It should go without saying that portrayals of black characters in horror movies can stand to improve, but on the bright side, they aren't as bad as they've been in the past. Compare the original King Kong to 2017's Kong: Skull Island, for instance (acknowledging that films like these...
While the original remake (oxymoron?) of House on Haunted Hill was notable for having a black hero (Taye Diggs), this direct-to-video sequel is notable for NOT having a black hero. It basically steps over the fact that Diggs' character survived the first film, instead focusing on Ali Larter's character,...
A general rule of thumb in identifying a bad movie: if two or more people in the credits go by a single name -- say, Madonna and Prince -- chances are it's not Oscar material. In Three Sickxty's case, there are actually five: Aerletaree, Earthquake, Chocolate, Navangia and Lashaun....
The Devil's Daughter is an all-black melodramatic semi-remake of Ouanga with no devil and with daughters so bland the devil wouldn't want 'em anyway. The whispy-voiced Ida James stars as vapid heiress Sylvia Walton, who inherits a Jamaican plantation worked by "Jamaicans" without a hint of patois. Her half-sister...
I can't prove it, but I think that the NRA uses The Omega Man as a recruiting film. "This is what the future has in stake for you!" I can imagine them proclaiming. Never mind that this "future" takes place in 1976. NRA poster child Charlton Heston stars as...
If a movie could be a hate crime, Chaos is it. It's like Birth of a Nation without the artistic merit. It was originally slated as a remake of Wes Craven's seminal Last House on the Left, but pompous writer/director David DeFalco felt that his film was original enough...
I'm no expert on UK culture, but it seems that for the first decade or so of the 21st century, there was a (real or perceived) increase in adolescent crime attributed to youths dressed in hoodies who seemingly adopted what they saw as the dangerous elements of hip-hop culture,...
The original Terror Train is generally considered a cornerstone of the Golden Age of slashers—and, along with Halloween, The Fog and Prom Night, is one-fourth of the quartet of films that turned Jamie Lee Curtis into a scream queen—so it’s surprising that it took until 2022 for it to...
47 Meters Down: Uncaged has about as much in common with 47 Meters Down as it does with 47 Ronin. Sure, it revolves around sharks trying to eat people, but it’s nowhere near 47 meters below the surface and it doesn’t involve any sort of Mandy Moore-adjacent caging mishap,...
If zombies made a comeback in theatrical-release horror in 2004, then 2005 was the year for voodoo (albeit much less successfully), with Skeleton Key and Venom. Whereas Skeleton Key was a pleasant surprise, though, there's little pleasant about this amazingly bland horror entry (The SyFy-quality digital effects certainly don't...
