Reviews

A therapist becomes haunted by visions and hallucinations after a patient kills herself right in front of her after ranting and raving about a mysterious smile demon that's been following her around.

Sosie Bacon delivers an excellent performance as the leading lady even as the script her performance is supporting recycles several worn out cliches from The Ring and It Follows. Thankfully, the filmmakers have the decency to deliver a few surprising jolts and moments of suspense and they know how to surround the film with an uncomfortable sense of dread that keeps things going while it treads familiar ground we've seen elsewhere.

A woman inherits an estate from her dead aunt who orchestrates her suicide via video tape and, immediately after moving in, she and her husband experience strange haunting-esque activity and odd stalkers.

What Rest in Pieces has going for it is a fairly unpredictable script that just so happens to be told in a pedestrian and unexciting way. It also doesn't help that the leading lady doesn't provide much in the way of excitement or rational human responses throughout. Her line readings sound like they were dubbed by a robot, but the script's oddly paced twists and turns still take the viewer by surprise occasionally and the random bursts of violence and gore do shock after the mostly restrained and by the numbers first half hour.

Despite one detour to college and another to Hollywood, the Scream series has mostly stayed in the small town of Woodsboro for several films and it was getting a little stagnant and tired. Scream VI sets its latest massacre in New York City where danger appears to lurk from every alley, subway, and bodega and this leads to a series of effectively choreographed suspense sequences featuring a game and likable cast of survivors from the series including the return of fan-favorite Kirby.

In spite of all that it has going for it, the stakes seem lower than ever. Several characters are mortally wounded time and time again and escape the clutches of death far too easily. It seems that the filmmakers are too nervous to do away with many of their characters and the film suffers from that.

For those who only want gore and elaborate special effects from their horror films, Evil Dead Rise will hit the bullseye. For others who might want a more interesting story and better developed characters, it will disappoint and feel more like a special effects show reel.

The film is so relentless in trying to one up the last gory set piece that it can become exhausting after a half hour when it becomes clear that special effects is all it has on its mind. For many, this will be more than enough, but it's missing a lot of the humor that made other entries in this franchise so entertaining. Without that, it feels cynical and unpleasant.

A parasite gets loose in an apartment complex and turns all the residents into sex-crazed pleasure seekers.

David Cronenberg has a lot to say with this movie, because he makes sure to say it in an entertaining way, never letting his commentary take over and go into the realm of preachy. He uses his low budget effectively.

Terry O'Quinn's disturbed performance as the title character in The Stepfather is one of the all time greats as he struggles with trying to get the perfect family. A subplot involving the brother of one of his previous victims ends up offering no more than some slight padding to the story, but that's the only major weakspot of what is, otherwise, a very tight and suspenseful thriller.

Just about every classic horror trope is accounted for in the mysterious wax museum our college protagonists find themselves being sucked into in the very fun Waxwork. The story is creative, the performances are enjoyable, and the special effects are spectacular.

Linda Blair wears a tight spandex suit, grabs a crossbow, and teases her hair to the sky to get revenge on the lowlifes who attacked her sister and her friends. It's fun, if not extremely sleazy at times, but it's satisfying and has a great, rocking score.

Final Exam is like cafeteria food. Nothing special and a little bland, but it gets the job done. If you're needing an 80's slasher fix, Final Exam isn't the cream of the crop, but it's not without its own high points. Some of the characters are decently developed and the filmmakers create a little bit of mood with the abandoned campus location. It's just a shame that the film's killer is such a blank slate.

The Mutilator is basically like every other cabin in the woods movie except that this cabin is a condo by the sea instead. Characterizations are just as slight, but there is some mood and the death scenes are almost all showstoppers which is probably where it got its reputation from. If that's all you're looking for, The Mutilator will deliver.

Happy Birthday To Me embraces both slasher and classic suspense tropes and presents a mostly entertaining confection with just a few tiny drawbacks.

Elite snobs at a posh school are being killed and birthday girl, Virginia, thinks she might be killing them during her most recent blackouts. If not her, then who? The pacing can lag a bit at times and many of the characters are developed as much as they should be, but the wild finale and creative murder sequences make up for it. J Lee Thompson directs with a flair for the gruesome and macabre.

Slumber Party Massacre II doesn't have anything particularly interesting to say about anything, but it does have a singing killer with a drill and that's at least something unique to help it stand out from the hundreds of similar movies out there.

It shares some continuity with the original film by having one of the film's survivors grown up and going for a fun weekend away with her girl band friends and being terrorized by an Elvis impersonator with a drill/guitar hybrid. It's a short movie with a manic style and that's enough to keep those with open minds entertained for a little while.

Madman has a little style going for it, but the script doesn't add much to the tried and true summer camp slasher subgenre that was born out of the success of Friday the 13th. It does have a handful of alright death scenes including one decapitation via car hood and one victim dumb enough to try and hide from the killer in a tiny fridge.

A series of murders start up after a teenage track star dies from a blood clot during a race and the killer finds her coach and teammates responsible. There are some inventive kill scenes such as the death by football, but the killer's fencing mask get up isn't the most frightening and the script takes one too many left turns into subplots and scenes that don't payoff. It's nice seeing Linnea Quigley in a small role.

Three dull as can be concert goers break down and wake up in the home of a weird spinster and her domineering mother. There's also some creepy, heavy breathing man who watches everyone undress and might also be a killer.

The filmmakers of Unhinged might know much about picking decent actors, but they sure can pick great locations. The main location of the film gives Unhinged a lot more production value and mood that it deserves. It does have an interesting, if possibly offensive, twist in the film's final minutes.

Barbi Benton gets herself into a bad situation when a psycho from her past switches her check up test results in an effort to trap her at a hospital overnight and terrorize her. Some of the deaths are inventive and Benton isn't too bad of an actress, but the script is so strange and some the scenes so bizarre that, at times, it has a dark comedy feel to it.

As one could expect, Cheerleader Camp is about a killer targeting the attendants of a cheerleader camp while the lead heroine thinks she might be losing her mind and doing the killing herself. Most of the acting is porn quality, but a few of the effects are nicely jarring and gruesome. The grim finale certainly stands out among its peers for the downbeat twist.

A dark mall after hours is the setting for Sorority Babes in the Slimball Bowl-O-Rama and it's a film that hits just about every checkmark for an interesting and fun 80's horror film.

After being caught watching a perverted sorority initiation ritual, a trip of frat boys are lured to a mall bowling alley to retrieve a special trophy as part of the initiation and end up releasing a demon who can grant them wishes. Since it's a horror film, the wishes comes with a major price to pay. It's light hearted and silly and always fun.

Blessed with an atmosphere-heavy abandoned furniture store as its main location, Hide and Go Shriek does have a few tiny chills as its killer lures their victims to their doom by wearing the clothes of the victim they just murdered to confuse them. It's a nice, creepy touch to a mostly by the number slasher film.

The light story amounts to nothing more than a bunch of teenagers breaking into a furniture store for some partying and getting killed by someone who's in there with them. Only one of the death scenes is all that memorable and this movie has to hold a record for most survivors in a horror film, but it moves along quickly enough to keep the audience entertained and the killer's unmasking is borderline offensive in its strange hilarity.

Randy Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt play a couple of picture perfect 50's parents who might be hiding a disturbing secret that only their strange young son suspects. All that meat in their fridge might not be from animals, but from humans.

Taking the point of view of the young son, you're never really sure what to believe while you're watching Parents. Could this all be the product of a child's overactive imagination or could these people really be cannibals? Parents does lose a little steam once it decides to rip off the Band-Aid and let the audience know exactly what's going on, but it's still a creepy, disturbing, and sometimes darkly funny movie.

Right out of the gate, the filmmakers involved in Killer Party want you to know this isn't going to be your usual college horror film. There are three fakeouts in the opening 10 minutes, mirroring a similar opening scene used in Scream 4 nearly 30 years later. From there, Killer Party is off to the races.

Mixing elements of college comedies and supernatural horror, Killer Party tells the story of three best friends trying to pledge a stuffy sorority. Their efforts are rewarded with a April Fool's party in a haunted frat house where the bodies start to pile up. The performances are better than expected from a film of this sort which helps keep things interesting during the long sections where nothing horrific is happening. Sadly, almost all the gore has been cut, but that does help make the film feel lighter and more party-like.

Nightmare Sisters is a lesser known horror title from David De Coteau who's mostly been known for his homoerotic horror films from the last decade. In this, he gives scream queens Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens, and Michelle Bauer some of their most interesting roles to date.

They play three pathetically dorky girls who summon an evil spirit during a seance and turn into sexy sirens who seduce and murder several dumb jocks. It's a really simple premise executed as well as can be expected with the limited resources available.

Death Spa decides to opt out of the traditional slasher template that was so popular at the time and deliver some solid supernatural splatter with a large helping of good old fashioned ghost movie fun.

The story centers around a new age heath spa run by a computer system that becomes possessed by the spirit of the owner's angry dead wife and the equipment starts murdering all the club members. We're treated to saunas gone wild, shower tiles run amok, weight machines splitting people in half, and even frozen fish impaling people. Even if the script takes a few too many detours on its way to its destination, there's still more than enough gore and oddball characters to keep most audience members awake.

Sorority House Massacre could be forgiven for shamelessly aping other horror films such as Halloween (and it's first sequel) and The Eyes of Laura Mars, but it has the audacity to bring absolutely nothing original to the plate at all which makes the whole film feel like watching paint dry.

In the film, we have a young sorority girl plagued with visions of her insane brother who killed her family and, now, wants to come after her and her sorority friends after breaking out of an asylum. Clearly, not the most original plot in the world, but if Sorority House Massacre had at least attempted to bring in some fresh characterizations, interesting dialogue, or maybe an inspired sequence of suspense or two, it wouldn't have felt so stale.

Killer Workout was obviously never made to be an Oscar contender, but it succeeds in being a mostly entertaining and diverting 90 minutes. Owing heavily to workout craze sweeping the nation in the 80's, it features a safety pin wielding serial killer set loose in a workout studio.

While one must give the film credit for its originality when it comes to the killer's signature weapon, it does get old after awhile. Fans of cheese and jiggling body parts in spandex with enjoy the workout scenes that look like outtakes from a season of Fame.