Rob Staeger

Early scenes overplay the shock of these phantasms, but just as you expect Geoghegan to crank up the effects, the film mixes in some subtler scares.

Ahearne deftly builds the suspense, raising the stakes before steering the story into surprising new directions. Despite its modern premise, B&B feels classic — a Hitchcockian nail-biter without a platinum blonde in sight.

With Stonehearst Asylum, director Brad Anderson doles out a vintage Halloween treat — a straightforward Poe adaptation of the sort that Vincent Price used to star in — and gives it a freshness and complexity that make it a delight.

Director Dennis Iliadis doesn't overdwell on the existentialism of the concept; he lets emotional beats strobe against the WTF experience of the temporal doubles, peppering the action with distinct images and events to make the repetition stand out.

Writer-directors Micah Wright and Jay Lender are kids'-cartoon vets and show a facility for comedy on a more human level here — as does the nimble cast, which ably handles the tonal shift from travel nightmare to actual nightmare.

The temptation for an easy score is one of a handful of shopworn plot elements in Anthony Onah’s debut feature The Price, yet the interaction of t

Realive’s greatest strength is that it takes its premise so seriously, engaging with its moral and spiritual questions.

Filmgoers who brave We Are the Flesh may regret seeing it. Forgetting it is another matter entirely.

Where most post-Shrek animated films are manic and all too eager to please, Rémi Chayé's deliberately paced Long Way North tells its story with clarity and an urgent calm.

He Never Died is a Tootsie Pop of a movie. It has the outer shell of Taken...but there's an altogether different treat in the center.

Bogliano is not a subtle director — check his sudden zooms on items of portent — but he painstakingly shows us Caro opening her mind to the possibility of supernatural evil, and he's careful not to tip his hand too soon as to whether it's real or imagined.

A concurrent plot involving Ava's family doesn't land quite as well, as it travels down some more familiar paths, but the twelve-step satire had me grinning like a fiend.

Cawthorne's performance underpins the resulting power fantasy with genuine emotion.

Overall, it's a strong sampler, with surprising variety.

Not quite a biopic, the film presents an overview of Ip's years in Hong Kong; Anthony Wong's dignified performance begins with the grandmaster almost fully formed.

The film is most successful when humanizing the people behind the objectification, with lives beyond the smut.

Not every gamble works: The girls' intrusive Bejeweled-like social-media game annoys at every turn, and the plot itself is murky. But #Horror mesmerizes nonetheless, filled with tension, cruelty, and can't-look-away style.

Bishop isn't afraid to leave the club behind, confidently expanding beyond the seedy premise to become a three-way chase among the bachelor party guys, the club management, and a ferocious supernatural force.

Fans will clamor for Wyrmwood 2; the brothers have the talent to aim higher.

Mell stages a climax that's thrilling and ridiculous in equal measure.

Vincent Guastini's makeup effects are the star here, a refreshing change from the inky CGI morphing of too much modern horror.

The anthology is a mixed stocking; if you reach inside, something's likely to grab you.

The film itself works best once most of the soldiers have been dispatched—too often in the first half, the constant running and discharging of firearms proves too similar to watching a first-person-shooter video game.

Kevin and Michael Goetz's direction emphasizes the remoteness of the setting. The howl of the desert wind and the unflagging hammer of the sun are the backdrop for every bad decision, lending them a plausibility they wouldn't have in comfort.

In Fear traffics in suspicion, ratcheting tension, and shocks — including a few really effective ones — more than in satisfying explanations.

The Lennon Report loses some steam in its second half as the immediacy of the operating theater dissipates in press conferences and obituary voiceovers. Even so, Profe does an admirable job walking us through the day's events, weaving together the accounts of people on the scene.

The drama plays out as expected — the ending, particularly, seems too pat — but offers several well-executed moments of tension along the way.

After a promising start, rote possession imagery eventually becomes the focus, culminating in a by-the-numbers ending.