-filled slaughter-fest, even considering the lulls before Becky unleashes her fury.

The Boogeyman is a capable creepshow built for mass appeal that gets the job done because at the end of the day, scary is as scary does.

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.

What Influencer brings to the party lands with a softer impact in the messages it preaches, but that doesn’t prevent a twistier predatory narrative from snagging our attention like a buzzworthy viral sensation.

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.

Sisu keeps it simple as a smaller-focus WWII epic that loves killing Nazis as much as we love watching them die in over-the-top ways.

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.

Renfield makes a mess of its story at times, but does a good enough job getting gorgeously gruesome with its vampire action sequences to win us over with cartoonish gore – and Nicolas Cage's Dracula is one for the ages.

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.

Air is an underdog crowd-pleaser with a standout ensemble cast sharpened to a point. As both director and co-star, Ben Affleck finds a balance between comedy and explanation that remains accessible to all audiences.

A lot of dreamlike logic floats through a freakish onslaught of dependably scary imagery strung together by what fits a moment versus the fluid nature of a more captivating survival scenario.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is an accessible fantasy adventure that both roasts and respects D&D culture without losing newcomers along for the ride.

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.

Furies is a double-barreled adrenaline shot of ladies-first action extravagance that shines a light on Vietnamese genre cinema.

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.

Cameron and Colin Cairnes succeed in developing a time-warp slice of Halloween spookiness, a vessel for David Dastmalchian to prove himself (for those who don't know) as a commanding lead performer.

If You Were The Last succeeds in being sensually aware, wholesomely funny, and emotionally fulfilling.

Brooklyn 45 is a tragic fireside reminder about how easily good men and women can be corrupted, whether by propaganda rhetoric or the ghosts of miseries past.

Evil Dead Rise is both a familiar and refreshing Evil Dead sequel that delivers all the gore you’d expect with a measured dose of the humor that makes this series a fan favorite.

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

I don’t love every storytelling element, but I do adore all that involves the star of the show, an aggro bear on obscene amounts of blow. You’ll get what you pay for, and can we ask much more from Cocaine Bear?

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.

The Lair is an abomination of bad accents (“Texan American” yee-haw, “Unintelligible Englishman,” Australian muddying both), excruciating action hero one-liners, and discouragingly archaic plot choices.

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.

With House Party, Calmatic jumps from a prolific music video career to feature filmmaking with the same energy, leading to shorter-burst storytelling that values standout moments over longevity.

M3GAN capably proves herself more than a horror villain meme, although the film does sometimes struggle to balance the horror and comedy.

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.

Dash will leave viewers behind based on the virtue of its obscure construction, yet should excite those seeking alternative character studies based on gig culture, second lives, and the unfaithful depths humans will plummet before telling a simple truth.

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.

The Leech is a seedy, nefarious and scrappy morality tale that excels on the backs of its big-swinging performers.

A Wounded Fawn is an artfully chaotic descent into bloodlust, monstrous misogyny, and euphoric comeuppances of the most punishing pleasures.

Violent Night might take a hot minute to find its footing and keeps plucking low-hanging wordplay sugar plums, but at full strength, nobody's stopping Santa from making this year the reddest Christmas imaginable.

Blood Relatives is a warts-and-all brand of vampire indie that gets by with a bit of help from tremendous actor chemistry.

Nanny seeps into your pores, stings like salt in a throbbing wound and doesn’t require what some horror fans might—conversely—wish appeared.

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.

Run Sweetheart Run is a passionate Los Angeles marathon that severs heads, scolds abusive norms, and gets loud about the ways society needs to reflect upon bettering itself. Shana Feste finds action-packed elegance in rage and reflection, borrowing from fast-moving midnight flicks that aren't afraid to challenge oppressive stigmas.

Satan's Slaves: Communion delivers another artfully accomplished and wickedly malevolent slice of Indonesian horror that returns to formula basics without sacrificing Anwar's trademarks. Maybe a bit too ambitious with its storytelling. But still righteously right-on in terms of razor-toothed horror execution.

McKee’s darker genre touches in titles like The Woman and All Cheerleaders Die are sorely missed in Old Man, which is too reliant on performances that outshine a story seen coming like an asteroid the size of Mars.

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.

Sadly, some only listen when the quiet part is said out loud — Sissy blares its concerns and horrors like neon demons in front of the brightest ring lights.

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

Project Wolf Hunting goes for broke in terms of exquisite beatdown violence in the pursuit of primal genre happiness. Writer/director Kim Hong-seon executes like there’s a going-out-of-business sale on fake blood, and we reap the benefits as showstopping displays of action-horror devastation take center stage.

Hellraiser is a reinvigorated reboot that gets the blood pumping, starting with Jamie Clayton’s worthy Pinhead performance that sets a fresh tone with immense reverence paid to Clive Barker's works.