With Pet Sematary, it seems like the remake was ordered, and the filmmakers tried unsuccessfully to come up with a reason. Sometimes less is better too.

Every so often, though, a film like Bau: Artist at War comes along which is so off-balance it feels, not just flawed, but embarrassing, an unintentional parody of the ethically entangled genre.

I will give The Nun this, it has an utterly outrageous ending that pretty much brought the house down at the advance screening I attended.

The Italian characters in The Equalizer 3 tend to speak more slowly than usual, almost as though waiting for the subtitles to catch up. If you can handle that pacing, interspersed with short bursts of intense violence, then The Equalizer may yet hold your attention. But at the tail end of a summer that delivered exciting new chapters in the Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible franchises, that may be asking a lot.

Oh, but they’re a quirky lot, so they are, in Wild Mountain Thyme, which arrives December 22 stuffed with blarney, Irish clichés, and a head-scratcher of a plot about an odd yet spectacularly attractive pair who just can’t seem to get their romantic act together.

It’s one of those movies where, short of any actual existential terrors to throw at the audience, the sound engineers merely crank up the volume from time to time so that a door closing sounds like a cannon going off. Our Lady of Jump Scares preserve us!

It’s a clever conceit but bungled in the delivery.

It tries to mine humour and a bit of horror from the era but fails to make much of an impact in either genre.

Figuring out Nick’s motivations may be the most fun you’ll have over the film’s two-hour-plus runtime, though that isn’t saying much.

Anniversary is a political thriller. No, make that an apolitical thriller. Directed and co-written by Jan Komasa, it’s a hot-button story where all the buttons have gone cold. I’ve been in airport elevators with more pep.

Is it worth the wait? I mean, if you’ve already sat through The Last Dance — and I can’t advise that you do — then you might at well see it through to the bitter end. And I do mean bitter.

The film is a confusing, rather than complex, series of threats and reveals and confessions that never successfully gel into a suitable resolve.

You’ve probably heard punchier dialog at dinner parties.

The underdog formula doesn’t work in this film. Highlighted by Snoop Dogg’s ham-fisted acting, the script really doesn’t allow for any sort of forgiveness of his character’s oversights.

The film Dark Windows, by Norwegian director Alex Heron, manages to work in both forms of teen-o-cide in a film that feels like a Mothers Against Drunk Driving public service announcement appended to a slasher film, though that makes it sound more exciting than it is.

What can be said about series director Wes Ball is that he has a flair for noisy gun and air battles, pyro, fights, destruction, pursuit and escape. But it signifies nothing if there is no plausible reason for pretty much anything that happens.

At first so-bad-it's-good, then merely it’s-so-bad, Replicas’ source of interest is primarily forensic. How did director Jeffrey Nachmanoff and writer Chad St. John (London Has Fallen) think they could get away with it?

As flat and uncompelling as its title, Jiu Jitsu plays like a hybrid of rejected audition tapes from Predator with the outtakes from the fifth Highlander movie (and not the ones starring Christopher Lambert). But just how bad is Jiu Jitsu? Well, bad enough that the phrase “a waste of Nicolas Cage's talents” actually means something.

Neeson maintains a certain doleful dignity as an action star who apparently takes no pleasure in his gift for violence, but Blacklight has little else going for it.

As is often the case with a not-so-great film, I can report that I wanted to like it more than I did. But I just couldn’t.

A farce that fizzles, a satire that sags, and a dead-end for its gifted cast, Breaking News In Yuba County at least starts well.

The crude if silly humour of the movie’s first 90 minutes is followed by a dollop of sentiment at the film’s end, resulting in a case of tonal whiplash... like a slap with a wet fish followed by a forced bear hug. No doubt Tag means to be a rude but heart-warming trifle, but it just isn’t funny enough to get past its awful taste.

While 88 has characters who have lots to say about the history of white supremacy, dark money in politics, and the delusion of fixing a corrupt system from within, this is a stiff, artless effort that barely makes the transition from explanatory journalism to fiction.

The sharks are disappointingly not scary but they’re interesting-looking with their plastic torpedo heads and serrated-saw smiles. When they leap out of the dark to dismember bodies, they bloody the waters in swirling lava lamp patterns that feel almost peaceful. Or perhaps I’m just trying to find a nicer way to say dull.

A wearying spoof, the film, with its Regency-era setting, takes a smart, sombre drama and turns it into a juvenile inanity.

The movie attempts to strike a nerve and, in its efforts, occasionally demonstrates promise. A memorable death scene is accomplished with a blend of comedy, horror, and style. But it is a rare moment.

A family movie with lots of CGI-talking animals and star Robert Downey Jr. hiding his charisma, Dolittle is a tiresomely chaotic concoction.

Zero “rom” and very little “com.” The action sequences are perhaps the best parts of the film. Director Pierre Morel sure knows how to crash a helicopter! But there’s only so many times you can watch Cena shoot, fight or drive his way out of danger.