Unlike Halloween and Christmas, Thanksgiving has struggled to find a foothold within the horror genre -- unless, perhaps, you’re a Native American who tells campfire stories about the White Man’s arrival, spreading pestilence, genocide and gluten intolerance. Cinematically speaking, though, Thanksgiving has been a famine for horror; even lesser...
I don't know if there's anyone who would describe anything Renny Harlin's ever done as "clever" -- except maybe "Clever how he tanked Geena Davis's career" -- but darnit if Deep Blue Sea doesn't display a glimmer of cleverness amidst its arm-gnawing mayhem. There's a nudge-and-wink awareness of the...
Even for hardcore horror fans, found footage movies have pretty much worn out their welcome. Too often, they feel like an easy way for someone to make a film on the cheap without having to account for polished camerawork, effects, editing or dialogue. And too often, they show little...
For most of America (and the world, for that matter), the name Buckout Road means very little, but in and around Westchester County, New York, it’s apparently famous for being haunted. Or cursed. Or maybe both. Less famous than regional legends like the Headless Horseman and the Jersey Devil,...
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...
The Sickle is a low-budget little indie film that proves you don’t have to toss a bunch of money into a production to create something thoughtful, dramatic and well acted. Granted, coherence and excitement would’ve been nice also, but nobody’s perfect.
Told in nonlinear fashion, the story revolves around Jacob...
While the standard cinematic mystical darkie is a benevolent being who uses his or her powers to aid a Caucasian in need (CIN) -- see The Legend of Bagger Vance, The Family Man, The Green Mile, The Stand, The Shining, etc. -- The Offspring paints quite a different picture....
While the first couple of Friday the 13th films were noticeably lacking in color, the series has made up for those monochromatic early days by including fairly significant black characters in most of the entries since then. Apart from the downright Negroid Part 5, Jason X has the largest...
To say that Rudy Ray Moore is an acquired taste is like saying that Paris Hilton has no talent. Duh. His blue stand-up act aside, his films are low on budget and even lower on subtlety. Petey Wheatstraw, based on one of his acts, is the closest any of...
I don't know much about Papua New Guinea (except that it's apparently crawling with zombies and cannibals), but I don't think that the racial makeup of the populace is quite as black as Hell of the Living Dead implies. Here, it looks more like Africa or the Caribbean than...
